Harry Potter Breaking Free

It was interesting to Harry that a race of magical beings would be so polarized by an element. "Does it follow then that you would be resistant and strong magically in heat or fire?"

Fleur looked somewhat impressed despite herself. "Yes, 'Arry. We are safe from all but the hottest magical fires and in our avian forms we can throw around a very specific type of magical fire called Passionfire."

"Are humans elementally aligned to something?" Harry was relaxing now as he became wrapped up in the conversation.

Fleur smiled even as she shook her head. "Most humans are not... Some are, but the element is random and associated with their nature as a person. I would associate you with earth, 'Arry… stubborn, immovable and most importantly, mundane." Fleur grinned at her own joke.

Harry put his hand to his chin in a thinker's pose. "I think that you'd be fire then even if you weren't a Veela then. Unpredictable, spirited and beautiful until there's no air left in the room."

As soon as those words left Harry's mouth, neither he nor Fleur could maintain eye contact anymore, and Harry started kicking the living crap out of himself. A moment later, when he finally managed to look back in Fleur's direction, he made sure to look contrite. "My apologies Fleur. I had good intentions just now, but that wasn't appropriate."

Fleur's face immediately broke into an amused grin as she found herself in a situation that she'd never experienced before. Harry was the very first person to ever apologize for complimenting her appearance.

"'Arry," she began, laughter filling her voice. "I'm not angry. I get it. Veela are beautiful. It is in their nature, in their magic. I do not dislike that part of myself, for that would be denying my heritage. What I dislike is the alienation I experience because of it. Your presence is annoying to me because around you my allure flares and I am helpless to fully control it. On the bright side, I am shamelessly pummeling you with my allure as we speak and you are doing just that... speaking. If it were any other man, they would be struggling not to drown while trying to impress me with some childish feat of strength. At my school, even my scrupulously contained baseline allure is too much for most men to handle for any real length of time. I have very few friends because of the complications this causes."

Harry had never even thought of Fleur's baseline allure as being a problem. It meant essentially nothing to him. He didn't even have to take notice of it for the little effect it had on his body. Knowing that made Harry arch an eyebrow as he asked a question. "Your baseline allure is essentially as strong as Gabrielle's best efforts right now correct?"

Fleur nodded.

"Gabrielle's current allure shouldn't affect people to the extremes that you're describing," Harry said, with his brows knit together in frustration. "Even without my magical shroud intervening, it only made me a little bit fonder of her in the beginning. I believe these men you're describing are using your allure as a convenient excuse. Either that or they're extraordinarily weak-willed and undeserving."

With a scoff that was part amusement and part resentment, Fleur crossed her arms under her chest. Tell that to the women at my school then, 'Arry. According to them, I'm a legendary home wrecker of some kind.

For the second time in less than half a minute, Harry found himself furrowing his eyebrows in frustration. "If a boy decides to dump his girlfriend merely because he's been exposed to your charms, I'm pretty sure he'd eventually have left her even without your involvement. I know how you operate around boys, after all. You're very… distant, cool, difficult to get close to..."

"You do have a point, 'Arry, but I'm pretty sure you're underestimating the strength of both my passive allure and your own resiliency at exactly the same time," Fleur immediately corrected. "When I walk down the halls of my school, random boys profess their undying love for me on a semi-regular basis."

"Well, okay, fine then, maybe I'm just having trouble relating, which isn't actually a new problem for me," Harry mused as if to himself. "Even before my magic was released, I found it hard to compare myself to most of my classmates. With me it's always been results may vary greatly. For instance, I can make a very strong Patronus Charm, but... I faint like a damsel in the presence of Dementors. I'm extremely susceptible to the way they affect their surroundings."

"'Arry, of course Dementors hurt you more than most," Fleur responded in a soft and understanding tone of voice. "I mean, they specifically target painful memories..." Fleur stopped speaking there because she already saw that Harry understood her meaning. Then a question she'd been meaning to ask for quite a while was suddenly slipping from her mouth. "You have experienced many Dementors then, 'Arry? You say they make you pass out. How do you know this?"

Unbeknownst to Fleur, she was moving a little bit closer to Harry, with every single word that she said.

At first, Harry struggled to find a way to explain the situation without making the government of Magical Britain sound like a bunch of imbeciles, but then he just gave up and said it like it is. "Dementors were stationed around the perimeter of Hogwarts last year. They were placed there in order to catch an escaped fugitive that they thought was targeting me. I'll explain that story to you some other time. Anyway... The Dementors were very poorly controlled and ran amok several different times. On three separate occasions, I ended up losing consciousness because the Dementors sought me out. It even happened once during a Quidditch match, and I fell fifty feet to the ground."

By this point, a hand was covering Fleur's mouth as she resisted a desire to curse out both Dumbledore and Magical Britain in general.

"Later, I ended up being introduced to a Boggart that liked to turn into a Dementor around me with very similar results," Harry continued with a sigh. "When I harassed a professor friend of mine for help, he began training me to perform the Patronus Charm, but for quite a while I didn't show any improvement at all. As it turns out, I was subconsciously seeking out the experiences that the Boggart/Dementor kept bringing me."

Fleur was stunned by Harry's words. "But why, 'Arry? Why would you seek out those awful feelings?"

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