"Why would I want to go with you, 'Arry?" Fleur Delacour returned coldly. Harry felt the distinct desire to run away then and there but something held him back, he oddly felt that she did not mean to be rude. It still hurt, of course, his chest ached and his cheeks reddened.
He was reminded of all the others Fleur had rejected then, all the smooth lines they had spoken, all their charm and good looks. Harry felt he had very little of those things but he did not believe himself to be bad looking at least and he could talk to girls easily enough. Regardless, she had still rejected all of them.
Harry had watched Ron try and fail with Hermione. And as much as Harry wanted to try a classic "you do not have anyone and neither do I," if it had not worked on Hermione, it would not work on Fleur.
"Because I think you are very pretty and I think it might be fun to go with you." Harry decided simply, it was the truth. He could offer nothing more than those she had already rejected, so he might as well try and offer the one thing only he could offer, his truth.
Fleur stared at him blankly for a moment and Harry felt the moment as an eternity. He hated himself at that moment. Fleur? Fleur? He cursed himself for thinking she might agree.
And then she tilted her head and laughed softly. It was a quiet laugh, a cute one, he decided that he rather liked it. Some of his embarrassment started to ebb away when he realized she was not laughing at him. At least not in the cruel mocking way he might expect from Draco or Peeves.
Despite himself, he found a half smile form on his face and a laugh of his own escaping his lips. "I am not the best at this, am I?" He asked after a moment.
"Non, I like your approach. It's just not what I expected, not from the boy-who-lived." She finished, exclaiming his moniker dramatically.
Harry smiled more genuinely at that and added his similar observation of her. "You are not what I expected either."
Fleur's eyebrows rose slightly and she looked at him eagerly. Harry realized he should not have said what he had, but by then, it was too late. "To be honest… after seeing all the other guys you rejected, I expected a similar reaction…" he said, trying to make it sound as silly and funny as he could.
Fleur's smile faded and her laughter stilled. "Planning for failure is human, expecting failure is pathetic, 'Arry Potter." She told him firmly and Harry could do nothing but nod at the beautiful girl, wide-eyed and transfixed.
Her blank stare hardened further as she continued. "No, I will not go to the ball with you, 'Arry." She stated firmly, glancing away and back quickly, her expression warming slightly. "But, you may ask me again, closer to the actual date, sufficiently confident and prepared." She told him with a small smile.
Harry's heart which had fallen tremendously began to pick up again as Harry felt a drive begin to well up from within him. He had been rejected, he had never felt so embarrassed or out of place. But Fleur had given none of the other boys even a possibility of a second chance, and that counted for something. It counted for everything in Harry's mind and a smile to match Fleur's appeared on his face a second later.
…
Unexpectedly, a day after having asked Fleur to the Yule Ball, he found her sitting beside him in the library. "So this is where you have been hiding, 'Arry Potter…" she said, looking around curiously.
Harry gaped at her in surprise. What is she doing here? He found himself wondering. I am not nearly confident enough! Was I only given one day? He panicked internally as he watched the girl still busy gazing around at the library, totally oblivious to Harry's inner thoughts.
"I have bias, yes, but I must say that Beauxbatons' library is vastly superior. Are there even windows in here? I feel like I am locked up in the castle's dungeons… though I admit I feel that almost everywhere here." She ranted, still not fully paying attention to the boy beside her.
Only when Harry had yet to react in any noticeable way did Fleur devote her full attention to him. "'Arry?" She asked curiously, a small, teasing smile growing larger by the second.
"Fleur?" He finally stuttered out.
"'Arry?" She responded, their tones matching and her face mimicking his own.
Harry blushed deeply as he recovered fully. "What are you- can I help you?" He asked eventually.
Fleur's face tilted in the way it had the day prior. She held up a book to show him and said, "Do friends need a reason to spend time with each other?" Her head tilted, "or do you just not consider me one of yours?" She asked, confused.
Harry felt his heart jump at her words but he held himself back from showing it. "We are friends?" He asked, slowly, still not positive about what it was she was doing.
Fleur sighed quietly as she rested her elbow on the book laying on her knee and her head in her open hand. "How can I expect you to gain any confidence or preparation if you do not get to know me first? Honestly, I do not know how, or why, you expected me to go to the ball with you without having said a single word to me before asking." She finished, her eyes narrowing. She looked almost as if she was studying Harry particularly deeply.
Harry could not help but blush once more at her words, Hermione had said something similar when he told her he would ask Fleur to the ball. And by similar, he meant word for word. "Okay." He answered simply, regaining some of his composure. He waited a few moments but Fleur made no move to say anything more. His eyes dropped to the book on her knee which she made no move to open.
Harry turned back to his book which lay open on the large oak table. He barely read three words before sending a glance back at Fleur to check and see if she was still studying him. She was.
A half page down and she finally spoke. "What are you reading?" She asked, removing her head from her hand to get a better look at his book.
"I am trying to-" A cold feeling shot through him suddenly and he glanced up to see Fleur studying his book intently. No, she couldn't be… he debated internally.
As casually as he could, he memorized his page number and pushed the book closed and off to the side, making sure it lay on its cover. "I am just trying to wrap my head around some Charms homework Flitwick assigned us." He said calmly before reaching for a different book, one he had already skimmed through and determined to be of little use.
Fleur hummed, seeming interested in the topic, and Harry chanced a look in her direction. She watched him intently, a smirk on her face, and a glint in her eye. "Oh? I happen to excel at Charms, perhaps I could help?" She offered and Harry felt a sting of guilt. Am I being terrible? Merlin, I flat-out told Cedric what the first task was. Does it matter if she's just trying to find out what I know? Harry debated with himself, but in the end, he decided to just ask her. It was not like he had figured out the second clue through his own merit anyway. How Cedric had figured it out so quickly after the first task was beyond him.
"Oh, thank you, but no need, I am close to finishing anyway…" he trailed off, wondering how to broach the subject. Fleur continued to stare at him intently and a part of him felt like she already knew of his deception.
"Say, Fleur, have you figured out the second clue yet?" He asked simply.
Fleur's smirk widened into a smile before disappearing a second later. She sighed loudly as she leaned back in her chair. "Yes, and what a headache that might have been. I mean listen to it underwater? I suppose I had an advantage over you for this one. Merpeople prefer the warmer Mediterranean to your frozen North Sea"
Harry blinked at how easily and casually she had just told him the answer to the second clue. Did she not want to win? Or did she not view him as a fellow champion? "Leetle boy" was what she had called him that night, was it not?
No, not again. Harry decided, pushing the thoughts out of his mind. She had not needed his help figuring out the clue as he had Cedric's. If she could do that much then there was very little she could gain from picking Harry's mind for ideas or reading the titles of his books.
Harry laughed and joined in her outrage, he had never even seen a mermaid let alone heard one sing outside of water. He felt his face heat up as he watched Fleur express her outrage in an overly dramatic way about the clue. If she thought his confidence would increase by spending more time with her then she surely did not know herself very well.
…
"Bloody hell, mate. That's not how she responded to me when I asked her..." Ron exclaimed as he rubbed the back of his neck with embarrassment clear on his face.
"And you what? Just revised together?" Hermione probed with an odd look on her face.
Harry nodded as he finished off his toast and moved on to his eggs. "I did not get much revision done-" Harry was interrupted by Ron's laughter, he quickly began again before Ron could say something daft. "We mostly just talked about the second task, what it might be, how we will attempt it."
Hermione glared at Ron harshly who continued to laugh, completely oblivious to her. Finally, she gave up and settled on Harry with a soft expression. "Harry… you do not think she might be trying to figure out what you know about the tournament, do you?" She asked delicately.
Harry looked up from his plate then, feeling perhaps a bit hurt, but he also understood. "I wondered that as well. But if anything, I learned more about what she plans to do than she did with me… She certainly figured out that I have little to offer in the way of coaching. If she abandons this… game… then I will know it was just that." Harry said without a hint of shame or embarrassment.
Ron stopped laughing and he and Hermione watched him curiously for a moment. "Alright, if you're sure," Hermione said before letting the issue drop.
Harry realized then, that a part of him wanted it all to be a game for her. If it was, then he could move on, he had noticed the looks Padma and Parvati had been sending him recently. He could ask one of them maybe.
Anxiety rose in his chest at the thought that it was not just some game. If it was a game, then he had never stood a chance. That hurt, but a part of him wondered if it would hurt less than having a chance and failing. If she rejects me again, how much more will it hurt? he wondered, staring deeply into his now empty plate.
He had managed to build up the amount of confidence he had, minuscule it was, with the realization that it did not matter when she rejected him. At the time he had not known her at all, he could rationalize his rejection as her simply not knowing him very well. But now he was being measured up, if she rejected him again, then it was not some nameless, faceless boy of many that she was rejecting. It was someone she had gotten to know and someone she simply did not like.
Should I just ask somebody else? Forgo this entire thing? A sharp stinging sensation shot through his chest at that thought. He did not want to do that, not really, he realized. He felt a tickling sensation on the back of his neck then and he turned around in his seat to look.
He caught Fleur's eye who sat at the Ravenclaw table, two tables down. She watched him for a moment before smiling and waving lightly. He returned her greeting and felt himself relax as he did. No, he would not ask Padma or Parvati.
Harry looked away first and felt the tickling sensation disappear from his neck a moment later. Despite his worry, he felt a small smile work its way onto his face as he tried not to blush.
