A/N: Hello everyone! How are you all? Sorry for the late update. I've been rewriting both the old and the new chapters after some readers mentioned that there were too many monologues.
Don't worry though—I do plan to finish this fic. Uploads will not be regular, but I'll try my best to post around 5–10 chapters a week.
Please leave a comment, review, and give some power stones if you enjoy the story. I'm not a professional writer, but I'm doing my best. Writing is hard—very hard—but I'm trying to improve.
**********
After mid-June, the heat was as unrelenting as exam week itself. Students set aside their discussions of the Triwizard Tournament and bent their heads over books.
Harry Potter was probably one of the very few "lucky ones" spared the ordeal of exams: champions had the privilege of sitting none that year.
This gave him no peace whatsoever. He was about to enter a dangerous labyrinth filled with every magical creature Hagrid had lovingly set loose inside, and his anxiety was no less than that of any student sweating over their O.W.L. notes.
He practised frantically from the two pages of spells Hermione had compiled.
"How do Draco and Hermione manage it?" Ron asked one evening, lying flat on his bed and abandoning his enormous History of Magic textbook with a groan. "They have to date, revise for exams, and still push you harder than anyone."
"I'd like to know too," Harry said, sprawled on his own bed. "They're more enthusiastic about my spell practice than I am."
"Honestly, I think those two are about to sit the Tournament in your place," Ron said, picking up the textbook again without much hope.
Harry stared at the canopy overhead.
Every time he watched them direct their wands at him—every time Draco shot crisp, scathing corrections at him, or Hermione delivered a look of cold professional disapproval—a strange feeling settled over Harry.
He felt as though he were facing some neurotic hybrid of Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall, both capable of producing surprise-quiz questions about dangerous creatures at any moment.
For example, during a break in his practice with Ron, Hermione would flip open Fantastic Beasts and peer at him over the top of it: "Harry, what do you do if a Sphinx asks you a riddle and you don't know the answer?"
"Expelliarmus—" Harry fired a spell that successfully disarmed Ron, then turned to Hermione and said casually, "Guess it and hope for the best?"
Draco, who had been drinking water nearby, inhaled it.
"Completely wrong," he coughed. "If you don't want it to pounce on you and chew through your skull, you simply walk away without answering."
"What if there's only one path through?" Harry asked.
"Then ask it to repeat the question!" Draco rolled his eyes. "And then think—using your brain—until you work out the answer."
"Exactly right," Hermione agreed.
"Easy for you to say!" Harry retrieved Ron's wand and tossed it back to him. "Riddles are your strength, Hermione—not mine. I'll find another way."
"Agreed," Draco said, pained. "Harry—please, I'm asking you directly—do not try to engage any creature in the labyrinth in hand-to-hand combat. They will not let you bring the Gryffindor sword into the arena. Use your wand. This is not negotiable."
"I'm practising, aren't I?" Harry muttered. "What do you think I've been doing all week?"
Hermione shook her head in quiet despair.
She persisted: "Harry—what spell do you use against a giant spider?"
"Stupefy?" Harry guessed. He saw Hermione's face harden and quickly added, "Impedimenta?"
Even Draco looked pained.
"Reducto?" Harry tried. "Expelliarmus?"
"Harry," Draco said with slow, heavy patience, "if that spider's shell is harder than your skull—which it may well be—most of those won't do anything useful. And Expelliarmus is only helpful if the spider is carrying a wand." He gave Harry a distinctly merciless look. "Think differently. Every spell can be turned to attack or defence. Do you remember how your Defence Against the Dark Arts professor handled those spiders in class?"
"Those were Unforgivable Curses!" Hermione looked up sharply. "Draco, I do not like where this is heading—"
"Not the Unforgivable Curses, Hermione—the other spells he used." Draco glanced at her with a slight smile.
"Oh—" Hermione paused. Her eyes lit up. "Oh! Yes. That's actually very clever. Draco—that's reshaped my entire understanding of offensive strategy."
"What are you two going on about?" Ron asked, his face going slightly grey. "Can't you discuss something other than killing the spider?"
"Since they can be enlarged by magic—" Hermione jumped to her feet, her book sliding off her lap and flapping away across the room. She made no move to retrieve it. "They can also be shrunk! Harry—do you see? Reducio!"
"You can't be serious," Ron said, appalled. "The answer was just—make it tiny?"
"No guarantees it will work on every variety—no one has ever tested a Shrinking Charm on an eight-eyed giant spider—but it's worth attempting," Draco said, strolling to the corner where the copy of The Monster Book of Monsters had been viciously gnawing on a chair leg, and stepping firmly on it. "How many times in one's life does a wizard encounter an eight-eyed giant spider, after all?"
"Well done, Draco!" Hermione said with obvious delight.
Even during exam week, the pair had no intention of letting him rest.
"You need to build muscle memory," Draco said, flicking his wand and sending Harry's legs into an involuntary Tarantallegra. "Whenever you're attacked, you react before your brain catches up. Stay alert—if I'd cast that as a Stunner just now, you'd already be on the floor."
"That's not fair—you used a nonverbal!" Harry said, breaking the jinx with a counter-curse.
"Do you think your enemy will announce the incantation before they cast it?" Draco said flatly, raising his wand again. "You need to cultivate a sixth sense. A subtle look, a small flick of the wrist—these could precede an attack. You need to catch them first."
Harry dodged the next spell and threw up a Shield Charm that bounced Draco back two steps.
"Better," Draco said, with satisfaction.
"Why do you always go for my legs?" Harry said, exasperated.
"Because they're your weak point," Hermione said crisply from behind her spell notes. "You took a hit from my Leg-Lowering Jinx last time without even noticing it coming."
"Correct," Draco said. "You can't always be on a broomstick. Work on your lower body defence. You dodge reasonably well once you're paying attention—you just need to pay attention sooner."
He had identified this weakness early. In his previous life, he had used a Trip Jinx to catch Harry in the Room of Requirement. He had been working on shoring up Harry's blind spot ever since.
"You've actually mastered most of the list quite solidly by now," Hermione said, scanning down the parchment. "The Summoning Charm, Impedimenta, Reducto, Stupefy… and you're almost there with the Ironclad Charm."
"Hermione—we need to go," Draco said, checking the clock. The afternoon exam was fifteen minutes away.
"Right, stopping here," he told Harry. "If we're not away now, we'll be late for Divination and Arithmancy."
"Good luck," Harry said, wiping his forehead as they hurried toward the door.
He dropped into the old chair by the window and addressed the ginger cat perched on the sill, who was watching him with dignified interest. "You're the only company I have left, aren't you? I imagine you're rather bored of watching me cast spells."
Crookshanks opened his mouth in a vast yawn. He turned his head toward Harry, whiskers twitching, and made a cautious move in his direction.
The door banged open.
"Harry—I'm done with Divination! Let's practise!" Ron walked in, eyes bright with recovered energy. "I've got an hour before my next exam!"
Harry looked at the ceiling and exhaled.
"How did Divination go?" he asked, gesturing for Ron to sit.
"Not bad, actually. Professor Trelawney showed me her crystal ball and asked me to predict 'the fate of my best friend.' Obvious motives." Ron settled into a chair. "I improvised a bit—I said you were about to face an eight-eyed spider, get lost in darkness, meet a terrible foe, and barely escape with your life."
"How inspired," Harry said.
"Pure invention," Ron said cheerfully. "You know how it is. Did what I had to for the marks."
He reached for the Daily Prophet that Hermione had left on her chair and glanced at the headlines: "Triwizard Tournament Scandal: Champions' Performances Under Scrutiny." Ron's eyes moved on. "Barty Crouch Sr.'s Death: Accident or Something More?" He rolled his eyes and turned the page.
"She just makes everything sound worse than it is," Harry said.
"Obviously. Right—are we practising or not?" Ron asked, stretching.
"We're practising." Harry fired a Reducio at a passing spider, which instantly shrank to the size of a grain of rice and fled in a panic.
Ron laughed. "Brilliant."
---
June the twenty-fourth arrived with sudden, brilliant clarity.
The Great Hall at breakfast was full of restless energy.
"Only History of Magic left and then we're free!" Ron announced, seizing a large piece of toast and looking at Harry with barely contained joy. "What are your plans today?"
"I'll probably revise some spells," Harry said, glancing cautiously at Hermione beside him, who was frowning over a thick book. "Maybe take a break."
Unfortunately Hermione wasn't listening. She was flipping through the book at speed, producing a steady rustle of parchment.
"Hermione—please," Ron said. "Can you eat one meal without that?"
"No! I need to check something!" Hermione took a long drink of pumpkin juice and went back to the book.
"I'm fairly certain Professor Binns won't deduct points for a minor factual error," Ron said.
As they talked, a screeching owl dropped the morning Prophet on Hermione's plate with its usual punctuality. She abandoned the book at once, snapped the paper open, glanced at the front page—and spat pumpkin juice all over it.
"What's wrong?" Harry and Ron asked in unison.
"Nothing," Hermione said quickly. She had already begun trying to fold the paper back up, but Ron's reflexes were faster. He snatched it away.
His expression was not much better than hers. The half-eaten chicken leg in his hand dropped onto his plate with a clatter. Lavender nearby burst into laughter. He ignored her entirely, staring at the headline.
"Impossible," he said, in a strange, strangled voice.
"What?" Harry asked. "Rita Skeeter again? Is it about me?"
"No," Ron said, in the same stunned tone.
Harry was sufficiently intrigued to take the paper.
Rita Skeeter had not written about him. But she had clearly started her new campaign.
The front page bore two photographs—one of his godfather, one of Fleur Delacour—alongside a banner headline:
THE SECRET AFFAIR BETWEEN FLEUR DELACOUR AND SIRIUS BLACK
"She may be the only female champion in this year's Triwizard Tournament. But what schemes lie beneath that beautiful face? — Special Correspondent Rita Skeeter reports."
As the Triwizard Tournament approaches its climax, a secret romance surfaces. After two underwhelming performances, seventeen-year-old champion Fleur Delacour appears to have found a different measure of success: abandoning the pursuit of tournament glory in favour of a passionate, secretive liaison with Sirius Black.
Fleur Delacour is an ambitious French girl of Veela descent. Of all the admirers who offered themselves during the tournament, she set her sights on the heir to the House of Black—meeting him furtively near the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts, and reportedly captivating him entirely.
Their romance first blossomed at the tournament's Christmas Ball, where Sirius Black opened the dance with Fleur Delacour as his partner—to the devastation of most of the school's female population.
Whether this flower of the French court can take root on English soil remains to be seen. Reports suggest that Black's current attitude toward Delacour is notably cooler than her obvious interest in him—leaving this French girl in something of a chase.
Sirius Black, thirty-five, is handsome, dashing, and as the sole heir and new head of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black—as well as godfather to Triwizard champion Harry Potter—is a highly sought-after prospect. But what exactly is Fleur Delacour's purpose in pursuing him?
Is she dazzled by his looks? Does she hope to extract information about Harry Potter, the hero of Hogwarts? Or is she simply after the Black family's considerable fortune?
"Merlin," Harry murmured.
All three of them—along with what appeared to be a significant portion of students who had received copies of the paper—darted a glance toward the Ravenclaw table.
Fleur was seated perfectly upright, her expression serene. Even as Cho Chang handed her a copy of the paper and whispered something sympathetically, Fleur barely glanced at it. Then, in full view of the entire Great Hall, she tore it quietly into pieces.
She stood, looking around the room once, her chin held high.
The buzzing stopped. Nobody spoke above a murmur. Nobody laughed.
And then Fleur Delacour, with perfect composure and her head perfectly level, walked in the direction of the conference room next to the Great Hall.
The only sound was the measured, pleasant click of her heels on stone. Her pale blue robes shimmered with each step. Her eyes were straight ahead.
Harry heard Ginny grunt somewhere nearby with what might have been grudging admiration, and Ron breathe an audible, helpless sigh.
When Fleur's figure finally disappeared through the door, the Hall exhaled collectively.
"Did Sirius ever mention her to you?" Ron whispered to Harry, with the awe of someone who has just seen something extraordinary.
"Not a word," Harry said, and shrugged, spooning up some scrambled eggs. He found himself thinking, briefly, of Cho Chang's slightly unfocused look as she had been sitting beside Fleur—an expression he recognised.
Fleur had always made Harry feel vaguely small—not through any deliberate act, but through a quality of bearing that seemed to pre-categorise him. He had found it irritating.
Now, suddenly, it made perfect sense. It had never been condescension toward his abilities.
It was simply a question of generation. Harry shrugged cheerfully at himself and went back to eating.
"I have to go," Hermione said abruptly, gathering her things. "Ron—see you in the exam hall."
Harry waved her off and looked across the room.
Draco was already striding toward the Great Hall exit, the morning Prophet rolled up and tapping casually against his palm. As he passed Hermione, he stopped, raised one eyebrow in a deliberately conspicuous look, and smiled—apparently to ensure every Gryffindor present had noticed.
The girl closed her History of Magic book, stood up without a glance at anyone, and walked straight to the boy waiting at the entrance—leaving her friends and the general disapproving murmurs of Gryffindor house behind without a second thought.
---
"Have you seen today's Prophet?" Hermione asked breathlessly, catching up to him.
"Difficult to miss," Draco said drily, taking the heavy History of Magic book from her arms without being asked. "An earth-shattering scandal." He put his arm around her shoulder and steered her toward the courtyard corridor, a note of appreciative amusement in his voice. "Is it true, do you think?"
"I thought you'd already know! You seem the type to know these things," Hermione said, tilting her head up at him with curious eyes. "So—what did you actually want to say to me this morning, before I assumed it was about the article?"
"Perhaps I wanted to ask whether you'd noticed anything unusual about Harry," Draco said, studying her face.
Her dark circles, he was glad to see, looked considerably improved compared to a few days ago.
"Nothing at all," she said lightly. "He looked rather more surprised than usual, but otherwise perfectly himself. Didn't you see?"
"Perhaps," Draco said. "Or perhaps I simply missed you a little."
He tightened his arm around her shoulder and buried his face briefly in her hair.
Green apple and sunshine. His chest warmed instantly.
"That's not fair," Hermione said, which in her vocabulary at that moment meant approximately the opposite.
Their steps slowed in a secluded stretch of corridor, sheltered under a canopy of thick green wisteria vines. A few small purple blossoms that had not yet faded rustled in the breeze.
"Unfair?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.
"You can smell the top of my head without any difficulty," Hermione said, turning to face him and wrapping her arms around him with an air of mild grievance, pressing her face into his neck. She sighed at his collar. "You're just so much taller than me."
He had been reaching for his composure. She had, apparently, made other plans.
Her nimble fingers had located his tie.
Hermione Granger. Since exam week began, she had developed an apparently insatiable interest in ambushing him in empty corridors—sniffing him, making small, proprietary investigations of his neck and collarbone, untying his tie with great confidence.
He usually stood there, stunned, like now—clutching her History of Magic book while she did whatever she pleased.
"Hermione," he said, his voice admirably level given the circumstances, "this is a thoroughfare—"
"There's nobody here." She had already loosened his tie by several inches and wrapped her arms around his waist. She breathed against his reddening neck with every sign of contentment.
"What exactly is this particular small hobby?" Draco said, somewhat helpless. "Has it occurred to you that you've been getting rather bold about it?"
"What does it matter?" She was extremely comfortable. Her voice was soft and slightly muffled. "I'm only indulging myself a little… I have to worry about Harry every day, and my exam results and… I thought I didn't do well on the Arithmancy exam last week…"
"Because," he said, in a voice of restrained suffering, "you did exactly this before that exam and put me so completely off that I barely knew what I was calculating—and yet somehow I am being held responsible for your exam performance—"
"Mmm… I probably didn't get enough of you that day… I have to make up for it now…" Her lips brushed his throat. She sighed with great contentment. "Oh, Draco… you are very, very likeable."
He gave a silent, devout prayer to Merlin.
Who would have imagined, looking at her in a classroom, that she was capable of this? He was completely disarmed, thoroughly red, and had absolutely no idea what to do with her.
On the other hand, Hermione fully admitted to herself that she had developed something of an addiction.
She had to seek him out several times a day—like a cat requiring its preferred spot in the sun—to alleviate the compound pressure of everything happening at once. The exam subjects. The Dark Lord's plans. The theory about Harry. The ever-lengthening spell list. Tonight's Tournament finals.
All of it had accumulated in the chest of this fifteen-year-old girl until she could barely breathe.
She had to do something enjoyable. Tease her Slytherin boyfriend until he went pink. That seemed like a reasonable solution.
"Isn't this still Professor McGonagall's favourite, best-behaved student?" Draco said, casting an anxious glance down the corridor.
"I suppose I'm exploring alternative study methods," Hermione said cheerfully into his collar, beginning to unbutton the top button with practised ease. Her voice dropped to something mischievous and faintly smug.
"I wouldn't call that studying—" Draco said weakly, abandoning his remaining dignity. He loosened his tie the rest of the way himself, surrendering to the inevitable. "Fine. I'll let you do exactly as you like until the History of Magic exam."
Amid her soft laughter, he said, his voice not entirely steady, "You audacious creature. You know perfectly well that I cannot say no to you."
How could he?
She had been dragged into this nightmare alongside him, worried without rest, pushed Harry through spell practice every spare moment during exam week, and kept a brave face through all of it.
It seemed only reasonable that she should charge him a little interest.
Beneath the wisteria leaves swaying in the summer breeze, Draco felt her warmth and bit his lower lip, resigned to his fate with something approaching contentment.
He had been taught from a young age that intimate gestures belonged in private settings—a matter of respect. But at some point, starting perhaps with that first initiative outside the Fat Lady's portrait, this girl who was supposed to be composed and sensible had begun ambushing him in quiet corridors, and each time, he ended up a slightly alarmed and thoroughly flushed mess.
Her Gryffindor audacity surprised him, embarrassed him, and captured him so thoroughly that he lost all track of time.
---
We shall leave that corridor to its occupants.
Back in the Great Hall, Harry spotted Professor McGonagall coming toward him along the aisle beside the Gryffindor table.
She stopped at his seat, not speaking at first, staring rather blankly ahead of her with a pained expression, and sighed.
"Professor McGonagall?" Harry and Ron said together.
She collected herself. "Potter," she said, "the champions are to gather in the conference room next to the Great Hall after breakfast."
"But the task doesn't start until tonight!" Harry said, jolting upright.
"I am aware, Potter," Professor McGonagall said with the air of someone who has had this conversation already today. "The champions' families have been invited to witness the final task. You can see them now."
Harry's face went carefully blank.
His family. The Dursleys. His heart sank.
"For Merlin's sake, Potter," Professor McGonagall said briskly, reading his expression without difficulty. "Do you not wish to see your godfather?"
Harry's entire face changed.
Sirius.
Yes—of course. Sirius was his family. His real family.
"And the Weasleys are there too," Professor McGonagall added.
Ron's head shot up. "Which ones?"
"Mr Weasley, I suggest you take your exam before you go looking for your mother," Professor McGonagall said sternly.
"Right—right." Ron grabbed his bag, clapped Harry on the shoulder, and bolted.
Harry abandoned his scrambled eggs entirely and rushed into the conference room.
There, in front of the fireplace, were Mrs Weasley and Bill, both beaming and waving.
He crossed the room quickly—past Cedric standing in the doorway with his father, past Viktor Krum and his dark-haired, fast-talking Bulgarian parents—and gave Mrs Weasley a kiss on the cheek.
"We wanted to see you compete, Harry!" she said warmly.
"Good to see you," Bill said, shaking his hand, his long earring catching the light. "Charlie would have come, but he couldn't get away—"
"Thank you," Harry said, and then glanced around. "Where's Sirius?"
Mrs Weasley made a small, pointed sound and gestured rather pointedly toward a corner behind the fireplace. "I'm not entirely sure what Sirius thinks he's doing," she said in a tone that communicated quite clearly.
Harry looked. His godfather was talking to Fleur Delacour in the corner, looking slightly flustered.
"Ignore her," Bill said quietly, with a helpless sideways nod at his mother. "She read this morning's paper."
He raised his voice. "Shall we show you around?"
Sirius looked across the room at that moment and saw Harry. His eyes lit up. "Harry—sorry, I'm a bit busy. I'll find you in a moment, all right?"
Fleur, who had been wearing her usual composed expression, smiled briefly at Harry.
"Of course," Harry said, and turned back toward Mrs Weasley and Bill, who were already ushering him toward the door.
He only half-heard Mrs Weasley's commentary on Sirius. He was busy noticing, across the room, Fleur's small sister Gabrielle—who was watching Sirius with enormous, curious eyes—and Fleur's mother, Apolline Delacour, an extremely beautiful woman who was standing very still in the corner, observing Sirius and her eldest daughter with an expression of gentle interest.
Sirius and Fleur. Harry looked once more on his way out, checking whether their pairing looked as unlikely as it once had.
The dark-haired man and the silver-haired girl, standing close in a corner, both clearly engaged. Even looking at it now, it wasn't surprising.
He had been astonished at the Christmas ball, watching them open the dancing together. He probably should have started thinking then.
Most importantly, Harry suddenly understood something that had nagged at him for a long time.
Fleur Delacour had always looked at him with a particular, unmistakeable brand of fond distance—the way you look at someone considerably younger than yourself. Harry had found it condescending. He had thought it was about the Tournament.
But it had never been about the Tournament at all.
It was simply the slight bewilderment of someone whose attention was very much already occupied elsewhere.
Harry shrugged, quietly cheerful. "Shall we go look at the Whomping Willow?" he asked Mrs Weasley. "I know you missed it when you were at school."
"Oh, let's!" Mrs Weasley's complaints dissolved instantly into eagerness. "I've been curious about it for years. They planted it after I left, you know—"
---
Fleur Delacour had walked into the conference room fully expecting nothing in particular from Sirius Black.
She was still seething, quietly, about Rita Skeeter. She had managed the Great Hall—held her chin at the correct angle, torn the paper with sufficient composure, walked out at the right pace—and she had not allowed herself to show any of it.
She found her mother and Gabrielle immediately and was kissed and kissed again.
Gabrielle, as perceptive as ever, tilted her head and said in French, almost immediately: "Is that him? Sirius Black?"
"Don't stare at people in public—it's terribly rude!" Fleur said quickly.
"Nobody here understands French anyway," Gabrielle said airily. "I'm not even looking. He doesn't know you like him—"
Oh. Gabrielle.
Her mouth was like a tap left running, and Fleur had not moved quickly enough to turn it off.
"Stop—stop! He speaks French!" Fleur said urgently.
Gabrielle's eyes went wide. She clapped a hand over her own mouth. "I'm sorry—I didn't know—"
Fleur dared to glance at him.
He was looking straight back at her across the room, with a half-smile that said, very clearly, that he had heard.
She turned back to her mother and sister with a face she could feel contorting with embarrassment, and decided firmly not to look at him again.
"You do seem rather taken with him," Apolline murmured, kissing Fleur's cheek. "The last time I looked like that was when I met your father."
"Maman, please," Fleur said stiffly. The room was far too warm for June.
Apolline's bright blue eyes were already moving over the room with the quiet alertness of someone who has assessed most situations before anyone else. She bent slightly toward Fleur and whispered: "Fleur, I believe he's been watching you. He's heading this way. I think you ought to turn around."
Fleur turned—and found Sirius Black standing in front of her, greeting her mother and Gabrielle with entirely creditable French, then turning to say politely: "Pardon me—might I borrow Fleur for a moment? There's something I'd like to address."
Her mother and Gabrielle both made identical accommodating gestures. "Of course," Apolline said graciously. "We don't mind at all."
"Perfectly agreeable," Gabrielle added, examining Sirius with frank, curious interest as though he were a specimen she had never encountered.
They were hopeless. Fleur shot them both a look and followed Sirius to the corner behind the fireplace.
"What is it?" she asked, keeping her voice even.
"I read this morning's Prophet." He no longer looked particularly at ease. His composure had cracked slightly. "Rita Skeeter overstepped badly. She's damaged your reputation. Do you—would you like me to issue a public correction?"
"Correct what?" Fleur crossed her arms, trying to maintain her composure with moderate success.
She was actually struggling. Because he had not assumed the worst of her, as everyone else had. He had thought of her first.
She rather wanted to smile at him.
"A correction of the record," Sirius said, frowning at the middle distance. "Clarify that our relationship was entirely—that is, explain what it actually was. Your family has evidently drawn conclusions. Won't it cause you difficulties?"
He glanced at the smiling Delacours, who were not attempting to hide their interest.
He had, by now, spent enough time with Fleur to understand one thing clearly: she was a girl who cared enormously about being seen accurately—about being recognised for who she actually was, not what people preferred to imagine.
And she cared deeply about her family. She would not want them worrying.
"How would we correct it?" Fleur asked. "She listed actual facts. We were dance partners at the Christmas ball. We have met privately in the forest." She paused. "I've been wondering how she found out about the forest. We were always very careful."
Sirius was wondering the same thing.
"The facts she cited are real," Sirius said, "but they all have legitimate explanations, and we know what they are. A shared dance and a few meetings don't constitute a secret affair. We have—nothing to feel embarrassed about."
In reality, he was finding it rather difficult to sort out his feelings on this particular subject. There were too many other pressing things demanding to be sorted first. His exact feelings regarding Fleur Delacour were not even in the top three items on his current list.
But Rita Skeeter had smeared her. That much was clear and intolerable.
Fleur was seventeen. She deserved none of this.
"Oh?" Fleur said, looking at him steadily. "You have a clear conscience, then. What if—" She paused. Her heart was doing something rather chaotic. "What if I don't?"
Why had she said that? She had no idea, even as the words came out.
Was it spite? Or a thought that had been circling quietly for some time, looking for a door?
Sirius Black's eloquent composure collapsed on the spot.
She was seventeen and she was French and she appeared to have never been introduced to the concept of restraint. His Adam's apple moved.
"Then I'll play along," he heard himself say, before he had thought through any part of it.
It was apparently a matter of pride—he refused to be outmanoeuvred by a seventeen-year-old.
The next moment, both the male and female subjects of this morning's scandal looked at one another with identical expressions of startled confusion about their own words.
"Well," Fleur said at last, her voice eight tones higher than usual, recovering her composure first. "It's good to know." A small smile tugged at her lips. "I'm going to take my mother and sister to see the castle now. I'll see you later."
She turned, walked toward her family, bent to murmur something into Gabrielle's ear, straightened, and led both of them gracefully through the conference room door.
The moment she stepped out, a June breeze passed through the open door, lifting the hair from Sirius's forehead and doing something entirely unwelcome to his chest.
When the last corner of pale blue robes disappeared, he remained exactly where he was, feeling the strange specific quality of absence.