Chapter 23

An hour passed after Harry and Hermione's fight, and in that hour, three things happened: Ron and Fleur's match started, Ron and Fleur's match raged, and Ron and Fleur's match ended.

Harry watched it all with an analytical eye, skipping out on medical treatment just to ensure he didn't miss a beat of the action. He dropped Hermione off, healed as much of his shoulder as he could, as quickly as he could, and returned to the stadium, utilizing Gabby and Luna as buffers to keep the rest of the student body at bay so he could focus on the match in peace.

What a match it'd been, too: Ron and Fleur, duking it out with such distinct fighting styles. For the bulk of the match, Fleur had been on the back foot. Every time Ron would cast a spell aimed just an inch further to the left of her centermass than the right, she'd dodge the expected way, and usually right into his follow up spell. Her advanced shield spell, taking the form of a small buckler, was the only thing saving her from a swift defeat. Though tiny, the shield more than made up for its small size with its unparalleled defensive properties, turning blasting and fainting and blinding spells away with stalwart reliability.

It was an uneven fight, though, despite Fleur's deft blocking and rocksteady dueling skills. Ron was simply a league above what someone at her skill level could deal with. When she'd proven her shielding capabilities, he'd immediately switched to spells with a larger area of effect, spraying boiling water and slippery oil at her- neither of which she was able to block entirely, resulting in some light burns and a great difficulty holding her wand. Ron spent the next ten minutes scoring similar small wins in his exchanges with Fleur, pressing her further and further into a corner, which Harry knew, meant his inevitable victory. His plan for dealing with the redhead hinged upon his not allowing himself to be pinned down—with Ron, as the variables in a fight went down, the number of moves he could plan ahead drastically increased. Nothing illustrated this fact as well as Ron's penultimate combo move did, his CHECK, with CHECKMATEnot far behind.

He'd managed to catch Fleur off balance, and, rather than use the moment to cast at her, he cast up, into the sky, firing off a half dozen cherry-red stunners that disappeared in the clouds. That'd earned him a fair share of confused grunts and even some sneers from the crowd, but they'd all been silenced when, with five deliberately placed disarming charms cast one after the other, he forced Fleur into the exact center of the stunners, which fell in a ring around the French veela. In that one instant where she couldn't move to dodge him at all, Ron dealt the finishing blow: a shield breaker followed midflight by a disarming charm.

Or at least, it should have been the finishing move.

A sense of dubiousness had been coloring Harry's thoughts all fight long. He kept waiting for Fleur to pounce: to use some of that explosive speed he'd glimpsed that day in Gabrielle's bedroom months ago, to dodge and weave around Ron's cleverly constructed barrage and return fire. At any moment, he thought, she was going to show off something spectacular and blow everybody's minds. She walked with a confidence that he didn't think could be faked—confidence that translated over to her combat skills. He'd heard her boast on more than one occasion about her own capabilities, and he believed her. She hadn't been able to show off her skills in the preliminaries due to her mediocre opponents, but he'd glimpsedthe surface of her abilities before. She'd just allured her way past her first opponent here, but that boy'd been way out of his league anyway, and would have been as much a pushover for any of them, had they been paired against him. As the fight drew on though, and she seemed to honestly struggle against Ron's assault, even before he started getting fancy, Harry began to doubt his previous evaluation.

It'd been a ruse.

Ron's shield breaker and disarming spell were perfect: fast, accurate, and potent beyond his years. The only way Fleur was going to avoid those two spells was by moving, and if she did that she was going to knock herself out on Ron's ring of stunners. She didn't do that. Instead, she dropped her shield charm and let momentum reign. The shield breaker dispersed harmlessly on her breasts, the disarming spell ripped her wand from her slippery hand, and the stunners impacted with the ground where they died.

For a single moment, Ron was allowed to believe he'd won the fight. Then, Fleur transformed.

It was over in just a few seconds. Ron made the mistake of blinking when he realized that Fleur wasn't surrendering, despite being disarmed, and in that split-second, she closed the fifteen-meter gap between them and swung.

Ron had always shown the most enthusiasm when it came time to exercise and train their bodies when the three of them met up. When Hermione finally asked him, rather irritated and out of breath, just why he seemed to enjoy working out so much, he'd just ginned. "Guilt-free feasting," he'd said, as though that explained everything. Hermione didn't seem to think it did, but Harry thought it might. If Ron thought pushing himself till he was drenched in sweat gave him a free pass to gorge himself, then more power to him, as far as Harry was concerned. The ratio worked out to where the tall redhead was putting on mass and muscle at a decent pace, certainly better than Harry or Hermione at least, so he didn't see any problem with Ron's reasoning. They were still young so the effects weren't really going to become obvious for a few years, though Harry knew the girls he bedded appreciated his musculature, but all the same, the end result was a spike in strength for all of them, and Ron specifically. Before Harry came into his incubus inheritance and gained that inhuman strength, he would have been more than leery of boxing his buddy. Ron was a strong ginger fuck, especially for his age.

He put up a crossguard with his forearms to block Fleur's talon'd punch. His arms broke and dropped, hanging limp at his sides. He tried one last desperate attempt at knocking Fleur out, casting a wandless stunner at point blank range. She spun out of its path and roundhouse kicked him in the head. In an instant, he was out like a light.

Harry and the crowd at large watched in shocked silence as he crumpled to the ground. It'd been so abrupt, so unexpected, that they were like snails in applauding. When they finally started, it was subdued and unsure. Was it over? Many of them hadn't even seen her move. Had she won?

She had, and she didn't seem perturbed with the lackluster cheering, ignoring the crowd at large to focus straight on Harry instead. Her eyes said bring it on.

Gabrielle was cheering her head off to his left, but Harry ignored her entirely as he locked gazes with the older veela. She was still transformed, cloudy grey and white feathers accenting the avian part of her femme, wicked talons and double-lidded eyes the fatale. Her chin jutted out at him in challenge, and he rose to it.

Getting into position for this match was completely different from when he and Hermione had prepared to fight. Fleur was already in her circle, already transformed, and didn't speak to him as he reached his. The announcer didn't dally—and neither did the proctor, who asked them if they wanted to bow out and then retreated as quickly as he could when he got the expected answers from them.

'No warm-up,' Harry thought. 'No foreplay.' It was amazing, but getting to cum deep in the French veela's body, something so perfect and grand that wars had been fought for similar sensual zeniths in the past, as tantalizing as that was, Harry hardly cared. His fighting spirit was ten times more aroused than his loins, burning with desire, insatiable in its need to see who was the stronger creature: the veela or the incubus. Every time he got jumped by Dudley's gang, every time Petuna's bony hand met with his face, every time that fucking door locked and the lights went away, all of those experiences were still inside of him. He still had to deal with all of those things. And he would. One day, he really would. But until he could call himself Mr. Rogers and let bygones be bygones, slam-dancing with dragons and veela and crazy magic folk seemed like a great way to express some anger. He wasn't sure if it was a good moral character or the daily pussy he got, but somehow or another, he'd avoided turning into a little fight-starting shite despite his strong taste for it.

But, well, if they were going to hold a fucking Mortal Kombat tournament right next to where he spent his days learning spells and brewing potions like a good boy, and if crazy strong motherfuckers were going to line up, just as eager to brawl as he was… Come on.

The announcer called go, and the two seducing creatures exploded towards one another. Fleur didn't melt him with any fireballs, and Harry didn't turn her into a compact cube with his telekinesis. Before using any of that, they wanted to see who would be the victor in a magicless, stone-age style fistfight.

Harry's fist impacted the veela's face so hard it smoked, and her balled talon'd hand did the same, catching him square in the cheek. They ground their fists into the other's face and locked eyes in a wild stare.

"You hit like a little girl," Harry said, grinning a red grin. His teeth had cut his lip wide open when Fleur's superpowered punch had connected with his face. The taste of his blood made it pump faster.

"And you hit like a leetle boy," she said, flashing her unmarred white teeth at him.

They sprung back on unspoken que, bodies tense for the next exchange. Harry raised his hands and bounced on his toes, knees bent in a kickboxing stance. The main focus of his training with Ron and Hermione had been on their magic, but physical defense hadn't been entirely neglected. There were scores of books out there with phantom, almost hologram-like instructors that would teach the material in the text they belonged to, like an enchanted painting but loads more useful. That's where they'd learned.

Fleur fell into a different stance, her talon'd feet spread in a wide, defensive position, her claws aimed at him tip first, one closer than the other. The sun glinted off their menacing black edges.

"Don't worry, Fleur," Harry said, slowly circling around his avian opponent. She turned to keep him squared. "I'll make you forget all about these bruises after I win."

She let out an amused trill, reminding him of Fawkes, of all things. "You'll have to bruise me first."

She was right: whereas his cheek felt a bit like it was on fire, already puffing up, her face continued to exist in uninterrupted perfection. It pissed him off.

He sprung forward and snapped at her side with a lightning fast kick, aiming for her floating ribs.

She ate the blow with a wince and tried to grab him, but his leg was already gone, and her talons speared only air.

Still bending that way, Fleur couldn't dodge or block as he did the same thing to her other side, catching her with another strong kick to the ribs that knocked the air out of her. He finished his combo before she could catch her breath, finding her with a straight and then a hook to the face. He looked for the end with a full-power haymaker, but he overestimated her daze, and wound up catching a palm-strike to the throat in return.

He jumped back gasping, gagging, one hand clutching his throat, the other still held out in a fist. She'd done way more damage with that one hit than he had with four good ones. "Fuck," he wheezed, swallowing loud, painful gulps of air. "That might have killed somebody else, you know."

Fleur straightened up, wincing a bit as her ribs protested. "You're ze barbarian hitting women," she said, a playful smirk shining through her pain. "Don't complain when a maiden such as I defends herself."

She threw her feathered arms back with a grunt and lunged towards Harry foot-first, like a claw-tipped spear.

He sidestepped and seized her ankle midflight, faster than her, and threw her past him.

She flapped her arms again and reversed herself midair, spinning off the ground. She shot in close, catching him around the waist with a tackle that landed them both on the sod. She mounted him, pinning him to the grass. Two quick pops from her balled talons to his nose and he was bleeding beneath her. On the third, though, he dodged, pulling her hand down and using that momentum to throw her off balance. They grappled on the ground, rolling over and over, trying to seize the mount, trading quick blows as the opportunities presented themselves. When the scramble finally stopped, it was Harry who was on his back once again, but this time, Fleur was the one in a bad spot. Harry'd managed to get her into a headlock, and he wasn't letting go.

"Tap out Tweedy," Harry said, gasping. She'd gotten him good in the scramble, twice in the lip and once in the sternum, making it hard to breathe. Not as hard as it was for her, though. "They call this a rear naked choke. Ya ask me, there are better ways you and I can use all three of those words. All you gotta do is tap, and I'll show ya."

"F-fuck you, horndog," she ground out, pulling at his elbow in a fight for air. She was in the same type of situation as the one he'd been in with Hermione: she could easily reach behind her head and slash his eyes, but it just wasn't that type of fight. She struggled and struggled against his hold, but the darkness crept in around the edges of her vision all the same. She was stronger than him, by a good margin, but he was fast, and his form was perfect. She couldn't beat him just using her body.

Fleur aimed her hand back at his face and charged a fireball.

He kicked her away from him with every ounce of his strength, sending her flying across the pitch just as she released the superheated grenade. It exploded and turned the world white and soundless for a second.

"Fuck," he thought he said. Without being able to hear the words, he couldn't be sure. He may have just thought it.

A ringing replaced the silence, and he winced. Colors and shapes filled in, and he blinked hard, trying to focus.

'That was close,' he thought, turning his dirt-stained face to the side. There was a crater where his head had been, mushy black soil and scattered clumps of sod further marring the pitch's damaged façade. "Too close," he said, for sure aloud this time.

"You're looking ze wrong way."

The sound of soup boiling over and sizzling on the burner closed in on his blindspot, and Harry shielded himself with his telekinesis on instinct.

The explosion still sent him to the ground, rolling twice on the warm grass before he was able to halt himself. He strengthened his barrier and look for Fleur. "Pay attention mate," he whispered to himself, searching the ground for his veela enemy. She was nowhere to be seen. 'Invisibility?'

"Up here," she called, and he looked. There, high above the ground, was Fleur, flapping lazily with her arms, which had sprouted hundreds of additional feathers and were now full-blown harpy wings. "You're scrappier zan I zought you'd be," she said, nose now mostly beak and eyes completely obscured behind her plastic-white double lids. She looked truly ferocious now, more beast than young maiden. The self-satisfied smile on her hawkish face only reinforced the impression.

"You can fly?" Harry laughed, eyes strained. "Yeah, of course you can, that's fair." He grabbed his wand and held it at the end like an arrow, whispering a spell beneath his breath that saw an elegant golden bow of light grow into existence. "If this gets rewritten, you know I'm gonna get myself some of those badass demihuman traits—I'm thinking a tail and two stubby little devil horns. That shit'd be legit, don't you think?"

"What?" She asked, caught completely flat-footed. "Rewritten?"

"Nevermind that," Harry said, a disproportionally large golden arrow forming around his wand. He notched the glowing bolt, which was closer to a javelin now than an arrow, and drew back the string.

In the air, Fleur's eyes narrowed and a pair of molten fireballs grew in her hands, their distinct steaming-stovetop hiss loud in the air. "You should 'ave submitted me when you 'ad ze chance."

Harry's shoulders lurched as he suppressed a laugh. "Do you even hear the words you use when you speak? I'd say innuendo was beyond the French's grasp, but Gabby says shit that makes me blush. Are you just a fuckin numbskull or what?"

Fleurs lip curled. "You really should 'ave ended zis when you still could. I'm going to make this hurt, leetle boy."

Harry's chest and arms strained to keep the bowstring pulled back, its golden javelin growing in brightness, now, rather than in size. Where before it had been like an oddly shaped filament bulb, now, it was much closer to a dim star's brightness, radiating out a blinding white and gold that had almost everybody shielding their eyes. Everybody, that is, except for Harry, Fleur, and a small handful of the more magically magnificent spectators. Those that were able to withstand the javelin's brilliance bore witness to one of the greatest clashes of magical interaction when, on unspoken que, incubus and veela alike unleashed their long-ranged artillery.

In the stands, Gabrielle watched through narrow slits as holy gold met regal red. The Zeus-like bolt from Harry's bow struck and detonated Fleur's first fireball, scattering a million embers of red and orange and yellow across the badly-mangled field.

'Powerful!' she thought, heart skipping a beat at the impressive display. From that one meeting, Gabrielle felt sure she knew the match's imminent outcome: Harry's bolt would continue on through the second fireball, do to it what it had to its kin, and then strike Fleur for the win. This thought brought a cocktail of elation and despair. Her heart was as it would ever be, with Harry, and so she wanted him to win above all else. On the other hand, Gabrielle knew better than anyone else just how hard Fleur had fought to be here today. She deserved it as much as anyone else, Gabby knew. Maybe more. Black played against white in her heart, a chess game with a number of different variables behind each complicating the matter further.

Regardless of her mixed feelings, Gabrielle knew the outcome of the match, and could accept it. Eyes and brain working together to survey the scene below her in slow motion, the young veela prepared to head down and meet with Harry, just as soon as his javelin—

The second fireball completely atomized Harry's javelin, turing the brilliant lance into grey dust as the very magic fueling the spell was incinerated and destroyed.

"'Arry!" she cried, leaping to her feet in horror, dainty hands clasped between her breasts. Upon closer inspection, Gabrielle could spot the subtle differences that lied within Fleur's second plasma ball—it was the same brightness, she noted, but little black orbs of something whirled around within this sphere's interior, like a couple dozen angry bees of leashed destruction. These were what had dismantled Harry's piercing shot so easily, swarming and then zapping the bolt as it had breached the fireball's shell. Gabrielle had never seen any magic even similar to this from Fleur, and as the death orb continued it's flight, slowly to her eyes but at a pitcher's fastball speed in the real world, she hoped she never would again. It was killing magic, plain and simple, and it was headed right for Harry!

'He's fast,' she thought, leaning forward, eyes wide and filled with a deep terror. 'My Harry's so fast. He'll dodge. He'll move in time.'

He didn't.

Back on the pitch, Fleur watched with calm, steely eyes as her atomic fireball enveloped Harry. She couldn't have dodged his lance in time even if she'd tried, and so instead of allowing herself to be backed into a corner, Fleur had made another little wager with her sister's mate. If she was wrong, she would likely live out the rest of her days a despised, self-disgusted outcast. She'd damn herself to a life of misery, and worse, she'd likely damn Gabby right along with her… However, Fleur was rarely wrong, and Harry had proven himself so far to be a good head to bet on; if she was right, and all of her expectations were met, she could suffer her defeat, and go to bed with Harry one hundred percent free of doubts. The loss of virginity was of monumentally significance for veela, and Fleur would not surrender herself to a man on uncertain terms. Harry could take her, if he could take her, but only then, only if.

As the smoke cleared, Fleur was greeted with the results of her little wager.

In an atomized hole, with stinking ozone clogging his nostrils and a smattering of low to mid degree burns all across his arms, Harry panted in the nude. His arms were still X'd in front of his face, reddened and raw in some places, but not the melted skewers of Yankee BBQ he'd been expecting, thank the Lord and magic and Merlin and the Buddha too. He guessed he could understand why Fleur had crossed their little line in the sand, but that understanding did little to calm Harry's heart, which felt like a rabbit was running around inside of him, thumping its little feet in a demand for freedom. Beads of sweat ran down Harry's naked form like bullets, but eventually, after a long few seconds, he was able to convince himself that he really was alive and okay.

A gonging pang of hollowness resonated out from somewhere deep within him, and Harry all at once realized just how much magic he'd burned through to save himself. The telekinesis spell was only as demanding as its task, but considering that he'd made it coat his entire body, and then poured as much magic as he possibly could into bolstering its strength, Harry guessed that he'd asked quite a lot this time.

'It might have done the job with a lot less power,' he thought, vaguely. 'Not that I'm about to try it out.'

Creating a second skin out of a force field hadn't been an idea as much as it had been an instinctual gamble. The damage on his arms was from the indirect heat of Fleur's death fireball. Like Gabby, Harry too had seen the little balls of midnight destruction zipping around the orb's interior, and also like his beloved, Harry had recognized the imminent death they promised. There had been time to dodge, not a lot, but just enough that he probably would have survived, but the brutal truth of the situation was this: Harry had frozen. It was only for a split second, but still. The urge to pull his hair and call himself names was strong, but he pushed it aside for now. He'd work harder in the future to make sure nothing like it ever happened again, but for now, he had a murderous veela to attend to.

A convenient (and refreshing) gust of wind swept through the graveyard-silent stadium, taking with it the brown and tan cloud of earthen smokescreen which had been obscuring Harry up till then. Gasps and shrieks and incredulous laughter filled the arena, as all at once a very large number of people (which by tomorrow would be a very very large number of people, courtesy of the media) learned a trio of facts about the Boy-Who-Lived all at once: One: he was a badass; Two: he was a good-looking badass; and Three: he was a good-looking badass with a knee-knocking cock the thickness of a godamn Pringles can!

"Holy shit!" someone shouted from the audience. "Harry Potter's hung like a fucking dragon!"

This served as a spark, igniting the whole arena, which whooped and hollered and screamed and laughed in a collaborative effort the likes of which had never been seen before. Some eyes goggled. Some watered with mirth. Some closed politely, or in offense, or in disgust. Many peeked back open. Some swiveled to look at Gabrielle, who was doing a fine imitation of a tomato. Some swiveled to look at Hermione, who could be heard cackling even over the ruckus. Most, however, remained glued upon Harry Potter.

The reaction to the unexpected development was as beautiful and varied as the magical world itself.

Harry felt the tips of his ears warm, but resisted any further reaction to the crowd's cacophony. Part of him wanted to cover himself and hide, while another part of him wanted to grab himself by the root and exclaim, "I have the power!" up to the Heavens. Harry wisely denied both of these knee-jerk reactions and instead focused.

'Pay attention,' he told himself, blinking away some dust. With a little effort he began channeling magic through his wand to make sure it hadn't suffered any damage. He found that it hadn't, and was grateful. Had his trusty tool been turned to ashes, he may not have forgiven Fleur. As it was, Harry was determined to let the bird-bitch know that there were no hard feelings, just as soon as he was done kicking her pretentious ass and fucking her silly.

Fleur looked down at him with relief and embarrassment and something like respect in her eyes.

Harry raised his wand, stepped forward, and returned her look with a serious one of his own. The effect, unfortunately, was somewhat undercut by the stiffening cricket bat of flesh between his legs, rousing as his excitement grew. Swoons and groans and laughs were ignored wholesale from the audience.

Harry's fingers tensed in preparation. A muscle in his jaw twitched to an unheard rhythm. The wind was pleasantly cool against his exposed skin, and soothed his charred arms. Fleur was hovering, and when her wings were all the way down (and in the worst position for sudden aerial maneuvers), Harry made his move.

"Pondugre!" he called, sending forth a black ribbon the length of the field. It was slower than his javelin had been by almost a quarter, but when Fleur dodged left, and it dodged with her, the method behind his madness became apparent. Rather than coil itself around her in the style of the constrictor, Harry's spell simply scored a limp slap against her waist before retreating. The ribbon was thin and flat, and made great coiled hoops to either side of Harry, like fishing line, spooled in a reel before the cast.

In the air, Fleur's ability to maintain her altitude faltered, and she plummeted half of the distance to the ground before halting herself. Sweat began to leak from her fine golden hairline as she flapped her wings at least twice as hard as she had before in order to stay off the ground. In the depths of her enchanting eyes, confusion bled to understanding and then finally back to determination.

'No,' Harry thought, nodding to her with something like sportsmanship. 'Didn't think I'd get you that easily.'

His ribbon had tripled her weight just as he'd intended it to, but if one thing had been made apparent over the course of their fight, it was that Fleur was one strong bitch. He'd have to do better if he wanted to win, and 'Gods,' he thought, blood circulating through his tensed, aching muscles, 'do I ever want to fucking win this.'

A pair of fireballs, both housing their own little sets of killer black gumballs, spawned and then were launched from Fleur's clawed hands.

"That's okay, sweetheart," Harry cried, cartwheeling to the side just as nimbly as he would have on his broom. "I don't mind working for it!"

Twin explosions went off behind Harry, like a pair of perfectly placed grenades just barely avoided. The inferno they spawned in the air was intensely hot, but also small and brief. All the variables added to such that he felt a brief, unpleasant heat, but sustained no injury.

"Prefer these buns toasted, madame?" Harry called, and as soon as Fleur's siren lips parted to retort, attacked. The ribbon split the air with a whistling noise that was audible even over the audience's clamoring.

Recognizing that if she hadn't been able to outmaneuver the ribbon at full speed, she surely would not be able to do so now, Fleur didn't bother trying. Instead, she held her ground, or indeed, her air, and blasted at the ribbon with a furious torrent of napalm-like fire. The flaming spout gushing out from her outstretched palms proved first plenty hot enough to destroy any length of ribbon caught in it, and second, efficient enough for Fleur to maintain it indefinitely. When Harry made to capitalize on the apparent gap this strategy left in her defenses, Fleur again responded, reassigning one of her hands to spew its fiery torrent at Harry.

"Gah—fuck!" the terrestrial-bound incubus cried, canceling his telekinetic attack in favor of a defense as stray embers caught him, even as he dodged the main waterfall-esk fountain of flames. He had to keep on dodging, too, for while his psychic shield was holding up against the errant splashes of molten magic that caught him, Harry doubted he'd last very long at all beneath a concentrated downpour—Fleur's assault might not be costing her much in the way of resources, but he'd be damned if even this weaker shield didn't suck up magic like a motherfucker. And so, to save as much of his dwindling pool as he could, Harry ran, and planned.

Returning to the stands, Gabrielle had mostly moved past the embarrassment of seeing her lover streaking around the field below (and the bombardment of innuendo-laced comments she was suffering through up here) and was now instead focusing solely on the match. Her Harry was fighting back better than anyone had any right to expect—in the ever-loving buff no less—but Gabrielle knew her man, and was perceptive enough even from this distance to notice his flagging endurance. His match with Hermione had been a tough one, and whereas Fleur had advanced past Ronald without sustaining any injuries, the same could not be said about her beau. Oh, he was holding up well, all right, and was even managing to keep Fleur on the back foot a bit with his ribbon, but Gabrielle was still left with a feeling of dread.

"He hasn't figured it out yet?" the dreamy voice of Luna Lovegood called out to her, softly.

Gabrielle turned to look at the spacey girl, delicate brows furrowed together. She watched Harry and her sister continue their deadly dance from the corner of her eye. "He can't dispel magic he can't cast, Luna."

Luna blinked big blue eyes at her slowly, as if startled to see her. "Oh," she started, turning back to the fight, "I know. I didn't mean his new rune thing."

"What then?" the veela teen asked, confused and annoyed.

"It's not really something we ought to talk about here, you know?" Luna said simply, still not turning towards her.

Gabby didn't know but then, after a few seconds of frustrated deliberation, did.

'Something about his heritage,' she thought, turning slowly back towards the fight. 'But that still doesn't explain what exactly he hasn't figured out yet…' She wanted to know, but Luna was right: a stadium packed in to the gills with strangers wasn't the place to discuss such things. As air-headed as Luna could appear sometimes, Gabrielle couldn't fault the wispy blonde's sense of discretion.

Beside her, Luna suddenly asked, "How is it exactly that you fit a penis that large inside of yourself, Gabby? I can't stop thinking about it."

Gabrielle's face and neck darkened until they were nearly purple. The people surrounding them that'd heard Luna's question turned with the most shocked eyes she'd ever seen on anyone.

'Scratch that,' she thought, pretending not to have heard Luna speak at all. It turned out that she could fault the girl's sense of discretion after all. She could fault it quite a bit.

A swell in gasps and screams rose through the audience, and Gabrielle refocused on the match below. When she did, her heart stopped.

Back on the field, Harry could be seen limping, his left leg badly burned as the result of a risky maneuver that hadn't worked out.

'Fuck,' he thought, dispelling his weight multiplication ribbon into a flock of velvety black origami birds. They didn't have the enchanting properties of their parent material, but the birds' wings and beaks were sharp, and should manage to keep Fleur busy for a moment while he assessed the damage.

It was bad, he saw. Worse than the burns on his arms by a decent margin, and more painful, too. The part of his brain in charge of booksmarts knew that this was a good thing, as at least the pain meant his nerves hadn't been destroyed.

The part of his brain in charge of feeling that pain aimed a friendly FUCK YOU at the booksmarts division.

Divided as his mind was, Harry's heart was unified. Deep in his gut, he knew the match could not be allowed to go on for much longer. He also knew, with a painful bitterness that he was almost ashamed to even possess, that he was not going to win.

He'd had a chance to win the match—still did, in fact, and the thought brought him both comfort and frustration. The simple and short truth of it was such: as good as Harry was with magic, he was twice as good with dark magic. Didn't mean he trained with it too much, didn't mean he used it too much, didn't mean he planned on using it too much, but the truth was the truth. He was just the type of person who understood putting his magic and his soul into his spells. Sometimes that meant really nice things were easier for him, like the patronus charm. Usually, however, it meant those spells, those stinky hexes and jinxes and especially the curses, those of them that needed you to get just a little angry or whatnot, well, they were pretty easy too. He had a lot of fuel to feed those spells from his childhood, as angsty as that was, and as a result, his dark magic kicked all kinds of ass.

Regrettably, their use in this type of situation was dubious at best. They were allowed, of course, but actions had consequences, and putting it into people's heads that he was a dark wizard just wouldn't do.

And, he guessed, he didn't want to irreparably damage Fleur, either. This sentiment had been a bit stronger inside his head before she'd started flinging nuclear fireballs. Now, however, he was beginning to see the merit in maiming…

'No, bad Harry,' he reprimanded himself, dispelling the mental image of a rotisserie-smoked veela. She was a bit of a cunt for using supremely lethal magic, but he supposed her ass was literally on the line, and he couldn't blame her for pulling out the big guns to defend herself. It was just too bad he couldn't pull out his big guns in return—then they could see who the baddest motherfucker on the block really was.

'I'm going to lose,' he thought, still hobbling around as fast as he could, avoiding one of Fleur's imperfectly aimed flamethrowers while she used the other on his birds. A few nicks and scratches notwithstanding, his avian/fabric spell was not proving to be very effective, as he'd known it wouldn't be. It'd probably be smart to at least try and pepper her with some blasting and knock-out hexes while she dealt with his minions, but keeping the telekinetic shield up was draining enough on its own—if he started a barrage of magic now, he'd be more likely to finish it passed out from magical exhaustion than to catch the French bird with anything that'd stick. He was hurt, naked, exhausted, and completely on the back foot, having to focus on defense because he refused to raise his level of killing intent to that of his opponent, for fear of succeeding…

'But fuck,' he thought, a loopy smile starting to grow on his face, 'at least I can see Fleur's tits…'

It was true—while his tweedy kamikazes weren't making much headway on the whole 'tear her to bits' thing, they were doing an unintentionally good job of dismantling her wardrobe. Her transformation had strained and ripped her battle robe in a few places already, but the razor sharp wings and beaks of his ribbon birds had accomplished significantly more. Her grey-blue combat robe had several swooping arcs cut into it, revealing a generous amount of her sides, legs, back, and (notably) her breasts.

Back in Harry's brain, a new pair of opposing factions rallied: the part of his brain in charge of winning the fight versus the part of his brain in charge of spreading as much of his seed as possible. He tried to quell the dispute and insist upon remaining focused on his bout, but, shit, he was all but guaranteed to lose the fight anyway, so where was the harm in appreciating a nice pair?

'And wowza,' he thought, choking back a giggle, his stiffening manhood thumping against his legs as he ran Spartan-style around the pitch, 'what a pair she has, my goodness.'

From where he was, he could just make out the pale, milky smoothness of her high, fat breasts. They were bigger than he had imagined based upon her clothed appearance, but just as fine. Their height and size and curvature were all mathematically perfect, and seemed to personify her self-assured, lovably-arrogant way. Her nipples were a pink the shade of a promiscuous teen's lipstick, and stood at attention unabashedly, even as the wind blew against them softly.

Harry suddenly realized that he was running around in front of half the country's magical population (and all of his classmates) with a gigantic hard-on, and almost tripped, laughing. Fleur might have beaten him here, but at least (he paused mid-thought to crack up some more, still dodging her increasingly accurate napalm) at least he'd made some memories!

'Damnit though,' he thought, pushing through the pain to run and dodge faster. Fleur had incinerated the last of his birds and was now directing both her fire spouts his way. It was only a matter of time, now. 'I really wanted her.'

It was too bad, though. The only way Harry was ever going to get a chance to seed Fleur was if he beat her here.

'Waitaminute waitaminute,' he thought, mind racing as fast as his legs now. The phrasing there had triggered a memory, one from the start of school… No, from just before. He'd read something like that in a book.

'The creature book Gabby's mum lent me!' he remembered, a wild thought taking root in his head.

Choiceling incubi and succubi alike are imbued with the magical quality of sexual omnipotence—a combination of psychic and instinctual talents which together amount to an ability to discern whatever path may exist, down which they will be able to accomplish their Magically Mandated task, ie. seduction!

It was all at once that Harry realized his best odds for winning this match lied not in ignoring his carnal desires and focusing on the fight, but in the opposite direction entirely.

His plan, ironically enough, relied upon the assumption that Fleur truly was a chaste woman, whom would not allow herself to be seduced on any terms save those they'd agreed upon, namely, his beating her here in the tournament. If the only way to fuck her was to beat her, his instincts should, theoretically, see him through… It would only take a second to find out, but if Harry delved into her mind and came back with the knowledge that he could bed her without winning, then whatever small chance he had of using his instincts to guide him to her womanhood would be gone, and he'd likely find himself losing the match right then and there.

If, however, he scoured the sexual nebula inside of Fleur's soul, and came back with the information he needed…

It was quite possibly the most ridiculous of all the wagers he'd ever made, but all the same, the incubus Harry Potter stood still, and dove, and dove, and dove.

In the stands, Gabrielle watched her partially-barbequed boyfriend finally succumb to his exhaustion. Her heart clenched in abject horror as he came to a halt, to her eyes, for purposes of surrendering, and Fleur's napalm spouts followed him anyway. Gabby wasn't sure what was going through her sister's head, but as she watched the fire, once again processing the scene before her in quarter-time, come closer and closer to her defenseless love, a seed of hate took purchase in her heart, waiting despite her kind nature to blossom into pure murderous intent the moment her love was taken from her. She wanted to move, to cast something or get down there in person, but time was against her. To have gone so long in search of understanding and love and acceptance from the world, and then to have found it… Was she really going to watch her own flesh and blood reduce the greatest source of love and happiness in her world to a charred corpse without even trying to intervene?

In the milliseconds before her sister's flamethrower could steal her love's life, something unexpected happened: Harry leapt into the flames. Before her feathers and talons could come more than a few centimeters out of hiding, Gabrielle saw something impossible. Not only were the flames not hurting Harry, they were making full contact with his naked skin and not hurting him! She could tell the difference between the flames before that had been redirected away from his skin via his psychic shield and now, and the difference was he didn't have his shield up.

'Impossible,' she thought, eyes full of tears that hadn't built up enough steam to fall yet. None of the fire-freezing spells out there worked against veela flames. The one and only technique was kept secret from all non-veela, and even those veela who weren't proficient enough with their magic to warrant it's knowledge. Her own hottest fireballs still didn't meet the requirements needed for her to be taught; only her mother, Fleur, and her cousin Annabelle had flames hot enough to warrant its teaching.

'So how did Harry—'

"Good," that same dreamy voice said from beside her. It was Luna, once again. "He finally figured it out."

Gabrielle didn't comment, or rather, didn't have time to, for as soon as the word 'out' had left Luna's mouth, Harry had left Fleur's flames.

For what felt to be a long moment, but which was actually a tiny fraction of a second, she watched as Harry reached the zenith of his leap, and her sister. At the start of the match, Gabrielle had been torn between her sister and her beau. Now, she was of one mind.

'Get her, Harry.'

Back in the air, the tiny moment of equilibrium ended, and Harry got Fleur.

Like him, earlier, she too had frozen for a split second, and it was all the time he needed to end the fight. At point-blank range, he charged and released the most brutally overpowered stunner of his life. The effect was similar to a flashbang grenade, except that instead of blinding white, his stunner came out as a cherry red megawatt flash, and instead of leaving them both disoriented, it only affected him so. Fleur was affected in a different way; one moment she'd been there, awake, the flickering glow of orange from her flamethrowers painting her war-torn form in gorgeous sunset hues, and then the next moment, she was dead to the world, one hundred percent unconscious with naught but the overhead sun and the flashing lights of a thousand cameras to illuminate her.

Giving up blinking and trying and clear the spots from his eyes as a bad job, Harry made due with his fuzzy vision and focused, controlling his and Fleur's descent with telekinesis, floating the pair of them down to the ground nice and gently. He considered doing something about her partial or his full nudity on the way, but then decided against it. Any shyness he'd had left was dead in the scorched dirt somewhere behind him, and Fleur's tits were just too nice not to look at.

Though he wouldn't learn about it until later, upon reaching the ground, half-blind and half-deaf, Harry was promptly announced the winner, to an applause that rivaled the ones heard almost exclusively during World Quidditch Cups. He didn't know about this as it happened not because his stunner had left him momentarily hard of hearing, but rather because it had left him with next to no magic. As soon as Harry's feet met the butchered remains of the Quidditch pitch, he went the way of his KO'd opponent, and passed out.