Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.
There seems to be some differing opinions on adding to the genre list, but since most seem to think it's unnecessary I shall hold off at least for now.
Chidori's very diplomatic review that this is my best story is possibly my favourite review of late, deliberate or not, because this is, of course, my only story ;)
I hope you enjoy this completely filler, eventless chapter in which nothing of importance happens and no nasty surprises occur at all.
Chapter 33
Something patted her none too gently on the cheek. Fleur shifted away from it, turning onto her side.
'Wake up Fleur!'
Gabby.
Fleur turned back and eyed her baby sister with some distaste. 'You know I hate it when you do this. How did you even get in here?'
'The carriage lets in all Beauxbatons students,' Gabrielle beamed.
'My room does not,' Fleur told her.
'You warded it?' Gabby eyed the doorframe speculatively from beneath her blonde hair.
'Like my room at Beauxbatons,' Fleur explained. Her room at the chateaux was warded rather specifically. It had taken the entirety of her first year and a lot of help from Madame Maxime for her to be able to successfully create and cast the wards. Gabrielle had not been able to simply walk in to her room before Fleur had altered the enchantments to grant her access.
'Well I'm almost like you now, Fleur,' her sister grinned, poking her in the side, 'so I just walked in and nothing happened.'
Fleur considered that. Gabrielle was her sister, they had both inherited the veela magic, and it was likely their magic was of similar nature. It did, of course, mean that her wards were not quite as perfect as she had considered, they were only meant to allow her to pass, but Gabby was probably the only one who could exploit her error.
'I shall have to lock you out again,' Fleur teased, throwing back the covers and moving in search of her uniform.
Gabrielle's face fell slightly at the sight of her sister. Fleur had seen that look before.
'It takes time,' she reassured her baby sister gently.
'But it's already been so long,' Gabby pouted, in slightly better humour than before. 'I want to be like you, Fleur, you're so much prettier than me. It's not fair.'
'You'll be just as beautiful as me, Gabby,' she told her baby sister, rummaging through her drawers for a clean bra. 'And then you'll come to realise it's not as good as it seems.'
'Only people who are already pretty don't care about being pretty,' Gabby sulked, then her eyes lit up with mischief. 'I bet Harry wouldn't be so fond of you if you weren't pretty.'
'Harry doesn't seem very fond of me anyway,' she remarked lightly. 'He's not important.' She was quite proud she managed to say it with a straight face.
Gabby giggled. 'Nuh uh, Fleur,' she wagged her finger, 'I know you better than that. I'm your sister, and even if I wasn't, I still have a letter you sent me that says otherwise.'
No you don't,' Fleur smiled deviously. Gabrielle looked puzzled, and patted down her pockets. 'I stole it back,' she smirked, tucking her wand into her waistband.
'Oh,' Gabby pouted. 'I was going to have so much fun showing that maman, and papa, and then,' her eyes gleamed with silent laughter, 'I was going to show it to Harry .'
'And that, Gabrielle, is why I took it back,' Fleur sighed. 'I love you, but sometimes you're just too much trouble.'
'Spoilsport,' her sister grinned, her eyes flicking furtively around Fleur's room.
'You won't find it,' Fleur told her, amused. 'It's gone now.'
'You destroyed it?' Gabby gasped. 'But if the letter is gone, how is Harry going to know you love him and come to find you?'
Fleur laughed a little bitterly at her sister's naivety. 'Yes, I burned it. I think you've been reading too many books from maman's romance collection again, Gabby. That isn't how things work.'
'They're good books,' Gabrielle grinned, unrepentant. 'You changed your mind about him, then?'
'He changed,' Fleur answered vaguely. Her sister was prying. They didn't have many, if any, secrets between them, but sometimes Gabrielle took it upon herself to find things out that Fleur was quite ready to tell her. 'I'll change my mind in time too,' she finished morosely.
'Or you could go find him and tell him everything you wrote to me?' Gabby suggested, with hearts in her eyes. No doubt her younger sister expected the heavens to open along with Harry's heart, before they walked off into an early sunset. This being Britain she would at least be right about the rain, if none of the rest.
'I am not chasing after someone who doesn't even want to touch or look at me,' Fleur declared proudly. 'Even in maman's books it is the wizard who runs after the witch.' She neglected to mention that she would be standing out in the rain with him without hesitation if she had any hope he would be anything but cruel to her.
'So you don't want him?' Gabby grinned. 'Can I have him instead? He's my age anyway, that's too young for you.'
'No,' Fleur retorted angrily. 'You haven't even met him, Gabby.'
'He saved me from the lake,' she sighed melodramatically and collapsed on Fleur's bed, 'like a true hero.'
Fleur snorted. 'You know you weren't in any danger.'
'He didn't,' Gabby pointed out, 'and he still saved me, so either he's a hero, or,' she looked up at Fleur whimsically from under her lashes, 'he had some other reason for saving your darling, baby sister.'
She would like to hope that Harry had saved Gabby for her for that reason, it made her heart leap, but he'd seemed so angry with her afterwards that she just couldn't believe it.
'That's enough, Gabrielle,' Fleur said a little more sternly. Gabby pouted, but she knew when Fleur was serious and dropped the matter.
'Do you think you're going to win?' she asked instead.
'I'm going to win,' Fleur smiled. 'I always win, remember. Where's maman? There's no way she would have let her little chick wander off on her own, and you aren't sneaky enough to get away yet.'
'You don't win when we play cards, I'm luckier than you,' Gabby grinned. 'Maman is speaking with Madame Maxime, she has to go back to Carcassonne soon, but I'm almost as far ahead of everyone in my year as you were and I want to stay to watch.'
'All the way to the end?' Fleur asked, more than a little excited by the idea.
'All the way until the third task,' Gabby smiled. 'It's not so much fun at the chateaux without you, and I know you must miss me.' She fluttered her eyelashes and kicked her feet against Fleur's pillow.
Not so much fun was Gabrielle's understated way of saying that she was lonely and would rather spend four months with her sister in a different country than stay at school.
'I hope Madame Maxime lets you stay,' Fleur smiled. Gabby was not her, her baby sister was a little more like her father than Fleur was, a touch softer. She let everything get to her in a way that Fleur never had. More than once in the last couple of years her little sister had come to her crying, about the taunts of the girls in her year, or the dismissal of the boys who chose her more mature friends over her. Both groups would be left behind when Gabby grew up over the next few months, but she wold find herself just as lonely once she was like Fleur as she was now. She had never had the heart to do more than hint at that, crushing Gabrielle's hope was too cruel.
'She will,' Gabby grinned. 'I got the highest marks in my classes since you took them.'
'Still trying to beat me,' Fleur smiled.
'I'll beat you next year in the real exams,' Gabrielle declared fiercely. There was enough of their mother in both of them to make their rivalry strong, but it was never bitter. Gabby wanted nothing but the best for her, and Fleur would gladly sacrifice anything she had for her sister's success.
Something tells me I won't have to give anything, she thought to herself.
Gabrielle was in danger of surpassing her elder sibling without any help from anyone else. The only thing she seemed to struggle with was surviving without her family at school. She was certainly better at controlling her veela magic than Fleur was, even at her age.
'Let's go somewhere?' Gabby pleaded, 'your room is boring without all the little things you made.'
'I can make you something if you want?' Fleur offered. 'It's probably best to stay around here so maman knows where you are and doesn't have to worry about you getting into trouble.'
'I never get into trouble,' Gabrielle grinned. 'And maman won't worry about me when I'm with you.' She looked up at Fleur imploringly, all big blue eyes, white teeth and silver hair. If she did not know that the allure could not be used against another veela she would be suspicious of her sister's begging look. She could draw tears from a stone if she wanted to.
'Fine,' Fleur caved. 'Where would you like to go?'
'Somewhere exciting,' Gabby cried.
'I can show you where they kept the dragons from the first task?' A short wander into the edge of the woods should keep them well from danger. Gabrielle had a penchant for attracting or, more accurately, causing trouble, but there couldn't be anything all that dangerous in the trees.
'Let's go,' her sister decided, jumping off the bed and smirking evilly. 'We can sneak out.'
'We can just ask,' Fleur sighed, knowing Gabrielle would disagree.
'Sneaking is more fun,' Gabby smiled, pulling her wand out from the chest of her uniform.
Fleur spluttered. 'You keep your wand there!?'
'I couldn't before,' she exulted, 'but I can now, and it's much less likely to be lost or stolen when it's safely tucked away here.'
'You can't draw it very quickly,' Fleur remonstrated. 'The best place to keep it is at your waist or up your sleeve.'
'Fine,' Gabby grumbled, 'but we're still sneaking.'
'We can sneak,' Fleur conceded, 'but you always get caught.'
'Not anymore,' her sister smirked again, 'watch.'
She twirled her wand in a very familiar fashion over herself and faded from view. Gabrielle wasn't quite as good as Fleur was with disillusioning, but she wasn't too far behind. Complete invisibility would probably elude them both by a fraction, but of all the wizards and witches who could cast the charm they would definitely be better than most.
'Tell me you've seen anyone my age with a better disillusionment charm,' she crowed, twirling almost imperceptibly.
'It's very impressive,' Fleur congratulated her. She had, of course, seen Harry Potter's mastery of the charm, one that outstripped her own. He was one of the few who could fully conceal themselves with the spell, but Gabby didn't need to know that, though her sister would probably relish the chance to talk about him with her again.
'Let's sneak,' she giggled, opening Fleur's door and tip-toeing out.
She cast her own charm and followed her sister, used to Gabby's antics. The door swung quietly shut behind them and Fleur was stuck following the slight impressions of Gabrielle's feet across the carpeted hall.
Fortunately for Fleur, as she was always the one who ended up taking the fall for Gabrielle's mischief when they were together, neither her mother or Madame Maxime noticed them and they were soon outside.
'Which way?' Gabrielle chirped, dispelling her disillusionment charm. Fleur did the same, pointing her wand in the direction of Hogwarts' quidditch pitch.
Gabby took off, scampering across the wet grass without a care for her clothes.
'Slow down, Gabrielle,' Fleur called after her. 'If you get lost in the woods we won't ever find you again.'
Admonished, her sister returned to her side.
Her calm demeanour did not last long, by the time they were near the trees at the edge of the pitch she was already bounding ahead into the trees and Fleur had to hurry to keep track of her bright hair in the trees in front of her.
'Gabby,' she called, when her sister managed to lose her among the trees. 'Come back.'
There was no reply and Fleur's heart began to beat a little faster.
A shrill scream tore through the trees, and her mind went into overdrive. Her wand was in her hand instantly as she ran, sprinting through the branches towards the sound.
Gabrielle.
The sharp-needled boughs whipped across her face as she ran, despite her shielding arm, but Fleur ignored the stinging. There hadn't been a sound since the scream.
She rounded a tree and hit something soft, bouncing off and rolling across the floor.
'Fleur,' Gabby groaned, rolling off her legs which immediately sprang back to life, prickling and tingling.
'Why did you scream?' she demanded, pulling herself up on a nearby tree, still holing her wand.
'Look,' her sister's voice wavered, horrified, but still proud enough to maintain her demeanour.
Fleur twisted away from the tree, brushing her hair out of her eyes to look where Gabrielle was pointing.
She recoiled instantly.
It was little more than a skeleton, the bones blackened, charred and twisted by the fire that had rendered the corpse both fleshless and unrecognisable.
'Stay away from it, Gabby,' she warned. 'Actually, go get Madame Maxime, she'll know what to do.'
Her sister hurried off, running back in the direction they had come.
Fleur edged a bit closer, inspecting what was left of the body without getting too close. Most of the bones were shattered or cracked, the teeth mostly smashed out, and the skull dented. Fleur had seen injuries like that when her mother took her with her to magical hospitals to drop of ingredients for potions. They were normally the result of playing quidditch too fervently, or a particularly strong blasting or banishing curse.
There wasn't much left of the face, or anything really, just a few hard, carbonised strips of flesh stretched and cracked across gaping bones. The body was half-covered by fallen pine needles, most of which were brown and long-dead. This skeleton had been here far too long to belong to the missing judge. Fleur heaved a sigh of relief, she didn't want to be involved in anything to do with that. Rita Skeeter would be only too happy to write another article, presumably one suggesting she had lured him into the woods with her allure and murdered him.
'Fleur,' her mother's voice cut through the trees better than any spell, 'what's going on? Gabrielle was rambling about skeletons.'
The large form of Madame Maxime stepped into the small clearing and gasped. 'Expecto Patronum,' she whispered, and a huge, silver swan bust from the tip of her wand. 'Go to Dumbledore, tell him we have discovered a body on the school grounds, but we do not know who it is.'
The swan of silver mist shimmered and then soared off towards the castle.
'How did you find this?' Madame Maxime asked kindly.
'Gabby wanted to go somewhere, so I offered to take her to where the dragons were,' Fleur explained.
'You shouldn't have given in, Fleur,' her mother scolded, 'you always do whatever Gabrielle asks without considering the consequences.'
'It is a good thing she did,' the headmistress decided. 'This is not Barty Crouch the Triwizard Judge, the skeleton is the wrong height.'
A bright, flame-edge red flash burst through the branches and the Hogwarts Headmaster stepped into the clearing. He was not the calm, odd, old man he normally seemed. An aura of power and comfort came with him into the clearing.
'That is not Barty Crouch,' he announced after a moment. 'I have a few questions, Miss Delacour, then it would be best you returned to the carriage and remained somewhere the aurors can find you in case they require answers of their own.' Fleur nodded stiffly.
'You cannot be suggesting they will suspect her?' Her mother was outraged.
'I am implying nothing of the sort, Madam Delacour, but they will have questions about the body that your daughters can answer.' Albus Dumbledore drew his wand, a knotted, engraved length of unusually light wood and cast some very powerful wards in a tight circle around the body. 'Did you only just find this skeleton, Miss Delacour?' The headmaster looked down at her a reassuringly kind, bright glint in his blue eyes.
'Yes,' Fleur replied. 'Gabby screamed and I came running after her and found it.'
'Have either of you touched the body?'
'No,' Gabrielle whispered, eyeing the charred corpse from just behind Fleur. She jumped slightly, not expecting her younger sister to have managed to edge so close to her. 'Who is it?'
'I don't know,' Dumbledore answered gravely, 'but we will find out. I can assure you that it is not a student, the wards of the school would have notified my the moment one of them left the grounds without permission and I know for fact they are still working as of just before the wand-weighing ceremony.'
'That was sometime ago, Albus,' Madame Maxime noted.
'It tells me that they have not decayed over time enough to fail, and nobody has tampered with them in over a decade, that I would have certainly noticed. Whoever this poor unfortunate is, he is neither staff nor student.' The old wizard tucked his strange wand away to run his fingers through his beard. 'That does rather lead to the question of what he was doing here. Alastor has been growing increasingly concerned of late, but I had no evidence to lend credence to his theories but the shadows in his foe glass.'
'I will have to warn my students, Dumbledore,' Fleur's headmistress informed him.
'Of course, Olympe. I would expect and advise nothing less.'
There was a low cry and a bird of vibrant red and gold settled upon the wizard's shoulder. 'I must notify our ministry and the aurors,' Dumbledore said calmly, 'please do not try to touch anything, the area is quite strongly protected.'
A second flash of fire washed over the clearing and the old wizard was gone.
'Can we go back to the carriage?' Gabby asked. 'I don't like this place, it feels angry, and cold.'
Both Fleur and her mother glanced sharply at her younger sister. Gabrielle was far more sensitive to the emotions left in magic than either of them were. Fleur's allure was stronger, but Gabby's empathetic sense of magic was much more precise.
'What do you feel, Gabby?' her mother asked gently.
'I don't want to,' she shook her head, 'please don't ask.'
'It's important, Gabrielle,' Fleur told her, stepping next to her sister and taking her hand. Just listen to what you can feel for a minute. Her sister looked scared, but nodded and closed her eyes.
'It's distant,' she muttered, 'far away and fading, but it must have been so strong.' She shivered and her eyes flashed open. Fleur's sister looked very disturbed. 'It's like an echo,' she said. 'I don't think they died here, but the magic is still clinging to them. It's like thick, black smoke.'
Fleur stared at sister horrified. Gabrielle very rarely described what she felt so visually and when she did it was always in terms of bright colours or soft feelings.
'And it's cold,' Gabby whispered. 'It's so cold, like sharp ice. I-I can't touch it. It's angry, it's furious and cruel. I don't want to touch it anymore, please.' Fleur squeezed her sister's hand.
'It's ok,' her mother told her. 'Stop listening.' She turned to Fleur. 'Take her back to the carriage and keep her mind off it,' she instructed. 'I need to talk to Madame Maxime.'
Taking Gabrielle's other hand Fleur led her still distressed sister away from the clearing and the feeling of magic. They only made it a few metres back towards the quidditch pitch when Gabby froze and whimpered.
'Not that way,' she muttered. 'It's stronger that way.'
'Can you lead me to where it's strongest?' Fleur asked her.
Her sister's hand clutched more tightly, but she slowly began to walk, her eyes pressed tightly shut, in the direction they had been travelling.
They came to stop only a few metres from the edge of the quidditch pitch. There seemed nothing out of place, no matter how hard Fleur looked, but Gabby was visibly shaking.
'Let's go,' she pleaded, 'please, Fleur, let's go. It's so empty here, there's just nothing, and it hurts. I can't stay,' she insisted desperately. Gabby tugged violently at Fleur's hand, dragging her away out towards the pitches.
Gabrielle didn't stop until they were inside Hogwarts at the foot of the staircases. She was still trembling.
'I want to show you something,' Fleur told her. 'You'll love it.' Gabby didn't respond, she was still caught in the remnants of whatever she had been forced to feel. The empathy of veela magic was exceptionally strong in her, far more so than in Fleur, or any other veela she had met.
She led her sister up the stairs, pausing when they swung away, and being careful to step over the points that all of the other students avoided. Fleur knew that there were trick steps on these stairs.
The room was Harry's secret, somewhere he had shown her that she doubted he had shared with many others. Fleur certainly hoped she had been special enough that she was the only person he had shared it with. Gabrielle, though, she was more important than Harry's secret, especially when he had never even asked her to keep it.
They passed a pudgy, shy looking boy who Fleur had occasionally seen in the vicinity of Harry's former friends. She didn't know his name, only that he stared like all the others when she was near.
He wasn't staring like he used to. There was the strangest, strongest mixture of anger and sadness in his eyes when he looked at her as they passed him on the seventh floor corridor. Had Fleur not been trying to cheer up her sister she would have been sorely tempted to stop and see what had caused him to look at her like that.
The door to the Room wouldn't form when Fleur tried to reach it, not until she was almost desperate, and when she made it in Fleur found she and Gabrielle were not alone inside.
'Fleur.' Harry was gazing up at the walls. He'd been looking up at whatever had just faded from them, but she could only glimpse the silver edges of photo frames. 'I'll leave the room to you and Gabrielle.' His voice was nowhere as near as cold as it had been the last time they had spoken. It seemed almost resigned; his smile was tired and wry.
Perhaps he does not hate me.
Her heart squirmed in hope, but she refused to listen to it now only to be disappointed later.
'Thank you,' she responded with earnest warmth.
He dipped his head, glancing with both concern and curiosity at her still withdrawn sister.
'She'll be fine once I've shown her what the room can do,' Fleur explained, hoping he heard how important it was to her and that he understood she had not revealed this place lightly.
'I hope she finds it as amazing as it is,' Harry grinned, but the expression faltered as the walls began to change again, the frames reforming on every inch of wall space. 'I should go,' he blurted. 'Good luck for a month's time.'
A month, Fleur thought, confused. The third task, she realised. It had grown a lot closer than she had realised. The second task seemed only a few of days ago.
Harry stepped swiftly towards the door, moving close to Gabrielle, who flinched uncharacteristically back from him.
Fleur watched his back disappear, then turned back to inspect the room, focusing on their conservatory from home. The edges of the pictures faded again, the pictures Harry had wanted to see were replaced with the open glass windows that looked out into the garden.
Gabby was watching, wide-eyed.
'What is this room?' she gasped.
'The Room of Requirement,' Fleur answered. 'Harry Potter showed it to me after the Yule Ball, I told you a little bit about it in my letter, but not much, I didn't want to give away his secret.'
'It's amazing,' her sister gushed, 'everything is exactly like home.' She turned to the door, tentatively reaching for the handle. 'Can we go outside?'
'We can try,' Fleur smiled, glad her sister was feeling better. For some odd reason she had the oddest feeling things were going to be better now, like she had somehow glimpsed the light at the end of a tunnel she had not known she had been in.
AN: Please read and review, thanks to those who do.
