Past Present

Things were back to relatively normal in the three weeks leading up to Valentine's Day. Umbridge mostly hung about in the background. However, now when she and Viktor ran into each other in the halls, they made no secret of looking daggers at one another. Strangely, Viktor seemed to give Fleur Delacour just about the same look when Harry saw them pass, but Harry didn't feel like asking. Harry had resolved to talk to Cho, but every time they were together or ran into one another in the hall, he found himself unable to force the words out. Instead, he let her do the talking and mostly nodded enthusiastically, trying to push aside the idea that he must look a fool to keep bobbing his head about that way, as though it were on a spring.

Hermione and Viktor had been making plans for the last week to have lunch somewhere in Hogsmeade, but Harry mostly tuned it out when the two of them were together, usually over in the corner of the common room, sprawled in a couple of armchairs, lobbing ideas back and forth about how to spend the day in between talking about exams and classes. The exam talk made him nervous enough, though they were months away, and the Hogsmeade plans reminded him too much of the question of what he and Cho would do together. And it made him jealous of the ease with which the two of them talked to one another. Viktor had taken to coming into the common room in the evenings to read with Hermione or quiz her when she studied. Truth be told, Viktor was the only one still brave enough to attempt quizzing Hermione. Harry and Ron had lost the stomach for doing it. When the two of them did it, Hermione tended to snatch the book back and look at it every few questions, certain Harry and Ron weren't doing it properly. Harry didn't have the patience to nitpick on the difference between Gorlack the First and Gorlack the Second. Frankly, he and Ron were even more relieved when the common room proved too noisy for Hermione and the two of them went to the library instead. It meant Hermione couldn't nag them about their own studying.

Harry wished he and Cho were as comfortable around one another as Viktor and Hermione were, meandering from subject to subject, often while both of them had their noses in books. Or even just reading and being together, not talking at all. Or rather that he were at all comfortable with Cho. Or that they were both as sweetly shy with one another as Neville and Ginny were. The more he saw the two of them together this year, the more he suspected that Neville and Ginny were more than just friends. It seemed the whole world was pairing off around him and everyone knew who to ask and how to go about it but Harry. Hannah Abbott had even asked Ron to walk with her around Hogsmeade, and Ron seemed rather pleased by the invitation.

He felt he would scream if he heard one more girl talk about what she was wearing on her Valentine's date or another boy talk about how the girl he had asked said 'yes' when he approached her for the fifth time, so he decided to leave the common room and go to the library. He gathered up his homework and set outside, stomping as loudly as he could manage, but he doubted he could be heard through all that infernal giggling. It was almost as bad as the Yule Ball hysteria the previous year. Harry was beginning to agree completely with Viktor on the subject of giggling, he thought, as he settled into a table near the stacks.

Harry was just beginning to understand the passage on aging in potions when his thoughts were interrupted by a soft female voice just on the other side of the shelves, saying, "But what does it mean?" If that's another smoochy couple, I'll shriek, he thought to himself, but then he realized he knew the voice. Hermione? She and Viktor had gone to the library, but that had been hours ago...

"Not sure really. Tell me if this theory sounds crazy. Gold is a natural material, is it not? Not alive, like wood, but it could serve the purpose if any of those stories Madame Durshenkova found were true." Viktor's voice, just as soft and nearly impossible to hear, despite them being so close.

"Sure, but what about the core? What would serve the same purpose in this case? I mean, the letter says there has to be a core from a living thing, doesn't it?" Hermione again. Harry flushed as he realized they must be talking about the letter from Gregorovitch. The one he had sneaked a look at.

"Prod it three times. With your wand. Hold on a minute. Silencio. Be careful when you do it the third time, keep it level, I do not want to lose what is in it." Looking guiltily around him, seeing no one, Harry put his eye to a gap in the stacks. Across the way, he could see Hermione with Viktor's locket open on her palm, tapping it with her wand. She considered it for a long moment.

"Hair," she said at last. "Not yours?" Hermione asked, looking up at him.

"Hers. Too curly for mine," Viktor replied, shaking his head.

Hermione seemed to think for a moment. "Would hair work?"

"Cores usually come from a magical creature, but I do not see why that would not work as well. She would haff been a witch too. Fleur is always yammering about her 'grandmuzzer's' veela hair being in her wand."

"Sounding less crazy all the time," Hermione said, not taking her eyes off him.

"Still does not explain why I could...do what I did. Dumbledore said even he could not do it, even with the same charm. I am no Dumbledore. No way I should haff been that... powerful... even under duress. But it might at least explain why it worked without a wand. That served the same purpose. Something personal, made out of natural material, encasing something from a living thing, and I was holding it."

Hermione had put her wand back in her pocket, and picked something up from the open locket. Harry squinted, and finally made out a small black curl dangling from her fingertips, tied with a thin white thread. "Your mother saved it all this time? To put in this locket?"

"From her first haircut. Kept all of it. Mama is sentimental beyond belief. She has baby books on both of us that were the size of unabridged dictionaries. She still has pressed, dried roses from the first real date she and Papa had. She saves things. Occupational hazard of being an archivist. You end up archiving your entire life. Little wonder she put a lock of Violeta's hair in it," Viktor said, giving a small shrug.

"How did you find out about it? When?"

"She wrote me just a few weeks ago and asked me if I had found it yet. I had to write back and admit I had not. The more I started thinking about it... the more I wondered if maybe the locket had more to do with it than just reminding me of the right words," Viktor replied, gesturing with his hands.

"Why, though, do you think she put it in there?" Hermione asked, snapping the locket closed again, lock of hair in place.

"I guess they knew I would haff to stop running from it. And soon. And when I did, I would want something. To remember her," Viktor said, putting out a hand and taking the locket back. He considered it a moment before slipping it back over his head and into the neck of his robes.

"Why? I mean why would you have to?" Hermione said.

"You. Impossible to keep it from you forever. I could do that with Alexei. He let me get away with it. Elena too. And if I had kept it up, he and Elena would haff been out of my life after we all graduated. There would haff been nothing left to talk about. Hard to keep up much of a friendship when you do not know all the other person's ... for lack of a better word... secrets. Maybe being around you made me realize I did not want that to happen. You slam the door in everyone's face long enough, they leave. Not that I would go around announcing it, but at least it does not hurt to mention her anymore. Did you need anything else? More books?"

"I think the ones I got already will keep me plenty busy. I need to get back and start writing it. Eighteen more inches on History of Magic. I'm running out of room in my head for all these goblin names. They all seem to be named Urrrrgh, or something."

A soft smile broke across his face. "You are forgetting all the Morlocs, and the Urgags. Oh, and my favorite, the Barandir the Bloodthirsty line. There were what, twelve of those?"

"Oh, good grief, you mean there are four more? We're just up to the eighth," Hermione said, slapping herself in the forehead with her palm.

"Come on, I need to go back and get the dogs, you need to write. Let us go get your things," Viktor said, putting an arm around her shoulders and guiding her out the end of the stacks. Harry scrunched down as far as possible behind his open Potions book and held his breath until he heard the door swing shut and they had gone.