Chapter 71: Fleur
“Come seek us where our voices sound,” Fleur muttered to herself, so softly that even she couldn’t hear it. “We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss,” she continued. “An hour…” She scowled. “What will I sorely miss?”
“What are you doing?” someone asked.
Part of Fleur’s brain recognized them instantly; he was one of her schoolmates. It made sense; she had filled the sink in the carriage, then opened the egg underwater and lowered one ear down to touch the surface of the water. Exactly as it had under the lake that afternoon, her egg was singing here too.
Too bad for him, though, she was too focused, listening to the riddle over and over as she tried to work it out. She ignored him completely.
He, uncontent with being ignored, stepped closer. “Oh?” he muttered. “What new insights has drowning that egg in the sink given you?”
She still ignored him. They didn’t like each other all that much- as a matter of fact, he was her biggest rival at Beauxbatons, and seemed to be trying to get her to fail the Tournament.
Finally, she sighed, and lifted her head out of the water to look at him. “What?” she demanded.
“Does it shut up when you dunk it underwater?” he asked.
She gave him a glare. “No,” she retorted. “It just reverberates differently.” She jerked the egg out of the water with one hand and, after shoving it up close to his ear to make him back off with a yelp, she closed it and marched away.
“Madame Maxime?” Fleur asked. It was well into bed time; all her schoolmates had already gone to bed, and Madame Maxime was having her usual nighttime tea in the main room before turning in herself. Fleur, on the other hand, hadn’t even changed into her pajamas yet; she had been too focused on the problem ahead of her.
Maxime looked up at her. “Why aren’t you dressed for bed?” she asked, with a hint of annoyance in her voice.
She hugged her book to her chest- the book that she’d borrowed from the Hogwarts library before dinner. “I know what the Second Task is,” she muttered.
Maxime’s whole aspect changed. “Really?” she asked. “Come here- what is it? What do you need?”
She obeyed, taking her normal seat next to Madame Maxime, and placed the book in her lap- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Madam Pince, the Hogwarts librarian, had pointed her to it when she asked about Grindylows. “I… I need to learn to swim,” she told her knees. “And to breathe underwater.” She looked up. “The egg isn’t wailing, it’s singing… in mermish. It says they’ve taken something I’ll sorely miss, and I’ll only have an hour to search. Deep in that lake, probably.”
Madame Maxime nodded. “So, we just need to teach you to swim,” she clarified. “A Bubblehead charm will suffice for breathing.”
Fleur scowled. “But with a time limit… I’ll need to swim fast, not just swim. And there’s…” She put her hand on the book. “When… When I fell through the ice earlier, a Grindylow attacked me.”
She scowled as well. “True.” She sighed. “Well. You can cast the Bubblehead Charm, right?”
She nodded. “I can.”
“Then we’ll focus on swimming and creatures,” Maxime decided. “They’ll be important no matter the magic you use.”
“Though we’ll have to deal with the drag of the bubblehead charm,” Fleur scowled, gazing at her knees.
“Oh, another one. Gillyweed.”
Fleur looked up at the comment, from her search of Hogwarts: A History to see if it would tell her what might be in the lake. “What?” she asked.
The girl that had spoken had light blond-colored hair, which was tied together at the tip rather than the top, so it resembled a bundle of hay- and her pointed Hogwarts hat was perched atop a brown Stetson hat. “Hmm?” she asked. “Oh. Just another interestingly-named plant. I swear, wizarding names are even worse than Equestrian names, sometimes.”
“No, the plant,” Fleur said, abandoning her book to move closer. She spotted the House Badge on the girl’s chest- and while she didn’t recognize it right off, it looked like… Yes. That was a badger, which represented Hufflepuff House, right?
“The plant?” the girl asked, an eyebrow raised. “Gillyweed. Magical water plant that gives you gills and flippers for a while when you eat it.”
She stepped over to look at the book as well. “How long?” she asked.
“Just over an hour per mouthful, for most people,” the girl answered, looking at her. “Do you need something?”
She studied the page the girl was looking at. “How safe is it for non-humans?”
The girl scowled, studying the page. “I… Ya know, I have no idea. Why don’t we go ask Professor Sprout?”
She blinked, and looked. “Who?”
“Professor Sprout,” the girl repeated, rising from her seat. “She’s the Herbology professor, and knows tons of stuff that isn’t in these books- and she’ll be free for the next, ahh,” she glanced at the clock over the door again, “twenty minutes or so.” She smiled, and held out her hand. “You’re Fleur Delacour, the Beauxbatons Champion, right? I’m Applejack, Head Student Instructor for Herbology here at Hogwarts.”
She slowly accepted the offered hand. “Yeah,” she muttered.
“Gillyweed, for non-humans?” Professor Sprout asked, rubbing her chin. “Depends on the creature. There are plenty of creatures that eat it regularly- but there’s also plenty for which it’s pure poison. Hagrid or, if the creature is a Being, Madam Pomfrey are probably your best bets for that, but I can’t guarantee they’ve ever heard of Gillyweed.”
“M-Madam Pomfrey?” Fleur muttered. She’d never been a fan of medical personnel- and on top of that, whenever she used Hogwarts’ facilities, she always felt like she was intruding.
“Yes?” Madam Pomfrey asked, raising an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”
“Well no,” she muttered. “I- I was wondering…” She took a deep breath. “Would Gillyweed be safe?”
“Gillyweed?” Madam Pomfrey asked, tilting her head.
“I-It’s a water-!”
“I’ve seen it before,” Madam Pomfrey informed her. “It’s very compatible with humans- to the point where one man once spent three whole weeks underwater on a diet of it, before he couldn’t find enough and died when he lost his gills a hundred meters underwater- but it’s also quite toxic for Veela.”
Fleur winced. “Oh.”
“You’re… thinking of using it for the Task,” Madam Pomfrey said. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded. “But if it’s poisonous-!”
“You’re part-human, though,” Madam Pomfrey told her. “Humans are incredibly flexible- and most human hybrids can consume limited amounts of substances that would be poisonous for their non-human parts but not for their human parts, or vice versa, without suffering from it. So…” She drew her wand. “Do you mind?”
“Sure,” she muttered.
Madam Pomfrey cast her charms, and studied her for a few minutes.
Finally, she sighed, and pocketed her wand. “Well,” she muttered.
Fleur looked up at her, hopefully.
She nodded. “There is enough human in you to make it safe to consume some,” Madam Pomfrey told her. “Any more than about two hours worth in any twenty-four hour period will be dangerous, though. And you’ll be more sensitive to it than a regular human, so…” She paused. “I don’t know how much that would be. Professor Snape should know, though- and he, ahh, might be willing to lend you some.” She chuckled. “The good news is Gillyweed will also offset the effects of the cold, and that will last longer than the gills- about a quarter longer, specifically. You will want to be certain you return to me within that time, or you will die when it wears off.” She sighed. “You also won’t be able to breathe air for as long as you have gills, so… Be ready for it.”
Professor Snape, when Fleur found his office after asking about thirty different people where it was, was a scary man- an intimidating man. But, Fleur had never once backed down from danger, and always stood strong in the face of adversity. There were times when she wondered if it was related to the Veela combat instinct, especially since it caused her to get into fights really more often than she needed to, but it was useful here. She stood straighter as soon as she saw him, and felt her strength welling up inside her. “Professor Snape,” she asked, and bowed to make sure he knew she respected him.
Snape looked up at her. “What?” he retorted.
She immediately recognized the strong voice and easy gaze of a sly and powerful man- and did her best not to provoke him, by forcing herself to stay formal. “May I ask for your assistance?” she asked firmly.
He regarded her coolly. “What with?”
“Madam Pomfrey said you would be able to help me figure out how much Gillyweed I will need for the Second Task,” she told him.
He stared at her. “Did she tell you your sensitivity?”
She recited the number Madam Pomfrey had given her; she didn’t understand it at all.
He scowled, looking her up and down. “Huh,” he muttered, then sighed. “If you bring me a clump of Gillyweed, I will help you portion it appropriately.”
She bowed again. “Thank you.” Then she paused. “And, ah, do you know a good place to get it?”
He smiled- and it didn’t look like a vicious smile, but more of a natural one. “Yes, I do.”
“Gillyweed?” Madame Maxime asked, tilting her head.
She nodded. “It’ll give me gills and flippers for an hour, and offset the temperature problem. That way, I won’t have drag from the Bubblehead Charm, and it’ll be much easier to swim quickly.” She sighed. “I still need to know how to swim, though.”
“Very well. Where did you say we could get some, again?”
Fleur surfaced smoothly and climbed steadily out of the swimming pool that was in the bathroom Fleur and Madame Maxime had been pointed to when they asked Dumbledore for somewhere that they could teach her to swim.
Madame Maxime turned the lights on. “How is it going?”
“Pretty well,” she answered, glancing back at the pool. “I timed the bubblehead charm just as the gills disappeared, and shook off the Grindylow both before and after.” She sighed, sitting on the plastic chair that Madame Maxime had conjured. “And that was the last of it for today, wasn’t it?”
Maxime nodded.
Fleur let out a sigh of relief. “I’m starting to feel really confident about this Task,” she told her. “I know there’s a lot of opportunity for the Grindylows to gang up on me in the lake, and that will be harder, but even so, I’m sure I can take them.” She looked at the water. “It might be hard to find them, though.” She sighed. “Still. I can do it, and that’s what’s important. Anyways, what time is it?” She plucked her wand from the loop on the ‘swim robes’ that they had had Madam Malkin, the local tailor, custom-tailor for her. It wasn’t so much a robe as a suit; it fit her snugly, and the parts it had to make it look like robes weren’t very long at all, which vastly reduced the amount of drag and allowed her to move much faster underwater. Apparently, it had been based on a muggle garment called a ‘wetsuit’. “Tempus,” she muttered, and winced. “Dinner is coming up soon.”
“Dinner?” Madame Maxime asked, blinking in apparent surprise.
She nodded. She usually ran out of the day’s single hour of Gillyweed long before dinner, since she often surfaced shortly after it wore off- but today, she had been practicing not just transitioning from gills and flippers to bubblehead and bare feet, but continuing to stay in the dark underwater with a Grindylow even after that point, just in case the Gillyweed ran out too quickly or something during the Task. As a result, she had been underwater for much longer each time, and had gone through the Gillyweed much slower.
They had also been practicing temperature management- just a couple degrees at a time, but they had steadily reduced the temperature of the water. Whenever she switched to the bubblehead charm, she then immediately used a quick body heat spell to bring her body temperature back up to her normal level and keep it there. It consumed a lot of magic, making other spells difficult to cast, but it would keep her alive on the bottom of the lake for as long as necessary. It also only warmed her up so quickly, so the lowest they’d safely been able to test with the little bits of Gillyweed she was taking at a time was thirty two degrees. It was a lot warmer than the ice… but it was also lethally cold, if she didn’t use those charms.
“I think,” she muttered, before brandishing her wand to dry herself off. “I think I’d like to focus on the temperature next time,” she said. “Even if that means more Gillyweed at a time. That spell isn’t going to be any use in the Tournament if it can’t keep me at forty two in whatever the temperature of that lake is. And if they’ve gotten their hands on Gabrielle…” She shuddered; she had decided that ‘something she would sorely miss’ would be best personified by her youngest sister, so they had chosen to assume it was actually her sister, for the time being.
Madame Maxime nodded. “She might need it too,” she finished.
She nodded, throwing her robe around her shoulders, overtop her ‘swim robes’, and threading her arms through the sleeves. “Yes. Though assuming there’s some sort of magic done to keep her from dying down there, I will have more time to warm her up, and it’s possible she’ll already be warm from the same.” She sighed as she did up the front. “Anyways, we’ve got about twenty-five minutes, so…”
Maxime nodded. “I’ll take care of the Grindylow,” she told her. “Go ahead and get changed.”
She bowed and left the room, headed for the carriage.
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I like Fleur too! At least, this depiction of her, and how she was in Deathly Hallows. She was a little...snobby when she made her debut
I like how these guys get to work through prep instead of being chucked off a cliff and then having to work their way through the maze while outrunning the explosion.
Fleur is just vary likable. this is a great chapter.
It is refreshing to see the preparation of the other contestants other than Hogwarts'.
11251062
Yes, it is. I enjoyed a non-Hailey focus for quite a few chapters right around this point... I should probably try that again sometime.
Fleur was one of my favorite characters in Goblet. One of my biggest issues from its transition from book to a movie, (besides "calmly") is how Beauxbatons was depicted as an "all girl" school in the movie; when it is both coed and has a long history as a top Wizarding school. Fleur wasn't just the best girl, she was the best student period from a school of renown and tradition; that got turned into the ditzy damsel.
11272942
Well then, I'm glad my interpretation of her is so close to that.
Papa Tango…
Fleur?