Past Present

"I don't care what time it is, I need to talk to him," Snape muttered in a low voice.

"The boy needs his rest. Between Dumbledore coming in and questioning him, and those other three coming in every spare moment, he hardly gets any time alone these last few days. What he does get alone, he spends sitting up reading or fooling with those dogs or getting up when I'm not looking or some other nonsense he has no business doing. Found him halfway down the corridor yesterday, on one leg, leaning against the wall with his one good arm. Just wanted to try it and see how far he could get, he said. You would think he's expecting to have to make a quick exit any minute," Madame Pomfrey fussed back.

"First of all, Poppy, he is hardly a boy. He's nineteen. He's been of age for two years now. While I know it's hard to believe, he isn't exactly one of the students. Not now. Mollycoddle him all you like, but he's not a child. He's a grown man, and he's allowed to be just as stubborn and headstrong and idiotic about getting up out of bed as he likes and can get away with. You want to keep him in bed, sit on him, strap him in, whatever you like. It's none of my concern. Second, considering where he's been and who he's been with the last few years, I would hardly be surprised that he isn't exactly comfortable being cooped up someplace he's not familiar with and can't get out of easily at the moment. I doubt Igor's behavior exactly encouraged him in sleeping soundly and taking it on faith that a bed, any bed, is a safe place to be. Besides, the last few years should have convinced you that Hogwarts is not exactly a safe haven, either. We spent all last year reassuring the champions with the fact that our Defense Against Dark Arts teacher was one of the most respected Aurors in history, and look what happened there! Durmstrang might be a better hideout right now. In fact, if he had good sense, that is probably where he would still be. Dumbledore at least trusts Potenko. Now, are you going to let me talk to him, or are you going to make me go wake the headmaster?" Snape hissed.

"It's two in the morning," Madame Pomfrey grumbled.

"I am well aware of the time. I do have a clock and I am capable of reading it. Now let me in," he replied acidly.

"Oh, very well, then, but you wrap this up quickly, whatever it is," she said, then stepped out of the doorway. "He's somewhere amongst that pile of dogs," she said rather sarcastically, waving her hand at the lone occupied bed. Ivan draped across the pillow, head away from the door, and Viktor's head rested against him, rather than the pillow. Natasha curled at the foot of the bed, in the space next to his legs. As Snape approached the bed, she promptly began to growl, low and menacing. Viktor did not appear to stir. As Snape grew nearer, Natasha stood.

"You can stop growling at him, Natasha. Harmless enough, I think," Viktor mumbled quietly, opening his eyes. Instead Natasha growled that much harder, snarling and crouching. "She must seriously dislike you," Viktor said lightly, propping up on his left elbow, sitting, then grabbing Natasha's collar. She reluctantly sat and licked her muzzle, still eyeing Snape as he sat in a chair. Ivan roused when Viktor did and leapt off the bed when Viktor ordered him down.

"The feeling might be mutual. Thinks I'm a threat, does she?" Snape asked with an arched brow.

"No. Just warning you to mind your manners. If she thought you were a threat, she would not haff growled first. I would be prying both of them off your throat, instead. And I move a touch slower, right now and could only handle one at a time if they were not in a listening mood. Pity Durmstrang did not allow dogs. I could haff slept a lot easier," Viktor said, easing back against the headboard. The trappings had come off the right arm today, but it was still a little tender and sore and he had to drag the heavy apparatus on his knee along when he wanted to move his leg. The ribs were still agony when they protested, but at least all the bruises on the arms and legs had mostly faded, and all that remained of the black eyes were a couple of dark smudges along his cheekbones.

"You look considerably better than when I saw you last. But then, that's not such a feat. You looked mostly dead when they brought you in," Snape offered.

"That just might be the nicest thing I haff ever heard you say. Grant you, you did not actually say you were not disappointed I did not end up dead. Now, are we going to make small talk all night, or did you come here for a reason other than to wake me up and tell me I looked rotten when Hagrid hauled what was left of me in?" Viktor asked rather irritably.

"You know what I need to do," Snape said, fingering his wand, which he had just drawn from his robe pocket.

"Check me for the mark, I suspect. See if I haff one like yours. I would be old enough, would I not? No getting off with just the temporary membership badge," Viktor said lightly.

"Most people would be insulted by the very implication," Snape said with some surprise.

"I am not. I would think you a great deal less intelligent if you did not want to check. I take it Dumbledore does not concur with your suspicions, since he has not so much as asked me to roll up my sleeve?" Viktor asked.

"Doesn't want me to check at all. Dumbledore is a great deal more trusting. Wants to take you at nothing more than your unforced word," Snape replied with just a hint of distaste.

"I wish I could be that trusting. I suppose you wanted nothing less than a heavy dose of veritaserum and a good look at my arm?" Viktor said.

"Very perceptive. I'll settle for the look at the arm. Maybe I had you all wrong then. Potter, Weasley, and Granger would have just gone on a fifteen minute rant on the injustice of it all and how I was a horrible, suspicious, bitter git with greasy hair who asks the innocent to prove themselves and lets the guilty go free. Granger would probably start up another organization for the protection of your welfare against big villains like me and start selling badges. Their naiveté is shocking sometimes. Instead, you go and roll up your sleeve. When you slid in that jab about my Russian during potions last year in defense of your friend, I had you pegged as just another self-righteous, crusading Gryffindor, if you had gone here. Although, I must say, I admired your subtlety. Granger would have waved her hand and quoted me the handbook," Snape said in a wondering voice.

"She will get over that soon enough. Perhaps if you bothered to treat all your students with respect instead of abusing, harassing, and belittling them, you would get some respect back, but that is neither here nor there. You judge the three of them too harshly. Remember, I haff seen a lot more than they haff. Even Harry, in some ways. I haff been around a little longer, at least. As far as Hermione knew until a few years ago, this world did not even exist, there was no possibility of a Voldemort. Ron was protected in the Burrow and his biggest worry was living up to his brothers. They may still have that notion that everything is black and white. There is good and evil and nothing in between. You and I both know there are a hundred petty evils that have nothing to do with Volemort and a million shades of gray. One of the worst shades of gray is indifference and there is plenty of that right now. They certainly are not children anymore, but it will take a little more experience to completely disabuse them of the idea that the good always triumphs. We get that idea fed to us for so long when we are children, it is hard to shake. Usually," Viktor said softly.

"You think what they know now isn't enough? They would have to be idiots not to recognize what the stakes are after all they've been taught, all they've seen..." Snape began.

"Not the same thing. Read all the books about Aurors who died in the first war that you like, it is still just words on a page to them. Memories from someone else. Someone else buried their friends, their brothers, their sisters, their children. Might as well be a million years ago to them. Harry was just a baby when his parents died. He lost a potential future, not a remembered present. No hope of him actually remembering them on his own. Last year he had to drag Cedric's dead body back with him, but it was a schoolmate, not someone he was close to for years. Not someone he considered a close friend or a relative. Nothing quite compares to putting someone you truly loved for a long time in a hole in the ground for good, now does it? Harry will get it soon enough. It will sink in that he is not immortal, and neither are those around him. Maybe he already does, and is just not willing to admit it out loud. So will Ron. I am afraid Hermione already does," Viktor said with a little regret.

"What makes you say that, aside from your obvious affection for her? Granger is smart enough when it comes to the academic, but unless you can look it up in a book somewhere, I doubt she has come to the realization that this isn't going to be won on the merits of character and hard work, necessarily. Because we think we're right," Snape sneered back.

"The questions she asks. Ron, and to a lesser extent, maybe Harry, seem to take it on faith that Voldemort will be defeated. No question. He lost before, he will again. Sure, loads of people we are all too young to know died before, but that never happens to the people I love. To me. And we will all live happily ever after. Hermione might be the only one who really understood what Pomfrey told Dumbledore about how close I came to being dead a few nights ago. What I said about it being a lucky, correct guess. If I had been wrong, we would all be dead. Harry and Ron, I do not think they haff given it much serious consideration. I scared them, but not the way I scared her, exactly. To them, it was no more than my due to live, I earned it because I was brave. She knows just how lucky I was. She gave some serious thought to how close it was, what would haff happened if I had died. She has gone so far as to imagine it. They have not. Instead of expecting the fairy tale ending, she is asking how many ministries will be on board, how many already believe it. Last year, Harry was a great wizard and a good soul and there was nothing he could not do. This year, she worries about him more. She has considered the fact that there might be a tombstone with his name on it, and she did not reject it out of hand. She asked me what happens if Harry dies before Voldemort," Viktor said plainly.

"And your answer?"

"That I do not know, and I hope we do not haff to find out. You and I both know there is something about Harry that is going to prove important. Even if you do not care for him that much," Viktor added.

"Potter's been breaking rules and overstepping boundaries ever since he got here," Snape spat.

"Better be happy Dumbledore breaks some of the rules, too, or you would still be rotting in Azkaban," Viktor retorted. "Surely rule breaking cannot be the sole reason you dislike him so. But I do not want to chat with you about your pettiness. Do you want my arm or not?" Viktor asked, offering his bare forearm.

"Clean," Snape muttered, shoving his wrist back at him when he was through.

"You sound almost disappointed."

"You go rushing in many more times like you did with Igor and that dementor before and you and Potter both will get yourselves killed. Brave I admit, but foolhardy. Senseless bravery is not always noble, sometimes it is just senseless. This is not a Quidditch match."

"I know that. Oh, how I know that. If someone were to explain to him the full story, I am sure Harry would be a lot less reckless. Seems like being reckless is the only way he can find out about his own past if you ask me. Stop treating him like a child on the one hand and expecting him to act like an adult on the other. And Snape?"

"What?"

"Thank you. I did not know you cared. Your concern might be touching if you learned how to express it better."

"Quit giving Pomfrey a hard time by hopping down the hall. Like being able to hop out of here on one leg would ever be a life saver. It's not as though you would be much help in your present condition were something to happen. Stop being a damn hero," Snape said derisively.

"It might be. If I had to, I would. I do not intend to let any of them get buried if I can help it. You?"

"I don't need the sorting hat. Gryffindor," Snape muttered on his way out the door.

"I am sure Harry would be surprised to know you care at all," Viktor murmured to himself after the door had shut. "Funny way of showing it, though, the lot of you. Keeping him in the dark then wondering why he goes steaming in blind and flapping your hands over it afterwards. Voldemort is not going to haff mercy on him because he is still a child. He did not before. You should not either."