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Act III - Birth Of The Demon
Chapter 28: How I Met Your Mother
"Oh, yes! It's fantastic to meet with you too, Madam Tinkerbell," gushed Harry, his voice overflowing with saccharine as he shook hands with eighty-seventh person in a row. Not that he was keeping count or anything.
"Uh, it's actually Winterfell, my dear," said the posh-looking lady.
My apologies.," said Harry, beaming with his best fake smile. His cheeks were already hurting, and he swore to make Daphne spend hours giving him a massage just for putting him through his torment. " Just meeting so many people has gotten me all stirred up."
The woman gave him a boisterous, and utterly fake laugh. Harry had been quite good at first, and then had started making them progressively more uncomfortable, just toeing the line between politeness and outright disdain. They felt like he was insulting them, but weren't quite sure that it was on purpose and so couldn't comment leading to the uncomfortable laugh before him.. She gave him a pompous little shake of her head and moved aside, as Harry prepared for the next uninvited stranger to come and exchange meaningless small talk with him for the eighty-eighth time.
"Tinkerbell, really?" said Daphne with a bit of exasperation and amusement in her voice.
"I liked that little show. I used to watch it peering from my cupboard."
"Those damn muggles," began Daphne, and Harry instantly kissed her chastely on the lips to cut her off from going into another of her anti-muggle rants. He loved the girl to bits, but honestly, she had issues.
That reminded him, he also needed to go ahead and send a little letter to Witch Weekly, with a list of topics ranging from mental health to the benefits of thicker potion cauldrons, just to keep them from chattering on and on about his so-called growing 'harem'. It was like the tabloid had nothing better than to speculate on who would be next on Harry Potter's arm.
Unsurprisingly enough, Parvati Patil and Susan Bones were on the top of the top-ten list. Sue Li had ranked third last week, but quickly dropped to eighth place after her accident, with Romilda Vane jumping by two slots to reach #4.
He'd never say this to Daphne or Fleur, but he found the concept of relationships to be quite taxing in reality. It was one thing to be in love with the two of them, and another to face the fact that his peace-of-mind was constantly eroded by their overtaxing demands for affection, their constant sniping at each other, and their little mind-games that they chose to play while he had to pretend to never notice a damn thing.
What was worse was the underlying tension between them. It was like two alligators that were cuddly and kind but also might kill each other when he turned his back. Hanging out should have been relaxing, but he always felt like he was sitting at the end of a knife.
Honestly, his productivity was taking a serious hit, and it took a serious and conscious thought not to bend and sway to whatever arbitrary whims they asked of him.
Some people.
Harry yawned.
"Feeling tired?" Daphne asked in concern.
"Exhausted, more like," said Harry, putting up his best fake smile, as he shook hands with another of those generic faces that wanted to share a little of his spotlight and introduce themselves to him, as they passed along. Eighty-ninth next. "How do people keep doing this?"
"It's easy," said Daphne, offering an easy-going smile as she exchanged a word or two with the passing Lady Collingham, some Lady of some County on the West Coast. "Bottle your feelings up, and smile. Drink up. Enjoy the music. Flirt around. Shake a leg a bit. Simple, really."
"Yeah, not for me," said Harry. "And you'd never let me hear the end of it if I tried flirting with the girls."
"What girls?" Her voice was sharper than an unsheathed blade.
"No one. But trust me, I'm just not the partying type."
"Mmmm," said Daphne, probably still thinking of those imaginary girls. "Dementors, dragons and death eaters are your thing."
"You forgot basilisks and dark lords."
"You really need to get used to these parties, Harry," said Daphne. "As a young Lord, these are the best places where interactions happen, and you need them more than you think."
"Oh please," said Harry, covering his mouth with his hand to conceal a deep yawn and then shaking his head, smiling as the next person that walked passed him. "Selwyn and the rest of the crowd already made whatever opinion they needed of me. This invitation is nothing but an experiment to see if that meeting was real, or I was just dancing to your tune. And given the way Malfoy's been glaring at me, and talking to Yaxley and Chang's been leering at me when she thinks I'm not watching, they're probably about to stir some trouble as well. For all I know, they'll probably even throw in an unsuspecting accident involving some hapless muggleborn or muggle just to see my reaction to things."
Daphne gaped at him.
"What?" He asked. "Just because they're crafty and ambitious doesn't mean I can't see through their plans. Tell me, do Malfoy and Chang want to execute their so-called plan at this party?"
Daphne bit her lip. "They⦠do. Malfoy was supposed to be here with Pansy, but instead he chose to come with Chang at the last moment. I heard Pansy was beside herself. Girl spends half her time crying in the dorms anyway."
"My heart bleeds for her."
Daphne rolled her eyes. "You're just saying that because you dislike her."
I think she has the brains of a flobberworm. But you didn't answer my question."
Daphne exhaled. "Yes. There's been a change of plans. Apparently Selwyn and Rosier talked so much about the meeting that Uncle Lucius heard about it, and kept frothing at the dinner table and snarling at Draco for being absolutely useless. Draco floo-called Chang and got her to accelerate their plans for tonight."
"And what is that?" asked Harry dubiously.
Daphne gave him an easy-going smile while carefully considering her response. "Something that they think will help them make you dance to their tune. Chang's been quite silent about it, much to Draco's vexation. And, oh, Lady Rosier, I've been looking for you."
That was the end of the conversation as Daphne let herself be excused away by the charming and poisonously lovely Lady Rosier gracefully held her hand and led her away from having to answer his question, to talk to a section of people wanting to meet the youthful Lady Greengrass.
Now all by himself, Harry considered raiding the bar and pouring something strong for himself. Maybe he would have, if not for the fact that he didn't like being drunk. He was pretty sure he didn't get any more charming that way. More amusing, perhaps, but not always in a good way. There was music, and even though he had been accompanied by two lovely ladies that were enchanting enough to attract every eye on the floor tonight, both had been snatched. Fleur had noticed her father Guiseppe Zabini among the invited guests, and had excused herself to go meet her father in person after so long. She had even offered to take him with her, but Harry had insisted otherwise. And now Daphne had excused herself as well, leaving him without any company and tons of social climbers flocking to him from every side.
The Rosier wedding was indeed as gallant as he had expected. This was his first time travelling outside England, and while Sirius had been initially a little hesitant about this entire thing, Joshua had persuaded him otherwise, telling him that a bit of international exposure would be great for Harry, now that he had taken up his Lordship. Sirius too had gotten an invitation, but there was a sudden update from the Order about anomalous werewolf movement along the French border, and Amelia Bones had scheduled a joint operation between the British and French DMLE to act upon it. So there he was, Harry Potter, representative of two Noble Houses and Britain's notorious celeb, sauntering around by himself amidst all those people he didn't know and didn't care.
He'd have been better off back at Hogwarts, studying at the Lair and trying to decipher more about the Defense curse. Seeing the curse affect Hermione like that had been nothing short of terrifying. As if it wasn't diabolical enough, the curse had to operate on a temporal level, which made it exponentially more difficult to find its source. And at the rate things were going, he was thinking of asking Tonks if the DOM had any more time-turner prototypes to give away for experiments. He really needed all the time he could get researching dunamancy and chronomancy as quickly as he could.
But Tonks wasn't due for another session before the next week, and she had forbidden him from contacting him over Unspeakable affairs over conventional communication methods. Bill and Caroline were still working on it, and would be giving him a formal report by the end of the week, but until that happened, he had nothing to do except wait.
Might as well attend this damned party over with in the meantime.
The Santos Palace, and that was calling it loosely, was one of the most stunning architectural ingenuities Harry had ever been in. It lacked the mystery of Hogwarts, but its three-storey facade of columns spanning the entire five-hundred foot witty of its sprawling base, holding a mind-boggling labyrinth of one thousand fifty hundred and twenty seven rooms, that winded up almost a million and a half square feet of floor space. The salons, the hallways, the bedrooms, all of it was decorated with rich tapestries and masterpieces of long-gone jewels of priceless art. The main party was being held outside in the courtyard, sprawling out in size comparable to the Hogwarts grounds themselves. The Santos family was practically Spanish Royalty, and their splendour reflected just that.
Musing to himself, he approached the bar, and ordered a glass of Ogden's Finest, and took a tiny sip. Seriously, what was the point of having conversations with near-strangers about his personal life, especially when they didn't have the same goals as he did? Too many awkward pauses. And he'd start wondering why he showed up in the first place.
At least with monsters it was easier. He kind of knew what was expected of him there.
"What is someone so young doing here all by your lonesome?" asked a lovely feminine voice.
It was one of those sensations one had trouble remembering afterward β like the last moments of the dream right before waking up. You knew that once you were out of the dream, you'd forget it, and you couldn't believe you could lose something so significant, so undeniably tangible.
He turned to look the second he heard the voice β just like everyone else at the party.
She wore white. A white dress, a simple shift made of some kind of glistening silk fabric, which fell to the top of her thighs. She was at least six feet tall, more so with the partially transparent shoes she wore. Her skin was pale and perfect, her hair golden and shining with highlights that changed colour in the beat of the strobe lighting around. Her face was perfect beauty that remained unmarred by the obvious arrogance in her expression, and her body could've been used on recruiting posters for wet dreams.
A familiar frosty sensation surged through his veins, and Harry felt a cold rationality instantly set in, watching as the woman approached him with a predator's easy motion, each stride making her hips roll and shoulders sway, somehow in time to the music, and far more graceful than the efforts of the dancers, more sensual than anything Harry had ever chanced upon.
The woman had every single eye in the party and she knew it.
It wasn't an enormous event, the way she took the attention of everyone there. It wasn't a single, large, simultaneous motion where everyone turned to look. There was no sudden silence, no deepening stillness.
Her influence was a lot scarier.
It was simply a fact, like gravity, that everyone's attention should be directed to her. Every person there, men and women alike, glanced up, or tracked her movement obliquely with their eyes, or paused for half a beat in their⦠conversations. For most of them, it was an entirely unconscious act. They had no idea that their minds had already been ensnared.
No, whispered a tiny voice within his head. Not ensnared. Enthralled.
"Apolline Delacour," she purred, her blue cornflower eyes studying Harry, as he mouth parted, spreading slowly into a lazy smile that shrunk his pants about three sizes in as many seconds. "Lovely to make your acquaintance."
She offered her hand, and Harry accepted it, and proceeded to kiss her knuckles. He could feel the succubus's aura, like the silken brush of cobwebs against his skin, something tingling and delicious and fluttering that swayed up his legs all the way to his brain. A promise, a whisper to the flesh, about pleasures untold and unimagined. And right then, his reason reasserted itself, and that fluttering haze froze and cracked and blew away, like petals in the wind.
He met her eyes, and found that spark of shock and excitement within them. Both of them knew what they had done. Both of them knew what the other had done.
"Harry Potter, and the pleasure is all mine, Madame."
Her mouth and eyes reacted in completely different ways to his remark. Her eyes widened into a beauty-pageant expression, wide and immobile, but her eyes narrowed and went completely silver, the pale blue vanishing from her irises.
"Ze infamous 'Arry Potter 'ardly needs an introduction," she said, somehow keeping her voice so maddeningly soft and sensual as she focussed her fullest attention to him. "What is someone such as yourself doing 'ere by your lonesome? Has ma fille chΓ©rie has deserted you for others so easily, Monsieur Potter?"
"She had to go meet her father," said Harry, his voice coming out slightly rough, but it worked.
"Ah, oui," she said. "Ma Fleur has always been a, 'ow do you Eenglishmen call it? Daddy's girl?"
"I like Daddy's girls," said Harry with a straight face. "I find them playful and cute."
She threw her head back and laughed. It had a lot of belly in it, but was just as fake as everything else in this grand wedding gala. Part of him wondered how the entire place would look after a little Glacius Diabolica sprayed out for fun.
"I see, and ze ozzer?" asked Apolline. "Ze girl you're marrying⦠'ow did my Blaise put it? Out of pity?"
Harry narrowed his eyes slightly. "She's out there making conversation."
"Such a fooling thing to do," she said, her smile widening. "Leaving you all for the taking."
They were already attracting attention from everyone else, and there was no way that someone as crafty as Apolline Delacour would not know that. Hell, she herself was a walking-talking neon sign that exuded a 'LOOK AT ME' feel just by existing. The woman knew perfectly what she was doing, and he'd be damned if he let her escape without repercussions.
"What can I say? She knows me well enough to know that I stay away from slinky and overblown and obvious things."
The smile vanished.
"Please," said Harry, maintaining his practised fake smile. "Do not get me wrong. You do that ensemble justice. But you were trying too hard." He leaned slightly closer and fake-whispered. "Daphne does more for me just sitting in a chair than you did with the whole entrance bit from my back. And Fleur doesn't even need to try."
Yeah, call him an expert at foreign diplomacy and purveyor of international goodwill. It was probably the first time in all her hundred and thirty or so years that anyone had talked to Apolline Delacoue like that.
He really had a talent for killing conversations. And people. And magic.
He was beginning to notice a pattern there.
Apolline Delacour became as still and cold as a statue of a furious goddess, but the air temperature around them rose by a few degrees. Harry just stood there, his back against the railing of the counter, utterly unperturbed, for what could some scant flecks of flame do to the inertia and absolute frigidity of a glacier?
Apolline drew herself up, and a torrent of allure thrust out of her. A ripple of glazed eyes, vacant, dreamy stares spread across the entire hall.
This time, Harry smiled, as Death moved in, and swallowed it whole, her allure flickered away like a candle flame pinched between his fingers. The woman glared at him with a mix of white-hot fury and utter disbelief, the fingers in her clenched fist so tight that her knuckles were white.
"Maman."
Fleur's sudden interjection from afar stopped whatever altercation was about to happen. The veela heiress to the Delacour title approached them, her silvery hair matching perfectly with her pristine silvery gown. She looked very much like a goddess descended among mortals, not unlike her mother.
"Harry, I see you've met my mother."
"Yes," said Harry. "Absolutely. Though you remind me little of her, so I thought she might be your elder sister."
Mother and daughter spoke in rapid-fire French that was too quick for him to follow, even with French and Spanish translation charms he had cast over himself, but he could identify that it had something to do with civility and uncouthness, and given the looks Apolline was sending him, it wasn't too difficult to guess what it was about.
Finally, the woman addressed him directly. "I had expected someone more⦠civil, Monsieur Potter. Given 'ow rude you are, I was wondering if you were a late bloomer."
Even Harry had to admit that bit stung.
Fleur stepped in between him and her mother, and was about to defend him, when he tapped her in the shoulder, and looked past it at her mother. "Apologies, my French is rusty. But the other possibility is that I'm simply strong enough to resist your meagre aura. Perhaps you should consider that bit? But uncultured barbarian or not, I think we have different ideas of what civility means, Madame."
Daphne often said that he had a temper. Daphne was right.
Apolline raised an eyebrow. "Excusez-moi?"
"Oh you are," said Harry coldly. "I'm not your usual food, Madame. Please mind that allure of yours, before I mind you."
Her mouth quivered very slightly, her eyes more so. She looked up at him, almost fondly, exhaled and said. "Tres bien. Do you mind if I take ma fille chΓ©rie for some mother-daughter bonding? I 'ave missed her for so long."
Harry exchanged a wary look with Fleur, before shrugging. "Be my guest."
The mother grabbed her daughter's hands with surprising tightness and led her away towards the right, before the latter could even reply, not even sparing Harry another look. Harry pursed his lips, inwardly seething at⦠something. Something about this entire debacle felt off.
He snatched that glass of firewhiskey from the counter, mulling over Apolline's words, occasionally giving a smile and a word to someone walking up to him to say hello. He noticed how Daphne was still engaged in talking to a herd of people and spotted Elizabeth Rosier and Adrian Parkinson among them. In her midnight dress, low heels and delicate jewellery, her blond hair made up in an elaborate braid that would have only been made with magic, Daphne moved, talked and laughed in that reserved, elegant way only aristocratic women could manage. It told him tons of just how much work it went in cultivating that mask of aristocracy that Daphne reserved for others. Nobody that knew her like Harry did could say that the girl was a stereotypical pureblood princess β rich, prideful but not arrogant, too careful of her reputation, and incredibly charming though that could switch to clever condescension at a moment's notice.
And as much as he hated being caught alone in a setting like this, he didn't want to join the elite pureblood circle.
Not his type of place.
Still, the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. There was nothing to be gained by provoking him out of nowhere, and yet, that was exactly what Apolline had done. She had insulted her own daughter, then Daphne, and then him in order, and after seeing Fleur stand up to him, she had dragged her away to exchange words in private. Even with his reaction to her Allure, he doubted Apolline was foolish enough to try to damage Fleur's relationship with him. For better or worse, he was Harry Potter, direct heir to not one, but three Noble families. His name commanded respect and stood out, and this wedding had shown him exactly that.
So why had Apolline done that? And that look on her face? It wasn't the expression of someone that had just tried to derail her daughter's relationship. It was a look of satisfaction after confirming good news.
Still holding the glass in his hands, Harry sauntered all the way until he found himself an empty chair and sat on it, slowly helping himself to the drink, as he watched Fleur and Apolline talk in hushed tones. It was time to exercise one of the newest additions to his arsenal. He half-closed his eyes, and felt his own presence extend out and touch Fleur's magic, and felt her stiffen. It was an odd sensation, touching her magic, and feeling that weariness within her, as well as that intense, ever hungry presence coiling deep within her heart. He knew that Fleur could sense his presence, but from the way her soul slowly relaxed, he knew that she didn't mind. His lips twisted into a slow, slow smile, and Harry Listened.
Listening wasn't even that hard a skill. Owls were excellent at hearing over long-range, and were often very compatible mediums for connecting with the souls of the departed. The ability to use those birds as a medium of communication between souls across realms was a symbolic power that could be theoretically harnessed to scry past physical and geographic boundaries, and reach another with whom the Listener held a strong connection with. This connection was his first ever attempt at symbolic magic that stemmed from his animagus.
Said connection needed not be based on something positive, like love, or affection in Fleur's case. Even negative emotions such as hatred, jealousy and anger, or even somewhat neutral emotions such as suspicion could be harnessed to facilitate this. The only two limitations were that whatever be the emotion, it had to be something strong, which meant you couldn't just Listen to any particular stranger; and the second, was that it was easily detectable unless the person was distracted, exhausted or under a compulsion charm.
It was why he hadn't used this on the likes of Cho Chang or Dolores Umbridge or worse, Voldemort. Also, he wasn't that skilled enough to traverse past physical boundaries to reach someone that was as far as Sirius.
His sensations dulled, and everything else around him degraded down to white noise, except for what he was Listening to.
Fleur was speaking.
"Je ne vais pasβ¦.! Maman, just leave him out of this."
Another nifty advantage of Listening. You Listened to not what the other person was saying, but what your contact was understanding.
"You know it, ma' darling. You can play witch in L' Angleterre, but do not forget what they are. What you are."
"'Arry is not like them. I love him."
"You are Veela. You cannot love."
She might as well have told Fleur that she was going to kill her. Fleur staggered back by a single step, and Harry felt a cold, callous sensation entwine within her, licking its proverbial chops at the despair flooding through her body.
"I'm not just a veela. Not like you, Maman. I'm a witch, and 'Arry will see to it that I remain so."
"Intéressante⦠he is capable of that, is he?"
That took the wind out of her sails.
"Excusez-moi?"
"I sensed his power, ma cherie. It is cold, but never so cold that it freezes one's heart altogether."
"Oh, I don't know," said Fleur. "You need to have a heart before it can freeze, Maman."
Apolline let out an amused snort. "Such passion for prey. Still, I will allow it. You have done us a wonderful job, ma cherie. The Mothers will be proud."
A sudden fear struck Fleur's core like a poisoned dagger.
"...what?"
"Forget not, daughter, about the rules of our Cabal. What we are, what we represent, what is at stake. The Mothers are planning a Sanctum Invocation on Beltane at theβ¦."
She paused. "Do youβ¦ do you feel that? I think someone is around β"
Without a second's hesitation, Harry instantly pulled away, as all the chatter from around hit him all at once, like a freight train. Slightly dazed, he opened his eyes, and found himself peering at an oddly familiar face. Out of reflex, Harry shook his hand.
"Ah, Mr. Bobernickel. I almost didn't recognize you. How are you this fine evening?"
"Bob β what?" asked the man, giving him a stupendous look. Harry's vision cleared, and his eyes fixed on the green bowler hat, before he caught on the rest of the features.
It was Cornelius Fudge.
AN: Update Schedule for next month - 5th. 10th. 15th. 20th. 25th. 30th.
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