A/N: I didn't do Karkaroff justice, especially as regards his (sober) dialogue. I can't bring myself to care, but one day I might, so kindly make the criticisms good – hot and juicy. The Púrpura Nova Curse is my totally un-credible name for whatever it was Hermione got a blast of in OotP. Better suggestions welcomed, warmly.
Shipshape
He was in the Beauxbatons carriage listening to Olympe Maxime say something to the effect that she wouldn't stand for it, numerous times, and nodding seriously at the appropriate points. He didn't give a Doxy one way or another about what she was calling "purism een eets ugliest forms," but, hoping to maintain the alliance, he had to pretend so that she in turn would pretend to be concerned about his attacked champion. But faking it grew a good deal harder about ten minutes in when he felt his left forearm start to prickle.
It was not the certain familiar old blast of pain that could send you off your feet in the old days, for sure. In some ways it was worse, torturing ever so lightly and slowly. His skin felt like bacon curdling over a fire. He could feel it curling in on itself around the edges. So it was not so much pain as mincing – the grimace brought on by nails on a chalkboard, or musical saws – that was distracting him from Maxime.
"You look uncomfortable, Karkaroff," she said coldly.
"Forgive me," he said, almost as coldly. "Indigestion."
Which was after all an excuse that explained the gunky yellowish colour taking over his face.
"I thought eet might be ze bruises you collected earlier."
"The gameskeeper. He got very rough with me. Dumbledore just looked on, naturally," he said, picking up the real thread of the conversation, which was Dumbledore-abuse.
Maxime of course suspected (she was feeling suspicious times two that night) that Karkaroff did not want to talk to her. She was quite right. It occurred to Karkaroff as his Mark and his soul kindled prickingly that he was entirely wasting his time with her. There was only one person in the world whose help mattered to him anymore. And he had just spat at his feet earlier that afternoon.
---
Karkaroff slept horribly that night. Occasionally he drifted in and out of a nightmarish doze. At some point he found himself out of his cabin, wand out, with the vague idea of using Avada Kedarva on someone, possibly himself, possibly one of his students. He ran back into his cabin post haste and rummaged for Sleeping Draughts, but for some reason couldn't make himself drink; it was terrible, it was unbearable, it was frankly unwise to let loose that part of him, but he couldn't resist a long reverie of his former life under the Dark Lord. The benefits. The disadvantages. The punishments of others for lesser disloyalties than the Dark Lord would consider his. This went on for dark hours. At dawn he had to do some considerable clean-up on himself before facing the sun and the world.
The next morning, using the attack on Krum as an excuse, he forbid his students to participate in the Hogsmeade outing from sheer irritation. If the Drumstrang students had protested they would only have sealed his resolve and been undone. But they were cleverer than that. With the insolent deference that marked most of their racial and familial traditions, they set with silent acquiescence to work. The entire ship was polished within about an hour. By that time Karkaroff had eaten and realised that he didn't want them underfoot all day, and was inclined to let them all leave. He circled the ship once or twice to inspect, obliquely making his intent to let them off clear.
Poliakoff was the only one fool enough to make any celebratory noise or change of expression about this. Karkaroff rounded on him.
"Not you, Poliakoff," he snapped, grateful for an outlet for his increasing nerves. "Everyone who can take care of themselves is free to go. Anyone who still can't so much as behead a stuffed tiger with their Púrpura Nova Curse, however, had best stay on board."
Poliakoff stared and then asked, "Can I attend classes on Monday, sir?"
"Don't get clever."
And Poliakoff went off muttering something in Russian to the effect that he wasn't clever, he thought that was the whole point, wasn't it the ground he and Headmaster dear had covered dozens of times? Karkaroff didn't quite catch all this, but he gave Poliakoff several duties to keep him busy while he, Karkaroff, went to have further talks at the castle with Dumbledore.
Two seconds after barking at Poliakoff he turned smoothly to Krum, who had almost escaped at the back of a crowd of his happily chatting and disembarking classmates.
"No, no, Viktor, I'm worried about you, evidently you're a target in this conspiracy as well…"
"Vat do you vant me to do instead?" Krum asked dully.
"Why, nothing, nothing at all, Viktor, this isn't a punishment, you know… but your safety is my chief priority…"
Krum could have argued this further, but it was one of his cardinal rules to speak to Karkaroff as little as he possibly could, so he followed Poliakoff in without another word. Karkaroff looked after him rather unhappily.
---
Having had a hard night with his Dark Mark and similarly Dark memories led him to the reluctant conclusion that he was today going to have to throw himself at Dumbledore's feet. He didn't want to – Merlin's beard, how he didn't want to! – but there was no way to ignore that the Dark Lord was returning. And there was no way to ignore that Dumbledore was something of a haven for Death Eaters. There was Snape, whom Dumbledore doted on to a degree that astounded Karkaroff whenever he saw the evidence, a warm hand on his shoulder, indulgent smiles, conferences in conspiratorial undertones. (And the smugness on Snape's face when he sought out your eye during those little talks! Devoting most of his damnably clever mind to Dumbledore's business, no doubt, but sparing enough attention to gloat shamelessly.) And there had been that fishy business with Sirius Black the year before, Karkaroff was as clueless as anyone, but a blind man could tell that Dumbledore must have played a role of spiriting him out just before the scheduled Kiss.
But as he walked to the castle his resolutions already faltered. The Dark Lord seemed farther and more dead in the unreal daylight. Karkaroff was getting to be an entirely different man by day as he was by night, and it was a strain to be more than one person.
His resolutions were further undermined upon actually getting inside. Memories are much more vivid when alone, speculations are much more imaginative by night, and Albus Dumbledore is even more Dumbledorey in the flesh. Karkaroff was pretty sure upon entering the now-deserted Great Hall that he was telling Snape a story featuring a seductive use of peas, though upon seeing Karkaroff he quickly reverted to an excessive courtesy.
Snape looked grateful, as well he might.
"Professor Karkaroff," Dumbledore nodded seriously. "I'd hoped you would not find my choice of our meeting-place too trivial. I would naturally have had you voice your concerns in my office, but you objected to that when I sought you out earlier."
"You do no justice to my concerns anywhere." This was something different from the softer answer he had intended to give, but he couldn't, now the moment was at hand. If only Snape wasn't there.
"Sometimes I feel you don't do your concerns justice yourself," said Dumbledore. "I do my utmost to take them seriously, you know."
"Doubtless," said Karkaroff, in his rudest tones. "But just to help you grasp the weight of my dissatisfaction, I've lodged several complaints with the International Confederation of Wizards."
"Several? Not just the one?" asked Dumbledore, rather more lightly than is acceptable from someone who is supposed to be appropriately penitent.
Karkaroff ticked them off. "Against you, a renewal of my former complaints about your conduct, and an entirely novel one against the Ministry."
Like most men who had found how to just slip from the blow of the law, Karkaroff was now always turning back to it, mingling in the government, keeping chin jutted up instead of his head down, using the apparatus with a virtuosity unknown to the innocent who have never had any dealings with it, as if to shove his hard-won respectability into their faces again and again, lest they forget. It was sheer defiance. Karkaroff was too dignified to swagger, so he demanded justice from bureaucrats who knew his past, and that satisfied his ego about as well.
Dumbledore took this in stride. "As a preliminary, if you will not believe that I had nothing to do with Mr Krum's attack, I wish you would accept that the British Ministry's hands are clean. Mr Crouch was acting – well, possibly not under his own person – but not from influence from the Ministry, for certain."
"Claptrap," said Karkaroff angrily. "The Ministry's hands are never clean."
Well, he had walked right into it just there. Snape's eyes glittered. Dumbledore's didn't, and his expression was a studied neutrality, but it was plain enough what tidbit of his own past he was thinking of.
"It's very understandable if you're frightened," said Dumbledore, not much less gently than he would have spoken to a homesick first-year. "I'm not at ease with the current situation myself."
Karkaroff's heart literally skipped. But he only said, harshly, "There's something of a difference between 'frightened' and 'offended,' Dumbledore, and once and for all understand that I am the latter."
Why had he passed up that opportunity? he asked himself. If only he still had names, if he could come to the table armed with that much at least…
"Ah," said Dumbledore. "We are still talking of that."
"Don't tell me that Albus Dumbledore, the model of humanity and saviour of drowned kittens, would raise nothing of a fuss if one of his students was attacked."
"No, he wouldn't," said Dumbledore gravely. "Or, if we can again venture onto the more sensible roads of first and second person, I wouldn't. But please understand, Karkaroff. I had nothing to do with the attack on Viktor. Remember that Harry Potter, my own student, was almost attacked as well – "
"And yet very conveniently wasn't!"
"Very conveniently. But perhaps there is significance to that. If, as I think, this is the work of Lord Voldemort, then it is to be expected that Harry would be spared."
"Dumbledore, think what you're saying!" Karkaroff was near shrieking; why oh why had the Dark Lord been brought up? Oh, he knew very well, Dumbledore was trying to bully him – well, he'd find Igor Karkaroff wasn't easily intimidated. "If, improbable as it is – I'm sure this is an idea Alastor Moody must be putting into your head – do you think he or anyone of his henchman would be likely to spare Potter?"
So help them, Snape was actually fighting back a grin as he looked on. Watching him dig his own grave was evidently an amusing spectacle. Damn it. Where the hell was Moody, anyhow? Whenever you least needed him he was always poking his half-a-nose everywhere, but he was nowhere in sight when he and his dampening presence would actually prove useful – say, when Severus Snape was going all Cheshire-ish.
Dumbledore had some suspicious long-winded explanation. Karkaroff's mind began to draw dark blanks. If only he could really believe what Dumbledore said. Theoretically pride was very fine and all. But when it came to the little man panicking in your gut, that was something different altogether.
Certainly Dumbledore must be a safe bet, since even Snape wasn't leaving, and Snape was as hard-nosed a practicalist as any Slytherin and probably more so than most, he wasn't staying out of sentiment; if he was awaiting the Dark Lord's return with such equanimity under Dumbledore's wing it must be safe. And it was about the only option Karkaroff could see at all, though he would have killed for any other one, any other one at all… Karkaroff, like all those who least enjoy life, was among the least willing to give it up.
Karkaroff never remembered much of the rest of the interview, though he gathered that he had said quite a few scathing things about Dumbledore's honour. He knew that he must not have gotten anywhere near making nice because Snape looked so pained at trying to suppress his dark-eyed delight. Karkaroff somewhat came to as Dumbledore left.
"You only want the Dark Lord to be coming back!" Karkaroff called after him, nastily. "Only glory you ever get is in putting down proper Wizardly movements! Certainly not from the abysmal way you run Hogwarts to the ground!"
Dumbledore just went on, leaving Karkaroff panting. Why he was panting he wasn't sure, but he felt as though he had run marathons alongside death the past half hour.
"You know, Igor," said an oily, amused voice in his ear, "it ought to be your initials that are S.O.S., not mine."
Karkaroff pretended not to hear him, and stalked off.
---
As his classmates began to drift back to the ship, few by few, Poliakoff was out on deck, waving them off.
"What do you mean?"
"Headmaster's orders," said Poliakoff, with a too-demure mouth, as if fighting the smirk playing with his lips. "Go camp out in the castle."
The Durmstrang students were bewildered.
"Go on!" Poliakoff urged. "No sight in here for virgin eyes, let me tell you. Surely you all have some Slytherin friends you can spend the night with… that lovely cosy common room of theirs… Go on, go on!"
"You're up to something, Poliakoff," was Lesnowska's last word on the subject before she, last of them all, finally left and headed to Hogwarts.
"Me?" Poliakoff couldn't restrain a grin. "I didn't do anything, I swear! I am the innocent in this! I am being the responsible one and taking appropriate measures! I'm not the one who broke into the vodka!"
"What!" said Lesnowska, or the Polish equivalent. Poliakoff, pretending to look ashamed at having let this slip, waved her off.
Inside the dignified, stand-offish, unctuous Headmaster Karkaroff was indeed soused, and trying to absorb more. Krum was eying him impassively from the other side of the table, having barely touched his first glass himself, which had been taken only at Karkaroff's invitation, back when Karkaroff had still been articulate.
"Let me pour that for you, sir," said Poliakoff gallantly, in obliging English, as he stepped proudly back in. "My hands are more steady."
"Yes," said Karkaroff vaguely, eyes rising with the liquid level in his glass. "That's right… Happy Christmas…"
"Indeed! Viktor?"
"No."
Poliakoff topped him off anyway, and then sat down expansively with his own. "Well!" he said, now in Russian. "Isn't this cosy?" Then, in English, lifting his glass, "I am going to propose a toast."
"I want you back in your cabin, Poliakoff," said Karkaroff, but his words lacked a certain steadiness, and he was shakily raising his own glass.
"All in good time, Professor," said Poliakoff warmly. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. Some people cannot take in stride the first experience of drinking with authority figures. Poliakoff was not one of those. And there was a thirst in his eye – not for the various vodkas and wines that he now knew stuffed certain secret cabinets, but for vengeance, something altogether sweeter.
"To our headmaster!"
Krum raised his goblet, but only feigned drinking, his silent objection. Poliakoff was much more blatant. He brought the it to his opened mouth, but then, quick as a flash, tossed a bit of wine out of the goblet over his shoulder instead of drinking. Karkaroff's hand was unsteady. There was wine dripping down his front. Poliakoff grinned with wicked satisfaction to see it.
"To that darling little sweetheart Chang!"
"Hear!" said Karkaroff, splendidly genial. Krum considered, and then also drank to this.
"To the rise of Mudbloods!"
"Hear… hear…" Karkaroff was very pleased for these readily coming excuses to drink deeply.
"To Aidan Lynch!" Poliakoff continued, raising high his goblet.
Karkaroff's eyebrows tried weakly to come together. "Wait," he mumbled. "That's not right."
"Vive!" insisted Poliakoff, and dashed a little more wine over his shoulder.
With increasing certainty Karkaroff shook his head a net total of perhaps quarter of an inch, repeatedly. "No… no… that's not right, Polio… that's, that's… Lynch... is… Viktor's here," he finished, bemusedly, evidently having lost his point before he could drive it home.
"Viktor knows that I am only joking," said Poliakoff. "He knows vat I meant vas 'May Aidan Lynch one day recover to humiliate himself on the pitch once more!' Right, Viktor, yes?"
"Don't," Krum ordered. He was not of the order of athletes who refrain from bragging purely to goad others into doing him for it, by any means.
Poliakoff, more obedient to Krum than to Karkaroff, thus ended the toast, giving their headmaster more time to get down to the serious business of trying to leave the world behind. Within half an hour Karkaroff was getting into the chatty stage of drunkenness, and Poliakoff was being very sympathetic.
"Don't… ever… cross t'e Atlantic… 'thout a, 'thout a broomstick," said Karkaroff.
Poliakoff clucked in sympathy and nodded seriously and patted Karkaroff on the head. He didn't entirely remove his hand either.
Karkaroff didn't notice the liberty, engaged as he was in giving wise and worldly advice. He evidently seemed to think Poliakoff was Krum. "And… Vicky… don't… don't take a tetel."
"No tetels," Poliakoff agreed, stroking his head like a cat's.
"I mean… I mean… tattoos."
"Yes, yes…" Poliakoff began speaking in his native language, so that he could sound superficially soothing without rat-arsed Karkaroff being any the wiser. Karkaroff failed to notice that Poliakoff was caressingly bringing their faces closer and closer. He was very focused on what he was trying to say.
"Because, because, you run out of names, you know. When you take the tetel."
"Oh, Igor, I do think you are so right…"
"Vicky… don't… don't with the Mudblood girl… but… don't kill them either. It makes too much of a mess." Karkaroff nodded to show how sincere he was. It aggravated his headache, but it was worth it. "If you kill them, don't do it in tetel groups. They tell. Do it… do it alone…"
Poliakoff gazed deep, a soulful-eyed stare. "You sexy beast."
And he grinned at Krum, inviting him to appreciate what a ridiculous tableau he and the soused headmaster made so cosily nose-to-nose. Krum couldn't object to Poliakoff at last getting revenge for seven years of slights and put-downs. But he thought there was something ugly in all the comedy. It was uncomfortable enough to have Karkaroff falling apart in a way no self-respecting man would want to; twice as much so with Poliakoff making fun of his pain. The embarrassment of the pain, after all, was in that it was authentic. For Viktor Krum, it was a long miserable night.
---
Karkaroff refused to believe the next day at noon that he had done any such thing. With great mental trickery he managed to almost forget it, accepting Krum and Poliakoff's assurances that they did not know what had happened, since they had been in the students' quarters the entire night. And he spent most of his headachey Sunday on board, staring off, telling himself he was clearing his head, but in reality staring across the lake. Here was the ship. And there – the castle on the high, higher, unreachable, housing a lunatic who nattered on about lemon drops and operas – sanctuary.