~Written for Season 5 of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition~

Word Count: ~1500 words

Pairing: Bill/Fleur

Thank you to all of my wonderful team, the Wigtown Wanderers, for your support and absolutely phenomenal beta-ing skills this round! Thanks to RawMaterial, CUtopia, Vanilla Ashes, Magical Butts, and DinoDina for your awesomeness. I definitely couldn't have done it with out you all.

Chapter 1: A Sudden Taste for Red-Heads

She was beauty.

She was grace.

She was… certainly terrified. But she would never let anyone know. She could never let anyone see. Aloofness was a well-worn cloak for a Veela, and she had a reputation to uphold.

When the final scores sprung forth, when the horns sounded and the flood of students rushed from the stadium, Fleur kept herself shrouded in her cloak. It was as much a comfort as it was a necessity. At the shabby little school so vastly different from her own, in the poorly tended grounds with their hastily erected arena, she wore her cool.

It had never been so hard before, but then Fleur had never faced a dragon before that moment, either.

The raucous students far beneath her age battered with bellowing cries at her ears. Her fellow students, the representatives of Beauxbatons, huddled round her in a loose circle. They created a protective shield for the impossibility of her formal mask sliding loose. It wouldn't happen, of course, but Fleur registered detachedly that it was to her benefit.

Maybe. Veela didn't need support of such, but still. It helped.

Madame Maxime appeared beside her as soon as the scores unravelled and the flood of students raced to descend from the stadium steps in a flurry of pounding feet. She loomed tall above her, and the cast of her shadow was somehow comforting. "You did well, Miss Delacour."

That was it. That was all. A simple compliment: minimal at best, but resounding. Fleur, beneath her aloofness, felt something unwind just slightly in her chest. She inclined her head, dropping her gaze from her headmistress' unblinking stare. There was too much to that stare — not just the competitiveness that had welled within them for weeks, but what lay alongside it. A softness. A gentleness.

"Of course I did," Fleur said shortly. Then in a sweeping turn — it looked good; she knew it did — she strode away from the arena in long-legged steps. Like a gaggle of obedient geese, her Beauxbatons classmates flooded alongside her. Heads held high, eyes heavy-lidded, scanning any that dared to step too close. A shield, yes, and one that Fleur hadn't asked for, to be sure. But in this instance the barrier was appreciated.

She saw the Hogwarts students, a mess of dark robes and mismatched neckties, shoes that matched even less, and ignored them. She inclined her head towards the Durmstrang champion where he stood in his own pool of comrades; true, the back-thumping and hearty cries of support and appreciation weren't quite to her taste, but she could appreciate that Krum himself had performed well. Not as good as she, perhaps, regardless of what the judges thought, but good. Diggory was the same. A simple nod, a meeting of gazes. She liked Diggory. He was upstanding for an Englishman.

Unfortunately, an Englishman he was.

Potter was another story. When the cries of dragons roaring their fury into the sky began to fade, Fleur passed him. He was a small boy. His hair was terrible, his overlarge glasses just as bad. The ring of red-headed witches and wizards surrounding him were even more reminiscent of geese than those that flowed around Fleur, constantly in step. Potter glanced up as she passed, as the Beauxbatons students made their presence known with silent, synchronised steps. He would be a fool to overlook them, for Madame Maxime herself was impossible to ignore, not to mention Fleur herself. People looked at Veela. It was how it should be.

Satisfaction fluttered in Fleur's chest as it always did as each of the red-headed attendants glanced towards her. The typical arrangement: girls blinking then scowling, the boys and young men blinking then staring with eyes all but popping from their skulls. They looked ridiculous and Fleur… well, she didn't love it, but it was certainly satisfying. It helped to ease the crazed thumping of her heartbeat in her chest that wouldn't bother her so long as she simply ignored it.

"Congratulations, Fleur," Potter called.

Fleur's lip twitched. She couldn't quite help it. Foolish boy. Presumptuous, even. What kind of a child — for he was no more than a child, regardless of what the Triwizard attendants claimed — addressed a superior by their first name. The presumptuousness.

And yet a twitch was all she managed, a glance that was the perfect balance between dismissal and a glare. She didn't even have the chance to revel wholeheartedly in the women's disgruntlement or boys' adoration, because the most appallingly accented French assaulted her with no consideration for pronunciation. "Tu as très bien fait, Mademoiselle Delacour."

Sniffs immediately sprung around her. Twitters of horror, and even a gasp from one of the boys behind her. Fleur flickered her glance towards the red-headed young man standing alongside Potter.

He was tall. His hair was too long. He looked like he had an earring in one ear that was crafted from a fang, which was utterly disgusting. And his French. Better that he not have attempted at all.

And he was smiling.

Fleur instantly disliked the man. She'd never had a fondness for red-headedness, and even if his smile did become him, she didn't like the rest of the ensemble. Sniffing in turn with her companions, she shrugged higher her cloak of reserve.

"I speak English perfectly well, sir," she said, and even if it wasn't true: it was close enough. Fleur was good at everything. Even the things she wasn't technically good at. "You do not need to be butchering my language in your attempt to communicate."

The plump, curly-haired woman at the man's side gasped in a different kind of way to how the Beauxbatons student had. The red-headed girl glared and the one with the bushy brown hair rolled her eyes so pronouncedly that Fleur thought she could almost hear it. That was satisfying. It helped to soothe Fleur's discomfort further. Far better than the smiling man.

"I apologise," the man said, and he spoke with real warmth. Almost familiarity. "Sorry. I just wanted to congratulate you as well, Miss Delacour."

Fleur stared at him. The red-haired man with the disgusting fang earring and the overlong hair. He'd named her with respect at least, but still.

Still.

"Thank you," she said. Then, with a further inclination of her head towards Potter — he was staring, just like the other boys, just like the man infuriatingly wasn't quite so much — she continued with her gaggle of students up the slope away from the arena.

"That was appalling," one of her fellow students said with a sigh.

"It hurt my ears," another groaned.

Madame Maxime didn't scold them, but Fleur couldn't help but spare her fellows a glance. She frowned at Audrey at her side as the girl rolled her own eyes in a far more contained manner than the bushy-haired girl had. "Still your tongue and show some respect."

No one said a word after that. Not a single word, or a sniff, or an overloud exhalation. Fleur didn't much care for red-heads or Englishmen, but he'd - they'd congratulated her. Respect should be paid in turn.

Even if it did come in rather odd forms.

"So you didn't like me?"

"I did not say that."

"I'm pretty sure you did. You didn't like me."

Fleur glanced up Bill's chest, twisting her head to peer up at him through the semi-darkness of their bedroom. In such a light, the scars upon his face were almost invisible.

Pushing herself up onto her hands, she stared down at him instead. The curls of her hair pooled over her shoulders and she knew she was beautiful. She knew she appeared distant, and perfect, and that even to Bill who had always demonstrated a modicum of constraint in the face of her Veela charm, she was as attractive as a magnet to a lodestone.

He stared at her. He smiled. He closed his eyes when she traced a finger across the scars making patterns of the skin across his cheeks. "No," she said. "Maybe I did not."

"Not then."

"Not then. Not yet."

Bill's smile widened. Fleur could feel the warmth of it more than she could see it, and as it always had, that warmth somehow managed to melt just a little of the detached coldness within her. How he did that, she would never know.

He captured her hand in his own, and it was warm, and large, and just slightly calloused. That warmth had always been a part of Bill. "Not yet."

"Things change."

"That they do."

Fleur knew that, perhaps better than anyone. She'd never been fond of red-heads, but change had made an exception to the rule. Just this once. Just this one time.

"That they do."