AN:
- Veela stuff largely inspired by the wonderful works of Inwardtransience, author of 'The Good War' and other fics, who can be found on Ao3
- In this AU "moyen", a la "l'homme moyen," ("the average man") is the French word for "muggle"
- 'Wizard' refers to people that mostly do wand-magic, regardless of gender, while 'witch' refers to people that mostly do wandless magic (potions, old-fashioned rituals, etc). Due to the quick, straightforward sort of spellcasting that wands allow for, wizardry has been the preferred method of many conquerors.
- Nna is Igbo for 'dad'
- All the dialogue in this chapter is being spoken in French, so just add a bit of sass to your mental reading voice
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La villa Delacour, Occitanie
Two days after Hermione told an agent of France's magical government every unflattering thing she knew about Wizarding Britain, Fleur sauntered into the villa's cozy study and said: "There is something you must see."
Given that the last thing Fleur had shown her was the room in which she now sat, full of rare and fascinating books, this was rather exciting.
Hermione double-checked her page number in Aucuns Sauveurs Suprêmes: une histoire populaire de la Révolution (the magical revolution of the 1930s, of course— though the author didn't shy away from how it was inspired and shaped by the first revolution) and closed it as she stood—
"Leave it," said Fleur. "This shouldn't take long."
She then led Hermione down the large, airy main corridor, past several of the gauzy curtains her family seemed to favor over actual doors, up a curling flight of stairs, and out onto a semicircle of terrace beneath the nearly-cloudless sky. There she laid both hands on the balustrade and looked out at the sea for a moment with her back to Hermione— and a significant portion of that back exposed by her knee-length tunic, which was draped over only one shoulder.
Hermione hadn't noticed, before, quite how broad Fleur's shoulders were— or seen the lean muscles behind them. The summer sun had tanned her skin several shades darker, bringing out olive tones that went quite well with the pale lavender of the tunic and the paler blonde of her braided hair.
"Well," said Hermione. "This is nice."
Just as nice as the rest of the villa, really, which begged the question—
"Yes…" Fleur turned and leaned back against the balustrade, hands braced on it. "Please, sit."
Hermione suddenly wished she knew how to paint. The sea glittering behind Fleur, the drape of her tunic, the aura blooming around her like a full-body rainbow halo…
"Maïa?"
She was smiling— much the same way she had back at school, when they mocked stuck-up purebloods in français. A warm, secret sort of smile.
Hermione tore her gaze away to glance around, and settled on what looked very much like a muggle beach chair, knees together and hands clasped atop them.
Her face was warm.
"You know," Fleur mused, "at first I didn't think my grandmothers would agree to send you that portkey. Convincing them to let a wizard I've known for less than a year and two moyens I hadn't even met to stay here was tricky enough."
"Oh," said Hermione. What was one supposed to say to something like that? "Well, I'm very glad they did."
"As am I." Fleur smiled. "Glad and a little satisfied to have proved them wrong."
"Wrong about what?"
"Where the line is between caution and paranoia. Sure, you're a little uncomfortable here, but much less than one would expect from a wizard schooled in Britain. And you're not at all afraid."
"Telling me what I'm feeling doesn't exactly make me more comfortable, you know."
Fleur just kept smiling that serene, unflappable smile. Her right index finger started tapping the stone of the balustrade. "With any other first-generation mage, I might assume that lack of fear came from ignorance about us… but for some reason, I suspect you've read everything you could find about Veela."
Hermione blinked and stared for a moment. After their first meeting, they'd never actually talked about Veela while at Hogwarts; given some of the awful, nasty things certain classmates said about Fleur, the way they stared, she had thought it best to avoid the topic entirely.
"So tell me: what do you think you know about my people?"
Several different passages of text came to mind…
—lesser fae that require an alternate source of the sustenance once provided by the magic-rich ambient of their ancestral realm, but -unlike the elf and the goblin- possess the guile and predatory nature to take that sustenance—
—animagi-equivalent of a subhuman race, whose choice of guise despite their well-documented ability to elude us suggests a craving for something only men can provide—
… all but one of which were written by 'pureblood' men, and all of which shared the underlying assumption that Veela desired nothing more than to lure virile young wizards back to their lairs and drain their vitality like some sort of sex-vampires.
For people who prided themselves on being 'untainted' by Christian dogma, it all felt rather catholic.
Probably best to stick with first-hand observations.
"I know that you can shapeshift to some extent," she said. "At the world cup…"
"Eugh." Fleur rolled her eyes. "Those Bulgarian clowns. Don't remind me."
…right.
"You're also empaths— definitely receptive, and possibly emissive as well?"
Fleur arched a platinum eyebrow, all the more striking due to her tan. "Possibly?"
"I prefer not to jump to insufficiently supported conclusions," said Hermione. "You obviously have some… capacity for vocal hypnosis— at first I assumed it was an innate talent, but then I realized it could be nurture rather than nature, which is to say a skill Veela are encouraged to learn, a tradition maybe— but regardless, it seems to be—"
Most effective on those attracted to your gender.
"—the main thing that people fear about you."
"It is now," Fleur brought her left hand up to inspect her nails and, as if discussing the weather, said: "because wizards have done a very good job of making people forget what else we can do."
(the word she actually used was sorcier, which didn't seem to carry a connotation of wand-usage, but was spoken with much more disdain than sorcière or magicien in the Delacour villa—)
"Because the siren is less threatening to them than the valkyrie or the Furies… or the truth of what we achieved before man first waved a wand."
3100 BCE, Hermione translated almost involuntarily, the Sumerian elite made the transition from staves to wands around 3100 BCE at the latest—
"Or what we achieved afterwards, in defense against their savagery."
She would have run to fetch her notebook from the library just then had it not seemed so disrespectful to interrupt, yet she couldn't help but blurt out: "And what was that? The achievements, I mean."
Fleur showed no sign of offense. "Transfiguration and alchemy, to begin with."
What.
But the Egyptians— 2000 BCE—
"Not that we considered them separate arts. At the mastery-level, they really aren't."
Hermione… supposed the distinction between altering something's physical structure and altering its properties would start to blur if the structure you were altering… was…
Molecular.
Microscopic .
"And anti-apparation wards, later on."
Hermione— blinked.
And stared.
She hadn't read anything that even alluded to—
Ah.
Of course she hadn't.
"All defensive magic humans have come up with is based on shields and walls," said Fleur. "Which is fine for most things. But a wall is a useless defense if someone can just go around, and apparation—"
"Is extradimensional travel," Hermione cut in, which was rude, but listening to someone explain something she already knew was mind-numbing, "which renders physical distance in the perceptible dimensions much less important."
"And mostly ignores boundaries made here." Fleur nodded. "Yet that kind of travel isn't natural to humans— or to us. We can't perceive that other dimension even while moving through it. But to Veela, something from our dimensions forcing itself through another creates a distinct tone. A discordant note in the Song of the world."
"The what?"
"You see auras," said Fleur. "We hear songs. Notes, tones, tunes, rhythms, harmonies, polyphonies…"
…no wonder the ritual to admit them to the wards had been so… choral .
"So when wizards started using apparation to attack us, some clever cousins of my ancestors listened very closely to the discord that announced their coming, and composed a song to banish it. To reinforce the Primal Polyphony, and so prevent anyone from touching 'apparation-space' within a certain area. And because they could not know when wizards might attack, and could not always be singing, they crafted enchanted bells to do it for them, constantly. Those bells are the reason my tribe, the Veela, survived the establishment—"
—her nonchalant tone dipped lower, sharper—
"—of the Secrecy."
She took her hands off the balustrade to cross her arms, gaze on the tiles somewhere between her and Hermione.
"I don't know what they teach you about that time at Hogwarts, but for us, for Veela and our sister-tribes, it was… bad. Men have always resented and coveted us for our gifts." She lifted one hand to flip her braid forward over her bare shoulder and fiddle with the tie at its end. "We have challenged their chauvinism for millennia, just by existing."
Even the most masculine Delacours Hermione had met were rather… well, pretty. Unfairly pretty. Not exactly the type that some conquering warlord would be sportsmanlike about losing to, she supposed…
"So when the ICW was planning out how to conceal all things magical, the worst sort of wizards saw opportunity. We had not self-segregated like them, you see. We did have to be subtle, but rulers all over Europe prized our intent-sensing ability highly enough to shield us from the Church… and if we had to charm a few of them to keep our people safe…"
A shrug. A sly smile.
"We also took in outcasts. The abused, the discarded, those that refused to submit to human hierarchy— regardless of whether they could use a wand. We walked freely in halls that wizards had been banished from, and…" She cut herself off, nose scrunched. "God, I sound like Mémé Aza."
Was… that a bad thing?
"Our enemies," she said, "the most covetous of wizards, that is; they used our participation in ordinary society as an excuse to lump us in with dragons and dementors and such. They categorized us as creatures which would surely threaten their secrecy if allowed to 'roam free'. Creatures to be corralled," Fleur's forearms flexed as she clenched her hands into fists, her aura flaring white— "or culled."
Ah.
That was where the deja vu was coming from.
"So. Those bells I mentioned were our best defense against the ICW. And, you know. against mercenaries promised gold for captive Veela."
Gold.
Any significant spending of gold by wealthy purebloods —such as those who ran the fledgeling Ministry— generally fell into one of two categories: investment or indulgence.
Some were both.
Heat flooded Hermione's veins, urging her to leap up and pace, to curse, to burn—
She took a deep breath in, and a slow breath out.
Neither helped.
"If we hadn't been able to block apparation," said Fleur, still gazing at nothing in particular, "if we hadn't managed to keep the secret of the craft for so long…"
She shrugged, and looked at Hermione again.
"You might not ever have heard of us."
Then her lips pursed in a delicate frown.
"Stop that."
Hermione followed Fleur's gaze to her own clenched fists— where sparks were flickering in and out of existence, arcing from knuckle to knuckle, some leaving little black spots on the denim of her shorts.
"Fire won't help now."
She knew that. Her magic seemed to disagree.
Later. We can— do something later. After we understand the situation better. Uninformed action is worse than useless.
It took another sixteen deep breaths before the sparks began to fade.
"Anyway," said Fleur, "we didn't just sit around inside our wards. Neither did our cousins in other parts of the world. We fought the ICW to a standstill on what they consider their home field— and for that, the 'pure' wizards of Europe have never forgiven us. We disprove their superiority. We defy their dominance. That is why your schoolmates were… like that, about me." Fleur waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, which made the sleek muscles of her shoulder flex, which reminded Hermione of how they looked from behind when they first stepped out onto the terrace, which reminded her…
There is something you must see.
"Why are you telling me all this?" She asked— and then, feeling her face heat: "That's not— I mean, I'm— honored to be someone that you… feel comfortable sharing this with. I know… or at least I can imagine…"
Fleur strode across the tiles to kneel in front of Hermione and take her good hand. "I know you can. That's… part of why I told you."
Oh. Good.
Hermione wet her lips. Fleur's hands were very soft. "But not the only reason."
"No," said Fleur, a teasing lilt in her voice. "I also know how much you love elusive knowledge, historical context, that sort of thing…"
Hermione's face warmed.
"… and to Hear your reaction."
Ah. Right. Sneaky empath. Currently holding her hand, with their auras all cozied up together.
"Still not even a hint of fear."
Hermione blinked. She supposed that was a bit odd, in the abstract, but… "I mean… you've never given me reason to fear you."
Fleur smiled, just a little. "Only horror and rage on our behalf. And a little bit of envy while I was bragging, but not the nasty kind."
"…good?"
"Very good." Fleur sighed. "I really do wish you'd gone to Lys-des-Cendres."
Then she gave Hermione's hand one less squeeze, stood up, and took a few steps back.
"We are happy to host you," she said, "and your parents. And we want you to be comfortable, especially because after you've been through, so we've been… constraining ourselves."
What?
Hermione glanced at Fleur's airy tunic, her exposed shoulders and arms and long, toned legs—
"But this is our summer home. Our place to relax and… let our hair down, so to speak."
Several things clicked into alignment in Hermione's brain.
"Your true forms," she said. "You're talking about your true forms."
"Our flight forms." Fleur sat on one of the other beach chairs, crossed her legs—
—Hermione looked away—
"This form is no less true. Just… ill-suited to part of our lives. It's like fancy dress, no? It can be delightful, but when you have to wear it all the time just to be treated like a person out in public…"
"You don't want to wear it at home," said Hermione.
"Precisely. So." Fleur stood up again, and smoothed her tunic down over her thighs. "I figured I would show you first."
There were wiggly flashes of yellow rippling through her aura— similar, though much subtler, than what Hermione had seen ripple through Harry's whenever more than a few people looked at him at once.
For a moment, Hermione could only stare. Fleur Bloody Delacour, nervous? Because of her?
Odd.
And… gratifying , for some reason.
Probably kinder not to prolong it, though.
"I'm ready when you are," she said.
Fleur nodded, closed her eyes, tipped her face up towards the sky, took a deep breath, and—
Flames. Red and orange and white flames, rolling up Fleur's limbs from toe to head before flickering out, leaving behind—
Oh.
Oh, wow.
Two huge wings spread wide, at least twice as long as her arms had been and maybe more, tawny-brown feathers fading into white at the edges. Fleur lowered them, folding the ends of them back, revealing the four black talons curving out of what had been her wrist-joint, each easily as long as a human hand— so somewhat shorter than the claw that had sliced through Malfoy's robes and skin like paper, flinging red droplets across the grass—
Relaxed, they hung past the feathery knees of her digitigrade legs.
Tough, scaly-looking brown skin covered her elongated ankles and feet, from which more talons curved in place of toes— only three in front, for some reason, and one curving back from each heel. Her tunic was unburnt, and what little of her chest and shoulders it bared was covered in amber feathers, fading into white again up her neck, which was longer now—
Hermione was momentarily pinned in place by Fleur's eyes. Their color hadn't changed, but they looked— bigger, relative to her face, and the effect was rather startling. Only when she blinked could Hermione look away. The only difference in her face seemed to be a flatter nose and the small, almost dainty white feathers that sprouted up from her hairline, almost like a tiara. Some had grown around her ears as well, hiding them entirely. Her hair remained, still in a single long, lustrous braid.
"Well?" She asked— and her voice was different too, multi-toned, low and high at the same time.
"You…" Hermione stared. Wet her lips. Swallowed. "Did you just get even taller?"
Fleur blinked her big, mesmerizing eyes again, and then let out a weird two-toned honk of a laugh. The sound made Hermione twitch— and then smile, buoyed up by the unique joy of watching someone unfairly poised accidentally do something goofy.
"Yes," Fleur managed between quieter honks and little chirps. "By about half a metre."
"That's…"
"Fantastic, no?"
" …so unfair ."
Fleur shook her head, put her talons on her hips (flaring her wing-tips out to the side in the process), and asked: "Seriously though, what do you think?"
Hermione looked her down and up again before answering. If she had just radically transformed in front of a new-ish friend, she'd probably be horrifically self-conscious about it. Fleur seemed much more comfortable being the center of attention… but still.
"Seriously…" Hermione swallowed again. Why was her mouth dry? "Fleur, you're… bloody majestic."
Another, slower blink. Then that slight, nervous smile stretched into a grin.
(Had her canines gotten sharper?)
"'Ermione Granger…" her voice was a slow, lilting drawl. "Who knew you could be such a charmer?"
Hermione felt a sudden sympathy for Odysseus— and with no crew to tie her to the mast.
She averted her eyes, flushed and a bit light-headed, only to find herself staring at Fleur's hand-talons again. Her very large, very sharp -looking hand-talons.
"Don't those— get in the way?"
Fleur let out another chirp, then slowly reached out a folded wing and placed the smooth, solid, slightly-warm side of one talon under Hermione's chin—
"Get in the way of what , Maïa?"
—to gently nudge it upwards until their eyes met again.
Hermione did not say reading, because she did not especially feel like being mocked. "Er—" she glanced around, "clothes?"
Fleur's neck barely moved as she tilted her head to the side. "Clothes?"
"Putting them on and taking them—" Hermione averted her eyes, everything except her actual physical body cringing, "—off?"
You idiot.
That was such a weird thing to say.
"Because they'd tear the fabric, I mean."
"Would they?" Fleur asked. Her talon fell away, and a moment later there was a sharp pluck on Hermione's blouse. "What an image."
"Fleur." She took a breath. "You know I'm not good with… certain nuances—"
"Oh, really?"
"—and right now it feels like you're mocking me."
Fleur blinked, and stepped back, toe-talons clacking in the tiles. "I'm sorry. That wasn't my intent at all. I was aiming for friendly teasing, I suppose."
"Yes, well. I suppose I'm still not quite used to that."
Would she be used to it by now, if she had gone to Lys-des-Cendres. If she hadn't insisted on going to Hogwarts, despite everything Ted and Tonks had told her about it?
"Small doses, then," Fleur said easily. "So, your parents. Do you think they'll like my flight feathers? If I'd known for sure you'd need to come a day early, I would have preened."
Hermione considered that for a moment, averting her eyes from said feathers so as not to get distracted again. "…I mean, they've been very open minded about magic in general, but…"
There she hesitated, squeezing her right hand with her left because pain and tingling was better than numbness.
"I expected them to say something about me killing a man in front of them by now, so clearly my ability to predict their reactions is somewhat skewed."
Fleur made a low sort of cooing-trilling sound in her (long, slender) throat and crouched down in front of Hermione's chair, wings fanning out around her as she balanced on all four sets of talons. It honestly looked a bit awkward.
"It's only been… what," —that eerie head-tilt again— "a day and a half? It's probably still sinking in. They sound sort of… scattered."
"What is that like? " Hermione asked. "The— song-hearing, I mean. Auditory magic-sense."
"Maïaaa," Fleur groaned, "do you have any idea what it's like to manage a ten-year-old Veela that hasn't been allowed to fly for two days?"
Ah.
"I will gladly answer many questions after we've talked to your parents."
Right.
Maybe —hopefully probably— they'd be perfectly fine with… cohabitating with six-foot-tall sentient humanoid birds of prey for a week. She wouldn't be sure — couldn't be sure— without taking the risk. So really the only thing for it was to just get it over with. Rip off the proverbial plaster.
"Right then," she said, starting towards the doorway. "Allons-y."
"Wait," said Fleur— and when Hermione looked back, it was to the sight of wings twitching and a mischievous smirk. "I'll race you to the grove."
"Seriously? Even if you walked, you'd probably—"
"How defeatist of you, my friend."
Hermione meant to just turn and walk away. She really did. But that smile, and the thought that Fleur had been constraining herself, restraining herself, just to avoid discomfiting…
Hermione huffed. "Fine."
Brown-and-white wings snapped out, the tips of her flight-feathers nearly reaching the edges of the terrace—
Oh, Hermione thought. No wonder her shoulders are so strong.
Then she was blinking against a sudden gust of wind that ruffled her clothes and almost physically pushed her backwards— and when she looked again, Fleur was gone.
She nearly tripped on her way down the stairs.
Stupid sexy bird-lady.
As Hermione speed-walked across the central courtyard, a vast shadow passed overhead; Gabrielle, who had been dozing in the shade, screeched: "Finally!"
—and promptly went from doll-cute to duckling-cute, complete with fluffy neck-feathers.
She found her parents sitting under a veranda beside the olive grove, cozied up to each other, a book open in her father's hands. Hermione hesitated, and almost turned around before Fleur's shadow swept over her again— and this time she looked up in time to see a white-and-tawny blur disappear behind the roof of the villa.
(Had the race been a joke, or had she just gotten distracted up there?)
Her mother saw her coming first; her father closed the book.
Not for the first time, Hermione wished they were mages— if only so that they'd have auras large enough for her to try to read. Not for the first time, she felt guilty about it.
"Everything alright, chou?" Mum sat up as she got closer.
Is it?
"Yes," she said. "There's just… something you should—"
She was cut off by the whoosh of something large speeding overhead— followed by the heavy sound of vast wings beating the air once, twice, thrice…
Quiet.
"What was that?" Nna put his book down on the bench beside him.
Hermione caught a telltale glimmer in the corner of her eye, and turned to see the fading edge of Fleur's aura rippling faint yellow and green around the corner of the building. Her heart beat faster.
Like ripping off a plaster.
"You can come out," she said, hopefully sounding calm and collected.
Bird legs, it turned out, were not made for sauntering. Whether she meant to or not, Fleur stalked into sight, foot-talons carving into the earth with each long stride, hand-talons thankfully clasped behind her back—
Nna jerked back in his seat, left arm shooting out in front of Mum— who just watched Fleur stalk closer, wide-eyed and still as a statue.
"This," said Hermione, "is what our hosts look like when they're relaxing."
Fleur gave a close-lipped smile, and brought forth one of her hand talons in a shy little wave.
For a moment, both parents just stared. Hermione did her best to project calm.
Then:
"Well," said Mum, and paused to swallow. "Where do you buy all your lovely, drapey clothes? They must be worth every franc if they can survive those claws."
Fleur grinned. Her canines had definitely gotten sharper. "We make them ourselves. More importantly, don't you think Maïa would look darling in one?"
Hermione had spent far too much time with Parv to not spot an impending fashion ambush.
She turned on her heel. "I'll be in the library if anyone—"
"The library," said Her Mother, "isn't going anywhere."
Merde.
She woke the next morning to the sound of flapping wings and multi-tonal warbling. Through the window, she saw her hosts gliding in wide circles over the water, swooping down to skim the waves one by one.
Breakfast was fish fried with thyme and paprika. Very large fish. The Delacours graciously took the pieces with gaping puncture wounds. Those seated farther from the Grangers spoke to each other in a language full of long, lilting vowels, trills, and sharp guttural consonants that Hermione wasn't sure how to render in writing, much less pronounce. Those lounging about in human form (which did seem more convenient for lounging) seemed to speak a phonetically simplified dialect. And as she listened to it, to how utterly different it was from French, a suspicion took root in her mind.
Four days later, Hermione saw a werewolf at the hospital. The Pasteur Public Hospital, specifically— which she and her parents were at because one of Fleur's grandmothers apparently had the clout to secure appointments with highly qualified healing specialist with less than a week's notice, and considered Hermione warning Fleur about the glaringly obvious likelihood of Death Eater interference in the third task of the Tournament a sufficient favor to merit discomfitingly nepotistic gestures of gratitude.
Hermione fully intended to pay for the appointment, of course (with francs made by pawning a handful of the actual bloody treasure Sirius had sent her), but she couldn't help but feel as if she was cutting ahead in the queue— even if it was ostensibly the healer's day off.
The elevator she and her parents stepped into appeared to be made entirely out of some sort of smooth ceramic, no metal or plastic in sight, and devoid of buttons— operated instead by a straight-backed house— or, well, hospital-elf clad in a smart little uniform complete with a little cap, who responded to her request for the fifth floor with a nod and a tap on the off-white wall. Hermione glimpsed a glyph-array that seemed to feed the elf's magic into channels that curved smoothly down into the floor and up into the ceiling— at the center of which was an opaque half-sphere of what looked like some sort of quartz, glowing softly yellow-orange. Only the slightest sense of heaviness signaled the elevator rising; there was no vibration, no muffled mechanical sound.
"Second floor," the elf said boredly.
After several people had stepped off, a thin, grey-haired woman in an oversized muggle cardigan limped in with the help of a proper old-fashioned mage-staff, bright pink trainers peeking out from under her long skirts.
"Giusetta, you old hag!" Said one of the other elevator-riders —an older man in what would have looked like a mundane business suit if not for the lifelike swimming of its brightly-colored koi-fish-print— "Still menacing those poor apprentices?"
"Henri is still letting me weed out the hero-complexes," she shot back, "because I'm still better at it than him."
As the elevator doors slid shut, she rolled her left shoulder with a grunt.
"Rough night?" The man asked teasingly.
"Bof," she huffed. "Newcomers. Young newcomers."
"The horror. Where from?"
"Holland," said Giusetta.
Hermione felt the man cringe from across the elevator— which could have been for a number of reasons, given that Holland was even more feudalistic than Britain on the magical side, kept that way by multifarious oppression, so—
" Again?" Said the man.
"It's the children of the horde," the old woman replied.
"Still? I would've thought… what does the regime gain by letting them run around mauling people?"
"Same they gained by siccing the transformed on communalists in the first place."
Hermione barely stopped herself from blurting out They what, and failed to stop herself from looking at the woman— who, she saw, had two faded pinkish scars running across her cheek and through her mangled left ear, roughly parallel to each other.
Hermione had only seen such scars on one other person— who looked about a decade older than his maximum possible age. Giusetta looked perhaps… seventy or eighty, which usually meant someone was at least a hundred, when it came to mages. (According to Andromeda, very few British werewolves made it to old age.) The only abnormality visible in her aura was a sort of… slowness in the way it emanated from certain spots on her body, most notably her joints. Dumbledore's aura did the same thing, albeit in far fewer places, which she had attributed to the lingering curse damage he was rumored to carry from his duel with Grindelwald…
"—close calls getting out," Giusette was saying, "but a welcoming party helps soften the shock of it all, especially for the little ones."
Her clothes weren't dull or patched or frayed at the edges like Lupin's, she wasn't trying to make herself seem smaller the way he and Harry often did… and she was in the main building of the hospital.
St. Mungo's werewolf ward was, according to Andromeda, essentially an adjoining prison— connected to the main hospital only by a heavily warded hallway for the staff and supposedly 'furnished with state-of-the-art containment equipment in full compliance with all safety regulations'. Given what the British Ministry considered reasonable containment measures for prisoners they considered human, she rather doubted the lycanthropy-afflicted 'patients' of St. Mungo's were allowed to keep their own clothes, much less—
"Fifth floor," said the elf.
"The good news," said Guarin Genkov, Doctor of Regenerative and Rehabilitative Healing, pulling off his very strange headgear with all its heavily-enchanted lenses and scopes, "is that this is not as rare an injury as one might think."
"Oh?" Hermione managed, pulling the ruin of her wand-hand back off the examination table with a wince. Being scrutinized like some sort of entomological oddity did not put her in a talkative mood.
"Mmmhm." The Doctor kicked his rolly-chair back over to the desk and started rapidly scrawling with a ballpoint pen. "Professional duelists with personal grudges have, on occasion, been known to target their opponents' wands and wand-hands. It'll get you banned from most leagues, of course, but it's happened enough for write-ups of the medical dos and don'ts to get passed around —largely because the first few incidents were such a challenge for the healers— and those write-ups are now part of the regenerative arts curriculum at La Perenelle . This wand, you said it was dragon heartstring and…?"
"Cypress," said Hermione.
The Doctor hummed, jotting that down. "Well, all the splinters have been removed, so that shouldn't be relevant, but I'll write a note for your future healers advising them to consult with a wandmaker or two— God knows they're the only ones who can keep track of all the potential unexpecteds of such materials…"
He paused for a moment, tapping the fingers of his free hand on the desk, eyes darting slightly to and fro in thought.
"You may want to get a more thorough diagnosis —there are some magical imaging methods I doubt are available in England, on account of having been inspired by mundane technology— but I don't think you necessarily need one. It's a stubborn injury, but not an especially complex or sensitive one. Based on this limited examination, I would recommend that you choose one of two treatment-paths."
Hermione's father pulled out the hand-sized notebook he kept in his pocket and unclipped the pen from it. "Go on."
"The first," said Doctor Genkov, "would be a regimen of cleansing rituals, ritual-aided nerve-growth potions, and physical therapy— exercises to improve flexibility, strength, and dexterity. It's entirely possible for such treatment to restore much of your dexterity within a few years."
But not all.
Not even most.
While Riddle and his cult prepared their next reign of terror— doing who knew what behind the closed doors of the Ministry and Wizengamot while fools like Fudge persecuted the very people trying to raise the alarm, indoctrinating their children as they themselves must have been indoctrinated, surrounding Harry and Parvati and Padma and Ginny with wand-wielding Hitlerjugend—
"What's the second path?" She asked.
Doctor Genkov peered at her over his reading glasses for a moment before replying: "Surgical removal of the damaged flesh, and replacement via bio-alchemy."
Hermione's heart leapt in vindication. This was the benefit of seeking treatment in France— where potentially lifesaving arts weren't banned because of fear-mongering, censorship-happy bureaucrats—
"Replacement?" Mum asked.
"Regeneration," said the Doctor. "A rather complex sort of ritual that prompts the body to rapidly re-grow the targeted structure, good as new. You would still have to undergo physical therapy—"
—he nodded to Hermione—
"—the strength, muscle memory, and channeling capacity of regenerated tissues is typically akin to that of a young child."
Oh.
That was… suboptimal.
She had accelerated the growth of her channeling capacity beyond the typical rate of any adolescent mage that made regular use of a wand with daily wand- less exercises in telekinesis and pyrokinesis— but there was only so much that one could accelerate a naturally gradual process. Most of that growth had happened the slow way, over the course of years.
"You would be much farther down the wait-list for that sort of procedure, of course…"
What?
"…given that your injury doesn't strictly require it."
Easy for you to say, Hermione did not say.
"Conditions that can't be adequately treated with anything but bio-alchemy take priority."
Ah.
"You could seek out a private practitioner, but they can be rather costly."
"Well," said her father, "we'll have to see what the options are at Mjiwazamani."
"Ah, yes. Madame Delacour did mention you wouldn't be in-country long."
Long enough to actually start any new treatment at all, he meant.
Hermione glared down at her right hand— mottled, melted-looking skin stretched over fragile metacarpals and phalanges and not much else, the knuckles knobby, the wrist thin and bloody delicate- looking , like it might just snap if she leaned on it too hard—
"Thank you," she said evenly. "Doctor."
On the way out, she took a detour through the second floor.
Le Service de Lycanthropie was not separate from the rest of the hospital. It was right off a main corridor, through open double doors, and inside was a comfortable-looking lobby, complete with couches that looked like they could have been liberated from some old pureblood château. The handful of patients she could see without stopping to gawk looked perfectly at ease, some reading books or magazines, others playing chess.
Not for the first time, Hermione wondered why Professor Lupin had ever returned to Britain.
The afternoon of August twenty-first found her in a lofty parlor with more windows than wall, feeling rather loomed over. Madame Azalaïs, Fleur's (great?) grandmother, sat on a floating divan at least three feet up, legs dangling above the oddly springy floor, peering down at Hermione through pale blue-grey eyes rendered all the more piercing by her deep tan and russet feathers. Her left wing, folded close to her shawl-draped torso, was missing most of its flight-feathers— and in place of its talons were four inhumanly long prosthetic fingers, with joints and everything, covered in chains of tiny glyphs that glowed in Hermione's magesight.
The flapping of considerably smaller wings drew her gaze to one of the windows just in time to see a large-but-otherwise-normal bird fly through and perch on a nearby loveseat. One bright yellow eye peered across the parlor at her, ringed with crimson amidst a swath of black that reached almost to its sharply hooked beak.
"You have questions," Azalaïs intoned in her solemn, throaty voice. "Fleur believes the answers will not be wasted on you. So ask."
Neither Fleur nor her 'nest-mother' Apolline, both lounging on similarly buoyant furniture, interceded— so presumably this was just how Azalaïs talked to people.
Fleur's cousin Gio continued quietly humming as he hand-embroidered the cloak in his lap with some sort of magic thread.
"Thank you for taking the time to indulge me, Madame." Hermione bowed her head, because it seemed like the thing to do. "I don't mean to pry— most of my questions aren't about your people at all, at least not directly. It's just… well. What little history Hogwarts taught me was almost entirely focused on the accomplishments of human… well, wizards —"
(That she said in English)
"—and everything I know about the current society of their society, I learned at—"
A sharp tut cut her off.
"You proclaim their hegemony even now," Azalaïs scoffed.
"I'm… sorry? How so?"
"Wizards," she said. "I speak Anglais too, child. Wand-addicts, you mean. Sorcerers—"
(Hermione was increasingly sure that word some connotation she was missing)
"—who have the gold for wands, and think most other magic beneath them. Most other beings as well. Their society, you say. Yet the potions that heal and invigorate them, the fields that feed them, the wards behind which they hide… all impossible without witchcraft. And I would wager a great many of them were conceived shortly after their mothers danced sky-clad through sunrise."
…Hermione supposed this was what she deserved for presuming that any conversation with a Delacour would proceed as expected.
"Magical society," she amended. "I can't help but feel inexcusably ignorant about certain aspects of magical society. The circumstances of non-human people, specifically– I've gathered that werewolves are treated at least somewhat better here than they are in Britain; is the same true for others? Elves and goblins and–"
"Düérğyllŋə," said Madame Azalaïs.
"...Pardon?"
"They call themselves Düérğyllŋə. Düéryğ is the singular form. Goblin is a slur."
Oh.
Well.
If it was possible for one's magic to allow them to actually sink into the floor, now would be a great time for that to happen.
"They retain their sovereignty in the Alps, and have a monopoly on the gemstone market, which I have heard far too much blustering about to discuss while on holiday."
"Grandmother was in politics before she retired," said Fleur.
"'Werewolf'," Madame Azalaïs went on, "is considered pejorative as well. Lycanthropy is a disease. The Magical Republic of France does not deny people citizenship for catching diseases— or for being born with them. No exceptions. Because enough of us made enough noise and inconvenience about the people with lycanthropy that fought and died to make the Republic possible that not making them citizens would have been more trouble than it was worth. The protection and enforcement of their rights as citizens is a work in progress."
Ah. That old story.
"Being seen as diseased and contagious is a step up from being seen as monsters in disguise, but there are steps yet to climb." Madame Azalaïs leaned back on her floating divan with a sigh. "The Ministry supplies them with cognizance potions and warded-off parks for the full moons, and what few neglect to make use of such services are tried for public endangerment— not collared or put down like dogs."
—The Werewolf Capture Unit is a subdivision of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures—
—state-of-the-art containment measures—
—euthanize those that cannot be safely subdued—
Why on earth had Lupin returned to Britain?
How on earth could she ever have wanted to work at the Ministry? To spend who-knew-how-many years fighting an uphill battle up through its ranks, likely surrounded by more Crabbes and Goyles and Finch-Fletchleys, until she hopefully gained enough authority and influence to even start reforming it?
People who routinely, extrajudicially murdered other people could not be reformed.
A series of lilting, trilling syllables punctuated by sharp consonants drew her out of her thoughts— Madame Azalaïs, still looking down at her but talking… maybe not about her, but it certainly felt that way.
"Invigorating, isn't it?" Fleur replied in français.
Her grandmother hummed noncommittally, closing her eyes for a moment. The greying feathers of her neck sort of— puffed up?
"Elves," she said, "do not have citizenship. Too much bad blood between them and much of the old guard over how effectively they defended their masters, despite the fact that they were forced to do so."
She took a breath.
"They are legally classified as endangered near-human beings, and thus protected from abuse and enslavement. Most people are perfectly nice to them, though. They have to be, if they want their mail delivered on time."
What?
"Joining a union can be magically equivalent to swearing fealty to a House, with the right rituals," Fleur said quickly and quietly. "The headquarters of the National Postman's Union is some old château with enough ambient magic to sustain plenty of elves. Much more efficient than owls. "
"And kinder to the owls," Gio muttered, not looking up from his embroidery.
"Sylvans, who the English call dryads or…" Madame Azalaïs tapped her prosthetic fingers on the edge of her seat. "Fleur, you endured that place for seven months. What was the other word for…?"
"Waldyfs," said Fleur. "Not sure what the Gaels call them."
Azalaïs wrinkled her nose, and looked to Hermione.
"I— I'm afraid I don't know either, Madame. I've heard of 'dryads', of course, but not…"
"No," said the Madame. "I suppose you wouldn't have. The English do like their masquerade of civility."
Building up to something horrible, then. Lovely.
"The ancestors of the sylvans, like those of the elves, were refugees from the realm of the Fae— but where the elves compensate for the thinner ambient magic of our world by dwelling in places of concentrated power, the sylvans adapted themselves to draw sustenance from sunlight as well."
"Adapted themselves?" Hermione couldn't help but ask. "How…"
Madame Azalaïs glanced at Fleur, who shrugged, and then said: "How do you think, child?"
Her tone was casual. Not leading, like a teacher trying to guide you towards the answer, but like it was so obvious that there was no point discussing it.
Hermione's thought process over the ensuing seconds looked something like:
Voluntary adaptation— disdain for wizardry— witchcraft— ritual— transfiguration and alchemy before the advent of wands— indistinguishable at the mastery-level— the molecular level—
DNA is a molecule.
Fleur had never said how Veela came to be. British purebloods couldn't seem to agree on whether they were 'lesser' Fae or demons or magical beasts that had adapted to prey on humans, but if half of what Fleur said about their history with wizards was true—
"Many sylvans came here after the Revolution," said Madame Azalaïs, "fleeing slavery in England or the lands of its allies."
Hermione clenched her teeth to hold back her reaction to that—
"Here in the Republic most live on nature reserves, which they take care of in exchange for tax-exemption and the protection of the Conservation Corps. There's much debate over precisely how exploitative that is, given how much the government would pay humans to do the same work; their own assembly is divided on the issue."
"Those that tend the wand-woods are paid," said Apolline.
"Minimum wage," Azalaïs shot back, and then huffed. "They're legally categorized as people and entitled to citizenship, but only some clans bother to register their members— and one can hardly blame them for distrusting wizards with lists, after all their ancestors endured."
Slavery. More slavery.
How many thinking, feeling beings had wizards enslaved?
Why was no one else talking about this? Andromeda had told her about the plight of 'house' elves— why not these Sylvans?
Were they forced to tend the wand-woods of Britain? Did the Ollivanders use slave labor?
"Ishkha," said Madame Azalaïs.
Hermione glanced back at the empty doorway— and thus only saw the flash of violet in the corner of her eye.
Fleur's aunt-by-marriage flopped down into the loveseat, eyes just as brightly yellow as those of the bird she'd been seconds before.
"Ishkha," said Azalaïs, "is not an animagus."
What?
"Grandsire was," said Ishkha. "Grand mother was an ossifrage."
Ossi-fra…
Bone-breaker?
"'Bearded vulture' is a bit unwieldy," said Apolline.
Oh.
…
Well.
That answered a few questions Hermione had been embarrassed to have even thought of.
"So you're…" how to be tactful about this? "…like a reverse- animagus?"
"Sure," said Iskha, looking over at Gio's embroidery.
"I've never heard of…"
"Of course you haven't," said Madame Azalaïs. "The English like to pretend they don't have sex at all, much less the adventurous kind."
Hermione, who had spent a multiple evenings in the Room of Requirement listening to her fellow non-heterosexuals evocatively pine after a number of people including but not limited to her Yule Ball date and the tan, broad shouldered bird-woman currently lounging a few feet to her left, chose not to voice her disagreement with that statement.
(What would Angie and Alicia and Katie have thought, if they knew what Fleur looked like at home? Would they still find her attractive? Would they still trade euphemisms about her dexterity once they'd seen her fingers turn to talons?)
(Did… Veela stay in their flight-forms when they…?)
"Something to say?" Asked Fleur's grandmother, causing Hermione to twitch and sit up straighter.
"N-no Madame." She clasped her hands together in her lap to stop them fidgeting. "I mean yes! Sorry."
The corner of Azalaïs' lip twitched. "Don't be. Wizardesses apologize far too often."
Hermione couldn't help but frown. "I have performed some witchcraft."
Azalaïs just continued to look down at her with those pale, eerie eyes.
"So… people like Ishkha. I… don't suppose their circumstances in Britain are…"
"Better than those of Sylvans or people with lycanthropy, at least."
"The wizards cannot oppress what they cannot find," said Ishkha. "Can't speak for anyone over there, but my mother taught that mingling with humans is more trouble than it's worth."
…so definitely a 'no' on the citizenship, then.
"And in France?" Hermione asked.
"I have the token."
"Identification pendant," Apolline translated.
"And I'm in their books." Ishkha pulled her legs up onto the loveseat to crouch instead of sit, not looking at anyone in particular. "Because Zef. Pretty, tricksy man."
—Zefrín, Fleur's uncle that worked in the Ministry of Magical Security—
"They only bothered to marry to get her a visa to use as a stepping stone to citizenship." said Apolline. "For protection."
"Proof of domestic birth or residency," said Ishkha, swaying her head from side to side, "proof of personhood and magical nature in the absence of blood-relation to citizens, and three citizens to vouch for you."
Hermione narrowed her eyes. "What 'proof of personhood' does your government require?"
"Yes, exactly." Ishkha sucked her teeth disdainfully. "Tests. Had to learn letters."
A pretense of fairness, then, to mask discrimination against those without access to education.
And still a far sight better than her homeland.
Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Fakakta.
" How did things come to be—" No, that wasn't right— "How exactly were things made better for non-human people here than they are in Britain?"
"Not just Britain, child. Spain, Holland, Bulgaria, the Italian States…"
All still ruled by aristocracy. 'Pureblood' aristocracy, some with direct control over their Hit-Wizard and Auror-equivalents.
"That progress was made possible by the transition to democracy, then?" She asked.
"The Revolution," said Azalaïs. "It was made possible by the Revolution. Not Grindelwald and his sycophants, but the local movements they encouraged, supported, and coordinated with before power woke the beast in him. The first- and second-generation mages, the squibs and bastards, the Veela and Sylvans and lycanthropy-stricken. The Jews and Blacks and Imazighen and Arabs. The housewives and maids. The thieves and gangsters and prostitutes. The Muslims and the Christians. All of us together."
Right. No supreme saviors.
"And not just fighting." Her gaze pinned Hermione in place again. "Some never cast so much as a hex, yet did more for the cause than a dozen killers. Convincing their friends and family and neighbors to risk imprisonment and death or worse, breaking into news-printers to hide messages in the papers, knowing that innocent necks will feel the jackboot for it, managing egos and prejudices and resentments and needs to bring everyone to the table and keep them there, stealing food and medicine…"
Finally, she aimed those piercing eyes elsewhere - not at anyone else, but at the far wall, without really looking at it…
"Opening your home and your larder to strangers. Picking debris out of their shredded flesh and holding them down for amputation, with or without pain-potions. Having tea with killers while those they're hunting hide under the floorboards, or above the ceiling. Hiding while your hosts chat with such men, powerless to affect the outcome. Staying silent when just a few words could end your hunger and pain, could end the pain of the friends being tortured in front of you, because the cause is bigger than that. Making bombs in your basement, with no control over who they'll kill. Putting bullets in a comrade that the enemy has turned, because pulling a trigger is easier than casting a curse. Seducing secrets out of horrible men and killing them in their sleep. And planning! Endless planning, and arguing over plans, and coming up with false plans to lead the enemy into the jaws of your real plans, and waiting to hear who your plan got killed, and…"
She paused then, slouching slightly, breathing hard. A moment passed in relative silence.
"And then," she said, "once you've killed or captured everyone that kept you out of the halls of power, once the funerals and celebrations are over, you must sit down and debate. And debate. And debate . Over things that should be obvious. Over common decency. Over who actually deserves the rights you fought to win for everyone. You spend countless hours trying to convince strangers to care about people they've never met. You stand firm while men try to usher you back into the kitchen as if you didn't give just as much sweat and blood as they did if not more, burning with the urge to show them how you won a seat at the table - and you resist that urge, over and over. You learn which of your siblings-in-arms actually wanted to get rid of the landlords and masters and enforcers, and which ones just wanted to be them. Sometimes, when all else fails, you blackmail people."
"Mother," said Apolline, frowning.
"What?" Said her mother. "Who's she going to tell, Zef?"
Apolline sighed.
Hermione said nothing— just sat there, ramrod-straight, a little afraid to move.
With a burst of multi-colored flame Azalaïs returned to human form, and slouched back on her floating divan with no wings in the way. Her prosthetic fingers remained, attached to the palm of her left hand.
"Fleur, darling," she said, "fetch me a Perrier, will you?"
.
The day before her departure, beneath an umbrella on the beach, Hermione finally worked up the courage to ask:
"Fleur… isn't your real name, is it?"
Her friend, currently in human form because sandy feathers were torture (said form clad in a sheer sky-blue sarong over a muggle bikini), didn't so much as glance up from the book in her lap. "No more than 'Maïa' is yours."
"And… 'Delacour'?"
At this she did lower her book, and just looked at Hermione for a moment before saying: "Your father. He took your mother's surname, no?"
"Yes… he thought it would be better for his career. He was right."
A nod. "I imagine it must have felt like surrender. Maybe even like a betrayal of his heritage. But he did it anyway because it protects him, and you and your mother."
Hermione's parents had never said this— not explicitly. She had figured it out on her own, about a year and a half before Hogwarts. A rather upsetting realization, at the time.
"It's sort of like that for us," said Fleur, "but discrimination is not the only thing we have to fear, should the wrong person learn our true names."
Hermione's initial reaction (to her later shame) was of mild offense. I would never share a secret without permission, she thought. Fortunately, before she could make a fool of herself she recalled her own words to Parvati:
What you don't know, you can't be forced to reveal.
"I see," she replied. "So, what are your plans now that you've graduated? I'm sure you must have all sorts of prospe—"
Fleur groaned, slumping back in her beach chair. "Not you too."
"Sorry?"
"Don't let Mémé Aza catch you needlessly apologizing again. Before you know it she'll be rambling about how seducing the wives and mothers of pureblood bigots is actually Feminist Activism or something, and every attempt to excuse yourself will end in a guilt-trip."
Hermione suddenly and vividly remembered Narcissa Malfoy's latest Witch Weekly cover, and promptly tried to suppress the memory once more.
She failed.
"I do," said Fleur, staring out at the sea. "Have numerous prospects, that is. More than I would have if I was someone else's granddaughter, for sure. Some of them are even tempting."
Little wisps of pale blonde hair swayed in the breeze around her forehead and behind her ear. Her aura rippled pink, yellow, and gray.
"But then I entered that stupid tournament… and met you, and Harry, and Ginevra, and Cedric."
Hermione startled, just a bit.
No one had actually talked about Cedric all summer— only around him. No one she knew, at least, and the Daily Prophet only mentioned him to use Sirius as a scapegoat and insinuate things about Dumbledore. She didn't blame Harry for not wanting to relive that night, but…
"I got to know you all." Fleur gave her a sidelong glance and a slight smirk. "Some of you I even like."
It faded quickly.
"Liked."
Hermione held her breath.
"He didn't even really want to compete, you know?"
She had not. The longest conversation she'd ever had with Cedric was that day in the old dueling hall, trying to warn him and Fleur and Viktor about how dangerous the Tournament might become— did become. More of a lecture than a conversation, really…
"But he didn't want to disappoint his father, either." Fleur crossed her arms. "Then there's you, so informative about just how rotten things are over there. How blatantly corrupt and racist and dangerous, even before that monster returned. And here I am, lounging on the beach, when the terror may have already started."
Then she turned to look at Hermione again, gaze suddenly —jarringly— like her grandmother's, and asked:
"What would you do, if you were me?"
.
AN:
Azalaïs wasn't personally involved in every act of resistance she recounts, but I imagine she's worked extensively with people who were.
'Düéryğ' is just a play on 'dwergaz', the Proto-Germanic root word of 'dwarf'.
Bigger magic coming in the next chapter.
