You forget HarryxCow!Fleur. Smh

 

Milk and eggs, bitch

 

Anyone has a recommendation for a HP/Fleur fic without some sort of bashing and a super harry?

 

fvital92

Overall the Harr/Fleur pairing is a very popular topic for a lot of shit writers. This and the Harry/Daphne scene probably feature the most concentrated portions of crappy bashing stories. I only have a short list for you and some of these are a bit iffy. It's been a long time since I read Harry/Fleur.

Here are some:

1. WoT and HoT
2. What You Leave Behind
3. Dagger and Rose
4. The Lie I've Lived

I'd say the stories after those diminish in quality greatly, but if you are desperate there's:

1. Knowledge is Power
2. Deprived
3. A Cadmean Victory
4. His Angel

 

Seylliani
I couldn't agree more, thanks for. I'll definitely check out your sugestions. I've already read The Lie I've lived and thought it was pretty solid.

 

We really need more Harry/Fleur fics with original plots. I won't turn down a new (and decent) fic that has Harry rescuing Fleur from the Death Eaters at the world cup, but that idea has been used far too much already.

We need to find a way to encourage more people to write Harry/Fleur.

 

I agree. It would be nice to find a way to encourage more writers to jump on the Harry/Fleur bandwagon. The problem is that a lot of the people who will attempt it either write the story just for the pairing alone and it soon fizzles out when they realize they don't have much plot other than the pairing. The other problem is those same writers are often the same ones who like to write harems as well. Like people have said, the same ideas have been reused a lot so thats why I think people should start getting more comfortable with going AU with their plot.

I feel like the stages of a Fanfic author seem to often go from:

1. canon rehash
2. writing stories with overused tropes
3. finally start writing wildly AU concepts (if an author gets to this point)

Anyway, I always mean to write a proper Harry/Fleur myself but just never seem to get around to it. Maybe I'll get around to it one day.

 

It's a damn shame. I've seen more harry/Fleur fics left unfinished than there are complete. A lot of the unfinished ones are actually pretty decent and original as well. I was into Harry/Harem stories for a while but I think I'm starting to mellow out on it. I don't feel that a harem pairing can ever really be all that great because none of the characters ever receive the necessary character development. They're just names attached to body types.

 

Ftfy

Seriously though, I know some works of fan fiction out there do develop their main pairing but, in my experience, the vast, vast majority don't. I guess its just a hazard of the genre(?)

 

I agree partially. Part of the problem is that authors will write only for the pairing, leaving no story after the characters get together. It seems simple, from a reader's perspective, for an author to create a plot and insert their desired pairing. In Harry/Fleur, it's easy enough to create an interaction. Options include the triwizard tournament, the world cup, or some major event with high up political officials. The other part of the problem with Harry/Fleur is more demand than supply. People who want a Harry/Fleur pairing seem to be more likely to be readers than authors. While that's true for any pairing, Harry/Fleur seems to be more widespread.

Pros and Cons of Harry/Fleur
Pros
-Sex appeal (French, Veela, makes guys drool, older woman)
-Extremely Competent (Triwizard Champion!)
-Somewhat easy to make an interaction: see above list

Cons
-People who like sex appeal want more sex appeal. The easiest way to do that is to add more women. Harems!
-They don't meet till 4th year. Any girl in Hogwarts could have a step up
-Canon Harry is way below Fleur's league and you know it


In the end it's just easier to make a random girl at Hogwarts competent and gorgeous than to wait till fourth year for the real pairing.

 

Stories with serious pairings before 5th year at the earliest are ridiculous regardless. And you're basically talking about making a <14 year old girl 'competent and gorgeous'.

 

I choose pairings based on what I believe the other character can add to the HP universe. We never see anything outside of Harry's age group and Britain. I like the idea of Harry/Fleur largely because it presents an opportunity to see another culture of magic.

Sadly, even when a Harry/Fleur story does end up with Harry in France, the author is unimaginative. So I'm pretty much always left disappointed.

Another reason for reading Harry/Fleur which ties into the first is that is presents the opportunity to have new mentors, idols, and adult figures in his life that can actually give a damn about him and help him where every other adult in the HP universe has failed miserably.

Unfortunately this rarely ever happens.

My dream Harry/Fleur fic would probably include Harry and Fleur being the same age, probably around 14 at the beginning, and it would take place largely in France with amazing world building, an original plot, and probably over a million words. It would have actual character development, and competent adults. It wold not include bashing of any kind.

 

Such a fic doesn't really need Fleur. Rather the addition of Fleur makes things more difficult- why is she 14? If she's 14 why has she come along for the Triwizard tournament? If she isn't in the competition why is she in Britain? How (and why) is she going to have enough regular contact with Harry in order to move the story forward?
Easier to have Harry become friends with Parvati. She's in the same house and year. She seems relatively friendly and loyal from what we see of her. She also goes to the Ball with Harry giving you an easy starting point.

Set the fic in his summer vacations after fourth year. Have him go research Nagini in India and get that world-building. Gets him far away from the Order, the Ministry, Voldemort and gives Harry something to do. Everybody's happy.

Except for the people that wanted a Fleur fic. Oops.

 

I still want a fic where Fleur joins the Order to fight Voldemort a little bit earlier than canon but doesn't agree with how Harry is being kept out things since she's gained a lot of respect for him over what he went through the last year. So she starts helping him train and stuff at first since she thinks its the right thing to do and because she wants to repay him for saving Gabrielle but eventually it turns into more than that.

Another idea I had was something similar but instead Harry actually loses his trial and is expelled or charged with a crime and Fleur helps him out of the country or something. Idk. I'd need to think on it a lot more before considering actually writing anything.

 

Plot Bunny: After the Second Task, the Champions start informally hanging out. Harry already had a sort of friendship with Cedric, Viktor was 'dating' Hermione, and Harry had saved Fleur's sister when she could not. They never talk about the Tournament, and the meetings are sort of sanctuaries against the social and political pressure of the contest and the press. After these, the Tournament turns into a friendly competition that the TWT was supposed to be. However after Cedric's death, the group falls apart with Viktor heading back to Bulgaria (and the Hermione/Ron friction getting in the way), and Fleur heading back to France.

The following summer, Harry goes to Diagon Alley for school supplies under semi-heavy guard. While he is getting his money from the bank, he meets Fleur who is working there part time. Bill is working for the Order out of town, and so does not cross paths with her. Nothing much comes of this meeting beyond catching up, with Fleur stating that she believes Harry about Voldemort and her bemoaning being somewhat bored with her job.

After the first few meetings of the DA, Umbridge issues the Educational Decrees blocking student organizations or teachers teaching anything other than their subject. Hermione notices a legal loophole though: nothing is said about hiring a tutor. The DA uses Harry as a tutor, paying him the grand sum of a single Knut for him to tutor them, and he uses both Fleur and Krum as tutors for himself to tutor the others (or Fleur and Krum tutor the DA). Umbridge catches wind of this, but this is one thing that she cannot get an Educational Decree against--with OWLS and NEWTS coming up, many students are using tutors, and tutoring is a popular way of making money for the upper years. There is too much pushback in the Wizengamot to allow this to be passed for such a petty reason.

Harry and Fleur become more and more friendly as time passes along, finding that they enjoy each other's company. There is common ground to be had with their school celebrity statuses, and they become mostly platonic friends (perhaps slight crush on Harry's part). With Fleur being a popular and older girly girl and close friend, she becomes the source of Harry's romantic advice versus the far more down-to-earth Hermione. She helps him out with Cho despite her misgivings about the real reason Cho is interested in him, and their relationship does not die on the first date as in canon. Eventually though it becomes clear that her being pretty and similarly liking Quidditch, they never quite click and drift apart.

Ginny had a less-than-impressed opinion of Fleur to begin with, which is compounded by her helping Harry with Cho. However, after that relationship falls apart, Fleur acts as the wingwoman she is at this point and starts pushing Harry and Ginny together. Things progress pleasantly for Harry and Ginny, with most of the drama of book 6 skipped.

After the Department of Mysteries, Fleur is inducted into the Order. Bill returns from his task, and he and Fleur hit it off. However with the grim situation of Voldemort's return and the chaos in the Ministry, their relationship is not the whirlwind romance of canon. (In my mind, much of their getting together originally had to do with Fleur being out of her depth in a new country and culture, and Bill helping her with that strengthened their relationship. With over a year's experience with the culture and having developed some other friendships of her own, Bill is merely an attractive guy that she sees far more sporadically at Order meetings rather than an attractive guy who helps her through a difficult time). She and Harry still talk occasionally, but each has mostly gone their separate ways, as Fleur is busy with Order business and Harry with school, Slughorn, and Malfoy.

Dumbledore dies, and given how much closer Harry and Ginny are this time, she accompanies him on the Horcrux hunt. Fleur and Bill do not get married. At best they are merely dating, with Bill possibly pushing Fleur away after being wounded citing he does not want pity. She instead continues on with Order business along with the others.

At this point there are two paths. First: during the Battle for Hogwarts, as it is a large chaotic battle with many skilled and experienced witches and wizards, it is possible for Ginny to die. There is no guarantees that everyone will survive such a conflict, and the Weasleys are an example. As Harry is 17 and Fleur is 20, this falls into the 'half your age plus seven' dating age rule, they have a long friendship already, and both would be reeling from the losses of friends and/or family sustained in the Battle (possibly with Bill dying fighting Fenrir as payback). Unfortunately, this can reek of 'killing off the hypotenuse' to advance the Harry/Fleur relationship, which can be seen as a cheap plot device. Secondly, Harry and Ginny proceed post-Hogwarts but as people tend to do, one or both change and drift apart in the following years, and Harry and Fleur's relationship starts to pick up in the wake of it.

Ideally this would be told as a series of single short chapters or stories spread across the years. A good example of how this can been done is 'Debt of a Sword' by gabrielblessing (Fate-Stay Night/Sekirei crossover, though little knowledge of either is really required). It tells the tale of the two characters in a series of small chapters that details the changes in their relationship from acquaintances to friends to roommates to lovers, set over a few years, and is an example of the author's best work.

 

You would definitely need a way to truncate the story because no one is going to read a story that covers 3 years without much changing in it, just to get to the "payoff'.

I dislike the tutor idea completely. Firstly, I doubt the Wizengamot would give a shit. It's not like it's an arbitrary sliding scale where suddenly Umbridge goes too far and that's the straw the broke the camel's back. And then the idea of Fleur and Viktor travelling to Hogwarts to tutor Harry... the logistics just doesn't really make sense to me. Sure, it could work, but it seems like there would be better ways to do what you're trying to do.

Mostly, I think there's a lot of unnecessary setup here. Firstly, you would definitely have to truncate the story, because no one is going to read 3 years of set-up to get to the payoff, when the payoff is just the two characters finally getting together. Like, you can summarize it as: Harry keeps in touch with the other Triwizard Champions. Still dates the canon girls. Eventually re-ignites friendship with Fleur, which turns into more.

All I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be convoluted. You don't have to kill people off either. You can just make Harry not date Ginny. It's not hard to just say that Harry never got beyond the stage of seeing her as Ron's little hero-worshipping sister. Doesn't really even need a reason. Same thing with Bill. Maybe Fleur gets a job somewhere else and never comes across him, never joins the Order. Otherwise you're just using the same canon pieces to get to a different conclusion.

 

Mostly I was going for minor changes here and there while staying true to the characters as I remember them to reach the end result of Harry and Fleur being in a relationship. I was also trying to present it in an organic way, with them being casual but not close friends over Harry's school career, to better set them up than 'they meet, whirlwind romance, sexy times'. A slower romance makes for a more satisfying conclusion.

Also despite how long three years seems in the perspective of most fanfics taking place a single year at a time over 40000+ words, the story would be told as individual short chapters of 1000-2000 words each. Each chapter would be about a single moment in the relationship: 1200 words for the Second Task aftermath, next section with 1700 words detailing a typical meeting of the Champions, 1800 words for Third Task fallout, 1100 words for Year Five meeting at Gringotts...Three years would go by in a flash. The story I mentioned managed to go from casual acquaintances to lovers over the span of several years in 26000 words, so it is definitely possible.

"Tutoring" could work. It is less actual tutoring than using a loophole in the decrees to prevent retaliation, similar to what happened in 'What Would Slytherin Harry Do?' I agree that Viktor wouldn't be the best choice as a tutor, though Fleur could work as she would already be in Britain at the time of the story.

Killing people off is DEFINITELY not my first choice (a character should only die for a damn good reason relevant to the story), and the story wouldn't end with them merely getting together, but continue on into 'post-credits' scenes showing the characters change and grow and yadda yadda. Frankly, I threw this together from shower thoughts and I lost steam towards the end without a framework of the school years to work with. The theme of this story here is romance, not action and not porn. The best romance stories work off of a slow burn--how much more satisfying would it be to see Harry Dresden and Molly Carpenter get together after years of wanting for it versus seeing the leads of a romantic comedy get together after an hour and a half?

Plus it is all a plot bunny, not a story script. It's here mostly to inspire ideas, even if they are bad ones.

 

Not that I prefer killing off people, but I could see a reasonable variation where the Death Eaters assault Bill and Fleur's wedding and kill the groom in the firefight. Harry grabs Fleur before disapparating with Hermione, and now Fleur can shift from love-struck ornament to former champion turned into instrument of vengeance.

As I was thinking about it, if Harry and Fleur disapparate with Hermione and Viktor, there could be all sorts of non-bashing disgruntlement from Ron and Ginny to sour the canon relationships. The remaining Weasleys would be preoccupied with protecting their family while Harry and allies are using continental resources to aid in their search for the horcruxes. Instead of fumbling around in the woods, they'd be moving through different safe-houses and enclaves, always wondering who they can trust and how much they have to hide while still getting the job done.

 

I've written this exact scene before. It was kind of egregious. Like, writing a prologue to a story where you kill off a character's love interest just so you can set her up as the vengeful widow who falls in love with the person who saved her... there's better ways to do it that don't seem as heavy handed. Drama for the sake of drama is never the way to go.