[Living For Tomorrow] Chapter 4 -  A fork in the road

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Chapter 4 -  A fork in the road

The sky was dark and gloomy; it was a rainy day of October. Fleur tightened her cloak and buried her small nose into her blue-coloured Ravenclaw muffler as she hurried along Hogwarts’ corridors on her way to the Defense Against Dark Arts class. Fifth-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had double DADA together. 

“I don’t know ‘ow am I going to survive the winter in this castle,” she said. 

“Just cast a Warming Charm,” Harry said, not looking up from the book floating in front of him as he walked. 

“Non, that charm always messes up my hair.”

That statement made Harry turn his head to look at her. His deadpan face must have been very expressive because Fleur quickly said:

“That strong, warm air is also not good for the skin. I don’t want to get dry skin or, worse-” 

As she spoke, her voice became increasingly quiet until she trailed off, leaving her words unfinished. 

“You’re so strange sometimes, mate,” Harry said. “But if you’d rather shiver from the cold and get sick instead of getting messy hair and dry skin, suit yourself.” 

The cold became the least of Fleur’s concerns as she began to flush badly.

‘Sure, boys may not care about getting dry skin, but I’m certain many of them cared about their hairstyle back at Beauxbatons. Are the British that different?’ she thought. 

But one look at Harry’s hair, which looked like a birdnest that day, made her suspect that maybe it was only Harry who didn’t care about having a neat hairstyle. Maybe the other boys did. 

“What are you reading now?” Fleur quickly changed the subject and glanced at the floating book in front of Harry. There were animated photos of people performing all sorts of movements to the side and back, rotating, lunging, squatting, rolling to the side or the front, and so on. 

“A book on footwork techniques for duelling,” Harry answered.

“You need a book to learn ‘ow to move to the side?” 

“Footwork may not be as vital in duelling as it is in fencing because duels are ranged battles, but it’s still important. It helps you conserve energy, improves agility, and makes you more difficult to hit,” he said. “I’ve been to Duelling Championships with my grandparents before, and I watched quite a few duels. You could tell the difference between those who practised their footwork and those who didn’t. They usually held the advantage.”

“I see… Wait, you said fencing? Like, fighting with a sword?” she asked to make sure she had gotten the meaning of the word right. 

Understanding that he was not going to get any reading done while Florent kept trying to engage him in chatter, Harry closed the book and carried it in his hand.

“Yep. Can’t say I’m a fencing expert, but I learned how to use a sword before I even got a wand.”

“Is that the norm for pureblood families in Great Britain?” Fleur asked in surprise. 

Harry snickered. “No, my grandpa is just obsessed with swords. We even have a flying, magical sword at home. He loves showing it off to any guests who visit our home.”

A little over a month had passed since she arrived at Hogwarts, and Fleur was starting to get accustomed to the new school and to her new classmates and housemates. She had even made quite a few friends. Paradoxically, most of those were female (she had not had even one female friend at Beauxbatons!). 

As for male friends, aside from Simon Dedworth, the 6th-year Ravenclaw Prefect she had met at the welcoming feast, Harry Potter was her only friend. After living in the same room for over a month, the two of them had inadvertently gotten closer. 

As they arrived in front of the oak doors of the DADA classroom, Florent let out a groan. 

“I ‘ate this class! And I ‘ate this man!”

Harry snickered as he pushed the door open. 

“Why is Dumbledore allowing this clown to teach at ‘Ogwarts?”

Five minutes later, it became apparent why Fleur hated the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher. 

“Good afternoon, my dear students!”

He had wavy golden-blonde hair, two rows of shining, pearly-white teeth, ballroom-appropriate lavender-coloured robes, and a confident swagger in his step. He was unmistakable. He was Gilderoy Lockhart. 

“As per usual, today we’ll be re-enacting another one of my phenomenal adventures!” he said in a voice filled with enthusiasm. “Now, who wishes to receive the honour of assisting me?”

Literally nobody raised their hands. 

“Oh, Mr Delacour! Thank you for offering!”

“But I did not-!” 

“Oh, no need to be shy! Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition!” Lockhart completely ignored her protests. 

Not wanting to be the unfortunate soul to be humiliated in front of the class, her other classmates also egged her on, sending her like a lamb for slaughter. 

“Go on, Florent! You have a talent for acting!”

“That’s right, that hag impersonation you did last week was brilliant!”

“Florent! Florent! Florent!” some of them cheered her name. 

Lower lip quivering as if he was about to either start crying or screaming (Harry wasn’t sure which was it), Florent stood up from his desk and dragged his feet to the front of the classroom. 

It was a scene from Gilderoy Lockhart’s book “Wandering with Werewolves” this time around. 

“So, I got into a stance, readied my wand, and—Florent, we’ve been over this; give me a deeper roar—and pounced on him with my entire strength! Believe it or not, I grabbed the Werewolf by the neck with one hand and-” 

But Lockhart stopped before he was about to lunge at Florent and let out a suffering sigh. 

“This is not working. Florent, my boy, you need to put your heart into it. Your howl does not sound sincere enough! Where’s the passion? Where’s the fire in your lines?”

Lockheart’s voice became muffled in Fleur’s ears as blood rushed to her head. 

For more than one month, Gilderoy Lockhart had been picking on Florent at every chance he got. It was not hard for others to understand why he was targeting the French boy, considering that Lockhart never failed to mention in every class that he was a five-time recipient of the Witch Weekly’s Most Beautiful Smile award. 

Simply put, Florent Delacour was the most handsome/beautiful boy any of the girls at Hogwarts had ever seen. Next to the ridiculously attractive French boy, even the otherwise handsome and stylish Gilderoy Lockhart seemed like an average Joe. 

“At this rate, your grades may also-”

Fleur exploded. 

“My grades will what? What are you grading us for? What are you even teaching us? Almost two months passed since the start of the year, and you ‘aven’t shown us even one spell!”

Whereas everyone had been laughing at Lockhart’s buffoon-like behaviour and snickering at Florent’s misfortune, the French boy’s sudden scream plunged the classroom into dead silence. Even the always-smiling and talking Gilderoy Lockhart became mute, gawking at her with his mouth half-opened like a fish on dry land. 

“I’m sick of it! I’m tired and sick of all these stupid plays! I came to ‘Ogwarts to study because I ‘eard it’s one of the best schools in Europe! I didn’t come ‘ere to waste my time clowning! We ‘ave OWLs this year, but you don’t teach us anything! What’s the point of this class?! Is this a Drama class or is it Defense?” 

Fleur was so angry that she was physically shaking. She was on the verge of losing control. It took a titanic effort of willpower to suppress her inner Veela from coming out. 

Feeling as though she would lose it if she stared at Lockhart’s stupid face a second longer, Fleur almost ran as she rushed to her desk, haphazardly threw her books, quill, and bottle of ink into her backpack, and then left the classroom, slamming the door with a bang behind her. 

Half a minute after Fleur stormed out of the classroom, it was still deathly quiet, with neither the teacher nor the students daring to say a word. 

“Professor, I should go check on Florent and make sure that he’s alright,” Harry raised his hand and broke the silence. 

Lockhart coughed into his fist awkwardly. 

“Kuhm. Yes. Um. Yeah, you-, you go and do that.”

As Harry quickly gathered his stuff and ran out of the classroom after Fleur, Lockhart spoke to the rest of the class. 

“Erm, I think it’s best we end it for today. Hm, yes, take it as a small gift from me. Use this free period however you want,” Lockhart winked and even gave them all one of his patented shining-teeth smiles before turning on his heels and climbing the flight of stairs leading to his personal office. 

A chorus of loud murmurs erupted the moment Lockheart disappeared into his office. 

⁂

Whether it was due to the favour that Professor Flitwick had asked of him or maybe it was because he had started to consider the unusual French boy as his friend after living in the same room for nearly two months, Harry was not sure what the real reason behind his actions was, but he could not leave Florent be by himself at that moment. 

Considering that nearly one minute had passed since Florent stormed out of the classroom, he was long gone by the time Harry came after him. 

He took out his wand and made a movement akin to a pirouette as he spoke the chant of a spell:

“Appare Vestigium.”

A cloud of golden dust covered the floor, and Harry willed the spell to only show the tracks of the people who passed through that place in the last five minutes. 

A pair of golden shoeprints started glowing on the floor of the corridor; they were Florent’s tracks. 

However, despite the fact that he was walking at a brisk pace as he followed the footprints highlighted by the Tracking Spell, he had yet to catch up to Florent from behind. It appeared as though the boy had been running. 

Eventually, Harry and Florent did meet - he found the French in the Ravenclaw Tower, stuck in front of the eagle knocker guarding the entrance to the Common Room. 

Momentarily, Harry’s face slacked from shock when he heard the French swearings coming out of Florent’s mouth. Until that moment, he had never heard the polite and soft-spoken utter such words. 

However, he pretended not to understand what Florent was saying in French as he walked from behind and asked him in English:

“Stuck by the riddle?”

Florent quickly wiped his teary face with the sleeve of his robes and avoided looking at Harry as he replied:

“What are you doing ‘ere?”

“I asked Lockhart to let me go. I guess… I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”

“Oh… thanks.”

Feeling as though he was not in the mood for talking and not wanting to bother him, Harry walked past him and touched the eagle knocker. 

“What starts with ‘e’ but only has a single letter in it?”

Harry couldn’t find the answer to this riddle right away, either. It took him almost three minutes before it finally clicked. 

“It’s an envelope!”

“Correct!” the eagle knocker replied, folding its large silvery wings and allowing them to push open the door. 

“Thanks, ‘Arry,” Florent said in a quiet voice. 

It was not that Fleur was dumb or bad with riddles. It was just because of the language barrier. While she could speak and understand English rather well, she was still not as good as a native English speaker. Therefore, riddles that focused on wordplay often eluded her. As opposed to her, Harry was born and raised in the UK, and he had had more than 4 years of practice answering the eagle knocker’s riddles. 

“No worries, mate,” Harry said and patted Florent on the back, allowing him to enter first. 

⁂

The news of Florent Delacour blowing up at Gilderoy Lockhart spread like wildfire. By dinner time, the entire school had found out about it, and Florent had also been called to Flitwick and McGonagall’s offices as well. 

Fleur was so embarrassed by her earlier outburst that she did not dare come down to the Great Hall for dinner that evening. And Harry was reminded of that fact later, at night, after they both got in their respective beds and a resounding growl shattered the silence in the room. 

When Harry started sniggering quietly, Fleur cringed. She felt like banging her head against a wall. 

‘Ah. I want to die.’

The feelings of shame and embarrassment she had gone through that day were like nothing she had ever felt in her entire life. She wanted to dig a hole somewhere and just drop dead. 

“Florent, if you’re hungry-” Harry called out his name but then snorted with laughter, “-we could make a trip to the kitchens.” 

“Non, non, it’s all good.”

It was as if the fates were making fun of her because barely a second after she spoke, the loudest growl yet thundered from her stomach. It sounded like an orangutan’s mating call. 

Harry gave up all pretence and burst into laughter. 

“Hahahaha!”

He was laughing so hard that the bed was squeaking. 

“I’m sorry-” snort giggle “-but you have to admit, it was hilarious!”

Fleur could only thank God above that their bedroom was pitch dark and he couldn’t see her face. She was flushing so hard that she could physically feel her cheeks radiating warmth. 

⁂

It took some time for Fleur’s embarrassment to subside and quite a bit of coaxing on Harry’s part to convince her, but, in the end, his insistence and her hunger won out, and she agreed to follow Harry to the kitchens. 

“But what if we got caught by the prefects? Or worse, the professors?” Florent asked, unconsciously gnawing at his plush lower lip in worry as the two of them exited the Ravenclaw Common Room. 

Harry quickly looked away from the French boy’s face, distracted. 

“Don’t worry. I did my fair share of sneaking around. I know this castle like the back of my palm,” he said confidently. 

“I noticed that you’re often gone from the bedroom at night, but I didn’t want to pry…” Fleur acknowledged. 

“It’s nothing illegal. Honest,” Harry said, smiling. 

“Being out after the curfew is against the rules. I really don’t want someone to see us. My parents are very strict. If I cause problems…” Fleur trailed off. 

“What’s being caught on the corridors after the curfew compared to snapping and yelling at a professor in front of the whole class?” Harry said teasingly. 

She couldn’t find an answer to that. 

“Relax. You’re in good hands,” Harry reassured her again. “How good is your Disillusionment Charm?”

Fleur answered his question by twirling her wand above her head and muttering the incarnation of the spell:

“Indespectus.”

Harry made a humming sound. 

“It’s passable.”

His judgment made Florent let out a sound of disbelief. 

“Hah?! What do you mean passable?!”

She was sure that her Disillusionment Charm was good enough to earn her praise from the examiner for the Charms OWL exam. 

Harry followed her example of answering with deeds rather than words, and Fleur found herself awed into silence at the effects of his Disillusionment Charm. 

Fleur’s spell was, indeed, almost perfect. Nonetheless, if she were to move, a distortion would appear in the air, revealing her presence. Harry’s spell, however, had made him completely invisible!

“It’s all a matter of practice,” he answered her unasked question. “As I said, I’ve done my fair share of sneaking around.”

Harry and Florent started walking shoulder-to-shoulder through the empty corridors. Every once in a while, Harry would stop and whisper:

“Homenum Revelio.”

After the third time, Fleur asked in a low voice:

“What is that spell for?”

“It’s the Human Presence Revealing spell. It shows me where all the people are in a 25-meter radius around me.”

“Ooh! That sounds very useful. I’m going to look it up tomorrow.”

Due to the numerous portraits hanging on the walls, Harry and Florent kept their chatter to a minimum. It was only when they arrived in the kitchens that they finally started talking again. 

Fortunately, many of the House Elves who worked at Hogwarts were awake during the night. The kitchens were almost never unmanned, and the elves appeared to be more than happy to provide the French boy with the food he requested. 

Giving in to her hunger, Fleur spent the next five minutes gorging herself in a rather unladylike manner with chocolate-filled croissants and warm milk. It was the type of food that most teenage girls would avoid eating at that late hour, like the plague, but, for Fleur, it was a comfort food that she craved more than anything at that moment. 

Her hunger partially satiated now, Fleur unknowingly brushed a strand of her short, silvery hair behind her ear and smiled at Harry as she said:

“Thank you, ‘Arry. You’ve helped me a lot. You always help me when I need you.”

For a reason unexplainable to him, Harry felt his face beginning to flush. 

“It was nothing, mate, don’t mention it.”

But Fleur shook her head. 

“Non, it is not nothing. You think I don’t know what the other guys say about me? I ‘eard them talking when they thought I was not around… They call me Fruity Frenchie and say that I’m strange… but you are not like that. You are not like them… you are a good friend. Thank you.”

Feeling himself getting hot under the collar, Harry laughed awkwardly. 

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, lad,” he said, punching Florent in the shoulder playfully. 

“Oww!” the French boy let out a girly yelp of pain and clutched at his shoulder with his other hand. “What was that for?!”

“...Did I hit you that hard?” Harry asked, confused. He had not expected such a reaction from Florent. After all, he had only tapped him in a friendly manner like boys often joke around with each other. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Realising that she may have overreacted considering that she was supposed to be a boy, Fleur masked her pain and forced out a chuckle. 

“Ah, no, it doesn’t ‘urt that badly. It just caught me unprepared. You know ‘ow it ‘urts worse when you don’t see it coming.”

Changing the subject, she raised her plate and said: 

“Can I tempt you with a croissant?”

“Oui, oui, baguette,” Harry said, snickering as he took a croissant. 

In spite of his dumb ribbing, Fleur found herself snickering too at his words. 

“I heard that McGonagall called you to her office. Are you in trouble?” Harry asked. 

“Not as much as I thought,” she replied. “She docked 20 points from Ravenclaw for my behaviour, but I did not get punished with detention.”

“Hm, the rest of the professors have probably figured out that he’s a fraud by now,” Harry said. 

“Do you also think that Lockhart is lying about the stuff ‘e says ‘e did in ‘is books?”

“Definitely. My brother told me how badly Lockhart botched his first DADA class with them. He couldn’t even deal with a bunch of Cornish Pixies. Matt and his friends had to capture them alone while he scurried back into his office. It was because of that disaster that he’s only been reading and acting out scenes from his books in class since then. If he can’t even deal with a bunch of pixies, forget about him defeating Hags, Banshees, and Werewolves.”

Fleur let out a sigh. 

“Why is Dumbledore not firing this guy? I don’t understand ‘ow ‘e even got ‘ired in the first place.”

Harry stole another croissant from her plate (making her narrow her eyes at him) before replying:

“You may not have heard of it because you’re from France, but it’s a bit of an open secret here that the DADA position is cursed.”

“Cursed?” she asked sceptically. 

Harry shrugged his shoulders. “For decades, there has not been a DADA professor who lasted more than one year, and some of them even ended up dying. So it’s hard for Dumbledore to find anyone willing to take the job.”

“Then ‘ow are the rest passing their OWLs and NEWTs? I can’t believe it! Why is the Ministry of Magic not doing anything?!”

“Most students rely on their older friends for help and self-study,” Harry said. “Professor Flitwick is also subtly trying to cover some DADA content in his Charms classes, but there’s only so much he can do. In the end, we’re on our own.”

⁂

At the same time, although it was almost midnight, Professor Dumbledore was still awake, sitting at this desk in his office. Furthermore, he was not alone.

Sitting across from him was a handsome middle-aged man with bright blue eyes and long, straight, platinum-blonde hair. 

“I must confess, I did not expect your visit at this late hour, Lucius. Would I be right to assume it is something of utmost urgency?”

Unlike his usual appearance, Lucius Malfoy did not exude arrogance and confidence at that moment. There were dark bags under his eyes, his dark robes were wrinkled, and his face looked as if he had not gotten a wink of sleep in days. 

“I don’t even know where to start.”

Dumbledore studied him with attention. 

“Might I suggest you start from the beginning?”

Malfoy ran a hand over his face and let out a breath before saying:

“A particular artefact I had been given to safekeep has gone missing.”

“And you decided to seek me out because...?" Dumbledore probed, slightly confused as to why Malfoy was telling him that. 

“It’s a dark artifact, with some of the darkest magic I have ever come across. It was one of the Dark Lord’s artefacts.”

Now that got Dumbledore’s attention. At once, his tiredness seemed to vanish, and it looked as if an electric current started coursing through the blue irises of his eyes. 

“But why are you telling me this, Lucius? Forgive me for saying this, but the two of us were on opposite sides of the previous war.”

Mr Malfoy stood up from his seat and started pacing around the office. His demeanour screamed of anxiety and uncertainty. 

Dumbledore watched him pace around for a few moments, inwardly startled not only by his presence at Hogwarts at that hour but also by his uncharacteristic display of emotion. 

“Lucius.”

At his call, it was as if Malfoy snapped out of a trance and came back to sit down on the plush chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk. 

“First of all, I want you to understand one thing, Dumbledore.” He rolled up the sleeve of his right arm and showed the headmaster his Dark Mark. “I would trade half my fortune if I could be rid of this.”

Whatever Dumbledore was expecting him to say, it was definitely not that. 

“The Dark Lord... His promises sounded sweet. His plan looked nice on paper. But the reality proved to be different from his promises. I will not say this as an excuse for my actions in the past. What we did cannot be changed.”

The more he spoke, the old wizard’s surprise only kept increasing. Lucius Malfoy had all but admitted that he had not been under the Imperius Curse, as he claimed after the Dark Lord’s defeat, in order to escape prison. 

“But many of us did not know what we were getting into. I did not know. I had no idea that his plan was about killing and torturing Muggles, to speak nothing of the massacres he ordered among the ranks of Purebloods as well.”

The blonde man took out an elegant handkerchief from the inner pocket of his coat and wiped his sweaty forehead. 

“We thought of him as a revolutionary, but he proved to be nothing but a mad dog. A dangerous, cruel, volatile, and nigh-unstoppable mad dog. We do not want him back, Dumbledore. I do not want him back,” Lucius said, his voice lowering to a harsh whisper as he looked into his eyes. “I do not long for the day when I have to walk on eggshells again. I do not wish to be afraid that my son and wife’s lives could end on one of his whims after I said one wrong word. I do not miss the killings, the torture, and the misery we sowed.”

Dumbledore interlocked his fingers under his chin as he studied Mafloy silently.

Lucius licked his dry lips nervously before continuing:

“Four days ago, one of my House Elves disappeared, and, along with him, so did the Dark Lord’s prized relic. The elf does not answer to my calls and my other three House Elves cannot locate him either.”

“Until four days ago, the Dark Mark was faded, almost like a forgotten memory. But look at it now,” Malfoy said, showing the old wizard his darkening tattoo again. “The Dark Lord is getting stronger, Dumbledore. I am afraid it is only a matter of time before his return.”

A grave expression appeared on the old wizard's face. 

“That relic of Voldemort that you spoke of. What is it?”

Lucius shook his head. 

“I am no stranger to the Dark Arts, but even I cannot tell what spells the Dark Lord has cast on it. But the Dark Lord ordered me to protect it as if my life depended on it.”

When Dumbledore did not say anything in response for nearly half a minute, Lucius could not bear the silence anymore and spoke up:

“I came to you in honesty. I bared myself to you, not hiding anything. Tell me, Dumbledore, will you help me? Will you work together with me to stop the Dark Lord from coming back to life?”

Dumbledore looked him in the eyes for a few seconds before taking out the Elder Wand and saying in a sombre voice:

“If you truly wish for me to trust your words, open your mind. That is my condition. Let me see your thoughts and memories. Only then will I trust you.”

Malfoy did not reply right away. For a brief moment, his face mirrored the conflict raging inside his heart. But then, he steeled his expression and nodded. 

“Come, I will not stop you.”

At this confirmation, Dumbledore raised his wand and pointed it at his face. 

“Legilimens.”