March 30th, 1997
He spun his wand through his fingers, clock- and anticlockwise, rolling the smooth wood across his knuckles like a sickle.
Wisps of mist as dark as night and cool as frost whirled with the pale elder. The haze seeped through the countless runes carved along the handle like thick black tar, crawling up to his knuckles and sinking slim razor-sharp teeth into his skin.
In that faint prickle of pain, all the noise and cheers and tumult from the stands was caught like driftwood along the shore; all of it but the soft, insistent rage whispering from somewhere beneath his heart.
"Mon Coeur." Slender fingers rested on his forearm. "Are you with me?"
The wand fell still and Tristan blinked up; Fleur's bright blue eyes hovered before his face, a faint wrinkle creasing between her slim brows. "Are you feeling unwell, Tristan?"
Through stray strands of her silver-blonde hair dancing in the faint breeze, Tristan caught sight of Richard Wagner amidst all his friends, laughing and jesting and cheering for their comrade on the platform.
"No, I'm fine," he said, smothering the rage to a slim trickle and taking a deep breath through the disquiet. "Or I will be fine. In three days at the latest."
Fleur tracked his gaze over her shoulder. "Je sais, mon Coeur. But we need to be careful and patient about it so as not to paint a target on our backs." She took his hands in hers. "There is little point in killing him if one of us ends up in Azkaban for it, non?"
" Patient..." Tristan muttered, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back again. "I've been patient for over a week already."
'Every day I see that smug grin, every night I dream of it.' The rage stirred back up, its gaping mouth full of sharp curved teeth. 'I want him to suffer. And then, I'll just wipe him away for good.'
"I know you hate waiting, mon Coeur," Fleur murmured, tracing little patterns on the back of his hand with the ball of her thumb. "But tomorrow, after the quarter-finals, there will be only a handful of opponents left. Soon, one of us will make Richard pay for his threats."
'One of us?' A selfish little whisper wormed through Tristan's thoughts, snagged on flashes of Wagner's smug scarred grin. 'But I want to be the one. I need to be the one...'
Tristan's fingers slipped from her hands to his knee, picking up a swift rhythm; he watched Wagner's friend blast his opponent over the edge into the fjord and strut off the circuit to booming applause, collecting a round of pads on the back from all his friends.
Fleur's hand closed over his drumming fingers. "Tristan?" she cocked her head at him. "N'es tu pas d'accord?"
'No. No, I don't agree.' He shrugged. "Of the two of us, it was you he... wronged the most." The words tasted foul as rotten flesh on his tongue; Tristan clawed for some distraction. "What's he like in a duel anyway?" His gaze flitted to the celebrating Durmstrangs. "You've faced him before, haven't you?"
"Richard is fast and strong. His spells all look like ordinary ones you learn in class, but they are old and obscure, taught only to select members of his family. Many of them cannot be shielded from by common means."
"That doesn't sound too bad compared to what we've already seen here," Tristan murmured. "And I know a thing or two about obscure spells."
"I had not finished, mon Coeur," Fleur whispered. "Richard has a... gift." That little wrinkle between her slim blonde brows deepened as she studied him. "I believe you already encountered it that night, non?"
Tristan shoved the vision of Fleur surrounded by white rose petals somewhere deep below the cruel void beneath his heart. "Legilimency must be learned. That makes it a skill, not a gift."
"It is not legilimency. It is called adspecti."
He clawed through everything he recalled from the Black, Potter and his family's library. "How come I've never heard of that?"
"It is experimental Roman blood-magic, passed down to all true-born sons of a family." Fleur's lips curved. "Almost like your Parseltongue, just more sexist."
"So it's rare."
"Very," Fleur hummed. "No adspectus has been born in over a thousand years; they were believed extinct until Richard revealed his gift in a dueling circuit for the first time."
"His parents must've recreated it from scratch." Tristan frowned, his mind drifting to the columns of notes in his small ledger. "With the right blood and the proper sacrifice, one might succeed." He caught Fleur's eye. "How does it work?"
"Not much is known about it," she said. "Alongside emotions and memories with strong associations, Richard... gleans impressions through direct eye contact with a person; sometimes imprints of their past, and sometimes glimpses of their future."
A shiver crawled down Tristan's spine. 'The future...'
In his mind's eye, Marcus Flint's sister let out a burst of hoarse gurgling laughter; amidst the fog of her thoughts, Fleur spun in William Weasley's arms beneath the grand white marquise, tugging him after her onto a bed scattered with white rose petals.
Tristan's breath caught and his heart seized.
"Non, not like that." Fleur cupped his jaw. "He doesn't see the future, mon Coeur, no one can. It is more like..." she nibbled on her rose-pink lip until her eyes flashed, "-like the centauri from the Forbidden Forest, remember?"
Magorian's rib cage burst from his broad, hairy chest in a crimson spray of entrails before his mind's eye. "Red will stain the pines," Tristan murmured. "They saw blood and fire in the stars. And blood and fire they were given..."
"Exactment." Fleur nodded. "Most of these glimpses Richard sees are just sequences of self-fulfilling prophecies too, but he uses them to his advantage to throw his opponents off track by predicting their next moves and spells."
Tristan contemplated that. "So how did you beat him?"
A flitter of surprise passed through her blue eyes and she cocked her head. "You still do not know, do you?"
He blinked. "Know what...?"
A small smile graced Fleur's rose-pink lips, soft as summer rain, and she closed the distance between them, catching his lips in a long tender kiss and snaking her fingers through his hair.
The stands leaped and roared, cheering for the next winner.
Tristan drew back, his heart flopping at the sight of her. "Not that I'm complaining... but what was that for?"
"For being honest with me," she whispered. "You know I am not fully human, mon Coeur." Fleur's bright blue eyes darkened a hue and her fingers turned warm in his hair. "And if you had ever tried to use legilimency on me, you would know that my nature, when I utilize it, protects me from such magicks. Richard found out that day in the arena..."
Tristan lifted her sideways into his lap and cradled her against his chest, resting his forehead on her slim collarbone. "When I learned legilimency last year, I swore to myself that I'd never try it on you."
Fleur tightened her arms around him. "Despite William Weasley... and my internship... and now Richard... and all the other reasons I gave you to doubt me." She pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. "Je t'aime, mon Coeur. Je t'aime plus que tout."
"None of those reasons could've ever stopped me from pursuing you," he murmured, closing his eyes and breathing in the sweet scent of her hair. "I love you."
The crowd broke out in polite applause as Cedric Diggory caught the wand of some Beauxbatons student.
"For our next elimination, Tristan Peverell-"
Tristan's head snapped towards Olafson, and he leapt from his seat, catching Fleur as she staggered.
"-from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will face off against Aurora Eder from the Duelier-Akademie Wien."
An avalanche of disappointment crushed the spark of excitement, and it all melted in a scalding rush of white-hot anger.
"Calme-toi, mon Coeur. Tout va bien," Fleur said, brushing her lips over his and giving him a gentle nudge. "Just one more small step. Bonne chance."
His fingers slipped through hers, and he trod down the rows.
Opposite him, a short, slim girl stepped barefoot onto the platform. A crown of wisteria blossoms sat atop her snow-white hair and her emerald-green dress rippled like a gown of bright leaves.
Tristan spun his wand around and around his fingers. 'Some fairy girl?' He twisted on his heels, measuring his steps up and down the short stretch of obsidian. 'It doesn't matter who she is. She's just another step...'
"Ready?" Olafson's amplified voice boomed from the stands. "Begin!"
Tristan slashed his wand, weaving together cutting and piercing hexes into a barrage of vibrant blue and purple. Aurora wound through some and batted the rest aside, retreating step by step to the edge of the platform and circling around him in twirls and spins.
'This is a waste of time.' Soft fury fueled Tristan's magic, whispering through his veins and swirling around his wrist in a cool dark trickle of mist. He forced his arm faster and faster through the wand motions to the quickening drum of his heart. ' I just want this to end.'
A lone piercing hex slipped through, searing a gash of red across Aurora's hip; her face sharpened with a furious hiss, baring a mouth full of sharp gleaming fangs, and her ears grew as pointy as an elf's.
'I knew she was some fucking fairy.' Tristan watched a pair of golden wings uncurl from her back like those of a butterfly as she rose aloft the stone on bare feet. 'How ridicul-'
Aurora dashed forth in a dark blur, smashing into his stomach.
Tristan toppled over the circuit, clawing for halt with his fingers, but the smooth obsidian ripped out his nails in a smear of red.
'Fuck.' Spitting a mouthful of bitter iron, Tristan hauled himself upright. His cracked ribs snapped back into place and his chipped nails grew back from the raw, bleeding stubs of his fingertips, spitting out tiny splinters of black rock.
'This isn't just another small step.' All the pain drowned in a white-hot fury, burning within him bright as fiendfyre. 'You're just in the way. You're an obstacle…'
Aurora rose higher on buzzing wings of gold, letting out a furious screech as she lurched forth.
'And I hate it.'
Tristan slashed his wand, snatching her from the air in a fist of his magic, and slammed her to her knees. Curling his fingers, he bent Aurora's spine like a bridge above water until her face touched the ground, and wrapped his magic about each golden wing like a coat of tar.
'I'm tired of this freak show.' Tristan wrung his wrist, ripping her wings free from beneath her shoulder blades in spurts of bright blue blood.
Aurora's hoarse screams rang in his ear, as he stepped toward her, his eyes roaming over the crowd; Tristan found him sitting within the cluster of red coats, and he raised his wand, leveling the pale tip at Wagner's heart.
"That is enough, Mr Peverell!" A barrier of silver sprang up before Tristan's face. "Release your opponent; you have won!"
He clawed his magic back in and Aurora crumpled. She curled together in the puddle of her blood, sobbing and cradling her wings to her chest.
Tristan slipped his wand back up his sleeve and stepped past her. The spectators shrank back like snails into their shells, squirming in their seats as he ascended the rows; awe and fear shone in countless wide eyes, bright as the candles floating against the midnight black ceiling of the Great Hall.
It shone in all their eyes but Fleur's.
"Mon Coeur." Her arms drew him into a soft embrace. "Are you hurt?"
He shook his head.
Bien." Fleur stirred him into his seat, resting her weight against his side.
Tristan glanced about; the other contenders, their visiting friends and family, and his peers from Hogwarts all flinched from his gaze; Flitwick's thick gray brows drew down into a deep frown.
"They fear me..."
"You are a great wizard, mon Coeur," Fleur whispered in his ear. "Much greater than any of them. And they will always fear what they cannot understand."
He brought a finger beneath her chin, tilting it up. "And what about you, Fleur?" Tristan studied that faint flicker in her bright blue eyes and the little wrinkle above it. "Do you fear me too?"
"Non. Never," she breathed. "But I worry about you, mon Coeur. Every night you share my bed and my passion and my love, but when the sun rises, you grow distant. It hurts."
Guilt chewed at his heart. "I'm sorry."
"Peu importe, this tournament will be over soon." Fleur rested her head on his shoulder. "I cannot wait until it is all over. This tournament, the French Unspeakables, the Musketeers; all of it, until there is just us."
Tristan breathed in her vanilla-scented hair, staring out into the distance.
"What do you see, mon Coeur?" Fleur whispered. "What do you see when this is all over?"
The fjord lay before him; snow-shrouded mountain tops flashed white as the teeth in her smile, and the rippling waves along its shore shone as warm a blue as her eyes. All its harsh cliffs and gentle vales and green woods were wild and free and stunning like Fleur was, clad in her divine grace. The beauty of it snatched the breath right from Tristan's lungs, sending his heart flopping in his breast.
"You," he murmured. "When it's all over, there'll only be you."
Fleur let out a content little noise and snuggled into him. The sun slipped over its zenith and the shadows around them lengthened as duel after duel passed.
"Next up, we have Richard Wagner from Durmstrang Institute facing off against Fleur Delacour from Beauxbatons Academy!"
A shard of ice cursed through Tristan's veins and his stomach clenched tight.
Fleur raised her head from his shoulder and stood, flattening the back of her skirt.
He caught her hand. "Fleur-"
"C'est bon, mon Coeur," she leveled him with a long look, a fierce spark flashing through her bright blue eyes. "I have beaten him before, I will do so again."
'But it was meant to be me.'
"Good luck," Tristan whispered, his breath catching on the hot knot of emotion knotting in his throat. "I love you."
"Je t'aime, Tristan." Her fingers slipped through his and his heart clenched as she drifted away.
Wagner strutted down the steps past his cheering mates, twirling his wand with a small smirk.
"Ready?" Olafson asked. "Begin!"
They stood opposite each other in the stark silence, wands lowered, staring and waiting.
Cocking his head, Wagner ran his eyes up and down Fleur, shoving out his bottom lips and bobbing his head. He glanced over her shoulder and found Tristan, shooting him a wink.
Fleur's wand flashed up.
Wagner tilted his head, letting her pink hex sizzle past his cheek, and returned a trio of dark green and orange curses.
Fleur arched into a somersault, followed by another, her silver-blonde hair flashing like a whip and her blue skirt whispering around her bare thighs as she rebounded off the ground with a twirl.
The Durmstrang boys cheered and whistled.
Flicking her wand in swift stabs, Fleur conjured a batch of curved silver beads, flinging them across the platform, but Wagner raised a veil of black before himself that swallowed everything in deep dense darkness.
A wave of scorpions the size of small dogs sprang from his feet, scuttling across the circuit in a wriggling tide of dark legs, furious clicking pincers, and poised gleaming stingers.
Fleur thrust her wand at the obsidian.
Spears burst from the rock, piercing through the torsos of the scorpions. She twisted her wrist and the stone exploded, ripping apart the assailants in a spray of dark twitching scales, steaming gore and sizzling yellow pools of poison.
The dust and gleaming shards of obsidian rose in a smooth wave of Wagner's arm, fusing together into spikes; he whirled around on his heel and flung them across.
Fleur veiled herself in a cloud of silver butterflies; the spikes dissolved into fine black sand in the fluttering storm of their razor-sharp wings. She stabbed her wand forth like a dagger, and the butterflies swirled together.
Richard switched his stand and transfigured them into a swarm of bats, steering them back at Fleur.
From a single spark of white leaving the tip of Fleur's wand rose a great white swan. It craned its long smooth neck, spreading blazing wings of fire before her. All the bats melted in the pure white magic of its feathers.
Following the lead of Fleur's wand, the swan flapped its wings; it took to the air full of grace, passing through all of Wagner's spells, and smashed into his shield, sending him staggering.
Wagner caught his footing, but Fleur apparated behind him, hurling two fistfuls of azure.
A veil of black sprang up between them, swallowing the fireballs.
Fleur set one foot in front of the other, casting spells from her wand and hurling bright flames from her free hand until they stood face to face, her eyes huge and dark, but Richard's shield didn't falter an inch, and his faint, cold laughter rang out over the sizzle of flames.
The dark drained from Fleur's eyes as they stared at each other, locked in a silent battle, leaving them clear as spring skies, and Wagner dropped the veil between them.
'What is she doing?!' Tristan's heat froze. 'Without her magic, she's not protected.'
Wagner's lips curved in triumphant glee, and Fleur winced, clutching her temple and apparating away.
A flurry of curses chased her across the circuit, scraping against the dome surrounding the platform like nails drawn across a chalkboard.
Fleur apparated and danced through spells on light feet, bending and curving like a young sapling in the storm. She drew her wand in long, smooth motions and trailed silver steam in her wake like the tail of a shooting star.
The obsidian beneath her blue flats fractured, steam rising from the slim cracks in faint spirals, and the stands held their breath as Fleur thickened the steam into a familiar dense silver mist.
The grin faded from Wagner's lips as every last of his spells fizzled out within it like droplets of water on a hot pan.
Fleur clutched her wand with both hands and brought it down like an ax; ribbons of silver arced from within the mist, curving together into a brilliant spiral bright as the sun.
'Their spell.' In Tristan's mind's eye, ribbons of gold sliced through Aunt Amelia, scattering chunks of her corpse across mosaic tiles. 'She figured that one out as well.'
Wagner raised his veil of pitch, but the spiral stabbed through it in a lance of silver. It split into two and into four, snapping for his ankles and wrists, and heaving him off the ground.
Fleur apparated across and raised her wand, tall and proud, shimmering with platinum magic like a flame veiled in heat haze.
"Crucio."
Wagner's scream rang through the arena as he spasmed; his binds seared through red cloth and skin to stark, bare bone.
"Miss Delacour, release your spell at once!" Olafson yelled.
Fleur twisted her wrist, her knuckles white around the rosewood wand.
"Crucio."
Wagner's throat tore and his cries turned to hoarse wheezes. He bit off his tongue, spitting it out in a spatter of crimson.
A shield sprang up before Fleur, shoving her to the other side of the arena. She bent over backwards and propelled herself back off the ground on both palms.
"Fleur Delacour, you are hereby disqualified from all further duels!" Olafson shouted, cutting Wagner from his binds. "Richard Wagner will progress to the semi-final by technical victory!"
Fleur's lips curved into a small smirk as she watched Wagner twitch and sob, surrounded by healers. Slipping her wand through the slim loop at her belt, she strode off the platform with her head held high, caught Tristan's eye, and faded away in a faint ripple of air.
A thousand eyes prickled in the nape of his neck; even more questions swirled in Tristan's mind.
He wrenched the world back past him in a soft snap, catching sight of the hem of Fleur's blue skirt as she slipped into the Beauxbatons cabin, and hurried after her into her bedroom.
Fleur stood by the window, staring out across the fjord.
" Why?!" Tristan blurted, locking the door. "Why did you do that, Fleur? He was already defeated, why give away the victory?"
"I told you I came here for a reason, mon Coeur. Remember?" she murmured. "That reason was not winning this silly tournament."
"So Wagner was your reason? Taking revenge on him?"
"Non." Fleur turned around and stole a small step toward him, staring through her lashes up at him. " You are the reason, mon Coeur. You have always been the reason."
Tristan frowned at her. "I don't understand what's going on here. What do I have to do with any of this?"
"You have everything to do with it." Fleur linked her arms around his neck. "Because I know you, mon Coeur; you are exactly like me. And just like I could have never taken the Triwizard Cup without facing you first, you will never leave this place without beating Richard."
"You wanted to lose against him…" Things fell into place behind that fierce proud smirk. "That moment you faced each other in the stalemate, you drew in your magic on purpose to… to-"
"To let him catch a glimpse of himself winning, oui." Fleur's bright blue eyes burst into flame. "But for that to truly work, I had to accept to lose first so he would not grow suspicious." Her smirk widened a fraction. "But I doubt Richard feels much like a winner right now..."
'She planned all that in the few seconds she had between getting called out and facing him in the arena.' Tristan hunted for words but all he could do was stare at her in mute admiration.
Fleur closed his jaw and rose onto her tiptoes. "Do you understand now, mon Coeur?" She stole a small kiss from him, and another, her breath hot against his lips. "Now, we do not need to duel each other anymore. I made Richard suffer for what he did, and soon, you will face him too. You can do whatever you want with him then," Fleur's voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned in closer. "You can wipe him away in front of all the world to see; everything will be perfect."
Tristan crushed his mouth onto hers, slipping his tongue past her lips in a heated dance. "You're perfect," he whispered between hungry kisses and her breathless moans, heaving her up in his arms and carrying her over to the bed, settling between her legs. "Absolutely perfect and brilliant."
Fleur scorched the clothes off them in a flash of azure. "No more growing distant, mon Coeur. No more thoughts wasted on him." She pressed all of her warm bare curves into him. "I want to be the only thing in your head. All you will think about, all you will see, is me; like you said earlier."
Tristan leaned back with a ragged breath and drank in her beauty, marveling at the flutter of her lashes, the faint blush on her cheeks, the allure of her flawless soft pale curves.
"I can manage that," he murmured, brushing her long blonde hair back behind her ear and cupping her full breast, teasing the stiff bud of her nipple between his thumb and forefinger with a small grin. "Shouldn't be too hard…"
"I want you to show me that you mean it, mon Coeur." She arched into his touch, hooking her legs behind his butt and pulling him down on top of her. "And I want to feel it."
Tristan caught her lips in fierce kiss, chasing her tongue in a wild, hungry dance.
Fleur spread her thighs a little wider, her hand roaming down his hard, hot length resting on her tummy, and lower.
"Since we promised to be honest with each other, mon Coeur-," her fingers curled back around him, soft and warm and slick with her arousal, touching his tip against her bright pink sex, "-I should probably tell you that today might be a bit riskier for me…"
"Is that so?" Tristan lowered his hips, watching himself sink into her tight silken heat inch by inch until Fleur's nails dug into his back and she inhaled sharp.
"And what do you suggest we do about that?" He drew back out until only the tip of him remained inside her. "I can be… careful-" hoisting both her legs atop his shoulders, Tristan shifted his weight, folding her in half, "-if you want me to?"
"You could." Fleur let out a soft, long moan as he thrust slow and deep again, her lashes fluttering. "If you really wanted to."
Sparks of pure white-hot bliss swirled south in his stomach, threatening to burst too soon.
"I'm not sure I do anymore," Tristan whispered, fighting the feeling as he went harder and faster. He clutched her hips for better leverage, sending her pale breasts bouncing with each thrust and little shivers rippling through her thighs.
"Then don't, mon Coeur." Fleur stared up at him with parted lips, her heart shining in her big blue eyes. "When it is all over, there will only be us."