The Secret Society Interlude: Fleur Delacour

A/N: Still not done with the next chapter, so I decided to post this short interlude. I was planning to include this in a few chapters, but it works just as well right now. Hope you all like vagueness lol.

A/N: They are speaking French here, but due to the magic of writing, you can read it in English.

Read previous chapter here

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Fleur giggled when the owl nibbled on the treat she offered like a little glutton. She wasn’t sure if it was done on purpose, but Harry always sent the same scruffy owl that seemed to be offended at the world around it, at least until treats were offered. However, it couldn’t be denied that the owl was an excellent mail deliverer.

“Off you go,” Fleur gently shooed the bird away, making it give her an angry look before it flapped away. She wished it was possible to let the owl rest for a day or two, but it was already risky for her to receive it in the manor. If her father found out about it…

Fleur didn’t even want to think of that option. He had been firm in telling her to disassociate from Harry, as if that would stop her. She wondered if he was turning a blind eye to her frequent letters since she had seen her mother giving her a knowing look far too often.

If there was one thing that she was sure about her mother, it was that she was devoted to her father to an extent that made Fleur shudder in disgust. It didn’t help that she had been scarred from the things she had overheard coming from their bedroom… or study… or the dining room that one evening when they thought she wouldn’t return for the day.

Whatever the case, Fleur was happy to keep the status quo. They could be oblivious to her actions, or pretend to be oblivious, and she could happily continue pulling Harry into her clutches.

… That sounded like she was planning something nefarious with Harry, but that wasn’t the case at all. She wanted him, desperately. In the same way she suspected that her mother wanted her father.

Fleur was about to slip past her parents’ room and enter hers for privacy when she heard her mother call for her.

“Darling, what are you holding?”

Fleur winced, wondering why today was different from usual. “Nothing, Mother. Just a letter from a friend.”

“I see,” Apolline walked up to her daughter and grazed her thumb over her flushed cheek, “And I suppose looking like a love-struck fool had nothing to do with your… friend.”

That confirmed to Fleur that her parents had been turning a blind eye to what she had been doing. She wished it was possible to use a linked artifact like a notebook or mirrors to communicate with Harry, but the wards around the manor made that impossible. Why else would she resort to something so slow, like owling back and forth.

“Let’s talk inside the room,” Apolline said with a sigh, “I don’t think you want your father to overhear.”

Fleur gave her mother a look, silently saying he probably knew about this already. The bedroom door shut with a flick of her mother’s hand before Fleur was motioned to the chair next to the dresser.

This was starting to feel more than a mere mother-daughter talk like Fleur had hoped for.

“Do you know why your father was furious that you fixated on this Harry Potter?”

Fleur’s mind raced as she replayed the night she returned from the auction. Her father had immediately asked to see the Arcanium Ring in excitement before frowning when she didn’t hesitate to say that she had gifted the ring. That was when she had been barred from contacting Harry.

“The ring, is it not?” Fleur asked confidently.

“When has your father cared what you have done with the trinkets you’ve bought? Has he ever asked to look at one?”

Fleur slowly shook her head, but while that may be true, her father was deeply interested in the workings of the mind, which obviously included the mind arts.

“Darling, it was what you did to the ambassador’s son,” Apolline couldn’t have sounded more disappointed, “What were you thinking? And the mess you left behind? Did we not teach you anything? If such action must be taken, why didn’t you make use of what our family has?”

Fleur had frozen in shock, wondering how they had found out. She told Harry two lies about what she had done to take care of Alex. While her father did have obliviators on payroll, it wasn’t as if she could use them whenever she wished. And though she seemingly had unlimited funds available to her, every single coin was tracked and accounted for.

Besides, hiring outside help was out of the question. Not if she wished to keep it a secret.

So with most options taken away from her, Fleur decided to take care of it personally. She waited for Harry to leave the catacombs before arriving at Alex’s unconscious body. She remembered how a smile had wanted to form on her lips when she remembered how Harry had dismantled him.

“Fleur!” Apolline said sharply, “This is what your father was worried about! It is no laughing matter!”

Fleur touched her lips and felt the wide smile that it was currently in. She couldn’t help it.

“We already knew you had these… temptations, so is it a surprise that your father wants a different type of man for you?”

“Father does not get to tell me who to spend my life with!” Fleur retorted immediately before forcing herself to stay seated in the chair. Her mother was probably on her side here, so it made no sense to anger her too.

“Nor does he want to, but with the lengths you went, can you blame him for being concerned? What must this Harry be like? Do you truly know enough to take such risks?”

Fleur remembered the suspicion in Harry’s eyes and, more importantly, remembered how that suspicion fell away as she worked her magic on him.

“He’s for me, mother.”

Apolline rubbed her eyes tiredly, wondering if she had given her mother such worries when she chased after her husband. She didn’t have to think long before denying it. The worst Apolline had ever done was scratch up a woman’s face when she insisted on flirting with her then-beau. She couldn’t ever bear the thought of such savagery that her daughter considered insignificant.

“Your father had to clean up after you, Fleur,” Apolline blurted out, unable to take the calm way her daughter was acting, “If a friend of our family didn’t contact us, you would have been taken in!”

“… Oh,” Fleur uttered softly, her belief that she had escaped attention getting ripped away.

“And if you had to go to this length, why do… that!” Apolline held back a shudder as she thought of what she had seen in her husband’s memory. The poor boy had been ripped apart by her daughter’s perfect hands, not that it looked like it. The number of gouges in the boy’s skin and the torn limbs fit a werewolf attack, the theory her husband told the Aurors to focus on.

“You know why, Mother.”

Apolline stared at Fleur’s frown before sighing in apology. It was an insensible question for her to ask. It wasn’t often that a Veela like Fleur came into existence, but once they triggered the conditions for change, there was no going back.

If Harry Potter’s existence was the only obstacle, Apolline was sure that her husband would have taken care of him by now, but that would only cause more significant issues. They had only been delaying the inevitable before making the hard, but only choice.

“Your father and I have decided that it’s time for you to go to Britain,” Apolline ignored the squeal of excitement that left Fleur’s lips, “But first, you’ll be getting the lessons on what to do if such a situation ever happens again. We will not be able to pressure the British Ministry like we did here to save you.”

“Yes, Mother!” Fleur didn’t care. She would be able to see Harry sooner than expected.

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