AN: Not even 24h passed since I posted the last chapter. See how I spoil you, see? Enjoy!
Chapter 12 - A New Resolve
"Maman, where is Fleur? She's never around when I want to play with her!" an adorable six years old girl with long blond hair and baby blue eyes complained to her mother.
Her mother, a middle-aged woman, also blonde-haired and very good looking, explained to her in a patient voice: "She is practising her Charms in the garden. Your elder sister is very serious about her studies."
"But I want to play with heeer!" the little girl whined and stomped her feet petulantly. "When the summer ends, she will leave and I will be alone again!" She was on the verge of crying.
The woman looked at her husband for help.
"What should we do about Fleur, Jean?"
The man in question, a distinguished gentleman in his late forties said in a disgruntled voice:
"I don't like it! I don't like it one bit! Why is she so dead set on going overseas? Is Beauxbatons not good enough for her? Is it better to go back to that cold and dingy castle of barbarians in the north where students and professors alike got mauled by rabid magical beasts?"
The investigation regarding the deaths that had happened the previous fall at Hogwarts had concluded and it had been revealed to the public that Professor Snape had been killed as well, not only the Malfoys and the Minister. It was unclear how the Potion Master had died but after months of not being seen around, Dumbledore was forced to admit that he had covered the truth in order to avoid plunging the school into a panic, the truth that Severus Snape had been killed by a Cerberus. After that admission, the old wizard also took the initiative to step down from his position as the Headmaster of the school. As for who killed Draco Malfoy, Professor Quirrel had been the one on whom the blame had fallen. He had gone missing too but many were wondering if he had not somehow ended up dying too, his disappearing act another farce of the cunning former headmaster.
The more he spoke about it, the angrier he became - Jean Delacour was not happy with his eldest daughter's choice, not in the least. At first, he had not had anything particular against Fleur going to study at Hogwarts besides a small worry related to her magical creature identity seeing as the English were not exactly welcoming towards her kind. However, he had been unable to resist the puppy eyes of his wife and his daughter and he had caved in to their pleas eventually, allowing her to go to Scotland. After all, whether it was Hogwarts at 1000 miles away or Beauxbatons at 300 miles away, such distances made little difference for wizards as they were still just one portkey away.
Furthermore, Hogwarts was renowned in the entire world, especially due to its former headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, who was considered the most powerful wizard in recent history. As much as the French scorned the English, it could not be denied that Great Britain had always had a special status in the Wizarding World. Leaving aside legends like Merlin or Morgan le Fay, in the past century alone, 3 of the 4 most powerful wizards in the world had come from England: Albus Dumbledore, the Dark Lord Voldemort, and the Boy Who Lived, Neville Longbottom.
Even so, currently, Mr Delacour did not want to let Fleur return to Hogwarts again. Not after four people had died on its grounds in the span of two months and one went missing (Quirrell).
"Those Englishmen changed her too! I almost don't recognize my daughter anymore!" he continued to complain in chagrin.
"Jean," Apolline put her hand on his forearm and tried to calm him down but he would have none of it.
"Don't tell me you haven't seen it too! Remember how she used to be? My sweet and clingy baby girl, always smiling and up to no good, trying to prank the House Elves or messing around in the vineyard with the Muggle workers... but now? After months away from her family, she's barely spending any time with us anymore! Every year she gets colder and more distant! It's almost like we're strangers now!" he ranted.
"If only she talked to us...How can we help her if she doesn't tell us what is wrong with her?" Apolline also said with a sad sigh.
Through it all, little Gabrielle stood silent. The young girl loved her sister a lot but she also noticed the unusual tension in the family whenever Fleur returned from school. Young children often saw and understood much more than adults were giving them credit for.
Unbeknownst to Mr and Mrs Delacour, their eldest daughter had caught their conversation from the beginning. She had returned from the garden just when her younger sister had started whining about feeling lonely. Curious as to what they were talking about, she had not entered the room and stayed outside to eavesdrop on them.
A ripple of emotion appeared on her face but she quickly snuffed it out.
'Talk to my parents about my problems?' She snorted. 'And tell them what? That their sweet and clingy baby girl is actually a cold-blooded killer? That every time I sleep I dream about the faces of the ones that I killed? Or that I've already murdered more than 10 people and that the vicious werewolf found dead a few days ago was my work?'
She was aware of how cold and distant she had become towards her family. However, it was not something that she had done on purpose. She just felt disconnected from the world around her, from the ordinary people surrounding her. It was like she was living in a completely different world.
'Nobody would understand me. No one would believe that I'm from the future. No one would believe or accept that what I'm doing is for the greater good. To prevent a terrible future.' she thought.
The image of a scrawny boy with a smug smirk on his face and vivid green eyes appeared at the front of her mind but she shook her head and quickly left the house, running back to the garden.
As a Veela, she had never had many friends. Most girls hated her - even her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law had been like that - and the majority of men could not really control themselves around her. But she had not been lonely before because she had been very close to her parents and her little sister and she had been good friends with her cousins as well. However, after travelling back in time, she was all alone. Now, she was experiencing loneliness like never before.
Fleur started practising her spells on a bronze statue again. Even as tears started falling from her eyes, her spells only became more powerful and were cast at a faster speed the more her emotions slipped out of her control. Before she knew it, her face transformed into something resembling the face of a bird, with a sharp beak instead of her mouth and two cruel slit eyes replaced her previously baby-blue human ones. Her wand fell from her grasp on the grassy ground when two very long and scaly wings burst from her shoulder blades, ripping the upper back of her dress. A fire started flickering in her hands which now resembled an eagle's talons rather than a girl's dainty hand and with a sharp screech, the monster she that had transformed into started throwing a torrent of fireballs at the bronze statue which became fiery red under the assault of her flames.
By the time she came back to her senses, Fleur found herself kneeling on the ground and panting in exhaustion, her clothes torn and scorched everywhere. As evening fell and the sun went down, mosquitos started attacking the tender skin left exposed by her ruined summer dress. It was time for her to go home.
'This isn't good...' she thought, feeling the start of a new headache when she thought about what to tell her parents once they saw her awful state or once they saw the ruined and burnt garden the next morning. It was the first time that she had transformed like that ever since she had come back in time. Fleur was not looking forward to the long discussion she would have with her mother next about her Veela nature.
However, as she stood up and headed towards the house, her heart was lighter and her face visibly more relaxed than before. Letting out her inner beast had relieved much of the stress and the negative emotions that she had accumulated until then.
⁂
'Back to good old Hogwarts.' Harry thought fondly.
Despite that he had almost died there on a yearly basis back in his original world, Hogwarts was his first home. It went to say how much he had disliked the Dursleys if a place where he was in danger of dying so often was more of a home to him than his own relatives' house. That fondness for the quirky and dangerous castle had never gone away, even after decades.
As a loud whistle blew and the train started moving, Harry cast a small spell on the door of his compartment that would shoo away any would-be busybodies from bothering him without a good reason. Then, he opened a book and started to read. It was not that he was truly a nerd but reading had been his only form of enjoyment for nearly 16 years after Voldemort killed the Weasleys. He had grown to understand why Hermione loved reading as much as she did. It was a way to escape reality, to immerse oneself in a world different from their life, a world where they could be anyone, anything.
A few minutes after the train left the King's Cross station, he heard a knock on the door of his compartment. Startled, he looked up to see who it was.
"'Ello. May I sit in this compartment, next to you? The rest of the train is full."
There was only one girl at Hogwarts who would speak with that slight French accent. A slender and rather tall (in his point of view) 15-year-old girl with waist-length white-gold hair and blue eyes. Even the plain Hogwarts robes could not hide how pretty she was.
Harry looked at her strangely. That year, the Hogwarts Express was emptier than he ever remembered it. He was completely sure that there were empty compartments towards the end of the carriage he was in. Scared for their children's safety and despite the Ministry of Magic's effort to assure them that Hogwarts would be much better protected from then on, many parents refused to allow their children to return to school. Almost 30% of the students had not come back.
'There are empty compartments towards the end of the carriage' - was what he had wanted to tell her bluntly at first but when he took a second look at her face and saw the complicated look in her eyes, he stopped himself.
In spite of his thoughts, his words were different:
"Sure. Suit yourself."
Nonetheless, even as the girl sat on the seat across from him, next to the window, Harry did not attempt to start a conversation with her. He just buried his nose in his book and read the entire time until they arrived at Hogsmeade.
⁂
She may have not bothered him on the train but once he sat down at the Ravenclaw table, Harry could feel that her gaze was still trained on him the entire time.
'What's with her, what's her deal? Didn't she 'Obliviate' me to get rid of me? What does she want from me now?'
He was distracted by Terry Boot and Michael Corner who came and sat next to him.
"Harry, mate, good to see you!" Terry said cheerfully and slapped his back with a bit more strength than necessary in his joy at finally seeing him after nearly a year.
"Hey guys, how are you?" he also greeted in return and grinned at them. "Where is goldilocks?"
"Antony didn't make it," Michael said. "His mum didn't let him return, she enrolled him at Ilvermorny, in the States."
"Poor Anthony, I heard Ilvermony is like a prison. Extremely strict, very stringent punishments for breaking the rules and few amusing things. Hogwarts is so much better. Peeves, the Giant Squid, the Whomping Willow, the dangers of the Forbidden Forest and even that dumb Filch, and his damned cat... ya know, a bit of danger is part of Hogwarts' charm." Harry said.
But the two boys seemed to not share his point of view.
"To be honest, my parents were thinking about sending me to Beauxbatons this year. I'd rather have no fun and stay alive rather than come here and be afraid for my life. To think that Dumbledore was keeping a bloody Cerberus in the school, can you believe this?! A freaking Three-Headed Dog, as big as a Dragon! No wonder that the Governers fired him from his position as the Headmaster after that fuck-up!" Terry argued.
"He stepped down out of his own initiative," Michael pointed out but Terry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, cuz he knew what was coming. He left by himself because it looked nicer rather than waiting to be fired."
"Then how come you're still at Hogwarts this year?" Michael asked him.
"Well, my parents didn't like the idea of me going that far from home, all the way to France...or Spain, wherever that school might be. In the end, they decided to give Hogwarts another shot now that Minister Bones has promised to send a squad of Aurors to protect the school at all times."
With Cornelius Fudge gone and with the string of killings that happened over the past few months, the ambitious Amelia Bones had taken advantage of the unstable situation to further her political agenda. From being the head of the DMLE Department, she had become the new Minister of Magic.
"By the way, you and that French hottie are you still a thing?" Terry asked and raised his eyebrows suggestively at him.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Harry tried to deny but Michael put an arm around his neck and started to rub his knuckles on his messy hair, making it look even more like a bird's nest than before.
"Don't think you can fool us, Potter!" Michael shouted self-righteously.
"Yeah, the whole Great Hall saw how worried she was about you when you were attacked last year!" Terry said enviously.
"Padma also told me you two shared a compartment on the train! All alone!" Michael accused him. "What did you two lovebirds do the entire time, seven hours, eh?"
"I'm barely 12, she's 15, get your mind out of the gutter. We didn't even talk, I was reading," he said blandly but they were not buying his words in the least.
The two boys were forced to pipe down their ruckus eventually because the first-year students entered the Great Hall at that moment, saving Harry from the pain of having to deal with their insistent questions.
He looked with great interest at the young and nervous faces of the children standing in front of the professors' table. In his past life, he had missed the Sorting ceremony at the start of his second year because of Dobby.
'Come to think of it, what happened to Dobby in this world? Is he still abused by the Malfoys? Is Narcissa treating him badly?'
He resolved himself to speak to Bellatrix about it soon.
'Maybe we can buy him off from her somehow if he's being mistreated.'
He had decided to stop being as passive as he had been until then. He could not bear with remaining a mere spectator despite his deep desire to not involve himself in the mess that was about to come. It was a paradox.
He shook his head and returned his attention to the young students waiting to be sorted. There were some that he recognized right away: Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood and Colin Creevey. As for the others that had never made a strong impression on him, he could not quite remember them as too many years had passed since he had last seen them in his past life.
Before the Sorting could start, however, a woman that appeared to be in her early thirties entered the Great Hall too. Despite that she was rather short, there was an intimidating aura around her as she walked in with her high heels and dressed all in black, her wavy and long black hair fluttering under her pointed witch hat.
"Quite the dramatic entrance. What a show-off!" Harry chuckled at her antics. It was none other than his dear 'aunt Bella'.
"You know who she is?" Terry asked in a whisper.
"Later," he whispered back.
Seeing as there were barely 30 first-year students this time around (an even lower number than last year due to the series of killings that had happened before), the Sorting ceremony did not take a long time. Colin Creevey and Ginny Weasley were sorted in Gryffindor just as he had expected and Luna Lovegood in Ravenclaw too. As Harry had the habit of eating at the end of the table towards the professors, young Luna coincidentally ended up sitting next to him, Terry, and Michael.
Once the Sorting was over, Headmistress McGonagall rose up from her throne-like seat and said:
"Welcome to Hogwarts." the former Transfiguration Professor said in her sharp, no-nonsense voice. "Before we start the feast, I have several announcements to make."
"First of all, Professor Dumbledore has decided to step down from his position as the Headmaster and retake his previous office as the Transfiguration Professor. As per the wishes of the Governors of Hogwarts, I have been chosen as the next Headmistress and Professor Flitwick has been appointed as the new Deputy."
Loud murmurs burst out from the students at her words. They were rather excited by the prospect of being taught directly by the legendary Dumbledore but they were also intrigued by the drastic change in the leadership of the school.
"Secondly, Unspeakable Bellatrix Black has decided to take a temporary leave from her job at the Department of Mysteries and take up the position of Defense Against Dark Arts Professor this year."
Harry was floored by the extremely enthusiastic applause that the student body exploded in. Even the Slytherin House joined in the cheering with the other houses.
'Was she that popular?! Wow, I had no idea!'
The younger students seemed as confused as him but most of the older ones were very enthusiastic.
'It can't be that they're cheering only because she's young and hot, right? I mean, even the girls seem happy about her appointment.'
He realized that despite having lived with Bellatrix for more than half a year in the same house, he knew surprisingly little about her past. That incident where she cried as she hugged him after playing Tchaikovsky's Valse Sentimentale on the piano had made him reticent about poking his nose into her personal life for information. As a result of that, the other students seemed to know something about Bellatrix that he did not. He planned on rectifying that soon.
"Another important matter to know is that Minister Amelia Bones has seen fit to station a squad of six Aurors at Hogwarts to patrol the grounds and the castle's corridors in order to ensure your safety. I ask that you treat them with the respect that they deserve and obey their instructions as if they were coming directly from the mouth of a professor. Your safety at Hogwarts is paramount."
Making sure to look at the Weasley twins she also said: "Causing problems to any of them would not end with just a mere detention or a few House Points deducted. Serious offences could very well get you expelled."
The boys in question did not seem to take her warning to heart.
"That only means we have to not get caught," they said to each other cheekily and sniggered.
At that moment, the large doors of the Great Halls opened once again as four wizards and two witches came in. Wearing long leather trench coats, boots, and a solemn expression on their faces, the six Aurors looked rather awe-inspiring as they walked confidently towards the professors' table... ...until the youngest one among them, a young woman with long brown hair tied up in a high ponytail stumbled and fell flat on her face!
Harry and Bellatrix facepalmed at the same time.
Bellatrix because the young woman in question was none other than her niece and Harry because he would never forget the clumsy Metamorphmagus from his past life even if she was wearing her original appearance this time around.
A deathly silence instilled for a few seconds. Then, a snigger was heard, not surprisingly from the Gryffindor table. After that, the whole Great Hall exploded into uproarious laughter. The other five Aurors became beet-red in the face, ashamed of their colleague's own embarrassment but that was nowhere close to how the young woman herself was feeling at that moment. Nymphadora Tonk's brown hair started going through all the colours of the rainbow before finally settling on a vivid, flaming red colour, matching the burning red blush of her own face. She was mortified.
"Now I feel a whole lot safer with Aurors like her around to protect us," Roger Davies said sarcastically and then burst into laughter, followed by the rest of the students around him.
"I dare you to tell that to her face." Harry shot back at him defensively, rather annoyed, but the fifth-year student ignored him and continued to laugh.
"You know her?" Michael asked.
"She's our DADA Professor's niece, a Metamorphmagus and one of the youngest witches to ever pass the Auror exams. She's amazing with a wand...even if she's a bit clumsy sometimes."
He had met Tonks in the summer before his 5th year at Hogwarts in his past life. Back then, it had been one of the worst periods of his teenage life. It was right after witnessing Voldemort's resurrection and Cedric Diggory's death. Haunted by nightmares and visions of how the Dark Lord killed and tortured various people and then also almost dying by having his soul sucked by a Dementor... it had not been one of his greatest summers, not by far. At that time, Tonks with her pink hair, bubbly personality, and sunny disposition had been like a splash of colour in the dark Grimmauld Place, in that dark period of his life. He had gotten quite attached to her despite the short time that they had spent together.
'She died only two years after...she died so young...' he sighed to himself.
He was still not fully on board with the idea of playing a central role in the war that was about to come. However, he had decided that he would at least do what was necessary to keep safe the ones that he had grown to care about in this life. Tonks' unexpected appearance at Hogwarts only worked to further solidify his decision.
'I would never forgive myself if Tonks or Bella were killed by the roaming Basilisk simply because I just sat on my arse without doing something to prevent that.'
Carrying that resolve in his heart, Harry tuned out the rest of the feast and started planning on how to deal with the King of Serpents in the Chamber of Secrets, the Diadem Horcrux in the Room of Requirement and on ways to ascertain whether Narcissa had somehow slipped the Diary Horcrux into Hogwarts as her husband had done it in his past life or not.