The Houses Competition
House: Ravenclaw
Class: Herbology
Drabble
Prompt: red dress
Word Count: 996 (wordcounter net)
Disclaimers/triggers: none. Age difference is approved in canon. I transed your baby, JKR.
xXx
"It's Helen, actually!" Someone shouts, breaking the silence after a fourth piece of paper has shot out of the Goblet and been read. Viktor looks around to place it, and follows the turning heads towards the table decked in red and gold. A dark-haired Gryffindor girl is looking around with an air of embarrassment, clearly not meaning to speak. Some other girl with a bush of brown curls and pins on her lapel is tugging at what he assumes is Helen, trying to get her to stand.
He watches her get up obediently and trod up to the podium, awkwardly tugging at the short hair around her neck. It looks gravity defying. It looks like her red plastic headband shouldn't stay on her head.
She is smaller than the rest of them. He thinks she might be younger.
xXx
Helen Potter is younger. She shouldn't even be in the tournament. She says she didn't put her name in.
He swears her name sounds familiar, but Viktor can't place it. And they said it wrong, the cup spat out the name Harry Potter, which he thinks sounds even more familiar.
It doesn't matter that it's not her name. It doesn't matter that she claims she didn't enter. The ministry man awkwardly says that Helen must compete. He keeps using the wrong name too, and each time, she glares. Her eyes are acid green.
"Hello," Viktor initiates. The teachers have kicked them out, and Fleur has already stalked off. The other Hogwarts champion hovers nearby.
"Hi," she says shortly, and goes back to wringing her hands.
She looks as distressed by this as everyone else. And he is good at neither English nor small talk.
So he doesn't speak again.
xXx
Viktor wonders if Helen knows about the dragons. She looks very young. Fleur at least looks tall and vaguely muscular, and her yellow hair is usually pulled back from her face in an active ponytail. Helen is short and skinny, and she wears clothes mostly too baggy to see, but he doubts she has muscles. Her hair is a black halo around her face, and no number of red ribbons seem to hold it.
She looks like a teenager. He can't imagine her fighting a dragon.
xXx
Helen Potter is one of the best fliers he has ever seen. She outflies a dragon like she's born for it.
She is frighteningly capable, he thinks, of robbing dragons. She is capable of standing her own in this tournament.
When he sees another Potter Stinks badge, he scowls and says some argumentative things in Bulgarian. He doesn't know Helen is standing nearby until he looks up and sees she's smiling at him.
A tiny warm feeling spreads in his chest to match the way her eyes glow in sunlight.
Oh.
xXx
"Hello," he says, echoing the last time he spoke to her.
"Hello, Viktor." Helen is sitting in the library with the friend he remembers from the welcoming feast. The redhead boy and the other Indian girls are not nearby today.
"Can I sit?" He asks, and she kicks the chair opposite her out a bit from the table. He takes it.
"You are a good flier," he says, and she's got her hair in the messiest ponytail he's ever seen, and her nails are painted pink, and her sweater is tight. Her shoulders are more muscular than he gave her credit.
"Thanks! You too. I went to the Ireland match. Ron and I were rooting for you." Her voice is a little deep and dark, like velvet. He can't believe she's talking to him.
xXx
He likes her name. It's easy to say. It's soft.
It's started snowing outside.
xxx
"Will you go to the ball with me?"
Helen is half leaned over the moving staircase. The strings of her jacket are an inch from his eye. The beads on her skirt are rustling around her ankles. There is shadow on her eyes and red studs in her ears.
Her question is bursting to life between them.
Viktor has never felt more on edge. He feels like crawling out of his skin. He feels like hugging her.
"Yes!" he tells Helen, trying not to start shouting.
They're only one task down, but Viktor feels like he's already lifting the cup.
xXx
Helen listens to the cutest music. It is energetic and sometimes sad and very muggle. She's got scrunchies on her wrists and she is asking him if he owns any red formal wear as she scribbles things down in pink and purple ink. There is a pride pin on her sweater.
He owns nothing but red formal wear. She laughs at that.
xXx
"Well? Say something."
Viktor can't. He's never known a word of English, or Bulgarian either, for that matter. He's forgotten how to think.
Red is falling off her waist in layers of star studded tulle and pulled tight and low over her chest, sleeves like clouds puffing out softly over her upper arms.
Helen's hair isn't long or manageable enough to really tie up in anything but ponytails, but she's got it half up and some sparkly silver thing shoved in, probably unintentional tendrils already falling down around her face. Silver and gold glitter around her neck. There are stars in her ears.
"Is it embarrassing? Does it not look right?" She asks, her voice tight now, and he thinks of how she pulls her hair around her face to look longer like all the other girls, how she shrinks down in public, how her loudest moments are all reactionary.
Helen is a spitfire, and she knows exactly what some people think of her. She doesn't know what he thinks. She doesn't know how beautifully she stands out in a red dress surrounded by greys.
"You look beautiful," he says, and he's pretty sure he pronounces it wrong, but she gets the message.
"Thank you," she whispers, and pulls him down to kiss him.