Author's Note: So tell me, ladies and gentlemen, are your bodies ready for Fleur Delacour?
We're going to try something a little different in this chapter. Like, how about more words, guys?
Kaleidoscope
Albus Dumbledore tapped the tiny Charms professor on his right on the shoulder. "Filius. Tell Minerva that there are some international issues I must attend to,"
He stood up from the large golden throne at the center of the staff's table in the Great Hall and walked away quietly in the wake of Harry Potter's sorting.
After he passed through one of the side doors, he broke into a run up a set of stairs. The gargoyle guarding the spiral staircase to his office moved aside as soon as he was in sight and he cleared the hallway in record time, ran up the stairs and into his office.
Albus quickly sat his desk and observed the room, then clapped twice. A burst of magic left his hands as the wards activated all at once, barring disturbance and entry as well as ensuring his privacy.
Dumbledore slowly poured a cup of water into an oblong silver pan as he contemplated the forces of the world closing in.
Once upon a time, he wondered if he would need notebooks and thousands of galleons worth of ink to keep track of all his memories and observances, but he found, like his mentor, that he was quite capable if he relied on a quick run in with his Pensieve once in a while.
What sat before him now was not a Pensieve, however. It was a scrying pan, crafted by Lady Flamel herself, a gift as he left his apprenticeship with Nicholas, nearly seventy years ago.
He walked over to a medicine cabinet full of potions ingredients that might have been more difficult to obtain than the priceless pan itself and opened it. Albus carefully pushed the Phoenix tears away, carefully bottled in a stopper of red diamond, which ensured that no sunlight whatsoever would interfere with its properties. He gingerly placed alchemized Erumpent Horn fluid (an accident that had proven to be very, very useful and impossible to recreate) on another shelf and reached for possibly the most mundane of his ingredients - a small vial of dragon's blood.
The dragon was nonspecific, but it certainly didn't matter, as the blood was magically similar between nearly all the species. He closed the cabinet carefully and sat in the high-backed chair behind his desk once more. With the utmost precision, he measured a small quantity of dragon's blood and let it fall into the water, where it settled in a red film after a minute of waiting.
Albus then proceeded over to a relatively large table and selected a spinning silver device that had been invented far too long ago for how efficient it was. He placed it against the outer rim of the silver pan, due north and watched as a single cloud of purple smoke moved over the waters and changed the red film of dragon's blood into a clear, sharp image broadcasted from a pendant worn by Astrid Greengrass.
A delicate finger obscured his view for a moment, indicating that the Green understood her mentor was watching the events unfold before them.
Artemis on Apollo Road
"Fleur!" a familiar voice called.
She let her eyes sweep over the gathering of the Four Hundred and locked eyes with a boy three years her senior, who went to Beauxbatons with her.
"What are you doing here, Fleur?"
"Stefan," she said softly as he approached.
His eyes widened for a moment. "Your family- I've never heard of a Delacour family on the Four Hundred."
She shook her head, clearly dismissing him, but he'd have none of it. He began to speak about rather inane things.
Most fourteen year old girls would have been flattered by the attention of such a handsome, older boy, but Fleur was far too used to it to care even a smidgen.
Her eyes scanned the crowd and locked onto Astrid Greengrass.
Very few people knew that the Gathering of the Four Hundred existed, let alone how to get in, but it seemed as though no locked door could keep Lady Greengrass out. Fleur was surprised not to see Albus Dumbledore lurking about with his sharp eyes and sharper mind.
This was usually the most important bit of the Gathering, the two hours before it truly began. Deals were being struck and families were being destroyed, at this very moment. Fleur clenched her teeth and willed herself to pick up strains of conversation from those who surrounded her, but gave it up.
Those currently in power sat near the stage, their seats reserved in advance by families that owed them debts, and they talked among themselves.
Fleur scanned the crowd, trying to find old allies of her family, but they all seemed to be cozying up with their longtime enemies. She gritted her teeth and threw another glance at Astrid Greengrass. If anything, the resourceful mage had come to ensure nothing untoward directed at the Association or at the Order of the Phoenix would happen.
She grimaced again, thinking of all the stories her mother had told her about the Order of the Phoenix, formed by Albus Dumbledore and an old wandmaker. Fleur reached into her purse, which was empty except of a pair of pills which were green, powdery and had a happy face stamped on them. Unlike other girls her age, she kept her wand tucked between her skirt and her blouse at all points.
She downed another pill and waited, watching patiently. Fleur licked her lips. The taste was rather foul, bitter and reminiscent of lavender.
Within twenty minutes, the agitated euphoria crashed over her and her face tinged pink from her pounding heart. The lights grew bright and she had an urge to run over to Astrid Greengrass and engage the woman in conversation but she quashed the desire before it could take her over. Stefan was still talking to her, completely oblivious to the fact that the aura generated by her Veela heritage seemed nonexistent at the moment. Perhaps his mind was simply weaker than most.
She wasn't sure what the pills were made of - the first time she had gotten them in muggle Paris during a night out and some besotted man in his twenties had given her one - but they somehow hid her aura from any means of detection.
"Order to the Quorum of Four Hundred Who Hold the Demons Back!" boomed a middle age man from the front row.
Fleur scoffed, angry somewhere in her mind. There were barely two hundred families left - over the course of three thousand years, lines had been killed off or assimilated at nearly two or three a generation.
Tonight, however, she would be the one on the hunt.
As the man who had spoken (Fleur identified him as Lord Baldwin from the characteristic scar across his face) leapt onto stage, the talking died to whispers.
Astrid Greengrass was now staring straight at the man, all pleasantness gone from her expression.
"We open the floor to those who wish to claim their Honors!" Baldwin blared over the crowd.
Nobody stood. Fleur didn't expect anyone to. Very few families truly hunted demons anymore, choosing instead to consolidate their esoteric knowledge and their power. There was a dark minority within their ranks who had made deals with the very demons they were supposed to fight. She took a glance at some of the men and women sitting in stony silence.
Baldwin looked almost bored. "And now we open the floor to those who wish to claim grievances!" he shouted again.
There hadn't been a true grievance claimed in a very long time.
A woman near the back of the hall stood and mumbled incoherently about some artifact that had been stolen from her family in Tel Aviv, but no one paid her any heed.
Trembling from anticipation, Fleur stood. Everyone in the hall turned to her, but she didn't back down. A slight sheen of sweat was visible on her brow in the harsh white light but it made her no less lovely.
She scanned the crowd yet again, feeling rather displeased at the way some of the men and women were eying her body.
"I claim a grievance from Malfoy!" she said, loud and clear.
It might have been her imagination, it might have been the pills she had taken, but she thought she felt the sudden grip Elder Malfoy had over his Canestaff.
Astrid drew in a sharp breath. Baldwin looked amused, rather than displeased.
Of course, no one knew the contents of her grievance, or they would be a fair bit more serious.
"Ten years ago, my family was slaughtered at the behest of the Malfoy family."
And all hell chose to break loose.
A dark brown spell from somewhere within the crowd rocketed towards her, but Fleur watched the nameless woman draw her wand, watched her lips move and watched the spell leave her Code.
With a single smooth motion that no amount of training should have given a girl of fourteen, she whipped her wand against the spell and it splashed harmlessly, dissipating.
It was highly against decorum for fighting to break out in the Quorum, but Fleur expected no less.
Lucius Malfoy bared his teeth at her and she gave him a beatific smile. She wasn't closed to scared - she couldn't be, another side effect of her surreptitious consumption from earlier.
"I am Fleur Delacour, named so because I chose the safety of my body and the hearts of my adopted family over the dirty politics of your family, Lucius Malfoy."
The truth was apparent to the Quorum already, but she chose to make it known already.
"But it is a fitting name, nonetheless," she said, not a single ear losing a word of her medieval French. "For I am the last flower of the Sun King's Court, after you exterminated my family a decade ago."
"Lex an Praelium*," Lucius Malfoy said quietly.
"A duel to the death!" Fleur demanded.
And now, there were snickers and ill intent from the audience.
"I am Lucius Malfoy," the man said, opting to speak in English rather than Latin. "I am of a line so proud that George the Dragonslayer is the least of my ancestors. You are a schoolgirl at Beauxbatons." He spat the word like a curse. "It pains me to do this," he said, clearly not pained at all, "but I will put you down in the name of my house and finish your alleged family."
He, too, gracefully leapt onto the stage as Baldwin descended.
Fleur walked towards the front of the room, wary of attacks from all around her. She almost cursed Astrid Greengrass as the woman put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
She, too, leapt onto the stage.
"Avada Kedavra," Lucius said softly, his cane pointed directly at her. The silver serpent at the head the cane belched a bright green spell, green as grass, at her and she stepped daintily out of its trajectory. It collided with the wall behind her, shaking the auditorium but not truly damaging it.
"But you have never ruled, Lucius Malfoy, nor have your vaunted ancestors!" Fleur cried out, baiting him. To the man's credit, he didn't seem angry, but the grip on his canestaff tightened considerably more than it already had.
Fleur watched the canestaff move in a figure eight, recognizing it as one of the binary motions behind wide-area casting. To her left, at the entrance to the auditorium, a large window let in the light of the moon, overpowering the suddenly dim candles that functioned as lighting.
Fleur's twisted her wand and jabbed it at Lucius. The wand was all too pleased to attack the man who had probably killed the woman from whence its core came and the magic sang in Fleur's veins. A long, white tongue of flame rushed through the air with an audible snap, disrupting the spell that Lucius had been attempting and forcing the man to summon the very chair he had been sitting on to block it.
The chair was literally vaporized by the heat of the spell and the heat of the moon. The wand sang again, tasting vengeance in the air.
They took measured steps towards on another on the stage and now Lucius's face was expressionless. His opponent was worthy.
"Mr. Malfoy," Fleur whispered as they closed in on one another, her eyes wide and her pupils dilated, her breathing coming in harsh gasps. "You killed my mother. My father. My dear grandmother. My older brother. My entire extended family. Do you know what my wand is made of, sir?"
Tears shone in her eyes and for a moment, Lucius thought the girl was insane. He shook his head.
"The branch of an elder tree and the hair of a full-blooded Veela."
The implications were clear. There was no way a wand of elder would have accepted someone without some close tie to death.
Lucius was taller than her by several inches, but Fleur held her wand aloft and pointed it above his head. He did the same with his staff and slowly, they crossed the two weapons.
An inexorable force, magic of the purest kind, pushed the pair of them back fifteen paces apiece, leaving a long, straight skid mark from Lucius to the center of the stage. Fleur didn't seem to expect differently.
"I believe, Mr. Malfoy, magic has answered my request and demands that we duel."
"In nomen honorarem**," Lucius responded, a strange sort of sadness suddenly visible on his face.
Now, the audience was entranced. It wasn't every day in which they had the opportunity to see an honor duel between a girl of fourteen and a powerful wizard. Yet, Fleur Delacour had been recognized as the equal of Lucius Malfoy by the magic of the Quorum. It could only mean that she had spoken true.
Astrid watched as the pair cautiously exchanged spells on stage, trying to find the rhythm of the spellcasting. There was a certain resignation to Malfoy's casting, almost as if-
And then, Astrid realized what was breaking the rhythm of the casting. Guilt. Shame. Remorse. It wasn't strong enough to make him a better man and to bring a new life to his magic as she had seen in her mentor. But it was enough to hold him back. And he had no idea.
Her gaze moved to the Delacour girl. An aeon ago, she had offered to adopt the girl, but the child had opted to go to a muggle orphanage, clutching nothing but a single strand of hair, the only remnant of her massacred family. Another moment when Albus Dumbledore had stood idly by. Astrid tried not to let any disappointment tarnish the man's image.
Of course, someone as beautiful as Fleur Delacour would have been adopted rather instantly. For a child of five to keep a secret for so long… Perhaps they had even thought she was a Muggleborn at Beauxbatons.
"Avada Kedavra," Lucius Malfoy tried again, the green curse traveling several times more quickly. Fleur still danced out of the way, returning fire with stream of silver darts. Lucius summoned a gust of wind which blew them back for just a moment, but as he used the Killing Curse to destroy her projectiles, Fleur used the bright white fire to destroy his.
What truly worried him at the moment though was how quick the girl was learning. She was obviously beyond talented, to be capable of lasting this long, but it seemed as though she was becoming harder to duel rather than easier. It was time to use some tricks he had picked up from his father. For a split second, Lucius contemplated that his time serving as a Death Eater had not improved his dueling even a shade.
He conjured a bunch of spiders surreptitiously with his hand behind his back even as he continued to trade spells with Fleur. "Solvite vitam," he enchanted, turned the spider into missiles of dark magic that were nearly impossible to spot and would kill in a single touch.
But Fleur had seen it all happen, her senses heightened and enhanced beyond a normal witch's by far. "Hasta Lucens," she muttered underneath her breath and from her wand, pinpoint accurate bolts of light targeted each and every conjured spider.
In the audience, Astrid frowned. She couldn't have seen the spiders - she had only sensed their creation and their enchantment. Only Albus Dumbledore, or Nicholas Flamel, or someone truly powerful beyond belief, could have had the eyesight to see it happen rather than simply sense it. No mere girl could possibly have that much attention to detail - it took hundreds of years to create that sort of awareness.
On stage, Lucius was slowly closing the gap between them, realizing that while the girl had far better reaction time than him, his casting speed was far greater than hers.
Twenty paces away. Fleur was still quite comfortable with block his spells and returning fire, attempting to score a hit off of something the older man wasn't quite aware of, but he did have far more experience than she, even if she had cheated a bit earlier.
Ten paces. She could see the whites of his eyes now. Neither of them seemed capable of any sort of mind magic, as Lucius seemed to be looking for telltale signs in her casting or shades of color in her spell.
"Lumos radians," she whispered, holding her wand behind her back for a moment, then flicking it the man's direction. She hid her eyes as her wand glowed bright enough to blind him, but he too shielded his eyes, choosing the shared moment of recovery to sprint forward.
He brought his canestaff down towards her, intending to finish her through physical injury, if he wasn't capable of casting a spell that she didn't dodge, but Fleur, whose hearing had been distorted beyond belief, heard him as though he were beside her even before he reached her.
Malfoy's swing went wide as Fleur cast a quick piercing hex at his general direction, but Lucius avoided it by quickly ducking. Fleur's wand still glowed a fair bit from her poorly chosen decision, illuminating every snap of her wrist and every twist of her arm, severely disadvantaging her.
Sensing some sort of victory, Lucius bulled into her, slamming into her chest with his shoulder and winding her. They both collapsed to the ground in a heap. Fleur's wand rolled out of her suddenly-open hands even as Lucius managed to drive his canestaff through the stage.
Fleur attempted to roll away, but Lucius grabbed her by the hair, forgoing the staff and slammed his hand into her neck, choking her against the ground.
Fleur could not reach her wand with either her arms or her legs and her vision was beginning to dim rapidly as she stared into the triumphant face of Lucius Malfoy.
Have to… kill him.
And then, she was reminded of an old tale that she had been told to her, by her adopted mother, a devout muggle who believed in that silly book with all the great stories, about a boy named Jacob who had to wrestle an angel.
She tried to picture Lucius Malfoy as her angel - it wasn't difficult, the long, white-blond hair and the aristocratic face.
And then, she did something that hadn't been done in nearly two hundred years - something that hadn't been done since the King had been executed under the guillotine and her family had went into a state of mourning.
Fleur found that in her fist lay the Rapier de France and she drove it into the heart of Lucius Malfoy, ending his life immediately.
The fingers around her neck slackened and she pushed herself off the ground, pulled the Rapier out of the man's chest and retrieved her wand, then walked off stage, her blouse drenched in his lifeblood, and out of the hall.
The Lord's Table
Harry sat down gingerly between Neville and Daphne as the hall watched the rest of the first years get sorted.
"Don't reckon people are too happy with our choices," Neville whispered.
"Oy, stuff it, Longbottom," a boy with a prefect's badge whispered loudly.
Neville opted to roll his eyes in the prefect's general direction instead of shutting up. "I think my mum would be proud."
"Professor Snape is glaring at you," Harry mumbled, not taking his eyes off the sorting ceremony as Weasley, Ronald was sorted into Gryffindor. Neville didn't hear him. Daphne reached over Harry's lap and grabbed Neville's wrist, her expression between disappointed and furious.
"Where's Professor Dumbledore?" Harry suddenly asked. Daphne's eyes shot to the now-empty throne at the staff table and shrugged.
Zabini, Blaise was finally sorted into Slytherin before Professor McGonagall turned around, expecting for the Headmaster's address to commence. She, too, looked at the large chair in confusion before walking back to her seat and pursing her lips, as if she expected the Headmaster to wink into existence. Professor Flitwick leaned over and whispered into her ear and an expression of recognition was suddenly visible.
McGonagall stood yet again. "Professor Dumbledore is currently busy. He will deliver his start of term speech after the feast," she declared, then sat down.
The plates on the table began to fill themselves with food and as a whole, Hogwarts began to eat. Slowly, chatter broke out amongst the students.
"Well, who would have thought you would have been sorted into our house?" said Pansy Parkinson, who had taken the seat across from Harry.
Harry didn't quite know how to respond to that, so he smiled at her instead. It didn't deter her.
"We all thought that Harry Potter of all people would be a shoe-in for Gryffindor."
"I think that's where the hat wanted to put me at first," he admitted.
There was far more interest in the conversation along the table now.
"So why did the Hat choose Slytherin?"
"Because every time it was about to sort me, I insisted."
"Me too," said Neville quietly. "It was dead set on putting me in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, but I argued with it for a pretty long time."
"So you infiltrated Slytherin House," grumbled Draco Malfoy. He wasn't used to being ignored.
Daphne giggled. "I think they were following me, actually." Her expression turned rather cold. "Which is better than listening to your parents blindly about where to go."
Several students, from Pansy to Theodore Nott, took offense to that, but Daphne parried the veiled insults they fired at her with far more finesse than they expected.
Harry, tired of watching the byplay between Daphne and the rest of his house mates, looked around to the other tables. There were a bunch of glares coming from the Gryffindors on the other side of the room and even a fearful stare or two from the Hufflepuff table. Most people, from all houses, were watching him with undisguised interest.
He absentmindedly ate a bit more and listened to his housemates share information about their childhoods.
"Of course, I'm going to be on the Quidditch team. My father says it's a crime if I don't play for Slytherin, I'm that good," Malfoy bragged.
"You play Quidditch, Potter?" Malfoy asked rather suddenly.
Harry looked up from his steak and kidney pie. "What was that?"
"Are you hard of hearing or something? Do you play Quidditch, Potter?"
"No." Harry went back to eating, but Malfoy wasn't done.
"What type of wizard doesn't play Quidditch?" Draco smirked at him. Harry shrugged and attempted, for the second time, to get back to eating.
"All that muddy blood in you must be…" Malfoy trailed off as Daphne and Neville glared. Harry was angry, but he chose to attack his food violently rather than rise to the bait.
Before long, the majority of the first year students knew that Harry Potter wasn't very talkative, though he did seem to like treacle tarts a fair bit.
"That's enough sugar, Harry," Daphne said, swatting his hand as Harry reached for yet another one. Neville chuckled.
"She can be unbearable, mate. Choose your battles wisely."
Daphne glared at him and Harry chose that moment to grab another and put it onto his plate.
"I saw that, Harry."
"Too late, took it, have to eat it now." But then all the food vanished.
Dumbledore had thrown open the gates of the Great Hall, a somber expression upon his face. All conversation stopped. The old man's eyes traced up the Slytherin table until he found who he was looking for.
"Draco Malfoy, would you please come with me."