There were all sorts of silly rumors regarding Veela and life-debts, up to including that it required the sacrifice of the veela as a wife or even as some sort of a slave to the person who had saved them. None of those rumors were accurate. A life debt for a veela meant the same as a life debt for any other wizard. Not that that made the idea much better. The one who owed the debt to the other would one day be obliged to repay the deed by doing something beneficial to or for the person they owed. As this bond is magically binding, the indebted could commit the repayment without acknowledging it, or even against their will. Debts were also important to the family in general, and her father was determined to thank the stranger for saving his daughters. And yet, he had found absolutely nothing. Fleur knew her father was frustrated by his lack of ability to come up with something. She had heard him say several times to her mother. "Somebody with that sort of power doesn't just show up out of nowhere without someone knowing who he is."
While Fleur's thoughts had revolved around her mysterious saviour, she also had vowed she would do all she could never to be put in that position again. In an effort to bring her level up, she had been getting up early every day to get some dueling practice in. Fleur had started with her father, when she had been sufficiently recovered from the cruciatus she had been put under at the World Cup.
Her father had his duties to attend to, though the events at the World Cup had made their family paranoid enough that Fleur's mother Appoline had joined the Beauxbaton's delegation in order to keep her eye on her daughters. Gabrielle was still scared to sleep alone and woke up several times with nightmares. Her sister followed Fleur practically everywhere now. Fleur didn't mind mostly because she barely let Gabrielle out of her sight.
This morning Fleur had convinced her friend Aimee to be her dueling partner and they had been practicing when apparently one of their dodged spells had nearly hit students that Fleur had assumed just emerged from the castle.
While one of them had been polite, if stilted, the other one had been outright rude to both of them. Especially after the boy flashed his family ring, it seemed like the two of them were intent on looking down on she and her friends.
In response Fleur had focused her allure deliberately on the both of them. She couldn't narrow the focus of it enough to only hit the one who had been rude, but figured it would teach the two of them a lesson.
Fleur did not get the results she had been expecting.
The blond haired one had reacted exactly as she had become accustomed to. He had succumbed to the force of her allure immediately.
However it was the reaction of Ares Flamel that had left her flabbergasted. She could count on one hand the amount of times someone managed to break through the effect of her allure when she had deliberately focused it. However it hadn't looked like he had broken through it. He had not even gotten a dazed look. He had completely resisted the effect of her allure. Instead, it looked like he had gotten angry. She had heard of a few occasional cases of people with such mental fortitude to completely resist the allure, though they were incredibly rare and all were older more powerful wizards like Albus Dumbledore. Fleur herself had never actually met someone like that. Even her father could be enthralled for a few seconds by her mother.
Fleur had been too stunned to do anything other than stare as Ares had snapped the other boy out of his stupor and dragged them both off.
Aimee was practically bouncing in excitement. "Oh my god, 'e 'ad the ring! So it's true! And… and... 'e completely ignored your allure!"
Fleur flushed red and glared at her friend. "I'm sure it was a fluke or something." If possible Aimee's grin got wider, "What if it wasn't? Wait till I tell the others we met the son of the Alchemist and 'e is immune to your allure!" She didn't wait, instead was already headed toward the carriage with excited steps.
The name of Nicholas Flamel was very well known in France. Both for his work in Alchemy and that he and his wife had lived there for nearly a century. One of his old houses still stood as a tourist attraction in Paris, as the oldest stone building in the city. It was toured by muggles regularly. They had no clue that the unbreakable, stasis, and assorted other charms on the masonry would probably hold for centuries longer.
The fact that an heir for that family had come out of nowhere would undoubtedly send a ripple through the magical community. Of course news tended to linger in magical community since the attack at the World Cup still dominated the papers nearly a week later. Aimee was undoubtedly just as excited to get back to the carriage to share that confirmation as she was anything else.
Fleur rolled her eyes half in exasperation, and half in amusement as she followed her friend back toward the Beauxbaton's carriage. Aimee was probably her best friend, out of a close knit group, and it had evolved naturally. In her earlier years when she had less control of her allure, it tended to draw attention to her. Aimee had become adept in neatly pulling that attention away from an embarrassed Fleur through sheer exuberance and audacity.
Her mind still on the interaction they had just had, both on the apparent immunity of Ares Flamel, and on his actual reaction. She also tried to shake the odd sense of familiarity that she had gotten, and that she still couldn't shake. There was also something oddly familiar about the dark haired boy that she couldn't put her finger on. She couldn't shake the feeling that she knew him from somewhere, but nothing was coming to mind.
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