Hey guys! Don't throw things at me, I've just been busy! School sucks, you know. And so does work. Its so... workish, and… ah, who am I kidding, I love my job… I WAS JUST TRYING TO FIT IN!
Hmm, that just got strange… Oh well! So anyways, the matter of ze French. Was that offensive? I hope not… STAYING ON TOPIC NOW. So, you know how google translate really is the bane of the universe? Well, I'm sorry. I'm about as French as a Mexican sombrero. I have no other way to translate French. UNTIL NOW! Guys, meet Yann. He's cool. And on top of his coolness, he's offered to translate for me! *COLLECTIVE YAY* So the point, dear readers, is that I will no longer be posting butchered French. SO THREE CHEERS FOR YANN!
And on a related note, thanks Yann. You're the only French person I know, so thanks for the help. Even if all I know you could be a creepy stalker, and for all you know I could be a witch who eats small children, you're still helping me out. So thanks. (Of course, you didn't help out this chapter, but the translations were all one word and I wanted it out by tonight, so when I have more complicated translations, you'll be the first person I'll go to. THANK YOU!)
I am going to be posting a new chapter each Monday/Tuesday. And for those who care, I'll be posting a chapter for my story Returning the Hellhound each Wednesday/Thursday, and my story Give Your Heart a Break every Friday/Saturday. Yeah, that's right, EACH WEEK! I KNOW! OMG A REAL SCHEDULE! WHAT THE HECK, I'M GOING TO BE DOING SOMETHING ON A TIME LIMIT?! THIS WILL NEVER WORK! Well, it probably won't, BUT I'M GOING TO TRY MY HARDEST! So yeah, enjoy! I know I didn't post on time this week, but I had it written on time, I was just waiting for translations. That has to count for something, right?
I woke abruptly, feeling immediately awake. I blinked, looking around, and wondered for a second where I was. The room was dark, with the heavy blue curtains drawn, and I felt very warm. The thick woolen blankets wrapped around me kept me from freezing to death. Then I heard a cough, and remembered. The Beauxbatons carriage. I relaxed slightly, then glanced at my watch. It was 6:30 am. I groaned. Why had I woken up so early?
Then I remembered. Today was the morning that Terese and I would submit our names, and we would try and talk Susanne into submitting hers. I rolled onto my side, squishing my hair against the pillow. I tossed and turned for a while, but no matter what I did my brain would not shut off. So I got up and changed quickly by the light of the sun peaking over that dark, ominous forest. I wore the warmer clothes we had brought in preparation of dark, cold, and altogether sad looking England. I had thicker velvet dark blue robes that hugged my hips and chest. Over that, I had a black cloak that was so long it swirled around my comfortable fuzzy blue boot wrapped feet. Then I transfigured the Wardrobe, which had been a Wardrobe happily for a few minutes so I could get my clothes, back into a sapphire, and hung it around my neck. Then, creeping along, I pushed open the wooden door. I peaked around the door, and slipped out when I saw no one. I walked as silently as I could past Madame Maxime's door, and carefully unlatched the lock. Then I pushed the door open and cool air flowed into the carriage. I shivered, then jumped out of the carriage. I landed hard on the ground, the shock racing up my ankles. The door was just above me, and I had to stand up on my tip toes to reach the handle. The door swung shut with a loud snap that echoed through the cold and silent air. I heard something fall and shatter inside the carriage, and panicked. Why, I wasn't quite sure, but, I didn't exactly have permission to leave the carriage, so I bolted. I ran across the grounds toward the castle. I slipped and on the dewy grass, running frantically. When I reached the side of the castle, I fell. My foot slid sideways on the slippery grass and down I went, hard, on my side. All the air huffed out of me as I hit the ground. I swore quietly in French, and pushed myself to my feet. My hair now had mud clinging to the ends, while the whole side of my black cloak was wet and muddy. My side stung, and I was sure that tomorrow I would have a lovely array of beautiful bruises up my side. I poked my hip experimentally, then winced. Yep, bruises. A gust of wind blew my muddy hair around my face and I shivered. I had forgotten the cold. Still swearing under my breath, I headed for the castle more slowly, wondering why I decided to leave the carriage anyway. Then I remembered the carriage door slamming shut and the unknown thud in the carriage, and I spun around, almost falling again in the process, to glance fearfully at where I had come from. The lights were on. I walked as briskly as I could while keeping my balance toward the castle, and when I reached the steps, I ran up them. The large wooden double doors looked heavy, but that was the least of my problems. No self respecting school would leave it's doors unlocked. But, no self respecting wizarding school would leave it's doors unwarded. But, wards always were my specialty.
I didn't touch the door. You don't just touch a possibly Warded object. I pulled out my wand and began tracing a simple Revelation rune. Then, the complex Rune Shield over the door began to shimmer into existence. A clearish blue wall of wards. I smiled. Easy. Regular wards are the simplest to decode, it's ward mutation and fusions that become difficult. Plus, I loved ward walls. They were like a giant puzzle. This combination of wards prevented me from destroying them, but not from slipping past them.
I heard my mother's cool voice, repeating the phrase she always said to me when I had trouble with a ward. "Il n'y a pas de barrière impénétrable, seulement des gens non éduqués dans l'art de les traverser." (There is no such thing as an impenetrable ward. Only those not schooled in the art of getting past them.)
I studied the runes carefully, noting each one individually, and the effects they had altogether. As far as I could tell, none prevented me from touching the Ward Wall. So I touched the Wall with my free hand. Sure enough, the Wall just shimmered under my touch. Using my hand and my wand, I pulled the swirling runes out from the Wall so they glimmered on the surface of the Wall. An easy combination of runes that made it Unpierceable, Untraceable, and virtually Unenterable by night. You could not break it, bind it, or undo its effects, even temporarily. It was so well done that I was itching to see what surrounded the grounds. I had felt it resist us briefly when we flew in, until the wards Creator let us in. I examined the runes a third time, and this time I noticed a tiny, almost invisible flaw in the Ward Wall. There was no rune preventing the entrance of students. I smiled. Students were allowed in and out through the Wall at all times. Being a student, there was nothing in the ward preventing my entrance. The ward did not specify being a student of Hogwarts. But, a little selection of runes I almost missed caught my attention. The runes together created a Rune Combination that would trigger a silent alarm if anyone entered the castle other than students and staff. I was about to draw a combination of runes to disable it when I stopped. I did really want to meet this Ward Wall's Creator…
In a split second decision, I crossed the Wall and it melted back into nothing right before the Rune Combination that would alert the Creator of my entrance flashed once. The silent alarm was triggered. There was no turning back now. I steeled myself and then walked hurriedly into the castle.
MAGICAL LINE BREAK!
I was lost. I had no idea why I thought entering the castle early in the morning would be fun. There was no one awake and I had already dodged three teachers patrolling. I was just about to give up and find a teacher for help when I heard an incredulous voice.
"Fleur?"
I spun quickly to see Cho Chang standing there fully dressed in her black Hogwarts robes, her dark hair braided down her back, looking as though she would have been less surprised to see an elephant.
"Cho!" I said, relieved. "Merlin soit loué! (Thank Merlin!) Could you 'elp me? I am quite lost."
Cho nodded, still looking bewildered. "Sure. Where do you want to-" she had started toward me and taken my arm, the side I had fallen on. Then she felt the water soaked into my cloak. "Fleur, why are you all wet?"
"Oh, I fell." I answered.
"Yeah. So why didn't you dry yourself with magic?"
I blinked. "Oh. I guess I forgot zat I could do it myself. I was busy being annoyed by ze world."
"Why are you annoyed by the world?" Cho asked.
I shrugged. "Ze cold. It does things to me."
Cho laughed. "Well, let me dry you off in the Ravenclaw Common Room. Okay?" Cho offered, jerking her head towards a spiral staircase to my right.
"Merci (thank you), Cho."
She grinned. "No problem. Come on."
I followed her up the spiral stairs, and at the top we found a plain door with no handle or keyhole, just a bronze eagle knocker. Cho knocked once with the eagle doorknocker, and the eagle opened it's beak and spoke in a pretty ringing voice.
"If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
Cho opened her mouth, but I butted in. "Of course. Sound is not a thing created by human imagination."
Cho glanced at me in surprise and opened her mouth to speak, but was again cut off, but this time by eagle knocker. "Nicely put." It praised me, and the door opened to reveal a beautiful circular room with large windows that filled the room with light. Stars adorned the ceiling, and chairs and tables littered the room, and a large marble statue of a woman rested in the back of the room.
"Hey, Cho, are you ready…" a voice trailed off.
There were four people sitting in the very front of the room at a table, seemingly waiting for us. Two boys, a girl, and Marietta Edgecomb, who had spoken, from yesterday. Both the boys stared at me, their jaws on the floor. Cho grinned at this, then gestured at an armchair near the table. I sat down on the chair, watching the boys stare open mouthed at me. I pushed my velvet blue sleeve back to peer at my pale arm. The light blue glow was a little brighter than I would like it to be, so I concentrated. It lessened slightly. There. The first boy shook his head to clear it, then turned toward the girl, who was laughing her head off at him. He kissed her, his hands in her hair. She laughed against his lips but kissed him back. I grinned at how unaffected she was by my beauty. I loved people who weren't threatened by me. Terese had been the first person I'd ever met like that.
Cho laughed. "Feeling uncomfortable, eh, Danny?"
The boy broke apart from the girl and looked at her sheepishly. The girl laughed, tucking her frizzy black hair behind her ear. "Danny, do you think I'm mad at you?"
The boy, Danny, nodded. "Yep."
The girl laughed loudly. I smiled. She was pretty, she had a good looking boyfriend, and I could tell she didn't need to be jealous of me, and the fact that she knew that, really made me happy. So I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. "Hello, I am Fleur Delacour. You are…?"
She met my hand. "Hey, I'm Maria. Cho mentioned you and your friends."
Cho gestured to the rest of the group. "That's Al, Danny, Maria, who you just met, and Marietta, who you already knew."
I waved at everyone. They smiled back. As I lowered my arm, I noticed the dampness on my cloak.
"Oh, I forgot." I muttered to myself. I pulled my wand out of my pocket and siphoned the slowly drying mud out of my hair and off my cloak. Then I dried my cloak with a charm, then my hair, which caused it to blow around my face in a silver cloud. Once I got it out of my face, I noticed the other boy, Al, was still staring at me like a complete idiot. Hmm. He was almost as weak minded as the redhead from earlier. I had never liked weak minded people.
"So Cho, are you ready for class?" Marietta asked, brushing back her curly brown hair.
Cho frowned. "That's the opposite way that Fleur needs to go. We can't take her with us to class, can we?"
Maria shrugged. "I don't see why not."
I shook my head. "No, I could not let you-"
"Its fine!" Cho said, smiling.
"No-" I protested again.
"Oh, come on, Fleur, it's a very boring class, you would make it more interesting." Cho coaxed, elbowing Maria and Marietta for help.
Marietta just shrugged, and Maria nodded. "Yeah, Fleur, Ancient Runes is horrible."
"If you hate it so much, then just stop taking it!" Marietta burst out, but I wasn't listening.
"Ancient Runes?" I asked, interested.
Cho rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Its hard and boring, the worst combination of things a class can be."
"I adore it." I said, rather stiffly.
Cho's eyes widened. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you." she rushed to apologize.
I narrowed my eyes, but decided to let it. Cho had seemed okay so far. "It iz fine, ze art of runes iz much less important in England zen in France, its country of origin."
Cho looked relieved. "Well, come on guys."
We headed to their class, and as soon as we rounded the end of the hallway Cho had found me in I lost track of where we were. I counted our twists and turns and the staircases we went up. We went left, right, left, left, right, up stairs, left, left, right, right, up two sets of stairs, right left, then reached a wooden door at the end of a hall. A whole class of students was huddled beside it. Cho shot them a confused look, then reached for the handle and I jumped forward, slapping her hand out of the way.
"Ne touche pas!" (Don't touch!) I snapped.
"What-" Cho started, looking very annoyed.
"You do not touch a warded object. Never." I said. "You could melt your hand off."
I pulled out my wand and brought up the ward wall surrounding the door. The runes glittering off it were simple Ward Combination, so very easy. One of the simplest wards you could ever create, but my skilled eye could pick out the skill and easy practice the wards had been drawn with. I scanned the runes, muttering to myself.
"Facile, très simple, (Easy, very simple,)created for a beginner… a simple Shattering Rune should do it." I traced the rune on the Wall, and then took several quick steps back. The wall shattered, pieces glancing off the stone floor, and the shards dissolved into smoke. I smiled, then took a step back to the door and opened it, gesturing for the others to follow me in. Sitting in the front of the class was a woman, reclining on a chair with her feet on the desk in front of her. She had iron gray hair, but her skin was unwrinkled and soft. She looked extremely familiar…
Then I remembered. She was someone my parents had investigated. My parents, who investigated criminals for the French and English governments, finding them breaking laws so they could arrest them. I couldn't for the life of me remember if they had found anything on her or not. But I couldn't imagine why Dumbledore would hire a criminal, so I assumed she was clean.
She noticed us entering, and jumped, her feet falling off her desk. "Fleur Delacour?"