Past Present

"Oh come on, Viktor. Mum will be insulted if you don't at least stay for dinner. She found out in my last letter it was your birthday tomorrow, she nearly sent me a howler for not telling her sooner. She always does a cake for Harry's birthday, too. Owls it to him," Ron bobbed as he treaded in the water, addressing the rock where Viktor was perched.

"I do not want to be a burden..." Viktor began uncertainly. They all got the feeling he wasn't used to having a big deal made of his birthday. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea.

"Burden! Mum will personally rip my head off if I can't get you to stay. We had given her more warning she probably would have asked your size so she could knit you a loud jumper with a big 'V' on it. Mum has this thing about birthdays, you see. She must like them. She had enough kids to ensure she celebrates them pretty much year round."

"I do not want to put your head in jeopardy, so alright. I will stay if she asks. I don't haff to be back early. I don't haff to be back at Vratsa for a team meeting until three days from now, in fact. I haff an appointment the day before, though," Viktor warned.

"She might let you go, if you make it real clear up front that you need to. Mum likes guests too. She's liable to implore you to sleep on the sofa, though. We run kind of short on beds this time of year," Ron teased.

"I imagine you do. How many are there again?" Viktor asked.

"Bill and Charlie are away from home now. Bill works for Gringotts in Egypt, Charlie works with dragons. You might have seen them both at Hogwarts last year. Well, Charlie certainly. He helped wrangle the dragons. Bill came with my Mum and Dad when the families... Percy, he's still at home until he finds another place to live that meets his high standards. I'm guessing he'll leave in time for his retirement. Fred and George, they're the twins, me, and then Ginny," Ron counted each name off on his fingers. "Seven of us."

"Seven. And all of you with red hair, right?" Viktor folded his arms on his knees.

"Absolutely. The Weasley red hair. Known and loved far and wide. Didn't Malfoy fill you in on our red hair and vacant stare? How the Weasleys always have more children than they can afford?" Ron asked.

Viktor smiled. "It must be nice. Haffing so many people around when you are small. I had to make my own fun. Nobody at home. And I will trade you the Krum nose for the Weasley red hair. Actually, I kind of like it, and you do not, so... I think I will keep it. I could not pull off red hair."

"Fred and George certainly made sure it was never dull, but I don't know about fun. It's okay, I guess, if you're one of the first ones in line. Pain in the neck, though, coming after the rest of them. The Weasley legacy precedes me. Percy was enough perfection for the lot of us."

"You'll make your own way. Think of poor Ginny. Everyone ahead of her and no one ahead of her," Viktor countered.

"What do you mean by that?" Ron cocked his head.

"Six brothers ahead of her, that she has to follow, that everyone will identify her with. But not one sister," Viktor replied.

"I think what Viktor's trying to say is that you might be trailing a long line of Weasleys, but Ginny has to trail all of you. And top that off with the fact that you boys have each other, and she doesn't have a sister. No one who has walked exactly the same path. She's alone in the mob of you Weasley boys," Hermione interjected, climbing onto the rock with Viktor and toweling her hair. "You don't have it so bad, Ron."

"Exactly. You can be alone even in a crowd," Viktor added. "You call your home The Burrow?"

"Bit of a joke, really. Rabbits live in burrows. Nine of us. Couldn't find a family more like rabbits than us. You never did tell us why the inn is called The Pavlova," Ron considered.

"Years ago, my mother's... let's see, it would be her great-great-great...great-grandfather, left St. Petersburg, left his home, made his way south, and came to Prishta, that's the wizard village that's nearby. He was quite educated, fairly well off, his papa had been a court scholar for the Tsar once. But I think he was bored. He wanted to see the world. He worked along the way, it must have taken him months to get here. The first day in the village, he spotted this young woman in front of one of the shops." He resituated himself on the rock, getting more comfortable.

"His name was Yuri Gregorin. He asked around and found out the woman he had seen was named Anastasia. No one knew her last name, they said, she was some Romany witch that had come in with her family and ended up staying behind. She kept a room over one of the shops, a bookshop."

Hermione interrupted him, "Romany? Isn't that another word for..."

"Gypsy. Yes. There used to be a lot of witches and wizards among the Romany. They found that moving constantly was almost as good for being undetected by Muggles as settling in wizard villages and avoiding them. A lot of the Romany ones broke off and settled down, though, because the Romany started getting a bad reputation. There were a few thieves among them. So most of them got called thieves. Unfortunately, a lot of the old Romany curses and charms and herbs have been forgotten because of that. No one to pass them on, anymore. Not for years. Some of the Muggle-born Romany still know a lot of the herbal potions, some of the minor curses and charms. They haff better skill at it than the true Muggles. A few of them can even use the curses effectively. There used to be a lot of minor seers among them. But once the stronger ones broke off, they started having a lot of squibs. Even the most magical among them now are fairly weak. They are a separate world, these days, none of them carry wands, as far as I know. Romany were always interested in magic you could do without wands."

"Yuri found work outside the village, on a farm. He left at dawn, and he did not get back until late. He kept the accounts for them, and he took the job because it paid well. Anyway, he eventually introduced himself to Stasi, found out she worked in the bookshop, and generally started spending too much of his time and too much of his money there, when he was not working, just to be near her. She was smart, capable, loving, beautiful, he thought. He wanted to be with her forever. After several months, he asked her to marry him. She told him she would, if he could give her what she wanted most. He couldn't think what it could be."

Viktor counted on his fingers as he continued, "One day he would come in with his money pouch, and tell her he could give her what she wanted, he could provide for her, he had a good job. She just shook her head. What she wanted could not be bought with the money in that bag. The next day, he would come in with his tools and pledge to build her a house, put a roof over her head. Same answer. Day after day, week after week, for months, he would have a meal with her and try to guess what it is she wanted. Flowers, fruit, candy, houses, land, money, he conjured pictures of children, a family, he even brought in a gazing crystal, to symbolize a future. All the same result. No, these were grand things, and she did want them, but it wasn't what she wanted him to provide most of all. 'You hold my heart, what else could you possibly want?' he asked her. 'Your heart is necessary, of course, but what I want is the secret to you keeping mine,' she told him. He offered her books, he offered to buy the shop for her, she loved books. She allowed she did, but that wasn't it, either."

"Finally, she offered to help him guess. 'If you can answer this riddle, you will know what I truly want. No man can buy it. No man can earn more of it. Its value cannot be fixed, even the largest amounts of it can be wasted and worthless, the smallest amounts precious beyond measure. Every man is equally rich in it, and spends it at the same rate, but some spend it more wisely than others. They trade it for treasures that cannot be bought.' He racked his brain for weeks. I did too. Mama told me the story and then refused to finish it until I had guessed."

Ron furrowed his brow and mumbled, "Every man is equally rich in it. Well, we know it's not money. No man can buy it or earn it, that also leaves out money. Spending, that sound like money too, but it can't be money. Viktor, you're not going to leave us hanging for weeks are you?"

"No, I promise to tell you if you give up," Viktor smiled at Hermione, who was whispering it to herself. Harry repeated the riddle over and over as well.

"Love maybe?" Harry guessed.

"No. The problem with that answer is that love can be earned. It should be earned. Anyone who thinks you cannot earn love has never taken up with an animal or a child. And love is never wasted or worthless. It always has worth to the one who gives it, even when the one receiving it does not value it. No, that was my first guess," Viktor grinned.

"Viktor, just how much time did you spend trying to figure this out?" Harry asked finally.

"Two weeks. She allowed me one guess a day, just like Yuri. When I figured it out, it seemed so simple I nearly kicked myself," Viktor replied.

"Time! That's it, it's time! You can't buy time, or earn it. You can waste a whole day, or spend a precious few seconds, depending on what you're doing!" Ron shouted suddenly.

"Exactly! He finally guessed it one day. 'Time. I thought about the riddle itself, and it is time. But I do not understand," he told her. 'That is the answer. No man can get more time, by buying or working for it. Time can be wasted at something that will not matter in a year, like earning an extra sickle, or it can be spent on a precious moment with someone that will live in your memory and keep you warm in your old age. Ask a drowning man how important a second is. Ask a lonely man how worthless an idle hour is. We all have only the present, we are guaranteed nothing else but that we spend our time at the same rate, both the pauper and the king. You can spend it keeping accounts because it pays well, or you can spend it keeping me because you love me. A fine house and land and money and children do me no good if you are not there to enjoy them with me,' she told him. He quit his job, had this inn built, purchased the land. They married and ran the inn together. Three children. They both lived to be quite old. When they died, they passed the inn on. It has always been in Mama's family. Mama got it when her grandfather passed it on. Just before she and Papa married," Viktor finished.

Ron pursed his lips. "That's a wonderful story, Viktor, but it still doesn't explain the inn name, does it?"

"You guessed the riddle, you mean to tell me you cannot guess where the name came from?" Viktor raised his eyebrows. "It was the one piece of information I left out."

"Her name," Hermione ventured. "You never told us her last name. You just called her Anastasia. If you can trace things back that far with records, you must know her last name," she turned her face to him.

"Anastasia Pavlova. He named it after her. He thought she deserved to keep her name alive in more than a book of records. Stasi, he called her. He recorded that story in a journal he kept. Mama still has it here somewhere, she copied it and preserved the original. Her parents had lived on the steppes, joined up with a Romany band that moved through when they had a drought, she liked Bulgaria and stayed behind when they went back. That journal taught me the grand total two words in ancient Romany that I know. Guerda engelikos."

"What's it mean?" Harry asked.

"Harry, I haff not a clue. All I know is Yuri wrote down that Stasi said it each night when she put the children to bed. When he and she went to bed. He said it was a Romany charm. Nothing on what it was supposed to do. He said it was ancient, powerful and important, but he did not say how. He said they taught the children to never forget it, to call on it in their worst times of trouble. Said it kept the evil eye away, whatever that means. Maybe the information on it was in another journal that did not survive. Pity no one remembers back that far. A lot of the Romany language, the magic, was lost a long time ago. Like the Celts, " Viktor sighed.

"You two spend entirely too much time reading, I think," Ron mused.

"It is my past. Part of how I got here. If Yuri had not found Stasi, I would not be here. And I had a very demanding History of Magic professor at Durmstrang who was very keen on talking about lost magic. Every fifth lecture seemed to be about some tribe or nationality that lost all its wizards somehow. I think she tried to make the point about not marrying anything other than purebloods with it. She was decidedly against marriage to anyone with a Muggle in their family tree. Watered down the bloodlines, she thought. I guess she would rather the Druids had kept intermarrying until they were so inbred and addled they could not count the pillars at Stonehenge, much less design it," Viktor rolled his eyes.

"Your family seems pretty open minded and liberal, what's kept Muggles out of your family tree?" Harry asked, sprawling on the grass next to Ron to sun himself dry.

"I do not know that there are not any Muggles there. There may be, back before anyone can trace. Luck. Circumstance. Durmstrang was founded three hundred years before Hogwarts. A lot of opportunity to meet a potential mate there. They would certainly be another pureblood wizard, since that was a requirement. You would haff to go out of your way in years past to even meet a Muggle or a Muggle-born."

"Tradition too. Wizards tend to set up communities here, in Russia, most of the places Durmstrang receives students from. Maybe having a Romany ancestor helped. Romany people were persecuted, hated, even among some of their fellow wizards for some time. Even the non-magical ones were slaughtered. As little as fifty or sixty years ago. I suspect Stasi might have warned her children and grandchildren against making similar quick judgments. Papa's family, several of them worked in Muggle Affairs, once the Ministry felt the need to establish such a department. Like your papa, I think, they took a liking to Muggles. Papa's uncle worked with them. He said he came away from his job with a greater understanding of them," Viktor traced a pattern with his finger around Hermione's hand.

"How did Anya end up working with them?" Hermione captured his finger, ducked her head beneath his and looked up at him.

"Mama met Madame Korrina's sister on the ship to Durmstrang. They became close friends, they ended up in the same house. They spent holidays at one another's homes. When Mama graduated, Madame Korrina had a job in the museum, in the gift shop, while she went to university in Sofia, and she passed on that there was an opening there. They needed someone who could speak Russian, do translations, preservations. Mama loved reading old books. History. It was her dream job to get paid for it."

"But you said Madame Korrina was a Muggle, how did she end up in a pureblood wizard family?" Hermione tilted her head and pursed her lips.

"There used to be a Muggle village and a wizard village fairly close to one another, up in the mountains, a few days east. Giants. They wiped out most of the Muggle inhabitants. Worse in the wizard village. The Ministry sent wizards to clean up the mess, to relocate the inhabitants, put memory charms on the Muggles that survived. One of them was the man who was to become Madame Korrina's adoptive grandfather. They found her wandering around the village, by herself, about two years old. They could not find a family that claimed her, so they assumed all her relatives had been killed. Of course, they assumed that her relatives had been wizards. She must have wandered in from the Muggle village, though. It was already two days after the attack. She must have walked most of those two days. Braydon Korrina took her home with him. His son and the son's wife had no children then, so they agreed to raise her. They did not find out she was a Muggle until they had already fallen in love with her. So they moved to Sofia and blended in among the Muggles there. When Madame Korrina was eight, they had another daughter."

"No one complained? Gave them a hard time?" Harry asked.

"No. Braydon was a pretty powerful man. Very important. I think most people were afraid to say anything bad about his son raising a Muggle. Besides, how can you fault a man for having pity on a child? As long as she married a Muggle and went to school with Muggles, I do not think it bothered anyone."

"And just how can they be sure she was a Muggle!? How can they be so sure she wasn't born a... a squib! She could be as much a pureblood as her sister!" Hermione snapped indignantly.

Viktor raised an eyebrow. "She is not a squib. For a start, purebloods supposedly do not breed squibs. A squib is supposed to be a throwback to a Muggle ancestor. I do not know if that is true, but there are enough other reasons to believe she is a Muggle. She never got a Durmstrang letter. Or a Hogwarts letter. Or a Beauxbatons letter. It is assumed that even if no one knew her birth name, the owl would still find her. Even squibs get invitations to school. Most convincing, though, she is aging like a Muggle," Viktor spoke gently, as though breaking a disappointment to a child.

"What do you mean, aging like one?" Harry wrinkled his nose.

"Aging like one. Even squibs do not age that way. Harry, you do not mean to tell me you do not know?" Viktor's mouth was slightly open. He looked stunned.

"Harry, wizards live longer. It's nearly unheard of for a wizard to die at anything less than a hundred and fifty if they die of natural causes. Nicholas Flamel, he was five hundred, but that was unnatural," Hermione informed him.

"A hundred and eighty is not out of the question. Madame Korrina, she is aging much faster than a witch would... " Viktor added.

Harry sat up, dumbfounded. "You mean...we...the lot of us...are probably going to live over a hundred years... more?"

"It's one of the reasons wizards and Muggles don't mix a lot, Harry. It's hard to explain to Muggles why you're still around after so long," Ron pointed out.

"Why doesn't anyone ever tell me these things?" Harry marveled.

"Because we assume you know. Or maybe that you've cracked a book," Hermione sniffed. "But then, wizards just seem to take it for granted. I don't remember reading much about it. Just a tidbit here and there," she finished.

"Getting cloudy. We had better go in. It looks like it is going to storm," Viktor squinted and surveyed the thick purplish clouds backing up over the mountains.

"Looks like regular old clouds to me. Same ones that have been there all week," Ron said.

"They are thick around the mountain. Low. Purple underneath, gray on the top. If it does not storm tonight, I will eat my wand. Besides, Ivan and Natasha want in. They haff been whining and haunting the door all day. They sense it coming. For such big strapping dogs, they do not like lightning very much. The sheep will be okay. Papa will probably put them in the barn."