Chapter Text
The early afternoon sun shone bright and warm over the Black Lake, its waters sparkling with the ripples left by the giant squid’s lazy movements beneath the surface. Birds chirped from nearby trees, and a gentle breeze sent a few autumn leaves dancing across the ground. Harry, Viktor, Fleur, and Cedric sat together on a picnic blanket spread across a soft patch of grass, surrounded by an assortment of food.
“Is it just me, or is it nice to finally not be underwater?” Harry said, stretching his arms over his head as he relaxed against a log. He was still a little chilled from the second task but found the warmth of the sun and the company of the others unexpectedly refreshing.
Cedric, already in the process of pulling out pumpkin pasties and some sandwiches from a wicker basket, grinned. “Honestly, after spending all that time trying not to drown, a picnic seems like the perfect idea.” He passed a pastry to Fleur, who accepted it with a small nod, her expression almost suspicious as she looked around at the others.
“Zo, how are you all adjusting to life here?” Harry asked, aiming the question at Viktor and Fleur. They’d all been so busy with tasks, he realized they hadn’t had much of a chance to actually talk about their experiences at Hogwarts.
Fleur’s snort caught everyone’s attention, and she didn’t seem to mind. She placed her half-eaten sandwich back down on the picnic blanket, looking at it as though it had personally offended her. “’ Ogwarts is cold, dreary, and full of strange creatures. And ze food... I ‘ave had better meals in ze Beauxbatons dining hall on a *bad* day.”
Cedric’s smile faltered just a bit, but he soldiered on, ever the optimist. “Well, it grows on you, doesn’t it, Harry?” he said, shooting Harry a hopeful glance, as though Harry could save him from Fleur’s harsh critique.
“Erm... yeah, sort of,” Harry offered, though he wasn’t quite sure that was true. He didn’t want to admit that even after all these years, he still found the occasional Hogwarts meal a bit dubious. “You get used to the, um... variety.”
Fleur raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, her skepticism palpable. “Variety? Zat is one way to describe it. I ‘ad to import proper French food just to survive. Do you know what they ‘ave been serving for breakfast? Toast! And beans! *Beans* for breakfast! Zis is not right.”
“English breakfast, innit?” Harry mumbled, feeling slightly defensive of his school but not sure how to argue with Fleur, who clearly wasn’t impressed by Hogwarts’ charm—or lack thereof.
Viktor, who had remained quiet this whole time, suddenly shifted. Harry glanced over at him, noticing for the first time how deep his frown had become. The Bulgarian Seeker was staring intensely at the ground as if lost in thought.
“Viktor,” Cedric said, trying to steer the conversation toward something less volatile, “what do you think of Hogwarts?”
For a moment, it seemed like Viktor hadn’t heard him. His brow was furrowed, and there was a strange tension in his jaw. Then, after an awkward pause, Viktor muttered, “I hate verbs in English.”
Harry blinked. *What?*
Cedric, ever the diplomat, raised an eyebrow in confusion but maintained his friendly tone. “I’m sorry?”
“Verbs,” Viktor repeated, more forcefully this time. “I hate verbs in English.”
Harry bit his lip, stifling a laugh. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Viktor’s struggle—English was confusing even for native speakers—but the sheer seriousness with which Viktor said it caught him off guard.
“Verbs?” Cedric repeated cautiously, as though he wasn’t sure if Viktor was making a joke or not.
“Yes. Verbs,” Viktor grunted. “They are... ridiculous. Nothing makes sense. One person dances,” he said, jabbing a finger in the air, “but if many people dance, why does *he* still get to dance? Why not everyone?”
There was a pause as Cedric processed this. His face was a mixture of amusement and sympathy, but he seemed unsure of how to respond. Harry, meanwhile, was fighting the growing urge to giggle. Viktor’s frustration was so intense, and his confusion about verbs... well, it was almost too relatable.
“So, what you’re saying is,” Cedric said carefully, “you’re upset because ‘he dances’ has an extra ‘s’?”
“Yes!” Viktor said, his voice rising in frustration. “I dance. You dance. He *dances* ! What is this?”
Harry let out a small snort of laughter, quickly covering his mouth with his hand. Cedric’s lips twitched as well, though he valiantly held his ground. Viktor, however, wasn’t done. He turned his full attention to Harry now, as though looking for some kind of explanation.
“Why?” Viktor demanded, his thick accent making every word sound like a challenge. “Why does *he* get to dance more than me?”
Harry couldn’t hold it in any longer. A giggle escaped, and once it started, he couldn’t stop. It was just so absurd. Viktor, one of the most feared Quidditch Seekers in the world, sitting here beside the Black Lake, having an existential crisis over the letter “s.”
Cedric, too, let out a quiet chuckle, though he tried to mask it as a cough. Viktor, oblivious to the growing amusement around him, crossed his arms and glared at the lake, clearly displeased with English grammar.
Fleur, however, looked utterly unimpressed. She sighed dramatically, shaking her head as though the weight of the world had just settled on her shoulders. “I cannot believe zis is happening,” she muttered to herself in French, her tone laced with disbelief.
Viktor’s irritation seemed to grow by the second. Harry had only just managed to stop giggling when Viktor continued, his voice now laden with genuine confusion.
“I do not understand zis language,” Viktor declared, shaking his head. His accent grew thicker as his frustration mounted. “In Bulgarian, you say ‘I dance,’ ‘he dances,’ same thing! No extra *s* ! But here, English makes no sense. Why does one person get to do more dancing than me, just because of zis letter?”
By now, Cedric had given up trying to be polite. His face had split into a wide grin, and his shoulders were shaking as he tried to hold back his laughter. “I—I don’t think it means he’s dancing *more* than you,” Cedric choked out between snickers. “It’s just... it’s just how English works.”
Viktor scowled, clearly unconvinced. “English does not work,” he muttered, folding his arms across his chest like a petulant child. “It is broken.”
That did it for Harry. He burst out laughing, clutching his stomach as he rolled back onto the blanket. Cedric joined in fully, both of them laughing uncontrollably at the sight of Viktor Krum—the stoic, world-class Quidditch star—sitting there, arms crossed, ranting about verbs like it was the gravest injustice he’d ever faced.
“Is this funny to you?” Viktor asked, his voice rising slightly. He gestured wildly with his hands, his frustration boiling over. “You are laughing, but it is *he* who dances! What has he done to earn this special verb?”
Harry was now gasping for breath, his face red from laughing so hard. Cedric wasn’t much better, his normally composed demeanor shattered as he howled with laughter. They had completely lost it.
Viktor, however, was deadly serious. He wasn’t done making his point. “Let me ask you zis,” he said, his tone turning more philosophical. “What if there are 645 people in a room? And they all dance. Then, one man— *he* dances? Why?! What makes him so special? Why does he get his own verb? How much is this man dancing?!”
Harry’s laughter reached new heights, and he collapsed onto the grass, rolling around as though Viktor’s words had physically knocked him off balance. Cedric, now lying on his back, was clutching his stomach, his face scrunched up in pure amusement.
Viktor frowned, clearly confused by their reaction. “Why is zis funny?” he asked again, almost to himself. “I am serious! English makes no sense!”
Fleur, who had remained silent throughout Viktor’s impassioned speech, finally let out a loud sigh, her patience visibly thinning. “Mon Dieu,” she muttered under her breath, her hands on her temples as though she were warding off a headache. “Is zis what we are doing now? Arguing over verbs?”
Her accent, usually so refined, was dripping with irritation. She cast a long, hard look at the boys, who were still laughing uncontrollably, and then at Viktor, who was staring at them like they had lost their minds.
“I do not understand why you laugh,” Viktor continued, still looking perplexed. He turned to Harry and Cedric with narrowed eyes. “Is zis funny because you think he dances more than me? Is zis what you think? Because I do not think so!”
Cedric had tears streaming down his face at this point. He tried to respond, but every time he opened his mouth, more laughter poured out. Harry wasn’t faring much better. He attempted to sit up but ended up collapsing back onto the blanket, completely overwhelmed by the absurdity of the conversation.
Viktor, meanwhile, looked genuinely hurt. “I am just as good at dancing as *he* is!” he declared, raising his voice. “Zis verb... it is unfair.”
“Viktor—” Harry wheezed, barely managing to string two words together. “It’s not—it’s not about—dancing!”
But Viktor wasn’t listening. He was too deep in his own confusion, his mind racing with grammatical injustices. “No!” he said firmly, crossing his arms again. “Zis is about dancing. Why else would there be a special verb just for *him* ? English must think he is the better dancer. Well, I do not think so. I do not think he dances more than me.”
At this point, Harry and Cedric were in a complete state of chaos, laughing so hard that they were both rolling on the ground, gasping for breath. Even Fleur, who had up until now remained somewhat detached from the situation, couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle despite herself.
Seeing the boys laughing only seemed to fuel Viktor’s indignation. He threw his hands in the air in frustration. “Zis is madness! English verbs are madness!”
Harry finally managed to sit up, still clutching his sides from laughing too hard. “Viktor,” he said, his voice hoarse from all the laughing, “it’s just... it’s just grammar! No one’s actually dancing more than you!”
But Viktor’s glare suggested that he didn’t entirely believe that. He muttered something in Bulgarian under his breath, clearly annoyed, and glared out at the lake as though it had personally wronged him.
“English is stupid,” Viktor grumbled again, folding his arms tighter and sinking back into a brooding silence.
Fleur, still rubbing her temples, let out another heavy sigh. “ *Zis* is why I prefer French,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “No nonsense about verbs and dancing.”
As Viktor stared broodingly at the lake, muttering about the nonsensical nature of English grammar, his mind wandered back to the first time he had ever encountered the cursed language. It had been a disaster from the very beginning—a disaster that, in his opinion, never should have been inflicted on him.
flashback
Durmstrang, with its cold, strict environment and no-nonsense approach to education, wasn’t exactly the kind of place where one expected to learn a language as frivolous and convoluted as English. Viktor had never imagined he would need it—he was a Quidditch star, after all. The international language of Quidditch was simple: catch the Snitch, win the game. Who needed to know how to conjugate verbs when you were soaring through the air on a broomstick?
But Igor Karkaroff, the headmaster of Durmstrang, had other ideas.
Viktor could still remember the day Karkaroff had marched into the classroom, his long, flowing robes trailing behind him as he swept in with all the dramatic flair of a stage actor. He had looked each student in the eye, his mustache twitching slightly as though he were barely containing his own disgust at what he was about to say.
“Students,” Karkaroff had begun, his voice low and serious, “it has come to my attention that many of you will be participating in international tournaments. You will need to understand English.”
There had been a collective groan from the students, Viktor included. No one at Durmstrang cared about English. It was a language for soft, Western wizards, with their cozy castles and tea breaks. Viktor had been convinced he could live his entire life speaking only Bulgarian and Russian.
Karkaroff, of course, had other plans. “We will begin lessons immediately,” he had declared, ignoring the groans. “English is a necessary evil. And you will master it.”
The lessons had been, in a word, torture. Viktor had quickly realized that English was full of rules that made no sense. The grammar was confusing, the spelling was absurd, and the pronunciation was a nightmare. Worst of all were the verbs. No matter how hard Viktor tried, he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that verbs could change so much, depending on who was doing the action.
*I dance* , *you dance* , *he dances* . It was as though English was trying to mock him.
There had been one particularly disastrous class that Viktor would never forget. Karkaroff, clearly irritated by the lack of progress his students were making, had decided to run through basic English verbs with them, trying to drill the rules into their heads.
“Repeat after me,” Karkaroff had said, his voice growing increasingly sharp with every word. “I run. You run. He *runs*.”
Viktor and his classmates had dutifully repeated the phrases, though Viktor’s brow had furrowed in confusion. He raised his hand, something he rarely did in class, and Karkaroff, with a look of deep annoyance, acknowledged him with a curt nod.
“Why does he run?” Viktor asked, narrowing his eyes. “Why not ‘he run’? Why add the extra ‘s’?”
Karkaroff let out a long, beleaguered sigh, rubbing his temples in the exact same way Fleur had been doing by the lake. “Because that is the rule, Krum,” he had said, as though that explained everything. “In English, third-person singular verbs require an ‘s’ at the end. It is just how it is.”
“That is stupid,” Viktor had replied flatly, and the rest of the class had nodded in agreement. His classmates were just as baffled as he was by this strange quirk of the language . They were used to more logical systems—where verbs didn’t change based on who was doing the action. Bulgarian and Russian were straightforward. English was... chaos.
Karkaroff’s eye had twitched at Viktor’s blunt comment, but he hadn’t argued. Instead, he had continued the lesson with growing impatience. “Fine. Moving on. I eat. You eat. He *eats* .”
Again, Viktor had raised his hand. “But why? Why does he eat more than I do?”
“He doesn’t eat more, Krum!” Karkaroff had snapped, losing what little patience he had left. “It is simply a rule of the language. It doesn’t mean he’s actually eating more than you!”
“Then why change it?” Viktor had persisted, his arms crossed stubbornly. He wasn’t trying to be difficult; he simply couldn’t understand why English seemed to complicate something as simple as a verb. “If we both eat the same amount, why does his verb get extra letters?”
The other students had snickered, though they were clearly just as confused. Karkaroff, however, was not amused.
“That’s just how it is, Krum,” Karkaroff had growled through gritted teeth. “English is a language of many rules. You must accept them.”
But Viktor had never accepted it. The more he learned, the more absurd English became. There were irregular verbs that changed completely depending on the tense. Past tense verbs made no sense at all— *I go, I went* —how could that even be the same verb? He had tried to memorize them, but the further he went, the more he became convinced that English was designed to make people like him fail.
One day, Viktor had even gone so far as to confront Karkaroff after class.
“Professor,” he had begun, his voice serious. “I do not think English is for me. It is a language that is... stupid.”
Karkaroff had simply stared at him, blinking slowly as though processing what Viktor had just said. Then, after a long pause, he had sighed deeply and said, “Yes, Krum. I know.”
That had been the end of their conversation. And, in a way, it had confirmed Viktor’s suspicions. Even Karkaroff, who had spent years mastering the language, seemed to agree that English was a mess.
---
Back by the lake, Viktor shook his head at the memory, his scowl deepening. English had never made sense to him then, and it still didn’t now. The flashback only made his current situation seem even more ridiculous. Why did the English insist on making something as simple as dancing into a convoluted mess? Bulgarian verbs didn’t behave this way. If he danced, then everyone danced. It was fair and simple. But here? The rules were arbitrary, and the verbs... well, the verbs were clearly out to get him.
As his mind wandered back to the present, Viktor noticed that Harry and Cedric had finally stopped rolling around on the grass, though they were still catching their breath from laughing so hard. Fleur was sitting a bit farther away, looking like she was seriously reconsidering her life choices for the tenth time that day.
Viktor sighed deeply. “I miss Bulgarian,” he muttered under his breath.
Harry, still giggling quietly, looked up at Viktor. “What was that?”
“I said,” Viktor growled, “I miss Bulgarian. No confusing verbs. No... madness.”
Harry and Cedric exchanged amused glances, but before they could respond, Viktor continued, still caught up in his linguistic misery.
“And what is with ze irregular verbs?” Viktor demanded, throwing his hands up in frustration. “I run, but I ran? I speak, but I spoke? Why does everything change? In Bulgarian, it stays ze same. It makes sense. But here, everything changes just because!”
Cedric chuckled softly, trying to soothe Viktor. “It’s just how English is. It’s... got its quirks.”
“Quirks?” Viktor snorted. “It is broken. *He dances* ,” he muttered again, shaking his head. “Ridiculous.”
Fleur, who had been quietly observing the ongoing spectacle, rolled her eyes. “Oh, please,” she snapped. “English is not *zat* bad. Try learning French. Zere are far worse tenses to deal with.”
Viktor turned to Fleur, glaring. “I would rather stick to Bulgarian, thank you.”
Fleur sniffed, clearly unimpressed. “Good luck winning ze tournament with zat attitude.”
Harry, still wiping away the last of his tears from laughing so hard, sat up properly and looked at Viktor. He felt a little bad now—Viktor genuinely seemed upset, and as confusing as English could be, it wasn’t worth making someone feel so frustrated. Especially not when that someone could easily crush him in a Quidditch match.
“Well, I mean, it’s not really about dancing more, Viktor,” Harry said, trying to sound helpful. “It’s just a rule, you know? It doesn’t mean he’s better at dancing, it’s just the way the language works.”
Viktor raised an eyebrow at him, his expression clearly saying, *That doesn’t help me at all*.
Cedric, always the peacemaker, leaned in, trying to smooth things over. “It’s like... a way of showing who’s doing the action,” he explained, though even as the words left his mouth, he didn’t seem entirely confident in them. “So, when you say ‘I dance,’ it’s just you. But when you say ‘he dances,’ it’s like... emphasizing that someone else is dancing. It’s not about him dancing more. It’s just grammar.”
Viktor’s frown deepened. “Zat is no explanation. You are just repeating ze same thing!”
Cedric blinked. “Well... yeah. Because that’s the rule.”
“Why?” Viktor demanded, his voice rising again. “Why does it have to change? *I dance* , *he dance* , we both dance. Why add extra letters? What is ze point?”
Harry and Cedric exchanged a look. Cedric shrugged, looking as lost as Harry felt.
“Because...” Harry began, trying to come up with something that would make sense. “Because English likes to make things difficult. You know, just... to keep you on your toes.”
Viktor narrowed his eyes. “You are making zis up.”
“No, really!” Harry said, scrambling for an explanation. “I mean, there are loads of weird things in English. Take irregular verbs, for example. You don’t just say ‘I run, I runned’ in the past tense. You say ‘I ran.’ But for some reason, with other verbs, you just add ‘-ed’—like, ‘I talk, I talked.’”
Viktor’s face twisted in confusion. “Zat makes no sense. Why not say ‘I runned’? Zat would be logical.”
“It’s just how it is!” Harry said, laughing again at the absurdity of it all. “English is weird, okay? We just go with it.”
Viktor, clearly unsatisfied with that explanation, shook his head. “You are all mad. Your language is broken.”
“Okay, look,” Cedric interjected, determined to at least try to offer something more coherent. “In English, verbs change to match the subject. It’s called agreement. So, when it’s ‘he’ or ‘she,’ you add the ‘s’ at the end. That’s just the rule. Same with irregular verbs—they don’t follow the normal pattern, but they’re part of the language. If you learn the rules, you’ll be fine.”
“Rules,” Viktor scoffed. “In Quidditch, we have rules. But they make sense. You know how to win. In English, you just... change things because? Zis is madness.”
Harry nodded, trying not to laugh again. “I mean... yeah, pretty much.”
Fleur, who had been watching this whole exchange with mounting disbelief, finally rolled her eyes and spoke up. “I cannot believe zis is still happening. You are acting like verbs are ze end of ze world!”
Viktor shot her a glare. “Zey are ridiculous,” he said stubbornly. “No one explains why zey change, but everyone just accepts it.”
Fleur raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. “You are overreacting. In French, we have so many verb tenses, that you would cry.”
“I would rather cry in Bulgarian,” Viktor grumbled under his breath.
At this, Cedric let out a snort of laughter, though he quickly covered it up by pretending to cough. Harry, however, couldn’t stop himself from giggling again. The whole situation was just too absurd.
“Okay, okay,” Harry said, trying to rein things back in. “Look, Viktor, I get it. English is hard. But the more you practice, the more you’ll get used to it. The verb thing? It’s weird, but you just have to memorize it. Trust me, once you stop thinking about it, it makes more sense.”
Viktor didn’t seem convinced. “Why do I have to memorize something so stupid?”
“Because it’s English,” Cedric said with a grin. “We like to keep things interesting.”
“That is not interesting,” Viktor muttered, his arms crossed. “Zat is just annoying.”
Harry laughed. “Yeah, tell me about it. I grew up with it, and I still don’t get half of it.”
“Exactly,” Viktor said, gesturing to Harry as though he had proven his point. “Even you don’t understand it.”
“Well,” Harry replied, still grinning, “nobody really understands English. We just survive it.”
Viktor shook his head, still grumbling under his breath about broken languages, but at least some of his anger had subsided. He glared out at the lake, looking like he had accepted—though not happily—that English was beyond saving.
“English is still stupid,” Viktor muttered one more time for good measure.
Cedric clapped him on the back, laughing. “It is, mate. But at least you’re not alone in thinking that.”
Viktor grumbled something in Bulgarian that sounded suspiciously like an insult, but the group had finally calmed down enough to resume some semblance of a normal picnic.
Viktor’s deep scowl hadn’t faded as he stared at the ground, still stewing in his frustration. Harry, having finally caught his breath after the laughter subsided, sat up and exchanged a glance with Cedric. There was a brief, shared moment of sympathy between them. They knew Viktor wasn’t trying to be funny; he was genuinely confused, and in Viktor’s world, confusion was a personal affront. Unfortunately, explaining English to someone who was already convinced it was a form of torture was no small task.
Cedric, ever the peacekeeper, cleared his throat and took the lead. “Okay, Viktor,” he said gently, trying his best to put on his ‘Head Boy’ voice. “It’s really not as complicated as it sounds. English just... has rules that sometimes don’t seem to make sense, but it’s all about consistency.”
Viktor shot Cedric a look that could melt steel. “Consistency? Where is consistency in this? One minute, I say ‘I dance.’ Then, for no reason, ‘he dances’? How is this... consistent?”
Harry, suppressing a snort, knew it was a lost cause but tried to help anyway. “It’s just, you know... grammar,” he offered weakly. “Every language has rules like that. You just have to accept it.”
“Accept it?” Viktor’s voice dropped to a low, dangerous tone. “You are asking me to accept that one person can dance more than everyone else in the room?”
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again, realizing there was no way to explain it in a way that didn’t sound ridiculous. He glanced at Cedric, hoping he could salvage the situation.
Cedric scratched his head, clearly trying to find a more logical way to explain. “Think of it like this, Viktor. It’s not that *he* is dancing more than you... it’s just a way to... separate who is doing the action. So you know it’s him and not, like, all of us.”
“But I know who is dancing!” Viktor exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “I do not need a special verb for that. If we are dancing, and I say ‘he dances,’ it sounds like I am saying he is a better dancer! Am I wrong?”
Harry’s face twisted as he tried not to laugh again. “Well, no, but—”
“Yes!” Viktor interrupted, his eyes widening as if he’d just discovered the conspiracy of a lifetime. “That is what you are saying! He is a better dancer!”
Cedric, now thoroughly perplexed, tried a different tactic. “No, it’s not about skill. It’s just... just part of how English works. The verb changes for the singular third-person. It’s just how it’s structured.”
Viktor stared at him, unimpressed. “Why?”
There it was again. The *why* that had sent Viktor spiraling into grammatical confusion. Harry could practically feel Cedric struggling to come up with an answer that wouldn’t make the situation worse, but there really wasn’t a good explanation.
“It’s tradition, I guess,” Cedric said finally, though even he didn’t sound convinced.
“Tradition?” Viktor repeated, looking even more baffled. “So, English wizards make up new verbs just because it is *tradition*? What other traditions do you have? Do you use different verbs for different days of the week?”
Harry, trying and failing to keep a straight face, shook his head. “No, it’s just... it’s not personal, Viktor. It’s just how the language developed.”
Viktor was silent for a moment, staring at them both with a look that made it clear he was not satisfied with their answers. He glanced over at Fleur, who had been unusually quiet, her arms still crossed in frustration. For a brief second, Viktor seemed to consider asking for her opinion, but Fleur’s icy glare quickly made him reconsider.
With a heavy sigh, Viktor muttered, “In Bulgarian, everything is simple. You dance. I dance. Everyone dances the same. No special treatment for verbs. It is logical.”
Cedric tried to offer some comfort. “Yeah, but English has its quirks. Every language does. You’ll get the hang of it. And once you do, it won’t seem so... strange.”
Viktor didn’t seem convinced, but he gave a reluctant nod. “Perhaps. But it is still stupid.”
Harry bit his lip, trying not to laugh again. “Look, Viktor,” he said, “I get that it’s frustrating. Honestly, sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me either.”
Cedric nodded in agreement. “There are loads of things in English that don’t make sense. Like silent letters. Have you come across those yet?”
Viktor’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Silent letters? What are silent letters?”
Harry stifled another laugh, knowing this would only lead to more confusion. “You know, when a word has a letter in it that you don’t pronounce. Like... in the word ‘knight.’ The ‘k’ is silent.”
Viktor’s face went blank with disbelief. “Silent... letters?”
Cedric nodded, trying to keep things calm. “Yeah, they’re there, but you don’t say them. It’s just how it is.”
Viktor blinked slowly. “This... makes even less sense than verbs.”
Fleur let out a loud, exasperated sigh, finally reaching her limit. “ *Mon Dieu!* I cannot listen to zis anymore. Silent letters? Special verbs for dancing? You are all mad!”
With Viktor still brooding over the unfairness of English grammar and Fleur looking like she was ready to hex the next person who spoke, the group tried to move on with their picnic. The laughter had died down, but the awkwardness had not.