Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Harry Potter story or characters. I do, however, reserve the rights for any characters I develop and the plot of this story.
Harry Potter and the Veela Life Debt
By Jojobevco
Chapter 7
Gossip Rags and Newspapers
The next morning, Harry and Gabrielle arrived in the Great Hall to a murmur of voices and sideways glances of disgust and horror. Harry and Gabrielle sat next to Hermione and Ron, who seemed intent on looking anywhere else than them.
"Guys, what's going on?" Harry asked.
"It's that complete cow of a yellow journalist Rita Skeeter," Hermione answered.
"Yeah, she's turned Gabrielle into some sort of scarlet woman!" Ron supplied.
"Scarlet woman?" Gabrielle questioned.
"Here, read for yourself."
Harry Potter forced into Veela Contract
By Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent
Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived and currently the fourth champion of the Tri-Wizard-Tournament has apparently been forced into a bond with an evil conniving Veela. The young Potter heir attempted, in an act of heroic bravery to save the younger daughter of French politician Jean-Pierre Delacour, named Gabrielle.
After saving the Veela our fine hero was apparently forced into caring for and providing for the Veela, to the point where she forced the Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, to provide a grand suite for her, and locked Harry in it for twenty-four hours.
It has become clear that Delacour is up to no good, I urge the French people to consider this girl, and her father in their upcoming election.
Harry stared at the newspaper for several minutes; Gabrielle was in tears next to him, desperately hugging Harry. Harry knew he had to deal with Gabrielle first so he apologized to his friends, told them he'd see them in class and went back to his room with Gabrielle. When they entered Gabrielle let go of him and dropped down to the floor and prostrated herself while continually sobbing, "I'm sorry, Master," over and over.
Harry groaned, he really did not want to deal with this again, he pulled Gabrielle up and over to the couch where he sat while holding her.
"Shh, Gabrielle, it's okay, I'm not mad at you."
"But what that Skeeter woman said is true, I did force you into it."
"No you didn't you never had a choice, you it's not your fault. I chose to save you, if anything it was my choice, I had no idea what I was doing, but still, it was my choice."
"But if you had just left me down there you could keep living your life just like you did."
"Gabrielle, our bond is the best thing to ever happen to me! I would never change that. I—I love you."
Gabrielle gasped and smiled, "I love you, too, Harry, always and only you."
Then, a long eared owl started tapping at the window. Gabrielle got up from where she was sitting on Harry and opened the window. She let the owl in and untied it, before the owl flew off. She handed the letter to Harry who opened it.
"It's from your father," Harry said, before reading it.
Dear Harry and Gabrielle,
Dumbledore and I are dealing with the Prophet. We expect to force them to print a retraction by tomorrow. My security detail will also be monitoring Gabrielle's mail for any threats made against her and take appropriate action. However, I thought you'd like to know that the point of view expressed by the British Press is not a universal point of view. I've enclosed the article from SorcièreHebdomadaire, a popular French magazine. Dumbledore or I will contact you with regular updates about the situation.
Sincerely,
Jean-Pierre Delacour
They both were surprised by the letter and quickly looked at the attached article, which had been translated into English.
Potter Heir, Delacour Girl Bond
By Luc Dumont
In a special announcement from Delacour Manor yesterday, front-running Magical Ministry candidate Jean-Pierre Delacour announced that his youngest daughter Miss Gabrielle Delacour, age 15, has entered into a Veela Life Debt bond with Mr. Harry Potter, 14, Boy-Who-Lived, current Hogwarts Student and fourth Tri-Wizard Champion (for more information see Fourth Champion for Tri-Wizard Tournament? November 1994.)
Though details on the circumstances of the bond were vague, this is what was reported. Mr. Potter was participating in the Second Task of the tournament (retrieving a selected hostage from a group of merpeople at the bottom of Hogwarts) Due to ongoing animosity between the Merpeople and the Veela nations; Miss Delacour's life was placed in imminent danger. Mr. Potter valiantly rescued Miss Delacour from the merpeople at great personal risk. Through the nobility of his actions a Veela Life Debt formed, in which Miss Delacour has become the Bonded Companion of Mr. Potter, as required by Veela Magic.
Mr. Delacour announced that Miss Delacour, now Mrs. Potter, participated in the signing over of rights directly after the task. The documents were certified by Mr. and Mrs. Delacour the next morning. Letters and Gifts of congratulations may be sent to Delacour Manor, where they will be forwarded to Mr. and Mrs. Potter at Hogwarts. We at Sorcière Hebdomadairecongratulate Mr and Mrs. Potter on theirbonding and wishthemhappiness and long life.
Harry smiled and turned to Gabrielle, "see, I was right, I wasn't forced into it, I valiantly rescued you.
Gabrielle laughed and looked at the clock, "Harry, you're running late, you better get to class." Harry nodded, and after giving Gabrielle a quick kiss on the head, he ran off to another dreadful potions class.
A few hours later Harry returned and found Gabrielle pouring over one of the Defense Against the Dark Arts texts, which he found curious, so he asked her about it.
"I didn't gain your knowledge, just your memories, your impressions of events. The bonding hasn't given me more knowledge. Beauxbatons has always been rather, ah, light on defense. Given your talent for it, I figured I should catch up. So how was your day?"
"Potions class was horrible."
"Worse than normal?"
"Much. First, he accuses me of making Polyjuice potion. Then it turns out that Dobby stole the Gillyweed I used in the second task from him. After that, something strange happens, Karkoff came in, and showed Snape something on his arm, said something about it becoming clearer."
Gabrielle stood and walked to the window. She watched the wind blowing across the grounds, the Giant Squid in the lake that almost killed her a few days ago. She then turned back to Harry.
"This is suspicious on its own. Combined with Draco's warning, it's bad, possibly very bad."
"What do you mean?"
Gabrielle started pacing, "Draco said his father complained about his mark, Karkoff shows his arm to Snape, both of whom are verified death eaters, that means that Voldemort is regaining his power. What is more disturbing is the Polyjuice potion, which I assume is not being made by you, that means that there is an imposter somewhere in Hogwarts," she turned back to Harry, "we must be on our guard."
"How do you know all this?"
"I've been reading up on your enemies, the rest of it is deductive reasoning, something my father taught me."
"Ah."
Later in the day when they went down to dinner, they received a pleasant surprise. When they arrived at dinner, instead of facing a group of whispering teenagers looking at them with disgust and horror, they were faced with a group of whispering teenagers looking at them with looks adoring and drooling
They sat by Hermione and Ron, who were busy reading the Evening Prophet and piling food on plates, respectively. Harry looked across at Hermione and asked, "what's going on?" Hermione simply handed him the paper and encouraged him to read. The article in question was on the front page.
Official Retraction of "Harry Potter forced into Veela Contract"
This morning, the Daily Prophet published this story written by Rita Skeeter, without the facts. This story was highly opinionated and inaccurate. We have published a similar story, which has been determined as accurate in this paper. We at the Prophet apologize to the Potters and Delacours for any inconvenience this story may have caused.
Barnabas Cuffe- Editor
The article from SorcièreHebdomadaire was reprinted below.
"Well that was nice of them."
Hermione looked at him with shock, "Nice? Harry, in the Prophet's 112 year history it never, ever printed a front page retraction, whatever the Headmaster and Mr. Delacour did was, well awesome."
"Really, well that makes me wonder what exactly did they do?"
"Most likely, the threatened to revoke the Prophet's ICW and Wizengamot Press Passes, which would have made them practically irredeemable in the eyes of the international journalism community. Then they probably offered something like an exclusive interview with Mr. Delacour after he won."
Everyone looked up at the platinum blond with radish earrings and a spacey expression that said this. Gabrielle was intrigued by someone with this thinking.
"Who are you?"
"Luna Lovegood, my father runs The Quibbler. Ooh, look Nargles, got to run," then she flew off.
Gabrielle shrugged, "well that was, ah, interesting," and tuned back to her food.
Then, Mr. Delacour's long eared owl arrived and dropped a letter in Harry's hands before flying off again. Harry opened the letter and read it out loud
Dear Harry and Gabrielle,
As you have undoubtedly noticed by now, the Daily Prophet has agreed to print a front page retraction of the story (impressive if I do say so myself). Albus and I managed to accomplish this through a few threats regarding their press credentials, and agreeing to an interview if I win the election.
My security staff, assigned due to my status as a candidate for minister, has completed the inventory of the letters. Over 500 letters were received or forwarded to the manor since these stories were printed. Half of them (mostly from Great Britain) are negative in nature. About 100 howlers were received. Several threatening letters were also received and were forwarded to the British Auror Offices, though I doubt any action will be taken. Among the more interesting letters were two with everflaming merde attached, several with stinkbombs wired to detonate upon opening, and one with pure bubotuber pus.
My social secretary is preparing a general response card for letters from well wishers. She would like it if you could send a photograph of the two of you to enclose. I'll send a professional photographer next Sunday.
I'll see you for the third task,
Jean-Pierre Delacour
Harry turned to Hermione and asked, "What's so bad about Bubortuber Pus?"
"In it's pure form it's highly corrosive, it would cause boils to emerge on the hands of anyone who comes in contact with it. Thank Merlin Mr. Delacour intercepted your mail, I'd hate to have that stuff on my hands."
They laughed at this. Harry quickly reread the last paragraph and was starting to dread another photo session, after the last one turned out so badly.
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