Before the excitements of summer had been forgotten, September gave way into October, and the the student's attention became fully enraptured with the imminent arrival of the other two schools and the start of the tournament. Speculation on what they would be like, when they would arrive, and what the tournament was going to entail ran rampant through all the common rooms, and Anezka's dorm-mates were not exempt.
Anezka herself didn't pay it much mind, past trying to concoct new marketing schemes for any possible potion. Gretchen was already trying to figure out how to catch the eye of any potential foreign paramour, while the twins were devising the odds of which school they should bet on to win.
"Well, with not even seeing who the candidates are going to be, my money would have to go for Durmstrang. I hear they are mad strict and delve into the dark arts. That would have to give them the advantage." Jade said as she sat in her favorite arm chair by the fireplace in the common rooms, the day the notice of the visitors pending arrival went up.
Having not really been a part of the conversation prior, Anezka couldn't help but join in with a chuckle, not entirely pulling her attention from she was playing an odd sort of fetch with Harold. "The only thing dark about Durmstrang is the winter. Polar night sucks. So does polar temperatures, for that matter. It's fucking freezing. I don't know what kind of sick parents would let their children go there. Well, other then all my Uncles. . . and my grandparents."
"Your Dad went to Durmstrang?" Onyx's jaw dropped. It had never occurred to her to think that Nezza's father, having been born and raised in Eastern Europe, might not have attended Hogwarts. To this Anezka merely gave a quick jerky nod of her head, as if to say that the answer was obvious. "Is he very skilled at the Dark Arts?" She asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
With a put-upon sigh, Anezka looked up at her classmate with a raised brow. "The only thing my Dad is very skilled at is losing his wand. And his shoes . . . guess I come by that naturally enough." She shrugged, wiggled her unclad toes, and went back to flicking the small ping-pong ball across the floor, and laughing as the small spiky creature went chasing after it and pushed it back towards her with his nose.
"Wait, so if your Dad didn't go to Hogwarts, how on earth did he meet your Mum?" Gretchen asked, her understanding limited and international love affairs being on the top of her mind.
With an eye roll, Nezza started to chew on her thumbnail. "That is a story better to be told by someone who gives more of a damn and has a stronger stomach than I do." She growled, then flicked the ball a little more forcefully than necessary, sending it flying under a nearby couch. This earned her a dissatisfied grunt and a mean look from Harold. "Sorry." She said to him, but Gretchen seemed to take this as a comment to her, making the other three laugh a little.
By the time the thirtieth actually arrived, the twin's had money on Durmstrang having the best Champion, but Hogwarts winning, Gretchen had raised her hems and lowered her necklines and Anezka still hadn't made her bottom line look any better. They gathered in the front of the castle, awaiting their visitor's arrival with the rest of the school, all worried about their own issues.
"Oh, MERLIN! It is so cold out here." Gretchen whined from where they all stood, seven rows from the front of the crowd.
"We told you to bring your cloak. You didn't listen." Jade wrapped some of the excess of her wool shawl around her shoulders just to taunt her roommate who stood shivering in her recently altered uniform and no outer garment.
Anezka didn't take her eyes from the crowd, but reached into her bag and pulled out a small silver flask. "Nine sickles for a sip."
"What is it?" Gretchen sounded sceptical, but desperate.
"Um. . . warming potion?" She didn't sound convinced with her own answer, but Anezka didn't act surprised when Gretchen took the flask, tried a swig and nearly choked. "No refunds or returns" Anezka quipped, noticing some amber liquid being coughed out of Gretchen's mouth.
"It's just firewhiskey!" Gretchen seemed entirely miffed by this as she was rubbing the moisture off her lips and still gagging.
"Yeah, and going rate at the Hog's Head for a shot is eight sickles twelve nuts, but I can't make change."
At this point, most of the crowd was enraptured by the appearance of a large flying carriage on the horizon. As it swooped in to land, the draft of it's movement wafted over the students, and Gretchen couldn't contain another shiver, and reached for the flask she had shoved back into Anezka's hands. "I will pay you after the feast."
"I don't usually do credit, but I know where you sleep." The words almost sounded more ominous for how casually she said them, as Anezka started to indulge in her choice of ways to stay warm. She tried to obscure the cigarette from general view by cupping her hand around it, and made sure to blow the smoke downwards.
After another several minutes, the Beauxbatons students and their surprisingly large Headmistress filed through the throng of Hogwarts greeters and made their way into the castle, shivering delicately as they went.
"Oh, that blond boy, he's rather cute!" Onyx said with a small sigh, not nearly as boy-crazed as Gretchen was.
Anezka repressed a laugh. "Boy? By the looks of them, I thought they were an all girl's school.
"Well, Nez, we can't all have your taste in men." Jade said with a wicked grin and a pointed look towards where Snape stood amongst the other teachers, making Anezka's face darken a little.
"What? What's Anezka's taste in men? I didn't know Anezka liked men!" Gretchen, desperate to be in on the joke, and missing Jade's telling glance, took a break from gingerly sipping out of the flask to try and get an explanation. Luckily, for the sake of Anezka's sanity, Jade prefered to keep Gretchen excluded more than she wanted to tease her friend about the strange pick of men she had exhibited over the summer, and so Gretchen went on in ignorance, as both twins maintained their silence.
By now, the crowds were going wild with their murmuring once more, as a ship had appeared on the lake. The murmuring turned into loud and excited voices quickly as the passengers disembarked and walked their way up to the castle.
"Is that Viktor Krum?" Gretchen asked, right around the same time every other Hogwart's student was, only her words were just starting to slur, slightly.
"You know, I think it is. Maybe you should shout his name loudly like everyone else, so maybe he will notice you and fall madly in love."
She did one better then was suggested to her by Jade, and started calling his name while jumping up and down to be seen over the crowd, of which many of the other girls were doing the same. Only, Gretchen's ample bosom was threatening to burst out of the plunging v-neck that her uniform jumper had been transfigured into.
While every other living creature, under the age of 30 and being even remotely female in gender, had eyes only for the Quidditch star, Anezka looked for a different face in the crowd, and she smiled a wry smirk when she caught a glimpse of it's familiar, and familial profile.
"Hei Valentine! Du-te înapoi în România, vă fata de cur!" Her telling him to go back to Romania, and calling him an ass face, caused the boy walking a step behind and to the right of Karkaroff and Krum to look around for who called to him.
He fell back for a minute, letting his headmaster and his peer to be a good five paces in front of him before he called back, "Mama ta e o curvă, Anezka!" He yelled and kept walking.
"Is that a traditional Romanian greeting or something?" Onyx asked, just managing to un-bulge her eyes, and pick her tongue up off the pavers, now that Krum had gone inside.
"Well, I guess it is in our family, but I really wouldn't recommend trying to impress Mugwump Căpreanu at your Dad's next International Confederation Dinner Party by telling him that his Mum is a whore."
"Thanks for the warning." Onxy frowned, clearly upset that she had started to practice saying the word over and over in her head for that very reason.
"Wait! You are related to him?" Gretchen hadn't taken Krum's departure for the castle as a queue to stop drooling, but rather to start drooling over the other male members of the Durmstrang group as they passed through to the castle doors. Clearly, Anezka's cousin had also caught her now slightly glassy eyes.
Ignoring the question, as it was too stupidly obvious of an answer, Anezka chose instead to lead the way of their small gang into the castle and towards the Great Hall.
Decorated as it was, in it's usual festive ornamentation, Anezka found herself looking around with new eyes, wondering what the visitors, particularly the Durmstrang students thought of such excessive frivolity. They were, by their expressions as they surveyed the room, impressed with it, if the craned necks and wide eyes upon noticing the enchanted ceiling were any indication.
Conversely, the Beauxbatons students, who remained huddled close together, looked around as if they had been exiled to a cave formerly inhabited by the Missing Link's colour blind brother. Their sneers were only hidden by their occasional shivers. The Mediterranean winters on the French Riviera clearly had left them at a loss for how to cope with a Northern Scottish fall frost.
All the Hogwarts natives, warmed enough by being back inside, quickly took their customary seats, eager for the food and for the excitement to begin, while the visitors seemed at a loss of where to go. Anezka couldn't help but ponder how the idea to put up 2 extra tables for the newcomers didn't occur to anyone else.
Slouching over her gold plate, and pondering the relative food-safety of the metallic dish, Anezka was chagrined to realize that Valentine had spotted her at the table. Tapping Viktor Krum on the shoulder, they together lead the way towards the Slytherin side of the room, earning some smug smiles from the underclassmen and some jealous stares from Gryffindors. Luckily for her, her dorm-mates and several other Seventh years had filled in surrounding seats, so her tedious cousin was sitting more with the fourth years, then he was with her. She couldn't help but think such juvenile company suited him, and she appreciated that he was on the other side of the table and five people away from her.
While the overweening, blond Malfoy brat fawned over Krum, all the girls from First to Seventh year were doing their best to attract the boy. Gretchen was the worst of all, intentionally forgetting any and all table manners and was constantly reaching for whatever serving dish was far enough down the table to give Viktor a glance down her blouse. Of course, with the amount of Anezka's whiskey that she had downed, she was mostly succeeding in tipping over bowls of bouillabaisse and drenching her bosom in gravy. Nezza, seeing an opportunity, took advantage of every one's distraction, and loaded a spoon full of steak and kidney pie, with the intention of catapulting it at her cousin. Her aim, however, was about as reliable as her sense of balance and the food instead splattered down the robe of the boy who sat between Valentine and Krum.
As the food was scarfed, conversation between the girls was limited, and as soon as Dumbledore began his speech on the rules and procedures of entry into the tournament, Anezka couldn't help but be a touch bored by it all. She had no intention of entering, had no money riding on it, and wasn't looking to hook up with the winner. The only thing of slight interest to her was that Dumbledore announced his intention to draw an age line around the Goblet to prevent minors from entering. While she was certain even her perfectly crafted aging potions wouldn't fool Dumblerdore's magic, the average buyer had no way of knowing that. She was glad that she had brewed a few extra bottles in the last month, certain that she would be able to sell a few in the next twenty-four hours.
As the meal ended, Karkaroff came to shepherd his charges towards the door, making a point to both toady up to Krum and belittle the poor victim of Anezka's edible propellant for the mess that was down the front of his robes. This poorly disguised favoritism made Anezka wonder what her fate would have been if her Mother had allowed her to go to Durmstrang when she had first turned eleven.
With her devil-may-care attitude, clumsy nature and disregard for respect, chances are Karkaroff would hate her, and only the prestige of her Father's family would keep him from making her the bearer of his worst moods, which were both obvious and legendary. Not that life at Durmstrang seemed anything less than bleak, on a general scale. The singular girl in the party of eight students did seem faintly miserable, but then that could just have something to do with having been stuck on a ship with seven boys and her headmaster for the long journey to Scotland. Looking across the hall, to where her cousin stood, waiting his turn to exit through the hall, she was reminded of the long summer months, being the youngest and only female cousin trapped among the thirteen that ran through her Grandparent's home, and she found herself feeling a certain kinship with this unknown girl.
Despite the remembered agonies, the thought of home stabbed at her, so after telling the twins she would catch up with them in the common rooms, she went galloping after the recently departed students, and caught up with them shortly past the main entrance.
Falling into pace next to Valentine, she had to look up to meet his eyes. "Cum este familia? Mi-e dor toată lumea." She asked quietly, with none of the belligerent tone of her original greeting, hours past.
"Everyone is fine, and misses you as well." He said in very careful and practiced English. "And your pronunciation is still a steaming pile of turd." He ribbed, but just like her, without the level of insult he had flung upon his arrival.
She pulled a smoke from a pocket, and lit up. "Well, at least I don't sound like a cartoon vampire that sells breakfast cereal." She mocked his very thick accent between puffs. "I vant to suck your blaaaaaahd."
"Very amusing . . . not" By now their slow pace had put the two to the back of the small group of students and while the others had reached the lake and were starting to board the ship they lingered.
Taking another drag, then dropping the still smouldering smoke into a puddle and shoving it into the mud with toe of her boot, Anezka brushed enough hair out of her face too look her cousin in the eye. "You're not seriously considering entering this stupid tournament are you? I can't imagine Tanti Miruna being alright with her baby risking life and limb for some galleons. And since when does a Sova suck up to the likes of Karkaroff?"
Sighing deeply, Valentine shook his head. "I am not made for the family business, Anezka. Erdo is very ready to take over leadership after Grandfather and Uncle Casmir, and outdoors life of the colony suits him. Vali will have the business and organization well in hand. By the time there are places found for the rest, there won't be much room for me. I . . . I think I would like to teach. I have enjoyed my time at school, and I always like to learn. I am assisting Karkaroff on this journey, in the hopes that by the time the year ends, I will be able to obtain a position working with him." He paused and gazed over the girl who stood next to him. "What about you? You will leave school this year. What are your plans for when you are done here at Hogwarts?"
She chuckled. "Whatever they are, they don't include teaching, that's for damned sure!" She said, then started to walk back towards the castle, as Valentine continued onto the gangplank to his ship.
"Noapte bună, vărul." He bid goodnight to his cousin before reaching the main deck, and she spared him a backwards glance and a mischievous smile in response.