After losing all of my work on this chapter not once, not twice, but three separate times in such a way as to make me sympathetic to those poor Baudelaire children, I bring you the next installment of A Pair Of Blue Eyes. Well to be fair, this isn't actually the "real" chapter. The real chapter is still being rewritten, and this is just the first 1k I had written for it. Just uploading this to let you all know that this story is not abandoned.
As soon as Harry's eyes cracked open, he was immediately forced to close them again to protect from the blinding whiteness that was the hospital wing with the afternoon sun glaring through the windows. He brought a hand up to cover his eyes as he cracked them open and his other hand grabbed his glasses from the bedside table where they had consistently been for the previous three years. He let out a groan as he arched his back to stretch the stiffness from his joints and kicked his legs over the edge of the bed to sit up. A sharp exhale escaped his lungs one more as hit feet came into contact with the cool tiles of the hospital wing floor.
As soon as he stood fully erect, Madame Pomfrey appeared in his sight and forced him back into the bed with a handful of potions. "I should have known that it would be sooner rather than later, that I'd see you this year - what with this idiotic tournament going on," she spat as she forced a neon red potion down Harry's throat. "Canceled for a reason! And yet they saw fit to bring it back! Some of the most influential minds in the current magical world, and making decisions like this; makes me wonder what kind of future we have...".
It seemed like an hour later when Madame Pomfrey finished force-feeding Harry, and with a jokingly serious warning to give it an hour or so before he leaves and to not come back she waved her wand at the entrance to the wing and bustled back to her office. As if on cue, the door was thrown open and Ron and Hermione all but sprinted to the other end of the hall and to his beside.
"Later," Harry said tiredly, holding his hand up in a gesture of silence. He definitely didn't want to deal with Hermione tripping over her own words in an attempt to say as much as possible in as short a time as she could, and he most definitely didn't want to have to hear the redhead's stammered and most likely half-hearted apology. He wanted some time to himself and he told them as much. "I just need some time to get my head on straight. I'll be out of here in an hour; we can talk then."
At a loss of words at Harry's obvious rebuking, the duo gave him sad looks and turned with their heads down, and made their way back to the entrance. He only felt a slight tinge of unhappiness as he watched their backs but the unhappiness was soon squashed by confusion as Ron suddenly tensed up when Hermione shouldered the over-sized door open. His confusion cleared up soon too, as the most beautiful girl Harry had ever seen brushed past them and stopped, looking around for half a second until she spotted the raven-haired boy.
"Fleur!" He said with a small smile, as she approached him. "What are you doing here?"
"Arry! I did not know 'ow long you would be 'ere for, so I zought I would keep you company, if zat is okay?" Gone was her confident demeanor. In fact, if Harry had to venture a guess, he would have said she was a mix of worried and embarrassed.
"Er - yeah, I was just about to get dressed and leave, actually..."
"NOT YET, YOU AREN'T! ONE HOUR, MR. POTTER!" came floating from the back of the room, in the direction of Madame Pomfrey's office.
Fleur grinned at Harry, and he had to look away from her mesmerizing blue eyes and towards his feet as he could feel a blush coming on. "Am I really such bad company, 'Arry? that you would want to be rid of me already?"
"No! No that's not it!" He insisted. He smiled slowly. "Its just - I already spend plenty of time in here. Can't say that I'm enamored with spending more than I already have to."
Fleur's eyes swept over him, taking in his ever growing collection of visible scars. "Tell me about zis one," she demanded, pointing out a decent sized depressed circular scar midway up his forearm.
Harry couldn't help but to let out an honest laugh at her choice, which in turn made her laugh, albeit with an air of confusion. "Of all of them scars, you pick the one that the basilisk gave me."
"Zat is not funny! Why would you laugh! You could have died!" She vented angrily, which succeeded in quelling the younger boy.
"Its just - the tent before the task - the basilisk...coincidence" He halfheartedly tried to explain his amusement.
She gave him an imperious look look a few second, which again had Harry uncomfortable and looking anywhere but at the stunning blonde. "You are right. So now would be a good time to tell me this story?"
So slowly and reluctantly, Harry began the story of his second year. He started with the writing on the wall outside of Myrtle's bathroom and the dueling club, and explained how everybody had thought him responsible for the attacks. Throughout the story, he understated each event in an attempt to make the situations seem less dire than they felt at the time. By the time that he had got to Hermione's being petrified, his pulse quickened and anger bled into his words, but as he finished the story with the destruction of the diary he visible relaxed and and trailed into a near whisper. The Chamber of Secrets incident may have happened two years ago, but retelling the story had made it seem as fresh as yesterday.
Fleur merely listened to his story, offering no words. She, thankfully, refrained from showing the hero worship he was so used to receiving, but even better was that she neither pitied him or shied away from him upon hearing that he could speak to snakes. That particular ability has haunted his steps ever since; even in his fourth year there were those who hadn't looked past that aspect.
"Thank you, for telling me zis. I understand it cannot 'ave been easy to make yourself relive that nightmare," she said softly, placing a hand on his arm, which made his skin tingle and had his cheeks burning. "I 'ave only one question...what 'appened to this despicable Lock'art?"
Harry grunted disdainfully. "I have no idea, and I don't particularly care. I'd rather have Quirrel over him, parasite and all."
Fleur raised an eyebrow and smirked at Harry. "Who is zis Quirrel and parasite?"