Chapter 8: Truth
They've had to give up Friday nights at the Harried Horntail. They have too many things to say now that can't be said in public. Tonight Marina is making dinner in her flat. It is the first time she has ever made dinner like this, for a man, for one man, for Viktor. Viktor surprises her by coming early, with Mr. Weasley's camcorder under his arm.
"Whatever did you bring that for?" asks Marina.
"I fixed it," announces Viktor proudly. "Remember how it wasn't working at the wedding?" He flips open a little plastic flap and says, "Look, no batteries! It runs on spells now. Ennervate!" A red light comes on. "Wingardium Leviosa!" The camcorder levitates at eye level. "Marina Recorda!" The camcorder follows her around the kitchen and films her stuffing cabbage leaves.
"You know," says Marina after a couple minutes, "Charlie was right. This is annoying."
"Let's take it to the reservation tomorrow," says Viktor wickedly, "and film him tending the dragons . . ."
Only when dinner is ready does he put the Muggle toy away. He pours out goblets of the elf-made wine he brought and lights two candles with the tip of his wand as Marina serves the sarmale. "Not to talk business over dinner," she says, as he pushes in her chair, "but have you found out anything more . . ."
"It's what I haven't found," says Viktor.
"What haven't you found?"
"Luiza Spiru." He spoons sour cream over the sarmale, spears them with his fork, and begins to cut them. "Madalina Moara checked out fine. She's a waitress at the One-Eyed Owl in Sofia now, did you know? And you're right, she is a half-wit. But Luiza Spiru is a woman with no present and no past. Durmstrang has no record of her."
"Well, she was an idiot," points out Marina. "I can hardly believe she attended Durmstrang, much less finished . . ."
"There's a magic quill at Durmstrang that records the birth of every wizarding child in this sector of Europe," says Viktor, "regardless of blood status, intelligence, whatever. It even records Squibs." He hesitates, then says quietly, "Durmstrang has a record of Slovadan. It has a record of you."
Marina holds her peace.
"Maybe it's just as well you didn't go," says Viktor. "We would have been in the same year. You wouldn't have liked me. I was a wild little smart-aleck of a jock for the first four years and a sullen introvert for the last three . . ."
"It wouldn't have been Durmstrang anyway," says Marina, "if I had gone to school. It would have been St. Petersburg. That's the Oblak tradition."
"Your parents didn't want to send you?"
Marina shrugs. "My mother couldn't stand to let either of us go, she was so dependent—and we didn't have any ready cash anyway, by the time Slovadan was eleven. That was the year after they separated. Dad did manage to catch a Portkey back from Peru, once or twice a year, but he never seemed to bring any Galleons with him."
Viktor chews the cabbage leaves. He says, "Marina, these are good. These are really, really good."
Marina has almost forgotten she is holding a fork. She says, "We sold off jewelry for food . . ."
Viktor brushes her hand. She looks down and remembers the food in front of her. Indeed, it is very good.
"It seems like you got a good education anyway," says Viktor after a minute. "I'm not sure the professors at Durmstrang are as good as the people you studied with."
"All the weirdos," murmurs Marina.
Viktor looks concerned.
"I mean, you're right," she says hastily. "I can't imagine that any wizarding school would have given me better instructors than the ones I had. But it was a motley crew of tutors that I ended up with. All the eccentrics, all the witches and wizards on the margins—"
"Stefan Dobrega was internationally famous," protests Viktor. "And the Director is also—"
"Stefan was internationally famous," acknowledges Marina, "and the Romanian Ministry's always been eager to claim him, mainly, I think, because there are so few Romanians who achieve any sort of international renown. But his domestic fame was as much for pure eccentricity as for his transfiguration research. The higher-ups at the Ministry thought he was more than a little odd. They were always petrified that he was going to 'go over to the other side.' Supposedly, that meant the Death Eaters, but in practice, I think they were equally afraid that he might put his talents at the disposal of the Hungarian Ministry, or the Czech Ministry, or the German Ministry, or even set up some kind of rival government in Romania. They were afraid of him, ridiculously, bizarrely afraid of him, and they got to be a little afraid of me as well."
Marina pauses. She sets down her fork, takes a sip of wine, and holds her cold fingers to the candlelight. "Drina Aureliu—the witch who taught me History of Magic—had the same sort of reputation. Eccentric, and she just knew a little too much about Muggles. Drina took me to a cocktail party at the Ministry once, when I was eighteen. I was planning to be a Dragon Keeper then. She didn't like it, she wanted me to do something more intellectual, and she thought she could introduce me to some of the department heads." Viktor nods. "But the evening was a disaster. When we walked in, everyone turned and stared. And then when the conversation finally started again, someone made a reference to the Szechenyi Lanchid, you know, the Chain Bridge in Budapest. And Drina said, 'Oh, I remember when that was blown up by the Nazis.' And Glad Ursu—he's the education minister—turned around and said, 'What's a Nazi?'" Marina lets this sink in. "He didn't know what a Nazi was . . ."
"Annoying," says Viktor.
"I just wanted to sink into the floor," said Marina. "I couldn't decide whether I was angrier at Glad Ursu for not knowing what a Nazi was or at Drina for revealing the sort of oddball Muggle-oriented history instruction I was getting for my NEWTs. I was very young . . ."
"At least you got a real education," says Viktor. "The History of Magic course at Durmstrang was pretty much all about cramming for NEWTs, and hardly anyone took it. The only reason I've heard of Nazis is that I've traveled a bit, and one of my great-uncles went undercover as a Muggle in the Grindelwald War."
"I worked it into my NEWT paper," says Marina. "Just to spite him—and the Ministry of Education. I explained all about Nazis in my essay on the Grindelwald War, and I got an O anyway. But it shows you the sort of tutors I had."
"The Ciorans?" asks Viktor quietly.
"Nina's a half-blood. A foreign half-blood. The neighbors have always looked askance at her, and she's had to ship all the children off to Beauxbatons, one by one, because Durmstrang won't take them. It's—well, it's just like my childhood, except that the Ciorans have a little more money than we did, and there are five kids, all close in age, so they don't get quite so lonely. But Nina's an outcast, and the way people look at Tomas is almost worse. Everyone understands that Nina didn't have a choice about being born a half-blood, but one does have a choice about whom one marries, and Tomas chose to be a blood traitor—"
Viktor laughs.
"Look, would people understand if you married a half-blood?" inquires Marina.
"My parents would," says Viktor quietly. "And my real friends—not the ones from Durmstrang. Actually, I don't really have any friends from Durmstrang anymore. Charlie's probably the closest—it's true, the newspapers would have a field day," he admits. "But they'd get over it."
"No one ever gets over anything in Romania," mutters Marina. "Tomas didn't actually want to be a dragon vet. He trained as a regular Healer. But Romanians are particular about who their Healers are, they don't really want a Healer who married a half-blood, they think he might have funny ideas about blood purity. Tomas and Nina considered moving to Germany, but the competition for Healing jobs there is intense, and Tomas didn't have any special leads or connections. The Director invited him to take one some work at the reservation, and the long and short of it was, he ended up being a creature Healer, specializing in dragons." She is silent for a minute. "Now Petru wants to be a Dragon Keeper, which is going to break his father's heart. Tomas doesn't even like dragons."
"Is the Director also considered odd?" asks Viktor. "I've heard people say things, once or twice, but when I looked up the dragon journals, he seemed to have a very good professional reputation."
"In the dragon community, yes, definitely," says Marina. "He took over the facility thirty years ago and turned it into the best teaching reservation in the world. The Longhorn breeding program is a marvel, too, though the locals don't like it. He's mixing blood stocks," she explains. "That's why the more traditional Dragon Keepers, like my Vasik cousins, broke off and formed smaller independent reservations. But yes, his professional reputation is very good. What people don't like is his attitude towards part-humans and non-humans—he's said to be a little too friendly. There was a rumor going around, during the war, that he had a couple of half-giants staying at the reservation." She hesitates. "It was true, actually— they're friends of Charlie's—"
"Yes, I've met them," says Viktor.
"Well, ironically, most of the Transylvanian witches and wizards didn't believe the rumor was true, but they disliked him for it anyway," says Marina. "They all said that it was exactly the sort of thing he would do, even if he wasn't actually doing it. And then there's—well, you've probably noticed—"
Viktor looks inquisitive.
"Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank is here rather a lot," says Marina quietly.
"Yes," says Viktor. "I have noticed."
"So have all the neighbors," says Marina. "They all know she's worked off and on at Hogwarts, which has a pretty dodgy reputation in these parts, and they think she's no better than she ought to be, and too old to boot—for the sort of sin they assume she's engaging in, that is. It's the talk of Transylvania."
"They shouldn't make so many assumptions," agrees Viktor.
"No, no, though—well, it's true," says Marina. "They can't marry. We thought they might, when Hagrid went back to Hogwarts, in the first year of the war, and Wilhelmina came back here. Charlie and Fergal teased the Director about it so much that in the end he told the boys and me. You see, his first wife—I mean, legally, his only wife, when he was a young man and he was still living in Holland—well, she was—"
Viktor looks expectant, and she can see he's thinking, "Muggle."
"She was a mermaid," says Marina quietly. Viktor chokes on his surprise. "It didn't answer," says Marina, thinking that the Director must have been a very, very, very idealistic young wizard ever to imagine that it would. "She went back to her people."
"I see," murmurs Viktor wonderingly.
"That was forty years ago, and he has no idea where she is now. He's completely lost track of her. But they're still legally married, and merpeople's lifespans are just as long as wizards', and there's no reason to think she isn't still alive. So his hands are tied, and they'll probably never be able to marry."
Marina takes a deep breath and lets this information sink in. The Director is not yet seventy, Wilhelmina not much older, and they have decades ahead of them. Fifty years is a long time in which to not be married to the woman you love, to slink around illicitly, facing the constant peril of a Hobson's choice between one's chosen partner and one's chosen career.
"This is in confidence, of course, Viktor. They've told some of their friends, but it absolutely cannot get into the press, nor come to the attention of any of the higher-ups at the Ministry. Romanians do not like marriages between wizards and magical creatures. If the Director had married a veela, they might forgive him—at least the men might—Romanian wizards are crazy about veela. But a mermaid doesn't have the same cachet. The only reason the Director's lasted this long in Romania is that the reservation's funding comes mostly from abroad and the Ministry couldn't easily get rid of him. But if they found out he had married a mermaid, they'd chase him out of the country. He'd be lucky if they didn't lynch him."
"That bad?" says Viktor, half-worried, half-amused.
Marina sighs. "There's a lot of pent-up anger here. The Romanian wizarding community has a lot of unsavory associations—vampires especially, but other things too. Too many people picked the wrong side in the last three wars, and even the ones who picked the right side didn't come out looking good. Too many people were killed, too much property, too many archives, too much of the communications network was destroyed. The wizarding quarter is a shambles and the Ministry is bankrupt. So there's a lot of pent-up anger and suspicion, against blood traitors, against half-bloods, against foreigners, against part-humans and magical creatures of 'near human intelligence.' Sooner or later it's going to break out in violent form."
"I wish I could take you away from all this," says Viktor.
"Do you really think that's a good idea?" asks Marina tartly. "I'm sorry—it's just—you'd be a blood traitor too. It stalled my father's career, and the marriage didn't even turn out well. He left his family and took a dangerous job on another continent and got killed for his pains. Marrying Nina nearly ruined Tomas's career. The dragon healing job was a lucky break for him, and he's very good at it, but he still regrets not getting to do the work he actually trained for. In his case, at least, his wife and children have been a consolation, but still— so isolated all the time, so little security, so many difficulties about the children's education—." She breaks off. "I'm grateful," she says. "I'm very, very grateful, and just very—very." Very inarticulate and very about to tear up. Very much in love and very astonished that something like this is happening in my life. "But," she says miserably, "I'm not sure I'm worth it."
"You are," says Viktor.
Marina rubs her eye and bites her lip.
"I'm not a pureblood anyway," says Viktor quietly. "We pose."
Marina does a double-take, because she thought she knew Viktor, and she did not see this coming.
"My great-grandfather had an affair with a Muggle," says Viktor, "at the same time that he was married to my great-grandmother. It's—well, it's not something we talk about. They had a child together, and my great-grandfather persuaded his wife to adopt him and raise him with her own children. It must have been very difficult for her, but she knew how poor his prospects were otherwise. Bulgarian attitudes towards half-bloods have changed a lot since the First War, but a century ago—and especially for a half-blood with a Muggle mother and no father in evidence—well, you can imagine."
Marina nods. Indeed, she can imagine.
"So she took the child, and the child was my grandfather, and I—well, I'm only seven-eighths."
"I'm more pureblooded than you are," murmurs Marina wonderingly.
"Yes," says Viktor, "and our children—"
Marina holds her breath.
"Mental arithmetic is one thing I am not good at," says Viktor.
"Twenty-nine thirty-seconds," says Marina wonderingly. "Twenty-nine thirty-seconds."