From inside the champion's tent, they could all hear the stadium fill up. Harry peeked out of the tent flaps and noticed it was filled to the brim- evidently, the Triwizard Tournament was living up to its name as quite the spectacle. Harry had never seen the Quidditch stadium completely full before- even during the final Quidditch game of the season when nearly everyone was finished with their exams, almost half the seats were empty. Part of the reason was because only two out of four houses were ever really interested in each game, but also partly because Hogwarts was seeing some of the lowest enrolment in centuries, after coming out of the war against Voldemort. Today, however, visitors from all over Britain, and some from other parts of Europe were here. He also noticed the section reserved for the press was packed- and remembering the trouble Rita Skeeter had caused him, he wanted to find out who she was.
"Hey, Fleur," he asked the French witch. "Do you remember talking to a reporter about the effect your allure had on me?"
Fleur's cold demeanor broke for a second. "Reporter? Non, I do not discuss such private matters to ze press." Her eyes narrowed into an icy stare at Harry. "You 'ave not been telling your friends that you could 'andle me, 'ave you? There is far more to me zen just my allure..."
"No, I haven't mentioned it at all... except to Hermione, of course. I read a quote in the paper the day after the tournament, that said you were talking about me... and I'm sure you were referring to my ability to resist the allure, and not... um... anything else." Cedric had caught on to what Harry was asking, and remembered the article in question. He was now extremely curious as to when the quote came about.
"I certainly do not make such matters public knowledge, 'Arry. You are saying one of your Eenglish reporters quoted me? I do not recall giving an interview or a statement for zem..."
"Then I think you should watch out for eavesdroppers. I'm pretty sure this reporter has rather unscrupulous methods of gathering her information... but I haven't figured out how, yet."
Fleur said nothing in return, only looking at him with some suspicion. The rest of the wait in the tent continued in silence, as they once again heard the opening formalities- anthems, greetings, introductions to various bigwigs and officials, and a few speeches by the bigwigs and officials. They seemed to drone on and on, but right at eleven o'clock, they called up Harry and Fleur to the first duelling arena.
Go through the motions, stick to what you know, Harry told himself as he passed through the duelling wards. On stage, he bowed to the referee, then to Fleur. He kept his knees bent, ready to dart in any direction at a moment's notice. Drawing his wand from his holster, he held it in front of him, pointed at Fleur. Fleur, on the other hand, held a completely different stance. Standing straight up with her feet together and one hand behind her back, she extended her wand-hand towards Harry with the palm up, almost as if she were asking him for a dance.
"Duellers, are you ready?" Both of them nodded.
"Begin!"
Harry began on instinct with the Dueller's Hello to see how Fleur would react while concentrating on his legilimency to predict her moves. He spread the three spells so that the silencing hex would go for her head, the body-bind slightly to the left of her shoulder, and the conjured ropes to the right of her hip. She let off a single stunner before twisting and bending down slightly, without even moving her feet and followed up with a cutting charm. The two hexes jinxes flew past her without incident and the ropes were sliced before they reached her. Harry predicted Fleur's stunner, and sidestepped the spell easily and started running towards her, attempting to force her towards the edge of the platform with the Pebblecoat combo. It consisted of a reductor at the ground, followed by a levitation charm and a sticking charm, which should have forced the opponent into a detour lest they get themselves weighed down in debris. Fleur saw exactly what he was doing, however, and ignored the reductor, banishing the rocks immediately before Harry could levitate most of them. It cleared just enough of the rocks for her to nimbly step in between as she deflected the sticking charms. As Harry repeated the combo, she conjured a flock of birds that flew straight at him, blocking his vision and breaking eye contact. There were far too many to destroy individually, so he used the splitting-wind spell to push all of them to the side, only to see a huge fireball rushing at him. Without any time to dodge, he threw up a shield.
Harry quickly began to move closer to the middle of the arena, where there would be more area to move. The flames didn't seem to be draining his shields as fast as he thought they would, so he held it up until the flames ended. He looked around. He couldn't see her- she was probably under a disillusionment charm. Without his legilimency to help him, he had to be wary of a spell coming from any direction- and the area of the platform that would have been safest for him had suddenly turned into the most dangeorus. Eyes darting back and forth quickly, he threw a wide-arc tripping spell in one direction. Seeing nothing fall down, he began to move to that side only to see a series of red and yellow bolts from the corner of his eye. Ducking and rolling to dodge them, he threw another wide tripping spell and saw a shimmer as Fleur jumped over it. There she is!
As the adrenaline really kicked in, Harry began to fight wildly. Both of them exchanged direct spells, mostly disarming, stunning, and body-bind curses. Neither bothered to put up a shield, trying instead to take their opponent down directly. Harry was having a harder time aiming at Fleur, who would only reveal herself slightly when she moved. Frustrated, he switched to conjuring water, sending a jet in Fleur's general direction, creating a thin puddle. He could see her footsteps now, but she realized it just as quickly. Cancelling her disillusionment, she pressed on the attack, launching spells faster than before. Harry could now resume his legilimency, letting him dodge with even greater ease and retaliating with a few broad-area explosion spells, which forced Fleur to either block or jump out of the way. In an attempt to keep Harry pinned down, Fleur conjured another flock of birds. Harry countered with the same wind-splitter, only to see three snakes moving quickly towards him. A normal dueller would have to deal with them individually, because they were all deadlier than the birds... but Harry was a Parselmouth. He quickly ran towards the snakes, and hissed to them, ~Stop. Attack her!~ Fleur obviously didn't anticipate his ability, and attempted to vanish the snakes she conjured, but Harry protected them as they advanced together. As soon as they were close to striking distance, Harry dropped his shield and began his attack. In between dodging Harry's spells, Fleur still managed to vanish one snake, blast another, and slice the last one just as it lunged at her. In that short time, Harry had closed the distance between them and she couldn't dodge his spells fast enough. He threw another blasting curse at her feet and two disarming charms. The blasting curse shattered the ground beneath her, throwing her off balance, and the second disarming charm hit her. As soon as the wand flew out of her hand, Harry summoned it.
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