The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 8: Drawn To The Lights
She had not wanted anything like this - really. Unfortunately, accidents happen. Emily, now reduced to running the types of errands that Harmony was assigned when first hired, was juggling too many things at once when she took Harmony's call.
Harmony knew that feeling.
But Harmony was out of practice in gently breaking bad news to others - bad news that she had gotten something the other person wanted probably more than anything in the world.
Her experience was on the receiving end of such news. Precisely that brought her to America.
When it happened to her, Harmony felt like she wanted to die.
When it happened to Emily, she almost did.
Emily had just released her unmistakable crie de cour of comprehension when, glued to her mobile on the other end, Harmony heard a sudden horn blaring, a squeal of tires, and the sickening thud of something solid hitting something fleshy. Emily's mobile must have gone flying, as the connection produced a loud, harsh cracking sound, and then a far-away babble of voices and sirens. With a final pop and hiss, the line went dead.
Although beside herself when that happened, Harmony could do nothing. Preparations for the Paris trip and show were in full swing, and suddenly Emily was no longer there to help. That meant one thing - as hard as Harmony was working, she would have to work even harder.
One of Harmony's many new responsibilities was "the Football." As Ms. Beastly's top aide on an overseas trip, Harmony was responsible for the special Daytimer containing all the information that her boss might need should a sudden business emergency occur. Many top business executives had something similar, but Ms. Beastly needed it more than most. She had no peers at Runway - no presumptive successor. Ms. Beastly trusted nobody in upper management to watch her back. That Daytimer was her lifeline.
Only half jokingly did the "Football" share its nickname with the nuclear attack codes that accompanied the President of the United States. Ms. Beastly's version collected names and contact information for everyone from reporters, to attorneys - from fashion designers to venture capitalists. It included access codes for ten figures worth of bank accounts and lines of credit.
In New York, Harmony simply checked the Football to ensure it was complete and current. In Paris, she would be responsible for having it with her at all times when she and Ms. Beastly were out and about.
* * * *
Harry felt like a ping pong ball bashed from one side of the table to the other. Fleur's imperious father, his lengthy military career accustoming him to absolute command, had put his foot down firmly. No daughter of his would ever do that, especially in front of all those leering Muggles.
"They did it for cigarettes," he declared contemptuously. It sounded almost like a curse.
He had known that sort of woman during the War of Liberation, and in the lean years that followed - before he had met Fleur's and Gabby's mother. Under his breath he muttered about "les putains."
He led Harry to believe that he did so with good reason.
For her part, Gabby was set to tell her father to sod off for good. All her life, up to and through her graduation with honours from Beauxbatons, she had been the dutiful one. Unlike Fleur - whom (Gabby claimed) the old man had indulged as if she were the son he never had - she had toed the family line and never done anything impetuous like moving to England and taking up with a goblin-employed curse breaker.
But after graduation, Gabby made up for lost time. She decided she wanted to see the world and make her own way.
It certainly helped that, like her sister, Gabby was one-quarter Veela.
It also helped that as she matured Gabby grew into every bit as much a beauty as her older sister - only without the harsh edges Fleur sometimes displayed from the war and Bill Weasley's tragic death within an hour of Voldemort's final defeat. Not that Gabby and Fleur could be mistaken for another; far from it. While Fleur was arrestingly buxom, Gabby always tended to the slender side.
Gabby thus entered the Muggle world, became a model, and had traveled the globe in that capacity for the better part of two years.
But just as Gabby's possible career-making big break arrived, she received awful news.
Her mother - who had always smoothed Gabby's relations with her straight-laced father - was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Within weeks she was dead.
Gabby was suddenly forced to strike her own balance between career and family.
She failed miserably. Within another few weeks, she and her father were at each other's throats about life in general, and in particular about Gabby's upcoming appearance in the biggest event in the fashion world - the fall L'Oreal fashion week in Paris.
Enter Harry Potter.
Maréchal Delacour deeply respected Harry for his personal role in defeating Voldemort, since France's alliance with the anti-Voldemort English came at significant cost. Even more profoundly, Gabby viewed Harry as a personal hero. He had rescued her from Hogwarts Lake when Fleur (she never tired of reminding her older sister) failed during the Triwizard Tournament.
Fleur called in Harry as a last-ditch attempt to prevent an irreparable breach.
It was no easy task.
"I do not care!" the old man exploded. "It is improper! No daughter of mine will parade about in front of hundreds of men - Muggle men - half clothed in risqué outfits designed by perverts and homosexuals! I will not allow it!"
"Open your eyes, Daddy!" Gabby screamed right back. "This isn't fifty years ago. I don't live in some cesspool. Twenty-first century models are upstanding, moral people!"
"Maréchal … Jules … I have to agree, at least initially, with Gabby. You're condemning her life sight unseen. Sixty years is a long time - more than twice my life. Things change and get better. Surely you've seen that the Muggles live much better now than right after Liberation, when everything was wrecked. Why shouldn't fashion modeling do the same? Gabby's hardly starving. You and I both saw the cool Mercedes coupe she's driving."
The old man scowled and looked ready to unloose another angry tirade, probably about how she financed that car. But Harry raised his hand, and to both Fleur's and Gabby's amazement, Papa held his tongue.
A fleeting frown crossed Harry's face. An idea came to him, but it would delay the unavoidable task he set for himself when he decided to accept annulment. No, he thought, that was wrong - his task became inevitable the moment he discovered Molly's true parentage.
But the detour would only take a few days, and the Delacours were Harry's first real friends outside Hogwarts.
"Look, I don't know any more about this than you. But I can't believe that the Gabby I've known since she was a little girl would choose fashion modeling if things were as tawdry and disreputable as you say," Harry went on. "All I'm saying is let's see for ourselves what she's doing before we do anything we might regret. Keep an open mind. Let's go to this show together, and then you can decide…. It's what Jacqueline would have wanted you to do."
Harry laid it on pretty thick - even invoking Jules Delacour's late wife (and Gabby's Mum). But it achieved the desired effect. After a nerve-wracking pause, the old man sighed in acquiescence and nodded his head.
"Oh merci, Papa! Merci!" Gabby pushed past Harry and flung herself into her father's arms. "You will not be disappointed. I promise!" Harry relaxed in satisfaction as he saw the Marèchal's craggy face blossom with probably the broadest smile it had borne since his wife's death.
Now for the other side of the coin.
Suppressing his smile, he addressed Gabby with practiced gravity learned during his years as an Auror. "Don't get the wrong impression, Gabby. I share many of your father's concerns. I'll watch how this show is conducted very carefully, and you know I have my ways. If I find anything - I mean anything - indicating that you or these other umm … girls have to resort to … er … casting couch methods, I won't hesitate to put a stop to this, even if I close the whole thing down. Understand?"
"Don't worry, Harry," Gabrielle Delacour replied faintly, still sitting on her father's lap. "It's not anything like he thinks. Fashion modeling is a real business. It has professional standards. Why, there's even a fashion press to make sure the kinds of things Papa worries about don't happen. You couldn't begin to imagine the scandal…."
That essentially ended Harry's visit with the Delacours. Gabby had to leave to do the million and one things necessary to prepare for the main event and the satellite happenings accompanying it. The Delacour patriarch almost immediately retired to bed.
Fleur walked Harry to the edge of the château's anti-Apparition wards.
"Damn," Harry muttered. "That's the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but I saw no other way to back those two away from a permanent breach. I'm in the middle again, and worse, I have to waste my time on some stupid clothes exhibition that I couldn't care less about…. Er … you won't tell Gabby that, I hope."
Fleur emphatically shook her head, her extravagant blonde curls bouncing in the night air. "Of course not `Arry. I can't zank you enough for your time…. `Ave you ever seen Paris?"
"Sure," Harry replied. "I've been there loads. The French Auror Department's there."
"But `ave you ever really seen Paris - for pleasure, razzer zan for business?" Fleur pursued.
"Umm … don't think so," Harry answered as he felt a subtle frisson indicating he passed through the protective wards - at least he told himself that.
"Would you fancy some companionsheep, zen?" Fleur offered. "Papa would surely be `appy for zee both of us to accompany heem. `E really likes you, you know. And `e knows `ow lonely I've been weeth Beell dead nine years now…. Zee clock teeks on."
Had the temperature of that autumn evening suddenly risen five degrees? "Umm … Fleur…. Thanks, I mean, but I don't think I should."
Fleur would not accept his answer without protest. "Eez zere somezeeng wrong, `Arry?" she huffed, her lips pouty. "I read zee papers. I know zat you are no longer married. Eez zere somezeeng about me zat's … unacceptable?" Her hand slipped onto his sleeve, and she gave Harry's wrist a little squeeze.
"Fleur, this isn't about you … although in a way you started it," Harry tried to explain. "It's about me. My annulment isn't what you think. Not at all. It all goes back…. Do you remember that spell you taught us to beat Voldemort?"
"'Ow could I not `Arry?" Fleur answered. "I could show you `ow it works again, eef you've forgotten." Her delicate hand unmistakably squeezed his wrist again.
Again Harry ignored her invitation. "Do you have any idea how that spell should work if performed by three people?"
"Ugh. A threesome?" Fleur wrinkled her nose in displeasure, if not disgust. "I don't know eef zat would even be possible - and I would not care to find out."
"Well's that's how I actually destroyed Voldemort," Harry told her flatly. "That's why my marriage both started and ended … and why I can't accept your otherwise most attractive proposal."
Fleur glanced around, her eyes falling on a delicate whitewashed gazebo back inside the wards. "Come," she said. "Eef you want me to understand, you must tell me quite a beet more.
Harry allowed himself to be led. They sat in the gazebo and for the next half hour Harry told her all about how he, Ginny, and Hermione had used the Puissance d'Amour Curse in a quite novel way - how, at the moment of truth, the addition of Hermione's love and the strength of her magic carried them all to victory. He explained the pregnancy that followed, his marriage to Ginny and subsequent annulment, Hermione's disappearance, Molly's near fatal illness, and his learning after all those years that Hermione was Molly's actual magical mother.
"Mon dieu!" Fleur exclaimed at that last point. "Does she know? Eet was obvious to me at zee time zat she loved you very much."
"Tonks told her not long ago," Harry replied in a very dispirited voice. "Tonks said Hermione hung up on her when she heard the news."
"I `ave trouble believing zat," Fleur replied. "Zat ees not like zee `Ermione zat I knew."
Even more downcast, he replied, "The Hermione you knew's been gone a long time. If she hates me, so be it, but I'm hoping she'll at least see Molly. Molly found out enough of it … mostly by accident. She worries if she did something to make one of her mums not love her. She's like me; she blames herself…."
Fleur stood up, and pulled Harry to his feet along with her. "Go zen. You must find `er. What needs doing can only be done in person." She kissed him on both cheeks. "Au revoir."
Harry took two big steps towards the ward boundary, stopped, and asked Fleur a final question. "Was I…? Was I just as obvious as her?"
Fleur shook her head. "Not to me, but zen I worked almost always with zee girls. But Beell … `e saw eet. At one point, `ee worried zat zee spell would fail because the pairings were wrong. But zeengs improved, so we kept eet to ourselves. J'en suis desolée, `Arry."
"So am I," Harry replied. He Disapparated.
* * * *
Another exhausting, troubling day passed, filled with too many details and too many last-minute problems either to correct or prevent. It reminded Harmony of the frantic last few hours before the final battle, after Snape's message but before the Death Eaters arrived - only without constant fear of imminent, violent death (professional death being something else entirely).
She pushed such memories from her mind. Otherwise she would obsess about Tonks' bombshell. Harmony could not afford to go to pieces; she had too many more immediate responsibilities.
Over lunch she went to see Emily. That visit did not go well.
"Not well" was an understatement.
Just out of surgery - Muggle surgeons put some sort of metal rod into her thighbone to stabilize really serious fractures - Emily was still rather doped up with anesthetic.
But she was not so far under the influence to forget what she and Harmony were discussing the moment she had stepped in front of that taxi.
Harmony repeatedly tried apologizing - telling Emily (not entirely truthfully) that she could care less about Paris, that it all was entirely Ms. Beastly's doing, and that she had been surprised to learn she was even being considered.
She would gladly decline the honor if possible - but both she and Emily knew that was not an option. Harmony could only avoid going to the City of Lights by quitting, and she would not do that, not after all she had invested.
It hardly mattered, anyway, as Emily credited none of her excuses. The two women's half-hour long argument went around and around, with Harmony's apologies met at every turn by Emily's accusations of betrayal and backstabbing.
Finally, their conversation became so heated that one of the nurses asked Harmony to leave.
But it was not a total loss. When she first came to America, Hermione trained as a Healer at the Institute. Wizards and Muggles were both susceptible to infections - although wizard Healers could more easily detect them. Immediately upon entering Emily's room Hermione sensed that something about her was off. Her freshly casted leg was disrupting Emily's aura. An incipient staph infection around Emily's implant was the cause.
Once upon a time, Hermione Granger was known as a witch who never forgot a spell. That was still true. Wandlessly, Harmony healed the infection, all the while being screamed at by the very person she saved from a long and nasty complication.
Emily would never know what happened. It was one of many things Hermione gave up when she became Harmony.
Nigel was handing out free passes to the opening of a new private gallery in Chelsea. Ties between haute couture fashion and avant guard art were many and varied. Thinking she could use a breather, Harmony took a ticket. She was pleasantly surprised when the artist, Lily Langdon, turned out to be someone she knew. Friendly with some of the models, Lily had introduced herself during a post-shoot gathering at some sushi bar. Lily was smart, opinionated, and about Harmony's age. The two hit it off.
So she attended the opening.
Once there, Harmony and Lily naturally gravitated to one another. Harmony was listening to Lily expounding upon the President's many sins, real or imagined, when the artist abruptly changed the subject and spoke in a hushed voice.
"Don't look now, but a man's behind you, checking you out, and not being at all shy about it," Lily whispered. "I don't much like him."
"Who? Do I know him?" Harmony asked.
"I don't know. I think his name's Christian," Lily continued. "He's dated, or tried to date, some of my model friends, especially the younger ones. The word is he's interested in only one thing."
"We'll see about that, then," Harmony answered with a knowing smirk. "I do believe I've got to freshen up."
Acting like she had to use the facilities, Harmony pivoted and locked eyes with the Guilderoy Lockhart clone. She acknowledged him, and received an appreciative nod in return.
A few minutes later, Harmony was in the back gallery ostensibly trying to make heads or tails of Lily's sculptures. She heard a familiar voice over her left shoulder.
"A little bird told me that someone's going to Paris as the Dragon Lady's new chief assistant."
"Just what type of bird would that be, Christian?" Harmony played along.
"I do believe it was a long-legged clacker," he replied.
"What do you want?" Harmony asked bluntly, before realizing that a less broadly phrased question might have been preferable.
"What I want, I'd best not say," Christian took his chance. "What I've come to ask is whether you'd share a drink to celebrate your promotion. I've followed Runway for years, and never seen any newcomer do what you've done so quickly, much less someone who, frankly, started with no clue about fashion."
Harmony figuratively took the bull by the horns. Putting her hands on her hips, she gave him an appraising once over. "I'll have you know, Christian, that I'm nothing like those air-headed girls you go through like so many bottles of beer on the wall."
"I know," he conceded, seemingly unfazed. "That's why we're having this conversation. You're older, stronger, and infinitely smarter than the lot of them thrown together. Predictably, you know my reputation. I'd like you to know more about me than that."
Harmony's mind calculated. A cad he was, but a smooth one. "All right," she said, as haughtily as she knew how, "tell me about yourself."
Christian smiled. But beneath his winning smile, he looked uncharacteristically nervous. "Christian Zevon Donaldson. University of Chicago, class of 2000, Harvard Business School, class of 2002. I'm a senior analyst at the Carnegie-Livingston Group, investment bankers. I specialize in the fashion industry. I know almost as much about Runway's finances as your boss does. There, that's me in a nutshell. It's all true. You can Google me right now from your cell phone for confirmation."
The Google reference brought back wistful memories. Without her, that verb would never have been coined.
She thought about doing what he said, but instead decided to slam him again - something akin to kicking the tires. "So you date all these girls to fish for inside information, then? A perk of your profession, I suppose?"
Christian winced. Acting less sure of himself, he took his time before responding. "Absolutely not. That's neither legal nor ethical. If I tried to profit from pillow talk, I'd probably be in prison by now. You know those girls - half of them couldn't keep a secret if their lives depended upon it…. I won't deny that the … extracurricular benefits … figured in my choosing my area of expertise, but I know enough to keep business and pleasure separate."
"So what do you want with me, then?" Harmony asked, seriously this time. "Is it business or pleasure?"
"I'll tell you exactly what I want," Christian dropped all pretence. "I'm almost thirty. I've got more money than I need - and unlike some, it's in the bank, not up my nose. I've sown all the wild oats any man could possibly want. It's frankly gotten boring. I'm looking for an equal, if not someone my better. You're so different from anyone I've ever met in this business. To tell the truth, I think you're extraordinary."
He seemed honest enough - for a man, anyway. Harmony pulled her claws back a bit. "That's rather extravagant praise, Christian. I'm not one to be swayed by flattery."
"I'd be disappointed if you were," he quickly agreed. "Look, let me buy you dinner - or lunch if you'd rather. Some place neutral, and no further obligation. I'll do my best to keep all my come-on lines to myself."
"Oh, all right," she agreed. "After I get back from Paris, we can…."
"I was thinking more like in Paris," Christian interrupted.
"You're going to Paris?" she asked.
"Of course," he told her. "It's only the biggest show of the year. To stay on top of the industry, it's mandatory that I go. So are you and your boss staying at the Plaza Athenee as usual…?"
- 12 -
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 6 Endings and Beginnings.doc.doc 12/28/06
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