Here Be Dragons

Author's note: Warning, a rape is discussed in this chapter, not perpetrated. Graphic language is not used in the description.

Chapter 11
Christmas 1996

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"Father says Durmstrang takes a far more sensible line than Hogwarts about the Dark Arts. Durmstrang students actually learn them, not the defense rubbish we do...." - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 11

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Charlie's consciousness slowly surfaced from the depths of sleep. His body enveloped in warm softness, his mind relaxed by the prospect of a day off from work offered little in the way of impetus to actually wake up or move. His eyes blinked open anyway.

The spartan room was illuminated by the soft grey dimness of weak, dead-of-winter sunlight filtered through a thick layer of clouds and reflected by deep drifts of snow. The whitewashed stone walls, bare of adornment, were interchangeable with practically every other dormitory room on the rez - a fact he found sublimely comforting. It made it easier to pretend he was home again.

He stretched carefully, slowly drawing taut the muscles of his legs, back, shoulders and arms with a minimum of movement or noise. A long, satisfying yawn burst forth in the midst of it. When he was finished, he burrowed back more deeply into the warm nest created by feather bed, down comforter, and body heat, looking forward to enjoying a rare and deliciously lazy lie-in.

"S Rozhdestvom," a deep voice rumbled softly as a warm hand slid across Charlie's belly.(1)

"Happy Christmas to you, too," Charlie murmured contentedly, resting his hand on Sasha's forearm to hold it in place. He turned his head and accepted a warm, gentle kiss, languorous and indulgent, for once without fearing they might be caught.

Last night had been a little slice of heaven - the perfect Christmas present, really, to actually lay in a proper bed beside Sasha again. After subsisting for the past six months on nothing but furtive, clandestine couplings held in random, remote spots around the rez in all sorts of weather, Charlie'd learned that making love indoors on a mattress was highly underrated. He was sick to death of hiding in caves too small to serve as lairs, knees getting scraped and bruised by rocks, or lurking in a forest, getting jabbed by sticks with his back pressed up against rough bark, feeling like a sleazy back-alley pervert.

Charlie rolled over and pulled Sasha into a tight embrace. "It's so nice to just be alone with you again," he sighed.

Their new fellow hut-mate, Fedir Shevchenko, had left the day before to spend Christmas with his family in Ukraine and was not due back for two more days. Charlie felt appropriately guilty for being so pleased Fedir was gone - the man had done an admirable job of putting on a brave face and throwing himself into his work after losing his partner. But it was massively depressing to see that lost, hundred-yard stare come over Fedir's face whenever something reminded him of Costel. All the time thinking, There but for the grace of God go I.

"I know what you mean," Sasha agreed, nuzzling Charlie's earlobe. "With any luck, it won't be much longer."

Finding a new partner for Fedir, as urgent as the matter was, proved to be a daunting task. Ghenadie's job of hiring a new recruit wasn't made difficult due to a dearth of applicants - no, it seemed as though every wand-waving broom jockey fancied he had what it took to lead the glamorous life of a daring dragon keeper. The trial came from separating those with a Knut's worth of real potential from the heaps of chaff. The idiots were relatively easy to pick out. It was the ones that had significant promise that you had to watch out for. Poachers would love nothing more than to infiltrate the ranks of the rez.

"What was it like... for you?" Charlie asked gently, smoothing Sasha's bed-mussed hair with his fingers. It was remarkably soft - a gleaming dark brown to match his eyes.

Sasha shifted to lie on his back and stared at the ceiling. "To lose a partner is..." He paused, searching for the proper words. "A deeper guilt than you can imagine. It is a natural thing to blame yourself."

Charlie shifted slightly, propping his head up on his elbow to better gaze upon Sasha's face. "You never talk about him - your other partner before me."

Sasha shrugged. "There is little to say. Wadim and I were partners, but we were not very close in most other ways. Anyway, he is gone now. Not good to speak ill of the dead."

"Tell me about him," Charlie urged, not precisely sure why he suddenly felt so curious. They'd known each other for five years now, after all, and he'd never been inspired to ask about Sasha's first partner before.

Sasha took a long, deep breath as he considered Charlie's request. "Wadim Gabor was what you English call a right old bastard," he finally said, his face carefully composed into an emotionless mask. "An old Romanian cur who'd just as soon spit in your eye as look at you. According to him, there was only one correct way to do anything, and that was his way. To ask a question was as good as challenging him to a duel."

"Sounds awful," Charlie sympathized, a certain Potions master coming to mind.

"I suppose I learned a good deal from him," Sasha granted charitably. "Too bad it wasn't a two-way street."

"What happened to him?" Charlie pressed.

Sasha pursed his lips. "We got into a firefight with a band of poachers one night. He caught an A.K. to the back."

"Fucking poachers never do anything honorably, do they?" Charlie grumbled darkly.

"Never," Sasha agreed, equally darkly.

"But it wasn't your fault," Charlie rushed to say. "He knew the danger. Shields don't work against that spell. And even you can't heal someone back from the dead."

Sasha nodded slightly. "This is all true. This is all logic. But those things are hard to remember when your partner is dead. This was a man I swore to protect with my own life... and yet, I live while he molders in the grave."

Charlie laid his head on Sasha's chest, knowing there was nothing he could say to alleviate the burden of survivor's guilt. He could only sympathize with his closeness. Sasha's arm came up to hold him tight, and his hand stroked Charlie's hair in a gesture of appreciation. They lay like this for quite a while, reveling in each other's presence, basking in the silence.

"I used to love how quiet the castle got once all the other students went home for Christmas," Charlie whispered, baring a little of himself as an offering of thanks for Sasha's opening up on such a difficult matter. "Don't get me wrong... I missed my family, sure. But it was so nice just to sit by myself. And listen. And think."

"My introverted philosopher," Sasha chuckled, tousling Charlie's hair in a way that made his scalp tingle. "Such deep thoughts beneath this ginger mop."

Charlie shifted to rest his chin on Sasha's chest and smirked at him, which only served to elicit a heartier chuckle, followed by a kiss on the forehead.

"What made you decide to do that the first time?" Charlie asked, unclear where all his sudden curiosity was coming from.

"What? To kiss you?" Sasha clarified. When Charlie nodded, Sasha shrugged. "I'm not exactly sure. I felt so comfortable with you, I suppose. Compared to Wadim, you were so friendly. And then, that night, you looked so... 'Vulnerable' isn't the right word... 'Open,' perhaps?"

"I'm glad you did," Charlie said with a smile.

"Me too," Sasha replied.

"When did you... know?" Charlie murmured, voicing the next random thought that popped into his head.

Sasha's brow furrowed. "Know?"

"That you were gay." Charlie gave a little mental gasp - he'd never said the word out loud like that since he'd come to his own epiphany.

Sasha took a deep breath, and Charlie's head rose and fell with his chest. "What brings all this on?"

Charlie shrugged, wondering the same thing. "This... being alone here with you this morning... I've missed it so much. I guess I've just felt so... constrained... sometimes. Especially lately, since we moved into this hut. Don't you?"

"Such is the way of this life - unless you want to come out to everybody." Sasha looked a little anxious.

Charlie bit his lip. "Sometimes I wish we could," he confessed. "But don't worry - I know better."

Sasha smiled at him fondly. He threaded his fingers into Charlie's hair and caressed his cheekbone with the rough pad of his thumb. "I know you love me. And you know I love you. Why does anyone else need to be involved?"

"They don't," Charlie agreed. It was just a silly notion, after all. He told himself that things were fine the way they were.

"You know, my first year here, I thought every time someone called me 'cocksucker' or 'faggot' it was because they somehow knew my secret," Sasha said. "But now I know better. The labels they use for people like us... these are equated with all the other insulting names like 'pussy' and 'cock' and 'arse,' like 'shit' and 'piss': human genitalia and body waste. When people are so ignorant about love, what is the use to fight?"

Charlie blinked with understanding. The men they worked with were not bad people. They were very good people, in fact: loyal and honest and intelligent about many things. He didn't understand why they felt so threatened by the idea of homosexuality, but threatened they most certainly were.

"What did you do before me?"

Sasha wore a playfully suspicious grin. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Which is why I asked, git," Charlie snapped equally playfully.

Chagrined nostalgia flitted across Sasha's face. "I'd wait until Wadim would visit a whore in the village, then I'd Apparate into a little Muggle town nearby. There used to be a gay club there years ago."

"I cannot even imagine you in one of those places," Charlie chuckled with amusement, remembering his meeting with Tonks in Berlin. "How did you stand it?"

Sasha's smile morphed into a wince, then faded altogether. "It was a very lonely, empty existence. I am not a proponent of anonymous sex for this reason. Better to jerk off in the shower, I think."

Charlie stretched up to kiss him. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

Sasha smiled. "It was not your fault."

Charlie shifted back down. "So, unlike me, you knew before you got here..." he said leadingly, redirecting back to his original question.

Sasha wore the guarded expression he always did when the subject of his schooling came up. "Yes."

Charlie wasn't sure why he felt the topic so important to discuss, but he desperately wanted to know about Sasha's romantic history all of the sudden. It certainly wasn't that Charlie'd imagined he was Sasha's first - in fact, he'd been glad of Sasha's expertise and guidance in the matter, especially in the beginning. But there was something overwhelmingly intriguing about Sasha's mysterious past, so Charlie pressed on.

"Was there anyone... special... before?"

Sasha looked hard into Charlie's eyes, but Charlie didn't back down. Share this with me! Please! he begged with his eyes. I can handle it.

Then Sasha sighed, resigned. "At Durmstrang, schooling lasts ten years, not seven like at Hogwarts. We leave home when we are only seven years old. I've told you this before, yes?"

Charlie nodded. He'd thought it particularly harsh when Sasha had first explained the Durmstrang admission process. He couldn't imagine leaving home so young.

"At your school, you say you get divided up into houses," Sasha continued. "With other people like yourself. Because a hat tells you where to live, you go."

"The Sorting Hat, yes," Charlie agreed. "It was bewitched by the founders."

"At Durmstrang this is different. We are divided up into boys and girls only. Two large barracks, one all boys together, the other all girls. The beds are grouped by year, but even the littlest boys are in the same room with biggest.

"At my school, the teachers were very strict. If you did a thing wrong, you were punished. Not like your detentions - my teachers used humiliation and pain. Embarrassing and hurtful spells. Yelling mean, insulting things. Beatings."

"Sash..." Charlie hadn't meant for this to be an exercise in traumatic memory. He no longer wanted to force the issue, not if it caused Sasha pain.

"I explain this so you will understand why I never told a teacher what happened. Why none of us ever told."

Charlie's mouth went dry, and his chest filled with leaden dread. No! Don't say it!

Sasha avoided all eye contact. "I lost my virginity at age thirteen. It was not my choice."

"Sasha!" Charlie hissed, horrified.

"I was not the only one," Sasha continued in a businesslike, detached manner. "It was a systematic thing. Some older boys would wake you up one night, pull you out of bed. You never knew when it would happen, only that it would. 'Initiation,' they called it.

"Other boys were treated far worse than me, initiated many times - I was lucky I was built strong, and they feared me. When we got older, some of my classmates used tradition as an excuse to perpetuate the awful practice. Others, like me, refused to participate with unwilling partners. Instead, we sought comfort in each other. Secretly, of course - such things were not openly tolerated at Durmstrang."

Sasha snorted with disgust. "Ironic, is it not? Raping another boy was nothing but time-honored school tradition, and the teachers turned a blind eye. But loving him was shameful, worthy of expulsion."

After another brief pause, he continued in a soft, somber voice, "The time here with Wadim... it was very hard. He was so much like my old teachers: never a kind word, never a gentle voice. Always punishment and humiliation. The other keepers were friendly enough, but I found no... comfort with them, you understand? I was terrified they knew my secret."

"Sash..." Charlie groaned, willing him to stop. His chest and throat and head hurt with the effort to hold in a sob.

"Charlie, it's okay. It was a long time ago. Yes, it was a bad thing that happened to me. But my school friends... we were there for each other. Helped each other through the shame and hurt. Taught each other that sex can be a beautiful thing as well as an ugly thing. A tenderness as well as a brutality. A union of equals rather than only a domination or submission."

Sasha turned back to him, a heartbreakingly tender expression on his face. "Then you came into my life. Always friendly. Always kind. Always good."

Charlie gathered Sasha to him, cradled his head in his arms. "I am supremely grateful to those school friends of yours," he murmured. "How you didn't all end up psychotic sociopaths is beyond me."

"I think the thing about seeing the worst life has to offer," Sasha said, "is that you appreciate something better is out there. If you learn to recognize and hate the Dark underbelly, you strive to always live in the Light. This is how I see things. Maybe I'm not making sense."

"You're making perfect sense," Charlie insisted. "Are you hungry?" he asked, desperate to change the subject.

"Yes, but the thought of leaving this bed is worse than the prospect of death by starvation," Sasha quipped, his jovial mood intentional and slightly forced. He pressed himself a little deeper into Charlie's arms.

"I can go get us something and bring it back here, if you like," Charlie chuckled, eager to put the horrific revelations behind them, too. Freya Eitelmann, Ridgebit Reserve's lone female keeper, had baked a loaf of stollen for every hut, just like she did every year. Charlie reckoned such a breakfast might be the perfect distraction.

Sasha's grip around him tightened. "No. Stay."

Charlie settled back down under the covers, nestled against Sasha, willing himself to be nourished by the warmth and love between them. But after several minutes and several more attempts to redirect his thoughts, he gave up and pondered the conversation anew.

Poor Sash! How horrific that his first experience of sex was by force! How does anyone recover from that? Why didn't anyone stand up to those arseholes? How could they all just let it happen, year after year?

Hang on... year after year? He said it was systemic... it happened to everyone? Does that mean...?

"I can hear you doing the math in your head," Sasha murmured.

"Sorry!" Charlie groaned. "But... do you think... they've all been subjected to it? What happened to you, I mean."

"I don't know when it started," Sasha replied. "Nor have I ever spoken of what happened since I left Durmstrang - not until I told you this morning. But before you came, I was the youngest here by at least five years. Leotrim and Laslo were both at school for a few years when I was there. The rest... who can say?"

Leotrim Remzi, Viorel's Albanian partner? And Laslo Petkov, the Bulgarian? Charlie was stunned to consider the ramifications: the majority of the keepers on the rez - all those from the eastern European countries - had attended Durmstrang. There were only three of them, including himself, who'd been educated elsewhere.

Dear God... they all went through that? Every one? Charlie thought he might be ill.

Sasha shifted a little, then guided Charlie to turn around and face him once more. "I think this is why they all say those things about faggots and such. They don't like to remember what happened to them. The fear it makes them feel... their cruel comments and derision are their way of whistling in the dark, perhaps. They assume anyone who could enjoy love with another man must be a rapist, a monster, a bully. They can't understand how it could be any other way."

Charlie nodded very slightly. "But they're wrong."

Sasha leaned close and brushed a light kiss against his lips. "Very wrong."

Charlie held him tight. "I love you," he choked. "I don't say that enough."

"Never worry about this," Sasha soothed him. "I know it always."

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1- S Rozhdestvom = "Merry Christmas" in Russian. From what I understand, it's not a literal translation, but rather, it's what is offered as a holiday greeting. Thanks to Savva for confirming this spelling for me!