Harry Fleur Chapter 16 Chapter 13-1

After rising back up to his feet and stretching out his body in satisfaction, Harry Potter turned away from Appoline Delacour's newly fucked silly and comatose body, to turn his attention towards the woman's youngest daughter instead.

"Master… Please take me next," Gabrielle breathed out, with a heady mixture of need and desperation leaking out through her every word. The French Duchess turned French maid was squirming where she stood in her tight black and white uniform, complete with lace headpiece, lace choker, a white low-cut bust hemmed in by a black corset, white lace sewn into the hem of her black flared-out skirts, and thigh high white stockings. Her violet eyes were gleaming with an unnatural intensity, her pure white hair was shining in the late afternoon sun, and while she no longer had a pair of white wings protruding from her back, she looked no less supernatural and exotic. Gabrielle was a vision of servile sex appeal and overwhelming charm, and she'd been teased to the point of near insanity.

It was official. Gabrielle Delacour was completely harmless. She was housebroken to the point that she'd just watched Harry rough fuck her very own mother into unconsciousness, and instead of getting angry or jealous, she'd found herself wanting to receive the exact same treatment.

"You've proven to me that you can indeed cooperate with other women and even another Veela," Harry happily praised as he stepped up to Gabrielle and ran a hand down her red flushed cheek. "There's a problem though," he continued in a newly reluctant tone of voice. "If you can control yourself to this extent, then I believe your elder sister can as well. I hesitate to begin a truly involved relationship with you without first speaking to your sister…"

"But Master, I don't understand and I've been meaning to ask," Gabrielle immediately whispered as she looked down at her feet and visibly squirmed with tightly controlled lust. "Didn't Fleur come to see you just over a week ago? Didn't she come to speak to you two days before I arrived?"

Very suddenly and very thoroughly, Harry's face took on a deadly serious expression. "No. I never saw your sister at all. Tell me more…"

"Eet was actually my seester hoo managed to free ze two of us from our marriages wizout 'aving to suffer all of ze ruinous social stigma," Gabrielle freely admitted with her hands balled up just under her body type defying breasts. "She deed so by using every scrap of her political eenfluence, but from what I was told, she ended up agreeing to complete an assignment for ze government een return."

"Your sister's no longer married to Bill," Harry repeated in a voice that was carefully, studiously, bland.

"Oui, yes, almost eemediately after we were returned to our mozzer's 'ome een disgrace, my seester marched out of ze 'ouse and sought out every seengle government contact zat she knows. Wizzin only two weeks' time, I was eenformed zat Fleur was no longer married to Bill, and I was asked eef I wanted my marriage annulled. I, of course, said yes, and I began sifting my way through the piles of paperwork that needed to be filled out."

"At the same time, Fleur was planning to come talk to me at my estate," Harry furthered.

"Yes, yes, a few days prior to ze annulment of my marriage, Fleur explained zat she was going to visit your home as soon as her divorce was finalized," Gabrielle haltingly explained. "I will admit zat I was somewhat pleased zat my seester wasn't present at your estate upon my arrival a week ago. I zought zat ze two of you never managed to reconcile your differences, and I was relieved to potentially 'ave less competition for your time. Now I ave come to realize zat you really are completely eensatiable, and I am unconcerned about sharing you. Eenstead, I've been meaning to ask just why you sent Fleur away. Now I know... You never did. You never saw my seester een ze first place... Fleur must still be performing zat task for zose government types. I don't like zis at all 'Arry… Please, we must go find my seester!"

"Do you know anything about the job Fleur agreed to take on," Harry asked even as he conjured an impeccably cut black suit and tie combo onto his body and magically fixed his sex addled hair.

"I was not eenformed. I was only told zat she was completing an assignment for ze French government, and zat eet shouldn't last longer zan a day or two at ze most" Gabrielle revealed with her eyes looking up and left in an attempt to remember more clearly.

"Fleur never ended up coming to see me,'' Harry repeated as if to himself. "Do you remember who the specific government official was?"

"Zere were three men, two of which I did not recognize, but ze third man goes by ze name of Councilor Paul Bernard. 'Ze man ees a member of ze Magical Counsel of France, and 'ee oversees Magical Law Enforcement.

"Stepping closer to Gabrielle's side, Harry suddenly wrapped his arms around her little waist, causing the newly worried young woman to snuggle herself tightly around his body in return. "We're Apparating to France's Magical Council building to speak to this Mr. Bernard," Harry explained even as he idly kissed Gabrielle on the forehead. "I would've felt it if Fleur was ever in danger in this plane of existence, and I never did. The problem is, now that I'm actively looking, I can't sense Fleur in this realm at all. Your sister's globetrotting through some other dimension at the moment, and we need to find out which one. I'm assuming you want to come along?"

"Oui, yes, I eentend to 'elp," Gabrielle immediately agreed, her voice becoming both tritoned and ethereal in her rising determination. It appeared that Gabrielle and more importantly Bell, her Proto Veela alter ego, were extremely protective of their elder sister… Good.

With a simple nod of his head, Harry and Gabrielle instantly and silently disappeared from the Delacour manor house.

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1 Week and 2 Days Earlier...

Over the last couple of decades, the Magical Community of earth had scraped together a much greater understanding of the multiverse present all around them, and with this understanding came the discovery and exploration of a growing number of pocket dimensions present in and around various mundane locations all around the planet. While having an expanding alternative plane of existence available to settle into was a good thing, an unfortunate side effect was that every lunatic and wannabe warlord that the magical community had to offer made a habit of using these very hard to find locations as their bases of operation.

The even more unfortunate aspect of this somewhat inevitable outcome, was the fact that Fleur Delacour was currently the uncontested best in the industry when it came to ferreting out and dealing with these so called 'pocket Lords.' She had the magical expertise to locate and open these intra-dimensional portals, and she had the authority to scrounge up huge amounts of resources to clean them out.

No good deed goes unpunished…

Back when Fleur first approached all of her government colleagues to demand, not ask, but demand that they make arrangements for her marriage to quietly come to an end, most of the officials and administrators that she knew merely arched an eyebrow at her in surprise, nodded their heads in ready acceptance and then began figuring out how to accomplish the task. It was a full two weeks later, just a single day before Fleur's divorce was completely finalized and she could finally move on with her life, that one of her least favorite colleagues decided to derail her plans.

Just twelve hours before Fleur was planning to travel to Harry's Mars estate, a rather annoying government official by the name of Paul Bernard appeared out of the woodworks, aiming to capitalize on Fleur's newfound weakness by making her agree to perform a mission for him. Not only were the man's methods completely repugnant, but the mission briefing that followed nearly had Fleur flying into a full on, out of control, passionfire rage.

According to Mr. Bernard, the Councilor in charge of France's Magical Law Enforcement, the government of Magical France completely despised its current reliance on and lack of authority over a certain incredibly powerful emerald green-eyed wizard. In response to this feeling of powerlessness and the ever-growing fear that it engendered within them, the French Government had gone to increasingly absurd lengths to safeguard themselves from this wizard's so-called 'inevitable descent towards the dark arts.' Long story short, the government of Magical France had poured an immense amount of time, money, people and resources into building themselves what amounted to a magical nuclear weapon, designed and geared specifically towards eliminating one pre-determined individual…

Harry James Potter.

The exact mechanics of the Magical Artifact were unclear even to Bernard. What he did know for sure was that the weapon was so immensely powerful, so enormously lethal, and so specifically targeted, there was a pretty good chance that merely learning about its existence was enough to curse Lord Potter into a coma.

Of course, it could come as no surprise that the obscenely dangerous magical artifact that the French government built in secret ended up being stolen from within their most secure and secret vaults by a psychopath with bad intentions.

Because of course it had...

According to Mr. Bernard's explanation, a man by the name of Devon Devinier, a longtime prisoner of the state that had been jailed in the same lab complex where the weapon was built, managed to free himself from the dozens upon dozens of extremely powerful magical restraints keeping him in place, at which point he enslaved all of the wizards residing within the facility, and then escaped with the magical device in hand. Not long after the man's escape, the Magical Council of France received an extremely well-constructed ransom letter. In this letter, Devinier threatened to show the superweapon that was currently in his possession to Lord Potter himself, so that the two of them could discuss just who it was that created it and for what purpose it existed.

It goes without saying that the French government immediately caved to every single one of Mr. Devinier's various demands. Two of which were the release of nearly fifty terrorists from France's Magical prison to rally to his cause, and uncontested custody of a brand-new pocket dimension that he could use as a base of operations.

It was a hard pill to swallow, but as it turns out, the men and women leading Fleur's country were exactly as Harry always described them. They really were nothing but a bunch of 'knuckle dragging degenerates'..

Proving himself to be a small cut above his peers, the offer that Mr. Bernard gave Fleur in the minutes that followed, revealed the man to be an exceptionally shrewd politician... Bernard suggested that he might help Fleur keep her divorce very, very discreet, while at the same time offering her the chance to destroy the weapon that was designed to eradicate her 'friend' Harry Potter. All she had to do in return was agree to take part in an exceedingly dangerous operation.

The mission was as follows:

Fleur Delacour was to infiltrate Mr. Devinier's pocket dimension, locate his lair, and steal back the weapon so that it could no longer be used as blackmail material.

That was the entire mission. Mr. Bernard didn't want Fleur to attempt to destroy or arrest Mr. Devinier because he didn't believe that she'd succeed. All that Mr. Bernard desired of Fleur was for her to get in and get out again without being noticed.

According to Mr. Bernard, if Fleur and her team were ever noticed within Mr. Devinier's domain, then dying would be the best outcome available to them. At first, Fleur was completely indignant that she was being underestimated to such an extreme. Then, in the minutes that followed, Mr. Bernard explained why he thought Fleur was no match for the man, and she ended up completely agreeing with his assessment.

As Fleur should've expected, there was a reason why the French government had been keeping Mr. Devinier locked up in their highly classified military research lab deep underground, and it was just as repulsive as the magical super-weapon that they'd been building within the same facility. Devon Devinier was a one of a kind magical creature, and as a result, he was dangerous beyond measure. The French government had spent the last 80 plus years trying to figure out how to recreate his various powers for weaponization purposes.

And in so doing, they'd created a monster… or at least they'd made that monster much, much more dangerous...

To start with, Mr. Devon Devinier was Earth's very last fully formed and manifested male Proto Veela, and the French military managed to capture him at great cost during the last of the fighting in the Veela uprising over a hundred years earlier...

Of course, one aspect of recorded history that was never going to be revealed to the general public was that Mr. Devinier essentially was the Veela uprising. By the time the fighting finally came to an end, the man had Imperius mind controlled so many of his Veela compatriots into fighting for his cause, it ended up becoming completely impossible to find out just who was guilty and who was innocent. As a result, the French government was forced to be extremely strict with all Veela regardless of their involvement, and to this day the Veela species was still in the process of repopulating itself.

According to Mr. Bernard's explanation, Devon Devinier was already the single most powerful Veela on the face of the planet back when the Veela uprising started, and that had been before he was subjected to just under a hundred years of magical experimentation by the French government... In recent years, the man's allure-based powers had grown to such an unbelievable extent, he could infect other people into a state of obsessive devotion merely by making eye contact with them.

Fleur had flinched violently when Mr. Bernard explained the exact particulars of the Allure assault Mr. Devinier was capable of using, and her face had turned a pale white at just the thought of it. Very few Veela in all of the world had ever been strong enough for their allure to cause status effects that would last beyond the time that their allure was actually being released. The fact that Mr. Devinier could use an allure-based attack to establish total dominion over his victims was abhorrent, it was sickening, it justified every single one of the fears that wizardkind held for Veela…

Fleur knew right away that Devon Devinier could not be allowed to live...

It was during the silent moment that followed Mr. Bernard's explanation that he handed over a recent photo of Mr. Devon Devinier attached to a psychological profile and a generalized explanation of his various skills.

For all that Mr. Devinier was purported to be well over a hundred years old, the man didn't look a day over thirty. He was tall, well built, with platinum white hair, lavender blue eyes, and a perfectly sculpted bone structure underneath flawlessly smooth and luminous skin. The man was a beautiful, terrible, powerful magical creature, with waves of unbelievably intense allure roiling off of his body at all times, six or seven Horcruxes hidden somewhere in his domain, and a mean streak a mile wide. He was a certifiably insane megalomaniacal psychopath, with the power to enslave people into fanatical levels of both lust and devotion.

Devon Devinier was a nightmare made flesh… He was as close to a fallen angel turned devil as Earth had seen in eons...

Despite all of the dangers involved in the mission and the fact that Fleur wouldn't have minded seeing her own government suffer, she ended up agreeing to undertake the assignment anyway. Harry was in danger. It was as simple as that. She would not, could not allow that to continue. Very few witches or wizards on any planet at all were strong enough to actually pose a threat to her newly estranged lover, but with Magical France's military having poured all of their resources towards creating a weapon-of-mass-destruction aimed directly at his head, this was probably the exception…

Gods and Goddesses help her, but Fleur Delacour really did love that man…

After ensuring that Mr. Bernard would immediately inform Gabrielle about her newfound freedom, Fleur was shepherded off to a military installation somewhere in Northern France. Once on location, she made a point of concealing her identity under a black hooded cloak and mask, before meeting the team of warmages that would be distracting Devinier away from her infiltration.

Warmages are among the most dangerous wizards on the face of the planet due to the fact that they've had an entire series of extremely illegal and dangerous Runic spell formations tattooed onto their bodies. Among several other things, these tattoos make warmages physically faster and stronger, immune to status debuffs like fear or confusion, and it means that they're never, ever disarmed. A warmage always has several offensive spell formations tattooed into the palms of their hands so that they can continue unleashing spells even if their wand is destroyed.

Of course, almost every Magical government on Earth strictly prohibited the use of Runic tattoos because they couldn't condone a population that was never completely disarmed. The day to day operations of their various Auror, court, legal and political systems would become far too dangerous to take part in without some variety of control in place.

Long story short, being caught with a Runic tattoo on your body will get you sentenced to prison for life in every country that has a working government.

So far as dark wizards are concerned, this prohibition is completely irrelevant, which is why Harry always went out of his way to completely remove the wand hand from any wizard that attacks him. Under normal circumstances, having a limb removed is easily repairable with the use of skelegro, muscle and skin replacement potions, but whenever law enforcement finds out that the limb contains Runic tattoos, they don't bother to do so. The removed limb is henceforth considered a weapon, and is thus confiscated. By this point, there were hundreds and hundreds of dark wizards residing in various magical prisons all over the world that are sporting brand-new magical prosthetics.

All things considered, Fleur was being escorted into her mission by a very, very capable group of young men and women. Unfortunately for all of them, none of their skills and abilities could protect them from Devon's allure-based powers. They needed to get in, protect Fleur until she found a place to hide, and then get back out as soon as magically possible...

Within just 12 hours of her meeting with Mr. Bernard, Fleur and her newly assigned warmage 'distraction squad' made their way towards the location of Mr. Devinier's interdimensional portal, where she managed to crack open the aperture and gain access to the man's lair. Then she was layering dozens upon dozens of espionage spells all over her body, such as the Disillusionment invisibility spell, the scent washing spell, the sound concealing spell, the notice-me-not spell, and a few different magic, matter and spirit obscuring boundaries that Harry had taught her over the last couple of months. For all intents and purposes, Fleur didn't exist at the moment. Harry's boundaries were so effective, Fleur was currently nothing more than a ghost that just happened to still be alive. She could no more attack her enemies than they could attack her because for the most part, she wasn't interacting with physical reality.

Quietly and with extreme amounts of discipline, the squad of warmages preceded Fleur into the portal… Only to find out that Devinier had long since learned of, and prepared for, their arrival. A literal horde of silently standing people, an army of completely enthralled witches and wizards, were filling the clearing surrounding the portal entrance, with their wands unerringly pointed directly at the aperture.

"Circle formation and move back towards the portal," the squad leader of the warmages immediately barked out, as the group of wizards suddenly found themselves surrounded on three sides. Even as a hailstorm of different curses and spells careened in their direction, the squad of warmages bunched up into a tight circle and began backing away towards the portal. The formation allowed the Protego shields that they were casting to stack together and it was a very effective defense, but at least one man was hit by an unblockable killing curse that left his dead body cooling on the ground. A second man was hit by an unknown dark purple curse that had copious amounts of blood spilling from his every orifice, and his eyes rolling into the back of his head even as he fell to the ground.

Not even thirty seconds after the warmages infiltrated Devon Devinier's domain, they'd already taken losses and they were hastily retreating back through the portal. Considering the risk that Devon Devinier posed for France, as well as the fact that Fleur definitely would've been able to hide out amongst the nearby trees in all of the chaos, these men were still probably going to consider their mission a success.

They'd be wrong...

As it turns out, the warmage that had been hit by the dark purple curse wasn't actually dead yet. The seriously injured twenty-something man survived just long enough to be healed by one of the enthralled members of Devinier's army…

If the members of the retreating warmage squad had known that they were leaving behind a survivor to be snatched up into Devinier's forces… they'd have finished the man off themselves…

Just a few moments after the squad of warmages scrambled back through the portal, Devinier himself Apparated into the clearing, stared down into the eyes of the weakened enemy wizard, and magically enthralled the man into a fanatically devoted state of complete obedience right then and there…

And that was the moment when the newly enthralled warmage began spilling his guts about how his mission had been to smuggle a woman matching Fleur's cloaked description into his domain.

Of course, by that point Fleur was no longer listening in from her nearby hiding spot. Instead, she was silently Apparating to the furthest extent of her visual range over and over again. She needed to make a run for it while she still had the space to move. She needed to find a hiding spot so that she could erect hundreds of obfuscating wards and find-me-not spells, and she needed to do so now!

Fleur Delacour's presence in Devon Devinier's domain had been revealed…

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1 Day Later….

It had to be said that Fleur really was a genius caliber witch and a phenom in her field. She knew all of the spells required to survive undetected deep in enemy territory, she knew when and how to use them and even more importantly, she knew when not to...

After finding a wolf infested cave deep in the mountain barrier ringing Devon's little 'kingdom,' Fleur immediately Confundus spelled the entire pack of creatures into believing that she was the youngest wolf among their number, and then she began warding the cave to the point of absurdity. Every sight, sound, smell, heat, magic, spirit and presence concealing ward that Fleur knew of was slowly but steadily applied to the cave walls and entrance, until even the wolves couldn't figure out where they were and she had to complete a spell exception around their bodies.

Next, Fleur started preparing to attempt a very ambitious ward that she'd only ever seen Harry Potter use in the past, which meant that she needed to have completely maxed out magic reserves and boatloads of mental fortitude. The magic that Harry could casually perform would normally leave a whole team of wizards sweating bullets and shaking in exhaustion. It didn't matter. It had to be done. Fleur had the need, she had the will… She had the intent…

Harry Potter always told her that strong intent is half of what makes magic possible…

After a good night's sleep curled up among the newly spell-cleaned and ultra-fluffy wolves, Fleur walked into the center of the cave, aimed her wand down at the youngest wolf in the pack and drew in a very deep breath. What she was about to do would be… hard, and just a little bit amoral… Unfortunately, it still needed to be done. Fleur slowly and carefully completed a grant intelligence spell on the little wolf below her, because doing so was completely necessary for the spell that she was about to perform. Then, when the youngest wolf's head jerked up in surprise and it began looking around the room with newly aware, newly cognizant eyes, Fleur completed a new variety of Fidelius charm that Harry invented using this wolf as the secret keeper. She channeled the knowledge that this cave was a magically protected secret hideout directly into the wolf's mind using an Auror issue empathy spell, and then she completed the charm with an absolutely massive outpouring of magic.

With a cry of max effort and a dangerously empty magical core, Fleur unceremoniously collapsed onto her side, where she was sniffled and snuffled by the newly intelligent little wolf…

It had worked… It was working…

The brand-new variety of Fidelius charm that Fleur had just completed would never be revealed to anyone because the secret keeper didn't have the ability to communicate. Fleur's cave was secret, it was hidden, it was safe.

Harry Potter really was a genius. Of course, he also would've had a lot of motivation to improve upon the charm that had failed his parents with such tragic results…

For the next eight hours, as Fleur just lay there on the sandy floor of the cave and recovered from advanced magical exhaustion, she allowed her mind to dwell on the emerald green-eyed wizard that she was currently on the outs with. Fleur was… a mess, where Harry Potter was concerned, and she knew it. She had no self-control, no self-restraint, no sense of boundaries, no sense of the appropriate, no clue what she was doing… She was a primal, territorial, jealous, nearly feral, love sick, halfblood Veela that was experiencing a full imprinting towards a completely unapologetic womanizer.

And yes, it was just as bad as it sounds…

Harry was smart enough to understand exactly how Fleur might be feeling, and yet he was underestimating just how much damage it does her that he sleeps around with every single witch in creation. Harry thought that Fleur was reluctant to leave her husband because she couldn't make up her mind, when the reality was far, far simpler than that. She was merely desperate to know whether or not he truly cared about her, whether or not he wanted her in his life. Two weeks earlier, when she was magically affixed to the wall of Harry's bedroom, Fleur had accused the man of being in love with her, and he hadn't disagreed, and she'd been completely elated… up until the point that the man explained why she was no longer welcome in his home, impregnated a woman just a few feet away from her, force Apparated her back to Earth, and removed her name from his wards…

There was really no way of describing just how painful it had been for Fleur to finally realize that Harry wasn't just going to forgive and forget every single time she trounced all over his life...

The more interesting question was, why had it taken Fleur so long to realize how out of control she was?... In what world was injecting powerful magical narcotics and truth serums into your lover anything other than a ruinously stupid and suicidal plan of action? If Fleur didn't know better, she'd think that her mother had suggested the 'plan' with the specific intention that her relationship with Harry explode into millions of pieces. Except… no… Appoline Delacour really was just that domineering and thoughtless… Fleur had always thought that she was quite a bit more even tempered than her mother owing to the fact that she was a halfblood, but that wasn't a line of reasoning that she could fall back on anymore.

Fleur had completed a lot of soul searching within the last couple of weeks, and she'd come to the same conclusion over and over again. She was completely screwed… Harry Potter seriously just wasn't the right person for her. Her magic, her constitution, her personality, all of it was diametrically opposed to being with a man that couldn't dedicate himself to her…

It was just too bad that Fleur was deeply, passionately, desperately in love with the man...

Every single night when Fleur went to bed, her mind turned in rapid circles over and over again like a rat in a wheel… If she was ever going to move forward and even attempt to get what she wanted out of her life, Fleur was going to have to bend, and flex, and grow, until she found out what she was truly capable of...

In the meantime, one thing that Fleur was capable of doing again was move, which meant that it was time for her to get back to saving Harry Potter's life…

Despite everything surrounding her current situation and how unbelievably dangerous it was, the idea of saving Harry's life was definitely a pleasant one. It felt good. It felt right. Turnaround was fair play… Harry had saved the world hundreds and hundreds of times… It was well past time that someone decided to put themselves on the line for him in return.

Moving to the entrance of the cave, Fleur applied all of her various espionage spells and then moved out onto the forested slopes of the mountain...

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1 Week Later...

Today would be the day that Fleur finally managed to steal back that damned weapon from within Devinier's castle fortress. It had to be… Fleur had been living on nothing but Conjured food and water for long enough at this point that it was beginning to take a toll on her health and nutrition. Even though the food she'd been conjuring was both permanent and superficially nutritious, there were always trace nutrients, minerals and enzymes that just can't be imagined with enough perfection to bring them into being. No witch or wizard, no matter how powerful, with the possible exception of Harry Potter, could survive solely on conjured food for extended periods of time. On the other hand, being able to bring forth her own supply of food had allowed Fleur to exist with almost no impact on the landscape around her, which in turn had allowed her to move around Devinier's domain like the ghost she was trying to impersonate.

Over the last week, Fleur had mapped out Devinier's castle, counted his people, scouted his defenses, found the room containing the weapon, and constructed a plan of action to retrieve it without getting caught.

Now all that was left was to enact the plan and get the hell out of here…

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One of the problems with enthralling yourself an army is that the people involved will lose a lot of their initiative because their only desire at that point will be to obey… For that reason, the patrol rotations of the various people within Devon Devinier's castle were as regular as clockwork with no deviation at all.

Fleur moved about the building with a ridiculous ease as she moved towards the one door within the castle that was always guarded twenty-four-seven. The poor warmage that had been caught during Fleur's arrival was the most offensively dangerous man among Devinier's army, thus he was the man that guarded the weapon most times of the day. The problem with Devinier's desire to have the warmage standing guard at this door at all times, was that he had the man standing there for upwards of 24-30 hours at a time. Yesterday at this time, Fleur had seen that the man was finally failing. Today was going to be the day that he went down.

Of course, Fleur could just spell the warmage to sleep, but one of the smarter pieces of magical equipment that everyone in the castle was wearing was an amulet that would alert Devinier if anyone in his little 'army was interfered with magically. No… Fleur would have to wait… She needed to let the enemy make their own mistakes.

Finally, after four straight hours of watching the warmage suffer from a distance, Fleur finally managed to catch the moment that the man's eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he collapsed backwards onto the ground like a frozen stiff cadaver.

After moving down the hallway as silently as a ghost, Fleur stunned the warmage to make sure that he stayed asleep, grabbed the keys that the man was holding, and then slipped inside of the tower room as quietly as she could.

There it was… The weapon…

Sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the circular tower room was a stone tablet covered on every side by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of glowing Runes to the point that it was glowing with an angry red energy. Fleur immediately bit her lips because she was capable of reading some of what she was looking at. If unleashed, the dark and primal energies that this tablet was just barely managing to control, could atomize Harry down to his very last particle.

After scanning every inch of the floor and walls for any signs of magical traps or gimmicks, Fleur moved over towards the tablet, rested her hands on its sides and began lifting it off of its pedestal.

What Fleur had missed up in the unlit recesses at the top of the tower, was the massive Runic trap spell that was inscribed into the stone. With a crack and a blindingly bright light, Fleur's wand was immediately stripped from within its holster, and her body was immobilized where she was standing. Fleur was stuck in place. She was frozen. She was caught.

Fleur's mind immediately started moving a mile a minute as she made sure that she finished accomplishing her objective one way or another…

"Mon mon mon… Qu'avons-nous ici (My my my… What have we here)," a tall and muscular man with pure white hair called out in cultured French after Apparating into the room.

Immediately after Devinier's arrival, an extraordinarily intense wave of allure filled the entire room to capacity, and Fleur flinched as a result. This man was a hammer… He had no finesse. His allure rubbed against her like a series of molesting hands. It was too forward, too intimate… "Trop présomptueux (Too presumptuous)," Fleur growled out in an irate tone of voice…"

"D'accord, maintenant tu m'as impressionné (Okay, now you've impressed me)," Devinier murmured as he rounded in front of Fleur, and looked down into the dark recesses of her cowl. "Qui es-tu pour défier mon allure? (Who are you that you defy my allure?)"

Fleur didn't respond. She was much too preoccupied with something else.

Devon's smile only grew larger as he pushed back Fleur's cowl, pulled off her mask, and revealed the extraordinarily beautiful blonde Veela woman hidden beneath. "Mon oh mon (My oh my)," he breathed out as he ran his hands up the frozen woman's face and caressed her tightly closed eyes. "Je pense que j'ai enfin trouvé ma poulinière destinée… Félicitations Mme Fleur Delacour de l'ICW... Tu es juste mon type, alors je vais t'accorder chacun de mes enfants... (Congratulations Ms. Fleur Delacour of the ICW… You're just my type, so I'm going to grace you with every… single… one… of my children…)"

"N'hésitez pas à vous faire foutre à la place (Feel free to go fuck yourself instead)," Fleur growled out through clenched teeth. Fleur's anger at the man's attitude was only made stronger by the similarities in his attitude to her mother, Gabrielle and even herself. The turnabout was a little too on the nose. It was hitting way too close to home. Fleur didn't need this kind of abject life lesson when she was trying to focus!

Then, with one last flex of her magical muscles, Fleur was finally finished with her task, and she had to force herself not to heave a massive sigh of relief.

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