Learning the Language

Harry felt like banging his head against the desk. He knew, he knew that there was something he was missing. It was subtle, some quiet colloquialism maybe, but... something in what the French representative of the IFW had said was a hint to the native French speakers. And Harry, not being a native French speaker--in fact, having learned his French from a combination of a potion and Hermione--had missed it.

There was only one thing to do. He had to find someone to tell him what he was missing. Preferably someone he knew--he would prefer not to just go up to a random frenchman and ask "Hey, what did I miss two nights ago?"

But who to ask?

-----

"Gabrielle Delacour?" The quiet voice behind her broke her from her thoughts. Her thoughts of what her mother had told her last night... the thoughts of the fourteenth birthday party that was just around the corner... and most of all, the thoughts of the young man whose name had come from the goblet once before--only to have him save her life.

What a coincidence. The wonders, they just never cease.

"Mademoiselle Delacour?" He asked again.

She turned. "Monsieur Potter. I did not expect you to be calling my name here." Why had she not learned l'anglais? Why?

"Excuse me. I wished to ask you..." he hesitated, and then sighed exasperatedly. "I do not know the words. This is why I need your help."

"Ah." She cocked her head to the side. "Avec quoi?"

"The... the challenge. The other night. I must know... there is another thing to it. What?"

"Ah." Gabrielle glanced around, trying to make sure there was no one there. She did not wish to be known as the one to lose her country its advantage. "What do you think that she has said?"

"That we would need a strength of mind... and that we would be offered something that would be difficult to refuse."

"Ah. Non." She took as step closer to him, and lowered her voice. "'Harry, this is not right."

"I know! But I don't know what is."

"She has said," Gabrielle could hear her mother's voice echoing in her head. "And this is how to turn the charm on when it is wanted..." "That you will be offered," she licked her lips and looked up at her hero. Her savior of four years past. Yes, Mother; I remember what you taught me. "something..." She tilted her head and looked up at him through carefully mascara'ed lashes. Her hair floated down to lay tendrils along her now-revealed neck. "something... that you ache for."

Harry gulped, and looked down at her. Oh, look, he figured it out.

"Veela," he said. "We will be facing..." He stared into her eyes for a long time.

She licked her lips again and smiled. "'Arry Potter, tu aimes quand je t'enseigne... le français?"

Would you like me to teach you... French?

------

Harry slid to the ground of the empty Beauxbatons classroom, still trying to take it all in. Yes, he had done it. Yes, he had passed the challange--passed admirably, with the highest scores. And everyone even agreed that he probably could have done it even without having prepared.

He remembered the whole thing through a sort of hazy mist, and like snapshots taken--not moving fluidly through to another image, but stills. It was a very disquieting feeling...

Snapshot one: walking into the barrier set between him and the Great Hall of Beauxbatons, know what he would find, and seeing the ethereally beautiful woman with very little shock... of course, there was always some shock when one sees a being with that much otherworldly beauty...

Snapshot two: feeling the pull, the urge to do something, anything...

Snapshot three: seeing the woman's face contort into a sharp beak, seeing her dive at him with uncontrolled fury... he knew that he must have resisted her, but he was appalled to find he couldn't remember it.

Snapshot four: seeing the veela fly into the wall. Again, he didn't remember the actual curse, but its effects were fairly plain to see.

Snapshot five: leaving. And looking up into the faces of Ron and Hermione, looking over at Professor Dumbledore to see him glowing... and locking eyes with one other person. She was not proud of him; her eyes held a very different message. And then her lips moved, and he knew it was a different message: "Meet me in room 367 tonight, after dinner." He knew no one else had heard it; it had sounded only in his own head. Tonight, it would be only him and Gabrielle.

For some reason, that left him both scared and excited.

He didn't forget that she was herself part veela, a fact she had demonstrated admirably at their last meeting...

-----

She licked her lips and smiled up at him.

"'Arry Potter, tu aimes quand je t'enseigne... le français?"

He had been hard pressed not to kiss her--she looked so much like she wanted him to. But he had remembered, just in time, that she was quite young--he wasn't sure how young, but he knew that when he was in his fourth year, she had certainly

looked about eight... on the other hand, she looked, figure-wise, much like Hermione, and she was older than he was... and all the while he was having this, er, assessment going on in his head, she was getting closer, almost as if she were--she was! She was standing on her tip- toes! (Harry had to go on faith for this--he tried to look, but got a very different view instead, and had hurridly wrenched his eyes upwards.)

He found after a moment, however, that he didn't much care about her toes. He was more interested in her lips. Which were on his.

Why did she have to go and ruin his self-control? Why?

After that, he pretty much stopped thinking, period, lost in a maelstrom of hormones, blood-loss, and wet, slippery things in his mouth that felt very, very good.

He didn't want to think about what his expression was when she pulled away.

"You have much to learn, Harry Potter," she whispered, mouth still only inches away from his, "About..." She sucked her lower lip in, and slowly, torturously, let it back out again... then smiled. "...French."

----

So here Harry waited, sitting in a dark, deserted classroom, waiting for a girl who probably thought he was only here to snog, thinking about how off-guard he had been caught the last time he was alone with her.

It was a bit pathetic, really, but he had found he could not stay away.

When she entered the room, he thought his heart would stop. She looked radiant, in the pale moonlight, and her eyes were literally like flashlights.

She looked more veela than he had ever seen her. It was a bit frightening.

She walked over to where he was sitting, and stood over him, hands on her hips. Her hair was falling in loose piles down passed her--Harry pulled his eyes up to her face. It was only partially successful; the angle almost gave him a view up her skirt, a fact he was annoyed to realized was highly distracting. What was it about her, he wondered, not for the last time, that made all the blood rush to his--

"So," said Gabrielle. "You came."

Harry shrugged. "I tried not to," he confessed, "but somehow, I found myself making my excuses anyway..."

Gabrielle smiled sypathetically. "And now... what?"

Harry tried to descern if she were just leading him on, or if she really didn't know what to expect. He found himself wishing it were the latter.

"Well..." he said, taking a deep breath, and trying, desperately, to stay neutral, "I thought maybe I could really learn French."

Gabrielle smiled, and laughed that tinkling laugh of hers.

"Donc, tu veux vraiment apprendre le français?"

Harry blinked. "Tu as une barrière fondamentale alors: tu ne penses pas de la manière correcte."

Harry looked at her for a moment, surpised. He thought about what she had said for a moment: "So you really want to learn French? You have a fundamental barrier: you don't think the right way." He said, "Comment est-ce que je devrais penser?" How should I be thinking?

"En français, naturellement."

Harry paused, unsure of her meaning. Think in French? What did she mean by that? "Que veux-tu dire?"

"Aucune traduction - ça c'est comment on parle une langue. Il faut penser dans la langue."

Harry slumped to the floor, and said in English, "How am I supposed to think in a language that isn't natural to me? I'm always going to be translating."

Gabrielle raised her eyebrows. He sighed exhasperatedly, and said, "Comment est-ce que je suis censé penser dans une langue qui ne m'est pas normale? Je vais toujours traduire."

She laughed again, and he knew rather uncomfortably that she was laughing at him. "C'est pourquoi tu devrais toujours demander à un veela des leçons de langue."

Harry was confused. "That is why you should always ask a veela for language lessons..." He shook his head. "Que veux-tu dire?" he asked again.

Gabrielle smiled that Mona Lisa smile and knelt just a shade too close to him. "Nous pouvons entrer dans ta tête."

Harry gulped. Inside your head... We can get inside your head...

He looked at her for a long time, figuring out what she meant. It wasn't easy; there were at least three levels to that comment. The look in her eyes, though... She meant every level there was. And even if that faded-well, it had been there.

He nodded. "D'accord."

Gabrielle leaned forward and ran her fingers through his hair. She tilted her head and brushed her lips across his, then repeated the action more firmly. She deepened it, and Harry went along, enjoying the sensation of her body so near his, her mouth moving... like it was, her hands locked firmly on the sides of his head.

She pulled back a moment, and murmured, "Ouvrez les yeux" before continuing her previous actions. He looked up into luminous silver-blue eyes, catching the moonlight and shattering it into perfection. It was only a moment later that he realized that they really were distorting the light... and then the pupils seemed to get very small, so small they were hardly there at all, and all he could see was that odd glowing slate color.

Harry knew he was falling under the veela spell, but he didn't much care. It didn't take much to break that when you were trying to... it was when you didn't want to that breaking that spell became difficult.

When her mind joined his, it did so with a silent rush of sound, and still earthquake, and simutaneous jolt and tranquility that was uniquely "Gabrielle." She was everywhere and yet still separate from him... it was incredible. Like flying and swimming and all the things he'd never dreamed he would ever be able to do so well as all the creatures intended to do them...

And as she slowly reworked his mind so that he could in fact think in French, his hands moved to her waist, and higher... and all of a sudden he knew what that felt like, because Gabrielle knew and for the moment he was Gabrielle. He gasped against her mouth in shock, and she lifted herself over his knees into his lap, staddling his body... and then she gasped, too. She nearly withdrew, both mentally and physically, but instead melded her mind more closely to his. It was exquisite.

And then it was done-she was gone-it was over. Harry stared at her, so suddenly absent and yet still so very, very near, his breath coming in huge gasps. Her breathing, he was pleased to note, was also a little ragged. "Tu es belle," he gasped. "Tu es lumineuse, radiente, et toutes les choses viennent divinement à cette terre sous forme de mortel, parce que sûrement une telle tempation ne peut pas être angélique. Pourtant tu es également intelligente, et déesse des opérations complexes... vraiment une femme inaccessible."

"Maintenant tu parles français,"

said Gabrielle, a beautific smile on her face. Harry groaned, and leaned in for another kiss.

Now you're speaking French.

~Finis~