Fleur Delacour had never felt more embarrassed in her entire life than she did as she walked to the dining hall with her family. She'd blown it big time and there was no excuse for her behavior. She'd assumed a great many things this afternoon and she'd been incorrect in every single one of them. She'd assumed that it was a suitor in her father's study and she'd been wrong and arrogantly so.
She'd further assumed that someone was so enraged over not getting her hand in marriage that hostilities were happening! She'd barreled into the room with her wand raised like a barbarian, shaming her father because of her unbelievable arrogance. She'd viewed the boy across the room from her with unconcealed contempt, seeing someone... lesser. She had in her arrogance believed that he was nothing more than an inconvenience, foisting his aura upon her with impunity.
She in her arrogance had believed that he was doing so on purpose in order to be inappropriately intimate with her. Fleur had just thirty minutes earlier left a sparring match, where her personal weakness, arrogance had been pointed out to her! Fleur was in a tailspin of furious thought as she digested all of that and... the ballad of Harry Potter.
The ballad of Harry Potter... incredible, remarkable, unbelievable! Yes, oh yes, both Harry and Dumbledore had sworn magically binding oaths on their honesty, but she still found it to be so...
No single man should be able to withstand so much heartbreak, physical agony, abuse and extreme isolation, without becoming naught but a monster in return. The boy currently sitting across from her at the dining room table was completely incapable of concealing his emotions. He was... kind, quiet, shy… Harry Potter was an open book to absolutely everyone at the table and they all found themselves humbled that such a monstrous upbringing could foster such a considerate young man.
At the moment, Harry was visibly demanding that his aura create a relaxed atmosphere through sheer force of will, as they could all see that he himself was nervous. Fleur was interested to find out what mental imagery Harry used to control his emotions like he does. She was also interested to find out what he really thought of it all...
Harry looked like an eleven year old, underfed, poorly clothed boy. He did not look like the boy who'd done all of the impossible things that Dumbledore just finished describing. Surviving under those circumstances, fighting and destroying Dementors?
On the other hand...
The way that Harry had moved when Fleur first burst into the room, and the way Dumbledore had explained his story... Dumbledore's story had left just enough ambiguity that Fleur was forced to make her own conclusions. She'd concluded that Harry was used to being in dangerous situations. That life or death struggle wasn't even all that uncommon for the boy. Why of course Harry Potter should have to fight for his very life against the closest things to devils on the face of the earth. The elderly wizard had mentioned this incident as if he was saying 'oops some milk was spilled, my mistake, moving on…'
As Fleur thought about it further, she came to the conclusion that Dumbledore was a little too loose with both his school and his personal morality. Harry had saved the school twice more while he was a student there? He'd have been eleven or twelve years old at the time!
Suffice it to say, Fleur had a lot of questions for Harry Potter. The real problem was that she'd ruined any chance she might have had for answers. She'd almost attacked the boy naught but fifteen minutes earlier, so now she couldn't figure out how best to approach him.
There was also another reason why Fleur was unraveling into a silent and stony stillness... For the first time since she'd turned fourteen, Fleur was struggling to control her own magical allure. It kept radiating out of her in quick bursts before she was able to slam it back down again. She wasn't releasing a strong allure (thank the Gods) but it was continuously happening every few minutes and it was maddening!
Of course, it didn't take a genius to figure out the reason behind Fleur's newest problem... Harry Potter's magic was blanketing the entire house as if they were standing on top of ten intersecting ley lines of power. Harry Potter was a walking StoneHenge of magical power, and Fleur was starting to hate the boy because of what it was doing to her magic. At exactly the same time, Fleur was angry at herself for disliking the boy over something he couldn't control, but in the end that just served to make her resent Harry Potter even more...
Long story short, Fleur Delacour was struck silent for the first time in her living memory, and it was killing her with frustration! Easily the most interesting person that Fleur had ever met had just asked his house elf for his lunch. He had politely asked the most well dressed house elf Fleur had ever seen, if he could please bring him the food that was prepared for him!
Fleur was building even more questions as time went by. Why does Harry wear badly repaired, bottle cap glasses when he's an Ancient and most Noble Lord worth a fortune? Why does he wear naught but rags when his house elf looks fantastic? At this point, Fleur was maintaining a cool, calm persona out of sheer necessity. It was either that or start screaming questions at the boy sitting across the dining room table from her, like a complete lunatic. She watched with carefully concealed jealousy as Gabrielle run roughshod all over the boy, with her much weaker allure flying around at full power.
And Gabrielle really was being very demanding of Harry's attention, whispering dozens of questions into his ear which he answered kindly in low tones that were of no use to Fleur.
If there was any consolation in Fleur's current situation, it was the fact that Harry appeared to be resisting the effects of both Gabrielle's weak allure and the allure that was leaking from within her own body. Maybe he didn't even notice… But that was too much to hope for...
Fleur just added that to her growing laundry list of questions. Was Harry weak or strong in regards to Veela's allure?
More and more with time, Fleur found their current situation completely unacceptable! There was no man on this earth that was able to deny her information for long. She would wait for the opportunity to advance on the boy this afternoon.
Harry Potter had many questions to answer for her...
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