sum: You were never supposed to grow old. / Natalie and Viktor and how dreams really don't come true.

a/n: For the Who's That Character Challenge in HPFC, number four: Natalie Fairbourne; All Sorts Of Love Competition, Angsty Love; The Failed Relationships Challenge. It's my first one-shot that I've worked with for a character I've never read about/heard of before the challenge, and I've never actually written anything that includes the character of Viktor Krum; nothing but RoseScorpius, actually, so I hope you like this. Please review, :) Sorry for the shortness, since I wasn't really in the mood for writing something longish.

dream a little dream of me
natalie/viktor

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"life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always changing. for any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. you can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. what you have to decide is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, is this how you'd want to have spent it?"

— the truth about forever, sarah dessen

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Children are not born evil and once upon a time, that's what Natalie was; a child.

She has dreams, like all little children, and curls her strawberry red tresses to the ultimate perfection on her third birthday; her father comes home from the war – it's another one of those blasted wizard wars – and brings her a present. It's a wicker basket, a small hole near the bottom of it but it's something from the Muggle realm and isn't that what Natalie's always wanted? She stands on her tippy-toes and peers instead of the wicker basket, and smiles, running up to her room.

For the next three weeks, her parents declare that she's been obsessed with the movies inside; they're from a world of once upon a times and happily ever afters and she's glued to the television with the bad habit of rewatching her favorite scenes over and over again. For a while, something goes wrong with the television but it's fixed soon enough and Natalie goes back to watching Cinderella and Snow White.

"You can't keep on watching those nonsense movies, all day long, now can you," Mary says; Mary's her nanny, the one that smells like fresh apples and cinnamon, crumbs of frosting around her chubby cheeks. But, Natalie idols Mary and if she says something is wrong, she knows that it can't be done.

(—but, there's this always this glimmer of disapproval in those steel blue eyes and Natalie just knows that if there ever was any real magic in her life; not the real kind, but the one in fairytales with the princesses and princes; she would have to ask Mary first, about it, and she'd never really be good enough in the end—)

So, she lies, "Of course, Mary. I'll stop watching them and go play outside with the other children."

Not fitting in with the other children would have been one thing; they don't understand her world of magic and those thoughts, and some of them threaten to tell their parents about the mad little girl with her hands reaching towards a sky of dreams, but she's got some plans and nobody's going to interfere with that. Once Natalie has her fairytale ending with the happily ever after and shining glitter, she'll show them that she was right all along.

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Natalie Fairbourne is seventeen years old now, and gone are all the traces of a little girl; the strawberry blonde ringlets are cut off, pin straight hair instead falling from a tightened scalp, shining lusciously and bouncing as she strides through the hallways. There's always something in her hands when she's sitting in the common room, but nobody really sees her there.

Her hair is flying in the wind – trying to separate itself from the queen – who has been overthrown moments earlier. She smooths it back down, smiling into the distance, as she walks back to her room, never being able to fall asleep again, thinking back to when everything was safe. She sees herself in the mirror, nothing but bones and a skull, before an angel comes down, an angel of darkness, and comes for her, looking into her own emerald eyes in a steely gaze, never looking back. Waking up in the middle of the night, walking into the middle of the parlor, as she becomes the evil queen, until she is cut open apart by her own rainbow veins.

The emptiness of the screen taunting her to typetypeype but all she ends up doing, at the end, is crycrycry until somebody tells her to shut the hell up, so she goes downstairs, and cries some more. She's just sitting there, staring at the poster of Viktor Krum and smiles – she hasn't done this in a long time – because he did it.

All of his dreams were able to grew up; just through perseverance. Broken bits of empty hearts flow as naturally as the harsh ringing bell. Her nimble fingernails peel away at layers at herself but it's just getting more and more confusing the deeper down she goes. There's always going to be that looming shadow of darkness in the back of her mind, and the explosions of war resounding through a mind that just claws at itself, in vain efforts to forget.

Strawberry ringlets, hints of violet seeping through the delicate pink exterior, lace wrapped around curls – she suspects something is wrong in this wizarding world realm – when she, Natalie, is laying on the floor, quarrels brought to a new level of extremity.

It's not like she's running a marathon, but her breath is winded and she can't find a way to be able to stop this secrets, all of these secrets that are drowning her six feet under. It's almost over though; that much, she knows, and that if she just continues this mess, she'll be free, at the finish line, at least. Once she finishes this, at the gates, she'll be with him, he promised her that much, at least.

It's the last day when she wonders if it's worth it; after all these weeks and months, she's still as alone as she was at the start. The road is getting tougher, the incline a higher steep, and suddenly to move a single step, it's impossible. Just one night, only one night, she takes a break, walking on the wild side of life.

Life changes when she wins a game of Exploding Snap – the prize is a Viktor Krum figurine – and Natalie's not even sure who he is.

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It starts with the beat of the drums, as two children fly in the wind ―they are not children, perhaps, and it is more that he is stringing her along as she finally takes a break, and leaves the deserted coffee shop, with barely a few members, simply staring off into the sunset, the soundtrack of summer echoing through their deafened it was possible, she is perhaps one of the countless Prefects; never a Head Girl, yet remains a golden girl, but he is the king and belongs with the queen, and he deserves nothing but the best, and she knows that she is not that.

She is supposed to be the sensitive one, and all of her friends had told her that he would be the one to dump her, but then again, they don't really know her that well, so she leaves, declaring that they're done.

He's made too many mistakes, and even when she's tried to previously put him in his rightful place, right next to her, he wanders off, past all the lines, crossing all of them without the slightest care in the world. People say that she is wrapped around his thumb, because after all, all they end up doing is fighting, but apparently they're just so perfect together (stark opposites, really), but she'd rather have someone who's just a little more like her, even if she and him are apparently soulmates. But Natalie can't stop but falling in love with him, because he's Viktor Krum and she couldn't ever imagine that her hero could do anything wrong.

The day that she meets her hero, the one who had pulled her out of the dust, she's sitting on a park bench and sipping on a mango smoothie. It's one of the normal things that Natalie's grown used to in life; she holds onto the cup and awkwardly doesn't notice the little step on the threshold and her drink goes flying into the air and reaches its destination.

"Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry," Natalie says, resisting the urge to laugh a little to herself, but it is more mortified about the entire situation, "—do you want me to pay?"

She stands on the sidelines for a moment, stepping in a square before squatting down and finding a pile of napkins from her purse – yes, she carries napkins – and hands them over to the man beside her, who upon closer glance looks startling familiar, and oh, god. It couldn't be. "Y-y-you're Viktor?" She resists the urge to squeal, trying to document this moment; her friends would be completely ecstatic about the whole meeting. "Viktor Krum?" Natalie hopes that she doesn't sound too much like a bumbling idiot, but she can't help herself.

He decides that she's clingy within the first five minutes of meeting her; there are strawberry streaks in her white blonde hair, flashing in and out of places where she doesn't belong, wide blue eyes and a cherry heart-shaped face the ultimate pass. There are rumors of break-ups, and she can't help but feel as though she has to avoid him —forever. She's been hurt before, hurt thousands of times, thrown onto the ground and excluded from well, everything, and she just wonders if she has this loser gene, because why else would everybody would avoid her.

There's the steady beating of the drums, penetrating their earlobes as they lay together, delirious heartbeats blending into one. She is fire, he is ice. There are constant splashes, as the fire is put out; after a while, it's just in vain, and the two of them give up. It is night, now, and they are restless, as they all know what's coming; the two of them are never going to change, never be the perfect rainbow that their parents had wanted; it started long before then. Checking that the coast is clear, they keep holding hands, walking through the dust, leaving the ashes behind as they make themselves new, knowing that the night won't last much longer.

In the morning, he is gone.

She lies upon the floor, staring upon the starry sky, the meteors and the comets moving at astronomical speeds, magic that could only come from perfection; tonight, though, they have all been blown out.

There is this empty ache, the silence, the never-ending silence, that threatens to destroy every thought, every hope left in this desolate city. She is lying still, extending her hand upwards as if she can still reach past the stars, pulling them all back down to her heavy heart; she believes that the normal nights have past long back —on normal nights, he would have come. He is not here though, he is not anywhere to be found, as another heart calls, far, far away from this city, far, far away from her; she has let him go.

Taking long and completely unauthorized of Jenna's marshmallow Coke was her version of life in the fast lane —pedicured feet rest upon pedals, left behind as they are left behind in the dust. For a while, Natalie has been this lonelytonedreject type of girl, but it's supposed to pay off, where the Head Boy will somehow fall in love with her and they'll live happily ever after with iloveyou's cascading down picturesque waterfalls, water droplets falling through ink splattered teardrops.

But she's not even a Head Girl, and while skimming through the magazines and newspapers, she sees that he's found a new girl – she's pretty, and of a high status, and worthy to be shown in public – so Natalie decides that this has never been something that she should have held onto.

It's not a love story, because they're not in love; at least not anymore.

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Please leave a review on the way out, :)

x clara