Eyes On Me

Gabrielle looked steadfastly at her fingers as they adroitly touched the ivory keys. She didn't look at Mike, the vocalist for the group, or Rick, who played a smooth, warm clarinet to her left, or even at her music, which nevertheless she would periodically turn the pages of. No, when the band was playing her music, Gabrielle looked at the keys. It reduced the chance of her making a mistake, and increased the chances of the rest of them getting it right. Besides, she knew every inch of the score in front of her by heart. She didn't need to look at it.

When the break came, she put the book away, instead hauling out a different one. Green cover, printed title.... This was the interlude music, what they would play before they went back to her music. This stuff was flashy and showy, especially the piano part. Her music never was. Gabrielle would sooner let others have the glory; only trouble came when she was in the spotlight.

She turned, carefully, to the first page of the music, and sat still on the bench during the ten-minute break before the band started playing again. The other members went to get drinks--let them. She sat and folded her hands quietly in her lap, listening.

There were three men sitting just beyond the normal range of human hearing.

It was a good thing she wasn't human.

One of the men came here every night. Every night, wild dark hair danced at the edge of her vision. Every night, green eyes calmly reflected every note she played, challenging her without ever knowing it to write new and better things, something to penetrate those unexcited eyes, to make them not-calm. Every night, he sat and drank his butterbeer while she tried not to catch his eye.

And he always, always discussed his plans in that chair. She didn't hear all of them--she was playing most of the time he was speaking, and even veela hearing would do only so much--but still, she could gather the gist of what he spoke about in her two ten-minute breaks.

There was nothing tonight--not unusual. She wasn't a terribly effective spy. He and his companions spoke only of the approaching marriage of two of his friends.

The band was coming back to the stage now. She glanced, ever so briefly, at the man as the band came through the stage door. Yet, lightning-swift as it was, it seemed to her that into that moment as her eyes brushed past him the man at the table slipped a soft-edged smile.

It must have been her imagination.

*

"To me you are bound, by all purposes magical and mystical, for all times even past the burning pain of death--" The twisted visage above her burned itself into her consciousness, permanently staining her mind, her will, and her awareness. Yes, she was captured to coerce her sister, but still, she made a nearly indetectable spy. And after all, it was true, wasn't it, that the magic was purer in the old bloodlines, and the Muggle-born did tend to be so rude, didn't they? No, it was best to follow the Dark Lord. His methods may be wrong, but it was a cause she would, in the end, agree with...

...and it wasn't like she had a choice.

By the time the Aurors came, she was already much worse than dead.

*

Gabrielle walked into her flat, tired eyes dull, hair falling from its elegant bun in tatters around her face. She closed the door, then turned to face the room, slowly kicking off her heels.

The lights popped on.

Gabrielle reacted immediately, sweeping into a low bow, surveying the shoes of those in front of her. It was a multi-purpose act: if it was her lord, it was a position of subservience, but if it was Aurors--if she was caught--it let her know in time to Disapparate out.

The figure in front of her wore well-shined black dress shoes, and the two feet next to it wore the height of wizarding fashion on their feet. Perhaps most tellingly, around the feet of the nearest wound a monstrous snake, coiling and curveting in a manner that was almost flaunting.

"My Lord," Gabrielle murmured, keeping her eyes and head low. "How may I serve you?"

"Look at me, my child." One did not disobey a direct order. Gabrielle wondered, as the dark figure moved in her peripheral vision, whether the Dark Lord knew about the contrast between himself and the beautiful ones who served him. Perhaps so--perhaps he enjoyed the contrast. Who knew? Certainly not Gaby.

"I have a special task for you, Gabrielle." He was obviously baiting her, waiting for her to ask.

"What is it?" she obediently queried. After all, one did not disappoint the Dark Lord.

He smiled. That was the first hint that she had made a mistake.

*

Another night, another song, another waste of time, usually. She rarely heard anything worth hearing here, although occasionally she picked up a hint of a raid, a rumor of a plan, a whisper of a bust... Tonight, she planned to pick up something much, much heavier.

He always left before she did, in the middle of the third set. He never stayed at the table until the end of the set. Yet, he always had compatriots with him at the break from the second. How, then, to approach him without giving herself away or alerting his companions?

Simple, really. Oh, it was a good thing she was part veela.... A normal human would have had to use a wand, but she could cast the spell with only her hair.

It was no surprise that Harry stayed to the end of the set and after. Gabrielle carefully looked towards his table as she came out the stage door. He looked nervous. Good. So was she; perhaps his nerves would blind him to hers.

The seat she sat in was still slightly warm; his friends must have stayed longer than usual tonight. Perhaps she should refine her spell the next time she attempted something like this.

The next time? Oh, Lord...

There was little small talk. Gabrielle considered that, too, a good thing. She was jumpier than she had expected, almost as if she had real feelings for this man. They left quickly, going to his flat. Outside the apartment, she dropped the tracking device--it would allow her lord to find her, bypassing the misdirection-wards.

Harry was looking at his watch. Did he have somewhere to go? Perhaps he had timed something at his apartment.... That would not surprise her, somehow. She thought sometimes that this man was all-knowing. Perhaps he had known she was going to ask him to love her tonight.

Her mission: seduce Harry Potter. She was given an hour and a half from the time she set the tracking device off. She fervently hoped it would be enough time.

Once inside the flat, they moved quickly. Quiet praises tumbled from their lips as hands moved freely where they otherwise would not have dared to go. A feeling of rising hysteria flooded through Gabrielle. She was meaning every word she said, every worship, every adoration! Was it only the physical aspect that made her fall in love with this man? It couldn't be, that hadn't happened before! It was only later, years later, that she realized that her spirit knew what her mind had yet to discover: the true nobility of Harry Potter, Hero.

He angled them across the room, towards the bed. She was reaching for his fly when he opened a drawer in the bedside table.

She had him unzipped when the syringe plunged into her arm.

The last thing she saw as she plunged into darkness was his face. His eyes gleamed greenly, calm as ever in the darkness.

*

Gabrielle woke to the sound of feet moving on a wooden floor, and voices talking in harsh whispers. She tried to sit up and discovered she was bound. Her shirt was back on, the pulled back left sleeve the only sign of her previous deshabille. She glanced across the room to where Harry sat talking with one of the people who spoke to him at her bar. A grizzled old man, he was disgusting, but she never based her judgments off of that. She had seen the intelligence in his one remaining eye, and she knew that whoever had taken that eye had only gotten one, and failed to take his life. That he lived at all was a sign of his formidability--it was harder to escape if you'd already sprung the trap.

The old man touched Harry's arm briefly, and Harry turned to look at Gabrielle. There was a calmness about him that struck her to the bone. He was cool, collected, and at peace. He didn't care.... He didn't care.

Somewhere inside Gabrielle, a unknown feeling stirred and shook.

He walked over to her, slowly but surely, and dropped down on the edge of the bed... his bed. Hanging on the far wall was a mirror, and in it she could see that he had both buttoned her shirt and brushed her hair, worn long tonight for the purpose of casting the entrancement. Harry looked her squarely in the eye, not saying anything for a long time, only looking at her with that unruffled gaze of his. Gabrielle's stomach twisted like a sopping washcloth. She had meant it; she had meant it! Didn't he? Oh, it was a wise man who said to beware the grief of a woman scorned.

As the silence continued, tears sprang up in Gabrielle's eyes, not only for his apathy, but also for something else, something she didn't dare to touch--not yet, anyway. Through the blurring of her eyes, she saw, perhaps, for a fraction of a second, something that cared in his--but when she blinked the tears away, his gaze was impartial.

She must have imagined it.

Harry opened his mouth, and hope sprang up in her breast.

Then he found his voice, and read her her rights.

*

Gabrielle sat on her bench in the corner of her cell. It was actually a decently sized cell, larger than most, but still, a cell it remained. In the past two weeks, she had gotten to know it very, very well.

Gabrielle thought back to her trial. It wasn't much of one... she told them everything--everything--and let them decide what to do with her. It was extremely difficult with Harry sitting right there, looking at her with calm, underestimating eyes. She had heard him ask that she be let off on account of her being "just a child, really, when it started" and had snapped at him, rather badly. She was not just a child when it started! She was at least a year and a half older than Harry himself had been when the Dark Lord came back, and he had no doubt thought himself rather adult then! She told him, in front of the entire court, that this was entirely her fault and that he could very well let her take responsibility the one time she actually attempted to do so.

The verdict was surprisingly lenient, considering that the judge was a woman and that she had attempted to turn the Boy Who Lived over to the Dark Lord. (And it probably hadn't helped that she had gotten closer to seducing him than any other girl ever had.) Still, she had a very nice cell and protection from Voldemort until such time as he was no longer a danger. Supposedly, this decision was reached because she was only doing this for fear of him. Something rang wrong in that decision, though, and Gabrielle wasn't sure what. It just didn't seem like enough, somehow.

Since the trial she had had several visitors, including her hysterical sister. Gabrielle had hastened to assure Fleur that this wasn't her fault, but she suspected that Fleur would never truly believe that. Various Aurors had dropped by, asking her for information on the Dark Lord. She willingly gave it; she had nothing to lose anymore.

It was strange not to call him her lord, but rather the Dark Lord, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Stranger still to think of herself as a criminal. Somehow, that aspect of the whole sordid mess had never occurred to her.

She heard the voices of the guards ringing out down the hallway. This happened often, and she wouldn't have paid it any more heed than she usually did, except that she had heard her name.

"--Delacour. How many is she going to get? I swear, that girl must be putting out or something, because guys come to see her three times a day."

"Mind your mouth, Jenks, and hurry up, would you? This one's important." The voices moved on, their grumbling echoing down the hall.

She was to have another visitor, then... and soon, as soon as whoever it was could get clearance. She sat on the edge of her bed--which had a very nice coverlet on it--and brushed her hair. She didn't have much in the way of fine robes, but her hair at least she could do something about.

No sooner had she put down her brush than the door opened, revealing the one person she had never thought to see here.

The door slammed shut after him with an admonition from the warden to pound when he wanted out because just calling wouldn't work, and then Harry Potter took a single step towards her.

Gabrielle looked for a chair to offer him, despite the fact that she knew she had none. Harry wore brown shoes, leather, but not polished. His robes were frayed on the bottom, and dampness clung there. She knew why; the corridors outside the cells were horrid, with unidentifiable wetnesses periodically spaced for maximum disgust. She glanced at the small table beside her bed for something, anything, to offer him, and came up blank. Finally, she gave up, and looked up into his eyes.

They were calm. She nearly threw something at him.

"I'm afraid," Gabrielle said in a low, clear voice, "that my place isn't nearly so nice as yours."

Something--at last!--flickered in the back of Harry's eyes, but it was soon gone again. "I suppose it isn't as nice as mine," he said at last, "and far less well suited to you." Gabrielle's eyes widened at the double entendre, and a brief expression crossed his face as if he really wished he hadn't said that. Gaby thought it might have been that she was previously too focused on how wonderful he was, but she had never before noticed how much of a... a... a geek he was.

Gabrielle smiled merrily and asked him why he had come to her room. It was to her great delight that he blushed. "I... I wanted to know..." The poor man's face was red now, and whatever had been in his eyes before was back again. He looked at the ground, shifting his weight and rotating the tip of his shoe into the cracks between two of the stones. When he was no longer pink, he looked up again. He took a deep breath, then finished, "What you said--that night. Was it true?"

Gabrielle stalled. Everything she had ever said to his face was true, but she didn't want to tell him that. "Which night?"

"The night I brought you in," he said, avoiding talking about just how he had done that.

Gabrielle looked at her nails. "Some of it might have been, I suppose," she said. Whatever happened, she couldn't let him know just how highly she thought of him, green eyes and all.

"W-Which part?"

"I don't remember. It was a while ago, I wasn't thinking clearly. What did I say?" Panicked, Gabrielle made the mistake of looking up at his face.

Calm green eyes? Not right now, certainly! There was emotion swimming in them, a longing look that nearly tore her heart out. She tried to clamp down on the veela charm, and succeeded, but only somewhat. She made a wild grab for personal control and missed it by a mile.

She was off the bed in an instant, across the half cell that lay between them, and into his arms and his embrace and his mouth before either of them had blinked. She had to raise onto the balls of a her feet a bit, but she was there. His arms--surprisingly strong arms, she was suddenly reminded--came down around her, one at her lower back, the other around her shoulders. She ran her fingers through his hair and made a low noise.

Something about Harry made her feel as if she were losing her mind, and enjoying every minute of it. She lost all sense of equilibrium, her senses whirling and unconnected everywhere except where Harry was, as if he were her only connection to the earthly plane.

But it felt very good....

She moaned against him, and opened his robes to run her nails across his chest. One of his hands cradled the back of her neck, while the other held her somewhat lower. They melted against each other, legs and groins and chests and mouths, and when she looked into his eyes once more she lost it completely.

Her veela instincts took over, making her hunger in a way no human ever could, needing to feed on the sexual energies of her mate. Dismayed, Gabrielle tried to pull back, but she was beyond redemption. She was a spectator in her own body as it undid the fastenings of his pants, sliding her hands inside.

She tried again to regain control when he said "no", tried harder when he screamed it, her spirit trying desperately to overcome that which she had no chance of overcoming. She tried; oh she tried, to the point of agony when he whimpered. It was to no avail--by then the base creature inside had taken over completely. It lasted an eternity, and all Gabrielle could do was watch from the back of her mind.

When it was over, and that greedy creature inside her had retreated, hunger slaked, she was petrified, not only for her physical safety, but also for her soul's. Being the slave of the Dark Lord was one thing--this was quite something else. Before, she could blame her shame on him; now, she could blame only herself for the look on Harry's face.

He had retreated into some quiet space, some place where there wasn't a small veela girl molesting him. His eyes were blank, unemotional; in a panic, she shook him and called his name.

His gaze focused, and he looked back at her. A fish jumped in her stomach. She wanted, suddenly, to have that infuriating peace reappear in his eyes. These were shattered eyes, broken eyes; he was no longer somewhere else, but instead had returned to the horror that was the now. Gabrielle shrank from the pain in his eyes, gently wiped away the beginning hint of a tear. She wanted to tell him to stop hurting--

But she had no right, and the words wouldn't come.

Her insides tore with every second he looked at her, and he looked for an age before he opened his mouth. A croak came out, and he tried again. "Damn you," he said--whispered, really. "That was--"

And then, horribly, he broke off, taking her words with the death of his, leaving her with only a soulful look to express her regret.

Gabrielle saw the moment he looked beyond his own pain and into her eyes. Even as she wondered at the character, the nobility, of one who could see so much, she quailed under the compassion she saw joining the pain. Slowly, he put himself back in order, fastening his pants and robes, and running a hand through his hair. He looked at her, and some of that infuriating calm was back in his eyes. "This isn't over yet," he said. "I'll be back soon."

And then he left.

*

He was back a week later, calling on her with a look of grim determination on his face. She had been careful to request a chair immediately after his last visit, and it had just been delivered that morning. She sat carefully on the bed in the far corner, and gestured at the chair. Harry remained standing.

Silence reigned in the cell, and Gabrielle looked carefully anywhere but at Harry. Finally he cleared his throat, and she looked up, startled. He said, "I still love you."

Gabrielle's eyes widened. He'd never said that he loved her even before--she had thought he would hate her now! She looked down, and fiddled with the bed sheet, rolling it between her fingers. "You scare me," she murmured.

She didn't want to read his expression, and continued hastily. "Not the power. That is... simply there, no? But your kindness, and your faith in what you believe in. You can still have feelings for me... even after... what I did. That is..." Gabrielle's faltering words ground to a halt, and she looked at him searching for a sign of reaction.

Harry was blushing, faintly, on the apples of his cheeks. He looked at the ground steadily, and said in a quiet voice, "I'm not that special. I'm just one person." He twitched, or shuddered, Gaby couldn't tell which, and hunched his shoulders. "Why did you do it?" he asked, in a tone that hid something.

"I tried not to," Gabrielle said hurriedly. "I tried to stop it, but the creature inside... it rose up and ate, and ate, and ate... and no matter how much I tried to stop it, the more it fed, the more I could not stop." Gabrielle realized that she was just on the edge of whining, and quickly became silent.

Harry lost some sort of tension that he had been holding on to and moved towards the chair, sitting in it with the air of a man who has just been told that his teenaged daughter is not in fact pregnant. He glanced towards the fire then leaned his head against the back of the chair. "Have you ever heard of the Magical Succor Act?"

He might have been talking to the ceiling, but Gabrielle assumed he was asking her. "No," she said honestly. "I haven't."

"It's a law. I first saw it when I was researching for my Godfather, trying to find something that would help him." Harry didn't say what he would be helping his godfather with, Gabrielle noticed. "I was reading a book on Azkaban, and I found a reference to it. It basically says that if you enter a prison where a magical creature of any kind, including a witch or wizard, is held, if you are carrying something that magical creature needs to live, than it is your fault if it gets taken from you provided that the magical creature is being deprived of it."

Gabrielle looked at him in puzzlement. "Oh," she said, uncertain.

A faint, sad smile crossed his face. "When you were just reaching puberty, you found yourself very hungry, didn't you?" he asked.

Gabrielle nodded. Surely every teenager was hungry.

"Then a female authority figure in your life, such as your sister or mother, taught you how to eat the Erotic Energies, correct?"

Gabrielle nodded again.

Harry pulled his head off the back of the chair and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. He looked her matter-of-factly in the eye. "I happen to agree with the Magical Succor Act, and have in fact used it in the defense of many witches and wizards when they went to court." He stood up and stretched. "If you enter a room with a starving Manticore in it, you should not begrudge him your steak. If you enter a room with a dying goblin, give him some gold. And if you enter the cell of a veela--" He came to her and gently touched her cheek. "You should give her what she needs, too."

Gabrielle flinched away from his hand, scuttling backwards. "Don't touch me!" she cried. "Don't you see, I can't control it, I can't stop it. I don't want to hurt you!"

Harry drew one of his knees up onto the bed, his hand still hanging in the air between them. He settled into a more comfortable sitting position and made as if to draw his hand back, holding if for a second close to his chest, then sprang forward, catching her face between two strong, rough hands and kissing her. It was an open-mouthed kiss, but not demanding, not aggressive, not a declaration of anything, and most certainly no more passionate than the response Gabrielle felt welling up inside her. It was a question and an answer, amnesty and grace.... It was a freely offered gift.

And Gabrielle couldn't take it.

"Harry, please," she begged. "Please, do not make me do this thing. It is wrong, Harry."

"It isn't," he said stubbornly. "It's something you need. I'm prepared to offer you that."

"Harry--"

"If you don't accept this--" Harry took the time to plant a kiss on her cheekbone. "--then you will probably wind up going down on the next male person who comes in here, and that person is likely, now that your trial is over, to be either Auror Moody or the Minister of Magic. While I admire both men quite a bit, I don't want--that." He was looking deeply into her eyes. Gabrielle thought she might throw up.

"Harry--" she started again.

"You need this," he said.

"Je ne veux pas vous blesser!" she screamed. She was appalled to realize that her eyes held tears. "You're dreaming, Harry. I can't--" Words failed her.

Harry moved her into his arms, and held her. They didn't stay like that long; not nearly long enough for a good-bye. Then Harry slid away, and stood up. He moved as if he would touch her again, but then decided against it. "I'll see you again," he said. "You're only in here until Voldemort is defeated, Gabrielle." He put, for perhaps the first time, the correct type of "r" sound into her name. "You can't hide forever. I will see you again."

Gabrielle nodded, tears in her eyes. "I will," she whispered. "I will see you again."

*

Later, Gabrielle was always forced to battle the conviction that Lord Voldemort was killed for her benefit. Intellectually, she knew this was not true. It is, after all, rather difficult to arrange for someone to be struck by lightning while casting an immortality spell at precisely the point that would cause the spell to backlash fatally--but it was possible, and a veela's intuition is often her most powerful weapon, so Gabrielle was left wondering, wondering....

*

It was scarcely a year after she had last seen Harry that she was released from prison.

The first thing Gabrielle did when released was return to France. How she missed her sister! Her mother, too, and the constant stream of food, and the unfailing service of the House Elves, and the beaches, and the beautiful view of the balcony of their Cannes mansion! And perhaps, though the competition was high, she could make a living doing what she loved--writing her music. She knew it was good. Perhaps she could prove that she was more than the others thought she was.

She did have a score, a score written in prison. It was beautiful, she thought, and the saxophone would be lovely if played as she wished it to be played. She had written it with something very clearly in mind, though. There wasn't much room for artistic interpretation. Only one person, she thought, in all of Cannes might get it right.... Perhaps she should not publish it. Perhaps it was too private.

Her welcome into the home was warm and forgiving, and her sister was overjoyed to see her. Gabrielle was settled into her room, cosseted, fed, and sent to sleep, and when she woke, there was a very nice young man sitting on her footstool. She couldn't see him, but she knew he was there--not only could she sense a presence, but Fleur had told her she would send up that nice young Canadian to feed her. Gabrielle raked her hair out of her eyes, and woke the veela pull. She listened carefully as he dazedly got up and walked to the edge of her bed, where he knelt.

She could only see the vaguest outline of his form in the dark, but she could tell when he looked up, and she leaned in close, increasing the pull, until their lips touched, controlling, not controlled by, her gift. She deepened the kiss until he shouted into her mouth--she hastily shushed him.

His hands came up, and something in the rough texture alerted her. She shouted a light spell and hurtled backwards on the bed, her hair glowing crazy neon shades around her. She stared at the calm green eyes before her--no, not calm, but ready, patient; he knew she would do that, he knew what it would do to him, and he was willing--eager, even.

Gabrielle huddled in a disbelieving pile on the comforter. "Comment?" she finally asked in a bewildered voice. "Et pour quoi?"

Harry smiled at her. "I told you I would find you," he said in French. "I suppose you just thought that you would see me first."

Gabrielle smiled back in spite of herself. "I certainly didn't expect you to be my first meal out of prison!" she agreed. "But how?"

"Gabrielle, it took you a week to get the paperwork filed--I knew it would, because I paid your warden to make sure of it. I was willing to bet that the first thing you would do would be go home, because you were always very close with your sister. So I simply came here and told her that I was in love with you and that I would do anything to let you know that. It's true, after all." Harry smiled into her eyes. "I asked her to help me. She agreed."

"But why?" Gabrielle was still feeling stunned, and rather betrayed. She had wanted to keep Harry in a special place in her heart, and not the same place as those she fed on. Their relationship had started as a very low thing, and something about Harry made her feel she wanted it to be higher.

"Gabrielle, I know that it takes a huge amount of power to feed a veela on one's own. That's why I made sure the guards on your cell were changed. Your sister knows that." Gabrielle nodded; her sister was the one who told her. "But Gabrielle, I have that much power, and your sister knows that, too. I can feed you, without assistance, for the rest of our lives." Harry's hand moved to the pocket of his shirt and he withdrew a box. "And," he added, "I would very much like to."

Gabrielle took the box. There was no question of what it was--very few things come in boxes less than the length of her thumb, and she somehow doubted this was lingerie. Nevertheless, she did open it. A simple gold ring--the traditional wizarding ring was silver, but somehow he had known that she wouldn't like that--glittered with an ornately cut, medium-sized diamond in the shape of a rose. It caught the light from her hair and threw it out over the room, strange Hinkypunk shades that were brightened and shaped.

Gabrielle felt tears threatening. "I'm going to hurt you," she said miserably. "I am, I just know it. You will love me and you will marry me and I will hurt you irredeemably and you will hate me. I will not be able to eat from you alone, or I will stop loving you--" She looked up suddenly. "I've never loved any man like this before, Harry, I don't know if it will last!" She slumped, the awful tears cascading down her cheeks. "Stop dreaming, Harry."

Harry took her hands and stood. "I'm not dreaming. You won't hurt me, I promise you won't, because anything you do that would hurt anybody I'm likely to love you the more for." He brushed away some of her tears. "Gabrielle Delacour," he said in a voice that demanded she look up. He cracked a strained and nervous smile, and said in an almost wistful voice, "Will you marry me?"

Gabrielle was going to say no. She was planning to, she wanted to, but the tears in his eyes stopped her. They were falling freely down his cheeks and reflecting the light from her hair and she couldn't--couldn't--

"Oui," she gasped. "Oui, oui, oui--" It became a chant, and she pulled hard on his hands. As he tumbled into bed with her, she kept saying it, letting him know that yes, yes, a million times yes she would spend the rest of her life with him, him alone, and she would love him until the very end.