Past Present

They spent a fairly lazy afternoon, finally managing to go swimming in the lake for a couple of hours. Floating really, as none of them had much energy. Tomorrow was their last full day here at Pavlova. Viktor had agreed to escort them all on the morning after that to the Burrow for their usual stay with the Weasleys once their visit to Bulgaria had ended. This year it had grown from the usual week to ten days. Now that he had gotten awake, Viktor found he didn't want to go to sleep, despite the lateness of the hour and everyone else being in bed, so he reclined here in the dark den on the sofa, tucked in and propping his chin on the back, in front of the large window, looking at the moonlight spilling over everything outside.

He didn't hear his father walk in. His father's voice always had a theatrical, booming quality, even when he spoke softly. It commanded attention without having to demand it. "Viktor," came the deep, gravelly whispered Bulgarian behind him, "scoot over. Let your old papa sit on the sofa with you for a minute." The request reminded him of the nights when his papa had come in to his bedroom at a similar hour, only to find him sitting up in bed silently, his eyes just as wide open as they were now. Mostly when his mama had been gone and he couldn't sleep.

Those nights Nikolas had perched on the edge of his bed and cradled him and reeled off as many Russian songs and poems and fairy tales as he could muster until Viktor had been so worn out he couldn't possibly stay awake, no matter how desperately he had tried. They each didn't look into the other's eyes. He had read somewhere that eyes were the windows to the soul. That must explain it. Some windows open on places you don't want to revisit. Sometimes he could still hear Papa's voice telling the Russian version of Cinderella in which she wore the more plausible fur slippers to the ball when he was halfway between waking and sleep. In his memory, it always layered over the beating of his papa's heart, throbbing in his chest beneath Viktor's ear.

In those first few weeks, he had stayed awake mostly because he was afraid that come morning, his father would have to tell him he didn't have a mama anymore either. If he didn't sleep, maybe he wouldn't dream about Papa saying Violeta was gone again. He wouldn't keep picturing that single image he had burned into his mind of piles of rubble and the people lying there, dirty and bloody with blank, staring eyes, like rag dolls and bits of rubbish, stray limbs poking out here and there at odd and unnatural angles, before Papa had picked him up and buried his face into his hard shoulder, the weightless sensation of being carried back across the street toward the cafe where they had been waiting, Papa's big hand on his head, smoothing his hair over and over. It was there every time he closed his eyes and let his guard down. It crept in while he slept and couldn't defend himself.

He wouldn't hear the yelling and the running and the wailing of the sirens blending in with the wailing of the people who were still standing and weren't stunned into an eerie silence. He wouldn't wake up in the halls of the hospital, with those sterile white lights hurting his eyes, to his father's crying both from the grief and the relief. From finally finding Violeta's name and Mama's name on different lists. He grew to hate sleeping and waking up equally, for a while.

It became a habit, fighting sleep, because you couldn't defend yourself when asleep. Then Mama came home and he had tried to stay awake in case she needed anything, in case she screamed and cried when the same image came for her and she had to touch the both of them to convince herself that they weren't gone too. She hadn't been able to make it up the stairs yet, so he would have to go to her. He couldn't bear to think of her enduring it one more second than was necessary, so he listened. He was ready.

On the nights it was quiet he sometimes stayed awake just for the comfort of hearing two voices downstairs late at night, arguing over which Tchaikovsky album to listen to, whether to play Beethoven or Handel, when he crept out onto the landing and strained to hear with his feet splayed on the top step where they couldn't be seen from the den, bony and usually scabbed knees together, running his fingers over the thick calluses already worn into his hands from the handle of his broom. They sat above the soft palm of his hand, nestled into the area beneath the base of his fingers, at odds with the surrounding skin. He worked at making other parts of himself just as hard, as numb, as unfeeling. The scabs always changed, different trunks he climbed, different branches he clipped when he was going too fast on his broom, intent on the practice snitch he had insisted on buying with his birthday money. But those same calluses had been part of him almost as long as he could remember. They never changed.

In some ways it had been a relief to go to Durmstrang. No one there knew or cared how many nights he sat up in bed, reading by the light of his wand behind the thick drapes rather than let himself drop off. How many nights he woke up in a cold sweat and a tangle of bedclothes, noiseless except for his heart pounding in his ears and quickened breathing. No one came and checked, anymore, not even Poliakoff, who had always slept like the dead, the sleep of someone with a clear conscience and no troubles. So he didn't worry anyone.

He had happened to draw the bed next to Alexei, when he still slept in the communal dorm. Alexei often slept in the bed next to him with his drapes open, charmingly unashamed of his unkempt little burrow in the blankets, the crumbs he got in his sheets when he snuck food from the kitchen into his room, his wildly mussed hair, his slack mouth, the ridiculously thick flannel pyjamas he wore in the cold, even his occasional snoring. Alexei obviously enjoyed sleeping. Dreaming.

Viktor sometimes hunched in bed, sitting, knees bent, slender arms wrapped around his shins, brooding and angular like a hawk on a wire, a hawk on the hunt. Instead of sleeping himself, he watched Alexei at it, his face unlined and untroubled in sleep, and he envied him. It made him hungry for that kind of peace. He was starved for it. It might have been what made him tolerate Alexei's full attention later. He had hoped some of it would rub off on him by accident. How could anyone so noisy and raucous during the day be so still and languid by night?

And then the referral by Karkaroff to Vratsa's scouts had meant he could help at home, rather than just being a burden, another expense they could ill afford. They could afford to let the boarders go and not replace them as long as he sent the money home. Papa and Mama would never entertained the thought of it if they had any other way. There hadn't been one. By this time, they had no savings left, only debts. Boarders were hard to come by these days. Papa refused to take up his old job, he couldn't leave her, the inn, even if it did mean bankruptcy. Losing it. He would stay while he could. When Viktor worked, Papa and Mama didn't have to feel compelled to drag themselves upstairs in the middle of the night and the wee hours of the morning to see if he was still up. They could concentrate on just putting themselves back together for a change. Only the two of them at ease with one another, like it was when they were in the den and thought he was sleeping.

But it had meant making sure no one found out, too. Even then, the reporters had been hungry for a story, and they smelled one on him. He wanted to make sure his parents didn't become that story, that the most they would get out of him was his youth and his skill, a few records broken, otherwise a mystery. That Violeta didn't become that story. They had all buried her too deep to have her ripped up by quills and paraded under their noses again. Even Alexei had only gotten a tiny inkling of what had happened to them. Foolish weakness to have told him that much, but what else could he do? At least he couldn't be tempted to talk too much and let the whole story slip. Nor would Alexei.

His competitors, older and younger, had been hungry for a weakness they could exploit, and that would have been it. So he buried it and tamped it down with his foot, and didn't dare blink when challenged even when it meant broken broomsticks and arms and noses and bruises and his own blood everywhere. He soon learned to admire brooms as tools, not the pseudo pets some of the other players seemed to regard their brooms. He broke too many to become fond of them. Brooms could be replaced and body parts healed. Even hearts, when you quit picking at the wounds. And he tried not to get close enough to anyone that he was tempted to talk too much. To let it slip. To give anyone the ammunition that might catch Papa and Mama in the crossfire.

Problem was Alexei didn't take the hint, he wasn't offended easily, nor was he fended off easily once Viktor had stepped between him and Karkaroff that first time in class. Alexei latched on and would not be shaken off. So Viktor had accepted him as the closest thing to a friend he had. He had little more than tolerated him at first, but apparently he hadn't been too bad at it. Alexei was still there. At least Alexei didn't pry when he sensed Viktor wanted to stop talking, he just did the talking instead.

Alexei did respect boundaries, and Viktor had so many then. An amusing companion at least. A very odd couple indeed, to everyone else, dark and silent Viktor with his spiky exterior and inscrutable expression, bubbling Alexei with his never still mouth, his pranks, his assault on life to suck it completely dry. Everyone half expected Viktor to murder Alexei over breakfast for talking too much one morning, but instead, the chatter was soothing. It kept him from having to think too much. All the others got the full brunt of his glaring, because they were only interested in bloodlines or money, or jealous of Viktor's having made primary seeker on the house team in his first year.

Or worse, interested because they had already gotten wind of those reporters and Karkaroff saying Viktor Krum was going to be a name better remembered than Josef Wronski in a few years. Interested because they thought he would be famous. Then later, interested because he was already famous. Coaches chose him because he would break all the records, because he was skilled, because he was young, pliable, but stubborn enough to coach himself when they couldn't.

He would nearly kill himself trying to master the Wronski Feint, get it an inch lower, a second faster, then get back up and try it again when others would refuse. He was willing to lift weights that made even the first team beaters cringe. Anything for an advantage. All the small advantages added up. No weakness left to exploit. No chance for an opponent to get an advantage. Stubbornness and fierceness and a touch of desperation made him a great player. His youth made him a little more marketable. Vratsa was always willing to give a new player a chance. It all added up.

A few months into the first year, Karkaroff had begun to set him apart, favor him, setting him at odds with the other students though he held Karkaroff at arm's length even more furiously than he had everyone else. It had been a feeling, and not a good one, either, that made him do it. Karkaroff had no idea of the situation at home. Or what had caused it. Or why most of Viktor's answers consisted solely of silent glares or grunts or snorts, or at best, single words, short phrases. He didn't intend to let Karkaroff know any more than what was necessary. It made him cringe to think of that man really knowing anything about him. About Mama and Papa. About Violeta.

It had been a relief, in some ways, not having to talk with anyone. Letting Alexei do all the social interaction, letting Alexei build a fortress of sound around him and make him forget himself and laugh when Alexei did things that seemed completely mad, like loading a teacher's desk with hundreds of stunned frogs that got pretty lively just in time for the lecture and the professor's customary retrieval of his reading glasses from the drawer. They had found frogs in their beds even weeks later. And Alexei actually seemed to like him regardless of how much he growled or complained or scowled or brooded. Alexei didn't know what was good for him, sometimes. The way he always ran after all the wrong girls among those who followed Viktor around proved that.

He had even begun sleeping eventually, worn out from Vratsa practices, the games with real professionals, the never ending interviews and English lessons and tutoring on the road and house games and hiding behind books in the library at midnight and Karkaroff's regime demanding you be up at dawn or even before when he was at school. He pushed himself until he couldn't go anymore and then he was insulated from the rest of the student body in his private quarters. Professional games and practices had meant arriving back at odd hours, so it was supposedly in deference to the other students, rather than to Viktor. Stubborn work ethic, Alexei had called it. In truth, he was just afraid to lose the chance to help keep Pavlova. Afraid to stop doing the one thing that he truly enjoyed and completely controlled lest he curl up and die from lack of freedom. Lack of joy. Books were wonderful, but they were still on the librarian's schedule, at her whim. The schedule of the professors. Quidditch was on his schedule. The schedule meant he didn't get home often, but at least it meant he still had a home to go to. It meant they didn't lose the one place that still held her memory so perfectly. He slept so heavily for a while from the absolute exhaustion he didn't remember dreams, good or bad. Exhaustion was good, he pursued it. It gave him the closest thing he could find to Alexei's peaceful sleep.

It wasn't a totally joyous existence, but it was much better than bearable even at its worst, those years. For some stretches he was even something approaching happy. Then that awful nagging feeling at the back of his mind began two years ago. After Karkaroff became headmaster. The rumors about the mark on his arm. The words "Death Eater" whispered in the halls and dorms, then finally spoken aloud. The talk about Lord Voldemort gaining power, his return, his continuing pursuit of The Boy Who Lived. The polarization of the faculty. The students. Factions forming, the distrust forming like mist on the lake.

The voice when he least expected it. A whisper at first, like a gnat in his ear, faint but annoying. Bearable. He had suspected it was Karkaroff even then. He could hear the warning note in his simpering fawning over Viktor while he played the tyrant with everyone else. It made him shiver when the coldest drafts in the castle couldn't. The nightmares began anew, then they brought endless new variations, the only dreams he had. He returned to being a light sleeper. He woke at nothing, no matter how bone tired he was. He woke sometimes to the voice, real or imagined.

Louder and more insistent in the months leading up to the World Cup. Familiar, but not absolutely recognizable. He couldn't prove it was Karkaroff, even to himself. Combatable, though. Karkaroff had miscalculated just how stubborn Viktor's work ethic really was. Viktor and Alexei had decided to give themselves the Defense Against Dark Arts education that Karkaroff had neglected, poring over books in the library for things that interested them. Not only could he execute a competent Imperius, he could resist one too, thanks to his clandestine practice sessions with Alexei. Even one as persistent as his headmaster's.

It took nearly everything in him, to keep it at bay, pushed it into the same compartment he kept everything else trapped in, but it happened at the expense of his sleep and his appetite. He made excuses about stress and nerves and practice, and he watched himself get thinner and more sallow by the day, and he didn't much care anymore, as long as it didn't interfere with the one real joy he had left, being in a Quidditch game, pay or no pay. It was easier to block out when he was on his broom. He could have blocked out anything there.

Luckily everyone had put his even greater moodiness down to adolescence, fatigue, his sallow skin to the rigors they were all going through for the competition, the increasing thinness to his general lack of appetite and the growth spurt that added a couple of inches to his height. He had barely been able to force himself to swallow the birthday cake they had provided for his birthday the week before the final game. It had seemed sickly sweet and cloying. They had chalked that up to his getting overheated during the practice.

Lucky his parents had been ill and hadn't made the World Cup. Mama would have had a fit. Ordered him into bed. Papa would have asked him what was wrong. And he didn't have an answer. Wouldn't have made a difference if he could have fingered Karkaroff then. What would they do? Get him away from Karkaroff? Impossible. Wherever he went, the administration would have wanted to send him to the Triwizard Tournament. He was too big a trophy to keep locked up, especially after the Cup. To Hogwarts. And that meant Karkaroff would be there too, no matter which school delegation Viktor was part of.

He had gotten ill with the flu nearly as soon as it started to get cold in Durmstrang, late September. His defenses were stretched to the limit, and something snapped. He couldn't eat most meals for a week, and when he did it often came back up soon after. Even Alexei broke his usual rules, had dared to question him about it, pointing out that he knew Viktor was sick. There wasn't much Viktor could do, but try to fend off his concern, write it off as a virus, being overtired. Alexei wasn't fooled, but what could he do about it? He could hardly sit with Viktor like a child.

When Alexei had discovered him face down on the cold stone hall floor in the middle of the night, his forehead on fire with fever, covered in sweat yet shivering in the cold night air, bare except for the shorts he usually slept in, with no recollection of how he had gotten there, Alexei had been so alarmed that he had physically hauled him down the hall and the winding staircase to the infirmary and onto a cot. Next he had gone to rouse the school nurse by pounding on her door and shouting. That brought most of the professors running, and one of them had fetched Karkaroff.

His condition had scared them all so badly, they hadn't even bothered to ask Alexei why he was in the hall fully clothed and wearing his cloak in the middle of the night when he was most certainly not delirious. Challenged, Alexei might have protested that Elena had made him lightheaded enough on their moonlit walk around the grounds. Alexei's longwinded lecture had been the first comprehensible thing he heard in the infirmary. Everything else was roaring and static and distortion. He could barely make out Alexei's blurry form sitting on the cot next to his in the lamplight, but the voice grounded him. He wasn't floating away as badly with Alexei's voice to hold him there, Alexei's yelling. It made his teeth rattle, his ears throb, but he welcomed it.

"I had to hold you under the arms and drag you down the central staircase. You cursed and growled at me like a mad dog when I tried to get out my wand to get you downstairs. I probably scraped half the skin off your ankles and feet, and you fought me like a wounded bear most of the way down the steps. Viktor, damn it all, you are a lot bigger and stronger than I am, even if you are wasting away and won't admit it! You wiry little bas-..., you scared the hell out of me! You couldn't tell me who you were or who I was or where you were. I don't think you even realized you were out of bed, the way you answered me. If you can call mostly moaning and mumbling incoherently an answer."

He could tell Alexei was worried because he was now cursing loudly and indiscriminately in front of the professors, not censoring himself once he got wound up. He muttered a string of profanity that would have made a sailor blush before starting in again. "Here I am thinking you're near dead, and you still practically knock me down the stairs when you get it into your head you don't want to go to the infirmary. Anyone would think you had a bad experience with a mediwitch, the way you avoid them. I never should have mentioned the word 'infirmary' even if I thought you were unconscious."

Alexei's anger was sharp, sharp as his voice. Viktor welcomed it the way he would have welcomed his mother brushing his sodden hair off his forehead right then. He couldn't seem to raise his hand to do it himself just now. It was real concern, the way Alexei kept repeating his name, more real than the shadowy figures on the other side of the room. "I should have just yanked you down here before you knew what had happened. That's what I get for talking to you, Viktor. No one should ever argue with you, Viktor, even when you're at death's door. They should simply bash you in the head with a whacking great mallet and slap you on a cart and hope they get you where they're going with you while they have the chance, before you wake up and dismantle them with your teeth. It's the only way to win an argument with Viktor Krum. I feel sorry for the professors who had your papa, if he really was anything like you, Viktor."

He had cursed at the adults so vehemently when they asked him to leave that they relented and let him stay there on the cot next to Viktor's. Normally, Karkaroff would have slapped Alexei for a start for daring to practice such language, then dragged him off to the dungeon for further punishment, but he had bigger things on his mind at the moment. The rest of the professors milling around seemed to be similarly worried over him. So worried that Alexei's mouth didn't raise much concern. Viktor had clung to Alexei's anger, it meant Alexei cared whether he lived or died. Good job, that, since Viktor didn't much care at the moment. Alexei didn't get angry at anything he didn't really care for. It was why Alexei didn't often get angry. Not much mattered to him enough to get angry over. And Viktor found he couldn't work up any anger of his own at the moment, and that had always been his one reliable emotion. Alexei's would have to do.

But Alexei didn't know that it hadn't been the bit about "Taking you to the infirmary" out of Alexei's intended soothing stream of patter when he had lifted him from the floor that had made him fight. It had been "Then I'll fetch the nurse and Karkaroff". Something about the name had made him panic, resort to fight or flight. It gave him the same feeling he got when the nurse had sponged him down with ice water to help bring his fever down. He could hear the blocks of ice thumping against the tub she carried, and idly wondered where the kettle drum could be. She told him when she roused him enough to give him a mouthful of ice chips that he had vomited blood earlier.

He didn't remember it, but he thought they were new sheets he was on. Wait, it was a different cot, a different piece of ceiling he was staring at. He was where Alexei had been a few moments...hours maybe...ago. He didn't remember being moved. She pronounced it the worst case of flu she had ever seen and hoped it didn't get around the rest of the school. Curiously, no one else ever got it. "Fight, dammit! Fight whatever the hell's going on in your head, Viktor! Is it him? Igor? Karkaroff?" Alexei had hissed in his ear when she went to fetch more blankets and convey her diagnosis to the huddle.

"Not sure, I don't know who, make it go away if it's him, I can't keep this up," he had found himself mumbling, pleading, seemingly very far away. He realized he was clutching Alexei's wrist desperately, as though he were drowning. Perhaps he was. His head buzzed and roared, but at least the voice wasn't there. He wasn't coherent enough to listen for clues in it if it had been.

He made it through the night, a confusing swirl of people across the room conferring among themselves and setting up shifts to help check on him, booming ice tubs, cold sponges and cold spoons full of ice in his mouth, his tongue thick and sore, his forehead on fire, sweating so much that he could feel the droplets running along his temples and into his sopping hair every few seconds, dripping and splashing onto the pillow like scalding teardrops, then freezing and shivering when they pulled the blankets off of him, that weightless floating away, then feeling as though his limbs were weighed down with lead, trapped against the bed. Once, a feeling of being turned inside out, weakness, draining the consciousness and the strength from him.

A pale, wan Alexei told him the next morning that they had managed to get a dose of potion poured down him with an eyedropper, only to have him bring it up again a lot faster. "And after I had to help pin you down to keep you from flailing all over the bed. The second you managed to keep down. You were comatose the rest of the night. I don't think you had enough energy left to vomit. You do realize your hip bones are sticking up a good inch and a half past your stomach? You look like you've weathered a famine," Alexei had said bluntly, slightly indignant. Viktor had kicked the covers down in his sleep, and managed to raise his head enough to see that his shorts did gap slightly over his concave stomach, not touching anything but his bony hips. He hadn't been that thin yesterday, had he? He needed to start eating.

He spent a good portion of the next two weeks in bed, both in the infirmary and in his room. Alexei came and kept him company, but he didn't push for any more answers. He now knew Karkaroff was the perceived enemy, but he had no idea the full extent of it. Nor where Viktor suspected it was going. If all he had heard was true, Karkaroff had been a Death Eater. A Russian Death Eater. Maybe one of the ones who had taken five buildings, including one Muggle shop containing Violeta and Mama, from ordinary structures to smoldering death traps and kindling. It made his blood boil and his stomach turn to think it might be true. Karkaroff had turned in his fellow Death Eaters, rather than face Azkaban. He wouldn't even manfully face a deserved punishment, the coward. If Voldemort came back, Karkaroff would need something else to save his hide. A bargaining chip. A trophy. Who had always been his trophy?

He maintained an uneasy distance between himself and Karkaroff for the next few weeks until they left for the tournament. He had promptly gotten a head cold two days before they left. On the ship Karkaroff always made himself scarce, for fear he would have to lift a finger. He still had the cold when they had reached Hogwarts. If it was anything like the flu he had earlier, he would be dead before the tournament started anyway, champion or no champion, he thought, no matter how much Alexei urged and yelled at him.

As the tournament rolled along, though, his cold went away in the warmer climate, the voice was quieted to a soft buzz in the back of his head, annoying but not a great pain. Karkaroff had other things to worry about. His old friends, according to Alexei. Leave it to him to work every source of information he could find. One of them was supposedly here at Hogwarts. So, even Hogwarts had one. Every wizarding school has a Death Eater in its closet, he thought to himself. I wonder who it is at Beauxbatons? Maybe it's the whole lot.

Then he had gotten a different sort of lifeline to replace Quidditch. In the library. He had seen her late one evening, when the packs of girls had thinned and he could finally concentrate on his book. Only he couldn't concentrate. He studied the bushy head, sticking out between and above the book cover and wondered why it seemed so familiar. She couldn't be waiting him out for an autograph, they were never so patient. It wasn't as though there were anyone watching. There was no one else here, she could have tap danced on his table and no one would have been the wiser. Even the librarian was off in the stacks. Besides, the girl was ignoring him to beat the band. She never looked up from the page. He had lain awake that night after he went back to the ship, trying to place her. She couldn't possibly be one of those roving packs of wolves that Alexei sometimes took off his hands. He never remembered any of them. She was wearing Hogwarts robes. Gryffindor robes. And he couldn't shake the feeling that he knew her from somewhere else.

It was driving him mad. So he had gone back to the library on the same schedule. And she had been there again. Tsking loudly and giving him a rather harsh glare over the top of his book after he came in and paused near the circulation desk. He had almost slunk back out under that withering look, until he realized it was directed mostly at the four girls behind him, who were conferring behind their notebooks about whether to sit or browse the stacks to get close to him. She sighed audibly and went back to her book. He had made a beeline for his usual table, then, backed up against the most densely packed stacks, not too far from her. He put her between him and the girls, and he made sure that he didn't look too inviting to those girls by shooting them the nastiest glare he could muster. They were now shamelessly pointing at him and making those horrid giggling noises behind notebooks as they whispered. He wondered why no one ever joined her. Seeker or no seeker, surely he wasn't the only one who wasn't blind? But what made him so sure? Didn't matter. His instinct was screaming at him, and even when he didn't understand it, he always followed his instinct. It never really steered him wrong. Surely girls and snitches couldn't be that different to instinct. Surely it wasn't completely wrong about her. Sometimes, you just knew. Papa said it had been that way with Mama.

He felt a little stupid for nearly running away when she had given him that look. Papa couldn't make him feel that foolish and small under his piercing gaze, even if he deserved it. He had stared down beaters four times her size, twice his, taken bludgers in the face, how could a pair of eyes over a book do that to him? It hadn't been until he had endured two more days of watching her and racking his brain that he had put it together. He had read little, studied less, between puzzling over the girl hidden behind those tomes and under that mass of hair and the English words he was unfamiliar with. But he had learned much, watching her. She loved to read. He could tell by the ever-changing covers she hid behind. She wasn't only reading things she had to, she was reading because she wanted to. And she didn't care that he was there, watching her, sitting near her. That was new. She didn't rise to the bait of "Viktor Krum, Famous Quidditch Player". Thank goodness.

Malfoy helpfully supplied her last name, as well as that of the two boys she was usually with, Potter, Weasley, and Granger, while making one of his stupendously clumsy digs for attention. Of course, he could already identify Potter. It was hard to miss him when Karkaroff had pulled up behind him at the door to the Great Hall the first night, looking as though he couldn't quite believe his eyes. The night Alexei had clumsily dumped his plate down his front while clowning for Elena.

He spotted the scar after Harry paused to let their group through, and despite some initial surprise on his own part, he placed it quickly. Everyone knew the story behind that scar. Some of the others gaped and pointed, poking one another. Viktor refrained. He knew how it felt to be treated like an exhibit at the zoo. Viktor calculated roughly in his slightly fuzzy head, yes, Harry Potter would be about fourteen. And he would be here at Hogwarts, wouldn't he? Had it been that long? It couldn't be, could it? Yes, it was. She would be fifteen now, if she were alive. His train of thought was interrupted by Karkaroff's hasty exit. He had barely glanced at Harry and the two with him, intent on chiding himself for having to do the math in his head. He shouldn't have to, even if he was tired and did have a head cold. Her age should just come to him.

He couldn't very well ask Malfoy the rest of her name without arousing suspicion. Just as well. Later, he found he couldn't pronounce it properly anyway. He couldn't wrap his tongue around the collection of foreign syllables that felt so strange in his mouth, though it always sounded perfect when he sampled it in his head. It had taken weeks of practice at home, without pressure, to force it out of his mouth closer to the way it sounded in his mind. Something approaching the way she had pronounced it for him at the ball. Even then, it came off his tongue with a gently rolling "r", subtly softened vowels, different emphasis, his Bulgarian accent changing the name's shape slightly, but still leaving it recognizable. It still came out that way, but she had seemed pleased enough with his improved, if still foreign, pronunciation.

"There's Potty Potter, Weasley the Weasel, and their little tagalong Granger. Poor as church mice and twice as tatty, every single one of them. Simply appalling what they'll let into Hogwarts. Nothing like Durmstrang with their pureblood requirement, I'm sure. My parents almost sent me there to keep me away from the riffraff, but they didn't want to send me so far away from home," he had supplied, angling for affirmation. Or possibly wailing and lamentation from the Durmstrang contingent that they had been cheated out of the pleasure of his presence at their school. He had gotten Alexei asking him to pass the bread and Viktor's blank stare and raised eyebrow. Malfoy hadn't known what to make of that. Alexei had recognized it as a sign of Viktor's deep disapproval. No one else would have. Right now, Viktor could strangle Karkaroff for ordering them to sit with Slytherin. Apparently he knew their head of house.

Then, suddenly it had clicked. Of course. He had seen all three of them together before, somewhere other than Hogwarts, but where? She was getting up from the table, probably to go to the library, so he excused himself, flung his cloak around his shoulders, even though he could have easily stood it here in short sleeves, and headed for the library. He did it to avoid looking more out of place than he already did. As he walked in, it dawned on him. The World Cup. She had been in the box. At the presentation. Along with Potter and Weasley and the Minister. His hand flew to the bridge of his nose and the now familiar crook there. He had been a real mess, nose smashed, his face all bloody, his robes dripping with it, two blooming black eyes, he remembered. Anton told him later that Petyr had cried for him, he had looked so awful. At the time, he hadn't cared about his injuries. All that mattered was that he had done his job. Why did he care now?

He was still standing there like a simpleton, finger on his nose when he realized she was watching him. He scratched an imaginary itch, then steeled himself and walked up to her, forcing his face to relax. He was going to ask her if it killed him. And knowing Karkaroff, it just might. "...box...Minister...Cup" he muttered, almost under his breath. Oh, brilliant opening, Viktor, he had chided himself, when he realized he had said it out loud. Loud enough that she had heard. She probably does think I am a simpleton, now.

"Pardon?" she had said, tilting her book out farther from her.

"Vere you in the box vith your Minister of Magic at the Vorld Cup? Top box? " he asked, his voice more forceful, but still library-whisper soft this time. Damn his accent. Why didn't he practice his English more? No one worth talking to in English before, you fool.

"Yes... I ...I was there with some friends... Harry and Ron actually..."

"I thought so...may I sit?" He indicated the chair next to her. He had picked it specifically so he could put his back to the girls peeking through the gaps in the books. She nodded wordlessly, so he hung his cloak on an empty chair and sat, his hands resting on the table. He forced himself to smile at her while he tried to think how to begin. She studied him so intensely, it felt as though she could see straight through him. It was at once a comfort and disturbing. There were some things he didn't want anyone to see.

He suddenly broke off and stared at the table for a moment as though gathering his courage. He hoped she couldn't see that he blushed. Seemingly to fill the silence, which loomed interminable and deafening, Hermione had asked, "Do you like Hogwarts?" He looked up, a little surprised that it hadn't been a question about Quidditch.

He considered a moment. "I like the library," he whispered almost conspiratorially. "I like to come here to read. Not so many people vich are vonting me to sign things. The books are nice too. Not so many books at Durmstrang, I am thinking. They can't giggle too loud." Now his mouth was running away with him. He was jumping from thought to thought. Inherited that from Papa too, he thought, suddenly feeling self conscious about his nose. Drawing too much attention to those girls. Stop jerking your thumb over you shoulder at them like you're hitchhiking, Viktor. Might as well get to the point.

He leaned in closer, looking straight into her eyes again. They were a sort of cinnamon color. She didn't blink. "You read. Lots. I never come here ven you are not here." Did he just inadvertently insult her by calling her a bookworm or make it sound like he was following her? No matter, it was out of his mouth now. "I... I come here to vatch you ignore me, too." He actually laughed a little at this, where did that come from? When was the last time he had laughed? And she did too. He couldn't believe he had just said that, so he went back to inspecting his own hands. Nothing for it but the truth, now.

"Ignoring you?" she asked.

"Yes. Those other girls..." here he inclined his head toward the four whispering, giggling Ravenclaw girls by the stacks across the room, "they are alvays vanting me to sign things. Or they just stare and point and laff. I haff had enough. Silly. How do you say it? Imm.. imm... not grownup..." he floundered and looked at her a little helplessly. Why did he choose a word he had never used out loud before, only seen in books? Wonderful, I should confine myself to writing everything on parchment and just flinging notes at her from my usual table from now on.

"Immature." she interjected.

He nodded, his lips pressed together. "You vould never giggle and point at me. Too busy vith your books. Vould..." here he returned to staring at his own fingers, picking at a nonexistent hangnail, embarrassed and shy again. He pressed the calluses in his hands against the table, just to have a new sensation to focus on.

"Vould you like to go to the Yule Ball?" Was he asking her to go with him or just making conversation? He suddenly realized his awkward diction made it hard to tell the difference. Awful language, sometimes, English. So many shades of meaning in a single word. A single phrase. "Vith me?" he added, tilting his head up, casting a slightly sidelong glance that still allowed him to keep tabs on his fingers, now nervously drumming against the table. He willed them to be still, but they didn't obey.

She just sat there, staring back for what seemed an eternity. Slowly, his usual scowl crept onto his face. "Somevone else has asked you...of course, you are probably going vith...your friend..." he said dejectedly.

"Yes! I ... I mean, no! I mean, no one else has asked...and...I... I would like to go to the Yule Ball with you..." He brightened considerably. Again he leaned in close, his face only a couple of inches from hers.

"I vill be honored." He nodded slightly. "I must go. Flying practice is early today." He gathered his things and walked off with a little wave, the girls behind the shelves giving Hermione stares filled with daggers, even though they couldn't possibly have heard him. But he had talked to her. Of his own volition. Reason enough to envy. He fought the urge to run out of the building and wondered why he trembled. Then he realized why in the cool evening air. He detected an outsider. Like him. Her books were every bit as much a shield as his were. As his scowl and slouch was. And unless he was very much mistaken, there was more to her than the books.

She was pretty, but then, so were all those other girls. But she had spark they didn't have. He couldn't imagine the rest of those girls huffing at him for disturbing their reading. Or asking him about anything other than Quidditch. She had promise. She might actually let him be himself. If only he could figure out how hard to push. He knew better than most, you push too hard, you get the door slammed in your face. Maybe for good. He had slammed it just that way a few times. Hangers-on don't take "no" for an answer , but a slammed door speaks louder than words. He had mastered slamming the door with nothing more than his face. His expression.

Their ensuing conversations encouraged him more. He confessed that he had been watching her, trying to get his courage up. He had surreptitiously asked the librarian for her first name one day, when she left before he did. She avoided Quidditch talk for the most part, unless he brought it up, and she asked him about the books he read, she told him about the ones she read, she didn't fuss over him. If anything, she treated him as appallingly ordinary. It was a breath of fresh air. But then she would. Look who she was friends with. Harry Potter. The one name that every wizard knew.

He also got a glimpse of how much she might like him back on the night her mouth ran away with her. First, she spilled the beans about being a "mudblood". She didn't want to get him in trouble, she had said, she knew Durmstrang had a pureblood requirement. Certain people didn't think she was fit to mix with purebloods. His eyebrows had shot up in surprise and her face had fallen. He had rushed to assure her that it didn't matter, he was just surprised that such a capable witch hadn't encountered magic until she attended Hogwarts. He had heard by now that she always got top marks. Malfoy seemed particularly bitter about that, he seemed to mention it every fourth meal. Karkaroff would care about her parents, but by the time he found out, if he found out, it would be too late.

Then she had started spewing facts. Nervously. When she had noted that there was a Bulgarian khan named Krum in the 800s, he had been impressed. He barely knew that, and he might even be a distant relation. She didn't turn it into some "you might be royalty" flattery. It was just an interesting fact about where he was from, his name. She didn't ask if he could trace back that far. When she had gone on and on about the other schools and her reading up on the both of them, she had thrown in the tidbit about bulky fur cloaks being part of the official uniform at Durmstrang, and he had to stifle a laugh. Her eyes had slid to his own heavy cloak, on the empty seat beside him, and she had blushed. "But of course, you knew that," she had added lamely, shrugging it off.

"I knew. I am always being yelled at for not wearing mine enough," he had replied, and covered her hand on the table with his own, reassuring her. She wasn't the first girl to put her foot in her mouth around him. But she sure was more charming than average when doing it.

Karkaroff had been furious, of course. He still didn't know who had ratted him out, just that it hadn't been Alexei. Alexei knew about keeping confidences, even when Viktor hadn't actually confided anything. Probably one of the boys who had gotten chummy with the occupants of Slytherin had heard Malfoy run her down, seen Viktor going to the library more than once, and put two and two together. Some of them were pretty eager to see Karkaroff's golden boy taken down a peg. Karkaroff had called him into his quarters the day of the ball and ranted and raved and shouted, practically foaming at the mouth, getting in Viktor's face with his yellowed teeth and spouting off about the honor of the school and the integrity of Viktor's bloodline and other nonsense in his clipped and perfectly scholarly Russian. Anyone walking by the ship would have heard a well modulated torrent of abuse in a language they didn't understand.

Clever of him not to use English. Never to use Viktor's name in his tirade. No one here would have a reason to know Russian. Not even Dumbledore knew Russian, it seemed. Anyone close enough to hear would have no idea Karkaroff was ripping his prize pupil to pieces. When he had finally summed up after forty-five minutes of calling Viktor an ungrateful embarrassment as many ways as possible with "And after I've treated you like my own son! Well!?! What do you have to say for yourself?!?"

Viktor had coolly replied in equally deft Russian, "It's only a ball. However, if we do decide to water down my bloodline, I'll be sure to ask if we can name our first son after you." Karkaroff had actually raised his hand to Viktor at that, then thought better of it. Karkaroff hated that he could never get a rise out of Viktor, unnerve him the way he did everyone else. Hitting him would just be asking for trouble.

On his worst day, if Viktor was conscious, he could easily thrash his headmaster. If he ever defended himself physically, Karkaroff was in trouble. Even this much thinner, Viktor was still well muscled and strong. Wiry. Tough. Quick. Besides, Karkaroff knew from experience that beating him didn't work. He had tried it once during third year when Alexei had stolen his grade book and hidden it under Viktor's bed. Karkaroff knew it was Alexei, everyone knew it was Alexei, but the evidence had been hidden under his bed. Karkaroff gave him the chance to point the finger, to escape punishment. He probably saw it as a welcome chance to drive a wedge between his golden child and that appalling, disgusting boy. Viktor refused.

Even with Karkaroff standing over him, shouting "Flagellare!" for the twentieth time, the invisible whip cutting into his raw and bloody back, Viktor had refused to admit it was Alexei that had stolen it, even though Alexei had urged him to tell when the summons to Karkaroff's office came from downstairs. "Viktor, I tried confessing to him, he would not have it, you have to tell him! Give him what he wants! He wants you to rat me out, turn me in for it! He is going to call you to the dungeons if you do not!" Alexei had argued even when he knew there was no hope of getting Viktor to yield, after his face had gone stony. Impassive. Committed.

Everyone knew what happened when you got the call to the dungeons.

No one could hear you down there, no matter how loudly you screamed. Everyone knew. But Karkaroff had given up on ever being able to beat anything out of Viktor after that. Viktor didn't even whimper. He already knew body parts healed, physical pain was temporary, the nurse had to see to you afterwards, and you recovered. There weren't even scars. And now, he was too valuable to beat. Karkaroff couldn't risk any other coercion. He needed Viktor for the tournament. And Viktor knew it was all hot air, this speech. He had gone with Hermione. Karkaroff had looked as jealous and suspicious as a spurned lover, but he didn't push the issue any more. Viktor was almost positive that Karkaroff had given up on owning him after that. But he had been wrong.

Then there was the shame of the third task. The voice was suddenly back, stronger than ever, the words crystal clear, and he found himself concentrating more on that than the instructions he was being given. He fought the urge to put his hands over his ears, to look around and see where Karkaroff was, where that chant of join me Viktor, join me Viktor, don't be a fool, you can buy my way back in, back into their good graces, your present fame is nothing compared to what he could give you, you never want to be attacked like you were the other night, do you?, he can protect you, you could give Mad-Eye Moody a run for his money with your skill, I need you, I made you, you would be nothing without me, I treated you like my own son, give in to it, join me was coming from. It beat a tattoo behind his eyes, and he felt almost as though he had the flu again.

It had to be him. It was unmistakably his voice now. He forced himself not to look at his parents. They had already asked him what was wrong beforehand. They wouldn't accept the excuse of nerves again. They hadn't really the first time. If he looked at them, he would break, snap like a dry twig. He held himself back from shrieking at Karkaroff to stop, from hurling himself at Dumbledore and begging him to make it stop. Hermione talked about him like he was a man to be trusted. He seemed trustworthy... but Viktor had nothing else to go on. For all he knew, Dumbledore was the Death Eater colleague Alexei had heard about. Now he fought the urge to go look at his arm, to demand that everyone roll up their sleeves. He had heard there was a mark on the arm. That it burned black sometimes.

He had already been stupid enough to turn his back on Crouch in the woods, even though he was obviously mad. He kicked himself for it. So stupid to try to see where Potter was going. But all he could think about was how useless he would feel if Hermione's friend didn't make it back to the castle in one piece while he stood there with someone so completely out of their mind as to hold conversations with trees. Grant you, at the moment, he didn't feel much more sane. Then inside the maze, he tried to push Karkaroff back into the compartment, block him out. He had been so intent on doing so, that he didn't even notice the other voice at first.

He paused. He had to be losing his mind. It was another. Quiet at first, under the current of Karkaroff's constant whining patter, then roaring up over it, drowning Karkaroff into the background. It wasn't words. It was rage. It was madness. It was a horrible screeching shriek, a rumbling. He had never heard it before. It scraped through his thoughts, careening around inside his skull like nails on a chalkboard, and he realized he couldn't hold against it all. Not at once. This all at once was too much. He was too weak. Before the second wave overwhelmed him completely, he stuffed Karkaroff into the box once again. He wouldn't give him the satisfaction, even if it meant giving in to the second. He had probably helped kill Violeta. He went under like being pulled into a riptide, a powerful undertow. He was utterly drowned in the madness, and he knew no more.

Alexei had been the first one to explain it to him. True, he had heard others say, "Diggory's dead!" in wails and whispers but somehow it didn't make sense until Alexei said it. He couldn't be. He was just ahead of me in the maze. I heard him walking. Talking. To Potter, maybe. Maybe casting a charm of some kind. I couldn't make out the words, but it was Diggory's voice. But how did I end up out here? Then the whispers, the stares, his own name mentioned. He had sought out his parents and told them to get out. To get outside the protective perimeter and Apparate home. Something about the look on his face must have told him parents not to argue. They had squeezed his bony shoulder and left immediately. With them gone, he had crumpled, empty, his head completely empty for what seemed like the first time in ages. He didn't have anything left. Nothing to fight with, nothing to fight against, except the guilt.

Unlike Fleur, Diggory had been decent to him. Polite. Pleasant. Admiring of his talent on a broom without fawning. Without empty flattery. Even with that great pillock of a headmaster associated with him, the Dark Arts background, they had treated Viktor as a worthy competitor. He and Potter, that is. Now they were telling him Diggory was dead, and he had used one of the unforgivable curses on him. Which one? Cruciatus, Dumbledore said, but later he added that Viktor was under the Imperius curse.

The moment Dumbledore said "Cruciatus", that's when he knew he wasn't responsible, stark raving mad or not. If he had been insane enough to want to cheat like that, Karkaroff had taught him a stable of curses that made the Cruciatus Curse seem like a tickle with a feather. Curses that didn't get you put in Azkaban. Curses that left no marks, no trace. Ones that didn't bring Ministry officials running. Sometimes, they left behind nothing recognizable at all, done properly. Call Karkaroff what you will, but he was nothing if not a thorough teacher. Didn't matter that he hadn't willed Cedric's suffering, though. It was still his wand in his hand that did it. He should have been strong enough to fight it off. Reason enough to be ashamed.

All these feelings and memories whirled through his mind in a matter of a moment, but Papa clearing his throat brought him back to the present. Viktor swung his legs down off the sofa and turned from the window, putting his bare feet on the cool stone floor. As he sat, Nikolas scolded, "Your mama would tell you that running around the house at night with no shirt or shoes is a sure way to get yourself sick. Of course, you would tell your mama that you were hot, even if it were dead of winter. We couldn't even keep you in a winter cloak outside. You would hang it on a tree in the orchard and go on your way with your sleeves rolled up. Still, you never got sick, I told her. Mama used to claim you were part polar bear." Nikolas paused, then sighed heavily. "Can't you sleep?" Nikolas asked, still staring off into the mostly dark room.

Viktor studied his father's profile, so similar to his own, for a space in the half light, the planes of his face thrown into a sharp relief of light and shadows. "No, but not for the reasons you think," Viktor replied. He turned his face to the dark room as well. They had conducted some of their best conversations in the dark, no eye contact, nothing but their voices connecting. It was less threatening somehow to converse with a pair of arms, a touch, a voice, a pair of dark eyes could be too intimidating, too much of a challenge. You might see something there that made you hesitate. It seemed both of them were reluctant to change a proven formula.

"You eat now?" Nikolas countered.

"You've seen," Viktor said.

"You have filled out a lot. Reasons?" Nikolas asked.

Back to that. Papa had always bounced from subject to subject and back with no transition, at the speed of his thoughts, generally with an economy of words. Anyone on the other end of the conversation had better be prepared to do some mental gymnastics and tallying to follow a conversation with Nikolas Krum. Mama called it his verbal shorthand. "I slept too late. I needed some quiet to think. Now was as good a time as any. I've made some decisions."

"Decisions?" Nikolas's voice was curious.

"For one thing, I decided I owe Alexei a very long explanation. Seven years worth of explanations. For my behavior. What I should have trusted him with a long time ago."

"Good. You need to tell someone without being cornered into it, Viktor. Even your mama and I have. Alexei won't tell anyone you don't want him to. I know it's not easy, but you did it with the three upstairs, and you haven't known them seven years. Alexei can't be any harder. Next decision?" Nikolas sounded pleased.

"You sure you and Mama won't take the money? I don't need it. If I fulfill my contract this year, I get a bonus in addition to the salary. That would be plenty for me to put to use after school. More than enough. You know I don't need fancy things."

"It's not a matter of you needing it. You earned it. It's your money. You've gone above and beyond what you needed to. It's only a homestead in the end, Viktor, no matter how desperately we wanted to keep it. We could have lost it and still had everything that was truly important if you were okay and Mama and I had each other. Nothing could take our memories of her. But don't think your mama and I don't appreciate what you did. What you sacrificed. We won't be rolling in money for some time, but we are comfortable enough. Most of the debts are gone, thanks to you. The rest, we can manage eventually. We decided to put the money away for you, and as a fallback, just in case. But we didn't need it, Viktor. Put it with the rest of the money you have put away. We'll let you know if we need you to part with any of it."

"You're sure?"

"Boy..." Nikolas warned him with mock sternness, "Mama already fought this battle. Viktor, your mama and I bred that stubbornness into you, you get a double dose. But we've had a lot more practice at it. Don't think you can outlast us. Take your own money. And enjoy it for once," he finished gently. "Actually, I shouldn't call you 'boy'. You've been a man for a long time. Too long. Too soon," he said, an edge of melancholy to his voice.

"There's a lot of that going around, these days. Too much. Upstairs, for instance. All three of them. Him, particularly." He jerked his chin at the staircase. He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, his father's sharp chin raising as he followed the banister with his eyes to the top, then his nodded agreement, a quick bob of the head.

"True. You recognize it in him. More decisions?"

"Yes. I'm tying up the loose ends at Durmstrang, then leaving. Three weeks there, at most."

"For which alternative?"

"I'm accepting the offer. Best of all possible worlds under the circumstances. Being able to Apparate has its advantages."

"It will be hard work."

"I'm not afraid of hard work. And I just can't stay at Durmstrang. Too indecisive. Not now. Not when I have the alternative. Choices. Not even with Karkaroff gone. I explained this to you and Mama. The reasons. What happened last year."

"I never said you were afraid of hard work. Quite the contrary, you seem too fond of it. And I understand why you are reluctant to finish your schooling at Durmstrang, even disregarding the other considerations. It isn't the same place where Mama and I went to school. Have you discussed it with anyone else?"

"Not yet. I want to make sure the details are all worked out first. I've learned never to count chickens before they hatch, you only end up disappointed. Usually with a handful of crushed eggshells. I believe it will be well received, though, if things work out. He seemed eager for me to accept. I think she would like it, as well."

"You've made your feelings clear?"

"Yes. I believe I have."

"Is that a decision too?"

"Yes. I decided it was worth it. I have patience and time. I have nothing but time. For once, that's all I have to give that is really wanted. It's all I have that is of any worth in the first place. Time. The thing in which all men are equally rich, but few spend wisely. I think this is worth spending on."

"Ah, so you've discovered the secret then? Look for the one who doesn't want your gifts, but the gift of you?"

"The secret was easy. I've seen that with you and Mama every day of my life. Finding someone who also knew it, that was the tough part."

"Wise creatures. We can learn a lot from them. Like how to spend your time."

"Especially the ones who read?"

"Especially the ones who read. And listen to Tchaikovsky. That all of your decisions?"

"You might add a George Gershwin to your list. I'm going to laugh more, and I'm soon going to bed. My eyes are heavy suddenly. There, that's enough decisions for one night."

"Deciding is hard work. It could be relief, though. You think Ivan and Natasha would like to go with you?"

"I'm not sure it would be allowed. It's a bit fuzzy yet as to where I would be living. Baramir is on the approved list. Besides, don't you need them here?"

"Mikhail has a new batch of older pups, just about the right age. I was thinking of getting a couple of them, starting their training. They would soon catch on. He owes me a favor, so he offered them to me. I know you love those dogs. And they pine over you when you go. If it's possible..."

"I'll take them. If it's possible. More details, Papa."

"You're good at details. You know when to attend to them and when to ignore them."

"Ignore them?"

"Minute details that aren't important. Ones that go away or aren't important in the first place, particularly. Like being too young. You ignore it long enough, you aren't too young anymore. Two more days, you'll be nineteen. You're making your mama and I feel old. In two days, it's your birthday."

"So it is. I hadn't really thought about it. And you two... feeling old? That will be the day. Why do I get the feeling I'll be creeping around like an old man years before you start?"

"Just because sheep aren't nearly as prone to injure you as opposed to Quidditch players and bludgers. I have never had a sheep knock me off a broom into the stands."

"Probably. Goodnight Papa."

"Goodnight Viktor. Sleep pleasantly."

It was a phrase that carried a lot more than the usual meaning, passing between the two of them. "I think I will." Viktor padded across the floor and up the steps silently, to his room, to bed. And he was surprised when he found himself looking forward to it.