Scarlet Scarves
Chapter 5— To Women
It was so strange to see Viktor the next morning at breakfast. I didn't know how to behave: should I wave or talk to him? He obviously didn't care to keep our relationship a secret as we were going to the ball but a public display seemed awkward. Fortunately Viktor seemed to know what he was doing (or maybe vhat he was doing). He caught my eye as the Durmstrang pupils entered and gave me a very short but intense smile.
When I left the hall he did to and once out in the entrance hall grabbed my hand and pulled me out the front doors. "Come vith me." He said determinedly.
"Where are we going?" I asked. "I've got to be back by eleven. Amanda and I are going to get dress robes today in Hogsmead."
We sat on a rock by the lake and for a moment the two of us were silent. I shivered a little bit. The first snow had come three days before and I was only wearing a light sweater. "Are you cold?" Viktor asked.
"No." I lied.
But like a true gentlemen he didn't pay any attention to me. He shrugged off his heavy coat and threw it around my shoulders. It was ridiculously big on me. "You are very cute in there." He said, smirking at me and pulling up the collar so my face was protected from the wind but almost gone in the fleecy lining.
I pushed the sleeves back so my hands were a little free. "Aren't you going to be cold?" I asked. Without his coat he had on only a simple T-shirt.
He looked around, as if just noticing the snow. "This is very varm veather where I come from." He said, breathing out misty little particles with his words. "I vas actually thinking of swimming later today."
I gaped at him. "You're making it up you show off!" I accused.
He shook his head. "It is the truth. I promise."
I looked at the lake. Among the little pebbles on the beach a little film of ice was forming. I looked back at him and cocked my eyebrow, challenging him to stick to that story. "Come with then," he said, "if you don't believe me!"
"I can't. As much as I'd love to watch you jump into the blood lake at this time of year, " I said, "I have to go get dress robes with Amanda." I checked my watch. "And I'd better bloody well get going if I expect to make it onto the train to Hogsmead."
I stood to go, shrugging off his coat and handing it back to him, but he caught my hand and stood. His lips were so close to mine that my cold nose started to sting a little from the heat of our mingling breath. "We shouldn't." I said, feeling somewhat detached from my body and surprised that words came out so rational. "I can see my dormitory window from here."
"She is going to find out in a few days anyway Tenn-ssee." He whispered back
I gave him a very brief kiss and when he released my hand to cup my chin, pulled my lips back reluctantly. "But not yet." I said and then turned to dart back up toward the castle.
He laughed but called after me. "I did not tell you something yesterday."
"What?" I asked, turning to face him but calling across the distance I'd covered instead of coming back.
"The champions…vell ve have to start the dancing." He explained.
"What does that even mean?" I asked.
He grinned. "I am not sure I know."
I shrugged. "All right then." And I turned and ran back up to the castle.
The first hour Amanda and I looked in the robe shop was fun. The next was tedious but not too bad. By the fourth, I felt like maybe her promise to find me the prettiest robes had been a sentence or a threat.
Amanda, eventually, settled on a very pale pink set or robes with elegant lace trimming and an old-fashioned cut. The skirt whispered romantically when she moved and swirled when she twirled. It was the perfect dress for her—a mix of glamour and romance without being stuffy.
My robes were a floaty pale purple with details of darker purples on the skirt's edge and along the collar. The skirt wasn't long like Amanda's but neither was it tastelessly short. Maybe it was a conservative choice but it felt comfortable and it made my legs look about a million miles long.
We found shoes eventually too (white stilettos for Amanda and low-heeled velvet ones for me that we had spelled to match the color of my dress) and then met up with Jack at the Three Broomsticks. "The shopping was a success I take it?" He commented, eyeing our packages. "What kind of dress did you girls get?"
She shook her head. "We can't tell you! You have to wait and see at the ball silly!" I shrugged at Jack as if to say, well I would have told you. "I wouldn't ask to see your dress robes would I?" She said.
He shrugged. "Well I'd show you if you ever did." He said, honestly.
It was fun to just sit there and talk with them. Jack said that most of the Beauxbatons kids had gotten dates to the ball. That didn't surprise me, French accents are very sexy and hip in Britain. He also said that a couple of the other boys from his school had been thinking of asking Amanda but he'd intimidated them out of it. Whether that was true or not it had the desired effect: Amanda squealed and scooted closer to him on the booth seat and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
"So who is taking you Tennessee?" Jack asked.
I shrugged. "You'll see then."
He laughed. "Oh a secret is it? It isn't Roger is it?" He tried to sound neutral, on the off chance it was Roger, but his nose wrinkled involuntarily.
"No." I said. "It isn't Roger."
"Like she'd go with that bastard." Amanda said dismissively. I've never been sure if Amanda knows that I have a crush on Roger. She has intuition to spare so it wouldn't surprise me but she never acts as if she does. Jack on the other hand obviously must have guessed somehow. Jack shot me a questioning look that I pointedly dodged by becoming fascinated with the grain of the tabletop.
8888
I woke up Christmas morning and realized, almost before I opened my eyes, that it was barely light out and I could quite clearly hear the crowded chatter going in the common room. We'd forgotten to close the dormitory door the night before. After about half an hour of angrily trying to tell myself that I was just on the edge of going back to sleep I sat up and rubbed my eyes sleepily. The rest of my dormitory was slumbering soundly.
I tiptoed quietly and quickly to the door and shut it, blocking out the sound. Lana rolled over in her sleep but no one woke up. I got out my bathrobe and went to sit on the window seat, opening the frosted pane so I could see out it. Snow had fallen in the night and the scene still had the magic of untouched snow to it. I stuck my head out the window and gulped air for a minute or two until the complaints of my nose and ears forced me to retreat.
When I was done moping I trudged down to the common room to say hello to Fred, George and Lee (I had clearly heard their voices in the din earlier). It was much more crowded than I'd expected. Not at maximum capacity exactly but the good seats by the fire were all filled and there was the buzz of conversation. I'd stayed at Hogwarts once before over the Christmas holidays, when my mum had been going through a rough time after my grandmum died, but the common room had been nearly deserted. Lana had stayed too in solidarity and we'd amused ourselves by pushing the beds against the wall and then sliding in our socked feet in the empty dormitory.
I found my three friends huddled around a table off to the side. Fred, George and Lee were in matching sweaters and looking ridiculous in magical headset style walkie-talkies I'd bought them. "What time is it?" I asked.
"A little before eight." George said, checking his watch. "Is that right Fred?" He radioed to his twin, who was literally right next to him.
"Confirmed George." Fred radioed back. I rolled my eyes. I should have known better than to get them those.
"What did you get for Christmas?" Lee asked, pushing up the little mouth mike to talk to me.
I shrugged. "Dunno yet, haven't looked."
"Why the devil not?" Fred asked, gazing at me with confused eyes.
I shrugged again. "I didn't wake anybody up." I said. "My dormitory is all still asleep."
"Well go get our gift!" Fred commanded, shushing me back toward the stairs with his hands.
"Yeah." George said. "You're going to love it!"
Creeping back into my dormitory I tiptoed to my bed and was just going to search for Fred and George's gift in the pile at the base when I heard a rustling noise above me. I looked up and found that there was an owl waiting for me, perched on the top of my footboard. It must have gotten in when I'd opened the window.
I accepted its letter and ripped it open. It read simply:
Tennessee,
Merry Christmas
ViktorBut there was something else in the package too. I tipped the envelope sideways and shook it so the little thing slid out onto my palm. For a second I thought it was a gold coin but then I saw the little loop at the end and the chain trailing for it. It was a medallion about the size of a pound coin with the figure of a roaring lion engraved on one side and an odd word I couldn't quite get my tongue around on the other.
"Wait!" I hissed to the owl that was hopping toward the window. "I've got a return gift."
What to give Viktor had been a huge dilemma for me. About the only thing I knew about him was that he played Quidditch. I didn't know how serious our relationship was so I didn't want to get something too romantic. He wasn't muggle born so I couldn't get him a DVD or CD or the like. It wasn't the sixties, so I couldn't get him an ID bracelet. He wasn't English so I couldn't get him a book (even from the wizard world) and to make things worse, I'd had to think about it with Amanda making ridiculous suggestions like designer jumpers and silk boxers in my ear.
I'd ended up getting his gift at the same magical toyshop that I'd picked up Fred, George and Lee's goofy headsets. It was a remote control broom, the magical equivalent of a remote control car. And, as an added joke, I'd baked him a big pan of brownies that (hopefully) Fred and George hadn't hexed. The owl gave me what I think was an incredulous look when I gave him the box that held the remote broom (it was rather big) and then piled the batch of brownies on top.
I found Fred and George's present in the little pile at the bottom of my bed easily. I'd expected cooking supplies but there was no such thing. It was, I could tell just from looking at it, a sack-o-dungbombs from Zonko's because instead of putting it a box or even just putting a bow on it, they'd tried to wrap it conventionally. There were little bits of the sack poking out at all ends and the paper was held together with spellotape. Boys, I thought, rolling my eyes. I didn't even bother trying to lug the bloody thing downstairs, I just shoved it under my bed before anyone else noticed it and decided to tell the faculty that I had about fifty pounds of dungbombs under my bed.
"Did you like our gift?" Fred asked when I came back down.
"Oh yeah." I laughed. "It's great. Very me."
"You'll need them someday." George assured me.
I spent the day with Fred, George and Lee. We were just starting a snowball fight about five o'clock for female time. "What the hell could take three hours?" Lee asked as we trotted up the stairs.
Amanda, who always knows what to say to things like that, turned and gave him a wide, wicked smile. "You don't even want to know." Mostly it was boring stuff though. What took the longest was letting my hair dry in the curlers we put it into.
I unwrapped my presents while we did this. Mom had sent me a day planner and a stylish winter coat with creamy fleece lining. Dad had sent me a fifty pound note and a very nondescript Christmas card. My sister Lydia had sent me the kind of high-heeled shoes that only New York women like her wear on normal days. I opened Amanda's present and blinked. I stuffed it back into the wrapping paper, where the girls sprawled over every surface in the dormitory couldn't see it.
I rushed into the bathroom where she was waxing some girl's underarms. "What is this?" I asked, pulling her to one side and pulling back the wrapping paper so she could see what she'd got me.
She giggled. "It's for tonight silly!" She said.
I was appalled. "Amanda! I've only just met the guy! What kind of date do you think this is?"
Inside the package was a box from Kirke's, the Victoria's Secret of the magical world. Inside that box was a pale pink and very lacy bra, matching underwear and a garter belt with matching sheer stockings. She giggled. "It's has nothing to do with Viktor." She said. I gave her a hard looking and motioned for her not to say his name in public but she continued. "It doesn't have his name on it does it?"
I thrust the box under her nose. "This is not innocent lingerie!" I hissed. "This is very, very guilty lingerie!"
She shrugged. "Maybe. That really depends on what you do with it, doesn't it? I'm not saying it doesn't have the potential to be guilty, or even that you shouldn't let it be guilty if that's how you feel. But you'd be surprised what attractive underwear will do for your self-confidence. Even if no one else knows what you've got on, you do and it'll show too."
I went back to my bedside and the book lying on my bedside but my thoughts seemed to turn inevitably to what Amanda had said like they'd been magnetized. I've never been comfortable changing in public (I'm the kind of girl who waits until the bathroom is free to change out of my pajamas) but I found my fingers twitching toward the belt on my bathrobe.
I stripped it off and slipped into the bra and panties. It looked so nice with my pale skin that I tried on the garter belt and stockings. My skin was glowing in the light from the setting sun that was framed in our window and even with my hair in curlers I looked somehow more elegant. I felt, for the first time, that I could see what Viktor was doing when he asked me to the ball.
When my hair had dried Amanda took out the curlers and we did our makeup and slipped into our dresses. We sat on my bed and tried not to muss our dresses. "I'm glad you're my friend Amanda." I said as we slipped into our shoes. "Fred, George and Lee are great but you're always my girly friend."
"Always." She promised.
We left early. Somewhere in the mass conscious it had been decided that the Hogwarts girl who were going with boys from Durmstrang or Beauxbatons would walk out to the ship or carriage so that they could ender with their dates. I put my mom's jacket over my dress and Amanda and I cast warmth and water-repelling spells on our shoes even though the paths to had been well cleared.
The night air was brutally cold but almost eerily still and though the frost was thick on the ground the night was clear enough to see the stars. "I'll see you in a bit." Amanda said when we reached the point where our paths in the snow parted.
The walk down to the lake was solitary but I was excited enough to be numb to the cold and the silence. A few girls were already on the dock waiting for the charmed boat to arrive. I recognized a girl I knew from Ravenclaw and we gravitated together. "Who are you going with?" She asked.
"Viktor Krum." I said flatly. There was no use trying to make the secret last anymore, she'd find out in a few minutes anyway.
"You're kidding." She gapped.
"No." I said. "Who are you going with?"
"Vlad Polkaff." She said.
The ship was buzzing with the same energy Hogwarts was, I could see that the second I got off the boat. Everyone was looking hopeful and nervous and excited all at once. Viktor helped me off the boat onto the ship. "You are very beautiful." He whispered to me.
I blushed. "Thanks. You look nice too." All the Durmstrang students were dressed alike—dark pants and shirts with rich red capes over one shoulder. If I'd seen it on a mannequin in a store I would have surely laughed but it looked well on Viktor. He had just the right kind of stoicism and imposing confidence to wear it. He looked downright regal with his head high.
He touched the necklace that was resting in the little dimple at the top of my breastbone. "Do you like it?" He asked.
I nodded.
"I'd hoped you vould." I asked him what he thought of my gift but he laughed and said he'd have to let me know later because all the boys on the ship had been playing with it all morning and he hadn't gotten a chance yet. He introduced me to all his friends but the names were so long, so foreign and there were so many of them I didn't catch a single one.
Someone brought out a bottle of vodka and poured shots all around. "Is this even legal?" I asked as I took my own miniature glass.
Viktor shrugged. "It vould be in Bulgaria." Which was a non-answer if ever I heard one.
One of Viktor's friends climbed up onto the edge of the ship, raised his glass and shouted something in Bulgarian. It was obviously a toast of some kind because Viktor and the men aboard roared their approval and slammed back their shots. It was a magical moment, that roar of companionship into the night that bounced over the dark waters we floated on. I shuddered and wished, suddenly, that I wasn't an outsider here as I hurried to catch up. "What did he say?" I choked out, when my eyes had stopped watering and my throat had opened up again.
He shook his head. "You vould not like it." He said.
"Come on." I cajoled. "Tell me."
"Okay." He said. "It is hard to say in English but it means something like 'here is to vomen because they are the only thing vorse for a man than vodka.'"
I giggled. "It doesn't either!"
"It does." He confirmed. "It's a very traditional toast in Bulgaria."
I was just trying to think of a suitable comeback when Karkaroff came up on deck. It quieted down quickly but Viktor must have been telling the truth about the drinking age in Bulgaria because no one thought to try to hide the bottle or the glasses.
He scouted the ship and seeing us, came over to where we were standing. The surly Krum from the World Cup and the library fell instantly back over his features. I'd almost forgotten about his duality in his personality—I was almost as surprised to see it back as I had been when I'd first seen him smile. I shifted nervously back and forth in my heels, wishing Karkaroff would shove off.
It occurred to me, as they spoke rapid fire back and forth, that it was both a little sexy and a little scary to depend so fully on Viktor in this way. It bound me to him in ways I couldn't even fathom somehow. I could hear my name in their conversation (sticking out in the throaty sound of the language like a sore thumb) occasionally so I knew that I was at least peripherally to do with what they were talking about it. Also from the way he was glancing at me I could tell Karkaroff liked muggle-borns about as much as he liked Hogwart's students and it wasn't exactly reassuring the way Viktor kept a tight grip on my hand the whole conversation.
"What was that about?" I asked as we walked back up toward the castle.
He shook his head. "Nothing to do with you." An obvious lie, even to me but I didn't see what I could get from pushing the subject further.
In the entrance hall everything and everyone had a sort of sheen over them. It seemed to me that everyone had thought to wear their best underwear at the same time. Girls who usually kept their eyes on the floor were beaming and waving at everyone around them like they were Hollywood A-listers. Boys who were usually too shy to talk to girls were chatting animatedly with their dates.
From across the hall I could almost feel Lana's eyes burning me. I shot her one long look with which I tried to convey all the regret, hope and guilt I felt about everything that had passed between us but it all burned up in the heat of her glare.
"Champions over here please!" Professor McGonagall called across the hall and I was glad to move to the corner of the hall because people were beginning to stare at me in a way that was somehow less than flattering.
I realized, as we all coalesced, that I had no idea who was going with the other champions. Harry Potter had taken a very pretty fourth year who I'd seen in Gryffindor tower but whose name I didn't know. Cho Chang was happily leaning into Cedric's arms. Next my eyes fell to the boy with Fleur as my mouth fell open. It was Roger. And he was looking at his date (who was swaddled in painfully beautiful silver robes) as if he hadn't a thought in his head except how stunning she was.
"That is vhat the toast was meant." Krum whispered to me, looking too at Fleur and Roger.
I felt as I had when I'd downed that shot too: like I'd been hit in the face with a lead pipe and then made to sniff smelling salts. I laughed but all my thoughts had run to my heart and turned into jealousy and anger so it seemed to ring hollow.
My first reaction to seeing Roger behaving so disgustingly with Fleur was as cliché as it was stupid—to do the same with Viktor. Luckily my higher reasoning function kicked in just time and I realized that on the off chance that Roger even noticed me it was very, very, very unlikely to have the desired effect. If he didn't see right through what I was trying to do at first glance he was hardly likely to become jealous when he had a girl like Fleur.
And then Professor McGonagall was arranging us into a line of pairs and the doors were opening onto the Great Hall. It looked as it never had before. The first thing I noticed was that the long house tables were gone and had been replaced by a smattering of smaller circular tables. The walls were hung heavy with icicles and wreaths of holly and Christmas decorations. But then we moved into the actual hall and I felt as if I were going to be crushed under the pressure of the eyes on me. I'd thought the entrance hall had been rough but it was nothing compared to this. I had sympathized with Viktor's discomfort with attention before—now I could empathize too.
Professor McGonagall lead us to a larger circular table at the top of the hall and seated with the judges. On the plus side, Viktor chose seats that were about as far from Karkaroff as was possible but on the minus side they were dreadfully close to Fleur and Roger.
To the right of me the under deputy who had come in place of Mr. Crouch chatted to Harry (who looked bored). Potter was in Gryffindor with me but he was two years below me and I barely knew him. Like I said before, the days of You-Know-Who had the feel of long-past history to me and I can't help feeling sometimes that I don't fully appreciate Harry. I know for sure that I wasn't nearly as impressed with him as both Lana and Amanda were when he came to Hogwarts in our second year. I hadn't ever really talked to him. "Hey Harry." I called to him.
He jerked to look at him. For a second I thought he didn't recognize me but then he smiled. "What's up Tennessee?" He asked.
"I forgot to tell you but good job on the first task." I said.
He nodded. "Cheers."
On the other side of me Fleur and Roger chattered inanely. Listening to them I could see exactly what Krum meant. Fuck alcohol, Fleur was deadlier than cyanide.
"What about me?" I said suddenly to Krum.
"Vhat about you?" Krum asked, looking at me curiously.
"I mean does the toast apply to me?" I asked. "Do you think I'm more dangerous than liquor?"
"Of course not. You are very nice." He said. He meant to be kind but it wasn't the answer I wanted to hear. As stupid as it was I wanted him to say that I was like Fleur, so beautiful it was terrible. I knew I was the safe, take-home-to-your-mother type but even nice girls like me dream of men driven wild by their beauty. It isn't that I'm unaware that it's not a nice fantasy but I can't help it.
Viktor and I chatted then about Durmstrang. It all sounded dreadful to me but I'm sure that it had mostly to do with the biases of the teller. The only romance in the whole descriptions, the only time he sounded genuinely happy, lay in the surrounding countryside, which I thought sounded magnificent. Eventually though, Karkaroff hinted that Viktor shouldn't tell me anymore about the school, so we talked my childhood as a muggle (actually I let him sidetrack me into a half hour explanation of the rules of football).
When we'd all finished our dinner, we stood and Dumbledore made all the tables whiz back against the wall to clear the flood for dancing. Then he conjured a stage along the right wall and a hodge-podge of instruments for the Weird Sisters, who marched out onto the stage to thunderous applause.
The lights dimmed and my stomach rocked pleasantly as I realized that the dancing was going to begin. Viktor was a good dancer. He isn't graceful on the ground but grace, as Amanda says, is not the man's business in a dance; but Viktor knew how to lead. I remember being vaguely surprised by how good he actually was but thinking back on, how else could I have expected it? Dancing, like most things, is a matter of perseverance when you first learn it, and Viktor, unlike me, had that in spades.
It was scary at first, the two of us seemed to be completely isolated in the little light that was left in the room, but eventually the other pupils began to move out onto the dance floor and then it was quite fun. The first dance was formal but there were modern ones later. Three pairs of the champions stayed on the dance floor but Harry, and his date, returned to a table they shared with a ginger-haired boy and a pretty girl in blue robes, who had the unmistakable look of the newly in love.
We danced until our feet hurt and then went and sat at the tables, drinking until we were refreshed and then returning to the floor. Fred and Angelina sat with us for a while, and while Angelina and Viktor argued over something to do with Quidditch Fred and I talked. "Why didn't you tell me you were going with Krum?" He whispered to me.
I giggled, pleased by how disgruntled he looked. "You didn't ask Fred."
He gave me a very queer look. "You never fail to surprise." He said. It was cryptic, to say the least, but I was flattered anyway. No one had ever accused me of being interesting, much less surprising and it sounded glamorous to me.
"Does it ever get boring?" I asked him, when it was just the two of us again. "People wanting to talk to you only about Quidditch I mean?"
"You don't talk to me about Quidditch." He pointed out.
I shrugged. "I might if I hadn't already embarrassed myself in that department with the Ponski Feint." I said honestly.
He considered. "No," he said finally, "I love Quidditch so it is never a bother to talk about it." He smiled. "Especially if it is to a beautiful woman."
Determined not to rise to the bait, I smiled my most even smile. "No kidding." I said casually, looking over at where Angelina was dancing with Fred. Her long black hair hung over her beautiful curves like a cape. "But I think Angelina might be quite dedicated to Fred. Heaven only knows why but that's just the sense I get."
He laughed at me for almost a minute. "I vas talking about you." He said.
"Oh." I said, blushing.
Amanda and Jack came to talk to us as well. Jack merely raised his eyebrows at me and I winked back, grinning. I laughed as Amanda asked Viktor what she'd missed when she'd been too sick to see the World Cup. Even Amanda, who knew less about Quidditch than I did couldn't think of anything else to talk to him about.
"So," Jack said conversationally, "Lana doesn't look too happy."
From across the room I could see Lana sitting at a table against the wall. She was with a group of girls who hadn't got dates (though I knew for a fact that two boys had asked her). Her dress was the same rich burgundy as the Durmstrang capes and the high, irritated color in her cheeks when she looked our way. Cerebrally I felt bad but there was so much adrenaline and joy in my bloodstream there was no room for anything else.
"Guess so." I said stubbornly. I didn't want to talk about Lana, it only made me grumpy, and tonight I was interested only in the lighter end of the spectrum of emotion. "Let's get out of here." I said to Viktor, pulling on his arm.
He yielded easily and we walked out through the entrance hall to the magical garden that had been created off to the west. We walked out into the semi-darkness until we found a little cove with a stone bench. I sat down while Viktor stood and looked down to where we could see the ship portholes glowing. We sat in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the funny still texture of the evening. I could see behind him two shapes in another of the side enclosures but the two of them were so close I could barely tell where one ended and one began. I thought it was funny until I recognized one of the moaning voices. It was Roger and Fleur!
I was suddenly nauseous. "Let's move a little farther along." I started to say but Viktor seemed to stiffen suddenly and he grabbed my arm and thrust me behind a higher hedge so the two us were concealed to any passers by. "What…" I started but he clamped a hand over my mouth.
In the sudden silence I could hear what he had picked up on, voices on the path. "You must be noticing it too Severus." It was the horse, wan voice of Karkaroff only a few feet away. Viktor's hand, the one not over my lips, had settled by his side and I could see him ball it into a fist. He looked, suddenly and genuinely angry.
"Of course I noticed it you damned idiot." That was the lazy tone of Snape.
I put my hand on Viktor's arm, trying to reassure him through touch somehow. I was surprised to find, for the first time in the bitterly cold night, he was shivering. He drew his hand down from my lips and my breath fogged in the air. It was a strange moment, our eyes and lips only inches apart, so close the misty fog of our breaths mingled, but being so unaware of each other. Our beings had moved out of our bodies toward the path a few feet away to eavesdrop on our professors.
"Well then you must know he's coming back!" Karkaroff seemed panicked.
"Nothing is confirmed yet!" Snape snapped. "This has happened before. When he has regained some of his powers."
"But never so strongly!"
They moved out of our hearing range. Viktor grabbed my hand and pulled me back out onto the path again but we ran the opposite direction that they had been heading—right toward Fleur and Roger. There was a shout behind us and I turned my head in time to see Snape shout at two kids who hadn't been as lucky as Viktor and me and had been caught by the two men. "What was that about?" I panted to Krum when we slowed to a walk around the next bend in the hedges.
"I am not sure." He said, but he looked like he had a pretty good idea.
We took an indirect route back to the dance hall but we went as quickly as we could. It seemed, suddenly, like a bad idea to be out in the cold and dark. And yet, for all it was creepy outside it was almost completely forgotten in the warmth. We danced and got warm again and, before I knew it, the band was announcing the last dance.
"Vhen vill I see you again?" Viktor asked me in the entrance hall.
I kissed his cheek. "Tomorrow?" I proposed. "On the Pitch?"
"After breakfast?" He said.
And then we parted.
Fin
AN: Sooooooo what do you think? Too cheesy? Too dramatic? Not dramatic enough? Did you think Krum and Tennessee just jumped right too it too quickly? Were all the characters true to themselves? Please drop me a line and tell me what you thought of this chapter! So I haven't even started the next chapter (uh oh) so there's no preview this time. Sorry. Oh and be sure to have a Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate this season!