6 The Ballad of Death (I)

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A/N: From now on, words said in French would be quoted in - -, while words said in English would be quoted in " "

Chapter title changed from 'The Dark Day' to 'The Ballad of Death'

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~ 24th of August, 1986.~

~Delacour Manor, Montpellier, France.~

The Delacour Manor was your typical mansion. Luxurious, huge, and graceful were precise words to describe it. It was situated in a remote grassfield a few miles away from the outskirts of Montpellier, the city famous for its wines.

The Manor had a well-planned interior, with its various rooms all situated and decorately appropriately. The person who built it certainly had a delectable taste for housing designs…well, at least in the eyes of a certain blue eyed boy.

In one of the aforementioned Manor rooms, a boy and girl who looked no older than 9 were staring fixedly at the chessboard between them. They were seated facing each other on a table and appeared to be deep in contemplation.

The girl, who looked absolutely stunning, suddenly moved a chess piece on the board, and earned the attention of the blue eyed boy opposite her.

'Knight to E4? Touché' the boy, who could only be Adrien, smiled and thought upon seeing the strategic play.

'However, how will you respond to this?' he ruminated, moving his Queen to the C6 position.

The young girl opposite him, none other than Fleur, creased her elegant eyebrows as she registered Adrien's new move. Within the past three years, she had grown up quite considerably and her previously light brown hair with blonde tips had completely turned silvery blonde.

Her chubby cheeks had faded considerably and now, her perfectly symmetrical face now possessed remarkably flawless cheekbones, cheekbones that exacerbated the appeal of her already heavenly visage.

'I'm trapped.' Fleur clicked her tongue and sighed gloomily in defeat. If she couldn't find a way to escape this entrapment, her record with her best friend would become more unsightly, and stand at 24-205, in favor of her best friend.

'How is he so good at this?' She continued to mull over her current predicament. She hadn't won a game against him ever since she first introduced the game to him. Initially, she had thoroughly defeated him repeatedly since he was a novice at the game whilst she had been playing for as long as she could remember.

However, after exactly 24 games, he suddenly became unbeatable and this irked her to no end. She couldn't understand how it was possible, how did he surpass her level in wizard chess after a mere 24 games?

Thinking about all this, she became disgruntled and decided to succumb to the inevitable. The game was lost and she had no way of defying that fate.

-You win…like usual…- she remarked, disheartened.

Adrien raised his eyebrows in amusement, -You're not going to keep trying?- he said, sarcastically.

-No, I'm tired of doing that...it's pointless-

-Hah- Adrien chuckled lightly, -Remind me what the scores stand at now? I've forgotten- he teased.

Fleur glared at him and pouted, -Can you not? Please- she pleaded, looking at him with puppy eyes.

Adrien chuckled again seeing that, -Now you know how it feels. You were bragging when you beat me in Exploding Snap, but look at you now.- he smirked.

-Pfft- Fleur tried to stifle her laughter, which confused Adrien.

-What's so funny?- he asked, his eyebrows raised.

-You just reminded me of the time you burnt your eyebrows when you were trying to beat me.- she started, no longer stifling her laughter.

-You should have seen your face. It was gold!- she giggled.

Adrien's expression immediately switched up, his cheeks turning slightly red in embarrassment.

-It's not funny you know. It took a while to grow back- he said, with a slight frown.

-It is- Fleur retorted.

-Not- Adrien persisted.

-Is-

-Not-

-Is-

-Why am I even trying to argue with you?- Adrien conceded first.

-Because you're embarrassed- Fleur chuckled, -Don't worry, It'll be our secret- she winked.

Adrien just sighed and clicked his tongue. Fleur smirked seeing that, though she suddenly remembered something.

-By the way, are we still going to the muggle park today?- she asked, inwardly hoping the response would be a positive one.

Adrien flashed a soft smile, -Yeah, we still are…as usual.-

3 years had passed since the Christmas Ball and quite a few things had happened since then, the first of which being Adrien and Fleur's friendship developing to that of childhood best friends.

Because he often found himself bored, Adrien had started to visit Fleur by instructing Filley, his house elf, to apparate him to her room. She was the only person his age he knew so far and she lived nearby; there was practically nothing stopping him from hanging out with her whenever he had nothing else to do.

Initially, he didn't expect much from the decision. To him, it was sort of a spur of the moment thing to pass away time. However, on the contrary, hanging out with Fleur was surprisingly…fun.

Yes, fun…something he found surprising and odd. He, a bonafide grown up playboy, found spending time with a child exceedingly fun and interesting. Was he weird? Adrien didn't know, and frankly, he had stopped caring about it for quite some time now.

In his eyes, there was no need to think about it too much. He was enjoying himself and had actually started to look forward to their…playdates, as Fleur called it, so there was no need to complicate things with superfluous monologues.

The times he spent with her made him feel like he had regressed back to his childhood days…innocent days that were filled with nothing but bliss and the mundane things of life. It was quite soothing for the mind, and made him more at peace with himself.

Fleur, on the other hand, was always eager and brimming with excitement about his visits. At some point, she even started preparing tea and french biscuits for them to munch on as they hung out and unsurprisingly, the biscuits tasted quite sumptuous.

Seriously, French food was godly…at least, in Adrien's eyes.

As for the other aspects of his life, quite a few things had changed as well. Firstly, he had grown rather attached to his new old parents and now accepted them as his second parents. He and the old Flamel couple had grown quite close now. He simply loved how kind and simple they were. It was beautiful.

Though, unfortunately, Nicolas and Perenelle's health had deteriorated drastically and now, even Nicolas had become bedridden. Perenelle could barely move, these days the most she could do was talk, but even that seemed strenuous lately.

The development cast a depressing and gloomy ambience over the Flamel Manor, something that Adrien abhorred. It was another reason he started visiting Fleur more often. It was a breath of fresh air, and diverted his mind from thinking about his parent's state.

For his magic, knowledge, and ability development, Adrien had progressed by leaps and bounds. His knowledge on Arithmancy was now roughly on par with that of the Hogwarts Arithmancy Professor, Septima Vector.

It was now sufficient enough for him to commence his investigations on the theories outlined in The Magic Series Codex, something he was quite excited about.

His knowledge on Ancient Runes had roughly reached that of a seventh year at Hogwarts, though he was still unable to decipher the glyphs inscribed on Aella's, his Thunderbird, egg.

Adrien had successfully hatched her about a year ago and surprisingly, it was an arduous task. He had read about the hatching process from Newt Scamander's Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them but the process outlined in it didn't work for Aella. It was as if she was dormant or even worse…dead.

He tried multiple things, ranging from asking his father to take him to regions raging with thunderstorms to trying to incubate the egg but none of them worked. He only finally managed to make progress when he tried to force magical energy particles into the egg, a decision he made on a whim.

Surprisingly, that worked and Aella absorbed the particles greedily, which made him conclude that she was unable to do it herself. Thus, he persisted at feeding her magical energy, and after roughly 2 years of doing that, the egg finally hatched, giving rise to an incredibly beautiful looking bird.

Aella was simply stunning. She had iridescent pearly white and bright golden feathers, deep golden eyes, and 3 wings, which was normal for a Thunderbird. She was very small when she first hatched and even caused it to rain at the Manor for a week, though now, she was roughly the size of an owl on the smaller side.

Adrien had brought her to Fleur's for the girl to see and surprisingly, Aella and Fleur became instant buddies. Fleur had even said that Aella seemed appealing to her. She said she had the urge to pet her and keep her close, which caused Adrien to raise his eyebrows in contemplation.

He wondered if there was some sort of resonance between Veela and Thunderbirds and even started researching it but hadn't found much. Though, he hypothesized that there was indeed some form of resonance between the two simply based off of Slavic Mythology that he had read in his past time back on earth.

In Slavic Mythology, Veela's were described as fairy or nymph-like creatures that lived in waters and had ability over storms and thunder as well as the ability to entice people with charms.

As such, Adrien wondered if the same thing applied to the Harry Potter world. It was never shown in the plot, and all Veelas could do in the actual series was charm people. If it did apply though, it would certainly be interesting.

Back to Adrien's progress though. Adrien had started to take alchemy lessons from his father. As the son of a man revered as the greatest in the field of alchemy, Adrien insisted on learning his father's craft and was now as roughly as proficient as an intermediate in the field, a level just above the novice level.

Adrien found Alchemy very interesting and entertaining. It somewhat reminded him of Chemistry from his past life; the two had quite a few similarities.

As for Adrien's magic, his spell pool was now roughly that of a fourth year at Hogwarts, and as of now, he had only cast spells wandlessly so having such an advanced spell pool, was quite remarkable, to say the least.

Adrien had also started to learn Occlumency and Legilimency. After being mind raped by his godfather, he realized how uncomfortable and naked it made him feel and as such he delved into the mind arts with vigor.

Because he was a Natural Occlumens, his speed of progression in Occlumency was terrifyingly fast. Currently, he was at the master level in the art, the same level as Severus Snape.

Unsurprisingly, Adrien was not a Natural Legilimens, though his speed of progression was astoundingly fast, just a level below that of his Occlumency speed, and this phenomenon was solely due to his Truth Eyes.

As Adrien grew up, his eyes started to become more iridescent, almost as if they were glowing. They also kept revealing new secrets to Adrien. He had discovered that his eyes made controlling magical energy extremely easy…easy to a frightening degree. He could move the particles as if they were part of his body, which was unheard of.

As such, they made Adrien a prodigy at any magical mind art. Mind arts worked by controlling magical energy particles to phase through wizards and this enabled wizards to obtain full access to a person's mind.

Legilimency worked that way. To be an accomplished Legilimens, one needed to be able to control magical energy particles to infiltrate a person's mind with great skill and control.

So since Adrien possessed natural control of these particles, improving in Legilimency was almost as easy as breathing.

Currently, he was around the intermediate level in the art, a level just below the master level, which was the level of Snape.

Back to the present.

Fleur smiled as soon as she heard Adrien's confirmation of their plan to visit the park in Montpellier. She was extremely giddy about it and couldn't wait to go there and play. She was about to say something when the space around her room suddenly warped and revealed a little house elf who seemed anxious.

Adrien frowned as soon as he saw Filley's expression. She looked completely petrified.

"Is everything alright?" he asked concernedly.

"Master Adrien come quick! Something bad is happening to the Master and Mistress! You must come back!" Filley exclaimed fearfully in one breath

Adrien was startled at the sudden exclamation. He frowned and responded,

"Calm down Filley…take a deep breath. What happened?"

Filley's expression didn't change. She just shook her head and remained rooted on the spot.

Seeing that, Adrien immediately assumed the worse and stood up. He looked at Fleur, who was looking at him with a worried expression on her face.

-Sorry Fleur, we may have to reschedule our park visit to another day. I've got to go.- he said to the girl, softly.

-Alright, that's fine. I hope everything's fine with your parents- she replied, concernedly.

Adrien just smiled and nodded. He gestured to Filley to apparate him back to the manor and a moment before he disappeared from Fleur's room, he smiled and waved goodbye to the girl.

'Fuck….'

Adrien thought as he appeared in the foyer of the Flamel Manor. Apparating always made him feel like his insides were churning and he could never get used to it.

Though, his grumbling was immediately caught short once he got a whiff of a peculiar smell. His eyes widened as soon as he registered the smell. The smell was putrid…awfully putrid. It smelled absolutely sickening, akin to that of rotting meat with rotting fruit undertones.

It was the smell of death.

As he smelt the ghastly stench, fear and dread latched onto his soul, gripping it firmly with its grisly claws.

His hands started to tremble slightly, his breath quickened, and his eyes became slightly watery. This was the first time he had encountered death, and it would soon prove to not be his last.

Adrien hastily made his way over to his parents room, blitzing through the corridors like Naruto on steroids, and only stopping once he came in contact with the familiar ornate brown door that served as the entrance to his parents room.

The stench of death had become considerably worse now, and Adrien started to wonder if he was in his house, or in a cemetery.

'Please…be fine…' he said to himself inwardly as he opened the door, knowing fully well that the probability of such a thing was abysmally low…

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A/N: Slightly switched up my writing style. Let me know what you think of it, in the comments.

Thanks for reading, I hope you like the story.