Chapter Text
Gringotts, Fleur decides after the Tournament ends. Prying old flyer from Hogsmeade free from the confines of her trunk, she stows it safely away in her robes. She will go for a job at Gringotts, she will improve her second language, and she will try to recover from her ordeal. Their ordeal.
(Perhaps Fleur will for once be taken seriously with the bank's insignia on her lapel...)
Her failure to win the Cup will fade away before long, she hopes. A youthful error in a soon-to-come history of successes. A footnote. The Delacours enjoy an illustrious reputation in France's magical circles. Fleur does not want her ineptitude to sully it or Beauxbatons again. The shame!
The world's turned on its head overnight, though. A friend died. A Dark wizard—the most frightening one of all—returned to life. Fleur does not need her grandmother's veela blood to sense the change in the air, but the awareness creeps into her brain anyway and fills the crevices in the stonework of Hogwarts with a new...malevolence. If Amortentia hints at your innermost desires, the stench of war flips over your stomach.
Her stomach hasn't felt normal since the Third Task began. Cedric's stillness, Fleur recalls, made the world grind to a halt too. Her disappointment over losing the Cup seems best left behind in girlhood and the accompanying naiveté, but...Fleur doesn't feel quite so naive anymore, not really. She just feels lost. Perhaps a job will give Fleur a stronger sense of direction than a flyer induced whim. "Pointe moi," she murmurs to herself, giving the castle a final look. She will not miss the decorations, the drafts, the food, or even that infernal poltergeist. The students, on the other hand, are a different story. Sighing, Fleur turns away from the smiling poster of Cedric Diggory, locates her sister, and strides toward the carriage.
All musings flee from her mind, however, as Professor Dumbledore himself approaches Fleur before her departure, still in his mourning robes.
"A moment, Miss Delacour, if you please," the headmaster greets, peering at her over his half-moon spectacles. His French is flawless.
Too astonished to do anything but comply, she turns to Gabrielle, heels clacking together like the hands of a clock. "Run along, Gaby," Fleur says in English, nudging her sister as the girl dawdles, eager as all children are to be in on a secret. In the corner of her eye, the headmaster looks amused.
"Laisse nous," she coaxes. Gaby pouts. Wanting to impress Dumbledore, Fleur returns to English. "Tell Madame Maxime I will join you shortly."
She spies Harry, Ron, and Hermione on one of the lawns, also dallying. With any luck, she can say her goodbyes before the trio boards the train.
On their stroll across the grounds, Dumbledore inquires into her health. Fleur takes a minute to consider the circumstances. She has the privilege of speaking with one of the greatest wizards of all time and instead of a clever spell or words of wisdom, he offers her an arm and a patient ear.
"I was...I was only Stunned, Headmaster," she lies. The least injured and the lowest scorer. How shameful, Fleur cannot help but think.
Dumbledore is not deceived. It was he who freed her from the living, hungry brambles. "Grief takes many tolls. Fear sups greedily too."
"Cedric was a good wizard," Fleur deflects, averting her eyes. "I will not forget him eezily, sir. Easily," she corrects, self conscious, and retrieves a few rocks from the shore of the Black Lake. As undignified as she will seem, Fleur can't resist an opportunity to anger the herd of grindylows.
Dumbledore watches the first of her stones hop, hop, hop, before he speaks again. The ripples lure the giant squid to the surface, curious as a cat.
"I have need of you, Miss Delacour, now that your studies are complete."
Fleur wonders if she's heard him right. "Professor?"
"Our Minister will not see reason," Dumbledore admits as the second rock skips further than the first and then sinks into the water. Seemingly affronted, the squid retreats. Cradling the last stone in her hands, she listens. Fleur prided herself on being of age when the Goblet spat out her name, but recent events made her feel so...young. Too young to rationalize what happened, but Fleur heard Harry. She attended the Leaving Feast and gave the headmaster's speech her undivided attention. Cedric's death was not an accident. "Soon, the Ministry will fall under his influence."
"The whole Ministry?" Fleur asks, aghast. After that, it will be nothing less than a flood... "That is disgraceful!"
"That is fear. Fear can drive good people to do terrible things. Willful ignorance," says Dumbledore, "is an agent of evil."
That is not the kind of good I want to be. She throws the last rock with all her might. They watch the voyage. With a cast of the wandless magic she never got a chance to use during the Tournament, a whirlpool of her own creation swallows the stone. That is not the kind of good I want to do.
Perhaps the rumors are true. Perhaps, among other things, Albus Dumbledore can read minds, for his eyes are twinkling, and he is smiling again.
"There is a need for a person like you, Fleur. If you will allow me to explain, Madame Maxime will not be kept waiting long..."
In the end, Fleur receives one job offer (from the Ministry) and one call to arms (from the Order of the Phoenix) and accepts both gladly.
"Are you sure about this, darling?" Apolline asks, studying what she can see of the room from the fireplace. It is, Fleur will confess, as cramped as the broom closet that Rita Skeeter pushed every champion into for interviews. In the August heat, she's grateful for the lack of a formal dress code.
August. Fleur has an entire month of employment under her belt. It doesn't make her feel any older, though.
"Of course," she answers, summoning an interdepartmental memo from its perch in the doorway. Lazily, it sails into her waiting hand.
"I simply worry—" Moments like these make Fleur wonder if the Gringotts job would've fared any better with her mother.
"I'll be fine, Maman," Fleur interrupts, unraveling the memo. Mafalda Hopkirk requests a meeting for the following morning... "I am not alone."
She is, but only just. She doesn't need to share her office space with anyone as her neighbors are near enough to call on if she so desires. The Office for the Removal of Curses, Jinxes, and Hexes has one supervisor and a pair of Curse-Breakers. A vacancy kept Adrian Bell and Leslie Chang busy for as long as either one could remember until Fleur filled the open spot almost as soon as her graduation ceremony was over.
On Fleur's last day in France, there was no room for grief, only joy.
Flushed with pride, Céline congratulated Fleur on her appointment. Giselle promised to write from her own post in the French Ministry. Hugo was skeptical. Edgar teased about her new love of the British. Madame Maxime slipped a vial of Felix Felicis into her pocket and winked. Gabrielle wept at the thought of their parting and pleaded with Fleur to visit often. Her father was delighted (merveilleux, he exclaimed, kissing her on both cheeks). Her mother was cautious. Her grandmother was more reserved, but supportive. As sorry as Fleur was to say goodbye to her friends and family, her excitement couldn't be contained. There was noble work to be done here, even in her dingy, hemmed in office. Her tour guide, Arthur Weasley, chuckled at the sight in commiseration. William chimed in as well, from one Curse-Breaker to another. Nowhere to go but up...
Up is the aim. The Order's gained Aurors and professors and tinkerers, all keen to stave off You-Know-Who's rise to power. Instead, Fleur hopes, the power of good will rise to every department in the Ministry until all believe the truth and stand united against the growing threat.
That day is not today. On her desk, the Prophet splays a photograph of the headmaster below an accusation—DUMBLEDORE: DAFT OR DANGEROUS?
"Fleur!"
Startled, Fleur's attention bounces back to Apolline. By the expression on her face, she's been speaking all along. Fleur winces.
Her mother heaves a sigh, forcing sparks onto the hearth. They already argued once before over the Order's mission; Fleur has no wish to repeat it.
"I simply worry about what's to come," Apolline repeats, troubled. "Mallièvre is as quiet as usual, but there are rumors, Fleur. Whispers of them in the mountains." Fleur doesn't know if 'them' means giants or Death Eaters, but she's nevertheless filled with foreboding, just as Apolline intended. In the First Wizarding War, Fleur's grandfather did not escape the Snydes, and left Fleur's grandmother a widow, despite all efforts. The veela love so deeply, Fleur thinks sadly. Without Apolline, maybe her grandmother would've willingly wandered into Massif Central and never returned.
Or not, Fleur muses, remembering her grandmother's affection for her and Gaby. A veela's affinity for any love can surpass heartbreak, in time.
"I am protected," is all she says. Great Britain has Dumbledore and Harry Potter, despite their beleaguered reputations and failing public opinion, as well as dozens of wizards willing to lay down their lives so they may save the world. What else can Fleur do but join her strength to theirs and fight?
"You are too arrogant, darling," Apolline grumbles, her disappointment making the flames crackle and hiss. "That will be the end of you, I swear it."
"Perhaps it runs in the family," Fleur declares, and then douses her mother's indignation and the Floo connection with an unsaid Aguamenti.
From August to June of the next year, Fleur does almost nothing but work.
Thanks to the upswing of disappearances and rumblings of You-Know-Who's forces, most of the divisions within the Ministry are collaborating.
She trails after Aurors like Kingsley and Tonks when their arrests are finished, tasked with examining the crime scenes for Dark magic. She joins Arthur on his house raids, wand at the ready and keenly focused. She finds more and more curses by the day, attuned to the innate wrongness that even talented wizards can overlook. The scent of ill will. A Muggle-born and a voracious reader, Adrian delightedly starts to call her 'Hawkeye'.
"It's a comic book," he insists, barreling on despite Fleur and Leslie's bemusement, "about an archer who never misses."
"This Hawkeye uses a bow, not a wand?"
The ancient veela fought with bows and arrows and Fleur's been trained accordingly but the appeal—beyond utility—is lost on her.
Muffling a suspicious cough, Leslie stands to fetch the kettle.
"It's a Muggle story from America," Adrian explains patiently. "He never misses a shot and fights crime and aliens with the Avengers."
"That does not sound much like a good story." It makes Loony Nonby look like real literature!
"He sounds busier than we are," says Leslie, refilling the tea with a sly little look. Fleur laughs.
"This is just your payback, madam," Fleur's partner says, pointedly lifting his lion-emblazoned cup, "because Gryffindor beat Ravenclaw last week."
My Katie, Adrian often announces, brandishing letters from his daughter, week after week. Leslie's girl, an old friend, writes regularly too.
"Cho can only do so much!" Leslie retorts, just as pointedly rearranging the Ravenclaw pennant that sits atop her desk. "The Chasers lagged..."
As eager as Fleur is to do her part, bickering over Hogwarts matters is not a tempting prospect. Gathering up her paperwork, Fleur excuses herself and makes for the lifts, a flock of memos fluttering ahead to accompany her down the corridor. Haunting the lifts, amazingly, was Mundungus Fletcher's idea. (Hear alotta of things in a lift, I do, he mumbled during an Order meeting, after delivering a report. Find alotta things too.) When she can, Fleur takes to listening to the other employees of the Ministry as they go about their business, eavesdropping for news or emerging judgments of the shadow war (or, in the least, the mysterious occurrences that Fudge allows to escape his notice) that is building to a boiling point.
"Did you see, Basil?"
Royden Poke shows Basil the newest edition of the Prophet. On the front page, a shifty looking Harry Potter ducks into a pub in Hogsmeade, with Ron and Hermione at his heels. In the photograph, Ron flips a rude gesture, while the likeness of Hermione marches haughtily on. Fleur smirks.
"What's he up to now?" Basil Harington asks, disinterested. A friend of Mr. Weasley's, Fleur seems to recall, and a potential ally.
"Running Dolores ragged," says Royden with a chortle, easing back to let a pair of witches into the lift. Wedged into the corner by the influx of boarding and departing employees, Fleur is all ears. Subterfuge works best when Fleur is not immediately seen by those vulnerable to the thrall.
"Dolores is working?" One of the witches asks with a snort. Her friend make a shushing noise, looking concerned. Anxious.
Dumbledore's star is falling. Umbridge's is rising. The Prophet favors her in its own slavish way, and paints Harry as badly as Sirius. Fudge's regard for Umbridge, though, casts a weight over the Ministry, making its people more afraid of his wrath than the idea that You-Know-Who himself is back. Less than a year out of school, Fleur observes, darkly amused, and the Order of the Phoenix has made her into something of a spy.
Spycraft's becoming necessary when the Minister demands resignations from anyone with a mere acquaintanceship with Dumbledore, she reflects. His behavior makes Fleur curious about Giselle's place in the French Ministry. If Harry grew up in the Pyrenees and attended Beauxbatons, would the circumstances be the same? Would Nadine Dumont treat him as poorly as Fudge does? Would her own Ministère rub his name in the mud?
In the noisy, forever bustling Atrium, Fleur's lunch date Apparates in and joins her at the fountain.
"Bonjour," Bill greets, sporting the usual smile and dragon fang earring.
"Bill," Fleur chides, stowing her paperwork into her bag, "I want to improve..." Her time with Bill always allows for a lot of English practice.
"Don't be cross! I know. But I'm learning French, see," he says, leading the way out. The Leaky Cauldron awaited. "Edgar wrote me yesterday."
"Il a fait?" Fleur demands, brightening at the thought of her friends, old and new, getting as close as can be. "Please, I must hear all about it!"
She and Bill part ways in the afternoon, with promises to meet again over the weekend. Fleur hurries back to her office, lest she want the in-tray to overflow again. After a year at the Ministry, Fleur's used to working long hours and doesn't expect to see daylight until Friday night at the earliest.
As the newest employee in her division, she's often saddled with the reports and the clerical work. As one of the junior members in the Order, she got most of the night shifts in the Department of Mysteries. Tonks too. Sheer happenstance let Arthur get guard duty on the night of his attack.
Fleur shakes her head. If it were her against that horrible serpent, she knows it would have gone better. She once subdued a dragon, after all.
Collecting the papers of her latest case into a file, Fleur tucks the folder into one of the overfilling cabinets, then stops to check the time. It's late, she realizes, more tired than she anticipated. Much later than she intended to stay. Fleur tidies up her desk quickly, thinking eagerly of her flat, until a week-old, unanswered letter catches her eye. Céline, she thinks, feeling guilty. Fleur never meant to get behind on her correspondence, but such is her life nowadays. At Beauxbatons, she saw her friends every day in her lessons; after more than a year in England and never not harried, she has only managed one get-together with the old crowd, and a handful over the holidays with her family, to Gabrielle's growing displeasure.
Will Madam Chang give her any time off? Fleur doesn't know. She's never asked for a personal day, preferring to press on and make a good impression among the seasoned staff of the Ministry. Maybe she can drop in and surprise Gaby at school. She'd like that. Fleur zips up her jacket, considering. She misses France more than she'd prefer to admit. A break would do her good...and she'd see her parents outside of a fireplace...
Scratching a reply to a devastated Céline, who writes of Myron Wagtail's publicized engagement, Fleur doesn't notice the Patronus until it speaks. "Potter is on his way," the doe sneers in Severus Snape's voice, flooding Fleur's office with light and sound and a danger like she's never known before. She gasps, crushing her quill in her fingers. "The Dark Lord has lured him into a trap. Hurry, Miss Delacour. You do not have much time."
Grabbing her wand, Fleur dashes right through the silvery apparition and sprints for the stairs, the echoes of Snape's words at her heels.
Protecting the prophecy, Dumbledore warned last July, was critical. It was also a risk.
"Lord Voldemort," the headmaster had explained, politely ignoring the room's discomfort, "does not know the complete prophecy. Fifteen years ago, a Death Eater heard enough of it to report back to his master, and so doing set the course in which Harry must walk. This prophecy is the key."
"The key to what?" Molly Weasley asked, fearfully voicing the words that no one else dared to ask. Next to Fleur, Bill drew in a breath.
"To the end of him." Dumbledore surveyed the group gathered in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, then continued. "Lord Voldemort cannot hope to gain access to the Department of Mysteries, not while our warnings fall upon the Ministry's deaf ears. He will send others in his place. Do not expect quarter from these agents, for he will punish the unsuccessful and make those still left in his circle rue the day they joined his cause."
No one spoke. The headmaster went on, graver than a gargoyle.
"This is not a duty to be taken lightly," Dumbledore added, reminding Fleur of his words about the Triwizard Tournament. This time, the circumstances were far more dire and even more dangerous. "Should one of Voldemort's supporters appear, you stand alone until help arrives."
This was the man that Madame Maxime wanted to prove was just a man, Fleur remembered. All she could see now, though, was a just man.
Skipping the slow moving lifts in favor of the staircases, Fleur keeps a steady pace in the descent. She's made a home of Level 2, but the Department of Mysteries lies deeply below on Level 9. Her body knows where to go better than she does (Fleur feels as if she left her brain behind in her office). To her dismay, the fear and panic and dread are in lockstep with her, staying as close as her next breath, and the next, and the next.
Kingsley isn't due for his shift until one...
The route is familiar, however, allowing Fleur to ignore the details she gawked at only months before, like the bluish torchlight, the black-tiled walls, and the windowless alcoves. During her nights of endless filing, Fleur wandered around the Hall of Prophecy, wand aloft and silent as the Grey Lady of Ravenclaw. Pacing down every row, it was Fleur who was the ghost. Still, the hall was not so much a hall but a cathedral, which stretched wider and longer than the Notre Dame itself, and sat to hold the hundreds if not thousands of copies of prophecies of the wizarding world. Too short to see Harry's properly, she at one point managed to find an orb naming another student of Beauxbatons: Nicholas Flamel.
Hurrying into the Entrance Chamber, Fleur spots a line of fiery Xs in front of a few of the doors. Smart magic, she judges, as the walls begin to rotate and the blue light gleams from beneath the twelve handleless doors. The crosses stay put, giving her a slight indication of where to go.
The vial of Felix Felicis sits back in her flat, unopened, but Fleur wonders if she drank the whole thing in her sleep, because her first choice of doors draws her right into the Hall of Prophecy, closest to the one hundred and thirtieth row, not too far from the action. Faint pops of Apparition, laughter, and the murmur of voices pull her ever onward, until she's standing behind the black robes of an oblivious, meandering Death Eater. Curious to know if he is one of the recent Azkaban escapees, Fleur points her wand at his back, steels herself, and thinks, Petrificus Totalus!
When the mask fades away like smoke, Ewan Avery glares up at Fleur, and looks nearer to seething after she pockets his wand and moves on.
"You hear him?" A woman exclaims, the noise of her shriek bouncing about the hall like a curse. Fleur can't see her yet, but it doesn't take a savant to know that the voice can only belong to Bellatrix Lestrange. "Giving instructions to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us!"
Fleur creeps further along, paralyzing Mulciber when she catches him alone. She slows the fall of his body, steals his wand, and keeps moving, trying to ignore the sweat beading at her hairline and the trembling in her arm. There are no Triwizard points at stake here, only human lives.
"I know Sirius is here!" Harry Potter snaps, making her heart sink through the floor like it's due for its own trial before the Wizengamot. The trap. She can't blame him. If she heard of Gabrielle falling into danger, Fleur would've rushed to save her without hesitation. "I know you've got him!"
The Death Eaters laugh. Though Fleur would like to punish the lot for their cruelty with some of the curses she's learned to break, she refrains.
"Hand over the prophecy," says Lucius Malfoy, just four rows from Fleur now, "and no one need get hurt."
Listening to the argument and keeping out of sight, she surveys the scene. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and two of their classmates are surrounded, outnumbered, and unhurt. The exits are not within reach, unless they run for it. And the Order...the Order will be too late, if Fleur doesn't do something. Between Portkeys and Apparition and the Floo, she doubts any help will come before the stand-off becomes a battle.
"Yeah," Harry is saying now, albeit foolishly, "yeah! I've got no problem saying Vol—"
Merde, Fleur can't help but think, recognizing a distracted Macnair at the end of her row, this is the boiling point.
"Shut your mouth!" Lestrange roars, spewing more bile than a doxy. Harry retorts, brave as always, as Fleur inches closer, empathizing with Hermione's pained groan. This is going nowhere, Fleur knows all too well, but every second of the impasse gives them another second to live...
"Do not play games with us, Potter," Malfoy warns. Fleur watches Hermione whisper in Harry's ear, nod, and then lean into Ginny, still whispering.
As Harry asks about the prophecy and the room's tempers pitch to new heights, Ron Weasley's eyes find Fleur. His jaw drops open.
"Quiet," Fleur mouths, and he looks away, tensing. With a similar shift in the others, Fleur realizes with sudden horror that they're going to strike.
"NOW!"
Fleur has the chance to duck, but the array of six Reductor curses sends the Death Eaters sprawling and prophecies smashing to the floor. Utter mayhem seizes the night between one breath and the next. In the time it takes for Fleur to avoid the cascade of glass and dart past the wispy seers, the room's occupants are scattering. She flings Stunning Spell after Stunning Spell, hitting Jugson in the face and startling Travers so badly that he's buried with Nott in the wreckage. Dodging a collapsing shelf and the bellowing rage of Bellatrix, Fleur runs through a door and spells it shut.
"...under the desks," Fleur hears from the adjoining room, and rushes to join the fray.
"Stupefy!" Fleur cries, forcing the second Death Eater careening face-first into the bell jar. To her astonishment, a baby's head comes to sit on the man's body, trapped in a cycle of life. She supposes her grandmother would find that interesting, but Fleur has no time for it and turns away.
"Fleur?" Harry gasps belatedly.
"It's time," Hermione manages as she, Harry, and the other boy glance between one another and the shrieking grotesquerie, left at a loss.
"It is time to go," says Fleur, drawing herself to her fullest height. "Come along," she adds, with authority. The Order's counting on her. To Fleur's relief and alarm, the three of them obey and follow her, though Harry insists as they start running that they need to find Ron, Ginny, and Luna.
Fleur is garishly green as she catches sight of her face in a mirror. Any further and she'll become into a banshee. "We will," she tells him.
A door bursts open, letting more Death Eaters in, wands aloft. Fleur readies herself, wishing she was a better duelist.
"In here!" The first yells. "In the office of—" Hermione's Silencing Charm traps his words in his throat.
"Impedimenta!" The other shouts, growling when Fleur deflects it.
Fleur flings Backfiring Jinxes and Cascading Jinxes as fast as she can, then Langlock (she really must thank Bill for that one, if she survives the night). Soundless green and purple curses ripple across the room, though, hitting the other boy and Hermione in the chests. The first curse sears Fleur's eyes and burns her skin as it sails past, filling her with a horrible dread. She's...she's only seen a description of that spell in a textbook...
"Stupefy! Stupefy!" Fleur shouts, spinning on her heel when the men fall bonelessly to the floor and Harry's gasp of agony reaches her ears.
"Neville! NEVILLE!"
Shocked out of her stupor, Fleur hurries to Hermione and feels for a pulse. When the faint thrumming beats below her fingers, she looks up.
Merde. Harry's crouched next to Neville, trying to rouse him. Trying to protect the body, Fleur realizes, aghast, like he did Cedric's.
"Harry..."
"I—no, he can't!"
An explosion crashes just outside the door, rattling it on its hinges. The fallout is much closer, Fleur realizes, horrorstruck. The crisis is here.
"Harry, we have to go now," Fleur urges, hating to hear the quavering in her own voice. So much for her authority as a member of the Order. She drapes a limp Hermione's arm over her shoulder, and then tightens her grip on her wand. "Please, Harry. I need you to help me with Hermione."
"I won't leave him," he mutters, face shining with sweat and tears. Fleur flounders for a control that won't stick. "I can't. Can't," Harry croaks.
"We'll come back for him," Fleur pleads, desperate. "Please. S'il vo—" She swallows thickly. "There is no time. We must go."
Time? Time for what? She manages to wonder, ashamed to push Harry through a tableau of comfort at the worst moment. They shouldn't be here. Neville shouldn't have been here. If none of them were here and Kingsley was on duty, Fleur laments, then Neville wouldn't...wouldn't—
Slowly, Harry gets to his feet, steadies his wand, and pulls Hermione's other arm across his shoulder.
"Ready," Harry mumbles. With a wave of her wand, Fleur unlocks the next door and begins to guide Hermione back into the Entrance Chamber.
The crosses are long gone, Fleur sees when the Time Room is well behind them. As she tries to get a hold of herself, another door pops open, letting Ron, Ginny, and Luna tumble out of the dark to meet them, flushed and panting.
"Ron," says Harry, sounding scared. A giggle draws Fleur's attention. Ron's...smiling?
"You're all messed up, Harry," Ron says feebly, a trail of blood dripping down his chin. A Babbling Curse, Fleur guesses, trying to remember the counterspell. Under such pressure, Fleur can hardly name any magic she's ever learned in her life. "Hermione?" Ron asks, eyes wide and distant. "Looks bad! And you!" He sways toward Fleur until Luna snatches a hand out and rights him. "Veela-girl. Fleur Del-a-cour," he exclaims.
Still supporting Ron, Luna explains what happened as they walk with Ginny hobbling behind the rest of the group, cussing under her breath.
"Episkey," Fleur murmurs, Hermione's head lolling onto shoulder. If not for the pulse below her skin, Fleur would think her to be dead too.
"Blimey," says Ginny, straightening up. Relieved, she joins Luna in shepherding her brother along like mother ducks. "Thanks, Fleur."
"Wait." Luna turns her protuberant eyes in Fleur's direction, missing Ron's attempts to play with her silvery hair. "Where's Neville?"
"He didn't make it," Harry answers when Fleur can't. Ginny claps a hand to her mouth. Luna chokes. "C'mon," he mutters dully. "We gotta go."
They stagger on, avoid Bellatrix Lestrange by the skin of their teeth, and manage to temporarily barricade themselves in the Brain Room...
...where things quickly go from bad to worse. The Death Eaters break in. Luna gets Stunned. Ginny does not emerge from beneath a bookcase that fell on her. Fleur is disarmed. She sinks to her knees, trying to keep the others out of the line of fire. Protego, she thinks again and again, deflecting the curses with her mind. Most break in the air before they are formed; others destroy the furniture around Fleur and Hermione, splaying metal and wood across the floor. Beyond the shimmering wall of her Shield Charms, Harry fires spell after spell, alone and outnumbered again.
"Accio Wand," Fleur calls, nearly breathless, and catches it in time to deflect another Impediment Jinx from Crabbe.
"Accio Brain!" Ron shouts gleefully, summoning one of the hideously floating brains out of the tank for his own amusement.
In spite of themselves, both sides watch in mingled horror and fascination as the tentacles start wrapping around Ron like living ropes.
"Diffindo!" Harry shouts, narrowly missing another hex meant for Fleur. Two against five, she realizes, overwhelmed.
Nonetheless, Fleur steps up to help Ron, dodging curses left and right. With one last look at Ron and Fleur, Harry runs for it, the prophecy held high over his head, and draws the crowd along with him. Left behind the Brain Room, Fleur freezes the tentacles, severs them off, and frees Ron.
"I dunno if I...feel so good," he babbles, keeling over in slow motion with a flick of Fleur's wand. "'Lo, floor," Ron muses drowsily, twitching.
"Sleep, Ronald," she suggests, chest heaving with effort, and after a long moment of grappling with her nerves, Fleur races after Harry.
By the time she gets to the Death Chamber, the battle is already over.
A gurney apiece for the others occupies the corridor of Level 9, casting that bluish light on every face. Scarred and giggling, Ron lies as still as a malfunctioning Sneakscope; Luna, devastated, says little and moves even less; Ginny, beside herself with rage, resists treatment from the Healers from St. Mungo's. Neville, Fleur realizes with a pang, is still and peaceful below a sheet, undisturbed by the traffic of reporters, Order members, Ministry employees, and the Weasleys. But the worst of all is Harry, who lies repose on his own cot, eyes unfocused and a sheet of sweat on his face. She would think him Petrified if not for the terrified pleas that sneak past his lips, begging for a reprieve from someone named Tom Riddle.
"Dumbledore says he's catatonic," Hermione offers in her approach, resting her weight on a crutch when she reaches Fleur. Her eyes are as blank as Harry's. Dumbledore revived Hermione after he arrived, but the Healers insisted on the crutch to stave off the potential of a fainting spell. Fleur thinks Hermione looks closer to beating someone to death with it than fainting. Fleur is almost afraid to ask, but she presses on ahead anyway.
"From...?"
"Sirius died. Then Voldemort"—Fleur winces but Hermione barrels on, flat and cool—"got into this head and stayed there."
"I'm..." Tonight (rather, this morning) Fleur is probably losing brain matter by the bucketloads. Too ashamed of her failures to face a debriefing with Dumbledore and the rest, she gives Hermione her full attention. "I am so very sorry, Hermione. I simply was not...quick enough to help."
Hermione shrugs. Fleur wonders if her tears are coming now or later. No one is unfeeling, not even Hermione. "You did all you could."
Fleur was the top of her class at Beauxbatons, and an up-and-coming Curse-Breaker. How has it all gone so terribly wrong?
Running a hand through her tangled hair, Fleur avoids the eyes of Bill and Dumbledore and Kingsley and Tonks and wanders away, trying to wriggle free of a nightmare that refuses to end. She wants to wake up. She wants to start the day over again. It showed such promise earlier, she recalls wistfully. Tea with Adrian and Leslie, lunch with Bill, many a good hour of filing, and even a promise to herself to return to France for a few days...
Things were much simpler when she was still a Beauxbatons girl.
That's it. Fleur draws to a halt, then quickens her pace, not bothering to heed the calls of her name until she's at the door to the Time Room.
"Fleur," Hermione wheezes, staggering along in pursuit. Fleur eyes the crutch warily, unwilling to let the idea get beaten out of her brain.
"What?" She calls over her shoulder, not bothering to seal the door shut. Hermione would just find her way in somehow.
"I know." Hermione sucks in a breath, eyes finally blazing again, this time with anger. They reach the bell jar. "I know what you're doing."
Fleur is surprised to learn they are already on the same page, albeit with differing interpretations of the text. "Then you will not stop me, no?"
"I should. You're breaking—you're breaking so many laws that I don't even know where to begin!"
It is not like Hermione not to know something, Fleur observes, staring down at the cycle of breaking and repairing Time-Turners. In her limited appraisal of life at Grimmauld Place, Hermione never seemed to go anywhere without a book. Never went anywhere without an opinion, either.
"Fleur," Hermione says pleadingly, "you shouldn't..."
"I will," says Fleur, and reaches into the repeating field just long enough to grab one of the chains. Her skin burns hot and cold, constricts and releases, even bristles under cuts of glass, then kisses of sand, until she pries one of them free. Outside of its paradox, the Time-Turner slows its growth cycle, whirring faintly. She watches the clock hands on her watch move, Hermione at her side, just counting. "Three minutes," she murmurs.
"Until what?" Hermione asks with an admonishing whack to Fleur's ankle. "Until you come back to your time? Until you get stuck in the past?"
"I don't know," Fleur admits hotly. Are the minutes in between the break and the remodel a guaranteed delay? Three minutes do not get her very far. If Fleur has to pick, it would not be three minutes in the past, it would be months. No, a year. A year ago, she was...what? Finishing the Third Task. No, she thinks, it shouldn't be a year. It should be almost two. She has to go back much further if she wants to change things properly.
On the watch on Fleur's wrist, thirty precious seconds have gone by. She has a suspicion that the Time-Turner will not survive much longer.
"Messing with time is a bad idea." Hermione watches Fleur arrange the pendant around her neck, dismayed. "Fleur, we lost. Don't make it worse."
"I owe Harry," Fleur says simply. She hasn't put it into words before, but it fits. It explains. "He saved Gabrielle. I have not forgotten that."
Two minutes left, she sees, antsy. The hourglass has a small crack, spilling sand into her palm. Living time, she guesses, or fading opportunities?
Hermione groans. If her resolve is weakening, she does not show it. "Gabrielle was never in any real—"
"He saved her anyway. Now I must save him." Fleur pauses. "And Ron. Neville. As many as I can." And Cedric if I could...but that is a pipe dream, as the English like to say. An intact Time-Turner would give her less than a day; saving Cedric Diggory regrettably requires something of a miracle.
Without warning, Hermione flings the crutch into remnants of the bell jar, then grabs the chain so she can fit it around her neck as well. It's not a moment too soon; the voices in the hall are only getting closer. Tonks and Lupin. Their time is almost up even before the cycle's begun again. Fleur's heart leaps into her throat. Nose to nose, they exchange a look in spite of themselves. "I'm going with you," Hermione insists, scowling.
One minute. Any longer and the cycle will start over. Any longer and someone will intervene, preventing Fleur from mending the night's errors.
Tuning the timepiece with a flick of her wand, Fleur nods once. That is another thing she knows of her new ally. Arguing with Hermione Granger is seldom done by anyone else but her best friends. But now both of her best friends are damaged beyond repair, and after tonight, there will be no one to stand in You-Know-Who's way but Albus Dumbledore, the Order of the Phoenix, and a lost prophecy. "Allons-y," she says grimly.
Of all directions, Fleur did not expect to go in reverse. Point me, indeed. Perhaps this way, Fleur reasons...even hopes, she will be able to do the good she set out to do when the first offer to join the Order was extended to her along the shore of the Black Lake.
The hourglass flips and flips and flips. The room lurches backwards. Color and shapes flit around Fleur and Hermione. Fleur feels the floor vanish beneath her feet. Unlike Apparition, where the world shrinks in itself and forces the wizard through a pressurized tunnel, jumping back in time feels like she and Hermione are falling off a very high building with nothing between them and true space but the broken, wobbling Time-Turner...