Changing Harry's ages is nothing but a change of his circumstances. How a Harry/Fleur interaction will go depends on several factors. Harry's age affects the way Harry acts, how Fleur perceives him, etc etc, so ti changes the circumstances.

It's no worse than stories completely changing his background, stories that have him act completely different or something of the sort.

It's all just personal preference. What deviations and changes we like to read about and what we don't. There is nothing wrong with age changing inherently. At least nothing more than other similar plot devices.

 

Fixed it for you. I read that one for a while, but had to drop it for the reason above.

---------- Post automerged at 07:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:37 PM ----------

Why is that?

Even in canon, Fleur warms up to Harry as friends. If you want to go strictly at canon pace, but have Harry/Fleur, you could put them together when he's sixteen and she's nineteen, depending on what happens during that time. A three year difference is not that much, and starting at 14, it grows smaller every year.

Hell, when I was a highschool freshman, I dated a senior girl for a little while. No, she wasn't a Fleur, but she was a semi-popular senior. My point is, we can talk about generalities, but since Fleur's character isn't fully developed—especially in GoF, there's a lot that can be done to put Harry and her together.

 

I'm bored so I'll throw my 2 cents in to this I suppose.

Writing Harry/Fleur in 4th year is always gonna be tricky. Honestly don't think it can really be done all that well tbh. I don't mind people changing Harry's age because that's pretty much just changing his personality/how Fleur perceives him. It's just another plot device. It can be done well, Newcomb's fic, or poorly.

The problem that arises is that regardless of anything else, a lot of 17 year olds look at 14 year olds as children. I know I certainly did. Canon Fleur is 17, hot as shit, and talented as fuck to boot. She's a champion picked on her own merits. From that standpoint, she has no reason to look to Harry for anything other than fame theoretically.

The way to make it a bit more realistic in my mind (the irony of talking about realism in HP fanfiction isn't lost on me) is to have 4th year be a jumping off point. Pre-tournament, Fleur has no reason to care about Harry. But then he's in the tournament, and he's doing pretty damn well to boot. In canon she warmed to him after he needlessly saved Gabrielle. It's not a stretch to imagine that Fleur, or any talented competitor, would take an interest in Harry as a person/competitor after seeing how he does in the first task alone. If nothing else she should take him seriously. A talented author could take an interest like that and do some serious character development where Harry and Fleur are dancing around each other, all suspicious and shit because they're really competitive. If nothing else it's an excuse for them to get to know each other without changing all that much.

On the flip side, an author can retroactively show all of that with a fic that takes place when Harry isn't 14. The relationship would already be somewhat established and could be built on.

Takes talent, time, and some creativity to avoid cliches but it's doable. I just don't think 4th year is a great place for it.

EDIT: 500th post for that? Eh, oh well.

 

I'll toss mine in as well.

Although, now that I'm sitting down to articulate my thoughts, what I think this thread really needs at this point in time is a dose of Lungs:

Why the only good Harry/Fleur fic will need to be written by you (and why it might still be mediocre)

I basically agree with all of that.

It's not that writing Harry/Fleur is hard, it's that writing anyone/anyone is hard, because writing a compelling relationship is hard as shit. It's basically drama < humor < love.

I mean, writing in general is hard. Just getting to the stage where you have this mental map of "what happens" and being able to write words that put that approximate mental map in somebody else's head is a significant achievement.

Drama isn't that hard - everyone understands problems and pathos. Humor is way harder, because you're adding a degree of subjectivity and the nuance of "what is funny?" sometimes hangs on a single word, to the point where you just need to intuitively grasp it sometimes.

Ah, but romance... now that's a tough cookie. It's got all the subjectivity problems of humor, but this time you're tacking on the fact that there's this thing called chemistry, and there's no roadmap for it. What makes a good love story varies so much and depends entirely on your writing style, your characters, your setup... context, in other words. Basically, you can learn a lot about drama and humor from reading how other people approach it. Romance, you learn a lot less, because when you inevitably get to the part with the kissing, you'll find that an attempt to borrow from other writers or other styles (which is totally an okay thing to do) leeches chemistry and intimacy from a scene until you get something like Heart and Soul, and that's at the top end.

So with that in mind, it's not surprising that there are so few good Harry/Fleur fics. You're taking a task that's pretty damn challenging in the first place (writing compelling romance) and then handicapping yourself by picking a universe in which the characters you want to write about aren't well situated in time and space to even interact a lot, never mind actually have a relationship.

- Not the same age, so experiencing different things at different times (in general.)
- Don't go to the same school.
- Don't live in the same country.
- Only kinda speak the same language.

(And if you start post-DH to solve those problems, you introduce another one: she's fucking married.)

Then there's Fleur's characterization. She's got just enough of it in canon for it to be an issue: we don't really see enough of her to paint a complete picture. It's more of a sketch. Yet she's not a complete blank slate like Daphne. It's a tough middle ground for authors - there's just enough there to put a fence around "getting her character right" without there being enough to really help you actually get her right.

(This situation is also why you so frequently see the same beats hit for secondary characters. "Luna mentions crazy animals! Tonks is clumsy! Charlie only talks in dragon metaphors!")

Given these issues, is it any surprise that anyone taking a whack at Harry/Fleur approaches it from the starting point of a pretty big contrivance?

The Lie I've Lived gives Harry an adult's memories and some of his personality. Wastelands of Time makes Harry an insane immortal. When A Veela Cries literally murders 90% of Hogwarts to clear the way. Knowledge is Power ages him 2 years and gives him the personality of a young Dr. House.

I mean, Steelbadger, I think it would be awesome if you could pull it off, but I just don't see 4th year canon!Harry/canon!Fleur as at all possible. Harry freaks out about asking a girl to the ball - he jokes about rather facing the dragon again, but it's not really a joke. Fleur is confident enough to fool around with Rodger Davies and not give a single fuck about setting her sights on Bill a couple months later. It's not an age thing (at least not directly), it's an attitude thing. She's not a Beginner Level Girlfriend, and Harry couldn't even handle Intro To Understanding Female Emotions with Cho. Sometimes it's hard to remember just how much of a dork Harry was before 6th year.

Holy shit, that got long. I think this is one of those posts where I kind of forgot what I was talking about midway through.

Short version: romance in hard, canon is not friendly to this pairing in particular, and like Inert said, doing it well is a matter of patience, talent, and creativity.

Or you could just say "fuck it" and do Veela sex magic / life debt soul bonds.

 

Great post and a bunch of really good reasons why a nice rom-com-esque Harry/Fleur story is possibly the most difficult one to get right within the limits of canon.

There are some pairings that can only work with a significant canon departure. Something like Harry/Bellatrix is probably the most obvious example. The thing about Harry/Fleur is that it sits right on the border where a big canon departure feels like a cop-out (to some) but an exhaustively canon-true rendition will almost always ring false. When people look for Harry/Bellatrix they know what they're likely to get; Harry aged up, Bellatrix aged down or some contrived reason that they're forced together. With Harry/Fleur it's much less clear-cut, she's just close enough that people think there's a small chance that it could be done without the contrivances.

The big issue with ActualBitch!Fleur/Harry is that it's almost certainly not going to hit the notes found in a normal romance. Fleur will be hated for how she is manipulating Harry and stringing him along. Harry will be hated for being manipulated and strung along. The relationship is doable and possibly even realistic given the situation, it's just not in any way fluffy (or especially healthy). Realism in romance does not seem to be a popular thing as pointed out by Lungs (more than one or two girlfriends? Blasphemy!). Most readers will be rooting for the relationship to fail, for Harry to see what Fleur is doing and kick her to the curb.

So the focus of the fic can't be on the romance unless you really want to field many, many angry reviews. Instead the writer has to aim their words at making Fleur human and not an evil succubus. The fic basically has to be a 'coming of age' story for Fleur with a romance only happening in the background and acting as a catalyst for her growth. I have no doubt it's not easy to pull off. I think I've written the opening chapter 5-6 times in my search for a good tone for Fleur.

 

I've held back any talk of my own Harry/Fleur fic for a few reasons (one, because its in hiatus, two, it's nowhere near a definitive fic in the fandom) but Steelbadger brought up 'contrivances' in romance fics, and I feel I need to comment.

The exact thing I was trying to do with We'll All Fall Afer the Yule Ball, was open Harry up to many realistic and brief relationships in a short duration. Parvati, Katie Bell, Hermione and then, you guessed it, Fleur, who would make the other three jealous instantly and add plenty of humor to it.

Now, I wanted to go straight 'Make a Wish' with Harry's character, and have him stumble through everything, but he does go to some lengths to make his night better (pep-talking Ron, learning how to dance before hand...) so that only comes off part of the time.

The problem I had with the story as a writer came when I tried to work in canon's restraints, like the tasks, for example. I should have ended it somewhere around Chapter 13, instead I added 2 more chapters that were almost like coming from another story (though there was almost some Harry/Fleur smut, so people more or less appreciated them and would have liked to see more).

But I hated them, because that wasn't what I set out originally to do. I'm the author who loses his way, but I'm working on that. The anthologies have really helped with that.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that, the type of author I am, I want to see that realism in relationships to. If you write a seven book series, I'd suspect to see more than one girl catch the main characters' eye. But CANON HP does not do this, so its contrived when YOU, as the author of a fanfic, do this.

 

Best way to do a vaguely canonical GoF Harry/Fleur:

After the First Task, Fleur realises that Harry may be a serious contender after all. So she decides to sabotage him. She pretends to fall in love with him to learn his secrets and to frustrate his efforts to get through the tasks through a mixture of driving him to distraction and active sabotage.

You could take it in several directions:
- Play it straight, a rather dark fic with Fleur unrepentantly ruining Harry's life to win the Triwizard.
- Play it sweet, with Fleur coming to actually care for Harry.
- Play it as a comedy of errors, with Fleur's attempts to sabotage Harry constantly competing against Barty Crouch Jr's attempts to get him through.

 

As someone who isn't particularly fond of the pairing, I'm going to play the Devil's Advocate here. What you wrote can be easily interpreted as "Yes, I know the pairing is next to impossible, but Fleur is a Veela and Veelas are hot and I love hot Veelas, therefore I love the pairing and will write it, damn all of canon." Which, of course, means that the pairing generally reads like a self-insert and wish fulfillment fantasy. You have to completely change Harry's character and tastes in women to make Harry/Fleur viable -- which is, of course, what everyone seems to be doing -- but then Harry is Harry in-name-only, and the story isn't really a Harry/Fleur story, now is it?

(Plus, fans of Draco/Hermione basically do the same thing for their own precious pairing as they completely change Draco's character, generally with flimsy justification, and really, being compared to Dramione of all pairings isn't exactly healthy.)

That's not to say I dislike the pairing -- some of my favorite stories (Wastelands, Lie) have been Harry/Fleur, although the Harry part of Harry/Fleur is debatable in either case. But for me the pairing is like the other unlikely pairings -- Harry/Bellatrix, Harry/Narcissa and to a lesser extent, Harry/Tonks -- that I can enjoy in small dozes, but not something I care to read about in every other story. Then again, its probably just me -- I actually like canon Harry (shocking, I know) and don't care to see his character changed all the time (although OOCness works in small to moderate dozes) just to get him paired with some girl.

Taure : Hogwarts Battle School basically did what you wrote.

 

Option 3 please.

I just have images of Fleur getting constantly screwed over a la Harry and Marv ( Home Alone). She eventually breaks towards the end of the year and Harry does the epic troll of acting like he never noticed her machinations.

It she steps on a broom or cops an iron to the face, I'll not complain. I'm not particularly enamored with slapstick, but I have been known to make an exception.

Get to it Taure.

 

You know, Fleur could always just like them young, and no more should be given to her motivation beyond that. Let's face it, if she's haughty and conceited (provided you write her that way), she doesn't want to deal with the wilfulness of her age peers, those fuckers aren't just worth the effort, not unless they messed with Fleur in a big way.

Granted, Harry's far from the picture of submissiveness, so it's not like he'd fold instantly on her approaching him, but you could make that part of the fic, the way she'd seek to twist him all up to whatever she wanted from him.

And all those fics that have Fleur constantly in search for that elusive someone who's immune to her charms never made much sense to me. She straight out tried using those lovely feminine wiles of hers on Diggory on order to have him as her Yule Ball date.

 

The only problem with that approach is that you're changing Fleur instead of Harry this time around.
In canon, she went for guys her age or older, something TLIL used to make the whole relationship a little less creepy.

I'd say that this is a problem for Taure's idea as well. Canon Fleur seemed to believe herself above cheating, to the point where she was upset about getting 25 points for what was essentially a complete failure.

 

You know I would love to see Fleur as a femme fatale. Has it been done? Someone who is as devious as she is beautiful. An anti-heroine of sorts. Can someone make it happen?

 

It's been done. It's probably the most common thing to to her when the story is written post-hogwarts.

 

I'm sure Sesc's forehead still hurts after seeing your post.

 

I meant while simultaneously being a love interest to Harry. An Irene Adler to his Sherlock Holmes if you like.

EDIT: Disregard this... found what I was looking for.

 

Seems like there's barely any of us, which is a shame. Somehow it seems like it got stuck in everyone's head that something has to be done to make it work. Most people just overthink it. Let's suppose that there's a less than 10% chance of such a relationship actually working (and I'm not even picky enough to say that the story I'm interested in has to work in the long run) then there should at least be some stories that have given it a whirl, but they all inevitably end up using some other gimmick (bonds, three ways with Daphne, etc).

Honestly, for me (and I'm surprise more DLPers don't agree with me), changing someones age is one of the fundamental no-no and is just a big of a no-no as soul bonds, phoenix animagi, harems, inheritances and magical trunks. And even after reading what everyone here has said, I'm going to stick by what I said earlier and say I still haven't seen a good reason to do it.

-edit- And if there's no good reason, why do it at all? It's not like you're breaking away from the normal stuff, since like I said, there are almost no "normal" stories.

 

I've seen more outlandish relationships happen irl than canon!Harry/canon!Fleur. Improbable, but not impossible.

---------- Post automerged at 10:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 AM ----------

Why do people change anything in fanfiction? Because they think that it is a change that will allow for interesting things to happen, thus shape an interesting story. It's a plot device, and is used as such. No different than changing Harry's upbringing, putting him a different House, or the thousands of other deviations one could think of.

 

It can be fun. Isn't that reason enough? In Newcomb's fic, we get to see some really interesting characters because of it. Harry gets friends that aren't carbon copies of Hermione and Ron, and that makes things really interesting. I have a somewhat weird feeling that maybe Cedric is still going to die which would be quite harsh given how much more time we get to see him in this fic.

As for Harry/Fleur, am I the only one who likes to try and find a way to do it with their canon personalities or as close as possible simply because of the challenge? It's kind of like when I saw people on here talking about Harry/Hermione being boring/people not liking the pairing. There was a part of me that felt the need to find a way to make it work in a way that was fun and exciting but still stayed true to their characters simply because of the challenge created by people who don't like that ship.

To make Harry/Fleur work, I think you need to find a way to put Harry and Fleur together without making it feel too forced. Taure makes some good points about after the first task, but there are other points as well. Harry could see her being attacked in the second task and have his saving people thing kick in. She seemed to be very much in the Harry camp of thinking the clue was serious about keeping people. She was borderline hysterical when Harry brought her sister back, and she seems to have quite a bit of pride to the point that she didn't want to be treated for her injuries and felt she deserved zero points for the task. That is something that you should be able to work with. You find out a ton about Fleur's character in that short scene after the second task.

The other option in 4th year is to have Harry save her when they are in the 3rd task. He can hear her scream and tries to look for her but fails to find her. If you do this, you end up working with a Harry who went one on one with a dragon on his broom, saved her sister in the 2nd task, and saved Fleur from whatever or whoever was making her scream like that in the 3rd task. You have very little time to work in 4th year with this point of divergence, but it could work to set things up nicely for a 5th year fic.