ccv. the man in the woods

When Hermione returned to the dormitories that evening and told the story of her afternoon, Elara couldn't help but laugh.

"You're barmy," she told the other witch as Hermione fussed with the sleeves of her nightgown. They'd all readied themselves for bed, Elara already relaxing against her headboard. "I can't believe you did that."

"I can't believe it either, really," Hermione admitted. Harriet started to giggle—and Hermione quickly lobbed a pillow at her, Harriet smothering her laughter in it. "I can't believe the woman's so brazen as to go around as a bug and spy! I nearly couldn't hold it together. I was an instant away from telling Dobby to squeeze her back into the jar so we could leave it in the lake."

"Well, you have already threatened her with Azkaban. I'm sure the lake would be preferable," Elara commented, smiling despite the panicked look on Hermione's face. The witch was brilliant. "Harriet, get off my legs. You weigh a ton."

Harriet sat up and shuffled over, hugging the pillow to her middle. "But you won't get in trouble, will you? If Skeeter gets jammed up and rats on you for knowing?"

"In the current state of things, I really couldn't say," Hermione admitted, hands once more picking at her sleeves until Elara lowered her book and reached out to stop her. "Technically, no. I'm a minor still, and you can't charge minors for abetting crimes unless they're strictly involved—but when has that stopped the Ministry? Especially Gaunt and his goons."

Their conversation pivoted from there lest Hermione worry herself into an early grave—or a panic attack, whichever came first. They eventually returned to their own beds, with Harriet's final yawning remark being for Hermione to warn them if she decided to blackmail anyone else before breakfast. For Elara's part, she mused it probably made her a terrible person to be filled with warmth at the thought of Hermione threatening Rita Skeeter on her behalf. It concerned her more that Hermione had decided to confront a potentially enraged witch with no other help aside from a scatterbrained house-elf. Elara wouldn't have minded an excuse to crush a beetle under her heel.

She settled farther into her blankets as the lights dimmed and the chattering of her dormmates leveled off. Perhaps it was a good thing Hermione went without us.

The next day, the fourth year Slytherins had Herbology first period with the Ravenclaws, which was never Elara's favorite class. It was too early, and they had to take care of their own plot of magical borage—which meant Elara had a planter of dead twigs poking out of her soil. Professor Sprout winced every time she passed their cluster.

Hermione was too enamored with Terry to scold her over it. They tended the garden together on the other side of the row, and their borage had grown to chest height. They could sit on their stools and hide behind it, and Elara knew they stole more than one subtle kiss when Sprout was busy elsewhere.

The affection they oozed was nearly nauseating.

"Stop touching the plants," Harriet hissed as she stepped closer from her own plot and began attacking Elara's with a trowel. She transplanted one of her healthy borage bushes, and it might have been Elara's imagination, but she thought the little blue, five-pointed flowers were already wilting at her proximity.

"I didn't touch anything," Elara complained with a sigh. She held up her thick, mud-stained gloves for confirmation.

"Stop glaring at it! You're hurting its feelings!"

"Plants don't have feelings."

Her plant drooped more.

By the end of the period, Elara had one scraggly borage specimen, and Professor Sprout gave her a passing mark, ignoring the gaping hole in Harriet's planter. The bell rang, and they washed their hands and gathered their things, Elara eager to leave all things nature behind. They had a free period now—but Hermione, hand-in-hand with Terry, skipped off to debate club, and Harriet grabbed Elara's arm to drag her to Hagrid's for tea. That would have been a pleasant way to spend the early afternoon had Hagrid not roped them into collecting fledgling Bowtruckles for the kitchen's house-elves.

"They're great for keepin' the orchards healthy," he told them, opening the wooden box to reveal what few Bowtruckles he'd picked up. They resembled the tiny little nubs of twigs. "A whole heap are needed 'fore the spring."

So, Elara found herself following Harriet through the wood at the Forbidden Forest's edge, carrying a light wooden box against her middle as Harriet tried to convince Bowtruckles to leave their old trees. It involved a great deal of scaling branches and scaring Elara half to death when she toppled out of them.

"You're ruining your socks," Elara pointed out as Harriet jumped from an elm—into a crowberry bush.

"Ow—fuck!" Harriet sniped at the thorns snagging her skin. "Ouch—! What about my socks?"

"You're ruining them, and you haven't got any more in your trunk."

The shorter witch studied the mud streaked up her legs, tears in the fabric. "Bugger. McGonagall's gonna have a cow. Here, take these—."

She slipped a pair of tiny Bowtruckles into the box with leaves and bark shavings. She then proceeded to beat the dirt from her cloak and legs, though her efforts did little aside from smear the mud onto her hands. Harriet released an aggravated sigh as her shoulders drooped.

Elara took pity on her and mended her socks, cleaning away the mess with spells she'd learned from Andromeda's home-caretaking books. She even polished her shoes, for all the good it would do, the dirt paths reduced to slush and muck as the snows began their first melt.

"Thanks," Harriet said, though the rambunctious spark didn't return to her eyes.

"Why have you been taking so much care with your appearance?" Elara asked as she stowed her wand away again, jostling the box. "You look perfectly fine in whatever you feel most comfortable in—and you keep dodging the question with Hermione, but I won't be put off. Out with it."

Harriet sighed—a heavy, jagged thing, the flash in her green eyes conveying her displeasure in being called out. Elara didn't miss the slight flush rising in her cheeks. "I'm ugly."

Elara blinked, scoffed. Was she being serious? "Don't be daft."

"I'm not. I don't understand all that girl stuff, so my hair's always a mess and my skin's dry and I bite my nails. My clothes never fit right because—because that's how Aunt Petunia liked it, innit?" Harriet grimaced and kicked at a dowdy shrub before starting toward another tree. "Krum asked me to the Yule Ball and I knew absolutely no one would believe it. They needed only take one look at me to know it was ridiculous."

"Why? Because Krum is such a prize?" Elara retorted. "Because he plays Quidditch?" She made a noise of disgust. "Spare me. He doesn't seem much more than a thick-headed dullard. He rarely has more than a word to say, and I worry too many Bludgers to the head had scrambled what brains he had."

Harriet rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth hitched, cheek dimpling. "But you don't even like boys, so you wouldn't like Krum."

Elara almost said, "I'm not sure you do either," but she didn't. No, she thought instead about the way Harriet spoke to Cedric Diggory, of all people. They'd caught up to him over the weekend, and Harriet had given him a piece of her mind for losing to Longbottom in the second task, but there had been something…soft in her berating. A small exuberance in the way she'd fiddled with her fringe and let her eyes flick over him. Elara thought Harriet liked him, even if she wasn't really aware of it herself, and given the fondness in Diggory's answering smile, it seemed he reciprocated.

She took the wrong Champion to that stupid ball.

"Idiots, the pair of you," she mumbled.

"What?"

"I said you're absurd. I don't have to like boys to know Krum is a thick-headed rotter."

"He's all right. Just not…not for me."

Exhaling, Elara changed the topic. "You've a Bowtruckle in your hair."

Harriet stopped inspecting the bark of the spruce in front of her and sent a withering look toward her scalp. "It's because they think I'm a ruddy tree. Here, get it off of me…."

Elara had no interest in touching the poor thing, so she grabbed Harriet's hand and guided it to the creature, her small fingers fumbling about until she could pluck it from her plait. Into the box it went.

They inspected two more trees before deciding the branch of Bowtruckles they'd gotten so far would be enough. They turned around and started back down the path.

"Are you tutoring the little monsters this afternoon?" Elara asked into the thick silence. Perhaps it was what remained of the snow that made it so still, so quiet. The air held an odd humid quality—the temperature fluctuating as spring neared. "They must be rabid by now, what with the end of term coming."

"I said I might be in the library today. Might is not even a maybe," Harriet groused.

"You're still going to go, aren't you?"

"Just to check! Just to make sure they're doin' what they're supposed to be doin'."

Elara took that to mean Harriet had gotten much too invested in the marks of the younger students and would take it personally if they did poorly. Silly. Elara warned her she'd end up like Hermione, breathing down their necks every time exams got mentioned.

"Next year is going to be bloody awful," Harriet groaned. "O. ! Hermione'll be beating us about the heads with color-coded binders before summer ends, watch."

"We should be so lucky." At Harriet's scandalized look, Elara shrugged. "She finds out the entire year's curriculum from the professors and writes it down beforehand. It saves a great deal of time and is incredibly useful."

"Even from Snape?"

"I'm not sure how she manages that." Elara tapped her chin, then smirked. "She must bribe him by promising to keep you out of trouble."

"I resent that. I am never in trouble."

The sarcastic remark had barely left her mouth when a scream rent the air.

Elara and Harriet stopped their banter and stared at one another, frozen, another cry burbling and echoing from the deeper woods. A fox, Elara told herself, searching for an explanation. Some stupid fools playing around—. But the sound was too bloodcurdling to be fake, too high to be a fox. It sounded like—.

"That sounds like a first year," Harriet whispered, her wand suddenly in her hand. "Go get help!"

"Don't—!" But Harriet had already jumped forward into the underbrush, and had it not been coerced out of her at a young age, Elara would have sworn until blue in the face. Instead, she lowered the Bowtruckle box and all but fell into her dog form in her haste to follow Harriet, because she was not about to let her god-sister go tearing off into the woods alone—.

The screaming continued.

They ran nearly into the Forbidden Forest proper, only stopping shy of the short wire fence acting as a barrier between it and the lesser wood. They came to a clearing more a divot caused by a fallen tree than anything, a space stretching two or three meters across. They burst through the winter bushes, and Elara resumed her human form, fumbling for her wand.

A ghastly sight hung from one of the trees.

There was a girl fallen in the dirt, dressed in a woolen cap and blue coat. Elara knew her to be younger than a first year because she knew her. "Gabrielle!" she shouted, breathless with horror, refusing to look up at the looming specter. The call of her name startled the little French girl, and though she didn't know Elara well, the voice of someone remotely familiar had her scrambling to her feet and dashing into Elara's arms.

"I—I got lost! J'ai peur, j'ai peur," she sobbed into Elara's robes. "Je veux ma soeur!"

"Don't look," Elara said, hand on the girl's head. She didn't know if she was talking to Gabrielle or to herself. "Don't look.Ne—ne regarde pas."

Harriet had her face upturned, her green eyes narrowed as the pale light from the sky poured over her. She studied the wizard suspended in the fir tree, the set of her jaw grim but solid, more solid than Elara felt at the moment. The wizard hadn't been hung in the traditional sense; no, he'd been impaled on several broken branches as if he'd been blasted off his feet, and those branches sagged under his dead weight. Elara couldn't bring herself to see more, too close to losing her breakfast. She stared at the red pool gathering in the tree's roots. It dripped from the ends of his robes.

"That's Mr. Crouch," Harriet whispered. A flash of recognition touched Elara's mind, the brief glimpse of the man's white, terrified face registering. His arms were spread in a grotesque mimicry of Christ on the cross, and Elara dug her fingers into Gabrielle's pale hair. "This wasn't an accident. Not with how he's positioned like that. This wasn't—." Harriet wafted a negligible hand at Gabrielle, whose face remained buried in Elara's torso. "I think—he was levitated, then dropped. Someone did this on purpose."

A rasp escaped Crouch—not a real breath, but a death rattle, the final haunting exhale of a body giving up the ghost. Elara saw Harriet stiffen, her body utterly still, knuckles bone-white from her grasp on her wand. A snap echoed in the woods.

"They're still here," Harriet hissed. "We need to run!"

"Harriet—!"

"Run!"

Elara didn't know where she found the strength to pick up a crying eight-year-old, but she managed to pull Gabrielle up, skinny arms going around her shoulders as Elara looped her own arms under the girl's thighs to hold her in place. Her feet felt like stone, too shocked to move, but Elara forced them into motion, lurching into a stilted run. She heard Harriet behind her, the whistle of her wand cutting through the air, then—

"Nebulus!"

A blast of fog filled the clearing at their backs, hiding their passage. Elara concentrated on holding Gabrielle, on running, her wand useless in her fist. She thought she heard rustling in the trees, but she couldn't stop, couldn't listen past the heaviness of her breathing and the crash of shrubs underfoot.

"Torsit," Harriet snarled. "Incarcerous Herbivicus!"

The ground burst to life behind them, a tangle of roots writhing out of the earth—and the second spell whipped the tree branches down, forming a wall behind them. Gabrielle cried in her ear.

They reached the end of the wood and kept running, not coming to a halt until they'd clamored up the steps to Hagrid's hut, and Elara had to set Gabrielle on the top step before she dropped her. Harriet bruised her knuckles beating on the door, and when Hagrid appeared, he knew something was wrong.

"What is it? Yer okay?"

"Find the Headmaster," Harriet gasped. "There's—someone's been killed. Hurry!"

While the half-giant went for the castle, Harriet and Elara remained on the steps, panting for breath. Elara's heart beat as if attempting to escape her chest, and her stomach revolted at the memory of blood streaked across dead leaves.

"Did you see who it was?" she asked Harriet, and Harriet shook her head.

"No—but there was someone there. Someone still there."

Gabrielle kept crying.

Elara released a shaky sigh, then swallowed, crouching to the girl's level. She didn't know how well Gabrielle understood English, and her own grasp on French was pitiful at best. "Êt…Êtes-vous bien?" she asked. "Are you all right? What happened out there?"

Gabrielle sniffled. "I—I waz with ma soeur," she stuttered, "But I left. I wanted to see ze…des licornes?" She made a motion with her hand to mimic a horn in the middle of her forehead. "But Fleur said non, and I went alone. I did not know where I waz, and ma soeur—."

"We'll find her," Harriet said next to them, still holding her wand. She hadn't stopped scanning the edge of the forest. "We'll get you back to her."

As it turned out, they needn't go searching for Fleur at all. The Beauxbatons Champion came tearing down the drive from the direction of the lake, shouting her little sister's name. She was frantic when she spotted Gabrielle, and they ran to each other, Gabrielle nearly tripping off the steps in her haste.

They spoke in swift, garbled French, the thickness of their accents and emotions rendering it intelligible in Elara's ears. She caught snatches, words like "unicorns" and "man," and if Fleur's wrenching cries and desperate need to embrace Gabrielle were anything to go by, the little witch had told her about what she'd seen.

Elara had never seen Fleur look worse—her face and eyes red with tears, snot on her face from the cold, her silk robes disheveled from running. Even so, Elara couldn't look away, inexplicably warmed by the sight. She and Harriet approached the pair, and when Fleur straightened, Elara handed her a handkerchief, not meeting her eyes.

Fleur mopped up her face and blew her nose, hiccuping. "Oh, thank you," she said, reaching out to clasp Harriet's wrist. "Thank you. You saved her—." Harriet scrunched her nose as Fleur feathered kisses against her cheeks. "'ow could I ever repay you?"

"S'alright," Harriet replied, her gaze flicking again toward the trees. "Just glad she's okay. The Headmaster should be coming soon."

"And you—."

Elara startled when Fleur clasped her arm and gave it a slight tug. She had to step closer or lose her balance, breathing in the smell of parfum, notes of cheery, freesia, and oak moss. The brush of lips against her cheek stole her breath, and blood rushed to her face.

Fleur withdrew, pausing to look into Elara's wide eyes, to see her flushed skin and mussed hair. Elara remembered Skeeter's article all too clearly, and how she'd gone to great lengths to avoid Fleur ever since. She couldn't stand the embarrassment, the rejection. Even now, she expected laughter, a cold, stinging dismissal—.

Elara tried to lean away, but Fleur stopped her. She touched her face, fingers tracing where her lips had first brushed until she cupped her cheek in her cold palm. Fleur raised her head to Elara's, and brought her mouth to hers.

Elara's skin tingled, her eyelids fluttering. It was firm, more than a grazing brush, slight pressure from Fleur's hand tilting her head enough for their noses to slide against each other. Her lips tasted of salt, the remnant of tears and sticky gloss. Fleur retreated, then kissed her again, and Elara reciprocated.

They pulled away and stared at one another, Fleur's eyes glittering. Elara thought she might never breathe again.

"The Headmaster's coming," Harriet said. Indeed, Dumbledore was coming down the sloping steps from the higher bailey, flanked by several professors and Gaunt's Aurors. Fat lot of good those Aurors did for Barty Crouch. Harriet went to meet them, and Elara tried to regain her bearings.

Fleur's hand fell to hers, and cold, red-chapped fingers squeezed Elara's. She smiled, the expression tempered by the somber mood, and Elara's face reached a new shade of red. Fleur pulled away, returning her attention to Gabrielle again and the nearing professors.

"Thank you," Elara whispered, at a loss for words. She'd witnessed a murder in the last half hour, and yet this had stunned her more than the sight of a dead Ministry official. Fleur Delacour just kissed me. ME.

Fleur raised a brow, the slightest tilt to her mouth as if Elara had said something silly. Perhaps she had. "Jusqu'à la prochaine fois, beauté."


A/N: "Jusqu'à la prochaine fois, beauté.": Until next time, beautiful.

Fleur smooches Elara:

Harriet: "IT'S HAPPENING!"

Harriet: "HERMIONE, GET THE CAMERA."

Hermione: "Harriet, there was a murder!"

Harriet: "THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT!"