Harry frowned in concentration at the blonde witch in front of him as he tried to figure out why everyone around her seemed moments away from drooling. He couldn't really come up with an answer.
She was pretty, he'd give her that. She also appeared to be quite aware of how to make use of what she had, so he could understand that she would be labeled as 'obviously attractive', but she wasn't drool-worthy, was she?
Which made it even stranger when some of the girls around her began to adopt the same glazed looks that the boys had.
Ron was completely out of it, ignoring the food in front of him in a way that made Harry feel distinctly worried for an imminent apocalypse. Hermione was also following her with her eyes, but appeared more self-conscious than anything. As if she was finding herself slightly jealous that she couldn't make the boys react like that.
Harry tried to think of an answer to all this bizarreness that surrounded him, but couldn't really figure one out. He hadn't been this confused since Ron had jumped out of his seat during the Quidditch World Cup.
That thought made him pause. Ron had only reacted like that because there had been veelas involved, and whilst Harry hadn't been able to figure out what was attractive about the bird-like creatures who looked just about ready to chew his face off, he had been told that they had something called an 'allure' which would cause most men to react strangely.
Was it possible to be part-veela? Harry wondered quietly to himself. Being able to breed outside of the human species would certainly explain why Professor Flitwick was so short, or Hagrid so big, and magic was most likely involved so it was doubtful that it was impossible.
Nodding silently to himself at his logical assumption, Harry looked again at the blonde part-veela witch, only to find that she was staring at him with a small frown.
Harry blinked, not having expected that someone would be paying attention to him for seemingly no reason, but then she sniffed loudly before taking her seat, ignoring his existence.
Harry paused for a moment, trying to replay the last few moments in his head, before arriving at the obvious conclusion. The blonde was a woman. Obviously, she wasn't supposed to make sense.
Satisfied with his answer, Harry turned his attention to the food, taking advantage of his iron-stomached friend's distraction to fill his own plate.
XXX
"Am I not attractive?" Fleur Delacour cornered him some time later.
Harry raised an eyebrow at the question, not really understanding why she was asking him when there would be plenty of people around to heap praise on her from what he'd observed.
"I don't believe we've been introduced." He said instead, attempting to hint at just how sudden this demand had appeared.
"I'm Fleur Delacour." She said in a deceptively sweet voice as she tried to keep her annoyance down to a minimum. "And you are Harry Potter, yes? I asked you a question, no?"
"Miss Delacour, you are very attractive." He attempted to avoid any confrontation, having been told that flattery went a long way to keep women from getting angry at you. "Might I ask what prompted this question?" He tried to be polite.
"You do not drool, Harry Potter." She stated in a very straight-forward manner. "I want to know why."
Harry wondered briefly if french people were rude in general or if this girl was a special case, before suppressing it as he was actually feeling somewhat refreshed at being exposed to someone being rude at his face rather than talking behind his back The lack of both Malfoy and insults being thrown at his friends were also not a bad thing.
