Harry Potter:Diamond Heart.

'This is going to be the best summer yet,' Harry grinned, 'I have to catch up on everything I missed in my classes because of the tournament, and,' he slipped his wand from his sleeve, waving it cheerfully, 'Ollivander was kind enough not to apply the trace that prevents me using magic in the summer without being detected.'

Salazar laughed rather coldly. 'I hope your muggle relatives realise how different things are going to be because of that.'

'They'll come to realise soon enough,' Harry smirked.

'Now?' His ancestor asked rather sadly, clearly a little upset that Harry was going to be leaving him alone down in the chamber. 'What about your things?'

'I need only my wand,' Harry responded. 'Hedwig can find her own way to me, she's a smart owl, and I have every book I could need in here. I'll just apparate back when I need something.'

'It's a long way to apparate just for a book,' Salazar remonstrated very half-heartedly, 'you might splinch yourself again.'

'It is,' Harry grinned, 'I'll get very good at apparating.' Salazar attempted and failed to hide his smile at the obvious excuse to visit.

'Off you go then,' he ordered, 'but you're cleaning up that basilisk corpse first thing when you next come back. I know you can use fiendfyre well enough to get rid of it now.'

Harry shot him a parting smile, pictured the Dursley's back garden, and twisted the world back past him.

There was a shriek of surprise and a smash as something glass broke.

'Hello, Aunt Petunia,' he called cheerfully, waving at the horrified woman. 'Hello, Uncle Vernon, Dudley, I'm back.' There was a moment of silence as Vernon did his best to cover every shade of red known to man before moving on to purple. Harry smiled icily.

I'm going to enjoy this.

'Where have you been, boy?' The man's bellow could probably have been heard on the other side of Surrey.

'The neighbours, Vernon,' his aunt hissed.

'And how dare you appear like that!' He had reached a shade of puce Harry hadn't seen before, and was yelling only a little quieter than before.

'I was in hospital,' Harry explained, letting the cold creep into his voice. He wasn't scared of his uncle, not after duelling Voldemort.

'Don't take that tone with me!' Vernon rose to his feet to tower over Harry as threateningly as he could. 'You can't do anything freakish now, boy, go to your room and change into normal clothes and then we'll talk about your behaviour. I won't tolerate…' He trailed off as Harry's wand gently pressed itself into his jowled cheek just below his right eye.

It was glowing a bright, cold green.

'Oh,' Harry smiled brightly, 'please carry on, uncle, don't let me interrupt you.'

His aunt's mouth was opening close in a manner amusingly similar to a goldfish, and Dudley was frozen in disbelief.

Uncle Vernon opened his mouth, but the only thing that emerged from under his bushy moustache was a strangled whimper.

'I shall assume you have finished speaking, then,' Harry concluded. 'Now, if an underage wizard,' there was another strangled noise when Harry said the forbidden word, 'performs illegal magic a letter arrives to inform them what they've done and what will happen next. Observe.'

He retracted his wand from his uncle's face and transfigured Dudley's sandwich into a cobra. The boy screamed every bit as loudly as his aunt, even eclipsing her for pitch, and they both recoiled from the table to cower across the garden from the admittedly deadly Egyptian Cobra.

They waited in the garden for several minutes as the snake made a mess of the table, scattering perfectly prepared sandwiches everywhere.

'No letter,' Harry remarked in mock surprise. Vernon blanched, and Harry banished the snake with a flick of his wand that made all three Dursley's flinch. 'I'm going to my room to change,' he told them firmly, 'please remember that demonstration for the future.' Everything but the ice slid from his face and eyes, leaving his previously warm smile cold, cruel and menacing. 'I'd hate to have to make this point a second time, I might decide I need to do something slightly more dramatic than summon a small snake...'

He slipped his wand away and strode inside through the back door, while the Dursley's were still stunned. His wardrobe was full of Dudley's cast offs, but a little transfiguration and nobody would ever know, he could keep reapplying it until he bought some new clothes of his own. For the most part, the summer looked bright.

Hedwig was sitting on his desk, one taloned foot outstretched on the folded, manila surface of an envelope.

Did Ollivander lie to me?

He immediately discarded the idea. Hedwig would not be the owl to deliver an official ministry warning.

Curious, Harry unfolded the envelope. There was only a single line of writing on the front. It had been written next to a hand-drawn image, sketched in pencil, but animate, as all images in the wizarding world seemed to be. The picture was of a tree, a willow, leaning over a bend in the river, its branches caught in a slight breeze.

Eleven o'clock on the day you receive this, or the first afterwards, Harry read. The word is argent.

He flipped over the picture, hoping for a name, fearing he would find the Dark Mark. He didn't exactly trust portkeys at the moment.

Fleur Delacour.

Her name was signed elegantly, looping gracefully across the bottom of the page. It could have said anything or nothing on the other side. Harry would still be holding it tightly, smiling like an idiot, with a shivering heart, just so long as the signature remained the same.

A more conservative part of him warned that it was probably a trap, but a quick glance at the clock told him it was less than half an hour to eleven and that voice of caution was swiftly overpowered. There was nothing that could stop him from going. Voldemort would surely have chosen a less convoluted plot to capture him.

He flipped the sketch back over, eyeing the drawing in anticipation.

'Argent.'

Nothing happened.

'Argent,' he tried, pronouncing it with a french accent. The picture glowed, there was a sudden jerk, and suddenly his back was flat against something warm and rough.

He was standing under and against the trunk of the willow tree from the picture, looking over the bend in the river.

Harry tilted his forearm to make it easier to get to his wand, but it felt a little warm to be England, and he was very much hoping it was a real invitation.

'You're early,' a soft, french accented voice told him from above.

Definitely Fleur.

There was a quiet thud as she jumped down out of the tree next to him. 'I said eleven,' she reminded him, 'you are lucky that I come here often, else you would have had to wait.' 'I think I could have survived,' he responded with a smile, looking around him. It was a beautiful, peaceful spot.

'You owe me an explanation, Harry Potter.' Fleur's bright, blue eyes bored into his, and he became even more aware of the tree trunk behind him. 'I did not walk myself all the way too the centre of the maze, and I certainly did not place a curse capable of killing anyone who tried to touch me intending harm on myself.'

'That may have been me,' Harry admitted, not seeing a way to deny it and not really wanting to lie to her. 'I couldn't leave you for whichever of Voldemort's followers was lurking around.'

'So you carried me all the way across the maze to the wards instead?' Fleur's eyes sparkled and she took a step closer. 'My little sister, Gabrielle, has a theory as to why you might have carried me all that way instead of simply sending up red sparks as you must have done for Cedric Diggory.'

Harry gulped, suddenly Voldemort was looking like the better option. 'Is it an interesting theory?' His question came out very weakly, and something almost predatory gleamed in the silver-haired witch's eyes.

'I think that I would very much like to know if she is right.' Fleur placed a hand either side of him on the willow trunk, cutting off any avenue of escape save the drawing he was still holding.

'You made a portkey,' Harry noted, trying his best to clear his mind and not let either her proximity or her aura affect him. She was his Fleur from the Yule Ball again, the one who was so like him, who understood without pushing, and the one he had previously feared a lie created to use him.

'They are easy to make.' Fleur shrugged with slightly smug nonchalance. 'It will take you back, but that requires a different word to the one that brought you here.'

'You've trapped me,' Harry laughed. 'I did think it might be a trap, but I did not expect to be trapped by you.'

'I will give you the word once you answer my questions,' Fleur assured him, proud of her trick. He was showing her the Triwizard Trophy for this, that would remind her who won the real competition.

'What questions?' There were so many questions that he couldn't, shouldn't answer if she asked. He hoped it wasn't any of those, he didn't want to lie to her.

I won't lie, he decided.

'Why would you not speak to me after the Yule Ball?' Her eyes fixed themselves on a point just between his, piercing, and he wondered if she could use legilimency. Half of him wished she could, because it would be far simpler if she already knew, the other half curled up in embarrassment at the very idea.

'You avoided me,' he replied, 'you used your allure on me, kissed me, and then refused to speak to me for almost two months.' Harry felt he had a fairly solid case, even if he regretted some of his reaction afterwards. He didn't feel any remorse for some of it. Pettigrew had died and Harry had been freed because she had pushed him over the edge.

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