Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Salvation

Damage Control

by cah11 4 reviews

Fleur fights to save Harry from himself, then fights to keep her mate out of prison.

Category: Harry Potter - Rating: R - Genres: Angst,Drama,Romance - Characters: Fleur,Harry - Warnings: [V] [?] - Published: 2010-09-01 - Updated: 2010-09-02 - 4695 words

5Moving
Once again thank you to all the people who left reviews for my last chapter. They were overwhelmingly positive, and for that I thank you. Thank you also for pointing out errors in my writing as they were glaringly obvious after being pointed out.
Disclaimer: As the word before this note implies, I do not claim ownership of Harry Potter, his universe, or any characters in his universe that appear in canon. Thank you for reading this message which accompanies every one of my chapters.
Recap of Chapter 4:
“Thank you Mrs. Cowan, that boy owes you his life; you have helped France and the world a lot more than even you know.”
With that the healer excused herself to go back to the hospital and the Delacours went up to Harry’s room to clean it up. As she was cleaning up the blood, Fleur noticed that the black mark on her finger had elongated to cover nearly half the circumference of her finger; it appeared to be two parallel lines a quarter inch apart with runes inside the lines. She stared at the markings for a second then turned to her father and asked, “Dad, what is this on my finger?”


Cah11 humbly presents
Salvation
Chapter 5: Damage Control


Mr. Delacour took one look at her finger and suddenly his face went very pale, “Not here, hurry, floo, family house, NOW.”

The last word was said with such forcefulness that Fleur did not even consider asking anything else. Turning around she walked to the floo, her father right behind her. As soon as they had gone through and sat down in her father’s office, Fleur immediately asked, “What is it daddy, what has you so scared?”

“Fleur, what do you know of bonds? Specifically veela bonds” Mr. Delacour asked.
Fleur frowned, “Well, I know that most forms of the veela bond are basically one step up from slavery as the veela has some control, but not much. I also know that once a bond is created, it cannot be broken by anything short of one of the partners dying.”

“Then you will understand what I am about to tell you.” Mr. Delacour sighed and then continued. “The mark on your finger, it looks a little like a ring does it not?”

“Yes.” Fleur said, surprised at how very like a ring the mark on her finger was, but no bond she had ever heard of caused a ring to form around the bonded veela’s finger.

“That mark is a very specific indication of what kind of bond is forming between you, and someone else-.”

But before he could go any farther Fleur was suddenly standing, red in the face and said in a quaking voice, “I’m being bonded to someone? But who, there isn’t anyone that I am very close to emotionally right now, who could be bonding to me?”

“I have no idea Fleur, I was hoping that you could tell me, the very fact that you don’t know who it is that is being bonded to you is more troubling to me. The bond that is being formed is a very specific bond; it can only be formed between two veela, and only two veela of a very specific lineage. What do you know of our races past Fleur?”

“Well, I know that we used to live in a feudal society ruled by a king and minor nobles before the wizards conquered us and absorbed us into there culture and their blood lines.”

“Very good, now what do you know of the king of the veela?”

Fleur looked lost and said “I don’t really know anything other than that he was reputed to be quite a bit more powerful than the average veela.”

“Yes, the king, or one of his heirs has more veela power in one hand then your mother has in her entire body.”

This caused Fleur to pale, her mother was a full blooded veela, and therefore had a tremendous amount of power, in a head on battle, her mother was worth at least 10 half blood veela, and easily 40 wizards. If the king had had more power than her mother in one hand, she could not see how the wizards had beaten them in the first place and said as much.

“Ah daughter, power can only get you so far, eventually even extreme power can fall to determination and overwhelming numbers. This is the reason that our kingdom fell, they simply overran us. Now as you can imagine the king had to have a queen did he not, after all a veela’s powers are derived from two emotions, anger and joy.”

“Yes…” Fleur said hesitantly.

“Well traditionally the queen of the veela was chosen not necessarily by the king, but in some cases by magic itself. In such a scenario the first sign of the bond is an overwhelming feeling of protectiveness on the part of the queen toward the king and vice versa. The second sign of the bond is a ring like mark that begins to form around the future queen’s ring finger, as her feelings for the present/future king grow more affectionate, the mark on her finger grows larger to encompass a larger circumference of the finger. The second stage of the bonding process is complete when the ring like mark stretches all the way around the future queen’s finger. The third stage is the most critical stage of the bonding; this is completed by the first physical union of the two royal veela. Throughout the bonding process the present/future king and the future queen can feel each others broad emotions. After the third and final stage of the bonding the pair will know everything, no matter how intimate or embarrassing about the other bondmate. Occlumency shields are useless at hiding information from the bondmate; the bond literally binds the souls of the two people together, making what were two individual people more like one person with a personality that is a mix of the two bondmates. Don’t get me wrong,” Mr. Delacour said hastily at seeing Fleur’s reaction to this news, “You two will still be two perfectly definable personalities, but the better aspects of your personality may leak over the bond and be transferred from you to the other person, likewise, better aspects of his personality may be copied and transferred over to you, slightly altering your personality and his to temper you and him. Say right now your mate has a short temper or a streak of vanity that most people miss, some of your patience may transfer to him to make him less impulsive and more willing to listen to advice, likewise, I know you have never been in a fight for your life outside the Triwizard Tournament, some of his bravery and impulsiveness may transfer to you to make you more daring, and more likely to make a quick lifesaving decision rather than freezing at the first sign of trouble.”

“I would not freeze at the first sign of trouble.” Fleur muttered.

Mr. Delacour smiled gently, “Of course not darling, I am simply using that as a hypothetical scenario of personality transfer.”

“So, whether I like him or not it doesn’t matter because elemental magic itself thinks that I belong with this man, what if I don’t love him?” Fleur asked.

Mr. Delacour’s smile widened, “Oh don’t worry about that sweetie, the bond could not have formed in the first place unless he showed interest in you, and you in him, if the present/future king found you either physically, or emotionally repulsive, or the other way around, the bond would not have formed in the first place.”

Fleur relaxed slightly knowing that even if she did not love her future bondmate now, she would in the near future as magic would not set up what was tantamount to an arranged marriage only to have it fail because one party or the other was not attracted to their bondmate, which would lead to the death of both individuals.

“Well that’s good then.” Said Fleur, then frowning slightly she said, “I still have no idea who the bondmate could be, the only person I have spent any significant amount of time with recently is Harry, but he is not a veela, so the bond could not be coming from hi-.” Suddenly Fleur stopped speaking and she got a faraway look in her eyes that let Mr. Delacour know that she was in deep thought. Coming back to Earth, Fleur asked her father urgently, “What are the three signs of the king veela bond again?”

Looking confused Mr. Delacour said, “A feeling of mutual protection, a ring like mark around the queens left ring finger, and being able to sense the other bondmates emotions, even through occlumency shields.”

Fleur had gone very pale and Mr. Delacour was at first worried that his daughter was going to pass out from blood lose to the brain. He was going to suggest she lie down when she shot up out of her seat and said in a shaking voice, “We have to get to St. Marys, NOW.” Not waiting for a response she shot off toward the fireplace again. Mr. Delacour had no choice but to race after her.

“Fleur, what are you talking about? Why do we have to go to the hospital now? If it’s about Harry, the healer said he would live, we had nothing to worry about.”

“No father, we have plenty to worry about.” Fleur said shakily, “Harry is my bondmate, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but that’s not the current issue, the issue is that right now I can sense Harry’s intentions through the bond, and he is attempting, again, right now, to commit magical suicide.

By the time the father and daughter arrived in the right wing of the hospital, both were panting and a little sweaty, Mr. Delacour was very confused as to how a person who had never before shown any hint of veela powers was bonding to Fleur in the way he was, while Fleur was simply determined to find Harry and try to convince him not to go through with what he planned to do.

As the two raced down the wing to the top security ward, (a room reserved for attempted suicide victims or high profile patients), they noticed that the wing was remarkably empty and when they got to the ward Harry was in they were alarmed to find most of the St. Marys staff in the room with no other patients anywhere in the vicinity of the ward. Running toward the door they were halted by a gentle looking healer who said, “I’m afraid I can’t allow either of you into this ward, the patient in there is attempting to commit magical suicide by imploding his magical core in on itself, if he is successful, all the magic in his core, which is an immense amount, will instantly combust and cause an explosion with enough force to equal approximately fifty high powered reductor curses.*” (It must be noted that wizards do not have any concept of science as we muggles know it and therefore have no standard unit of measurement other than work that can be done by spells.)

Fleur looked at the doctor for a moment with despair on her face, then replaced the look of despair with determination once again and said, “Stand aside, the patient in there is my veela bondmate, if anyone can convince him that he is worth saving, it is me. The healers in there trying to suppress his magic will only be able to delay him, he has more magic to draw from then he is currently compressing right now, meaning that he still has some doubts at to whether this is the appropriate course of action or not. If I do not go in there and persuade him that he is worth saving, then you will shortly need a new wing for this hospital.”

Fleur stared at the healer for a full fifteen seconds before he nodded slightly, and lifting his wand, unlocked the door to the ward. Fleur immediately rushed in and ran to Harry’s bed. She winced slightly as she felt the pull on her magic as Harry attempted to drain her magical core to aid in the compression of his own magic. As suddenly as the pulling feeling came it stopped, as though Harry had finally recognized her subconsciously and had no wish to harm her. “Why is he unconscious?” She asked a healer

“What the hell are you doing here?” The healer demanded, “This is a dangerous situation, this kid could blow at any time, and not even the strongest shield charm will save you from an explosion of this magnitude.”

“I am aware of that,” Fleur said icily, “I am his bondmate, and I asked why he is unconscious, only a few minutes ago I felt for him, and he was awake.”

“I’m sorry Mrs.,” the healer said, “We had to stun him, when we tried to intervene in his suicide attempt he began to fire wandless curses at random, and not all of them were harmless, some were actually quite gray in nature, though none of them were illegal, thankfully. Rather than try to suppress his powers while also dodging curses we decided to incapacitate him to make our job a little easier.”

Fleur paled. “Your idiots,” she hissed, “Not only have you attacked and incapacitated a veela that is untrained in his fully developed powers, but you have attacked the one male veela in the whole world with enough power to demolish THIS WHOLE HOSPITAL!”

The healers in the room went extremely pale and some backed away, evidently not willing to find out exactly how powerful the supposed male veela in front of them was, if the girl was correct, then he had enough combustible magic to equal over five thousand reductor curses.
“Run while you can.” Fleur said coldly, “Run before I wake him up, because I assure you that if you do not escape now, you never will, as I imagine his anger at not having his wishes followed will override his sense of right and wrong, and I am sure that he will inadvertently kill one or more of you.”

All of the healers slowly backed out of the room except for one who asked, “What about you, without us here suppressing his powers, he will blow in a matter of minutes.”

“I will convince him not to go through with it.” Fleur said with such conviction the healer believed it. “And if I can’t, well I wouldn’t be able to live without my bondmate anyway.”
With that, the healer ran out of the ward and quickly pulled Mr. Delacour out of the hospital, and kept running until he was sure that the kid would not turn them all into the biggest magical pyrotechnics display in wizarding history.

Inside the ward, Fleur turned her attention to Harry, and sighing raised her wand and muttered “Enervate.”

Immediately Harry sat up and started launching hexes in every direction except at Fleur. Stopping once he realized that their was no one but him and Fleur in the ward, Harry stopped casting and still compressing his magic, said, “Fleur get out of here, I only want my last wish of release granted. I did what I had to do, I defeated Lord Voldemort, now I just want peace and quiet, unfortunate that to get it I have to kill myself, but I don’t care anymore.”

“No Harry, you don’t really feel that way.” Fleur said sensing his emotions through the fast developing bond. “You feel betrayed by your friends, and your mentor, Dumbledore. You feel like you have no one left to turn to, that you are all alone in this world. Most of all you feel abandoned by Ginny, who believes Dumbledore’s lies and wants nothing to do with you, even though she knows you love her.”

Harry’s face had gone blank and Fleur could tell that he was erecting his occlumency shields around his mind, but true to her father’s word, they did nothing to block her access to his thoughts and emotions.

“You want revenge on your betrayer Dumbledore, and you want to prove that you are a good person to everyone else, if for no other reason than to clear your name. Most of all you want to be loved again, because…” And here Fleur shuddered at the things Harry experienced at the Dursleys, some were physically painful, and all were unpleasant. “Because you never received love from your relatives, and you deserve to be loved by someone in your life before you pass on. Don’t get me wrong,” Fleur said as Harry opened his mouth to protest, “I’m sure you friends loved you, but the love of a friend is no where near as personal, as intimate as the love of a family member, or a lover. If you die now, you will indeed be released from the agony of mortals, but at the same time you will spend the rest of eternity as twisted, miserable soul with no peace found on the other side. I cannot choose for you, you must decide your course for yourself, live or die, which do you choose.”

Harry had been staring blankly at her during her speech and now asked in barely more than a whisper, “Why do you care, and how can you sense my thoughts even through my occlumency shields?”

Fleur answered, “I care because I think I am coming to love you Harry, and I can pierce your shields because we are in the process of being bonded by magic.”

Fleur felt a crack in Harry’s mental armor appear at this news, but even without it she knew he was frighteningly angry at the news. At the last moment he got his emotions under control and asked “What do you mean a bond.” He spat the last word. “I thought bonds could only be formed between humans and veela after intercourse, so that’s impossible unless you managed to rape me while I slept.”

Fleur was revolted that he would think that she was even capable of such a thing, but then again he did not know about the bond they shared, but soon he would.

“No Harry,” Fleur said soothingly, “It is not a bond between a human male and a veela female; it is a bond between a veela male and a veela female.”

Harry froze and after a few seconds asked “What do you mean between two veela, I’m not a veela.”
Closing her eyes, Fleur reached for the bond and after finding it, began to feed her budding love for him and her honesty to Harry, saying, “You are veela, or at least half veela, we are unaware exactly what your blood status is, one more thing we should discover an Gringotts. However, you are not just any veela; you belong to the old royal line.” Seeing Harry’s look of dawning comprehension Fleur said, “Yes Harry, you are the heir to the throne of the veela.”

“But I haven’t shown any sign of veela powers all my life, why now?”

“I have a theory Harry, no more than that. A veela’s powers are based off two basic emotions, anger and joy. You never experienced joy with you relatives, and I don’t think you time at Hogwarts could really be called joyful, what with someone trying to kill you every year. There was also no anger, you were beaten as a child to make you completely submissive to the will of the Dursleys, and after you left, you were schooled by Dumbledore to never let you anger get to you, which is the thing that needs to happen to allow your veela warrior powers to manifest themselves. Because none of these emotions were ever fully displayed, your veela powers never had a chance to mature.”

Harry’s eyes widened and he asked, “Is that why my spells always seem much stronger when I am angry, or when I am thinking of good memories, because…”

“Because the barest hint of your veela powers are showing, yes.” Fleur answered, “What you achieved at the Ministry of Magic, the night you went after the prophesy is astonishing, you did something very unusual and supposedly impossible when you cast the cruciatus curse on Bellatrix, normally that spell takes years of practice, and a deep seated need to cause pain to cast, but you somehow managed to cast it on your first try using only your righteous fury. Such a thing should have required so much energy as to be impossible with out hate to back it up, but you managed it, even if the spell didn’t stick.”

“So what does all this mean?” Harry asked.

Fleur was pleased that Harry had stopped compressing his magic and that he had even let up on the compression a little bit.

“It means that you are not fully human, like me. It means that you are related to royalty, like me, although much more closely. It also means that once again you have someone to love and be loved by, and a hope of achieving the peace you want so badly once again, without have to end your own life. Please Harry, stay with me, I promise we will make you betrayers suffer, and we will lead the life you should have had from the beginning. The choice is yours, now choose.”
Harry stared at Fleur for a full ten seconds before, suddenly he released the hold on his magical core, and all the energy seemed to leave his body at once. Barely conscious he muttered, “Stay with me, please?” before he passed out.

“Always, my love.” Fleur whispered softly.

An hour latter a team of healers with some French Aurors from the French Ministry of Magic showed up outside the door of the ward Harry was sleeping in. The sight that met their eyes as they entered the room was at the same time comforting, and confusing. Some of the people present, (the healers), were glad that the patient was alright, and appeared to be resting. The rest of the people present, (the French Aurors), were confused by the sight of their bosses daughter possessively hugging The-Boy-Who-Tried-To-Kill-Himself, as some people were beginning to call him, as though she were his only security, and she would do anything to protect him.
“Miss,” The Head Auror began, “I’m afraid I must ask you to step outside, you are currently hugging a deranged madman who just tried to commit one of the most violent forms of suicide know to wizard kind. For such actions we are going to have to arrest, and charge him with attempted suicide, attempted second degree murder, and attempted manslaughter.”

Fleur slowly stood up and said in her coldest voice, “You will do no such thing; he was not in his right mind when he attempted those actions, besides there are mitigating factors that you are not aware of, such as him being a male veela. Besides he is so powerful, it wouldn’t matter what kind of prison you tried to put him in, he would get out under his own power or with the help of the entire veela nation if need be!

“Now listen here you insolent little bitch!” The Head Auror yelled, “He is coming with us to face those charges, and even if he escapes incarceration here well, he is a wanted man in Britain, he won’t escape the charges there without at least 25 years in that hellhole Azkaban.”
Exactly two seconds later, he found out why it is not a good idea to piss off a veela that is protecting her bondmate, especially when said bondmate is unconscious, and incapable of defending himself/herself.

The French Aurors looked on in terror as the expression of the beautiful women in front of them changed from cold and calculating to infuriated and determined. Immediately they noticed that her arms appeared to be sprouting feathers, her hands were now sporting inch long talons, and that the rest of her body was transforming into an avian, human hybrid. Upon completion of her transformation, two balls of passion fire formed around Fleur’s hands, advancing on the Aurors, she called out in a menacing avian sounding voice, “You will not touch him, leave before I am forced to defend him from you.”

It became apparent that the Head Auror had more brawn than brain when he reached for his wand to try to curse the half women, half bird hybrid in front of him and was hit in the chest by a very hot ball of passion fire. Said passion fire was so hot, that it instantly caused his charm protected clothing to spontaneously combust, and him to yell in pain and fright.

“Shit!” Was all he managed to say before an emergency portkey tied to his vital signs went off and transported him directly to the emergency ward of the very same hospital they were in. looking coldly at the other Aurors in attendance, Fleur in her combat form said, “Anyone else want to be reduced to ashes on this fine day?”

Immediately the rest of the Aurors backed away until they were out of the ward, casting fearful looks in Fleur’s direction. Once they were out, the healers, who had all been looking resignedly at the confrontation moved forward and one began to wave her wand over Harry’s body.
“Amazing,” she muttered “There doesn’t appear to be any damage to his system at all, that much compressed magic in one place should have left him magically scarred. But there is no sign of damage at all.”

Seeing that the Aurors had left, Fleur calmed down, and as she did so, she transformed back to her full human looking form and asked with some concern, “What do you mean damage?”

“Well,” The Healer began very carefully; she didn’t want to end up like the Auror Fleur had set on fire. “Generally when someone tries to commit suicide in that way, they scar their magical core, that is to say that their magic will constantly leak from the core and that their power will from then on be significantly decreased. However, for some unknown reason, this does not appear to have affected Mr. Potter.”

Fleur sighed in relief that her mate, and future king was not in danger. Sitting down next to the bed, she thought, ‘This is all about to become much more complicated. We must make preparations to protect Harry from those who would want to harm him, and we must train him to control his veela powers now, that will defiantly be a job for Mother. But first we need to see Sirius’s and the Potter’s wills so we can remove all of Dumbledore’s influences.’

Now that she had a goal, Fleur sat down, and grasping Harry’s hand, accessed the bond, and began to project feelings of safety and love to his unconscious mind. As she did so, she thought she saw his body, for the first time since she had met him, relax completely, and knew that he had felt the feelings she was sending him, and that he felt the same way.

Sorry that this chapter is slightly shorter than my other chapters have been, but the Gringotts part was really to long and extensive to be placed in the same chapter with this part, anyway it’s been to long since I last updated, and I’m sure you are all getting a little anxious. I should hopefully be able to get one more chapter out before the end of the week.
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