Published at 1st of June 2024 7:41 am

Chapter 263: Azure Recollections

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7 November 1994, Beauxbatons, France

Sebastien Delacour wasn't someone who could easily be surprised. He had experienced the horrors of war, and the backstabbing politics in the French Ministry, and had seen some very disturbing things in his time as an Auror. He liked to think that nothing could really make him speechless, that nothing could truly take him off-guard.

He was wrong.

Nothing could have ever prepared him for seeing Harry Potter in action. He knew that the boy was a magical prodigy, a once-in-a-generation genius… If he hadn't known that Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald were still alive, he would have thought that the boy was a champion…

He wasn't, which made what he had seen all the more ridiculous. It was something that was shared by all the spectators, who had stared at the giant screen without making a single sound. Normally, that would have simply been a bad sign, but this was different.

They had all thought him to be a foolish arrogant boy when he left his team behind. However, the moment people saw how he had fooled the Spanish Champions, those comments faded immediately.

It wasn't really the magic itself that was impressive; it was just how efficient the boy was. It would have been something else to see the boy simply walk around and just overpower any person in sight. It would have been more natural, and more understandable. A talented boy with more power than he knew what to do with it. Some people were just born lucky, special in their own way, and mages had accepted this since the dawn of time itself. People were not born equal.

However, the fact that the boy did not use any special spells or magic… That was what made this unbelievable. He had taken one of the Spanish champions' medallions without them even realizing it, and replaced it with a transfigured copy, one that would slowly compromise the entire team using some kind of curse that he activated later. This kind of planning was just not normal for a child. He would have expected this from a veteran fighter, not a student.

He had effectively held the entire Spanish champions team in his hands just a few minutes after the beginning of the task. And when he couldn't do the same to the Italians, because of their wards, he had used their discipline and ordered nature to predict where they would sit, and carved runes that they would power themselves to take them out. Outside of whatever he did to sneak into the wards, he didn't cast a single spell in that takedown… He had even modified the wards to knock out anyone else who would try to get inside.

His martial prowess against the two Greek Champions sealed the deal. He'd used conjured items without any souls to defeat the Argyros scion, a member of a very old family rumoured to descend from Hades himself, and that had an affinity for soul and darkness magics. It was a clever deduction on Potter's part to realize it, but the takedown of the two opponents was just so efficient, so mechanical…

That was when the ICW representative and Headmistress Maxime started to speak in hushed tones. It was true that the boy was ruining their task, neatly dodging most magical creatures in the forest, and just going out of his way to hunt other Champions.

There was a reason why he had asked Fleur to get closer to the boy. Oh, his daughter was a rebellious one and just didn't understand that he could see right through her. She wanted to use the tournament to make a name for herself, to get away from his authority and make her own way. He respected that and wanted nothing more than to see her succeed.

The issue was that Fleur had a romanticized idea of the world. It was his fault. He had coddled her during her youth, and she had clung to her dreams even in school, probably because she had a hard time adjusting due to her nature.

The sad truth was that she needed to handle things her way. Sebastien used his role as her oppressor to push her, waiting to see any sign of defiance, of true independence that would mean that she would press forward. He tried to oppress her dreams and hobbies, hoping to see her lash out, or even try to barter with him to get her way.

Yet she did nothing… And if she could not become independent of him, then she would not fare well in the world, where his protection became less significant the further she went. Fleur was just not ready… He sincerely hoped that the tournament would help forge her into the person he could see in her.

And Harry Potter was the key to that. He knew that the boy was powerful and a genius, but what interested him the most was his independence from Arcturus. He had learned to fight for himself ever since he was a child. He remade his family fortune by himself, without so much as a loan from Arcturus, and only asked for help due to the fact that as a minor, he would have been vulnerable to certain laws.

This was someone who knew how the real world worked and used it to his advantage. Arcturus, his old friend, had told him how impressed he was with the boy. It was why Sebastien had specifically asked Fleur to get closer to the Potter boy romantically, knowing that she would try to shield him from Sebastien, in simple resistance to his orders.

He could tell that she was fascinated with the boy and was uncommonly shy in speaking with him. It was a shame that Fleur resented the way Apolline used her nature to further Sebastien's political ambitions. She did not see how they were a team, that Apolline did this for him and he put forth bills to protect Veelas in France. He always listened to her council privately and often agreed with what she said.

Fleur was afraid of ending up as a trophy wife to someone successful instead of a person in her own right, and it was heartbreaking to see that this was all she thought of her own mother.

The tournament was an opportunity for her to grow, for her to learn… He hoped it would be enough. He hoped that Harry Potter would be the catalyst for that growth.

Of course, that was if the boy managed to survive the task. Because the ICW and Madame Maxime had decided to use a fucking Leviathan in a school competition just to slow him down. He couldn't really blame them; Harry Potter was simply too efficient, too experienced…

It was embarrassing, not only for the rest of the students but the competition as a whole. The boy had, in a couple of hours, completed half of the task, which was scheduled to last around three days. Madame Maxime couldn't really afford the humiliation, especially considering her heritage. Sebastien didn't personally know Olympe Maxime, but he knew of her during school. The giantess of Beauxbatons had worked ten times harder than her peers to prove herself and rise above her reputation. After all, giants were well known to be unintelligent barbarians. Harry Potter was essentially ruining her task, which she was obviously proud of.

The ICW also couldn't afford an upstart student raising Britain's reputation either, especially considering just how close they were to essentially taking over the country in everything but name. A rise in nationalism in Britain would ruin a lot of people's plans. Hence, the drastic measures.

Leviathans were the pinnacle of flesh craft and experimental breeding, meant to be used as weapons against severe criminals with minimal waste of human lives. There were rumours of other similar weapons, of course, but only the Leviathans had ever been publicly deployed when a War Lord who had taken over a large area in Northern Africa had tried to start a campaign of terrorism towards the ICW specifically, asking to be separated from the organization. Hundreds of Wizards and Witches had died, and any attempts at negotiation had failed miserably.

Instead of drafting an army to fight the upstart, they had sent just five Leviathans. It took them less than a week until every single stronghold was destroyed, and the War Lord had drowned in his own fortress…

That meant that sending a fucking Leviathan into a school competition was just absurd. As far as Sebastien knew, the official reason was that the beasts were only meant to make sure that no champion would be in danger. The unofficial reason was that they were just there as a subtle reminder of the ICW's power, but never in all his wildest thoughts, did the idea that they would be used to fight students cross his mind.

Sure, it was obviously sandbagging, but then again, so was Harry Potter. The boy had planned around the fight, probing for weaknesses, while being attacked by a dozen other Champions, and somehow ended up the victor.

He would be the first to admit that the Leviathan wasn't really the most powerful creature out there. He did not doubt that near a shore or a beach, it would have been far more dangerous. Its water elemental manipulation was impressive, to say the least…

In normal circumstances, a Nundu would kill it in seconds, and a Dragon would turn it to ash with a single breath. However, these were wild animals that could not be used effectively in warfare. But, this was the first time in recorded history that mages had weaponized a creature of this magnitude of power to serve entirely their purpose.

It should not have been beaten by a single wizard. A skilled team, perhaps, if they all attacked it at once to overwhelm its magical resistance. But the idea that a single person, especially a student, no matter how much the terrain was in the Potter boy's favour, would defeat it, was akin to a teenager defeating a dragon in single combat. It was simply inconceivable. And to make it worse, the boy had made it look easy.

To be fair, no one really expected the runes… The boy's skill in the field was ridiculous, creating a complex runic matrix on the fly to defeat the beast. No matter how much the Leviathan was holding back, the boy's rune matrix had, alone, negated much of the offensive that the creature could mount, and it didn't help that the Potter boy used the beast's own strength to defeat it and his other enemies. He used a modified version of the lightning rod charm and used it to power a rune matrix, as well as knock out the other champions.

Even that weird, modified stunner that knocked the beast out while ignoring its obvious magical resistance was something that he had never seen the likes of before.

All in all, he was gaping at the illusion in front of him. He had never really expected this to be the outcome. He looked, flabbergasted, at the smirking Arcturus next to him, "What the actual fuck Arcturus…"

The Black Patriarch snorted in amusement, "I told you Harry was special."

Special was an understatement. Sebastien knew that the boy was good, but this was ridiculous on many levels. He didn't even look winded as he strolled towards where the Beauxbatons champions were camping. They hadn't even noticed him replacing one of their medallions with a normal one before walking away as if he hadn't just won the task and combined the seven medallions to create a small ball of blue light.

Then, he proceeded to create a spell to activate the ball twice in a row to triangulate the location. Sebastien knew that he had created it because there was no way the boy had seen the ball of light before.

He then proceeded to walk away, until he found himself in a weird clearing. Of course, that was when the boy waved his wand and a pillar rose from the ground with a spherical hole inside. He put his sphere in and was announced as the winner.

Madame Maxime, with a frown on her face, stood up and spoke in a magically enhanced voice, "Harry Potter has finished in first place!"

The applause was lower than he expected, considering that the boy had essentially speed-run the task on his own, "Seriously, what the fuck, Arcturus?"

The man simply shrugged in response, "He must have really wanted that diary."

Choosing not to comment on that response, Sebastien decided to watch his daughter, who used a clumsy variation of the self-stunning manoeuvre. It was a pretty risky trick, where a person would stun themselves with a weakened stunner to play dead when they knew that they would lose. She had also cleverly cast a tracking charm on a Spanish and British champion, which would help her follow the victors to the finish line. It was a clever trick, even if it could be a risky one.

Of course, to add insult to injury, the Potter boy had sent all the other medallions to the other British Champions, practically guaranteeing their victory as well.

So, when Fleur woke up, she found herself amongst dozens of unconscious champions. She woke up the rest of the French Champions and followed the British Champions.

Sure, Hogwarts had stolen the show, but at least Beauxbattons would be a close second. And the look on Dumbledore's face as he gave the Potter boy the diary of his own mentor, knowing that he would never get it back, was something that he was planning on savouring…

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