Harry Potter :Diamond Heart

It must be nice for her to hear from you,' Harry replied politely.

'I'm sure your family find it equally nice to hear from you,' Fleur responded amicably. Harry laughed and she immediately realised what had been wrong with her absent minded statement.

'I'm sorry,' she apologised. The words sounded strange coming from her mouth. Fleur had not said them sincerely to anyone in a long time.

'Don't worry,' he shook his head. 'It's actually almost refreshing to have somebody forget.'

'They stare,' Fleur murmured.

'Yes, they do,' Harry said with a little irritation. For a brief moment his eyes seemed a lot older than his fourteen years, then his face slid smoothly into calm countenance. It was as much a lie as the stunningly bright smile she had occasionally seen him flash when he wanted to charm someone. His bright, but empty smile reminded Fleur of the soft one of her own that she wore to let the world know it could not touch her.

Sometimes a smile is the simplest lie. It was not the first time Fleur had thought that. The phrase had been in her head since her fourth year at Beauxbatons.

It was something of a relief to Fleur that he seemed to hate the stares almost as much as she did. She wasn't quite sure why, but she was glad that something about him was similar enough to her to make sense, even if their reactions had been at opposite ends of the spectrum. Fleur had chosen to eclipse and ignore all her former friends, proving them wrong, whereas he had decided to vanish from sight and shut out everything but his own goals.

'Madame Maxime told me about your task,' she began, eager to see a little more of the boy that had captured her curiosity so thoroughly.

'What did she say?' Harry had been eyeing the door behind her, but now seemed curious enough to abandon thoughts of escape. Fleur shifted further in front of the entrance regardless; she wasn't going to let a chance to see what was so different about him slip so easily.

'She said you cheated by bringing the model dragon in and that if you had summoned it you might have got full marks.' It bruised her pride to all but admit he could have bested her in the task.

For a brief second Fleur glimpsed a spark of anger in his eyes, then it disappeared as he shook his head.

'I forgot about the wands only rule,' he confessed. 'How stupid of me.'

'You still came second,' Fleur reminded him. She did agree that it had been stupid, but his mistake had left her first, so she wouldn't encourage him too much. He might prove a serious rival if she did.

'Second is not first, is it?' He gave her an amused look.

'No,' she admitted. 'You intend to try and win.' It was not a question, the desire in his eyes was clear.

Perhaps he did put his name in after all.

'Winning will prove that I am stronger than I used to be,' he explained. There was enough conviction in his tone that Fleur knew she had indeed found a third rival in the tournament. 'You are fourteen,' she reminded him in surprise at his ambition.

He didn't like that. Harry's eyes narrowed and went hard. Fleur cursed internally at wasting a chance to learn more about him.

'When I win I will let you read my name off the Triwizard Cup.' He seemed to take a delight in repeating her own prideful words back to her. 'I guarantee it will not say my age,' he finished coldly.

Just like that the wizard she had been speaking to in almost amicable terms had gone and in his place was the personified form of infuriating disinterest. Harry Potter's eyes swept over her as if she were just another part of the room.

Fleur grit her teeth at his sudden dismissal of her and prepared a vitriolic response of her own, but Harry brushed past her before she could retort. Fleur was left to listen to the sound of his footsteps as they echoed down the tower.

She reassured herself that there would be other chances to see what was so special about the boy. He had spoken to her after she had been rude to him before the first task and he would speak to her again. He did not seem the sort to hold a grudge.

It was not as if she had learned nothing from their brief conversation. There had been enough emotion behind his words at time to let her begin to paint the picture of the wizard Harry Potter was.

The canvas of his character was a slightly disturbing thing. There was nothing unsettling about the boy himself, just the way that he seemed slightly unsure if he was really there. A lingering uncertainty about whether or not others could see him persisted around the edges of his smiles.

From that alone she gleaned that while their situations were somewhat similar, both Fleur the veela and The-Boy-Who-Lived drew the unwanted eyes and envy of those around them, what ever it was that had made Harry Potter so different was so deeply ingrained into his mind that it affected every aspect of him.

Fleur would be considering him as a serious rival for the Triwizard Tournament. There was every bit as much ambition, conviction and desire in his eyes when he spoke of winning as she had glimpsed in her own when she imagined herself holding the trophy before her mirror. Harry Potter would be doing his utmost to get his name engraved on the cup and she would be a fool to underestimate him.

Recasting her disillusionment spell she decided to take a detour back to the Beauxbatons' carriage. Walking through the centre of the school might get her discovered again and though only Madame Maxime and Harry Potter had been able to penetrate the cover of her charm it was not worth the risk of so many propositions from potential Yule Ball dates.

Instead of turning back towards the Great Hall she wandered round the edge of the quidditch pitch and looped back towards the temporary accommodation of her school.

The route was practically deserted. Fleur glimpsed only three people from under her disillusionment charm and she only recognised one. Ludo Bagman, one of the judges and the head of the department of magical sports was sitting in the bottom row of the stands talking quietly with a witch dressed in official ministry robes. She couldn't see Bagman's face, but his companion had a vacant, forgetful cast to it offset by a slight, sharp glint in her eyes. It was a gleam Fleur recognised from some of the more spiteful, rumour-spreading harpies amongst the other girls at Beauxbatons.

She gave the two of them a wide berth, not liking the look of the witch, and narrowly side-stepped the third person who appeared from nowhere in front of her.

The rat-faced wizard did not notice her, but Fleur certainly noticed him. He was unkempt, with darting, nervous eyes and smelt faintly of both stale food and dirt. She couldn't even begin to imagine what his role at the school could be. Another gamekeeper, or caretaker, perhaps. She had not come across the caretaker so far, and so couldn't know whether this was the infamously bad-tempered squib, Argus Filch, or another, but he fitted the image Fleur had in her head, despite the lack of a cat.

He did not join Ludo Bagman and the witch in the stands but scuttled rather swiftly into the shadows of the red and gold painted section. Fleur did not see him emerge again in any of her cautious backwards glances towards the pitch. She was fairly glad of that. The short, unkempt wizard had held a slightly unusual aura about him. He had seemed almost furtive and wary.

After seeing him Hogwarts' quidditch pitch seemed rather more eerie than before. Every shadow held a hundred dark creatures, the posts jutted into the sky like the ominous, towering spires of Nurmengard she had seen in the pictures from old papers as a girl.

Fleur shivered, then frowned at her own fear. She was a Triwizard champion, one of the best witches of her generation, there was nothing for her to fear in the umbrae of Hogwarts.

Of course telling herself that was not enough to give her the confidence to stop glancing into every pool of darkness between the pitch and the carriage and Fleur was more than a little glad nobody had seen her moment of weakness.

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