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He finds her sitting on the narrow flight of stairs leading up to the Astronomy tower, her silk gown spilling down the stone steps like a waterfall, her wet cheek pressed against the rough wall. One golden shoe dangles from each hand. Even her hands look sad, the wrists hanging limp and dejected.
"I looked for you everyvere," he tries softly, but all that happens is that her crying goes a little louder for a second, and she turns her face towards the wall. They're mostly fatigued, hiccupy little sobs, interspersed with deep sniffles. It reminds him of his baby brother, Sashko, who when he has exhausted his grief over some disappointment, will hang on to those little sounds as though he's luxuriating in his surrender to sadness, to the strong arms that hold him.
Viktor stops a few steps below his barefoot, unhappy Cinderella, holding two impractically full glasses of butterbeer. He sits down, as carefully as he can, but still manages to get beer over the rim of one glass, splashing over his fingers and onto the edge of her dress. She doesn't even notice: if she'd yelled at him for that, he'd at least have known what to do and say to make her giggle and forgive him.
He places the glasses on the step beside him, and studies her bare toes peeking out from the silk and lace, since she seems disinclined to show him her face quite yet.
At eighteen, Viktor has learnt a thing or two about girls, but none that seem particularly helpful at the moment.
He has learnt that many of them will squeal with glee or go faint at a casual glance from him. (They need not know him for this to happen; the better they know him, the less they seem to know what to do with him, in fact.) He has also learnt that dislike is often feigned to attract his attention in a roundabout way. He has learnt that whether it's infatuation or dislike, the strength of its expression seems to be out of any balance with what has merited it: himself, merely Viktor Gheorgiev Krum, a quiet, moody, awkwardly tall bookworm with a disproportionate ability to chase a winged golden ball through the air.
He hasn't yet had a steady girlfriend, although since his rise to fame began to offer him opportunities, he has fooled around with a few. But back at Durmstrang in the girl's wing, there's Karkaroff's niece, Tereza Cvetozar, with haughty cognac eyes and hair white-gold as a Lippizaner's tossing mane. Before he left for Britain, she told him sweetly that if he were chosen champion and took home the Goblet of Fire, there might be a second prize waiting for him upon his return. He remembers, from a far distance, how pleased he'd been as she cupped his cheek with cool fingers and kissed him for luck. How determined he'd been to win her favour.
That's one of the things he's learnt too: that girls' favour is capriciously extended or withheld, and one of his jobs as a man will be to navigate these treacherous waters.
But here and now, those lessons seem to be from another subject entirely. That subject is called "girls", this one is called "Hermione", and he isn't sure how to reconcile the two. Hermione, he's pretty sure, doesn't barter with favour, and so her heartfelt sobs may have little to do with him at all.
God, that's what he's hoping, anyway.
"You vant me to go?" he chances. There is a brief series of hiccups, where he thinks maybe he can discern a whispered "No," and then just a quick little shrug. Viktor chooses to interpret this to mean that she wants him to stay. If she really wanted him gone, she would have told him already, right?
Gently, and mostly because he doesn't know what to do, he takes one pale foot -- reddened at the knuckle of the biggest toe -- in his hand, places it across his long knees, and begins rubbing it lightly. He's a patient person, this at least is a strength he's aware of, glad for, since his mother often reiterates it with a warm, quiet pride that makes him feel a head taller (not that he really needs to be any taller). He can calm a foal that is wild after a summer on the mountain grazing meadows, and he can practice with Sashko on the broomstick for hours without losing his temper at clumsiness or tantrums. That's another lesson Viktor has learnt -- one that doesn't apply specifically to girls -- sometimes all you need to do is wait and be quiet, and things will arrange themselves the way they should be. It's one of his Quidditch secrets, and God knows it's also come in handy a couple of times when Karkaroff has been in a foul mood.
Hermione's toes are curling in his hand. The nails are pretty, polished with some shimmery transparent thing. He strokes them lightly, and there's a choked sound from above. He glances up. She's red-faced from tears and maybe something else.
"It tickles," she whispers, giving him a reluctant, tiny smile.
"In a bad vay?"
"No," she tells him after a second's consideration. "It's nice." Her brown eyes are solemn, and somewhat shy. "You're ... really so nice, Viktor."
Nice, huh? Lyubezen. Not a word he often hears used about himself -- brilliant, dour, and bone-headed are all more frequently bestowed -- but he likes it. Smiling a little, he rubs his thumb gently over the angry red spot on the knuckle of her toe. Lifting the other foot and checking, he finds a matching spot there, symmetrical. "Hurts, this?"
"The shoes pinched."
He throws a glance at the shoes that have fallen forgotten to the step below her feet. Hermione's feet are small and slim, but the shoes seem impossible even for them, sliver-heeled doll's slippers narrowing to a sharp point. "Yes," he says with a wince of sympathy. "Vy not put a Crucio on each foot and haff it done vith?"
She laughs at last. "It wouldn't look as good, though."
He holds on to her feet, speaks to them with his head bent. "This vot made you cry, then? Hurt so much, you ran avay?"
She goes very still, the muscles in her feet tensing under his touch. Softly, she says, "Viktor, I apologize. It was very rude of me."
"No, no," he murmurs, "is fine." Never let the lady carry the blame, says his father's chiding voice inside his head. (How old was he the first time he heard that -- five? -- and the neighbours' little Ana had gotten away with murder that summer, just about, before he was able to convince his father that all chivalry should have its sane limits.)
"It was ... I can't really tell. Wouldn't be fair to ... someone," she says in a hard, restrained whisper, as though it costs her to be so fair. "Just ... something someone said."
"About you and me?"
"Sort of."
"Someone you care about."
She only makes an exasperated huff, but it is answer enough. His hand has stilled on her foot. Potter, he thinks to himself, something vicious-green curling its arrowed tail inside his mind, but then at once he wonders -- doesn't seem like Potter, somehow, to be so snide; dense maybe but not deliberately cruel to a girl. Potter's redhaired friend, then? Viktor suddenly remembers the boy's sneer as he asked for Hermione.
After a while he says, "I hope I didn't make you trouble, asking you to ball."
"Trouble?" she gasps, almost indignant by the look of her. "Viktor, it's the most fun I've had in ... well, ever, I think." And at that she straightens herself, raises her chin, as though her low mood is physically lifting off her shoulders. She cocks her head to the side, listening, and in the silence they can hear the beat of rock music pulsing through stone walls. "You know, it really is the most fun ever, and the night's not over yet, is it?"
Her change of mood seems so spontaneous and so earnest, it makes him grin from ear to ear.
"Vell, in that case, Pepeliashka, vould you do me honour of another dance?"
She beams at him, but then furrows her brow. "I don't think I can put on those shoes again," she says with a grimace.
"Don't you haff other shoes?"
She swallows visibly, avoids his glance. "I don't think I especially want to go up to the Gryffindor common room at the moment -- I'll ask Ginny to get them for me," she says suddenly, laughing. "Or ... you know, if I can't find her, I will dance barefoot, how about that!"
"You velcome to stand on my shoes ven ve dance, save your pretty toes," he offers. He takes her hand, gently pulls her to her feet as he stands up.
"What ..." she seems shy to ask, actually gives a little nervous giggle. "That word you said, 'pepel ... iashka' something. Bulgarian, right? What did you call me?"
He opens his mouth to reply, then hesitates. Suddenly he's not sure that his Cinderella would like to be named for one, or at least, whether the revelation will be able to compete with the mystery of the foreign word. "Later, I vill tell," he murmurs.
"Oh. Okay."
"It vasn't something bad."
"I know that. I know you wouldn't," she says, with a clear-eyed confidence in him that makes his stomach flip over in the strangest way.
"Her-my-nee," he says -- and it's just an impulse, but as he says it he realizes how much it matters to him that she understand this -- "my Bulgarian is as good as your English. I speak vell in my language."
Hermione's eyes go wide and even her lips make a round little 'o' of sympathy. "Oh, Viktor! I understand that!"
"It is just ... I know I sound stupid; sometimes I hear English students ... repeat my vords. And not ... nice vay. Behind my back. I haff only learnt for two years. I speak Russian, good as a Russian -- even German, I speak quite vell, because I started learn as little boy." He shakes his head. "Some luck to fall in love vith English girl, right?"
There, that is out, too, now. His heart beats so hard it's a wonder the sound doesn't echo from the walls.
She lays her other hand over their clasped ones -- his hand is as big as both of hers put together -- and runs her fingers feather-light over the thin back of his hand. "But you see," she says, hesitantly as she searches for the right words -- "it isn't only what you say; it is... it is the sum of someone's words and actions and ... demeanour ... that makes that person seem ... eloquent. And I think you are."
Viktor is frozen under her tender caress. He thinks this is probably not the right moment to confess that he doesn't know the word 'eloquent', either. He gets the gist of what she's saying, he hopes.
He looks down at her bowed head with that lovely wild hair all sleek and tamed, and he wants to kiss her, so badly. But at the same time, it seems rather too early for that.
And he wants to dance, too.
They both draw breath to speak simultaneously, and Hermione checks herself and looks up at him. Her eyes have a soft, startled wideness that makes him think she maybe was thinking about kissing, too. It causes something in his chest to constrict and ache so sweetly, it's hardly bearable and yet worse if it should stop quite yet.
Sometimes, Viktor knows, all you have to do is wait and be quiet, and things will arrange themselves just as they should be.
He gives her hand a small squeeze before letting go, and bends over to pick up her shoes. "I vill carry your beautiful instruments of torture."
"No, Viktor, leave them." She stays him with a touch of his shoulder. "I'll pick them up later."
"They vill haff butterbeer for company, at least," he says, straightening up, and she laughs as they look down at the small still life on the steps, two golden shoes and two full glasses tattling a secret, festive tale.
"A party of their own," she agrees.
She seeks his gaze, such a warm, brave challenge in her smile, and Viktor takes a deep breath and offers her his arm. Her hand is light on his sleeve and he feels like the luckiest man alive as they walk together down the stairs.
'Eloquent', he thinks with pride. Hermione finds him 'eloquent'. He will look it up at the first opportunity, just as he knows she will have looked up his 'Pepeliashka' before the next time they meet.
-end-