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“This is all Karkaroff’s fault.”
“Now, now, Vitya, don't be like that. He wasn't even present at the time.”
“I know he's your shitty father, but stop defending him, Yura. It's his fault, I know it is. There's no other explanation for this.”
A pair of young men plod down a dusty forest road, a muddy forest trail bordered by the glaring green sentinels known as pine trees. Or are they fir? It doesn't matter, the men are still in trouble either way, principally because they're in Russia. The fact that they have no magic after something went wrong with a bottle of vodka and a goldfish is less troubling than that dreadful fact. No, they don't even have wands, or robes, but are dressed to fit in, i.e they're wearing Adidas tracksuits, sunglasses, flip flops and baseball caps. Thank God they were isekaied in the appropriate gear. However, gopniks are not known for their wilderness survival skills…
“Yurets…is that a bear?”
“Huh?” Spinning around in the deep, icy mud busy conspiring to murder him, Yuri narrows his eyes at the area of deep green darkness his friend is pointing to. A brown bear stares back.
“...No, Vitya. You're drunk. That's a-” He takes off at full speed down the road, really putting his tracksuit and its go-faster stripes to the test. Belatedly, Viktor follows his example, the pair kicking up dust and hitting passing people in the face with stones and flecks of mud.
“Young idiots!” shout the strangers covered with mud, shaking their fists at the boys as a bear emerges from the woods behind them. No matter, they'll simply catch a lift on it.
The magicless wizards have to reach an oasis of civilization and safety in the apocalyptic landscape that is Mother Russia. In other words they have to reach a Soviet apartment block. From there they can work out what to do.
But before that can happen the forest sets on fire, on both sides.
“I'm not a fan of this.” Viktor grumbles as he trots down the centre of the road, the gigantic wall of trees on either side of him having turned into gigantic walls of flame, their crackling like gunfire, their heat and oxygen stealing proclivities making it painful to breathe.
“Me neither. Russia wasn't like this back home.” replies Yuri, stoically ignoring the inferno raging on all sides, the embers floating across the road continuously attempting to set him and his highly flammable plastic clothing ablaze.
“How much time did you spend amongst muggles, Yura? Not much to none. It was probably always like this, you just didn't notice.”
“I guarantee your homeland will be worse than expected if we make it that far.”
“Hmpf. Not possible. Bulgaria is perfect in whatever world it occupies.”
Cars pass by slowly, but only the one driven by a babushka bothers to stop for the stranded boys. She immediately offers them the holy trifecta - cigarettes, vodka, and an ikon each.
🪆🇷🇺🪆
Having been adopted by an old woman, the pair of young men settle into her flat high up in one of the slum blocks they used to only dimly be aware of. Moscow and its rings lurk outside the windows. Moscow and its Kremlin and tourists and summer humidity. True wizards would never subject themselves to such inhumane conditions, but they are no longer wizards, but a couple of wandering Slavs. As such they aren't distressed as much as some other magical people might be upon finding themselves cast down from the height of power, the hallmark of the Slav being his endurance of suffering and discomfort.
One former wizard approaches another where he relaxes in a chintz rocking chair near a brown cabinet containing the bulbous black face of an old television. Yuri shakes a thin box at him.
“What is this?” asks Viktor, over a shot of vodka.
“Have a look.”
Viktor takes the flat rectangle. The flat, slightly squishy rectangle. He pulls the shiny cardboard cover off, but the cover underneath is the same, only made of black plastic this time. A quartet of youth attempt to look cool in the picture slapped on it, youth which includes himself, as he looked a few years ago.
“...I look like a douchebag.”
“Break it open.”
“Excuse me?”
“Break it open.”
So Viktor sticks his thumbs into the recess in the middle of the two halves of the thing, breaking it open to reveal a disk, also with a picture on it. A picture of Harry Potter.
“And here.” Yuri dumps a thick book onto his pal's lap, hitting him in the genitals either accidentally or on purpose.
In the kitchen, where she is cooking borscht, the old woman sings to herself over the sound of hoarse screaming.
But Viktor later gets his revenge, when he points something pertinent out upon this twenty-fifth rewatch of The Goblet of Fire, the duo lounging around in front of the television, now and then supplied with sustenance by their babushka. It's a good life, certainly an easier one than they possessed before. Several times a week they go downstairs to the postage stamp of green between the gigantic apartment buildings, and manically dance their problems away with the other Russian chavs.
“You don't exist.”
“Excuse me, Vitya?”
Viktor lifts the fourth Harry Potter book, glancing aside at his comrade, bosom buddy, and brother in all but name. “You're a film-only character.”
But Yuri, who read the book after he stole it from a child in the next flat over but before he lent it to Viktor, has an ace up his sleeve. “And? You're ugly in the book. And forever alone. We're both the fantasies of some director. We owe our lives, our friendship, and most importantly, our good looks to the magic of film.”
All the blood leaves Viktor's face. However he recovers when Yuri shows him this thing called ‘Fanfiction’.