A/N: New Blood is OFF next week for the holidays (and due to erratic untrustworthy internet access on my part). Next chapter will be up on Tuesday, January 2nd! :)

Now that the First Task of the tournament was successfully out of the way and she'd claimed second place, Fleur declared, Madame Maxime was hovering over Fleur much less than before, freeing her from watchful eyes to meet up with Hermione more in secret.

"Ah, this would be easier if she had not seen our affection at Beauxbâtons," Fleur said regretfully, shaking her head. "Quelle dommage."

"At least she's not watching you as closely anymore," Hermione said, biting her lip. "You really think she'd know if she saw us together? Even if we were in a group with others?"

"With others?" Fleur's eyes sparkled. "Hermione, you want others to watch on as I kiss you passionately? Such scandalousness in you!"

Hermione's face flamed. "That's not what I meant!"

Fleur laughed.

Slipping away with Fleur to go to the Chamber of Secrets was much less awkward than it was with anyone else – two girls going to the female restroom was nothing anyone would bat an eye at if they were seen.

"There used to be a ghost that haunted the toilet here," Hermione said, reflecting. "She left for… whatever's beyond, I guess. She was always crying…"

Fleur looked solemn. "I am glad she is at peace."

On the way to the Chamber, Fleur talked about her tournament progress.

"I have solved the egg," she said with satisfaction. She looked at Hermione. "Have you?"

"Has Harry?" Hermione asked. "Yes. He—we–solved it in a swimming pool not long ago."

"How wonderful!" Fleur nodded with satisfaction. She grinned at Hermione. "Now I need hide nothing from you."

Hermione grinned back. "I mean, we could still copy your strategy…"

"Pssh," dismissed Fleur. "My strategy right now is 'Use the Bubble-Head Charm' and 'swim fast'. Not exactly anything unexpectedly brilliant."

"That's not a bad strategy," Hermione reassured her. "That'll help keep you free to speak spells to deal with the other inhabitants of the Black Lake – the grindylows, the giant squid, and so on." She shrugged. "Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one."

Fleur gave her a sly sideways glance. "Like walking in a straight line towards your goal?"

Hermione flushed hotly, and Fleur laughed.

"It was pure brilliance, Hermione, truly," Fleur told her, eyes dancing. "I could not believe what I was seeing, and then when he emerged unharmed—! Oh, I cheered along with your school. It was incredible to see."

"It was all about making a point," Hermione said, smiling back as she recalled Harry's victory. "We wanted it to be as defiant and pointed as possible. That he got to moon Dumbledore in his underpants was a bonus."

Fleur cackled. "I believe he liked that part more than winning."

They arrived at the Chamber of Secrets, where they began setting up their supplies.

"We need the cauldrons in a pentacle," Fleur instructed, marking out places on the floor with loose rocks. "I will need to write the runes around the circles first, and then you can prepare the cauldrons while I work on the channel runes around each of the five cauldrons."

Hermione obliged, taking out the chalk she'd brought out of her bag and handing it over to Fleur. She kept one stick for herself, enlarged her geometry set, and set about tracing perfect circles and straight lines on the floor to serve as guidelines for Fleur.

When Fleur was done with one rune circle, she moved to the next. As Hermione got the first small gold cauldron ready, she looked at the runes, fascinated.

"I've never seen runes like this," she admitted. "What language is this?"

"Akkadian," Fleur said, crouched on the ground inscribing the second circle. "Perenelle spoke of her myth of an eternal garden of Babylon."

"And Akkadian is Babylonian?" Hermione asked. "I thought 'Babylonian' was a language itself."

"It is, but it is a dialectic form of Akkadian," Fleur said, humming. "Akkadian split into Assyrian and Babylonian some three thousand years ago."

Hermione blinked. "…I don't know if they even teach Akkadian runes at Hogwarts."

"If they do, it will not be until advanced classes," Fleur assured Hermione with a smile. "After your O.W.L. exams, I think. And if they do not teach you, I will send you my old textbooks so you can learn anyway."

"But your textbooks will be in French," Hermione pointed out.

"Oh no, you are correct," Fleur said, pretending to be dismayed, before she smiled widely at Hermione. "I suppose you will just have to spend more time with me to learn French."

Hermione blushed, and Fleur laughed.

Writing the runes took a while, but after Fleur had done it twice, she got into the swing of it, able to converse while she was copying the same circles out.

"Madame Maxime praised my efforts at the First Task," she said. "She did not seem to care that Harry beat me." She paused, reflecting. "I rather think she would have been upset if I had tried Harry's strategy."

"Well, of course," Hermione said, confused. "You're not fireproof."

"Even if I was, she wouldn't have liked it." Fleur sighed. "Poor Viktor. Karkaroff is displeased his champion was beaten by a young boy."

"Are you serious?" Hermione was incredulous. "Viktor was done so quickly, and he came in just behind you in marks. How could he have possibly done better?"

"You know this, and I know this, but you are presuming Karkaroff is a sensible person," Fleur said darkly. "Karkaroff is a rotten human being. If the ones taken are our school headmasters, I rather hope Viktor will leave his to drown."

"For the Second Task in the lake?" Hermione blinked. "Wait, you think it might be the Headmasters?"

Fleur shrugged. "Who else? Everybody has one to save, now. And where better to watch from to judge, than under water yourself?"

"There's no way," Hermione said, shaking her head. "No way. That would be monumentally unfair."

"How?" Fleur was puzzled. "Viktor has Karkaroff, Cedric has Dumbledore, your friend Harry has Black, now—"

"And you have Madame Maxime!" Hermione pointed out. "Who is ten feet tall! Almost twice as large as any of the others, to say nothing of how much she must weigh!"

Fleur paused.

"…that is a very good point," she admitted. She laughed, shaking out her hair. "All the better. I do not know how I would manage to carry her to the surface anyway."

Fleur had put a lot thought into various theories on who they would kidnap for the Second Task. She too had come to the conclusion they would undoubtedly take a person, not a thing, and she was preparing as such.

"I had thought 'family', but Harry has none, so that cannot be it," Fleur said. "I had also thought 'best friend', but I do not think that a choice like that would be obvious."

"How so?" Hermione asked.

Fleur glanced up at her. "Who is my best friend, Hermione?"

"…Léa?" Hermione faltered. "No. Umm. Is it Jules?"

"Probably," Fleur said. She sat up, shrugging, and dusted off her hands, before going and getting the yellow chalk to use for the channels. "Friends are still new to me. I do not know if I would truly have a 'best' one."

Hermione considered.

"That's fair," she agreed. "I don't know who they'd pick for Harry, either."

"My next thought is they choose everyone's companion from the Yule Ball," Fleur said. "That has the advantage of being very public choices everyone will recognize, and everyone will have one."

"Wait, go back," Hermione said. "What 'Yule Ball'?"

Fleur looked surprised.

"It is a longstanding tradition of the tournament," she said. "There is a giant dance. Everyone attends and celebrates."

"On Yule?" Hermione repeated, astonished, and Fleur paused.

"I do not know if it is truly a Yule ball, or if that is just what they are calling it, and it is held on Christmas instead," she said thoughtfully. "I will have to ask Madame Maxime."

Hermione wondered if Harry knew about this. If he had to get a date to a ball…

Fleur looked at Hermione, her eyes soft.

"Ah, Hermione, can you imagine?" she sighed. "I have thought of it often – of you on my arm, a snowy princess next to my winter queen, of us spinning and dancing in each other's arms long into the night…"

Hermione's heart leapt.

"Can we?" she asked, her voice quiet. "Is that something we can do?"

Fleur's eyes grew sad, and she shook her head.

"Madame Maxime would know," she said. "She would see us together, and she would know. Can you expect me to hold you in my arms all night and everyone not be able to see how much I love you? Our secret would be out for all to behold."

"But you've already done well in the tournament so far," Hermione argued. "And it's not like she can take you back home now…"

"No," Fleur said dryly, "but she can make me run drills from dawn to dusk every day until I die. She is still Headmistress, and she will not be pleased to have been disobeyed."

Hermione sighed, and Fleur sighed as well.

"We can dance together at least, some," Fleur promised her. "She knows of you, after all. It would be odd if we did not. It is just a relationship she does not want distracting me this year."

"Who are you going to go with, then?" Hermione asked, throwing a rock at the wall moodily while Fleur marked out the rune channels.

"I haven't decided," Fleur sighed. "I thought maybe your Blaise, if he accepted such an invitation."

Hermione turned to look at her very quickly. "Blaise? You mean Blaise Zabini?"

"Yes." Fleur looked surprised. "He is one of the few boys who does not fall to my allure." She smiled faintly, pained. "It would be nice to go with someone who would be able to converse with me and not just stare at me all night."

"Oh," Hermione faltered. "That's…" She paused. "Why can he resist your allure?"

"I am not entirely sure," Fleur said. "I took him to Hogsmeade and asked him many questions, trying to discern why. If I could figure out how he can, I thought maybe it can extend to others…"

It was a little weird to hear Fleur talk about her date with Blaise, even if it hadn't quite been a proper 'date'. Hermione knew that they weren't in a formal 'relationship', that because Fleur wasn't formally courting her they were both free to go out with whom they pleased, but it still felt a bit odd. Hermione swallowed down her jealousy and focused on the content of what Fleur was saying instead.

"Do you have any theories?" she pressed. "About why Blaise can resist when others cannot?"

"I think it may have to do with contracts and bonds," Fleur admitted. "Before the champions were chosen, Cedric looked at me like any other boy did. It was only after the goblet chose him that he can meet my eyes with intelligence still in his own."

"You think it's because there's a binding magical contract on his magic?" Hermione asked, considering. "Like that influence on their magic is enough to counter the Veela allure?"

"It is a theory," Fleur said, shrugging, but Hermione frowned.

"But Blaise was fine with you before you were chosen," she pointed out. "Harry being chosen obliges us all through the coven bond, but Harry wasn't chosen yet then either."

Fleur turned to look at Hermione, incredulous.

"Blaise," she said very slowly, "has a bond to you."

Hermione blinked.

"Yeah, a bond," she repeated. "Not a binding magical contract."

Fleur raised an eyebrow.

"Then why have you bound your magic to each other?" she asked. "What is that, if not a contract?"

"I—I don't know." Hermione felt off-balance. "I mean, we have our coven bond too—"

"Your coven bond was a promise to each other," Fleur said patiently. "A contract between you all. You promised to share magic and blood." She tilted her head. "What do you think would happen to one of you if you tried to break that bond and pull your magic back?"

Hermione faltered. "I—"

She didn't know. She honestly didn't. She knew coven bonds lasted for life, and she knew that covens who had one of their members die went through agonizing grief and loss, but she hadn't read anything about coven bonds being deliberately broken.

"I don't know," she admitted quietly.

"That is because you can't," Fleur said emphatically. "You make a contract with the others on your magic. You can't break a coven bond – not without leaving your magic behind."

Hermione's eyes went wide. "Then—"

"Relax," Fleur soothed her. "Your coven is a good thing. They stabilize your magic, and you all grow and learn together."

"But—with Blaise, I don't even know what the bond is," Hermione said anxiously. "I—I mean, it feels like a good thing, but if there were words with it, I don't know what they were—"

Fleur laughed.

"You have a bond of that strength with a person, and you do not know how it formed?" she asked, amused.

"I don't," Hermione admitted, and Fleur laughed again.

"No matter," she said, shaking her head. "Sometimes bonds just form. Storge, philia, eros, agape… but I think Blaise's bond with you stabilizes him so he does not feel my allure, whatever that bond may be."

Once the runes were all done, Hermione arranged the golden cauldrons around and filled them with water. In each, she put a fruit: an Fuji apple as a control, then a pomegranate, a pear, a fig, and a granny-smith apple. The smallest cauldron went in the heart of the circle, and in it she put the Philosopher's Stone.

"There," Fleur said with satisfaction. "Now, we must speak with the Stone."

Fleur carefully stepped her way over the lines of chalk runes on the floor to the gold cauldron. She closed her eyes, and Hermione watched anxiously as Fleur grew paler and visibly weaker before her. When she finally looked up though, there was success in her eyes.

"Ⓐ⅌ↂↈ◉⦾," she said with satisfaction.

The sound was aberrant, and not really a proper sound at all, but somehow Hermione recognized it anyway, recognized it from when she had spoken to the Stone in that weird, wordless way. Hearing it spoken aloud burned her ears, like the sound itself was scraping the skin from inside her ear canals, and Hermione's eyes went wide as both she and Fleur clapped their hands over their ears.

"Fleur!" Hermione's eyes were wide with horror, pleading. "Don't tell me you've forgotten how to speak normally?"

Fleur, to her credit, looked alarmed.

"₰⅌," she tried, stopping. "ℭ₦৻৳?"

Hermione couldn't believe it. She'd never had this problem when she spoke to the Stone. She tried taking deep breaths, reassuring herself that whatever Fleur was experiencing had to be temporary.

"Let's take you upstairs," she suggested. "If you're out of range of the Stone, maybe it'll be easier to—" she gestured widely, abstract "—not."

Fleur nodded, eyes wide, and Hermione led the way out of the Chamber, taking Fleur's hand as they went through the stone door, through the hall, and started up the stairs. Fleur looked anxious, an unfamiliar expression on the French girl's face, and Hermione felt guilt sink in her chest at her worry.

"It'll be okay," Hermione reassured her. "It'll be fine. And if it's not, well…" She shrugged, uneasy. "We can at least make the most of it and find Karkaroff for you to talk to until his head explodes."

Fleur laughed, a happy, unexpected sound, and she looked surprised. Hermione brightened.

"That's promising," she said. "No, don't talk yet – let's wait and get you all the way out, and then we'll try again."

Fleur looked relieved and significantly less worried as they continued their ascent, and once they finally climbed out of the sunken sink, Fleur turned to Hermione, a mischievous glint in her eye, and she put a finger to her lips.

"Be quiet?" Hermione asked, surprised. "Um. Okay..."

Fleur took Hermione's hand, looked both ways coming out of the bathroom, and then proceeded to pull her down the hall, around the corner, up a staircase, and then into a classroom, one Hermione hadn't been in before.

The classroom had pillows scattered all around, with one stool at the front near the chalk board. It was vaguely reminiscent of Trelawney's class, but there was no heavy smell of incense in the air – just a light scent of lingering perfume. Hermione looked around, intrigued, and it took a moment for her see the chalkboard, where there was French still written on the board.

"Are you having classes in here?" Hermione asked, surprised. Fleur nodded, and Hermione laughed. "I don't know why that's so surprising to me," she said, shaking her head ruefully. "I guess I thought you would all be studying in your big house-carriage, but… well. Hogwarts definitely has the extra space."

Fleur went to the board, picking up the chalk.

The nature of the stone is lingering in my head, she wrote in beautiful, flawless script, despite her medium being chalk. We should distract me so as to put it out of my mind.

"That makes sense," Hermione said, nodding slowly. "What did you have in mind?"

Fleur erased the board before returning to Hermione and taking her hand. She tugged Hermione down onto the pillows, sitting so she was facing her. Hermione blinked.

"Am I supposed to talk to distract you?" she asked, her mind suddenly going blank. "Ah—I can tell you about… um…"

Fleur laughed, a silent chuckle, and she gave Hermione a fond smile, her hand moving up to cup Hermione's cheek.

"…oh," said Hermione, feeling her face heat. "We… ah… we don't need to talk at all, do we?"

Fleur shook her head, her eyes teasing, and Hermione blushed and nodded.

"This is a good plan," Hermione murmured, as Fleur moved closer. "Very smart way to make your mind—"

Fleur's lips cut off Hermione's rambling, and Hermione's eyes fluttered closed as she fully sank into the kiss, her own mind going blissfully blank and silent.