Gold
Sometimes he felt like he was missing something. He could feel the bench he was sitting on, when he looked up he could see the sky and feel the sun on his face. When he inhaled air rushed into his lungs and he could taste autumn. Sometimes he said "I feel like I'm fifteen again." Which is odd, because he's never been fifteen before, he just turned a couple of days ago. Sometimes he dreams about flying through the air with a hand outstretched.
To catch a piece of gold.
It wasn't that he forgot what his name was. It wasn't even that he didn't like his name. Michael. He'd been writing it on his papers for the past fifteen years or so. It was just that sometimes he wrote down the wrong name. The swirl of the C was comforting to his hands and ending in a C felt complete. Cedric. That wasn't his name. That was a dream.
He didn't daydream, but when he closed his eyes he was somewhere else.
Fifteen years was long enough to make a man bitter. Fifteen lonely years was enough to drive him insane. When winter came it wasn't that he didn't feel cold, it was that he chose to revel in it instead of hiding from it. Someone else's quiet courage was tucked away inside his coat, and England was hardy cold enough to dare lose that.
Some people would say that fifteen years was too long to hold onto a memory.
Viktor Krum would beg to disagree.
It wasn't that he forgot to move on. He had moved on, and for thirteen of those fifteen years he had done what everyone expected him to do. He had chosen the 'right' side, he had done his part. But two years after, with nothing left except empty Quidditch fields and memories of fifteen years before…
It was time for a visit, if only because his mind would rest easier.
Fifteen was old enough to talk to strangers, because that was older than being a child. He was old enough to take a look at the man, dressed oddly, walking oddly, with one of those harsh odd looks on his face and ask him.
'Are you alright?'
Thirty years old was old enough to look into a piece of the past and lie.
' Yes. '