A Visit To Bulgaria

A Visit to Bulgaria, Chapter 11

Author: Luna

The crowd at the Revels was beginning to grow restless. The bonfire was still burning feverishly, and Alexei judged this as the right time to begin what for many was the sole reason that they came to the Revels. He made his way to Sergei Alexandrovich's side and murmured to him, "Shall we begin now?"

Sergei gave him a sideways glance and a little laugh. "Shouldn't we wait for a certain friend of yours?"

"No," said Alexei, "I think that he is enjoying himself very much where he is."

As are you with Anastasia, thought Sergei, but he said nothing. Sergei Alexandrovich had never been fond of Alexei Poliakoff - but, for that matter, neither were most of the young men at the Academy. "Well, then," he said, drawing his wand from his belt, "as you wish."

Alexei gave Sergei a little smirk and headed off to find Anastasia. He was the sort of young man who knew that he was insanely lucky in all aspects of life, and was quite willing to display his wealth, both material and otherwise. He realized that though he wasn't a particularly attractive person in many ways, his close relationship with Viktor gave him a great deal of benefits. It was from Viktor that he had gotten many of his prized possessions, including his Firebolt, his extensive wardrobe, and the villa in Italy that Viktor had given as a Christmas present to the entire Poliakoff family. And, thought Alexei as he caught sight of Anastasia conversing with a few of her friends, my greatest achievement.

"Chere, allons-y." He knew that she absolutely adored him when he spoke in French to her.

"Ah, yes, Tatiana, you know Alexei?"

Alexei smiled as he kissed Tatiana on each cheek in the European greeting. She was an uncommonly pretty girl and he wouldn't be altogether surprised if he might enjoy her on the side for a while, once the novelty of Anastasia had worn off a bit.

"I do now, and it certainly is a pleasure."

Tatiana blushed and giggled under her breath. He could see that she didn't have an ounce of intelligence in her body, but that wasn't exactly of great importance to him. He offered Anastasia his hand and they met up with Sergei, who was looking decidedly unhappy. It was time to dance.

*~*

Viktor and Hermione were almost to the clearing. It seemed that a translucent veil hung between the forest where they stood and the large gathering on the other side. If Hermione had been thinking rationally at all, she would have been racking her brains for where she had seen this sort of magic before.

The temperature had dropped considerably, and presently Viktor was warming her hands in his own. Hermione was shivering in her damp, thin clothes, and the warmth of the nearby fire was incredibly enticing. Yet what was more enticing was the solitude and privacy that she and Viktor had, here in the forest where no one could see them, where they could say and do whatever they wished. It was an amazing concept even to think about, complete and total privacy, and the possibilities of it filled her mind.

"You are cold," Viktor murmured. "Let me..." he paused, "warm you."

Hermione came into his arms, her teeth chattering a little, and feeling a little ridiculous for not bringing along some sort of sweater or cloak. However, she felt that freezing out here in the forest was preferable to being under the scrutiny of a hundred other people her own age. She whispered, "Do you regret anything that happened tonight?"

Viktor looked down at her solemnly. "I would think that you would already know the answer to that question. I have told you that I loved you, and nothing has changed in the past fifteen minutes." He closed his eyes and kissed one of her hands. "But I will say it again, until you believe me: I love you, I have loved you for a very long time, and I cannot think of any greater happiness than to have you by my side." Then, he grinned, and asked playfully, "Any other deep dark secrets of mine you want to know before we go join the others?"

"No," she murmured, "no. Only I have the strangest feeling that none of this will - " and she finished the thought silently, will be with me for very long. But to him she only smiled, kissed his lips, and said, "Shall we let Alexei and Anastasia have all the fun?"

It seemed that they crossed the barrier almost effortlessly, and the heat of the fire assaulted them like a wave.

*~*

Sergei Alexandrovich had always been fascinated with Muggle artifacts. Because of this, he wished that he had one of those impressive Muggle firearms which he could shoot into the air to catch the attention of the crowd. However, he had also heard what sort of mischief those noisemakers could cause in the hands of careless people, so he raised his wand in the air and spoke softly a spell that sent forth a huge burst of silver sparks that mushroomed over the clearing and fell gently over all of the revelers. When he could sense all of the eyes on him, he began to speak.

"Friends, I have the honor of welcoming you formally to the Midsummer Revels. Before we start the dance, I must acknowledge the great contributions that have been made to further this fine tradition. First of all, there would be no dance without music. Tonight we have the immensely talented Dmitri on the gaida, accompanied by Jana on the drums and Marya on the accordion."

A young man of middling height with carefully trimmed facial hair and grey eyes gulped the last of whatever was in the large tankard he was holding and hoisted up his instrument into the air, to wild applause. The instrument appeared to Hermione to look something like the Highland bagpipes, but slightly less complicated. She turned to ask Viktor, who informed her that it was a gaida, which was the Bulgarian version of the bagpipes, made out of a goat's stomach. "There is little in the world that sounds better than a well-played gaida," Viktor said. "You will see. And Dmitri is quite gifted."

Behind Dmitri were two girls, one carrying an elaborate accordion and one with a two-headed drum slung over her shoulder with a strap. Hermione could sense the tension and the excitement rising in the clearing, and she gripped Viktor's hand. On the edge of her consciousness, she knew that Sergei was still handing out thanks. But there were so many other things to watch and see that she felt that her mind could never take all of it at once. She saw that Alexei and Anastasia were about twenty feet away, the fire on their faces, grass stains on Anastasia's white dress, and flowers in her hair - but then Hermione squinted and realized that there were no flowers in her hair, or grass stains. The light of the fire was playing tricks with her eyes. For what seemed like the hundredth time that night, she felt that she was losing the ability to think rationally and calmly. In fact, the only time that the world around her had seemed like reality was when she had been by the lake with Viktor. Hermione thought to herself, fleetingly, there is some enchantment on this piece of the forest, but then she heard the high drone of the gaida and the thought was gone. Viktor had been right. The music was intensely beautiful, like the scent of a very heady rose is beautiful. It was nothing like the bagpipes of her homeland. This music was sensual, complicated, and seemed to speak to her. She felt her body moving without her volition, felt the person next to her grabbing her other hand, and looked up in wonder at Viktor. He simply smiled, although she could see the excitement in his eyes. "Now we dance," was all he said. All of the revelers had joined in an enormous spiral of dancers, coiled into the very middle of the clearing, almost touching the fire. Yet they seemed poised, waiting, and almost ready to unleash themselves. Hermione wondered what they were waiting for. Every part of her, down to her toes, was itching to move. For a second she thought, rationally, what am I doing? I'm delirious, in a mad party in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere.

But then Jana brought her hand down on the drum and Hermione was shoved into motion.

*~*

She remembered very little of the following hours. There were brief intermissions in the dancing, at least for her, when she had reached the end of the spiral and was flung off by the energy. She quickly regained her footing then, and seized the hand of the dancer closest to her. After a time, the spiral broke apart and the revelers went wild, or so it seemed to Hermione. They danced where they were, or ran madly around the fire, or skipped and leaped. Her feet were burning from where she had stubbed them on stones, and her hips ached with every step she took. She was still vaguely aware that she was running somewhere, dancing some sort of rhythm, and then she collapsed, and did not feel the ground as she hit it.

Viktor found her there before she was trampled by any other dancers. He picked her up, and she stirred a little. Her arms went around his neck, and he took her off into the surrounding forest, where the air was cooler and the drumbeats not quite so pulsating. He conjured a blanket quickly and laid her down upon it. Then, she opened her eyes.

"Viktor?"

He was sitting at the edge of the blanket, rubbing one of her feet. "Yes."

She moved a little, groaned, and stopped moving. "Oh, God. What just happened?"

"You exhausted yourself. It happens to everyone, eventually."

The drum and gaida were farther away, but the tones still rung in her head, over and over. She wanted, needed, to dance. She tried to sit up, but Viktor held her down.

"No, no. It is best not to return." He started to massage her other foot. "The...need, the need to dance more, will pass. It was the same for me, my first time here. I danced until dawn."

"Is it - is it some sort of enchantment?"

He nodded. "Yes. But I do not understand the whole of it."

Hermione reached up to touch a sore spot on her forehead, and winced. If she had had a mirror, she would have seen the greenish bruise that was forming there. She did not specifically remember being hit on the head, but she reminded herself that there had been a few minutes when she was unconscious.

"Viktor?" she whispered.

"Yes?"

"Take me home."

He furrowed his eyebrows. "To England?"

"No. The...the room where I sleep. Take me there."

Viktor got to his feet and summoned his broom. "Do you think that you can ride, if you hold on to me?"

"I...I think so. Yes." The fatigue was coming over her again, like a fog, but she fought it back and accepted the hand that he offered her to pull herself up. The broom hovered in midair before them, and Hermione waited for Viktor to mount it. But he gestured for her to get on first, and then climbed on behind her.

"You are very tired," he observed. "I will hold the broom. You can just lean back onto me."

She let herself settle back into his arms, which were around her and gripping the broom in front of her. She could already feel her eyes closing and feel the warm, soft fatigue settling around her, but then they lifted into the air and she started awake.

The night was exquisite. The moon glittered off of the lake where they had been earlier, and the trees gleamed. Near the horizon, to the west, lay the Fortress. Hermione had never thought it was so far off, but she admitted that she had never achieved a very firm grasp on the geography of this place.

"Hermione?" he whispered to her.

"Mm?"

"Tomorrow, there is something that I would like you to do with me."

She thought to herself, almost laughing, there will be a tomorrow?

"I am going to the capital for a few days to arrange some matters for the World Cup semifinals. Will you join me?"

Hermione perked up a little at that and sat up from her reclining position on the broom. "Of course! Are there any museums there, or monuments?"

"I knew that you would ask that...but yes, there are quite a few."

"Will we take Anastasia and Alexei with us?"

"If you would like them to come along, I am sure that I could tear them away from their studies. But I intended for it to be the two of us."

She smiled and understood. After what had happened tonight, she couldn't look back. Things were moving forward, quickly, and all she could do was enjoy it.

*~*

Near the still-crackling bonfire, Alexei was waiting for Anastasia to fall asleep. As her breathing became more regular, he observed her face fall into repose. She really was a beautiful girl, and incredibly charming, but if he wanted to amuse himself in a certain manner then Anastasia was just too risky. He didn't want to see what would happen if Viktor found that he had been enjoying himself too much. He loved Anastasia, and Viktor, a great deal, but Alexei was most definitely a person who believed that he had certain needs that had to be addressed. Needs that Tatiana, Anastasia's friend, could satisfy. She was still awake, listening to Sergei Alexandrovich, sipping a bottle of something, and looking quite bored.

Alexei knew precisely what to do. With a little smirk, he left Anastasia sleeping contentedly.

*~*

Hermione felt her feet touch solid stone just before she was lulled into a pleasant doze by the wind pushing rhythmically at her face and hair. Her feet were unsteady under her and she tripped and almost fell, but Viktor's arms were around her and holding her upright, his hands pressing her close to him, and her nose was full again of the pine scent of him.

"Viktor," she whispered, her thoughts muddled by fatigue. There had been something in the forest that had made her mind into the seething mess that it was now. The butterbeer? The other drink that she only vaguely remembered drinking? Or had it been in the air itself, another delicate enchantment? The air at the top of the fortress - for they had landed on one of the four towers - seemed too fresh and cold and brisk to her lungs.

"You're not yourself," he commented matter-of-factly before sweeping one arm under her knees and keeping the other at her shoulders to carry her down into the fortress. She absentmindedly put her arms around his neck for support and let her head fall back.

"But...Anastasia...and the fairies..." But then she reminded herself that there had been no fairies. "The lake..."

Viktor winced at the mention of the lake. Will she even remember that in the morning, or will her memories blur together and she will think all of it a dream? He suddenly regretted letting Anastasia persuade him to take Hermione to the Revels. He wanted desperately for her to remember what had happened by the lake.

With his hip he pushed open the door that led down into the bedrooms that the tower contained. Hermione's chamber, as the room for honored guests, occupied the room at the very top, with the most spectacular views. With concentration, he managed to open the door without his wand or even a spoken command, a technique that he had been studying over the summer.

He entered the room. It was dreadfully chilly and he noticed that the fire had burned out so long ago that even the embers were cold. Laying Hermione carefully down on the bed, he unsheathed his wand, conjured some kindling, and lit it. Then he crossed to the windows and made sure that each one was open only a crack. Despite the season, it was a positively Arctic night.

"Viktor?" He barely heard her voice. It sounded like she might have drifted off to sleep and was merely dreaming. But he went to her side anyway.

"Yes, Hermione."

"I'm cold. And I don't feel like getting up."

He noticed that she still had on the clothes that Anastasia had no doubt given her to wear at the Revels, a dress made of some floaty, probably enchanted material. The fabric was damp from where she had lain on the ground after she had fallen unconscious.

"There...there is a nightgown in the, ah..."

"Wardrobe?" he offered.

"Uh-huh," she murmured.

Inside the wardrobe were a variety of sensible-looking stacked clothes. Hanging from silk clothes-hangers were the non-sensible looking clothes, most of which he recognized as loans from Anastasia. On a high shelf he found floaty white things that he assumed were nightgowns. He unfolded one, closed the wardrobe doors, and brought it to Hermione. She lazily opened her eyes, and then closed them again.

"Don't want to get up."

Viktor sighed and reasoned that one night spent sleeping in her clothes would not be much of a problem. He pulled her to her feet and held her against him to keep her from falling. With the other hand he drew back the covers and then helped her into the bed. She yawned and smiled slightly. He arranged the pillows under her head and pulled the blankets around her, but she did not respond. Reasoning that she was already asleep, he made sure that the fire was steady, put out the other lights, and made to go.

He was almost to the door when he heard her voice, somewhat amused.

"No goodnight kiss?"

In a second he was by her side, his lips on hers, and for someone so tired she certainly did respond. Her hand was at the back of his neck, and then in his hair, on his back, back to his neck again. He shuddered as her other hand went around him and she was pulling him down to her, kissing him more and more insistently. She pressed her body through the sheets to his, and it took all of his self-control and more not to slip under the sheets with her and enjoy himself.

She eventually broke from his lips to catch her breath, her face flushed and her hands still grasping his shoulders. "Get into bed," she whispered, almost savagely.

He sighed. "Hermione, you are drunk."

She grinned. "So what?"

"It is not right."

She pouted. "You don't want to."

"No, no. Hermione," he said, looking straight into her eyes, "I am doing this because I love you. You would regret doing this. You need to sleep."

"Fine!" she spouted indignantly. She turned over, away from him, and pulled the covers around her.

Viktor was more surprised than hurt by this incident. He hoped that in the morning, they would be able to talk more seriously about it, but he reasoned that there was very little he could do about the situation tonight. He almost wished that he was not so very attracted to her, because he knew that he would think of nothing of her and would probably get very little sleep that night, remembering her arms on his back, her body against his.

His room was freezing as he disrobed and climbed into bed, his body wanting to be with Hermione and his mind frantically reminding him that she had not really desired him, that she had been drunk or enchanted or both. Over and over the thoughts battled in his mind, his desire and his conscience. He saw blurred images of her in his thoughts, her body dancing to the drums in the clearing, arms in the air and hips moving to the music. He saw her face, luminous in the moonlight as they swam in the lake, her lips opening just slightly right before he kissed her. He could see nothing but her in his mind, smiling at him as they whirled around the dance floor, to Gounod waltzes, and then hand and hand, their bare feet pounding the forest floor, as the gaida went on and on. He had been ecstatic walking to the Ball for dinner, with her on his arm, so proud that such a lovely, brilliant, exquisite young woman was interested in him.

He could tell that it was going to be a very long night.