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“You did WHAT?!” exclaimed Fleur Delacour, widening her bright-blue eyes in total shock.
Standing before her were two other girls with platinum-blonde hair (the same colour as Fleur’s), both of whom had their hair at shoulder-length (whereas Fleur’s hair was chest-length). One of the girls had bright-green eyes and the other one had silver. The girls were Fleur’s cousins, Aurora Delacour (her paternal cousin) and Madeleine Beaumont (her maternal cousin, who preferred going by Maddi), and they were in their fourth and third years respectively at Beauxbatons. They were even the same height as Fleur (five-foot-eight, to be precise). Fleur wanted to be angry with her cousins, but it wasn’t easy to do because they were family.
Like Fleur, Aurora was quarter-veela, while Maddi was the odd one out because she was half-veela. Fleur couldn’t believe that her cousins arranged for a blind date for her, since tomorrow was Saturday (with only one week before the first task of the Triwizard Tournament). The three shared a bedroom in the sleeping wing in the carriage because none of the other female students were willing to share a bedroom with someone who had some veela traits. The same could be said in the boys’ bedrooms if one of them had any veelo traits. They just returned to their bedroom moments earlier from dinner in the Great Hall of Hogwarts. The blind date thing explained to Fleur why her cousins didn’t return with her immediately.
“We set up a blind date for you, Fleur.” stated Aurora (the one who had bright-green eyes).
“To help distract you from your anxiety of the upcoming first task, since it’s next Saturday!” said Maddi (the one with silver eyes).
“Yeah, but for it to be a blind date?!” Fleur replied, still shocked over what her cousins did. “I’ve heard of the horrors that come with it. How am I to know that you two chose a boy who’s immune to our allure?”
“You can trust your cousins on that, Fleur!” assured Aurora and Maddi in unison. “Since we have equal difficulty in finding our potential significant others who’re one-in-a-million. Even if most of the boys in all three of the schools drool at the sight of us, there’s always going to be at least one who’s immune to our allure, since they’re the ones who go for personality over looks.”
“Will you tell me who my date will be?” Fleur begged. “The suspense is gonna kill me.”
“Nope!” her cousins replied simultaneously. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a blind date.”
“If I die from it,” said Fleur. “I’m blaming you two for failure to help me relax.”
“If you died, you wouldn’t be able to!” said Aurora dryly.
“Besides, if you let your anxiety of the first task get to you,” Maddi pointed out. “You’ll just keep yourself in a stressful situation, and you already have enough of that as it is.”
“Your date will be waiting by the front doors to this castle,” Aurora informed Fleur. “Then you can go wherever and spend some time together.”
“We’ll accompany you to the front doors, Fleur, since we’ll be heading that way anyway.” stated Maddi. “I managed to secure a date from a handsome young man who was also immune to our allure, and I asked him if he knew of a place we could go to first and he suggested Honeydukes Sweets Shop.”
“What about you?” Fleur asked Aurora.
“Yeah, even I managed to get a date,” stated Aurora. “Since I’m going to explore Hogsmeade anyway and see what kind of shops are there, I'd like to share that experience with a special someone. But Maddi and I can help you out in picking an outfit for you to wear for your date if you’d like. The boy I talked to regarding the blind date with you told me that it didn’t have to be one of those fancy dates.”
“Does he even know that I’m his date?” asked Fleur.
“Sort of, as he has an idea even if neither me nor Maddi narrowed it down,” said Aurora. “But neither Maddi nor myself will be revealing your date’s physical description. We, as your cousins, have gone out of our way to ensure that it’s someone immune to our allure. We can’t afford to see you so focused on your worry, you need to find a way to keep yourself distracted from that before it consumes you.”
Fleur couldn’t argue with that, since she knew that she was taking a huge risk by staying stressful. Even though Madame Maxime found out about the dragons being the first task, it did nothing to dissipate Fleur’s worries because dragons were very powerful creatures and couldn’t be taken down so easily. Fleur also refrained from asking her cousins who their respective dates would be, figuring that they wanted to keep that under wraps until tomorrow when they had breakfast first before going to Hogsmeade. All too soon, it was getting close to bedtime, so Fleur and her cousins started getting ready for bed so they could be well-rested by next morning. All three were wearing pajamas that were made of some kind of silky material with the button-down shirt being long-sleeve and trousers. Fleur’s pajamas were sky-blue because of them being closer to her eye colour, Aurora had on a pair of sea-green pajamas, while Maddi’s pajamas were silver. As soon as they climbed into their respective beds, the light turned out with Aurora and Maddi dozing off. Fleur, however, just laid on her back and stared up at the ceiling in the dark, pondering over her thoughts and wondering what would play out tomorrow after breakfast.
‘Will my blind date enjoy being in my company?’ Fleur mused. ‘Will I enjoy being in his company? What will our first date involve? Will we even be a good match?’
It took a little longer for Fleur to fall asleep compared to her cousins because of all the other questions that kept popping up in her mind. She managed to close her eyes and get to sleep, knowing that being tired on her date with this mysterious person wasn’t going to be a very good first impression. Messing this blind date up wasn’t something Fleur wanted, and she needed to distract herself from the dragons for a little while and keep the stress at bay.
/Scene break\
The next morning, Fleur was naturally the first one to wake up because of the anticipation of her blind date due to happen sometime after breakfast. It wasn’t too much longer before Aurora and Maddi were waking up, and they climbed out of bed while Fleur stayed where she was. Seeing that their cousin wasn’t getting up, Aurora and Maddi approached Fleur’s bed and pulled her sheets and blankets back as a way of telling her to stop loafing around and get her rear in gear. The wave of cool air caused Fleur to widen her eyes and try to pull them back over her, only for her cousins to lightly smack the tops of her hands.
“The longer you stay in bed, the longer you’ll keep staying in bed, Fleur!” Maddi told her. “Your date would be highly disappointed if you flake out on him.”
Fleur immediately got up and went to get a change of clothes before hitting the shower. She and her cousins decided on wearing long-sleeve polo shirts and jeans since their respective dates weren’t going to be any of the fancy ones. All three opted to wear midnight-blue coloured jeans, but Fleur’s shirt was going to be a cerulean-blue, Aurora opted to have her shirt being black, while Maddi decided to wear a magenta shirt. Fleur ended up showering first because she had a hunch that her cousins wanted her to go first, judging by giving the older girl expectant looks. The moment she finished and left the bathroom was when Maddi went, followed by Aurora soon after. Once the three grabbed their coats and left their room, they headed for the living quarters so they could leave the carriage and head for the castle’s Great Hall.
The three spotted Maddi’s brother, Lucas, sitting in one of the chairs waiting for them. Lucas was in Fleur’s year, and he had hair the same colour combed to the left and the same eye colour as his sister. Lucas was also very tall at a height of six-foot-six (part of which was helped by being a half-veelo); and he was dressed in a gray long-sleeve t-shirt, black jeans, and black trainers. Upon spotting his sister and cousins, he got up and walked with them to the castle. Lucas happened to have his own room because having the veelo traits made boys jealous of his muscular physique and handsome looks (the sight of which made most girls go googly-eyed in his direction with their tongues hanging out to the point of drooling).
“Trying to look your best before your date after breakfast, Maddi?” Lucas asked his sister, sounding half-serious and half-playful.
“Yes, Luke,” Maddi replied. “All three of us have a date, but Fleur is going to have a blind one.”
“We made sure to look for the right boy,” stated Aurora. “Since most of them already drool at the sight of us.”
“I was mad at them all night for doing that!” Fleur replied, trying to exaggerate it despite her female cousins seeing through it.
“No you weren’t!” Aurora and Maddi shot back in amused voices.
Knowing that Aurora and Maddi were right, Fleur didn’t make any more attempts to sound furious. The four continued on to the castle so they could eat breakfast in the Great Hall. As she ate, Fleur caught herself on the verge of turning her focus to the dragons, but reminded herself to focus on other aspects of life. But she still used the opportunity to think about how she was going to get past the dragon when the day came. After coming up with a plan, Fleur immediately began refocusing her attention on her upcoming date with this mystery boy Aurora and Maddi set her up with. Due to being so distracted with her thoughts, Fleur didn’t realize when breakfast was over until Aurora shook her shoulders, resulting in her snapping back to reality.
“Come on, cuz,” Aurora and Maddi chorused. “We don’t want our dates with our respective special someone to get delayed!”
The girls waved goodbye to Lucas (and he waved back with a smile on his face) before making their way towards the front doors to the castle. The girls lagged behind the other students due to wanting to avoid getting knocked down and trampled on, especially with some of the students being impatient and wanting to be at Hogsmeade as fast as possible. Once the crowd dispersed a great deal, Fleur and her cousins continued heading for the front entrance to meet up with their dates. When they made it, the girls saw three boys waiting. One of them was a tall redhead with freckles, blue eyes, and had big hands and feet. The second boy was portly and had brown hair and eyes. The third one had untidy black hair and emerald-green eyes hidden behind a pair of black full-moon glasses, and was the shortest (but not all that short). Fleur immediately knew that the black-haired boy was Harry Potter, since the magical world (especially Magical England) was all-too familiar with the Boy-Who-Lived. The redhead was Ron Weasley, as mentioned by the school’s rumour mill. The brown-haired boy was revealed to be Neville Longbottom. Aurora walked up to Ron while Maddi walked up to Neville, making Fleur and Harry realize that they were dates for the day. Fleur eyed her cousins as if to ask if Harry really was her date.
“Yes, Harry is your date, cuz!” Fleur’s cousins chorused.
Fleur widened her eyes in shock to realize that Harry really was her date. She looked over at Harry, who was shocked himself (though, not as much as Fleur). Harry, Ron, and Neville were wearing black jeans, black coats, and black trainers; but the shirts they were wearing were a mystery. Fleur felt herself relaxing when Harry greeted her with a smile, which also indicated that he wasn’t upset and that was good enough for her. Then Ron and Aurora went their own way, with Neville and Maddi doing the same (but not before they made arrangements with the other four to meet up at the Three Broomsticks for lunch later). Once Ron, Neville, and their respective dates were out of sight, Harry and Fleur began heading to Hogsmeade, but decided to take the long way. They weren’t sure what they wanted to talk about, so they walked together silently (since it was better than saying the wrong thing).
“I’m sorry if my ‘leetle boy’ comment offended you, Monsieur Potter!” Fleur apologized. “Your headmaster never said anything about him believing you to be innocent, and that made it very easy to mistake you for being guilty of your name coming out of that goblet on Halloween.”
“It didn’t offend me at all, Miss Delacour, but I accept your apology!” assured Harry. Then he went on, “I can see where Dumbledore’s lack of words can lead to confusion, plus you and your school and even Durmstrang would naturally be unaware of my misadventures here. You can call me Harry if you’d like.”
“Thank you, Harry, and you can call me Fleur if you wish!” Fleur replied. “What kind of misadventures have you been on, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Well,” stated Harry. “I would like to explain it, but I don’t know if I feel ready for it. I’m always expecting my rotten luck to return, as it feels that no matter what I do it always happens. If I were to eventually tell you about it, I’d rather do so somewhere private.”
“Good point!” Fleur replied. “And maybe it’s best we focus more on our date anyway.”
“If you’d like, after we finish our walk in the woods,” Harry offered. “We can go to Honeydukes sweet shop and get some sweets and then head to the Three Broomsticks for lunch. I can even pay for it all if it makes you feel better.”
“No need for all that, Harry,” assured Fleur. “It wouldn’t be fair for you to do everything. How about if I pay for one and you take care of the other?”
“Well, okay,” said Harry. “Which one would you like to pay for?”
“The sweets at Honeydukes,” said Fleur. “As I felt that it would be a real way for me to make it up to you for my ‘leetle boy’ comment, since it would be a token of my apology.”
“Sounds good, Fleur,” stated Harry. “And when we do go to the three Broomsticks, we can even ask Madam Rosmerta if there are private dining rooms we can eat in to ensure that fangirls especially don’t try to rip you to shreds or something.”
“I’d like that, Harry,” Fleur replied. “And it would also help me out in avoiding the sight of those lustful boys drooling at the sight of me, since I hardly have any chances of avoiding those disgusting moments and I really don’t want to lose my appetite.”
“Me, too,” said Harry. “Since it’s like those boys only risk making fools of themselves the moment they start drooling. They need to learn self control before they do something they’ll come to regret.”
Then the two continued their walk in the woods to pass the time until they felt ready to head to Hogsmeade. Fleur even found herself wondering how Aurora and Maddi were doing with Ron and Neville respectively. They were going to tell her about it afterwards, and she was going to do the same for her cousins. Even Harry, Ron, and Neville were going to take turns telling one another about their respective dates later on. Harry felt himself more at ease since he was finally having some experience on being a teenager, and he and Fleur had trouble keeping their eyes off of each other. Maybe Fleur would be a good motivation for Harry to make it out of the tournament alive, and vice versa. Harry even did the best he could to avoid getting thoughts of his rotten luck returning. That was when he decided it was time he put more effort into focusing on his life instead of living up to the Boy-Who-Lived expectations.
The End!