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(i.) Winterwhite
Near noon on the day after the ball, Viktor climbs up on deck and spots her waiting at the place they agreed upon last night. She's swaddled in her robes and scarf, half turned away to watch the birds that flit through the briars along the lake, and Viktor finds an easy kinship between her and the small featherballs. Like them she's a dun brushstroke of softness on the white day, a self-contained heartbeat of warmth.
"Hardly worth your time, this little brown mare." The disdainful words come low and gruff, immediately at his back. Karkaroff moves with a quiet that is uncanny for such a big man; it's not the first time he's made Viktor jump when lost in thought. Viktor suspects that his headmaster and mentor rather delights in it.
"There is nothing I can say that will convince you, Igor," he replies. Call me Igor, boy -- that came after innumerable rounds of vodka, on the night they had bargained Viktor's contract with the Vratsa Vultures. Viktor, knowing the ins and outs of Karkaroff's sullen temper, uses the first name only when he senses that the liberty is welcome.
Karkaroff smooths long, elegant fingers over his goat's beard. "She's of dirty blood, I heard a boy say last night."
"You only care about that when you care to," Viktor observes, and is answered by a breath of laughter.
"I truly don't care at all, Viktor, as long as you don't act the fool in ways that harm our interests. You were damned loose-tongued last night." Karkaroff leans his arms on the ship's railing, his hooded gaze evaluating Hermione without any concern for discretion. "You'd like to take her to your bed, teach her another sort of dance? I suppose she is pretty enough for a fling."
Viktor feels his ears start to burn with resentful anger at the subtle lechery in Karkaroff's voice. "Why would I want to hurt her that way?"
"Hmm. It doesn't hurt much if it's done right," says Karkaroff drily, and Viktor, hearing the provocative tone, clenches his hands at his sides to keep himself steady.
It's hard to tell, often, whether Karkaroff is baiting him for fun or spoiling for a fight. Karkaroff likes him, that much Viktor is sure of, since when Karkaroff dislikes or lacks interest in someone he makes that painfully clear. Karkaroff's mind, cool and slippery-bright like quicksilver, enjoys challenging Viktor's methodical intellect, amused and intrigued by such a gift for magic in someone so different from himself.
Enjoys. There is that word again: a better word. Karkaroff enjoys Viktor, knowing full well that the latter is half repulsed by, half attracted to his ruthlessness and cunning. Viktor wishes that he himself didn't enjoy being enjoyed by someone he does not like. But he enjoys Karkaroff too, in his way, enjoys the contrary challenge of the man. It's all more convoluted and perverse than he ever expected it to turn out.
"Go then. Your little girl is waiting." Karkaroff smiles lazily with his mouth closed, the way he does. He is a haughty, handsome man with one glaring physical flaw, and rarely shows his damaged teeth unless caught off guard.
Viktor doesn't bother to suppress the muttered oath that passes his lips. Karkaroff is in one of his better moods, and he knows he can get away with it. "Don't watch us."
Karkaroff shrugs expansively, bored. "It's nothing new to me." He turns to walk along the deck back to the stern of the ship. "By all means, don't hurt her," he adds in a mocking murmur over his shoulder, "... much."
Viktor waits until Karkaroff disappears out of view, spitting out the bitter aftertaste of sweet venom, before he turns his focus back on Hermione. She's looking at him, has been looking at them, no doubt. Shame, burning and inexplicable, sidles like a snake over his skin. He wishes intensely that she hadn't seen.
When she raises her hand and gives him a swift, enthusiastic wave, his breath catches and he vows that he will make it not matter.
Her hair steals tea-and-honey highlights from the low sun, and when he walks down the gangway and approaches her, her cheeks heat over and her eyes shine -- brown, brown, such true deep brown. Viktor's own face feels hot. Some tensely furled emotion expands and labours for freedom in his chest like the wings of a strong, trapped bird.
"Hi!" It's the most breathless sound he's yet heard from her, and he smiles broadly and swallows his own greeting, unsure of his voice. Is it really only hours ago that he held her for the ball's last dance, barely swaying with her to the slow ballad of parting? Being so close to her had felt easy as breathing right then, the most obvious, pleasurable thing in the world.
Fortunately, his own tongue-tied state seems to relax her nerves. She returns his smile and gestures to the rucksack she's carrying. "I brought tea and apples. And cushions from Madam Pomfrey to warm our bums."
"Bums ...?" he asks helplessly, and she laughs. And her laugh is -- oh God, Viktor is in deep trouble. He knows this. He wishes to be in no other state.
She subtly indicates her backside outside the formless robes. "For sitting on," she explains.
"Aha. So this is bum," he says, lightly patting his own, and then has to laugh too, really laugh out loud because he's tried to choose what he would say to her ever since he woke up this morning, and this is probably the last thing he'd envisioned as their greeting words.
Hermione glances at the body part in question, quickly away and then back at him, grinning quietly. "And a very nice one it is, Viktor," she says, her voice demure but her eyes rather pleased with her own daring.
He lets out his breath in another huff of amusement and crosses the small distance to her, takes her gloved hand in his own and presses it lightly. "Enough of that," he says softly. "And enough of ..." he indicates the ship with a toss of his head. It may be just his imagination but he feels Karkaroff's insolent gaze like a trickle of ice water at his neck. "Now, ve go for valk alone, Her-my-nee, yes?"
(ii.) Winterlight
Her slender fingers curl around his large hand, and if they were tentative at first, now they hold on in such careful, trusting possession that he catches himself smiling for the joy of it. They are climbing a steep incline, Hermione leading the way, to a spot she knows of that she claims will be worth the uphill work. Viktor wonders if she really remains unaware that it is she who is worth the work for him. Uphill climb or downhill tumble, he's gladly along for this ride.
"What's he like?" she asks, picking her way carefully over frost-encrusted rock and heather. "Karkaroff, I mean?"
Viktor grimaces. "He is not good man. But ... interesting." Charismatic, petty, demanding, his mind supplies, and thinks too of Karkaroff's offhand, grandiose kindnesses, concepts that are hard for him to express in his limited English vocabulary. "He has ... moods."
She glances up at him. "Like you."
Viktor returns her gaze impassively, hiding laughter at her tart tone. "I don't know vy you think so."
"That scowl of yours can look murderous, truly," she informs him.
"Good," he grins, scowling a little for good measure. "Am happy to hear it vorks."
Her mouth works against a smile, as she stays doggedly on topic. "Doesn't he like that you're seeing me?"
In his mind, Viktor goes back over the talk with Karkaroff -- the part of it that isn't unthinkable to share with her, anyway. "He knows you are friend vith Potter, I think. Vot he not like is that I may tell you strategy and you may giff to Potter."
She frowns. "Well -- he has a point, you know. We should be careful when we talk about that stuff. It could get tricky."
"Ve vill be careful," he promises her. And he will. Whatever it takes.
By now, they've reached halfway up the hill, and Hermione stops and turns, gestures out at the lake and the sprawling, snow-dusted moors with red-cheeked pleasure and an owner's pride. "It's really pretty, isn't it?"
Viktor looks at her and smiles -- not exactly subtle, but why be? "Yes."
She bites her lip, pleased and flustered. "No really, do look, Viktor!"
Chuckling, he indulges her. It is, indeed, very pretty. The Scottish winter has nothing on the stranglehold of snow that grips Durmstrang for five months out of the year, the descent of unceasing twilight that strums the soul like a melancholy lullaby. But he doesn't miss the Durmstrang winter storms that howl with icicle fangs and claws, out to trap you and devour you. By dire necessity, he has built the toughness to withstand them, but they'll never be second nature to his warm Bulgarian blood.
"Is pretty. Not too hard vinter, this, just right. You like it here?" he asks. "Do not miss big city, London?"
She makes a quick grimace. "I ... it's weird," she says, as she starts climbing again, comfortably out of breath from the exertion. "I hardly remember, most of the time, that it's where I came from. London's not like a place to me any longer, it's ... it's more just the time that was ... before." She makes a low sound of frustration. "I'm not explaining well. I do miss my parents, and sometimes our house, or my room. But I was so often unhappy there."
Viktor chews on this for a while. "You are ... vot is English vord? No vizarding parent?"
"Muggle-born," she says. Her fingers make a sort of convulsive clutch at his before tugging free. She gives him a cautious, assessing look. "We have worse words for it, too."
"I haff heard the vorse vord," he tells her quietly. "Is the only vord Slytherins use for it."
Her mouth tightens a little, her glance up at him solemn. "You are Pureblood, right?" She must be climbing faster because there's her back in front of him all of a sudden.
It takes him one long stride to catch up and place his hand on her shoulder.
"My blood," he says as they keep walking, "is red. Varm. Like yours." He takes possession of her hand again, firmly, signalling with an arch glance that he is not about to let her have it back without a much better excuse.
"Oh," she whispers. "You're right. It's silly, isn't it? All this talk, as if blood could be dirty or pure, or anything but what it is. But you never know who thinks that way."
He nods. "Both my parents are vizards, if this is vot you asked. But my mother --" He thinks of his dear Mama cursing in frustration over her spells, and grins. "Must be vorst vitch in the vorld," he says, shaking his head fondly.
Hermione's anxious expression flies for scandalized concern. "Really? You mean, she's not good at magic? But --"
"She is very fine mother," Viktor says, feeling somewhat defensive. "Love her more than I can find the vords. She is excellent at many Muggle things. She raises horses because she loves them. Makes delicious food, vithout vand if she can help it. Her only magical talent, I think, is being good flier. If she vos not good flier, she vould probably be a ..." he frowns. "A not-magical vitch."
"Squib," supplies Hermione. "That is a little like Neville, one of my friends. He thought he might be a Squib, but he's found out that he is good with herb and plant magic. And he's a really nice person, like your mother." She smiles. "You must take after your father in magical ability, then."
"Mmm. My father jokes he had to give me double strength magical gift to compensate for my mother's lack. Then my mother raises eyebrow, like so, and says it is her flying talent makes me good at Quidditch."
Hermione laughs. "That's nice. I mean -- really. When families love each other, they tease that way. The Weasleys do the same--" and then she trails off, averting her face.
He wonders about that, watching her discreetly. Her affection for her parents is clear enough. It must be very strange, it occurs to Viktor, growing up a magical child with no magic around. Lonely, he thinks, and gives her hand a small squeeze.
She squeezes back and looks up at him, her eyes forthright. "I can't even imagine how worried Mum and Dad must have been. All those little things that ... accumulated, things that Muggle children just can't do. I didn't mean to, of course, but I guess that's why we didn't tease and laugh so much. They were always so worried about me."
"But ... how did you find out? About magical vorld, about the school?" Viktor realizes, with a touch of discomfort at his own inadequacy, how little he knows about the integration of Muggle-born magical children in his own country, let alone in England.
"I -- well," she begins, looking caught off-guard, and something hesitant about her expression makes him wince inside. Instead of urging her on, he presses her hand again.
"You don't haff to say," he mutters, his voice rough and stumbling in a disconcerting rush of protective feeling.
Hermione has stopped, her hand pushing away the thick strands of hair that the wind blows into her face. Her eyes rest everywhere but on his face.
"I hurt a boy." The words come in a muted rush. "I ... at least I think I did. He was the worst of the bullies. 'Freak', he'd say always, and sometimes 'witch'. Like, using it for a bad word. Isn't that funny?"
Viktor shakes his head slowly. "Yes. But no."
"I got so mad one day, in the lunch hour. He was tugging my hair so hard I fell, and he ... climbed on top of me and sat there grinning, his knees pinning down my arms at the elbows, saying 'freak, freak,' and then he ... spat in my mouth. In my mouth." She shudders, her pretty mouth twisting, ugly for an instant with the memory of it. Viktor's own mouth makes a grimace of empathy.
"And I felt this fury, this flood of power inside, and there was a ... push of sorts and a cry ... that's the last thing I remember. That evening, two women came to our house: McGonagall and Madam Hooch. They talked with my parents the whole night. I'm not sure what happened to the boy; I guess they fixed whatever was wrong and obliviated like mad. The next morning, they told me what I was, and that there existed a world where people like me were normal. Oh, you can't imagine, Viktor. It was like ... like having lived your life in a cage, and finding a way to escape."
Viktor can imagine -- barely. "How old, you vere?"
"Ten. I had to wait almost two years before going to Hogwarts, but my parents took me out of school and gave me private tutoring for that time. It wasn't so bad. Sometimes lonely and dull, but better than going to war every day."
Viktor makes a wordless sound, a low exclamation of sympathy really, as he runs his knuckles softly over her turned cheek and she glances up at him.
"I don't know why I told you that," she says, surprise in her eyes. "I've never told anyone here, never wanted to ... not even Harry or Ron."
"Thank you," he tells her simply. It seems the only adequate response.
A sunburst of a smile, bashful yet wide with wonder. "You make me want to. Say things. Do things."
Viktor feels his own smile start in his chest, in his eyes, before it reaches his lips a little more teasing than he had planned. "You also make me vant to do things."
There's a glimpse of that doe-eyed shyness again. "I'm not saying you should feel sorry for me," she says, taking refuge in a brisk (if breathless) voice. "Harry had it ten times worse."
"Really?" Viktor tags along as they start on the last leg of their climb, paying intent attention to her outraged account of the tribulations of her friend.
Oh yes, he will do whatever it takes. Even listen to her talk fondly and at length about bloody Potter.
(iii.) Wintersweet
"How many times have you broken it?"
They're sitting on a frosted, toppled tree trunk, on Madam Pomfrey's bum-warming cushions, sharing red winter apples and sweet black tea. Viktor's eyes are closed against the sunlight, his neck tilted back a little to relish the touch of warmth, a tea mug held in one hand and balanced on his thigh. When Hermione's cold, ungloved fingers tip-toe like butterfly feet down the ridge of his formidable beak, he wrinkles it and opens his eyes to the low sun's glare over the lake.
"Is tickling."
"Sorry--" She starts to withdraw her hand, but he catches it carefully by the wrist, then lays his palm against hers, and curls his gloved fingers around her naked ones to warm them.
"Did not say I did not like." He thinks. "The Bludger in Vorld Cup vos third time."
"Third!" She makes a face, cringes on his behalf.
"Yes." Viktor still feels aghast whenever he thinks back to the agony of that last one. He'd spat blood and puked like a pig on the lawn, seeing bitter-white stars.
"Well, it does give your face real character," she offers him as earnest, if cold comfort, and he gives a rueful shrug.
"Had already as much 'character' as vos fair for one face, I think. Did not need more."
She gives that opinionated, lop-sided smile that makes his heart gallop wide fields of pleasure: not only her lips quirk up, but one eyebrow, too, and her chin juts up with gentle humour. "It's better to have some character to spare than to have too little," she states firmly. For punctuation, she bites into her apple. The fruit is hard in the cold and gives off crisp, juicy sounds that make his mouth water.
"But is not fair, Her-my-nee. Your face has real character too, vithout painful accident, or ugly nose. In fact --" He cocks his head to study her profile -- makes quite a show of it, until it pays off in a blush and a laugh. Even her earlobes turn rosy, just above the knitted stripes of her Gryffindor scarf, and that bite of apple seems like a bit of work to swallow. "Is beautiful," he murmurs. He pulls the glove off his free hand by his teeth and lets a finger trace the dainty slope of her nose with its sweet bouncy tip. "Like perfect ski jump."
"Ski jump?" Hermione's voice is breathless. "You Durmstrang types are so relentlessly athletic."
"And these eyebrows ..." He smooths one with a finger. "Haff character too, like kitten tails. You ever noticed how much character haff kitten tails? Soft, but ..." He fights hard to suppress his smile as he meets her suspicious gaze. "... Just little bossy."
"Oh, indeed!" Her eyelashes slide closed for a second. She carefully sets her apple aside on the trunk before she looks up and studies him in turn, scrutiny as sombre as a zealous angel's. "Yours make you look angry, Mr. Krum."
Viktor is all too aware that she's still tentative whenever she touches him, still not altogether confident about the rules in this game they have started. So when she raises her hands slowly towards his face now, he makes no effort to hide how welcome it is, oh, how very much by the rules -- his lips parting in anticipation, breath leaving him in a softly controlled rush. Her fingers move parallel on both sides of his face: brush feather-light over his jaw, rest for a split second at the corners of his mouth and then skim his cheekbones on their way up to his eyebrows. Viktor's hand trembles and he nearly spills his tea mug over his lap. He can feel her touch everywhere.
She ruffles his thick eyebrows a little with her thumbs, smiling in mischief.
"Now if I comb them down, you look terribly sad -- aw, poor Viktor!" She bursts out in giggles of delight at her creation, so damned adorable that he puts up as tragic a mien as he can, to make her do it more. But she smooths them quickly up again. "You know, I like your scowl. It is so--"
"Vot, so?" he asks her, curious when she hesitates and blushes. Merlin, how she blushes.
"So ... masculine," she admits in a hasty hush, as though it were a dirty word. "You are, you know. And your broken nose just makes you ... even more so."
Viktor needs a second to digest this, slightly taken aback but inordinately gratified. He asks her with a slow smile, "You think so? You like that?"
She nods, biting her lip with an uncertainty that touches like a warning knife point to his chest. For some reason it's Karkaroff's parting words, however insincere, that come to mind. Fifteen. God. He should be very gentle.
"Then I guess the Bludger vos vorth it," he says in a light tone, holding her gaze as he bends over to place his tea mug in the snow, then straightens up again.
"That sounded awful, right? I would have liked you just as much without the Bludger to your face." But she's a little high-pitched and breathy now, and he suspects she may be on to his intention. She sits so very still and straight on the trunk, bracing herself with her arms, as though she's about to bolt and run, run, run, like a startled deer over the moors.
He leans forwards, just a few inches, so that he can brush the pad of his thumb over her lower lip where her teeth worries it. Hermione parts her lips on a soundless intake of breath, her gaze darting to his mouth, and he cups her cold cheek in his palm, his thumb brushing strands of brown hair away from her face.
"Can't think of clever thing to say about your mouth," he breathes. "Only it makes me vant to--" He swallows, looks at her inquisitively.
Her eyelids slide shut over darkening, mesmerized eyes. It is permission as good as any.
Steadying her with his palm over her cheek, he leans forwards, all muscles hitching with caution and want as he brushes his lips across hers, slanted, feels the skin's coolness like snowflakes, contrasted by the warmth of her quick breath through her nose over his cheek. Then the soft pillow of her mouth gives to his pressure, and the blood's heat beneath wins through the surface cold. Her lips are still slightly parted, and moving a little under his own as though she is whispering a question.
He pulls back slowly, thinking the reassurance of his self-control is the answer she needs. But Hermione follows him, hands bunched in the warm fleece of his coat lapels, her lips barely clinging yet tenacious, dazed eyes opening to reveal the same question formed in their clear, tawny depths.
Despite the cold around them, sweat starts all over his body.
It takes so little effort on his part -- just the dizzy, relieved decision to give in, just an infinitesimal push towards her. This time, she twines her arms around his neck, and when the tip of his tongue glides past her lower lip and finds her apple-sweet taste, she makes a sudden sound in her throat that sends all the blood in him redirecting in a thick, sweet rush.
His hands stroke up and down her back. He shows her, as tender as he knows, and Hermione responds as intently as if he were homework assigned by a particularly exacting teacher. Viktor has never been a girl's first before, as far as he knows. He's found cheerful, bold girls to explore with, has been careful in all his choices, unwilling to entangle himself in something as delicate as this. This trembling, still absorption that is as charged with restraint as with desire.
The softness of their mouths, her strong clutching arms, their warm quick breath and low sounds of discovery, all of it fuses together until Viktor feels aglow in an overspill of heat, as if the two of them, melded, were a red hearthfire in the wide bleak pallor of the winter moors.
He's the one who eventually needs a breather, heart racing and head swimming, one hand dug into her dark mass of hair and the other one dangerously tempted to stray beyond the boundaries he's set himself. As he pulls away, Hermione whimpers and slowly opens her eyes. Her mouth is swollen to a pout, as pretty as a rose, and he touches a finger to it as if to shush her.
"Vait," he whispers.
She blinks, looking like a sleepy and bewildered cat, waking from fireplace dreams. "For what?" she asks at length, quizzical.
Viktor laughs, the tension diffusing at her pragmatic question. It both tickles him and breaks him that she's gone in a heartbeat from sensuous to sensible.
"This must catch up," he informs her, placing his hand over his heart.
She tilts her head, the corners of her mouth quirking up in an expression of supreme scepticism. "You're a Quidditch ace, Viktor. Your heart can take it."
"And you are kissing ace, Her-my-nee. I should haff known --" He shakes his head.
She throws her arms around his neck again spontaneously. She's half laughing, half defiant as her cheek rubs along his, soft and hot. "I know that I -- everyone says I can be a little ... too much -- you don't mind though, Viktor, do you?"
Viktor wraps his arms around her, thinking that even if he'd been idiot enough to mind, this happy hug would be the most disarming gesture in the world. His nose burrows discreetly in her wild hair, inhaling scents of frost and woodsmoke, ink and apples.
"One can haff such thing, 'too much Her-my-nee?'" he wonders with a quiet smile. "Then I think I vill haff some of that, please."
(iv.) Wintergreen
It starts snowing lightly as they walk back, weightless flakes that dance in capricious gusts and then settle immaculate on the frozen ground. It feels like kindness and blessing, a spell whispered by winter to cover and keep their secrets.
Hermione shows him a different way down from the moor, a quicker one along a rocky dried-up river bed, leading down to the school's greenhouses. She has his hand in hers, tugging at it sometimes as she walks first, she who knows better how the path winds and where to step. Occasionally she looks up at him over her shoulder and their gazes lock in a warm buzz of questions and stomach-fluttering answers.
At one point where it is very steep, he jumps down first and reaches up to her, lifting her down by the waist, the way they danced the night before. There he takes the opportunity to hold her a while, stroking her hair with a hand gentle with reverence at this: that he has chosen someone out of the world and found that she cares for him, too, that she kissed him back when he kissed her and laughed with happiness afterwards.
Standing toe to toe, he is so much taller than her, and he senses that she enjoys the differences between them as much as he does: rough to soft, angles to curves, big to small. And yet there is a dignity intrinsic in Hermione that makes him feel on eye level with her in every way that matters. The way she carries herself -- her neck, her back, her words and her gaze, is tall and unafraid. She makes him consciously straighten himself a little, which people have nagged him about without luck since he entered the growth spurt of puberty (unsurprisingly, it is usually those less vertically exaggerated who'll tell him to stop slouching and walk tall, and this has made it a sullen pleasure for Viktor to scorn their advice).
"I guess I'll see you at dinner later," says Hermione as they start down the last slope, the greenhouses coming into view.
"I guess. Vish I could sit vith you at table," he murmurs. "Not haff to listen to Malfoy's bragging."
"That would be nice. But the rules are what they are." She pauses for a moment, and when she goes on, she sounds at once practical and a little timid. "You'll be going back to the ship after that, right?"
"Yes. Vill be practicing for Second Task," says Viktor and grimaces. He can't tell her this, but he'll be spending the evening attempting to transform his upper half into that of a shark. He's managed it perfectly only once as yet, and although he'd never admit as much to Karkaroff, it grossed him out to feel all those razor teeth in his mouth.
"And I'll be helping Harry with the same," she says with a small frown and a sigh.
"Good luck," he says sardonically, giving her a quick smirk that probably is a tad sharkish, at that.
Her eyes widen and then she does a second take, reluctantly amused. "You really want to win, don't you?"
"Of course," he replies in relative astonishment.
"No. I mean ..." She rolls her eyes. "You really, really want to win."
Rather than repeating his reply, he inclines his head at her, arching his eyebrows in a mild, Yes, and --?
"I just mean ... look at how you managed the First Task." She furrows her brow. "You seem so ... not unscrupulous, I guess that's not fair, but ... uncompromising. No questions, no fear, no prisoners taken --"
"Fear is vasted on hypothesis. Better save it for proper occasion." He's still not sure what she's driving at, just senses that something about him puzzles her, and decides to attack the problem from a different angle. "Her-my-nee, tell me ... vy read so much?"
Her gaze darts up at him, her turn to be taken aback. "Because -- well. Because." She narrows her eyes, smiling as she tries to figure him out. "Because they are there. The books. The well of knowledge. And knowing it, learning it, makes a difference. Between doing something and doing something in an, an outstanding way, or at least as perfectly as I can."
Viktor nods in relief. "Ven I do something, desire something," he explains, "same as you, I put whole mind to it. Nothing by half. I know I can't alvays vin. I hate that I can't," he says fervently, grinning again, "but I accept it. I hate to accept it, but --"
"All right," she says, giggling into her scarf. "I catch your drift."
"But if I do not crave victory, if I take aim and then fail because of a lack of desire, I can not respect myself if I lose. I vish to be hot or else cold, not ... nameless in-between."
"And you complain that you must sit at the Slytherins' table," she chides him teasingly, "with ambition like that ... Viktor." She throws an arm out in demonstrative emphasis, laughing. "Even your name is on your side."
"You think so?" He gives a stoic shrug. "Is svord vith two edges," he admits, "haffing name like that. In good times, name is on my side. But one day luck fails. And then my enemies can laugh cruelly at the beaten 'Viktor'. Like in Vorld Cup."
"But you won't let it stop you that they laugh. You won't stay beaten."
"Never."
"Then you do earn your name," she says easily. "No matter what happens."
"I know you vant Potter to vin." He watches her face carefully. "It is all right. He vos your friend long before I came here."
Her surprise seems entirely earnest. "Oh, I ... I haven't really thought about it that way. Harry, he didn't enter the contest on purpose, did he? All he wants, all I want is just for him to ... get out of this bloody thing alive, really--" Her voice trails off, making Viktor regret having put that anxious expression on her face.
"They vill not let him be real harmed, Her-my-nee." He sees her press her lips together, obviously unconvinced. "He is very good friend to you, yes? An ... excellent person, for you to care for him so vell?" he gets out. Although he can't put any heartfelt generosity behind that assumption, the curiosity at least is genuine.
"You don't like him," she observes.
"He and I, ve compete," he shoots back, and if she picks up his double meaning she lets it slide.
"I don't know ... sure Harry is nice. He's brave ... and kind, I suppose. So is Ron. Well, not always so much with the 'kind' bit, Ron, but he does mean well. Somewhere. Deep down." She shakes her head in amusement at her own loss to explain. "Isn't it a mystery, really, what draws particular people together in a close friendship? I think it can be just as inexplicable and compelling as falling in love."
He doesn't reply to this. He could explain, if she wanted to hear, could tell her in detail what makes her so attractive and fascinating to him, both as a friend and as a young woman, but he is somewhat afraid that it would be too much, too soon, and that she would be unable to reciprocate in any gracious way. He doesn't want to embarrass her any more than he wants to hurt her, and he is not too keen on embarrassing himself, either.
They turn onto the path winding between the long, low glass buildings, and without warning his quiet deliberation is interrupted as they walk into spring green.
The air hums with a loving magic, in a sheltered corner between two buildings. A boy stands flustered and stares at them, at their clasped hands, a wand and a watering can in his hands.
"Neville!" exclaims Hermione, tilting her head back and staring around. "This is, how did you do this?"
"Ma-madam Sprout taught me," stutters the boy, looking in quick alternating darts to their faces and to the ground. "It's just a sunny-spell to make the winter-blooming plants more, more willing. The highland winters are too harsh."
They all glance around. It's the air that shimmers translucent gold-green, the palest shade, like a snowed-down sapling's winter dreams of April. Sweet fragrances drift in the mild breeze.
"Viktor," says Hermione, turning to him eagerly, "this is Neville that I told you about, my friend who is good at Herbology." The boy who wasn't a Squib after all, remembers Viktor and extends his free hand.
Neville appears highly alarmed to have been talked about, but reaches out a hand to shake the one Viktor offers, so shy that Viktor decides that this boy isn't rival material. It makes him warm towards him immediately.
"What is flowering now?" asks Hermione, and Viktor actually loves how she talks to Neville, with a sweet immediacy of interest that isn't like the smooth impenetrable bubble she inhabits with Potter and the red-haired boy. The attentive way she turns towards her friend is almost protective, as though she's sternly ordering Viktor to be kind.
Neville turns to the sheltered south wall and shows them what he's been caring for, strokes tender fingerpads along opening chalices as he murmurs English names that sound like small poems -- honeysuckle, Christmas rose, wintersweet. Occasionally he sends a glance towards their locked hands, until Hermione bites her lip and blurts out to him:
"You won't tell anyone right away, will you Neville? It's not exactly a secret, but it's ... it's just happened, you see."
"Oh! I ..." His mouth is open in surprise. He seems to consider her request closely, before he replies on a note of worried humour: "I mean, everybody already assumes you are, er, together, after the ... ball and all that, but. Sure. If anyone says anything, just ... don't blame me, okay?"
The two of them glance at each other with bashful grins, and Viktor stands beside, amused and indulgent and feeling quite strongly that yes, he is a little older, certainly. But that is all right.
"I saw you last night," he offers to Neville as they're about to walk on. "You are good dancer, Neevil."
The boy is startled into a smile that fills all his face. "Thank you. It ... it was the most brilliant fun, wasn't it?"
That happiness lingers on his face, proud and a little wistful as he watches them step out of the green into white again.
(v.) Winterwhere
The sun has just begun clinging to the blurred line of the hills when Viktor boards the ship, having taken his sweet time over goodbye with Hermione up near the castle.
"Look at the smile on that face," says his friend, the lanky Finn Staffan with a wry grin as he comes down into the galley. "Don't you look just like the cat that got the cream."
Viktor swats him amiably on the head, trying with all his might to temper his goofy expression. "It was nice. Thank you for caring."
"Karkaroff said to send you to his cabin when you arrived. Speaking of cats, he's been pacing like a tiger all afternoon. A jealous tiger," says Staffan ominously, "brooding over the trollop who stole his golden boy."
"Oh, damn," Viktor curses. "Better get it over with..."
Karkaroff's cabin is swirling with smoke from the spicy tobacco that he favours for his pipe, and with the scent of angelica from his favourite infused vodka. He's been reading, heavy books lying open on his desk in disarray, but now is sitting leaning back in his chair, watching Viktor with narrowed eyes that seem all black pupils and shadow.
"Well?"
Viktor inclines his head. He finds himself unexpectedly impatient with this flair for dramatic staging. "I am sorry, had you expected me back before?"
Karkaroff snorts. "Hardly." He puffs on the ebony mouth piece of his pipe, blows out a ring of cloying sweet smoke. "Did it hurt then?"
"That's not for you to know," replies Viktor softly.
Karkaroff jerks upright in the chair in one of his lightning stabs of temper. His voice is an almost voluptuous deep hiss, like a snake's. "You can make the girl yours as thoroughly as you please, as long as you remember that you are mine, boy. Mine and Durmstrang's." Jealous tiger, indeed. It occurs to Viktor that Karkaroff may mean to shape him for his own ends, eat his soul. And that is just not going to happen if he has a say in it, not without shackling spells or Imperio.
It burns in him suddenly, a fire of certainty at his marrow, how repulsed he is by Karkaroff's cold, twisted ideas: that girls should be broken in like horses, that tender green shoots may be trampled down without care, as if it is their own fault for being young and breakable. He remembers the dragon's eggs, shattered at the end of the First Task, and understands perhaps for the first time consciously, irrevocably, how far it could get out of hand, this kinship of ruthless ambition. He sees something of himself in Karkaroff, that is true, but there's a lot more in the man that he wants no part of.
And yet it would be stupid if not dangerous to alienate him.
"You can teach me much about magic, Igor," says Viktor in an even, careful voice. "You can teach me much about strategy. But you can't teach me anything about this."
Karkaroff sinks back again, his anger reeled back under control, eyeing him through the smoke wisps. His lids lower and his lips purse in a sour approximation of a smile.
"Time will show," he murmurs, barely audible, "-- what can be taught you, boy."
Viktor finds it a rather weak comeback. He gives a courteous bow and leaves the cabin without spoken permission, happy enough to let Karkaroff have the last word.
-end-