CH 120

'I can show you where they kept the dragons from the first task?' A short wander into the edge of the woods should keep them well from danger. Gabrielle had a penchant for attracting or, more accurately, causing trouble, but there couldn't be anything all that dangerous in the trees.

'Let's go,' her sister decided, jumping off the bed and smirking evilly. 'We can sneak out.'

'We can just ask,' Fleur sighed, knowing Gabrielle would disagree.

'Sneaking is more fun,' Gabby smiled, pulling her wand out from the chest of her uniform.

Fleur spluttered. 'You keep your wand there!?'

'I couldn't before,' she exulted, 'but I can now, and it's much less likely to be lost or stolen when it's safely tucked away here.' 'You can't draw it very quickly,' Fleur remonstrated. 'The best place to keep it is at your waist or up your sleeve.'

'Fine,' Gabby grumbled, 'but we're still sneaking.'

'We can sneak,' Fleur conceded, 'but you always get caught.'

'Not anymore,' her sister smirked again, 'watch.'

She twirled her wand in a very familiar fashion over herself and faded from view. Gabrielle wasn't quite as good as Fleur was with disillusioning, but she wasn't too far behind. Complete invisibility would probably elude them both by a fraction, but of all the wizards and witches who could cast the charm they would definitely be better than most.

'Tell me you've seen anyone my age with a better disillusionment charm,' almost imperceptibly.

she crowed,

twirling

'It's very impressive,' Fleur congratulated her. She had, of course, seen Harry Potter's mastery of the charm, one that outstripped her own. He was one of the few who could fully conceal themselves with the spell, but Gabby didn't need to know that, though her sister would probably relish the chance to talk about him with her again.

'Let's sneak,' she giggled, opening Fleur's door and tip-toeing out.

She cast her own charm and followed her sister, used to Gabby's antics. The door swung quietly shut behind them and Fleur was stuck following the slight impressions of Gabrielle's feet across the carpeted hall.

Fortunately for Fleur, as she was always the one who ended up taking the fall for Gabrielle's mischief when they were together, neither her mother or Madame Maxime noticed them and they were soon outside.

'Which way?' Gabrielle chirped, dispelling her disillusionment charm. Fleur did the same, pointing her wand in the direction of Hogwarts' quidditch pitch.

Gabby took off, scampering across the wet grass without a care for her clothes.

'Slow down, Gabrielle,' Fleur called after her. 'If you get lost in the woods we won't ever find you again.'

Admonished, her sister returned to her side.

Her calm demeanour did not last long, by the time they were near the trees at the edge of the pitch she was already bounding ahead into the trees and Fleur had to hurry to keep track of her bright hair in the trees in front of her.

'Gabby,' she called, when her sister managed to lose her among the trees. 'Come back.'

There was no reply and Fleur's heart began to beat a little faster.

A shrill scream tore through the trees, and her mind went into overdrive. Her wand was in her hand instantly as she ran, sprinting through the branches towards the sound.

Gabrielle.

The sharp-needled boughs whipped across her face as she ran, despite her shielding arm, but Fleur ignored the stinging. There hadn't been a sound since the scream.

She rounded a tree and hit something soft, bouncing off and rolling across the floor. 'Fleur,' Gabby groaned, rolling off her legs which immediately sprang back to life, prickling and tingling.

'Why did you scream?' she demanded, pulling herself up on a nearby tree, still holing her wand.

'Look,' her sister's voice wavered, horrified, but still proud enough to maintain her demeanour.

Fleur twisted away from the tree, brushing her hair out of her eyes to look where Gabrielle was pointing.

She recoiled instantly.

It was little more than a skeleton, the bones blackened, charred and twisted by the fire that had rendered the corpse both fleshless and unrecognisable. 'Stay away from it, Gabby,' she warned. 'Actually, go get Madame Maxime, she'll know what to do.'

Her sister hurried off, running back in the direction they had come.

Fleur edged a bit closer, inspecting what was left of the body without getting too close. Most of the bones were shattered or cracked, the teeth mostly smashed out, and the skull dented. Fleur had seen injuries like that when her mother took her with her to magical hospitals to drop of ingredients for potions. They were normally the result of playing quidditch too fervently, or a particularly strong blasting or banishing curse.

There wasn't much left of the face, or anything really, just a few hard, carbonised strips of flesh stretched and cracked across gaping bones. The body was half-covered by fallen pine needles, most of which were brown and long-dead. This skeleton had been here far too long to belong to the missing judge. Fleur heaved a sigh of relief, she didn't want to be involved in anything to do with that. Rita Skeeter would be only too happy to write another article, presumably one suggesting she had lured him into the woods with her allure and murdered him.

'Fleur,' her mother's voice cut through the trees better than any spell, 'what's going on? Gabrielle was rambling about skeletons.'

The large form of Madame Maxime stepped into the small clearing and gasped. 'Expecto Patronum,' she whispered, and a huge, silver swan bust from the tip of her wand. 'Go to Dumbledore, tell him we have discovered a body on the school grounds, but we do not know who it is.'

The swan of silver mist shimmered and then soared off towards the castle. 'How did you find this?' Madame Maxime asked kindly.

'Gabby wanted to go somewhere, so I offered to take her to where the dragons were,' Fleur explained.

'You shouldn't have given in, Fleur,' her mother scolded, 'you always do whatever Gabrielle asks without considering the consequences.'

'It is a good thing she did,' the headmistress decided. 'This is not Barty Crouch the Triwizard Judge, the skeleton is the wrong height.'

A bright, flame-edge red flash burst through the branches and the Hogwarts Headmaster stepped into the clearing. He was not the calm, odd, old man he normally seemed. An aura of power and comfort came with him into the clearing.

'That is not Barty Crouch,' he announced after a moment. 'I have a few questions, Miss Delacour, then it would be best you returned to the carriage and remained somewhere the aurors can find you in case they require answers of their own.' Fleur nodded stiffly.

'You cannot be suggesting they will suspect her?' Her mother was outraged.

'I am implying nothing of the sort, Madam Delacour, but they will have questions about the body that your daughters can answer.' Albus Dumbledore drew his wand, a knotted, engraved length of unusually light wood and cast some very powerful wards in a tight circle around the body. 'Did you only just find this skeleton, Miss Delacour?' The headmaster looked down at her a reassuringly kind, bright glint in his blue eyes.

'Yes,' Fleur replied. 'Gabby screamed and I came running after her and found it.' 'Have either of you touched the body?'

'No,' Gabrielle whispered, eyeing the charred corpse from just behind Fleur. She jumped slightly, not expecting her younger sister to have managed to edge so close to her. 'Who is it?'

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