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Even the birds knew it was time to go. They left the village the previous week, abandoning its hedgerows and trees, its traditional tiled roofs and the orange embrace of the valley which had always sheltered it. Leaving the peaceful quiet an eerie desolation. Leaving a beautiful place Viktor Krum couldn't bear to leave, no matter the example set by his avian comrades.
“We're cutting it fine.” said Yuri, the grief stricken young man's best friend and companion on this, the last trip through a world about to become just another latter day Atlantis. An immense grey wall had arisen beyond the village, the dam which spelt doom. Muggles and their wonders.
“Hold on. Just a little more. The place won't flood immediately.” Viktor continued to wander up and down the cobbled streets, his eyes vague, seeing the past, not the present. Not the future. He hadn't lived in this village full time since before he began attending Durmstrang, but that somehow made his pining for the world he was about to lose even stronger.
His steps were leading the both of them back to his old house, Yuri could tell because he'd already thoroughly toured the place with his friend. He said nothing though, hating to be a nag.
Viktor's old house was much like the rest of the houses on his old street - very picturesque. Very pretty. But empty. Empty like the rest, blank, black eyes staring at nothing. Soulless. The buildings would feel nothing when they went under, only the people who had left memories behind would.
“Get!”
Feral dogs had gathered in the village, there to pick over whatever had been left behind that was even remotely edible. Viktor gestured angrily at the three loitering suspiciously on the path to his old house. At his command the skinny things slunk away a few feet, only to stop and look back, their eyes already regaining a wolfish tilt, holding little of the dogishness most people were used to. Yuri followed up his friend's aggressive bark with a silent avada per dog. They only ever caused problems, whether that was attacking chickens or attacking children. Spreading rabies either way. Viktor, returned again to his childhood where there were no feral dogs, never even noticed the blinding flashes of green.
The pair approached the stone steps leading up to the front door of the house, one behind the other. Only for Yuri to walk face first into Viktor and nearly cause the both of them to fall backwards down the way they came, potentially cracking their skulls open.
“Vitya! Don't stop suddenly-”
“The door’s open. I left it closed.” Viktor's voice, already distant while he wrangled with his rose tinted memories, became more so, and quiet to boot. Before him stood the ornate wood door, and as he said, it was standing open. Not all the way, but enough to expose a good chunk of the darkness within.
“So it blew open. So what?” asked Yuri, having sidestepped his companion and come to stand beside him on the top step.
“So I locked it.”
“...Oh.”
Thoughts of leaving had to be postponed, as the young men were too masculine (and too curious) to let such an invasion stand. They only wandered into the one house and the public buildings. They didn't invade other people's former properties.
“Who's there? Come out!” Ordered Viktor, bullishly striding towards the entryway, wand out. As always, Yuri provided a cautionary influence, but as always he followed wholeheartedly anyway.
Up until Viktor stepped across the threshold. Magic erupted from nowhere, charging the air, making the men's bones hurt. When it cleared a little boy of three or so stood on the doormat where a young man of twenty-something had been before. A look of great interest rather than great confusion overcame his face. Then he ran away, further into the house.
It took a moment even for the quick-witted Yuri to react.
“Vitya!” he called, bolting for the door, before pulling to a stop on the very edge of the threshold. “Vitya! Come back!”
But giggles and the rapid pitter-patter of small feet was the only answer. Pulling his wand out, Yuri cast a spell to check for enchantments on the doorway, but it returned a negative. Stepping through should be safe, but if he too was changed into his child self, they'd be well and truly stuck. Would have to rely on someone coming to look for them. Hopefully before the river began to rise into a reservoir. Or before something else occurred. Childish giggles continued to nag at him as he stalked around the outside of the building, attempting to decide whether to breach another entrance or else wait for the boy to run back outside himself. The house had a cellar and an attic, and he didn't want Viktor falling down the stairs or running off into the wilderness beyond the house, where there were only fields, old wells, and stark orange cliffs. He could attempt an accio, but that would certainly hurt his target.
“Viktor! Stop messing about! Come back!”
Something, a sound, a sense, yanked his head up, pulled his gaze through a window, confronting him with a darker shape within the darkness. A fully grown man-shape, a shadow or the man himself, Yuri didn't stop to make sure, but ran back to the door, then past it, climbing through another window in case the first was trapped. This seemed to be unexpected on his part, because it caused a commotion. A boy screamed and the shadow flew over the wall. Charging around the corner into the room he'd seen the man in, Yuri found nothing. Rushing steps retreated from his ears, another high shriek cut off abruptly. If the intruder were a wizard, all would be lost, because he could've simply apparated away with his hostage. And he must've been a wizard, he must've have set the de-ageing trap. Down into the basement Yuri went, following Viktor's last scream and the footsteps of his abductor.
“Let him go!” he shouted reflexively as he leapt into the pitch blackness, narrowly avoiding something flying by in the blind dark, the passage of it blowing iron rich air into his face. Without knowing where his friend was he couldn't fire a spell, could do nothing more useful than cast lumos.
Doing so showed a foe who was bound by no such handicap, his evil eyes flung wide behind a cloth mask, the light catching the edge of a blade. Again Yuri dodged, just enough to save his skull and life. An axe collided with the muscle connecting his neck and shoulder, unleashing agony unimaginable. It was so horrific that not only didn't he hear his own scream, but he fainted for an instant, dropping his lit wand, before his brain jerked back into consciousness with him still standing and with the weapon still lodged in his flesh.
Surfing on a river of love and adrenaline, the young man saw an opening, and took it, forgoing magic. “You bastard!” he hissed, grabbing hold of the axe handle before the killer could lift it out of his reach, kicking him savagely in the groin at the same time. An ‘oof’ was all that emerged from the monster’s throat. A small hurt, just air being expelled by the force of the blow. Since he'd shown a terrible willingness to kill, Yuri likewise didn't hesitate, ripping the axe free from his own body and bringing it down on the psychopath’s bowed head with a wet crack, again and again. And down on his neck and back too, anywhere that would incapacitate the assailant. Anywhere that would kill the monster. Only when he was sure the man would not be getting up again did he stop.
“Viktor? Vitya!”
The first word rang around the cellar at only a quarter of its usual strength, while the second Yuri struggled to get out of his voice box at all. The room began to spin rapidly, then more rapidly, the blood and the walls and the body mixing into a brown blur in the blue light.
“Vit-”
The axe fell from his hands, and then he fell too, just missing the bloodied head of the weapon, collapsing only inches from a mess that had been a man.
“...Yuwi?”
A tiny pair of feet came to a stop beside the older boy, a tiny hand reached for the wand, still doggedly lit. Clutching it tight, Viktor slapped his friend’s bloody cheek with his own wand, the sound and sting causing Yuri's eyelids to flutter. However, it was not the wand which made the evil crimson mouth in his flesh close its ragged lips and stop vomiting his life blood onto the concrete floor. Dragging him up the stairs was an impossible task for the little boy who'd healed him, and Viktor couldn't make any more magic happen, so he ran back to the ground floor, and out the front door, looking for help.
“Hel-” As suddenly as he'd become a child, he became an adult once more, and capable of being the help he was searching for. Running back through his old door before stopping to think, he found that this time it did nothing to him. It was just a door.