Harry Potter and the Clean Slate

by ForsensProgeny

EWE: 70 years after Voldemort's death, Harry Potter is working for the ICW as a bounty hunter. That was until he tracked down and fought a dark witch meddling in magics that should't be meddled with. Sent back to 1995, Harry feels his mental crack slightly. Armed with a disregard for the law and heavy sarcasm, he sets out to change the world. Harry/Tonks, chaotic Harry, slightly AU

10. Aphrodite

I still don't own Harry Potter. It's in the hands of that JK Rowling person, don't know her really. Seems a tad shifty if you ask me.

I'm still alive! On a more important note, this fic isn't abandoned! Sorry it took so long, I'm sure most of you have forgotten what this fic is even about at this point. But I just didn't get this chapter to a place where I felt happy posting it before I left, then I was without a computer for six weeks until now. But it's here now, and that's what really matters in the end. Thanks to those who choose to continue reading and have already followed and favourited, I'm still amazed at how well this story is doing.

That's all folks! Enjoy the new chaparoonie! I'm introducing a character that I'm sure some of you have been looking forward to, and I think they'll be sticking around, as well as bringing some more people in for me to play with. :)

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Chapter 10: Aphrodite

Harry stood, hands clasped behind him and back straight as he watched the second years slowly filter into the room. As with many of the classes now – apart from some of the upper year ones, who knew him better – students took seats starting at the back and filled in forwards from there, the last to come in approaching the seats nearest to him like skittish animals, as if he was about to draw and curse at any moment.

It was safe to say that many found it jarring to read the fantastical stories being written about him in the Prophet and then sit in the same room with him these days.

"I'll call your name, you will raise your hand," Harry said after everyone had sat and the room was silent, making many start in surprise. When he was finished with the register and was sure that everyone was listening, he began the lesson.

"Close the books for now, today I need you to listen," he said brusquely, waiting for the last book to thump shut before he continued. "I'm going to be talking to you about power, and how it works in the magical world. I'm telling you this now because you are still young enough to not let your pride blind you, and after a year of education here you may have already begun to see some of what I'm about to explain to you."

He paused, looking over all of them, eyes a dark, steely grey. "This is important. So again, I need to all to listen."

You could have heard a pin drop in the room, it was so quiet. But they were paying attention, and that was all that Harry needed.

He nodded in satisfaction, "good. Now, the first thing I'm going to tell you is that magic, at its core, is unfair." There were some shocked indrawn breaths in the room, but most looked unsurprised at this, which comforted Harry a little. "Some of you – those who have been raised in magical households perhaps – will have already been taught this, told to accept it." He swept his eyes across the room. "But for those of you who have not been told, it will come as more of a shock. In the muggle world, everyone is – at least physically – mostly equal in the power they can put out. This is not the same for mages.

"There will come a day when you will notice that someone else is capable of producing a spell that you cannot, or is able to cast it more effectively. You will question why, and get frustrated by it, wondering at the disparity between someone you see as an equal or even lesser person than you. You might become envious of him or her, and begin to become hostile, jealous or both. What I want to do now is nip that way of thinking in the bud, so that in the future when your hormones kick in and you're a hot-headed teenager you don't do something stupid because you haven't been taught about how things are and hurt those around you and yourself.

"The bare, unbiased truth is that not everyone is born the same. I am – more than likely – more powerful than anyone in the room will ever be. This isn't a boast, this isn't me trying to scare you, it's just how it is. It's the same for Albus Dumbledore and yes, the Dark Lord as well."

He waited for the gasps to die down then leant forward, hands planted on his desk as his voice dropped. "Many wouldn't want me to tell you this, they think that it gives children the wrong idea, delusions of grandeur. But in my opinion, those people are merely exacerbating the problem by sending you out there ignorant of reality. Eventually, some of you will realise that – magically – you are more powerful than others. It is inevitable, but what I want to tell you now is, above all else, do not let it get to your head.

"Power is but one aspect of magic. Yes, being more powerful will give you an advantage, but only against those who don't know how to deal with it. Power often corrupts, making those who wield it in abundance arrogant and dismissive of those they see below them. It's easy to feel intimidated by someone who has more magical power than you, as has been the case in the previous wars. But I'm telling you now, power isn't everything. You can be smarter, faster. Use their belief that they are better to lure them into complacency. Even a man such as Albus Dumbledore can be defeated by a clever wizard who waited for the opportune moment and snuck an expelliarmus to his off-hand. Mages like him often win fights purely through intimidation, the victim's knowledge of the disparity between the power of two mages making them throw their wand to the ground at the first sight before they even attempt to defend themselves.

"So what I am saying is that, yes, some of you may be more powerful than others, some may have a natural talent for something that gives them a perceived advantage, but you must not allow yourself to be defeated before the fight has even been fought because of arrogance. In this class, I will find your strengths, your weaknesses, and then we will play to them and introduce new ones, so that when you battle something or someone with greater power than yourself you will not falter, and will instead fight."

He stood straight again, arms swept wide. "Magic is unfair, magic picks and chooses who it gives its power to more. But that is just the magic, and you are not solely your magic. It is your choices that will define whether you allow that unfairness to dictate the course of your life."

He stood before all the young faces and let the silence stretch, let his warning sink into their brains. Their hesitance seemed to have been forgotten, and many even looked eager.

When he had judged the silence to be long enough Harry dragged a sharp grin onto his face and twisted his wand into his hand.

"Now, BEGIN!"

-oOo-

As soon as the last student left and the sound of excitedly chattering voices faded Harry waved his hand to the door, causing it to slam shut. He sank into the comfortable leather chair behind his desk heavily, the strained smile on his face disappearing like a mask falling.

He really hoped that they took it to heart. The imbalance of power between one mage to the next was what allowed Voldemort to walk uncontested through a busy street without anyone raising their wand. He prayed to all the magical beings that maybe – just maybe – he could start to change that perception from the classroom. The wizarding world didn't need more sheep.

Reaching down into a lower drawer to the side of his desk, Harry withdrew a bottle of muggle scotch from inside with a tumbler and poured a healthy amount in, downing it with practised ease afterwards. The shadows of sunset crept across the room like Death lowering the drapes on his little spot in the world as he filled his crystal glass with more amber liquid and poured it down his throat, a scowl marring his sharp features, angular black brows knit together.

Tonks, his mind was on Tonks. It concerned him how much her words had distressed him. He hadn't had anyone get too close for many years, hadn't allowed his emotions to go beyond his own control since he was thirty and had lost his partner to his own stupid mistake. And now, Tonks had done just that.

Harry knew he was different, how could he not be with the life he had lived? Tonks' words about him being above everyone else perhaps held more truth than he would like to admit, but he preferred to think he was instead below everyone else, the hidden scalpel carving out the benign tumours that wracked the wizarding world so that sweet souls like Tonks didn't have to. Which was ironic, considering what her job was. He knew that what he did was distasteful to most, but he did what he thought was necessary. Killing was what he did, and he was good at it. Had been since he was a teen. He would never feel guilt for any that he had killed, his words to Tonks had been true, he would have done it all again for her.

For her. It struck him that he was beginning to think of doing things more and more for the sake of her. He supposed that it was as good a motivation as any. And what a motivation it was, so strong was it that he had carved a river of blood just to get to her.

And yet again, that caused a twinge of unease to flash through him. In his line of work emotional attachment hadn't been an option, emotions could be too easily manipulated and used against him, and with who he had been that had always been a distinct responsibility. And now this woman that he had known for such a short amount of time had managed to get so close to him, and he couldn't imagine losing her. And now, she had apparently decided that she wanted nothing to do with him. He didn't like how much that hurt.

Harry downed one last glass, the warmth of the scotch burning down his throat as he tipped it back more violently than usual and threw the empty glass at the wall. He stood and ran his hand through his hair in agitation. "Fucking hell Potter, get your shit together. Your not a sodding hormonal schoolboy anymore." His voice was rough from the alcohol and it carried easily around the empty classroom, which only made him feel more alone. The room was dark now, and he belatedly realised that he had been sitting there for hours, the sun had already set. And here he was, brooding like some angsty teen. He was almost a century old for Merlin's sake, he was too old for this shit.

With an irritated growl, Harry decided that he needed to get thoroughly pissed and do something dangerous and stupid to take his mind off things. Throwing a long dark brown leather overcoat over himself, Harry stepped into his floo and emerged into the smoke-laden room of the Hogshead. He took one look at the space, decided it was far too busy for his current mood and exited after waving at Abe, ignoring the dark, fearful or (by far the worst) reverent looks he was getting from the occupants of the dingy old bar. The papers seemed to have come to the conclusion that he was some kind of Dark Lord, which amused him greatly. He found it funny that he had managed to get accused of the same thing that his younger self had in the same year.

He twisted away from the Hogsmead apparition point and landed in the Diagon Alley one with only the smallest of pops, his ponderings and alcohol distracting him from silence. He looked up the length of the Alley to the Leaky Cauldron and came to the same conclusion that he had at the Hogshead. After a moment's indecision, he walked the other way, further into the Alley.

Again, people parted before him as if he was maintaining a banishing spell five paces in front of himself, giving him wary looks and shepherding children under protective arms. It was funny, when a mage got to a certain calibre and then got in trouble with the law there was often an awkward sort of stand-off. One average mage could cause a lot of damage on his own, and when mages of himself, Dumbledore and Voldemort's strength were involved it was magnified tenfold or more. He had seen it before, multiple times. Dumbledore had flamed out of Hogwarts wards and evaded the entire country's Auror force with ease before returning with a happy smile only months later, and nobody had dared lift a finger to him even if he had technically been breaking multiple laws and resisting arrest. He had been called to take care of mages like Dumbledore himself numerous times when the various ministries were in over their heads, because the only way to match that kind of power was to bring in another of equal or more strength.

The end result was the Wizengamot being too scared to call for his arrest. Probably because they (along with everyone else) suspected that he was the one that had single-handedly broken into one of their precious ancient mansions and burnt it down to ash and bone. If he had done it to one, who was to say that the mysterious Harrison Slate would break into all their houses and murder them in their sleep?

Sometimes, Harry wondered how the wizarding world hadn't fallen into ruin yet. He sent another prayer (to all the muggle deities this time) that his message to the children would sink in and change things.

He came to a stop outside a bar down a side alley not far from the looming marble of Gringotts. It was formed from large, ungainly blocks of old grey stone and mottled timber and looked like it had been there before Diagon had. It was called Garnuk's Hand, the image of a goblin's wrinkled hand pushing forwards a stack of galleons adorning the ancient headboard. It was the place most frequented by weary Gringotts employees and goblins themselves.

It had an interesting history, including a story about a group of goblins saving the wizarding king at the time, but all that mattered to Harry at that moment was that it was quiet. The people who frequented the place were far too worn down by the slave drivers that were the goblins for any kind of rowdy atmosphere.

Harry pushed opened a heavy stone door that reminded him of a vault door, the rough-hewn granite swinging inwards far more weightlessly than what should have been possible, revealing a room that could have been best described as… heavy. Heavy timber rafters crisscrossed the ceiling, the thickness more than his entire torso. The bar and stools were both made from huge, solid blocks of marble much like Gringotts. Soft music ran underneath the buzz of conversation and clinks of glasses, all of which stopped when people began to notice who had entered. Harry observed the pub, and the pub observed him back. He thoroughly enjoyed the wary glances being thrown his way for all of about three seconds, then got tired of it. Eyeing the bar, Harry saw a few stools free around a singular woman in the middle. Shrugging, Harry strode through the room, ignoring everyone backing away from him, and took a stool next to the woman, quickly ordering a drink afterwards. As with most things goblin, the Crackling Ale he ordered was almost double the price as it would be anywhere else. But again, at least it was quiet.

As he waited for his drink to arrive he looked around the bar once more, noticing that everyone was still quiet and staring at him.

He did a double take. Actually, no they weren't.

'Huh.'

Harry followed their gazes and his own eyes landed on the woman next to him, who was still resolutely staring forwards as she spun the spine of a wineglass idly between long, delicate fingers. Her hair was a platinum blonde, the sheen unnaturally bright and flowing. Her features were delicate and defined, her nose sharp and cheekbones prominent. Harry immediately recognised her, and knew if she turned a little to her right, towards him, he would be transfixed with bright, azure blue eyes. She was wearing expensive-looking robes, deep blue with a silver trimming that matched her hair. Harry thought that the figure that the seemingly purposefully obscuring garment was hiding should be illegal to stow away from what little he could see of it.

'Ah, well that explains it.' He had managed to find a seat next to Fleur Delacour of all people. Not really much of a surprise, now he thought about it, he was fairly certain that at this point she was working at Gringotts as a… something. Honestly, Harry didn't think he had ever bothered to find out.

"Bloody hell lads, I know I'm a looker but there's no need to stare," he said, louder than strictly necessary. The words seemed to snap all of the men out of their collective trance, shaking their heads bemusedly as the few goblins arrayed around the room looked on in disgust. The little blighters weren't as affected by her charms as wizards were.

Harry turned back to see his drink had been placed with a sound thunk before him, the goblin behind the bar giving him a trademark sneer which he returned before the little guy waddled off to annoy someone else.

"Little shits," Harry muttered as he lifted the ale to his mouth and took a sip, delighting in the sensation of his entire body becoming suddenly fizzy.

"You are not affected by my allure," a soft voice said from next to him. It would have probably been difficult to know who had spoken to him over the renewed chatter in the bar if the French accent hadn't been so distinctive.

Harry glanced to the side to see that she was studying him, looking remarkably like a hawk who had just pinned down something to play with. He shrugged, "nah, I don't suppose I am."

She seemed to be expecting him to say more to her, probably used to men telling her their biography after she looked at them for more than a second. She blinked a few times, off balance, before she continued. "You do not understand, zees is a very rare thing," she gestured around the room in general in a distinctly dismissive manner, "zese brutes in zis country, zey have no control," she sniffed.

Harry turned to her fully on the cushioning charmed block of stone, gulping down another mouthful of his ale before he flashed her a grin, "ah, you must forgive my fellow countrymen for their lack of manners, but I must ask, if you hate this place so much, why are you here?" He asked in French. Of course, he didn't actually know French. No matter how much he hadn't come back to the UK once he started working for the ICW he was still British at heart, so disliking the French was in his blood really. No, what he had actually done was apply a translation charm under the table.

The only sign that she was surprised was a raised eyebrow, "I aspire to be a cursebreaker, however there were no open places at the French branch of Gringotts," she shrugged, tipping the wine glass forward to allow a goblin to fill it up again as she pushed a galleon forwards, "so, I settled for the next best thing," she looked around at the various men ogling her with what they probably thought was stealth and sniffed again, "no matter how barbaric the people here are, the Gringotts branch in England is a famously competent one," she eyed him with a small smirk, "and do not think I didn't see that charm you cast under the table."

Right, veela. Like most magical creatures, she was more sensitive to magic than most. Probably would mean she would be a damn good cursebreaker, actually. After all, that's why goblins were good at warding, and she had a wand.

Harry laughed, "guilty as charged," he thrust his hand forward, "Harrison Slate."

She eyed him with distinct amusement as she carefully took his hand and shook it lightly, "I already know who you are, Meester Slate, your face has been spread across the paper for days."

"All lies, I assure you," he replied, his smile a bit strained. He had forgotten exactly how much he despised Rita Skeeter. He lightened his own mood by imagining a beetle in Umbridge's old place of residence back in Cornwall.

"I'm sure they are," she said, her eyes twinkling. The pupils were a little too large to be natural, giving her an almost alien appearance.

"And you, of course, are Fleur Delacour, the famous Triwizard Champion, you suffered the same fate as I over the previous year from what I saw," he said with a mocking smile, moving on from the unpleasant topic.

She frowned as she took a careful sip from her wine, wetting her lips afterwards. She probably had no idea how attractive that looked. Actually, scrap that, she knew exactly what she was doing. "Not exactly what I would like to be renowned for, that entire contest was a disaster."

Harry nodded sagely, "understandable, I heard your solution to the first task was so boring that even the dragon fell asleep."

She glared at him for a full second before she tipped her head back and laughed, the musical sound drawing the eye of pretty much everyone in the room, even some of the goblins. Harry smirked at the jealous looks being thrown his way and took a smug sip of his drink, waiting for Fleur to compose herself.

"Oh, I am zorry," she said, not sounding like it, "it 'as been a while since someone 'as teased me so, not since I left ma sœur in France, it… 'ow do you English say, took me off guard," she nodded in satisfaction, "oui, it took me off guard."

Harry shook himself from his observation of the way her hair was moving and grinned at her like a loon, "happy to be of assistance," he turned to the barman (bargoblin?) and ordered a fire and ice cocktail. The result was a tall concave glass, half swirling orange and half crawling ice-blue. "No matter how much of a disaster the tournament was, I assume it helped with getting the job?" he asked.

She nodded, switching back to French, "like many of the ancient artefacts that we've claimed for ourselves, the Goblet of Fire is a goblin-made object, they know how it functions. It chose the most worthy from all who put their names into it," she was trying to appear modest with the slight shrug she performed, but the proud smile was shining through despite her best efforts, "my entire year put their name in the Goblet, and out of all of them, it chose me, and so the goblins followed suit."

Harry gave her an appraising look. He hadn't actually known that. "That's respectable. So you are, I assume, a preacher of the 'more than just a pretty face' argument?" He asked, a smirk tugging the corner of his lips as he drank from the cocktail, the feeling of warmth and ice slithering down his neck.

She let out an amused huff through her nose, "I do not respond in such a cliché manner any longer, I am more likely to inflict harm upon their own face if they say something that would encourage me to reply in such a way. Make sure they are never even a pretty face."

Harry smiled, "I'm sure, you do look like quite the formidable witch, probably even more so when you're in form."

"I think it would be best for you if you never found out."

Harry laughed again, feeling his worries ebb away due to the spirit of the conversation he was in, "if I ever make a veela angry enough for her to want to peck my eyes out, I will probably deserve it," he said, making the corner of her own mouth tug up a bit, "still, cursebreaking, that is a very dangerous profession, no?"

She gave him a hard look, looking suddenly hostile, "I do not need your approval, I am perfectly competent in the magic required to do the job," she said icily.

Harry looked at her sideways, amused, as he took another drink, "I don't know why you think I would disapprove or not, we only just met," he said, grey eyes twinkling, "if you want to go blow that pretty head off your shoulders poking runes in a jungle somewhere, go ahead princess. I'm not about to stop you."

A hot blush rose up her neck and infused her cheeks as she looked away from him, pulling up the collar of her robes in a vain attempt to hide it, "apologies, I am far too used to people just seeing my..." her lips quirked up, "pretty face, and objecting me to do such a dangerous job," she lifted a shoulder in effortless elegance, "I don't know if it is because of the allure or because of the stigma about blondes."

Harry huffed a laugh and drank, "and you are about as blonde as it gets, no?"

"I suppose so."

They fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes, neither really caring to put effort into the conversation for a while as they drank. Magic was an incredible thing, but Harry thought that along with occlumency the things it could do to alcohol were among the best attributes of the miracle.

"So why cursebreaking?" she gave him a look and he rose a shoulder in a pale imitation of the artistry that was her own movement, "you never actually answered my question."

She seemed satisfied with that and seemed to consider her answer for a while before she replied, "perhaps it is because I simply want to prove those who disparage my heritage wrong, when a cursebreaker uncovers a good relic or tomb they often get printed in the Breakers newspaper, and when those who say my kind are only good for intercourse see the name 'Fleur Delacour,'" she spread her hands apart before her as if unfurling the title, "under an accomplishment that they know is beyond their own abilities, I will smile my brightest smile." She had an incredibly vindictive look on her face and her pupils had got unnaturally big, and unnaturally black. "I also got the best marks in ancient runes in thirty years, seventeen years for defence against the dark arts, my qualifications uniquely suit the job."

Frankly, Harry found the scene genuinely frightening. Facing down a Basilisk was one thing, an irate veela within fireball throwing distance was another.

"And how close are you to achieving that goal?" Harry asked, hoping to act as the fire extinguisher in this instance.

She seemed to sag slightly, which didn't suit her proper and proud posture at all. "It is slower than I had hoped, it is part of the reason why I am here," she gestured around her with her off-hand, not really needing to clarify why this place in particular was the chosen location to mope. "People seem to think that because veela are not human, goblins will like us more than they like mages," Fleur snorted, taking a spiteful sip from her drink, "they are mistaken. Goblins hate everyone equally, even other goblins. I have been stuck working in cursed object detection for my entire time there, and they show no indication of giving me any kind of opportunity to rise in the ranks."

In Harry's mind, an idea was beginning to form. A wide grin was spreading across his face as it took shape and life, Fleur caught it from the corner of her eye and gave him a wary look. Apparently, even if she had only known him for a total of about ten or twenty minutes she could tell when he was about to do a classic Harry Potter and do something potentially lethal to all involved.

"What are you 'zinking?" Fleur asked warily.

Harry's grin didn't abate in the slightest, "say, Fleur, would you say that you are the adventurous type?" He asked innocently.

Fleur's eyes narrowed, "why would you say that?"

Harry shrugged, "you entered your name into the Goblet of Fire, probably knowing you would be the one to be chosen, you moved to a different country to chase a job that is considered one of, if not the most dangerous and lethal job in the world, a mage doesn't do these things without a little of ingrained thrill-seeking."

She scrutinised him for a while, "ok... I suppose you are correct, but I know that look. My sister had it once, it resulted in the house elves relocating the pond from the garden into my parent's en suite, you are planning something, 'arrison."

Harry wasn't sure which was hotter, 'arry or 'arrison. He decided they were equally sexy and moved on.

He rose an eyebrow at her, "you will have to tell me that story sometime, but not right now," Harry leant forward eagerly, lowering his voice, "how would you like to come with me and break into an ancient hidden tomb? Call it work experience."

Fleur's eyes widened, her almost empty glass hitting the bar with an audible thunk. "You are being serious?" She whispered.

Harry nodded, his smile blinding. "Oh, it's serious alright. I was planning on breaking it myself, but I suppose I could take an apprentice along."

She looked hesitant, "are you… qualified, for such a thing?"

Another risen eyebrow later Harry replied, "is me not being the youngest Defence teacher in almost one-hundred years not enough for you?"

She shook her head, "no. Dumbledore's choice of teachers is renowned for being… lacklustre."

Harry thought for a second. Now that he had come up with his plan, he was quite attached to the idea of bringing Fleur along with him, for reasons he didn't fully understand.

"How about," he said slowly, "I prove to you that I am competent."

She still looked sceptical, "and how exactly would you do that?"

Harry withheld the urge to say something biting. She had no way to know that he had been breaking into magical strongholds for longer than her parents had been alive and had forgotten more things than she knew. Since he had only mastered occlumency when he was 21, that was actually probably true. But it would be pointless to be angry at the girl.

"I'll take you back to my house, and make a runic array that you don't think is possible," Harry said, his eyes distracted as he considered what he was going to make.

Fleur leaned away from him a little, "your house?"

Harry snapped back into reality and realised how weird that sounded coming from a guy she had only just met, "yes, my house. You want a vow?"

Fleur stayed silent for a minute or so. Harry took the opportunity to finish off his cocktail, the last flickering flame flowing down his throat with an audible thwump of snuffed fire.

"I must admit, I am intrigued," Fleur said, her head tilted to the side, "there have been many stories about you 'arrison, I'm interested in being the witch to find out if the rumours of you fending off twenty dark wizards has any veracity," she said cheekily, "although, I am less interested in the rumours of you yourself being a dark wizard."

Harry tipped his flat hand from side to side in a 50/50 gesture, "I wouldn't call myself dark, maybe the better classification would be… dim."

"Dim," Fleur repeated, looking like she was trying hard not to laugh.

Harry nodded in mock seriousness, "of course, I'm not dark, but I'm not light either. Grey doesn't work, dark and light aren't colours, so the in-between is dim, not grey."

"You know, if your trying to convince me of your competence, calling yourself dim is perhaps not the best way to go about it," Fleur said, finally letting out a little giggle that she stopped with a hand, looking horrified that she had done something so dumb-blonde-ish.

"Hmph," Harry said with faked disgruntlement, "so are you in or are you out?"

Again she considered him with all her attention, and again Harry got the impression of being pinned under the talons of a bird of prey as it pondered whether to eat him now or later.

"Against my better judgement, I think I will accompany you, if only to see what sort of adventure you have concocted," she sounded like she was trying to sound reluctant, but the anticipatory sparkle in those bright blue eyes gave her away, "but I will, of course, require a vow," she smiled weakly, "I have already, unfortunately, learnt my lesson on needing such things when invited to any man's home."

Harry rose his eyebrow.

The smile became thinner, "you heard about the house fire on Ackerley lane?"

"Ah," Harry nodded, "well, seeing as I have no intention of my house becoming ashes, I will of course do the vow," Harry looked away and snapped his fingers at a nearby goblin, at the same time cancelling the translation charm under the table so there was no interference with the vow, "oi, you! I need someone to bind an oath, you up for it?"

They had to put the goblin on one of the high stools while he and Fleur stood so the little guy could reach their intertwined hands. Harry didn't swear on either his life or his magic, you had to either be exceptionally stupid or confident to swear on such things. Instead, he swore a more complex vow in which if he made any unwanted moves, perceived or not, he would experience steadily increasing pain until he stopped, similar to the cruciatus but without lasting effects. It was the standard vow for any situation where you wanted to go somewhere with someone you didn't fully trust. With magic making it so much easier to control someone, women learnt from a very young age to make sure something like that would never happen. The vow was made specifically for their safety. The ingrained lesson was probably the only thing stopping cases of abuse of any kind from being astronomical.

When they were done, they both began to gather up their things. The cloak that she fastened over her shoulders was a lighter blue than the darkness of her robes, lined with what looked like actual bronze magically woven into a thin strip around the edges. She flipped the cowl of her cloak up over her head and looked at him expectantly.

Harry proffered his arm, a wide grin on his face, "let us go on a merry adventure, Madame."

Fleur smiled too and took his arm as they left the bar, looking far less weary than she had when Harry had entered, "yes, let us."

-oOo-

They arrived next to a grass bank, not directly into the house. One one side was another house and on the other side a lively bar, from which music and rowdy voices could be heard dully. Next to him, Fleur looked around curiously, "are we already inside 'ze wards?"

Harry looked over his shoulder just before he entered the wards, "no, we entered into a small notice-me-not ward that I erected if I ever needed to bring someone new into the main wards, just so if someone apparated in they wouldn't be noticed by the local muggles."

Fleur nodded, "that is smart, I suppose," she admitted.

"Actually, before I bring you in, lets have our first lesson," Harry said, grinning as he gestured at where his ward line was, "open your senses, what do feel from the wards."

Fleur gained a look of intense concentration as she drew her wand and pointed it in the general direction of the ward, closing her eyes after a while.

"'Ze wards… they are…" she searched for the word, "tremblotant, they waver in and out."

"Wards? Plural?" Harry prompted.

Fleur nodded, "zere are two different sets?"

"Is that a question or a statement?"

She gave him an irritated look, "a statement."

Harry hummed in agreement, "indeed there are, what you are feeling is one set deactivating and one activating. Of course, the timings overlap so there is no time for someone to slip in-between, so one set is always activated, but the effect means that it is much harder for someone to break through them. It is harder to pin one set down, they either have to break one fast enough before it disappears, or break both sets at the same time, which would be much harder with their shifting nature."

Fleur looked grudgingly impressed, "'ow much did zis cost you? I 'ave never 'eard of such a thing."

"I made these myself," Harry said, not bothering to hide the smugness in his tone.

She blinked once, twice before she replied, "is 'zis what you wanted to show me as proof?" She asked.

Harry shook his head as he proffered her his forearm for her to take, channelling his magic into it so he could account for the shifting wards, "princess, what I'm going to make is going to be much cooler than these old things," he said, gesturing vaguely above them.

Fleur rolled her eyes but took his arm anyway and let herself be pulled in, "I wish you would not call me princess," she muttered with a pout.

Harry stayed silent as they walked up the path, right up until they were almost at the door, where he nudged her gently with his elbow, "you should know that, seeing as I didn't feel a single twinge from the vow, I can tell you don't actually dislike it."

-oOo-

Two sobering potions and half an hour of painstaking etching later, Harry stood before Fleur with a proud smile on his face, his hands holding a pendant on a leather cord coiled in his palm. The pendant was made from smooth marble and had been transfigured by Harry into the shape of a raven with its wings spread wide, its head twisted to the side to eye him beadily.

"I'm finished!" Harry singsonged from above her, startling her from her deep focus on a book Harry had chucked on her lap about Manchu wardcrafters to keep her occupied while he worked. She had been working her way around the house before that, and from the lack of disparaging remarks about English interior design, he could tell she at least didn't consider it a pig sty.

"Merde 'arrison," she breathed, her hand clutching her heart before she saw the pendant, "what is it?" She asked, her hand already extending towards it.

"Ah ah," Harry scolded teasingly as he brought it out of her reach, "you'll find out as soon as I put it on you."

She scowled but turned and brought her hair up anyway to allow him access, her curiosity overpowering her aversion to anything too intimate. Harry brought the pendant around her neck and clasped it behind her without lingering, however tempting it was to do so. She was 18, and that was a step below too young for him no matter how attractive she might be.

She stood there for a few seconds before she realised what had happened and gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

"The allure," she turned wide eyes to his amused face, "what have you done to it?" She asked, slipping back into French in her shock.

Harry rose both hands and wiggled his fingers as if to say 'ta daa!' "I blocked it."

Fleur looked down at the Raven, a curious expression on her face as if conflicted as to whether to be happy or not, "'ow did you do it?" She asked.

Harry sank into a leather armchair, "I managed to get my grubby mitts on one of the Guardian rings, you know, the ones the rich purebloods get when they have the money to do so?" He clarified when he saw her momentarily puzzled face. She nodded and continued to finger the Raven idly as she listened with rapt attention, "a part of their runic scheme is a block against compulsions and love potions. What I did is reversed the runes so that instead of blocking the emotions from coming in, they block them from coming out, and I also changed them so it became a ward instead of only a personal protection. Flip the pendant over," Fleur obediently flipped the bird over to reveal the underneath, where around ten small runes were drawn and were glowing with a pink hue, "you see silo there?" She nodded. "That used to be karugan, I switched them because of the different type of atttraction compulsion you exude. Around the whole array, erbetois has been etched instead of dubravnov to change it to a ward and ekko has been flipped to link with gab to prevent the compulsion from getting out instead of in," Harry gestured to the runes in question, master explaining to student. At that moment, their age gap seemed much wider than it actually was.

"Ingénieuse," Fleur muttered, "people 'ave been trying to do zis for an age, to think the solution rested in 'zomething as obscure as Guardian rings..." she trailed off.

Harry smiled as he spun his wand around his fingers, trying to get the stiffness out of them, "so, do you think I am qualified now?" He asked, unable to prevent the sarcasm.

Another shade of red crawled up her slender neck before she looked away, pretending to study the Raven again, "I suppose this is an adequate display of your competence," she murmured before her head snapped up again, the spark back in her eyes, "so, where are we going?" She asked, anticipation heavy in her tone.

Harry smiled, his arm proffered palm up and open for her to take so they could apparate away, "nous allons á l'horizon, princesse."

-oOo-

Harry leant back leisurely in the cracked leather seat of the rib he had… unofficially commandeered to get to where they needed to go. Right now they were quickly leaving the island he had 'borrowed' the boat from and bouncing across dark, moonlit waves as they made their way towards the general direction of where Harry was pretty sure their tomb was. Despite it being almost midnight it was over twenty-five degrees with a Saharan wind from the southwest blowing in their faces. Harry was wearing a plain white shirt with the top buttons undone and a pair of cargo shorts. He would have completed the look with a pair of aviators, but wearing sunglasses at night was one of those things that was considered generally moronic.

In front of him, Fleur was wearing an all-white plain summer dress, thankfully charmed so the wind wouldn't give Harry a free show.

Fleur didn't need extravagant design to look good.

She was kneeling at the bow of the boat, her platinum hair flowing freely behind her as she watched the rib rise and fall into the waves, apparently uncaring of the sprays from the contact. It was, Harry though, most definitely picture-worthy. He imagined he could make a fortune selling it. Harry was pretending he was James Bond on a mission with his beautiful sidekick when Fleur spoke, turning around to sit down so her hair flowed past her face with her arms rested on the inflated sides of the boat.

"So, why Greece?" She called over the sound of the wind and the engine, "it eez not the most popular country, non?"

Indeed it was not. It was only in the last hundred years or so that the Greek mainland had begun to build its mage population back up at all. The mages that had once lived there had called themselves Athenians, the country having included magical Constantinople at the time even if Athens had been the capital and the larger populated, at least for mages. It had all changed when the Ottomans attacked towards the end of the life of the Eastern Roman Empire. Unlike the Byzantines on the muggle side, Athens hadn't fought the Anatolian mages and had instead all been steadily fleeing northwards to Bulgaria for years previous, which was the main reason why Bulgaria was one of the leading countries in the wizarding world in the current day with all the experienced mages they had received from the exodus. Recently mages had begun to immigrate back to the now unimaginatively renamed Magical Greece, a relief as the muggleborns born in the country had been stuck in a bit of a grey area for a long time where they both did and didn't belong to a magical country. Harry had always found how mage and muggle culture overlapped fascinating, most of all the fall of the Roman Empire, which had formed or otherwise affected many of the current wizarding countries.

Harry slipped his wand into his hand and set up a shield to partially separate the wind around them so he could speak normally, "we're here because this is where whatever we are looking for is… at least that's what I think."

Her head tilted, and Harry tried not to get too distracted before he ran them aground, "you theenk?" She asked, a hint of danger entering her tone.

"Uh huh," Harry said, his wand now displaying coordinates, Without looking, he angled the boat starboard and slipped the wand back up his holster with a nod, "it's under a fidelius."

She stared at him, "a fidelius," she repeated in a deadpan, "if eet is under a fidelius, then 'ow do you know where or what eet is?"

'A good question,' Harry had to admit.

"Well, I'm actually not sure what it is exactly," Harry said, scratching the back of his head and ignoring the first part, "but from the nature of what's within it I'm assuming that it's some kind of vault or tomb. One weakness of the fidelius is that even if it can hide the location, it can't hide the knowledge of specific objects within it if the objects were once outside of it, or people would be regularly forgotten then remembered again as they walk in and out. I know that the object I'm looking for was in this general area, and due to the… nature, of the said object I can follow the magical trail to where it ended up before it was put in the fidelius."

"But you were just looking at coordinates," Fleur pointed out, "that eez not what eet looked like you were doing."

It certainly wasn't what he had done the first time around. It had taken them almost a year to follow the very, very scarce trace of Hufflepuff's cup and find it, half of that year having been spent scouring the Aegean Sea with the desperate hope that they would pick up the much faded magical residue of the Horcrux. Harry and Hermione's sensory skills had been nowhere near as developed as his own were now, so predictably it had taken them a while. If Ron had stayed with them it probably would have taken half that time, if the git could have been bothered to actually put in the time to be a sensor. Magical ability had never been Ron's strong suit, he had been the more 'moral support' type.

Harry nodded, "I'll do it once I pick up the magical residue, but right now I'm using a different method," Harry had to jerk the wheel to avoid a floating log he only just spotted in time. After two strings of cursing from both him and Fleur he continued, "I knew where this place was before someone put up the fidelius, and now I can tell – from where things are missing in my head – the general area it's in now."

"And 'ow 'ave you done zat?" Fleur asked, sounding intrigued.

Harry looked at her and grinned, "ever heard of occlumency?"

Fleur seemed to stare at him for a while longer than necessary before she answered, "of course, I 'ave mastered its basics already, although my status as Veela gives me certain natural advantages," she said, aiming for arrogance. It was ruined by the fact she had to force herself to look away from him. Harry tried not to smile at being ogled at by Fleur Delacour, it was certainly quite the ego boost, although he did wonder if he would have got that in his old body.

"Ok, so basically I can think of the object I'm looking for, but then when I try and think of where it is, my mind runs into a wall of sorts. This is just one more thing about occlumency that makes it probably the most useful thing to ever learn," he lectured. "I can tell the general amount of memory space that has been removed from the magical residue left over from the fidelius invading my mind and nicking it, from there I prod that blank space a bit, and from that my mind makes links and associations with what was once there, the area around it," Harry smiled at her disbelieving face, "let me tell you, it takes a lot of practice to get that technique down."

Fleur stayed silent for a while, probably thinking on his words before she remarked, "if you knew of zis place before it got put under ze fidelius, why 'ave you not already broken it?"

Harry smiled disarmingly, "why, I didn't have good enough company of course."

She looked away again, the darkness hiding what Harry knew was there anyway. He was really starting to enjoy doing that to her, she was far too sophisticated and poised for her own good.

-oOo-

"Alright," Harry said as he sniffed the air around them. Burnt ozone flooded his senses, the smell of dark magic. Of course, he couldn't actually smell it. Muggles call it synaesthesia, the brain associating tastes and smells with information in the brain. Certain types of magic had certain smells, and dark magic smelt like ozone, "I think we're in the right area now." He slowed the boat down to a halt, the dual outboard engines' idling rumble the only sound in the silent night.

"And 'ow can you tell zat?" Fleur asked as she looked around. The only thing to be seen was black waves and the carved reflection of the moon on the water.

"Fill the air around you with your magic Fleur, the only way to get better and sensing is constant practice, even if it's easier for you than others. Tell me what you feel."

She closed her eyes again and splayed her hands outwards, as if trying to hold the magic physically. It was a while before her face scrunched up, a thoroughly disgruntled opinion overlaying her elegant features, "I can barely feel eet, but what is there is..." she shook her head, "zere is an echo of something… Mal, anormal."

"Abnormal," Harry mused, "I suppose that's a good enough description."

"What eez it?" Fleur asked, her nose scrunching in a way that Harry found quite cute.

Harry's face became grim, "let's just call it soul magic and leave it at that."

Fleur's eyes snapped open, the piercing blue easily visible by the moonlight, "magie de l'âme? Merde 'arrison, what are you dragging me into?"

"Don't tell me you aren't intrigued," Harry grinned as he cut out the engine and moved to the front of the boat next to her.

She sighed, "oui, I zuppose I am, my mozzer always said I 'ad the tendency to jump into the nearest patch of Devil's snare and jump in eet," she admitted. She looked over the side of the boat and hummed thoughtfully, "do you zink it eez still warm?" She asked.

She really shouldn't have said that.

"Why don't we find out?" Harry said gleefully. Fleur only caught onto his meaning when he scooped her up under the knees and behind her back.

"'Arrison! Don't you dare!" She shrieked, trying to escape.

Harry just laughed and threw her bodily into the water, screaming the whole way. Harry took his wand out, set up a ward around them to calm the waves in the area as well as a muggle aversion charm just in case, then slipped the wand back into its holster.

Fleur surfaced, spluttering, just in time to see Harry throw his shirt to the side and throw himself into the water without any grace. He landed half on his side in a canon-ball position and once more drenched Fleur, who had to turn away at the last second.

What followed was a diatribe of very inventive and lengthy French cussing, in which Harry was fairly certain she insinuated that he was the result of an illicit and illegal act between a troll and a mandrake. After that a duel was instigated as they tread the water, resulting in Harry becoming half merman and Fleur riding the water Hippogriff he had conjured, raining fireballs down on him as she tried to simultaneously fight off the army of flying jellyfish he had brought up.

He had let her win, of course.

Harry was still chuckling as he pulled her back onto the boat, where she collapsed onto the cushions on the front. She looked like she was glowing with how bright her smile was, no matter how irritated she had been at first.

"Might want to apply some drying charms to that dress," Harry commented as he scooped his shirt back up, refusing to look in her direction.

Fleur looked down at the clearly visible bra through the white material and yelped, applying probably the most efficient drying charm known to man. Emotion's a good motivator.

"You could 'ave neglected to tell me and got… what did you say? A free show?"

"I could have," Harry agreed as he did up the last few buttons, "but I'm not that type of guy. I want to earn things like that."

"And what type of guy are you, 'arrison Slate?"

The image of Tonks in the hospital flashed in his mind. "Did I ever know who you were at all?"

Harry's eyes visibly darkened, Fleur noticed it easily, as it was like someone dimming a torch in the night, "I don't think that even I know that yet," he said darkly before he shook himself and walked forward again. "Anyway, enough philosophy, we've got a fidelius to break into, do you know the Galilee Charm?"

She flipped her damp hair over her shoulder, "of course, I am not un imbécile."

"Right then," Harry said as he twirled his wand at his feet and stepped off the boat to step onto the water as if it was solid, his arm extended, "follow me then madame," he teased. Fleur chose to go along with it and delicately took his hand, stepping off the rib and onto the water like a celebrity exiting a limo.

"The fidelius is two parts, half of it removes knowledge from people's minds, the other half blinks it out of existence on the physical plane," Harry began to explain as he walked towards the centre of the warded area, Fleur following dutifully beside him. "We find it by using a handy little charm called reperio complicatum spatium. It's mainly used for detecting space extension charms so you don't misjudge how much something has been expanded and crush yourself when you cancel them, but it works when you're looking for a fidelius as well. The fidelius is the opposite of extension charms, as it is shrinking space away instead of expanding it, but the charm is made solely to detect manipulated space in general, so you'll still feel something from the magic. Any fidelius can be located like this, but most of its reliability comes from obscurity, as the bloody things are almost impossible to find in the first place," Harry lectured as he began casting the spell as he walked around the warded area, the orange waves rippling across the warm sea. The sensation of walking on it was odd, he could still feel the water on the bottoms of his feet but he didn't fall through it.

Next to him, Harry saw Fleur watch his wand movements a few times and then mimic it herself, getting it right on the second try. Harry was impressed, he had no doubt that she would grow up to be an accomplished mage. Well, actually he knew she did. In battle, the woman had been a force from the stories he had been told.

"I 'zink I found eet!" Fleur called excitedly from across the warded area roughly half an hour later. Harry skipped over and stood next to her.

"Where?"

She gestured to an area roughly three paces in front of her as Harry looked over her shoulder.

"Good fucking job Fleur," he said excitedly, patting her on the shoulder as he moved past her and cast his own charm. "You're right, it's right here," he said, his wand pointed at a small space.

"What now?" She asked, curiosity evident.

"Now," he said as he began tracing runes around it, "now we poke it to reveal what secrets it's keeping."

Fleur came up from behind him and was now the one looking over his shoulder. The feeling of her hair cascading off his neck and over his shoulder made him pause halfway through a rune that looked like an eight turned sideways and stuffed inside a cube before he continued.

"What runes are these? Many of them are unfamiliar to me," Fleur said, sounding confused, "apart from 'zat one," she pointed at the squashed and entombed eight he had just finished, "is that not one of the runes for illusions?"

Harry nodded as he added a runic link to add another cluster to the array, "right you are feathers, the rest of them you don't know because you most likely didn't do a divination mastery and don't know the more advanced mind-altering runes yet."

'And some of them haven't been invented yet,' he added silently.

Fleur stiffened beside him, "I will ignore zat you called me zat 'orrid nickname only because zis is so intriguing, but if you do so again I will immolate you, compris?"

Harry hid his mischievous grin by facing away from her and finished up his last rune, "crystal clear ma petite ailes, now before I activate this do you want to copy this array down? You could hunt down the individual runes in your spare time or figure out what they do afterwards."

Ten minutes and one burnt-off eyebrow later Fleur was done with her notes, and was still glaring at him. Harry raised his hands in mock surrender as he slowly regrew his eyebrow, "hey, I think the nickname is cute, not my fault if you choose to take offence."

The blush didn't make the scowl any less fierce, "'ow are you regrowing zat?" She asked irritably, as if it was a personal offence that he was undoing her handiwork.

"Oh," Harry pondered it for a minute, then decided he trusted her enough. He morphed himself to have bright blue eyes and bright, platinum blonde hair falling in waves to the top of his neck. His nose got longer, but apart from that, his bone structure didn't shift much, his normal one being close enough. The end result was someone who looked eerily like Fleur's older, veela brother. "I'm a metamorphmagus," he revealed with a bright smile.

Fleur blinked, "merde zat is weird," she commented, then smiled, "so you are not fully 'uman, like me non? I zuppose zis is 'ow you did some of the things attributed to you?"

Harry shrugged, his features subtly shifting to resemble her more and more until he just looked like her with a male hairdo, "yeah, I guess we can bond over our appeal to the black market sex trade now or something."

She hit his arm, "zat is not funny," she scolded lightly, then side-eyed his form, "and stop zat, go back to 'ow you were, or at least something different."

"You're just mad that I'm worth more than you. And what, you don't like it?" he grinned, returning to how he usually looked. It was odd, it was almost easier now to shift into this form than it was to shift into how he had looked as Harry James Potter.

"Non," she replied, turning her head to study the runes, looking slightly embarrassed, "I am too attracted to it, I never considered myself to be a narcissist."

Harry nodded sagely, "well if it's any consolation, I think that if anyone could be beautiful enough to fall in love with themselves it would be you."

She rolled her eyes, the expression looking comical on her face, "flattery will get you nowhere, Meester 'arrison Slate, now activate the scheme."

"You know when you say my name like that it only encourages me," Harry teased. Fleur turned to scowl at him, one hand suddenly wreathed in flame. "Ok! Ok! Distraction time!" And with that, Harry shoved the tip of his wand into the central activation cluster and channelled his magic into it.

Immediately, a green glow emanated from the spot and spread away from them, rising and falling to make a huge shape. Harry strained to hold his magic to it, the runes glowing brighter and brighter under as more magic was fed into it. It highlighted Fleur's face and his own in unholy neon green as they gazed at the shape it formed.

Fleur gasped, "it eez an island!"

Before them, made all from different shades of green, was in fact an island. It looked entirely bare and unnaturally uniform, a perfect circle with cut grass covering it apart from a thin strip of smooth light green sand surrounding it's edge.

"Not done yet," Harry said through gritted teeth as he jabbed his finger at the circular cluster his wand was pressed in the centre of, "this cluster is giving me a third eye on where the island is, in the land of the Not and Black. This one," he indicated the one below it, "is a clusterfuck of a ward using more divination runes, occlumens runes on top of some soul and blood magic to trick it into giving me it's secret when I drag it from non-existence. I need you to rotate the top one right as I rotate the bottom one left, understood? We have to do it at similar speeds to pull this baby out of hiding."

Fleur scrambled forward and hovered her hand over the cluster, nodding along over the sizzling sound of active runic magic permeating the empty black ocean, "oui, oui je comprends. Dis-moi quand."

Harry decided that meant she was ready, braced himself and placed his own hand over the bottom cluster, "ok, three, two, one, now!"

Harry withdrew his wand from the top cluster to allow Fleur to take his place then placed all five fingers on the cluster below and began to turn it, feeling the blood flow from the tips of his fingers as he did so. Above him, he could feel Fleur doing the same.

Fleur was helping, but he – as the activator for the second phase – was bearing the brunt of the magical drain. This wardbreaking set was one of the few that could actually make a good dent in his magic, there was a reason that the people who had broken fideliuses in his time had been teams of specialists. He felt like he was trying to spin Hagrid as he moved the cluster around and Fleur did the same in the opposite direction, noticeably smoother than him but still keeping pace. However, the results were evident. As one set moved up and one moved down the island began to rise from the ocean at the same pace, shedding seawater like a second skin as it did so. Great cascades of black water roared in foamy avalanches down the grass and off the beach to end in ripples near himself and Fleur. He felt the knowledge of what the island was flowing back into his brain as the scheme began to trick the ward that he was in on the secret.

With one last monumental effort, Harry moved his cluster the rest of the way around the circle to come to rest at where Fleur's rune had been previously, her own doing the same. Blood was now leaking from the lines of the runes in his own clusters as the scheme literally bled away the rest of the blood that it didn't need. Before them, the island finally shuddered to a halt with a series of bone-shaking cracks and rumbles.

Harry withdrew his hand from the ward and hissed in pain, "son of a bitch that hurts," he swore as he sucked on the tips of his fingers and then plunged them into the ocean, his intent letting them past the Galilee charm. The sound of more hissing sounded as steam rose, like hot metal being quenched in a bucket of water.

"'Arrison! Are you ok?" Fleur gasped as she moved to kneel by him, taking his fingers in her own. The tips were raw and burnt, the huge amount magic channelled through them having been partially wasted in heat.

"Yeah, all good," Harry mumbled, using his off hand to fumble around in the waterproofed, expanded pocket of his shorts to pull out a tupperware tub of magical burn cream, which he applied and helped along with his own magic. Soon enough, the skin healed and knitted together.

Seeing he was fine, Fleur looked around in confusion, "did eet work? I do not see anyzing, apart from the 'ologram."

Harry snapped his newly healed fingers, "ah, right. The island of Herpo is..." he brought up his wand, "at 36.061728, 24.418658 in the Aegean Sea, 58 kilometres north of Crete and 180km south of Milos."

Fleur's eyes widened as the island rose from the sea like a whale breaching, the secret now flowing into her own brain.

"It eez incroyable,"Fleur whispered. Then, "Island of 'erpo?" She questioned, "I 'ave never 'eard of such a place."

Harry eyed her curiously. "Surely, anyone who has studied curse breaking has heard of Herpo the Foul, he created some of the most revolutionary wards to date." He said nothing of her moronic statement about not hearing about it. From her flushed ears, she had also realised how dumb that sounded.

Her head snapped to him, "truly? And this is his island?"

"His burial site," Harry corrected as he began to walk the short distance to the island and up the sandy beach to the lush grass. Behind him, he could hear Fleur doing the same. When they reached the peak of the island Harry conjured a sun lounger and lay back in it, pulling out a pepper-up from his pocket that he had purchased from the Athenian magical district along with his and Fleur's garb.

Speaking of, Fleur was standing before him, beautiful and puzzled as she watched him down the crimson red potion.

Harry vanished the empty potion vial with a negligent wave of his hand and raised an eyebrow at her, waving a hand vaguely around the island, "well? What are you waiting for? Find the entrance!"

She stared at Harry, her irritation peaked, "excuse moi?"

Harry glared at her, "I said get on your hands and knees and scrub, princess. Want to cursebreak? Half of it is scrabbling around in the dirt looking for entrances that haven't been found in centuries, so far I've done most of the scrabbling, now it's your turn. Call it a lesson."

Fleur seemed to wrestle with hexing him for a moment before she turned herself away with great effort to carry out what he had ordered, her want to learn more than her want to hurt him apparently.

It took her only twenty minutes to find the entrance, the island not being that large and with nothing on it. She called to him then, causing Harry to grudgingly release himself from the sweet hold of the lounger and walk over to her. She was standing next to a circular area of grass that was rippling and flashing yellow and black like some kind of safety hazard. It was pretty obnoxious.

Harry proffered her a potion that was a clear silver with bubbles rising from it. At her doubtful look he explained, "it's a wakefulness potion, I'm not about to get myself killed because you fell asleep and fell through a ward trigger-line."

She took it then.

Harry had her try and figure out the right runic combination to deconstruct the illusion while he added his own commentary and comments on her work, drawing better runes for her and correcting others. Eventually, she got it, and the illusion fell away, the perfectly even grass caving in like a mini-sinkhole. She looked very proud.

"Follow me," Harry said as he walked through the entrance and emerged onto a rough stone staircase that descended in a straight line down into the darkness. With a flick of his wand, multitudes of fling balls of light positioned themselves in a line down the staircase, illuminating their path. Behind him, Fleur stepped inside also.

"Don't step anywhere that I don't step, and don't touch the walls. The man who set this up likes his traps and this place is no different."

"And what man is zis?" Fleur asked as they began to trek down. Harry had his sensory abilities on at full tilt now.

"His name is Tom Riddle, but I wouldn't recommend looking into him. People who search for his name often end up only finding an early grave." Harry explained as he gingerly stepped over a trick step that would have done something nasty. "Don't step on that one."

"Why 'as zis… Tom Reedle set up traps for a tomb that is not his own?"

Harry chuckled at her pronunciation. "The short answer is arrogance, the long one is something that I'm not going to tell you at the moment for your own safety, speaking of safety…" Harry paused and undid a thin magical trigger line that stretched across the path at shin level.

"Oh? And why is zat?" Fleur asked as she watched his handiwork in interest.

"Why is it because of arrogance or why am I not telling you for your own safety right now?"

"Ze latter."

"You know what they say about knowledge being power? Yeah, in this case, the power would be of the corrupting, dangerous sort that people would kill you for. I would rather that the least amount of people know of it as possible."

He turned around then to make her see how serious this was, "this isn't just dark magic, Fleur, this shit is black. The type of magic that twists and influences everything it comes into contact with. So if I tell you to back away and don't go near something, you listen, ok?"

After a moment's hesitation she nodded, "oui, I will listen."

Satisfied, Harry nodded once before turning and continuing onwards.

After many more traps and illusions had been destroyed and dispelled by the both of them they emerged into a large chamber with heavy vines clinging to every surface protectively. The corners and distant reaches of the chamber were obscured with heavy shadows. The sound of water dripping somewhere far away was prevalent as it echoed around the huge space.

"Stay behind me and don't do anything stupid," Harry said shortly as he stepped in. Immediately, the entire area was illuminated by a murky green light with no visible source, similar to that which flowed into the Slytherin common room from The Black Lake.

The light revealed a huge pile of staggering amounts of wealth in the centre. Piles of gold were stuffed into finely crafted armoured helms and swords jutted out from open trunks filled to bursting with perfectly cut gems and jewellery. Necklaces and pendants hung from proffered limbs of solid gold statuary that were so lifelike they seemed as if a human had been touched by King Midas and sold onwards. Laying haphazardly atop it all, as if it was merely thrown on top as an afterthought, was a long tomb of solid white marble with black spidery lines crisscrossing it.

"Putain, you could buy 'alf of France wiz zis," Fleur breathed from his side, awed at the sight.

"Do not touch any of the valuables," Harry warned as Fleur reached down for a silver cherub that had rolled off the pile and obviously bounced to where they stood at the edge. "If you touch the first thing that catches your eye when you are cursebreaking you will die before you hit twenty. Don't be a fool, Fleur, check that it isn't cursed before you touch it."

Abashed, Fleur pulled her hand away and cast detection charms on the cherub. On the third charm, it glowed with an inner light for a moment before it faded again. Fleur narrowed down the detection charms until it glowed red and produced a slip of parchment. After she read it she sighed. "It eez under the gemino charm. If I 'ad to guess I would say zat every object in ze room in under the same charm."

"And how would you dispel the charm?" Harry asked.

Fleur paused, "a ward over the entire pile, seven stones arrayed around eet with the gemino charm's counter on each."

Harry smiled, "good, I would do the same." As he finished that sentence the sound of stone grinding on stone filled the chamber, and he and Fleur turned to see the lid of the tomb slowly slide off and fall to the side. There was silence for a time as he and Fleur watched, then from the tomb, a pulsating red light began to glow.

"'Arrison, what is zat?" Fleur asked softly from beside him, her pale skin and bright flowing platinum blonde a stark antithesis to the dark stone and darkness of the chamber, as if someone had guided the sun inside.

Harry braced himself and rose his wand to the tomb, fighting a grin, "something wicked this way comes, Fleur. Try not to die."

Before she could respond rasping breath was drawn from before them, the sound like nails dragging on parchment. A body sat up then, and Harry heard Fleur gasp in horror.

The thing before them was similar to photos Harry had seen of ancient Egyptian mummies once removed from their sarcophagi and wrapping. It's skin was dry, brown and dead, hanging off exposed bone like it had been merely draped on. Preservation magic had kept it well enough for that at least. It had no eyes, its sockets a black hole. Grey hair were in patches on its skull and chin, remnants of what had been a long, flowing beard. Scraps of cloth where perhaps clothes had once been lay in tatters at its feet and on its shoulders, the tears in said clothing exposing holes in the skin that revealed its ribcage.

Inside the ribcage was a spinning ruby, the second Horcrux in the room that Harry could feel. But this one didn't belong to Voldemort.

"Herpo," Harry acknowledged grimly.

What had once been a legendary wizard responded with a loud, keening shriek as it leapt from the tomb, gnarled staff in hand, the tool of the ancient mages. Harry wasn't surprised that Herpo couldn't talk. Being trapped as a Horcrux down here for so long had probably driven the man past insanity.

Herpo let loose with a roaring inferno of purple and black fire as soon as his bony feet touched the ground, the clear crystal nestled in the top of the wooden instrument glowing the same colour. Snarling snakes and malformed creatures tore throughout the flame in a raging stampede as the curse bore down on himself and Fleur.

Harry's own wand was already moving before the fire was even halfway. From his own a bear of clear crystal emerged, twisting around once before landing on the stone floor with a heavy thud and thundering forwards. When it met the fire it opened its mouth impossibly wide and swallowed it whole, then continued its charge with a roiling fire visible in its gut and flaming violet eyes.

Herpo twisted out of the way of the killing curse that Harry had followed up with and continued the move to slice downwards with his staff, cutting the bear in two with a sharp crack of broken glass. The fire washed over him, but when it had faded Herpo was unharmed, the only visible effect being the melted skin sleuthing off his bones.

A reducto then hit Herpo from Fleur, who had been frozen up to then but had taken advantage of the reduced sight. The small blast took out the skeleton's breastbone and the surrounding ribs, leaving a hole about the size of a dinner plate in its wake and causing Herpo to stagger backwards, screaming in pain.

"Good fucking hit, Fleur!" Harry roared in approval, keeping up a steady stream of highly explosive spells to keep Herpo occupied in an endless chain that was rocking the whole room. The shell of a man was forced to spin his staff like a propeller once to fall behind a strong blue shield, bright orange and white explosions detonating against it in a disastrous orchestra of detonations.

"'Zanks, but 'ow do we kill 'eet?!" Fleur shouted back, twisting away from a twisted iron spike on a chain that had come around the side of Herpo's shield narrowly.

Harry weaved an animation into his chain against Herpo to keep the ancient being behind his shields, the dim blue beam of light hitting a solid gold statue of a hoplite resting haphazardly sideways on the pile of wealth.

"Don't try to kill it, restrain it! I'll do the rest!" Harry replied.

He brought his wand sideways across himself and summoned a dark red shield to block an angry yellow blade of light from Herpo that would have cleaved him in two. The spell slowed when it hit the shield, slowly fizzling out and dying as it went through, emerging from the other side as quickly fading yellow sand.

There was no follow-up, as Herpo was suddenly otherwise occupied. The statue had managed to stand and had wrapped its pike under Herpo's neck, pulling the writhing creature into its solid gold chest and lifting Herpo off his feet. The thing stood at around eight feet tall and was completely rigid, not even moving with Herpo's spasmodic jerking.

"Keep him down!" He yelled, sending chains to wrap around Herpo and keep him still. Fleur followed up soon enough, side by side with him now as they sent spell after spell to keep Herpo strapped to the giant Ancient Greek soldier. The gleaming metal muscles were straining to keep the thing in place, the sound of metal groaning and threatening to tear filling the chamber with an awful, reverberating howl.

Harry began to sense the incoming problem when a hum started to sound, and he began to feel magic being drawn in from around the room and building up in front of him. The crystal in the staff began to glow a deep red where it was pinned to Herpo's chest bone under all the chains, illuminating the sunken cheekbones of the monster in an unholy light. Its shrieks became whispered words which carried unnaturally around the chamber in a sibilant chant as if the walls themselves were murmuring the words in rythm, making Harry's chest cavity vibrate with its odd strength.

Harry realised at the last second what was coming when he caught the last word. It brought forward the memory of a word he had read in an ancient text he had found buried in a shaman's tomb in Guatemala.

"Get the fuck down!" Harry yelled, dashing towards her.

She turned halfway through an overpowered sticking charm, just in time for Herpo's chant to reach a crescendo and for Harry to tackle her bodily to the floor.

A titanic thrum of electric magic exploded from Herpo's gnarled staff. A rapid ring of red death with a white-hot edge to it crackled as it burst from the crystal, bisecting his soldier in two and expanding at chest level around the whole of the chamber. Behind Herpo the top half of the thick, marble tomb slowly slid off of the bottom half with a steady rasp to fall onto the pile of valuables.

Even if by then they were flat on the floor, both of them could feel the malevolent magic pass over them in a blistering wave of hate. The acrid smell of burnt hair filled his nostrils alongside roiling ozone as the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck curled and crisped.

Harry had turned as he tackled her so his back was to Herpo, old instincts kicking in as he put himself in-between the monster and Fleur. As soon the wave passed over them he spun around, getting to one knee to cast a shield on pure instinct.

It was just in time as well, as as soon as he did so a constant scream of bright white lighting impacted it, sending a jolt up his arm. Harry groaned as he maintained the shield, slowly struggling to his feet with trembling legs as the lighting magic hissed and cracked against the pale silver of his shield.

"Fleur!" Harry barked, sweat beginning to drip down his face. "I need you to distract him, I can't risk dropping this!"

A constant stream of swearing sounded from behind him, but finally, the spell against his shield was dropped. A constant stream of fire was enveloping the area where the lighting had been coming from.

"Thanks luv!" Harry yelled cheerfully.

'Time to end this, I think. Don't want to explain to the French Nobleman how exactly his eldest daughter got burnt to a crisp in a place which technically doesn't exist.'

As soon as Herpo emerged from the smoke Harry let loose with a barrage of rippling cutting curses, all of which were borderline illegal… in some countries. In the rest, they were just plain illegal.

Herpo managed to deflect two but the third caught Herpo at the shoulder of his right arm, neatly bisecting it from the rest of his body. If Harry had been anyone else he would have stopped and blinked, not having expected to be able to actually damage it. Fortunately for his continued existence, Harry was far from being anyone else. He quickly animated the now vegetable soldier, the upper half of the gleaming giant reaching out to catch the staff out of mid-air, which had already begun to arc back into Herpo's outstretched off-hand. Fleur followed up by summoning both away and burying them half into the stone to stop Herpo from getting his staff back.

He sought to take advantage, as did Fleur from behind him and to the right. Herpo – in a display of acrobatics that should have been impossible for someone a millennium old and sans an arm – ducked under two more cutting curses and twisted around a flailing cross of writhing rope before stomping on a shining gold sword leaning against a shield on the floor, causing it to bounce up with a ring and land firmly in Herpo's outstretched hand. The creature opened its toothless mouth open and let out a warbling cry as it charged.

Harry grinned. "Oh, is that how it is?" He whispered under his breath.

He tossed his wand in the air, the slither of wood spinning slowly. From one end a liquid stream of dark metal emerged to form a long, sharp edge. The wood thickened and grew a leather shroud around it, a simple, straight guard growing from the top.

-oOo-

Fleur watched in amazement as Harrison caught his wand – now in the form of a sword that was taller than her little sister – and expertly swung it around himself – a slightly manic gleam in his eyes – before charging to meet the monster they had been fighting.

Even with an arm missing it still seemed to be able to use the sword like an expert. As soon as it was within range of Harrison the sword blurred in a devilish vertical arc, aimed to slash Harrison from chest to stomach.

"'Arrison!" She shouted in both fright and warning, her wand raised to distract the skeletal figure should Harrison fall. But her warning was for nought, for Harrison's own sword was already in motion, much faster than what should have been possible. It swung from underneath and to his right and batted the golden sword to the left, allowing Harrison to get a firm kick into his enemy's midsection, sending him stumbling back a few steps. Herpo was still fast enough to block the following sideways slash however, and from there the fight continued.

What followed was one of the most incredible things Fleur had ever seen, second only to the dragons of the Triwizard Tournament. Against the creature, pulled straight from one of the scary books her mamam would read her about shambling bone-men, Harrison seemed ridiculous. He was dressed in an open-fronted white shirt and beige cargo shorts with trainers, exposing lean muscles and an odd scar on one side. It was a harsh contrast to the dark steel sword he swung like he had been doing it for his whole life. He was moving like a dancer, twirling and parrying then responding in fluid movements. Halfway through, he began laughing, and Fleur found that she didn't even think it was out of place.

Harrison Slate was, without a doubt, the most dangerous man she had ever met. Other than maybe Dumbledore, but only because of the political power that man wielded. Harrison knew how to do things she had never even imagined. Breaking into a fidelius? It shouldn't have been possible, it was the stuff of myth and legend.

She considered him from her place at the side as she watched them. His grin was wide as slapped the flat of the sword as it was thrust towards him with his bare hand, which was glowing a pale white. The sword that he had just slapped away swung around again with an audible whoosh to cleave at Harrison's midsection, which he barely dodged by jumping and twisting to lie horizontally mid-air before landing, the only cut received being to the lower half of his open shirt, where a slither of material had been neatly sliced off. Was that who she was with? A legend?

She was broken out of her hopeless observation by Harrison finally getting his move in. Herpo had slashed his sword across his chest once more, the swing starting from his armless side. Harrison leant back, his spine bending at an angle that shouldn't have been possible. The crackling sound of bones shifting was audible, and Fleur realised he had morphed to allow him to dodge it. The result meant that Herpo was completely open in the small gap in time between the dodge and Herpo's correction. Fleur watched, entranced by the beauty of the steel dance, as Harrison thrust his sword directly into the undead creature's chest where Fleur had blasted a hole with a joyful shout.

-oOo-

"Surprise bitch!" Harry yelled gleefully as he channelled magic through the wand and subsequently through the blade, causing a huge blast of magical energy to flow through it and hurl Herpo away from him and into the wall to the right, screaming the whole way.

"Keep him bound Fleur!" Harry shouted as the blade of his sword was detached from his wand and banished away to pin the struggling creature to the wall, the blade sinking into the cold stone like it was butter. He followed it up with several steel javelins that also pinned his remaining hand and feet to the wall. After a moment's hesitation, Fleur's conjured chains also wrapped around them and Herpo to keep the old wizard still.

Harry looked into Herpo's eyes as he approached cautiously, the newly restored wand spinning between long fingers. There was nothing in the dark pits of his eyes, but Harry could practically feel the glare on him as the ragged man struggled to break free.

Once he was near enough he stopped and stared at the ruby glow before saying: "you way want to look away for this bit." Not waiting to see if she did so or not, Harry cast a spell on his left hand, covering it with a layer of golden light, making it seem as if he had some sort of magical gauntlet on. After inspecting it for any imperfections Harry thrust his hand through the ribcage and grasped the ruby. Violent red sparks flew from the glove as he pulled, the horcrux resisting his efforts to remove it from its host. If he had done this with his bare hands his own hand would have been burnt away, leaving only a blackened stump that would have refused all attempts to regrow or heal. He knew that because it had happened to Hermione. Eventually she had been able to craft a new, metal hand that had actually reached artefact status for its ingenuity, but for the remaining few years of the war she had had to put up with a Moody-style wooden hand that used a clever holster to put the wand in it. It hadn't affected how brilliant she was, only made people underestimate her. But she had been in constant pain for a number of hard months.

With a monumental pull, the Horcrux was torn asunder from its ivory cage, and in Harry's hand he held the soul of a monster. The skeleton fell to the floor then, humerus, thigh bone and tibia rolling away as it lost the source of its power that had been keeping it together.

"Is eet dead?" Fleur's voice penetrated into his mind, shaking him from his study of the depths of the jewel.

"Julian Herpo has been a dead man for a long time, princess, this was just the last cry of a man long lost to insanity," Harry said grimly.

"'Ow did he life for so long?" Fleur asked, obviously shaken, "eet should not be possible."

Harry turned full body to her then, rolling the vile magic in his magically protected fingers. "Are you sure you want to know, Fleur? You can feel what I hold here, do you really want to know what it is?"

Her jaw set and she got a stubborn glint in her eye that Harry had seen in many a woman, normally before an argument ensued. "If eet is dangereux then eet is best if I know about eet, non? Eet would be better to know of eet than to die because I never learnt of eet when I break my own tombs."

Harry nodded in appreciation. That was an argument he could agree with.

"Very well," he said easily. She stared at him, surprised that he had capitulated so easily. He smiled. "What, you thought I would keep knowledge from you? You're an adult, Fleur, I'm not about to baby you."

"This," he held the stone up, interrupting whatever comment she had been about to make, "is what's called a Horcrux. It's created by killing someone with the killing curse then, using a ritual, splitting your soul and storing it within an object," he tilted his head, "it is preferable for the object to be magical in nature, the more powerful the better, for it grants the soul fragment with additional protection on top of what the ritual already gives it."

"Zat is 'orrific," Fleur whispered, looking at the red ruby in horror.

"Yes, it is," Harry agreed, "human sacrifice is the most powerful sacrifice when doing rituals, as you probably know," he grimaced, recalling his own personal experience of just how dangerous it could be in the Algerian desert. "It imbues the Horcruxes with immensely powerful protection, so much so that it can be destroyed by very few things, the most powerful of magic," he rose an expectant eyebrow at her, "can you guess what those are?"

"You are doing a lesson now?" She asked incredulously.

"Yes, now answer."

She huffed and thought on it, "if eet is a part of a soul, would the killing curse kill eet? Zat curse severs the connection to the soul, non?"

"Good, another."

She puffed her cheeks out in thought, "per'aps using a form of alchemy you could dissolve eet?"

"Nope, the only other way is Fiendfyre and Basilisk venom, I have some theories about dementors and the veil... but that's not important."

"And which one will you use?" Fleur asked, nervous.

"Fiendyre, but first we need to find the other one," he said, placing the ruby on the ground.

"Other one?" Fleur asked, her voice ever so slightly higher pitched.

"Mhm, but the fucker placed it under all the gold, so we need to cancel out the gemino first," he turned to the veela, who was looking around the room as if fearing that something was about to jump out at her. He snorted, "don't worry about it, this one doesn't have anything to control, you make the three ward stones for the right side and I'll make the four on the left, okay?"

She nodded a bit numbly and moved to comply.

Harry used the marble that had been used for flooring as the ward stones. It wasn't pure enough for more long-lasting ward stones but it was good enough, the wards didn't need to last long. Harry finished his four quickly and moved to help Fleur, finding that her own were actually perfect and far neater than his own. She was more of a perfectionist than he was, always finishing her runes with the proper flourishes and spikes. The only downside was that she took twice the time as he did with his hasty scratchings.

Once the ward had run its course Harry began to dig through the valuables until he found the polished wooden box that was practically leaking dark magic. Wrinkling his nose at the smell of ozone, Harry opened it and removed the cup with another gauntleted hand, this one having been enchanted with a curse that would drain all the water in someone's body through the bottom of their feet.

"By Godric, I hate these ruddy things," Harry muttered as he lay it next to the ruby. "Stand back a bit please Miss Delacour, can't be too safe with fiendfyre."

She did so, and Harry walked back and cast the chaos magic. From the tip a spiralling pillar of flame emerged, spilling to the floor to form into the form of a familiar skeletal horse. It flapped its wings proudly and tossed its head. Harry glared and wrestled control of it, sending the creature stamping towards the Horcruxes, wings spread as it half glided along.

With his off-hand Harry cast a silencing charm on himself as he watched two twirling figures of black disintegrate in the unnaturally wide maw of the thestral, indistinct mouths agape in wordless agony. Eventually, though, the remains of the Horcruxes were gone, leaving only a dark smear on the floor.

The thestral trotted back to him then, looking very pleased with itself, and bowed its head.

"Yeah yeah, you're very impressive," Harry drawled. The thestral let out a proud snort of flame before it was dispersed with a flick of Harry's wand.

"Zat was… terrifying," Fleur said, staring at the place where the Horcruxes had been.

"Yeah, not the most pleasant things," Harry agreed, then turned back to Fleur, grinning. "But now at least we can do this." He sprinted away from her then, jumping and turning in mid-air to land on the pile of gold with an almighty crash, sending stacks of coins and assorted bits of jewellery tumbling down to the floor.

"Scrooge McDuck style," he said blissfully, casting a few cushioning charms behind him and laying his head back in contentment.

"One moment you are battling a demon in a sword fight then you dive onto money like some sort of child. You really are an enigma, 'arrison."

Harry jerked his head up to look at her, smiling. "C'mon, don't pretend like you don't want to."

She kept looking at him sternly, then a wide smile broke out onto her face and she followed suit, squealing and landing next to him with a slight 'oomph' when she did so. Harry turned his head to look at her as she cast the same charms that he did and then observed the ceiling with a frown. "Zis ees not nearly a good enough view."

Fleur then shot four different spells in a square, each one forming lines between each other on the high stone ceiling of the cave. She then began murmuring in Latin and waving her wand in intricate patterns, inky black and starlight pouring forth from the rosewood tip. When she was done it was like a window into the night sky, complete with the moon shining at them at an angle, not quite full. It was yellow, likely from some sand storm miles away.

"Looks familiar," Harry observed.

Fleur nodded and let her wand fall to her side. "When I was at 'ogwarts, the top of 'ze Great 'all was one of 'ze few things I liked, I used to remain in 'zat room for hours. Afterwards, I dedicated myself to learning 'ze charm for my own use."

"Nice," Harry observed, then remembered something. "Hey Fleur, how would you feel about trying something new?"

She shrugged, "zis day 'as been so crazy already, why not?"

Harry grinned and fished a sealed plastic tube from his cargo shorts. Delicately, he popped the cap off and withdrew the rolled piece of paper from within.

"What is 'zat?" Fleur asked curiously, "ees it a cigarette?"

"Nah, this is much better," Harry said gleefully, "you know how to smoke?"

"Non, I 'ave never tried," she said, still eyeing the thing with curiosity.

Harry brandished his wand and lit the end of it with a flickering flame. "Well, I think it's about time you learnt."

The next few minutes were thoroughly enjoyable to Harry. On her first try she coughed so much she thought she was about to cough up a lung, causing Harry to roar with laughter. Through his laughter, he somehow managed to educate her on how to inhale and exhale properly, and soon enough she was doing it perfectly. There was something about teaching a high-up French nobleman's daughter how to smoke weed that was just priceless to him, she was so delicate with how she held it and regarded the whole thing with a mite of curious suspicion. They finished the first one quickly, and on the second one they both just sat back and relaxed again, a happy light-headedness spreading through them.

Harry blew a puff of smoke out and rose his own wand, drawing links in the constellations in the sky, trying his best to remember old lessons from Professor Sinistra. "Why were you there? At the pub."

"What do you mean?" She asked softly.

"That pub is quiet, not a place that people go to have fun, at least not younger people." She smiled at that. "People go there for a bit of peace and quiet, to think on their issues. That's why I was there, so why were you? Apart from escaping the goblins."

She was silent for a while, then she let out a long sigh. "You are correct of course." She paused. "I was 'zere because of a man."

"Oh? Please do tell." She snapped her head to meet his eyes and he shrugged, "what? I could help," he said, passing the smoking spliff over.

She considered it then nodded, "alright." She took a deep breath. "'is name is William, 'e works at Gringotts."

"William Weasley?" Harry asked, already knowing the answer. "He's a well-known cursebreaker in the field." He explained at her raised eyebrow.

She nodded, smiling, "'e is very good at what he does."

"He's also an Englishman," Harry grinned, "so, you like the men but not the country?"

She flushed prettily and took a deep drag to stall her answer. Her embarrassment couldn't hold out under the influence, however, and soon enough an easy smile spread across her face and she lifted her shoulder in that effortless way she did. "I zuppose so," she turned to him, resiting the side of her head on one hand, and winked, "I will be the first to admit you are quite 'andsome as well."

Harry snorted, taking the spliff back from her, "I don't count, I'm a metamorph."

"Zis ees not 'ow you usually look zen?"

"Eh," Harry tilted his hand back and forth, "kinda, how I look right now is the image I have of myself in my head." Although it used to be a different one. "How I look is my own projection of who I am, and who doesn't want to think of themselves as attractive? How I look is fluid, I can become attached to a face and keep it around, but I'm all of them and none of them." He smiled ruefully, "there's not really a good way to explain it, it's a completely alien concept to anyone but us."

"Eet must be nice, being able to change 'ow you look and fade into 'ze background whenever you like," Fleur said wistfully, rolling a thick gold coin of unknown origin in-between her slender fingers, "most of 'ze time I can ignore 'ze stares, but zometimes 'zey still get to me."

Harry didn't try and reassure her that standing out was fine, that it was good to be different. He had experienced it, and it wasn't fine. It was a huge pressure to feel like you were always being watched. It followed you into empty rooms sometimes, it could haunt your life if you let it. Thankfully Harry had been too busy trying to survive to worry about his fame most of the time. He had been horribly unprepared and under-supported to experience the horror that was being a child celebrity. If he hadn't been preoccupied then he had no doubt he would have gone insane. Afterwards, he had buried himself in his work, choosing the hit-wizards over the aurors so he wouldn't have to patrol in public areas and could focus on the fighting aspect.

"You're a strong witch, I can tell." Harry exalted, twisting his fingers until the smoke resembled a hung banner, "and maybe when you get that page in the newspaper and cast down your doubters you'll find the stares far more palatable."

She smiled, tracing her name through the smoke, a gleam in her eye. "Oui, I 'zink I will."

"But we got off topic," Harry cut in, "you mentioned a certain handsome redhead, and were about to tell me what the problem is."

"Oh, yes," the smile faltered, "we met a month ago, in Gringotts, and we started going out a week ago. 'Ze date was incroyable, but 'zere were a few problems."

Harry had a good idea of what those problems could be. Or who.

"'Alfway through 'ze dinner 'is mother made 'erself known," she sounded as if she very much wished that weren't the case. "She made increasingly rude comments about me, indirectly of course, and William just stood 'zere and didn't even try to defend me! 'E waited until she 'ad run out of 'zings to say, 'zen asked 'er to leave! 'Eet was absolutely 'umiliating." She was genuinely upset by the end, her chest heaving. Harry passed her the weed to wean off some of the angst, and she took it and a long drag with relish.

She sighed, slumping back to lie limply on the pile of wealth, "and 'zen afterwards I cannot 'elp but wonder, what if she is right? What if I am too young? 'E is twenty-four and I am only eighteen. What if 'e is only wiz' me because I am a veela?" She said, sounding defeated.

Harry thought about that while he worked on finishing off the spliff.

"Did you say anything back?" He asked eventually.

She let out an amused huff and rolled her head to look at him, "what do you 'zink?"

The corner of Harry's lip twitched, "I was past the thinking stage, I already knew. That was just confirmation." He thought some more. "Do you like him?"

"Oui," she replied without hesitation. "'E is not affected by 'ze allure at all, and 'e 'as been a complete gentleman wizzout fail."

"So why do you think anyone else is entitled to an opinion?" Harry asked in confusion. "You like him, he likes you, as far as I'm concerned everyone else can fuck off. Why should anyone by you and him care about you and him?"

She giggled, "it will be 'ard being with 'im, if the 'ole family 'ates me."

"Weasleys… the mum called Molly?" He asked.

"Yes, why?"

"She used to be Molly Prewett, old family, so her head's probably still in the fucking Victorian age," he took a deep drag, delighting in the feeling of the dying embers burning in the back of his throat. It made him feel alive. "Not surprised she's got a stick up her arse, probably thinks your some kind of street whore that enticed him with your allure. You know how much worse people were about veela back in the day, especially in the old families."

She breathed deeply, "even if 'zat was per'aps 'ze most crass thing I 'ave ever 'eard," she released the breath in a sigh, "now 'zat you say 'zat, what she said makes far more sense."

"Hey," he reached over and tilted her chin up, "fuck. Them."

He withdrew his hand and she smiled again, "'zat is your advice? Fuck 'zem?" She laughed, "I 'zink I could 'ave come up with that by myself."

Harry grinned at her, loving the way she said 'fuck.' It sounded funny hearing the barbarian English swearwords being spoken by someone as elegant and French as Fleur. It also sounded sexier, but that was beside the point.

"I promised help, princess, I never said it would be good help."

"'Zank you anyway." They remained in silence for a while longer, happy to bask in the feeling of a task accomplished and the haze of good marijuana. Fleur broke it eventually, though. "And why were you in 'ze bar?"

Harry shrugged, "was looking for pretty French birds to chat up, what else?"

She laughed heartily, "well you found one, but I doubt that 'zat was your original intention."

"Would you believe me if I said that I was there for similar reasons to you?"

She rose a teasing eyebrow, "a man?"

Harry smirked, "when she wants to be."

"Ah, so 'zat gossip rag you English call a newspaper were right about one zing."

"Broken clocks, Fleur, broken clocks," he said to the ceiling, lighting another. Fleur refused it so he kept it all to himself.

"And what is 'ze problem with you and 'er?" She asked, "per'aps I can be more 'elpful than you were." She sounded far too amused for his liking.

"Yeah yeah, laugh it up feathers," Harry drawled.

"Don't call me 'zat."

"Uh huh," Harry replied uncaringly, breathing out a puff of smoke, "what do you know about what happened on the 28th?"

"Not much," she admitted, "theories vary from you being 'ze next dark lord to being an 'ero who saved thirty-eight people in a heroic fight to the death against 'ze entire muggle army. All 'zat is known for certain is 'zat, somehow, Nymphadora Tonks was taken, you arrived at the scene, and Dumbledore 'imself brought 'er into 'ze 'ospital hours later."

"Some good examples. Although my personal favourite is the one about me rooting out the primary conspirators of the Rotfang Conspiracy."

She giggled, "Escusez-moi?"

"Never mind," he waved a hand dismissively. He had to pause to compose the answer in his head. "Would you like to know what really happened?"

"Oui."

Harry took a long, long pull. He needed it to not remember her face as he told it.

"The truth is that they took her." He looked to Fleur. "Death Eaters took her, a way to get to me for surviving a raid and putting one of their buddies in prison."

"'Zat is awful," Fleur gasped.

Harry shrugged, "that is war, and we're in one. Action and reaction. Fortunately, I took action before they did and forced her to take a ward so I could know if she was attacked, not that the fucking thing helped much." He grinned ruefully, "had to use divination, always was pants at the art but fuck me if it isn't handy."

"And 'zen?" Fleur asked, enraptured.

"Tracked her down to an old pureblood mansion where they were keeping her in a cellar, torturing her," his face fell into a stony mask. "She said I killed twenty-two men and women that day," Harry said without emotion. "The thing is, the memory she counted the bodies in didn't include the fight in Hogsmead."

He looked to the side to find her staring at him. "What do you think of that, princess? Still so keen to be on this adventure?"

"'Zey deserved eet," she said, uncertain but with an undercurrent of fire. "Veela are creatures of love, 'arrison. We, more than any other being, know 'zat we will do anything for 'ze people we love, no matter 'ow bad." By the end she was entirely certain, her chin lifted as if daring him to think she was lying. "I don't fear you, I admire you."

Harry scoffed, "I don't love her, I don't love anyone."

"I did not say 'zat you love 'er, love comes in time," Fleur said patiently, "but you have love for 'er, enough to kill to get to 'er and raze the place of 'er 'ardship to 'ze ground." Fleur sighed and shifted closer to him so she could rest her head on his shoulder. It was a purely platonic sort of contact, both of them both knew they had other people on their minds and in their hearts. It was a comfort of sorts, for both of them. "Merlin knows I would do the same."

"Maybe," Harry laughed, placing an arm around her shoulders. "I wish she took it as well as you are."

"'Ow bad?"

"Red face, tears and shouting," Harry admitted.

Fleur winced against his chest.

"Yeah, said some stuff about not knowing me, about me being apathetic and acting like a god amongst men or some such rubbish." He scowled, gesturing unthinkingly at the starry ceiling as he tried to get his point across. "It's not like I just go around cursing random people. The people I killed were trash that were harming children and planning to rape a woman they had never even met before. I would do it all again in a heartbeat," he said hardly.

"You talk like someone who 'as seen war," Fleur said quietly. "You talk like my Grand-père."

Harry wondered how much information he could trust her with, but didn't wonder for long. His brain was filled with smoke and his words flowed from it like water from a tap.

"I have seen war, sometimes it feels like I never left the first one," he laughed, the laugh turning into a cough halfway through. He soothed his stinging throat with more smoke. "And now I'm in another one! Isn't that just grand?"

"Maybe 'zat is the problem."

Harry rolled his eyes to look at her. She was looking very thoughtful. "Oh really."

"Yes, 'arrison, really," she said in exasperation, lifting her head so her chin rested just above his nipple as she stared up at him. "'As she ever been in a war?"

Harry opened his mouth to say yes, she had died in one, but some sense of self-preservation emerged and he strangled the words before they came out. "No," he croaked.

"And it ees said 'zat she is an Auror, 'ow long 'as she been doing 'zat?" Fleur persisted.

Harry did a bit of math in his head. "A year," he summed up.

"Only a year of being an Auror, a year which was entirely peaceful and she probably never 'ad to kill anyone or see many dead."

He mulled over that for a few seconds. It was true, he had been doing that same thing for over seventy years, to him it seemed like just another day. His head had been scrambled, associating the Tonks from his time, who had died a battle-hardened Auror, to the practically green Tonks who had probably never even seen a killing curse. Abruptly he realised he had been expecting far too much from her, and he didn't like how that made him feel about himself.

"Still though," he scowled, "she didn't have to be such a bitch about it, she must know I did it for her." He threw a large golden coin away from himself petulantly.

Fleur attempted to hide a smile which he saw anyway. "'Ow soon after 'ze incident did you speak to 'er?"

"Three days," Harry replied, "there were some things that had to be cleaned up."

"Oh? Anything to do with those three Aurors that are missing their thumbs on their wand arm?" Fleur asked, sounding half scared and half approving. "William got called in for it, but even 'e couldn't break the curse stopping them from growing back."

"No idea what you're talking about. I'm sure those thumbs will grow back in roughly the same amount of time it takes for an Auror to be discharged from the corps for being on medical leave for too long. Purely by coincidence, of course."

She snorted, "I'm sure, but we are… how you English say, off the rails?"

"Off track," Harry corrected with a smile, "off the rails is something completely different, although I suppose we are both that as well right now."

She hummed and shifted for more comfort against his chest, accepting a small puff from the spliff still in his fingers, "off track, yes, a curious phrase of speech..." she wandered off, gazing at his face blankly.

"You were saying?" He asked, amused.

She blinked and blushed again, "yes, I asked 'ow soon you spoke to 'er after what 'appened, and you said..."

"Three days," Harry repeated, grinning.

"Shut up," she said, slapping his chest. "All I was trying to say is 'zat she would 'ave still been emotional and… en conflit."

"Conflicted?"

"Conflicted," she nodded, sending platinum blonde down his body, "we are slaves to our emotions, we say stupid things when 'zey run high." Fleur frowned, "although I don't like 'zat she attacked you when you saved 'er life, I can see 'ow that reaction may 'ave come about."

Harry thought about that and came to the decision that she was probably right. It didn't make some of the things he or Tonks had said any more justified, but he could see how the argument had 'come about', as Fleur said. He was too used to just being able to do things like that and walk away without any moral qualms and had been alone for so long that he hadn't really bothered to think about the consequences of someone close seeing what he was capable of. Half of him wished he had just stunned Tonks as soon as he had seen her, and the other half was actually glad that she knew who he was now.

Well, at least that part of who he was.

He sighed, "you're right, I'll have to speak to her soon," he looked down at her, eyes narrowed. "How are you so good at this?"

She smirked. "Veela, 'arrison, are sensitive to love, "she said with immense self-satisfaction, "I could sense your inner turmoil the moment you stepped into the bar."

Harry grunted. "Fucking veela." He sat up, letting her take her head off his chest. "I think it's about time we got out of here."

Fleur brandished her wand and produced the time from the tip. She swore. "Merde, I 'ave work in three hours." She sat up and seemed to remember that she had been lying on a massive pile of gold. She glanced from the gold to him then back to the gold, a hesitantly wistful look in her eyes and posture.

"Take as much as you want," he gestured around him, "it's certainly better than the person who owns it having it." He swiped a brown bottle nearby and held it aloft, whistling. He popped open the cork and took a sniff. "Fucking score! This whiskey must have been ageing in here for almost a thousand years," he took a deep swig and smiled widely at the taste, "damn, that's good."

Behind him, Fleur was stuffing her expanded pockets with gold and jewellery until she resembled a walking jewellery store. "Should I feel bad about stealing zees zings?" She questioned, holding a huge solid gold chain aloft and eyeing it doubtfully before pocketing it.

"Nah, the guy who owns this is a right bastard, he deserves everything coming to him," Harry said, taking another swig and then beginning to make his slightly staggered descent. Suddenly though, his foot fell through a hole disguised by a silky sheet of velvet and he stumbled.

"Oh, fuck!" Harry yelped. He only had a split second to make his decision before it would be too late, the floor was already rushing towards him. It was a critical moment, his vision narrowed and tunnelled as he focused on protecting the only thing that mattered.

Quickly, instead of casting a cushioning charm on himself, Harry curled his arms around the precious whiskey and clutched it to his chest as he tumbled painfully down the pile, knocking helmets and coins down with him in a thunderous avalanche of chaos. He fell to a stop at the base where he finally stopped swearing and lay, groaning and moaning.

"'Arrison! Are you ok?" Fleur asked, all the heavy cloaks and jewellery adorning her making the run down far more ungainly than she would ever let herself be if she was fully sober.

Harry stuck up the unbroken bottle of whiskey in triumph from his place on his back on the floor, "nothing important was lost in the accident, Fleur, no worries."

Fleur laughed freely but was interrupted by the sound of whirring and the sound of metal clinking from the direction of the top of the pile. Harry (for the second time) sat up, and Fleur turned around as well. Both of them watched the hole with dazed curiousness, Fleur remaining frozen to the spot and Harry sat still on the floor, only moving to take a sideways sip of the bottle, keeping one eye on the hole. Finally, the whirring stopped, and for a few solemn seconds, there was silence.

Then, suddenly, from the hole that Harry had punctured a distinctly canine head emerged like a meerkat emerging from its hideout, formed from what looked like burnished bronze. The head turned to them, revealing glowing eyes the colour of teal, like the shallows of the sea. With an athletic leap, it jumped out of the hole, revealing a heavily muscled frame. It was about 2 feet tall at the shoulder, the muscles also formed from the same polished bronze and rippling like they were the real thing as it began to approach them low on its haunches, making sniffing noises as if deciding if it was safe to approach.

"'Arrison? Should I be concerned?" Fleur asked warily, eyeing the dog as it got closer, the sound of its heavy metal paws striking the stone floor ringing around the room.

Harry – still sitting on the floor straight-legged – waved her off, taking another deep drink from the bottle. "Nah, don't think so," he slurred.

The dog stopped in front of Harry and sat, its tongue lolling out goofily.

"Who's a good boy?" Harry cooed, scratching it under its chin, "is it you? Are you a good boy?"

"You are unbelievable," Harry heard Fleur mutter as she sagged in apparent relief that she wouldn't be fighting another monster today.

The dog let out a crackling bark and began to itch itself with its hind legs where Harry was petting it, as an actual dog would.

"This is pretty impressive," Harry observed as he tapped his wand against the dog with his off-hand, runes and diagnostics appearing above it. "I think some of these are actually Atlantean runes."

"Atlantean?" Fleur asked in wonder, "I was not aware 'zat anything from that place remained."

"Because the High Wizard Council at the time ordered anything remaining destroyed. They were understandably paranoid, seeing that some of the artefacts from the place could have razed cities. Did wipe cities, actually," he said distractedly as he swiped his wand sideways, the runes spinning with the motion to reveal a new set that he examined. "This dog is called a Molossian, a traditional Ancient Greek dog. Old Herpo there probably had it commissioned at the time and managed to hide it away in here," he gestured in the vague direction of the skeleton still pinned to the wall. "Most likely the last of its kind in existence."

"Incroyable," she whispered, hesitantly stroking its head and snatching her hand away when it growled at her threateningly.

Harry chuckled, "I think I somehow activated it when I stepped on it like an idiot, it's sort of… bound to me, now. Dunno, from the little I've seen of Atlantean magic it seems to have even more of a life of its own than our own," he swiped the set of runes away with a flick of his wand and frowned at the new ones while the dog pressed itself into his palm. "Fleur, go and stand on the other side of the room for me?"

He felt the heat of her glare on the side of his head, "a please would not be out of place 'arrison."

"Please don't be a pain in the arse?" He asked, not looking away from a certain rune depicting seven semicircles arranged in a circle to resemble a flower.

Huffing and muttering under her breath about rude Englishmen, Fleur began to walk to the other side of the room.

Harry conjured a parchment, ink and quill and wrote down Fleur's name on the front, a rough estimation of her location and a brief message before folding it and proffering it to the dog. "hey boy, you mind taking this to Fleur?"

To his delight, the dog barked in a way that somehow sounded like affirmation, delicately took the scroll behind its large canines, turned towards Fleur then leapt into the air. In front of it, a bright teal light erupted into existence and the dog fell into it. A moment later the light emerged in front of Fleur, and the dog jumped out to land on the stone with a heavy thud, making Fleur let out a shocked gasp. It trotted up to her, the scroll floating from its mouth on a beam of ocean green light to float in front of Fleur, who took it delicately and read it.

"Gold doesn't suit you," she snorted, looking down at the heavy jewellery adorning her, "everything suits me. 'arrison."

"True, can't let you get big-headed though," Harry said. "This is pretty bloody cool. Vaelin!" He whistled, "come back here you great lump!"

Without hesitation the dog turned and jumped back through the glowing portal to him, butting against his legs affectionately. Harry grinned and scratched it behind the ears, "who's a good boy, is it you Vaelin? Yes it issss." Vaelin let out a warbling sound of contentment at Harry's ministrations.

"'Arrison, you can play with your magical dog later, I 'ave to get 'ome and sleep for the few hours that I 'ave left," Fleur said, moving over to him.

"Oh, right, sorry," Harry said. He looked around. He could move the rest of it into his vault at a later date he supposed. "Come on then Vaelin, we're off," he clicked his fingers at his side and moved off to the stairs, Vaelin walking obediently next to him. On his way out he picked up the staff to add to his collection.

"Vaelin?" Fleur asked in amusement, glancing down at the dog.

"A tribute to a hero lost too soon," Harry said solemnly. "I suppose I could have named him after the Latin name for bronze, but I didn't want to call my new dog aeneus."

Vaelin barked his agreement and Fleur laughed melodiously. Harry smiled, this had certainly been a much better way to spend his time than moping in his classroom.

-oOo-

Once they had recovered their original clothes and Fleur had stashed her hoard in a bag she had expanded they stood atop the Hill of the Acropolis, looking over the blinking lights of muggle Athens. The potions had begun to wear off now, and Harry could tell that Fleur was struggling not to fall asleep as she leaned against him, one of his arms once more wrapped around her. On his other side, his companion sat vigil, the glowing eyes the sole evidence that it wasn't a statue.

"'Zank you, for today," Fleur finally said. "Eet was… informative, and 'ze most fun I have 'ad in a veery long time, 'eet was exactly what I needed, I theenk, even eef it was terrifiant at times."

"You're welcome. Not what you expected to happen when you went out for a drink, ay?"

"Non," she laughed softly, then took a deep, satisfied breath. "I 'ave no idea 'ow I will return to sitting be'ind a desk now I know what 'eet is like to cursebreak."

He gave her a soft squeeze. "You'll make it. You picked up the things I showed you quicker than almost anyone else I've seen." He looked down at her pleased flush and bright blue eyes and grinned, "plus, if you ever need an escape again you can always let me know and I'll swoop by and rescue you from your tower of despair."

She rolled her eyes, but they were bright. "I am not a princess, 'arrison, I do wish you would stop insinuating otherwise."

"Vow breaks in a half-hour, Fleur."

She pushed away from him and pouted. "I never should 'ave sworn that vow."

"No no, it was a good idea," he shrugged, "I'm dangerous."

"'Zat much I know, but you are a good man 'arrison," she looked up at him seriously, "Nymphadora will see 'eet. I know these things."

"Don't be so sure, Fleur," he warned, "trust is an awful thing, and trusting too easily will get you bit."

"Don't you trust me?"

Harry smiled. "I don't trust anybody, Fleur, nobody but myself – not for a very long time. It has always worked out the best for me." He offered her his arm. "Let's apparate back."

Her eyes were sad for a moment before she nodded and took his arm, and they spun away back to England. A moment later, a lone green flash sparked on the top of the sheer hill of the Acropolis then blinked out.

---

AN: And there's the chapter! If I'm being honest, I think this is probably my favourite one I've written so far. Exploring other countries and coming up with a history for them is just the coolest thing for me. I hope you lot enjoyed it as well.

It was pointed out to me that I made a bit of an oopsie. I do now realise that Rudolphus Lestrange should have still been in prison at this point, and therefore shouldn't have been able to coordinate the raid on Harrison's town. For the sake of me not being able to muster up the required number of fucks to go back and edit the name we'll just pretend that he was let out on temporary parole and was arrested again afterwards. That's believable, right?

Please keep up all the nice comments and criticisms so I can continue to get better at this stuff, and of course, keep following and favouriting.

See ya next time!