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So many people died. People Hermione knew well. People she'd met only once. It didn't matter, they all hurt, all went towards creating a tally in her soul, a remembrance for the dead, where she would go internally and lay flowers. Sometimes it felt like she herself had been one of the causalities, especially since England no longer held her parents within its embrace. So many things had changed, and she felt that spirituality she developed whiplash. Familiar places grew strange and eerie, while the eerie and weird became familiar. Everything flipped upside down, and remained that way, even when the dust has settled and all was over and peace had returned.
"But, 'Mione, I don't get it. What has the war got to do with Krum of all people? He never even fought! He and his people got to stay out of it!"
"You seem to forget, Ronald, that he was present at your brother's wedding, and fought the Death Eaters."
"So? He just so happened to be there, thanks to Fleur. He pissed right off back to Russia or wherever he comes from, immediately afterwards."
"Ron, don't act like you don't know-"
She and her on-again, off-again fiance, Ron Weasley, were engaging in their thrice-daily argument, when a profound realisation struck Hermione, one of those rare ones which hit like a sledgehammer only a few times during a person's lifespan - the result of years of subconscious thought coming together all at once. There was no getting over Viktor, not for Ron, because there was no getting over him for her. The celebrity seeker had been the first time she realised she was pretty, and a girl like other girls, no matter her liking for books and nerdiness. The first time she realised she could be desired by someone other than her (sorry, Ron) pathetic, same age friends. An older boy, a foreign boy, someone who could have anyone, wanted her, wanted her enough to follow her around Hogwarts, enough to ask her to visit him, to write to him. Who liked her still, going by the last thing he said to her. Who was still unmarried despite having everything else he could want. It was almost unbelievable, still, and made her head heady whenever she seriously considered the situation. Viktor Krum, that was a name you could utter anywhere there were wizards and have yourself understood, even if you didn't speak any words of the local language.
And he wanted her, loved her to distraction, desired to lavish the world on her, so what was she doing, what the bloody hell was she doing, standing in her shitty flat, arguing with Ron Weasley, who was as mean to her as often as he was kind.
"Hermione? You okay?" He asked, suddenly faced with a young woman gaping at him like the horrified fish one finds lying on ice in good quality muggle supermarkets.
"I…I have to go." she whispered, the soft voice being all she could muster as most of her mental processes were still being used to parse this gargantuan understanding.
"W-what do you mean?" Always pale, but pale as whey now, her red headed lover began to sweat and shake, almost as if he'd been made privy to the same life altering understanding as Hermione. But she ceased to consider his existence, and turned her back, turned away towards her writing desk, near to where her super fast, super agile owl slept on her perch.
Stumbling over to the pretty and functional mahogany desk (ironically, a gift from Viktor) Hermione pulled out a sheet of the best parchment she possessed, and whipped out her eagle owl feather quill the way a cowboy whips out a gun. Presently the tip, loaded with black ink, began to dance across the page.
'Dearest Viktor,
I have been a fool. A fool worse than Voldemort. He had some sort of extenuating circumstance to point to, but I had none for doing what I did, except maybe immaturity. But I am immature no longer. I have grown up all at once, the Truth climbing to her feet and slapping me hard in the face.
And I loved it.
Dearest Viktor, tell me I am not too late. Tell me you still love me as you always did, my darling. Does your invitation to visit still stand? If so, I am coming. Let me be lover as well as friend to you.'
Finishing her missive, Hermione lifted it to her neck and touched the parchment to the spot where she habitually sprayed perfume. The few times she dared do this to the letter she sent to Viktor (unforgivable, unforgivable) he reacted by breaking the facade of pure friendship and once again declaring the passion that was always roiling beneath it.
"What's that? What are you writing? Where's it going?" Asked Ron, sounding like a frightened bird as he watched Hermione tie the letter to her owl's leg, watched the creature dive out the window and into the night, aiming for a certain country on the Black Sea. A country that had never changed its name, not since the days of Thrace and the legendary warriors on horseback, flying across the plains. The country of Roses, and Lions.
Remembering the past, Hermione turned to her old friend, one half of her best friend, that composite entity. Like a big brother would, she placed her hands on his shoulders. "Ron. Padma loves you. Apologise to her, and have a happier life than you could ever have with me. It was over before it began, we both knew that the moment Durmstrang's ship exploded out of the Lake, and everything since has been us trying to fit pieces in the wrong puzzle."
The memory of that most masculine of arrivals, an ancient warship emerging from the deep, carrying gold in its belly, sailed between the couple. That ship represented everything a woman like Hermione could ever want - mystery, mastery, power.
Although Ron's face crumpled, he left her flat without contest.
⚓🦅⚓
'Dear, most beautiful Hermione,
Must you ask? How many times have I told you that I love you? How many articles must the papers run, wondering if there is something wrong with me? If I like men. If I like anyone at all. If I perhaps possess no tender feelings, simply because I am waiting for you. I tell them I love you, but they laugh at me. Don't laugh at me too. Come.'
Viktor played no tricks with his letter, because he was no game player, despite his profession. Straight as an arrow, sudden and bold as an eagle, he waits, and watches, then strikes, and nothing can stand in his way. If he does not win now, he will win later. It is inevitable. People like him, when they see a maze, they plow straight through it, leaving lesser men to get stuck in corners. He sent a Bulgarian rose, but he always did, with every letter.
Hermione packed a small bag, as much as she could stand, before rushing out the door, running down the stairs of her building and down the old flagstoned street like her life depended on it, the shades of the hot blooded, romantic past watching her go, doffing their feathered caps and bending their stockinged knees, swords rattling in scabbards. However, it was a joyful countdown, and at the other end was a hug a long time coming.
Luckily there was a protocol, and Hermione was able to climb out of her thestral carriage and fall to her knees on the yielding earth of Bulgaria without Viktor swamping her immediately, as like at muggle airports, people must wait elsewhere for arrivals to emerge around a bend in the woods. Not that she didn't want to be swamped, but she needed a moment to calibrate. Bulgaria. Thank God it had not been many years at all, only one or two since the War. She had not wasted that much time. She was fifteen when she met him. Thank God it had not been long. The trees rustled over her head, clapping. The birds sang happily. Another one finds their mate. As it should be.
Viktor, when he came into view in a glade filled with purple Orpheus flowers, emerged as a king. He, handsome and sharp as a raptor, tall and broad in his furs, had his courtiers, kind eyed witnesses to his triumph, ready to whisper in his ear 'Memento Mori', all of them as stately as he, if not more so. Greece and Rome. Byzantium and Russia. All were represented in the faces of his friends. In his face. The past became present once again, the Ancient World and its deep loves and hates, white and black, bowing it's laurel wreathed head. Gold wreathed. Greatness. Hermione had always striven for it, so why did she wish to punish herself with mediocrity for so long? That is no way to honour the lost.
"Viktor…" she breathed, the Truth rising up once again with her brand. "Viktor…" she whispered, falling into his strong, enveloping hug and hot and spicy scent, both so unlike that of any other man who had ever dared embrace her. But Viktor did not dare, he did, because he was superior with the superiority that simply is. That does not make excuses or apologies. That does not even notice the unworthy.
Long arms used to reaching for and holding onto exceptionally valuable things, tightened around her. "Hermione. I love you." he said in her ear, his accent still tripping on her name. And how Hermione loved to hear it do so.