"Careful," Hermione warned Fleur, holding out a hand to block her passage. In the near pitch-black secret passage, it was virtually impossible to see anything. Although the tip of her wand was illuminated, the darkness of the passage seemed to swallow it up, giving her no more than a foot or so of light in any direction. It was quite cramped in there too, and Fleur had to crouch down just to make her way down the staircase safely. "There's a trick-step two steps down. If you touch it, the floor will drop out and we'll go tumbling down to the dungeons."
Sure enough, as Fleur waved her wand over the staircase in front of her, she could see a heavily scuffed stair that seemed slightly out of alignment. Without the warning from Hermione, she'd likely would've stepped right on it.
"Merci," Fleur murmured as she followed Hermione's carefully placed footsteps.
She wished they didn't have to take this secret passage, but it was the best path they had to make their plan succeed. With any luck, Harry would already be on his way up the Grand Staircase with the fake Professor Moody in tow. At the very least, Fleur and Hermione had five minutes to reach the area they needed to.
They returned to moving more quickly in silence. Although they had worked together on this plan, Fleur wouldn't say that they had worked out all of their issues. At best, it seemed to be a tentative truce; Fleur knew perfectly well that Hermione would rather see Fleur return to France and forget all about Harry, but that wasn't going to happen. Thankfully, Fleur hadn't been cursed by Hermione again, though she still remained on guard around the younger woman.
"We're coming up on the bend," Hermione announced.
"We're close then," Fleur commented. She tensed her grip on her wand. There were a million different ways this could go wrong and very few that it could go right. She had to trust in her and Hermione's planning that they'd succeed.
It had been quite the eye-opening experience to work with Hermione. Just as Harry told her, she was the most meticulous witch Fleur had ever met. The sheer breadth of her knowledge of magic was a wonder to behold in and of itself, but she was also able to apply that knowledge in creative ways to handle complex problems. It was a skill that Fleur deeply respected and one that she wished she had herself. Of course, Fleur was no slouch, but she knew her real talent was in the practical application of magic. She knew what worked for her and what didn't, and that influenced where she focused her learning. Hermione didn't care what she was good at; she just learned anything she could get her hands on and kept that knowledge locked away. Even if she couldn't apply that knowledge herself, she was able to effectively instruct others on how to do so.
Perhaps that was why Harry had insisted that they worked together on this. Fleur knew before this that Hermione was a brilliant witch, but actually working with her on a project like this really put into perspective just how valuable Hermione was for Harry. And now it was Fleur's turn to show Hermione how valuable she could be.
Fleur had to stop abruptly to not run into Hermione's back. Hermione had stopped near the base of the narrow staircase and started running her hands along the left-hand-side wall. Fleur lifted her wand to shine some light on it, and that let Hermione find the gap between the cobblestones that she was looking for.
The sound of grinding cobblestones made Fleur cringed as Hermione slowly pulled out the loose stone from the wall. As it popped out, a thin ray of light shone through the newly-appeared hole in the wall beyond.
Hermione peered through it first and shook her head. "They're not there yet."
"May I take a look?" Fleur asked politely.
In reply, Hermione pulled away from the hold and Fleur took her place.
Though she'd never been in the room, she recognized the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom well enough from Harry and Hermione's descriptions. The hole looked out on the room from high up on the wall close to the ceiling. Her peripheral vision was partially obscured by the frame of a portrait, but the room itself was clear enough. Rows of desks filled the room and various magical oddities hung from the ceiling, including the skeleton of a young dragon. The professor's desk sat at the head of the room, and there was a short staircase that led up to his office behind it.
"It's a right, right, and the third door on the right, right?" Fleur asked, her nose crinkling at how ridiculous the English language could sound sometimes.
"Right," Hermione answered, cracking a small smile.
Fleur tried to offer a smile herself, willing to try anything to win Hermione over, but Hermione looked away as Fleur's awkward smile appeared.
Suddenly, Fleur's ears twitched as she heard the sound of a latch coming undone. She pressed her eye back to the hole and looked over towards the entrance. Unfortunately, the portrait frame obstructed her view, but she could still hear two sets of footsteps enter into the room along with a cane hitting the floor sharply.
"Now, what was it that you couldn't wait to tell me, Potter?" The fake Mad-Eye Moody asked in his gruff voice.
He certainly was a good actor, Fleur admitted. She'd only interacted with the professor a handful of times in the months since she'd arrived at Hogwarts, but he'd never once done anything that was suspicious.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," Hermione whispered beside Fleur.
Without looking, Fleur lowered her wand to let Hermione see the map. "Is it him?" Fleur asked quietly.
"Yeah," Hermione whispered. "Barty Crouch."
"Nox," Fleur murmured, extinguishing the light at the tip of her wand. She didn't want Moody to spot the light when he came into view. Apparently, the magic in the walls of Hogwarts was dense enough to obstruct the man's magical eyesight. He wouldn't be able to detect Fleur and Hermione where they were, and anything he saw through the tiny hole would hopefully look just like the rest of the castle walls did to him. However, his real eye could still distinguish light well enough to spot a light source within this secret passage.
"Mischief managed."
As Hermione was stuffing the map back into her bag, Moody and Harry walked into view. Harry was walking side by side with the man, keeping him to his left so that he could easily draw his wand with his right if he needed to. Despite the seriousness of what they were doing, Fleur couldn't help the fire that roared inside of her when she saw her mate.
"This third task," Harry said slowly to Moody. "I've been reading up a lot about the previous ones. They all seem to involve some type of course or maze. Bagman already told us that we have to navigate a maze that's being made on the Quidditch Pitch." Even weeks after being told about it, Harry still couldn't disguise the disgust in his voice that someone would dare to damage the Quidditch Pitch. It was cute. "But we have no clue as to what will be in it."
"Worried about your Veela girlfriend, Potter?" Moody let out a hacking chuckle.
"More worried about myself," Harry replied. "I want to win this thing."
A strange look of glee and approval crossed Moody's face. To any onlooker, it might resemble the proud face of a professor, but Fleur knew better now. Either he was Barty Crouch Sr and wanted to see Harry win for some reason—perhaps over an expensive bet, though the man didn't quite seem the type—or it was Barty Crouch Jr who likely wanted Harry dead for his role in defeating Voldemort years ago. Or it was someone completely different who just happened to have the same name. The most likely case seemed to be that it was Barty Crouch Jr—despite the fact that the man was supposedly dead. Regardless, the fake Moody was an inherently suspicious figure and his reaction to Harry's declaration was worrying.
"Good," Moody nodded approvingly. "There's only one person you can truly count on in life, and that's yourself. When you're in the maze, you can rely on anyone else."
"That's why I'm looking for any help you can offer going into it," Harry explained. "I know it'll be full of magical creatures and traps, but there's also the navigation part of it all to be concerned about."
"I wouldn't worry about that bit," Moody said knowingly. "I'd focus on making sure that you can deal with anything you come across instead."
So, the maze wouldn't let them get lost? Or maybe he'd secretly help guide Harry through the maze?
"I've made a list of things to read up on," Harry said as he pulled out a piece of parchment from his bag. "I was hoping you'd be able to look it over and guide me in the direction of anything you think I've overlooked."
"Give it here," Moody said, sticking out his hand. He practically snatched the parchment out of Harry's hand as he passed it over and brought it right up to his face to read it. "Hmm, not bad. Did you write this up yourself?"
Of course he didn't! Fleur and Hermione had helped out tremendously by doing most of the legwork on tracking down the necessary books and reference material that could be useful. Harry had helped out too, though the best help he offered was in how he could relieve stress from both women.
"With Hermione's help," Harry answered.
Fleur glared at him through the peephole. It was her and Hermione's idea to make it seem like Harry was going to double cross Fleur in the final task in order to make him appear more susceptible to Moody's influence, but it still annoyed her to have her name omitted.
"Miss Granger is a sharp one," Moody hummed as he finished reading the parchment. "The list looks good, but there are a few books I think you should take a closer look at."
"Would you like to go to the library to show me, professor?" Harry asked innocently enough.
"May as well," Moody grunted after a minute. "Needed to visit Irma there anyway to see if she's gotten the books together for the seventh year class."
This was it! Fleur raised the tip of her wand to the small open hole and readied herself. They just needed to wait for the perfect moment when Moody had his back turned and then—
"Down!" Fleur shouted as she grabbed Hermione's collar and yanked the girl back.
The wall exploded right where Fleur had been peering out of. Sharp fragments of cobblestones rained down on them, cutting straight through their robes and into their skin. Fleur hissed in pain and immediately brought up her shield to block the follow-up strike. The air was too dusty to easily make out what spell had been thrown her way, but it struck her shield with a loud, gong-like sound before it dissipated. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion, disorienting her even further.
Hermione coughed and choked on the thick air, spitting out the pulverized remnants of the stone wall that had landed in her mouth. "How did he see us?" She gasped for air.
Fleur wasn't sure. According to everything they read, their magical signatures should have blended into the wall perfectly. Moody hadn't even been looking her way so there was no way he spotted them with his real eye. "I don't know," Fleur coughed. "Ventus!"
A gust of spiraling wind shot out of the tip of her wand, blowing away the debris that hung in the air. She pushed it further up the passageway and was finally able to see that most of the wall around the peephole had been reduced to rubble. In the classroom beyond, she saw flashes of light as Harry and Moody dueled.
Fleur had never seen Harry duel before. Truthfully, she'd barely paid any attention to him in the first two tasks at all. From what she'd heard, he was nothing special. Now it was clear that he had been holding back.
Moody was lashing out with dark curses with a child-like expression of glee on his face. He was stringing them together almost faster than Fleur could parse, and he did it all while dodging any spells Harry managed to throw back at him. He was like a hurricane of death, and the room was already showing signs of strain as deep gouges pockmarked the walls and desks lay disintegrated on the floor.
Despite what Moody was throwing forward, Harry didn't look like he was being overwhelmed. He was clearly on the defensive, but his wand and spell work were so precise that he was able to block every blockable curse that he wanted to with minimum physical exertion on his part. He still had to step out of the way of a few esoteric spells that didn't have a shielding spell or counter-curse that Fleur knew, and he obviously dodged most spells that he could in order to conserve energy. He moved gracefully like a ballet dancer, always striking the correct pose for a perfect riposte or a deft dodge. His wand moved like a flurry in front of him, and Fleur was tremendously impressed at the level of speed he was able to maintain.
But this was no time to gawk.
"Cover us," Fleur ordered Hermione as she suddenly leapt forward through the destroyed wall. A silently-cast slowing charm allowed her to gently land on her feet without issue and immediately leap forward into combat.
Unfortunately, that damned magical eye on Moody told him that she was coming. If she hadn't already been on the defensive, the spell he fired off underneath his elbow without even looking back at her would have caught her unaware and potentially ended her life. It was a dark black curse that rippled through the air as it flew at her at a terrifying speed.
Fleur flung herself to the side to dodge it, cringing at the bubbling sound coming from behind her and the acrid smoke that she inhaled. She didn't have the time to look back at it to see the full effects, but she was sure that it had to be some time of acid or venom-based curse. Something dark, and quite possibly reserved in a private family grimoire. It had happened during Grindelwald's war that many of his followers shared their families' darkest and most dangerous curses with one another to gain an edge against their enemies. These spells rarely had counter-curses or, if they did, were kept hidden away in the grimoire. It had caused so much widespread devastation as the mediwitches and mediwizards were unable to fix most of these dark curses. Those that they did treat were generally only dealt with through stasis charms or amputations. It seemed as though Voldemort's followers had followed the same tactics as Fleur had seen far too many unknown curses from Moody for them all to have come from his family alone.
Picking herself up off of the floor, Fleur weaved a complicated pattern with her wand and jabbed it towards one of the nearby desks to Moody's right side. It looked like her jet of lime-green light had just barely missed him, and that apparent mistake made Moody bold as he ignored where the spell had struck. It wasn't until it was too late to stop the effect that Moody realized that Fleur had intentionally hit the desk.
A proud roar rang out in the classroom as the desk transformed into a sleek, golden lion. Fleur twisted her wand again, directing the creature to ready its sharp claws for an attack. Fleur made the creature duck low underneath Moody's instinctive curse before she drove it to pounce forward towards the enemy, jaw wide open.
The lion lasted little more than a second as it was shredded into ribbons in mid-air. Upon its destruction, the beast shifted back into the splintered desk and crashed into Moody's side. He barely seemed buffeted by the wood, but that wasn't the goal anyway. The goal had been to buy Harry a second of reprieve so that he could take the offensive, and that was exactly what happened.
Moody was forced onto the backfoot as Harry started firing spell after spell at the man. None of Harry's spells were dark, and they were much less lethal, but each had the opportunity to end the fight. Stunning spells, disarming charms, and subtle blasting curses struck Moody's shield one after the other. He was forced to walk backwards under the brunt of the assault, struggling to maintain his shield against Harry's raw magical strength.
Fleur could see what the man was doing before he succeeded in it. He was trying to place himself right in between Harry and Fleur in the hopes that one of them would curse the other. Well, Fleur wasn't going to let that happen. She started firing off curses at Moody's back as she clambered over desks and chairs in order to keep herself and Harry at a ninety degree angle relative to Moody's position. It gave them the best chance to avoid hitting each other while still making it difficult for Moody to shield spells from both of them simultaneously.
Moody's face contorted in rage as he was slowly pushed backwards to the head of the classroom. He could try for the staircase up to his office, but he'd be terribly vulnerable from an attack against the environment around him just like how he'd attacked Fleur. There was also his desk to consider, but with her new angle, Fleur could see that it was partially dissolved in a puddle of violet acid. It seemed that Moody was running out of space to move and was only delaying the inevitable as he continuously shielded and dodged Harry and Fleur's spells.
A tripping jinx suddenly flew down from the gaping hole in the wall up above. Hermione's spell struck Moody's leg, making the man trip over himself and tumble hard to the floor. Harry and Fleur's recent spells soared overhead but the thrill of impending victory still filled Fleur.
At least, it did until she saw Moody's eyes focus on Hermione.
Since he tripped, he had no need to block the next couple of spells, which were set to pass harmlessly overhead. Fleur cursed, realizing his target, and fired off a disarming charm at his prone form, but she knew it wasn't going to reach him in time.
"Avada Kedavra!" Moody spat out as he fired off that jet of vibrant green light right at Hermione.
Harry screamed at Hermione to move, but she seemed frozen in place over the fear of having to confront her own mortality as the curse grew closer and closer.
Fleur acted only as she knew how. With a wide twirl of her wand, she focused her magic directly on the broken cobblestone wall beside Hermione's open form. Fleur felt beads of sweat form on her forehead as her spell pulled harshly on her magic, demanding the energy necessary to make this work.
Like a well-cast repair charm, the wall beside Hermione suddenly elongated in front of her. The cobblestones stretched out, letting off a terrible screeching sound as they protested the unnatural movement. Fleur worried that they wouldn't hold, but they did.
Moody's killing curse struck the elongated wall right in front of where Hermione's face was. The cobblestone exploded into a million fragments, but the curse dispersed upon impact. Hermione cried out as her body was shredded by the rough stone, but the scream alone told Fleur that she was alive for the moment at least.
In the chaos, Moody managed to block Fleur's earlier disarming charm. He tried to push himself up to his feet only to be physically tacked by Harry.
Harry was in a rage unlike any Fleur had ever seen before. She could see his wand abandoned on the floor by her feet. She picked it up and hurried over to where she could hear the sounds of flesh smacking against flesh.
Moody was flat on his back at the base of the staircase up to his office, and Harry was on top of him punching him over and over again. His fists came down hard onto the man's already broken face, knocking teeth loose and opening up cuts all over his skin. Fleur could see that not all of the blood on Moody's face was the man's though; Harry's knuckles were bleeding profusely as well as he beat the man tirelessly.
Although Harry had a look of righteous fury on his face and was physically destroying Moody's face, Moody just laughed through it all. He was choking on his own blood as it filled his mouth from his bloody gums, but that didn't stop the laughter.
As much as Fleur wished she could let Harry give this man what he truly deserved, murdering him wouldn't get them anywhere. If anything, they'd just end up in more trouble.
"Harry, please," Fleur murmured to him.
Harry didn't act as though he had heard her; he just kept pummeling Moody's face.
"Stupefy," Fleur said quietly, knocking Moody unconscious.
Harry rounded on her then, but Fleur didn't fear Harry. He was filled with wrath, but that came from his fear of losing Hermione. Fleur passed over his abandoned wand back to him. He gave her quite the vicious glare as he got to his feet, but he quickly left and rushed over to the floor beneath the broken wall. As Fleur collected Moody's wand, she heard Harry casting several summoning and transfiguration charms to create a makeshift staircase up to Hermione.
The look of anger on Harry's face that had been directed her way had hurt to see, but she knew that she wasn't the intended recipient of it. Moody was. Or, more accurately, Barty crouch was.
Fleur crouched down beside the fake Moody, only now feeling the myriad of cuts that littered her body from the initial attack from the man. She cast a numbing charm on her left arm where she had a sizable gash and moved on to start riffling through the man's pockets, looking for anything that could give her a clue as to who he actually was. Unfortunately, she found little more than a handful of notes on upcoming plans for classes and his hip flask.
It was only because there were no other obvious leads that Fleur popped open the flask, mildly curious as to what the man had in it. It smelled foul, and most definitely not alcoholic. Fleur's nose crinkled at the scent but she still smelled it again to try and decipher it. It smelled more like a potion than a proper drink. She could make out the scent of fluxweed and knotgrass in it, but the rest was beyond what her nose could detect on its own.
"Hermione's safe," Harry said quietly from behind her.
Fleur turned around to look at him. Hermione was lying unconscious on a desk behind Harry. His hair was messy like he'd been running his hand through it and he had a scorch mark on his exposed belly where some type of fire spell had eaten through his shift. More than that though, she could see the remains of a couple of tear tracks down his face.
Abandoning Moody for the moment since he was safely stunned, Fleur got to her feet and wrapped Harry up in a big hug.
"I'm sorry," he murmured into her shoulder as he latched onto her tightly. "I was just so damn scared."
It broke Fleur's heart to see Harry like this. "It's alright, mon chéri. I understand."
She really did. She remembered how terrified she had been when she learned that the judges of the triwizard tournament had taken her sister as a hostage for the second task. When she'd resurfaced she'd immediately started raging at her parents in French over the fact that they allowed her to go. They'd let her shout and yell and curse their names until she got it all out of her system. They understood and didn't judge her for what she'd said out of concern for her sister's safety, and Fleur wouldn't judge Harry for what he'd said when he'd been scared for Hermione's life.
The door to the classroom burst open as Albus Dumbledore strode in with Professors McGonagall and Snape on his flank.
"My word!" McGonagall gasped as she took in the state of the classroom. "What happened here?"
"Professor Moody attacked us," Fleur explained as Harry pulled away from her.
Harry immediately went back to Hermione's side protectively as Professor Snape approached her. His eyes glanced over the dozens of cuts on Hermione's body and then over to Harry and Fleur. He reached inside of his robes and pulled out a small glass vial filled with a dark red potion. "Blood-Replenishing Potion, single dose," Snape muttered more to himself than anyone else as he uncorked it. Harry watched Snape very carefully as the man poured the potion down Hermione's throat.
"Harry," Dumbledore said compassionately as he swept his way forward, casually waving his wand and causing the room to right itself. It was impressive work, even for one as esteemed as the Hogwarts Headmaster. "Are you alright?"
Harry nodded silently in reply, still focused on Hermione's pale form.
"We should take the girl to the Hospital Wing," Snape told the Headmaster. "Poppy can fix her up there."
"I'll take her," McGonagall said as she came forward. However, she gasped when she finally walked to the front of the room and saw Moody's broken face. "Alastor!"
"It's not him," Fleur reminded her.
"Then who is it?" McGonagall asked a little hotly.
Suddenly, Moody's face began to bubble and shift. Snape and Dumbledore both abandoned Hermione's side for a moment to come over and watch, but Harry remained. Figuring he had her well in hand, Fleur watched with the professors as Moody's face slimmed down and a thick head of hair appeared on his head. Although his face was still covered in blood, starting to swell, and looked thoroughly pulverized, Dumbledore recognized the man immediately.
"Barty Crouch Junior," Dumbledore breathed out. "Alive and well it seems."
"We must alert the Aurors," McGonagall insisted.
"Not with Fudge at the Ministry," Snape argued back.
The three of them dissolved into planning how best to approach the situation and didn't notice Fleur as she left them and returned to Harry's side. Just as she neared, he waved his wand and levitated Hermione's unconscious form into the air.
"To the Hospital Wing?" Fleur asked.
"Yeah," Harry nodded, looking terribly grave.
Fleur reached out and took Harry's other hand into hers, interlacing her fingers with his even as he tried to pull away. "She'll be okay, Harry," Fleur assured him. "She's tougher than she looks."
Harry let out a deep breath. "I know."
"Then let's go," Fleur said, tugging at his hand. "We'll stay with her until she wakes up. I'm sure she'll be happy to see you looking after her."
"She'll be happy to see you too," Harry replied.
Fleur thought about it for a moment. Would Hermione be happy to see her? She had saved her after all. Or would that only strain their relationship even further if Hermione felt indebted to her for some reason? Fleur didn't know, but she'd deal with that situation when it came up. Until then, she was going to be here to comfort Harry. He had been through too much in his life. Even if it made her life more difficult in some ways, Fleur would try her hardest to make sure he didn't have to suffer through the loss of another loved one again.
A/N: Hey, thanks for reading! If you are interested in reading more or supporting me, check out at p atreon .com(slash) ashox