CH 36

Fleur's moment of triumph had come, just as she had known it would. The goblet, flaring into red flames, had chosen her, naming her Beauxbatons' champion and thus the best possible candidate for her school. She had risen, with everyone's eyes on her and for once she had truly, completely enjoyed the attention. They hadn't been staring at the Veela but at Triwizard champion Fleur Delacour.

As she strode proudly across the Great Hall to the antechamber every pair of eyes had been a witness to her victory over the rumours her former friends had spread, and every pair of eyes had been on her.

Nearly every pair, she corrected. One wizard had not looked up. One wizard had not noticed her. Again.

It had, of course, been the same young student who hadn't noticed her before. The messy-haired boy had not noticed her as Veela and now he had not noticed her as Beauxbatons' champion. His eyes had not even flicked up from the pages of his book.

Fleur had fumed in the antechamber, ignoring the curious, yet slightly hostile gaze of her competitor, Krum.

After a long minute, in which the Hogwarts champion had arrived, introduced himself and been ignored, she had decided that having his attention was not really that important. She hated not being noticed, it was unusual, discomforting and insulting, but it would not mean anything to her once he did notice. Once he did he'd just be like all the others. The boys and mean that stared at her because she was beautiful, and the girls out of jealousy or disbelief. Her conclusion was going to be the end of her interest in him. The last thought she would ever have on the boy.

Then he had joined them in the antechamber.

Fourth champion, she balked at the very idea. It was the Triwizard Tournament. Three schools. Three champions. It was an honour, the greatest recognition, to be chosen and this Harry Potter stood there and denied he wanted any part of it.

Fleur could not believe him. Nobody would not want to be part of this. It was dangerous, but that was just part of the appeal, another reason to accept the challenge and be remembered as one of their schools' greatest.

In her anger at his audacity and arrogance she had snapped at him and dismissed him as a boy without any chance of competing at their level. He'd barely noticed that either.

It was only after they filed out to leave him with his headmaster that she realised the boy's name must have somehow bypassed the age line. That was no mean feat.

An age line was not a complex ward, but it was a powerful one. A single, simple thing was required to bypass it, in this case, an age greater than seventeen. They were rarely used, as occasions in which they were necessary were rare, but of interest to the very few that, like her, had a knack for enchanting. None of her teachers had known any of its specifics and Fleur had had to go to the library to find anything. It's design was as simple as it was powerful.

Age lines could not be bypassed. Magic remembered how long it had been a part of a living thing and the ward need only touch it to verify its age. No potion or enchantment was capable of deceiving something so perfectly simple. Any attempt to use a spell rather than stepping across it still placed the caster's magic in contact with the ward. The only way past was to actually break the enchantment itself or to possess an artefact capable of completely hiding magic.

There few such artefacts and there was nobody alive capable of overpowering a ward created by Albus Dumbledore. In fact, even if by some miracle this boy had managed to, the power required would have been felt and seen all across the castle, and certainly by the caster of the enchantment.

It made the fact that his name came out quite a mystery, because not only could he not have not passed the age line, but the Goblet could not be lied to either. Any attempt to enter the name of another would fail.

All of this led Fleur towards a rather disturbing conclusion. Either the age line had been set to specifically allow Harry past, or his name had never been in the goblet to begin with, and Professor Dumbledore had merely pretended to pull it out.

Both theories placed the blame squarely at the foot of the Supreme Mugwump.

It was a chilling realisation, for nobody would ever question the word of Albus Dumbledore. He was the vanquisher of Grindelwald, the world's most powerful wizard and certainly one of the most knowledgeable. His opinions were treated as fact. If he had said, or even implied, that Harry had put his name in the goblet and been chosen, nobody would dream of questioning him, simply because he was Dumbledore.

It only underlined the fact that he was utterly beyond suspicion that Fleur herself thought her conclusion too fantastical to be possible simply because it was him, even when she knew of no other logical possibilities.

Of course, if it were true, then that meant Dumbledore wanted him in the tournament for some reason, and wanted him in addition to another, older representative.

An extra bite at the apple, perhaps.

It would certainly explain why he was so disappointed when the boy had declared himself an extra, one whose points would not be tallied for Hogwarts, but if the headmaster had really wanted another champion to increase his school's chances he would have surely chosen an older, more capable student.

That line of thought brought her back to the boy again.

What is so special about him?

She knew who he was. Fleur had known the moment she heard his name in the antechamber and glimpsed his scar peeking from under his wild fringe. She had been quite taken aback by how different he was from the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived. Being Harry Potter was not reason enough, however. As a baby he had survived the killing curse, it was widely known, but at no moment since then had he done anything of note that she had heard of. Even if he was a prodigy it would take incredible skill and no little luck for him to match wizards or witches several years his senior. The gap from fourteen to seventeen stretched longer than three years. It was a period of intense change. They were mature, virtually adults; he was a child still. The only thing separating him from any other boy his age was an odd scar and his infuriating ability not to notice her.

Three times she had been beneath his attention: at the welcoming lunch, after curfew in the Great Hall and when her name had been called. Either he was just incredibly dense and slightly resistant to her allure, or there was something quite different about him. Her need to know, which was more pressing than ever, had now bypassed simple curiosity and was rapidly approaching obsession. She simply did not understand why he did not stare like everyone else.

Fleur had taken to following him when she could, often under the disillusionment charm, but it was not an easy task. Harry Potter was rarely seen around the castle and when she did run into him, he would swiftly vanish only moments later. That left her invisible, in the middle of foreign students, and quite often lost.

It was how she hoped she would not end up this time.

.

.

.

🍀Visit my site at tiendup for more advanced content...🍀

🍀Read the complete novel in PDF, available at my Store!🍀

https://sunflowersfic.tiendup.com/