Before the Durmstrang students return to their school at the end of fourth year, Viktor Krum again asks Hermione to come visit him in Bulgaria. After the turmoil of the summer term, and faced with the prospect of spending another uncomfortable summer with her parents, she accepts and starts making plans as soon as she steps off the Hogwarts Express.

Her parents aren't exactly happy about her decision, but they let her go anyway. Hermione knows they haven't known what to do with her since the first summer she came home from Hogwarts, talking excitedly about classes and showing off her pincushion stuck with needles that used to be matchsticks. So it is that Hermione packs a bag and flies to Sofia, Bulgaria at the end of the month, to spend three weeks on holiday. Viktor greets her at Sofia Airport with a kiss on the cheek and an offer to carry her bags.

As he walks her out to the taxi stand, he explains that although he has a flat of his own in Vratsa, she will be staying with his parents here in Sofia. "Quidditch season is over," he says, "so ve will haff time together."

She blushes and is totally unable to explain why.

And they do have time together. Sofia is an ancient city, historic, and Viktor takes Hermione through all the museums, translating the Bulgarian text for her. In the evenings, they return to his parents' flat for dinner, talking or playing board games until it is time for Viktor to return to his flat in Vratsa. The first evening, he asks her if he can kiss her goodnight, and she hesitantly says yes. After that, a kiss good night becomes part of the routine. "Ve will see each other tomorrow," he tells her before leaving.

At some point, Hermione realizes guiltily that these are becoming less goodnight kisses and more goodnight snogs. She wrestles with the decision of whether to back things off or not. Yes, she admits to herself, squirming, Viktor is not the person she pictured herself snogging on a regular basis. But he is the one who saw her, recognized her as something other than a walking textbook. He tells her she is beautiful, and all of Hogwarts knows that she is the person he would "most miss." He wants me, she tells herself. He's interested in me. He may not seem like Mr. Right, but I should give him a chance.

So she lets him kiss her, and snogs back a little more enthusiastically. They walk through the Sofia Zoo, holding hands, and Viktor sneaks a kiss every now and then. He looks at her with this light in his eyes, like she is the best thing that has ever happened to him, and she squelches her unease and smiles back.

In the second week of Hermione's visit, they explore more of the country, sometimes flying – which always leaves Hermione queasy – or Apparating, which leaves her queasy in different ways. They spend a day on the beach in Varna, playing in the surf, and Viktor takes her to the Quidditch stadium where he plays with the Vultures. His teammates call her the pretty anglíski and make jocular comments over her head in Bulgarian that cause Viktor to scowl.

And meanwhile their relationship – their physical relationship, Hermione clarifies to herself – is deepening, changing. She has done . . . things . . . that she blushes to even think about, things that she definitely won't tell her mother about – that she's not even sure she'll tell Ginny about. She stands at the window of Viktor's flat, staring out across Vratsa and to the mountains beyond, and feels years older than she did before she left.

On the Wednesday before Hermione is supposed to go back to London, Viktor tells her he is in love with her. She is both miserably amused at the phrasing and anguished over what she should say back. She does not love him, no. She has come to care for him, feel some affection for him, but it is nothing that could be mistaken for love. Hermione debates telling him that, but then thinks of Ron and his stubborn pigheadedness, and finally stammers back that she thinks she feels the same way. The bright smile he gives her only solidifies the lump of disquiet in her stomach.

During her last four days in Bulgaria, they tour the southern part of the country – Blagoevgrad, Stara Zagora, Plovdiv. Viktor is the happiest she's ever seen him, and every time he looks at her his feelings shine from his eyes. She writhes inside, but thinks that it's just sparing his feelings, it's only for four more days . . . three . . .

On her last night in Bulgaria, Viktor asks her to stay the night in Vratsa, and out of guilt and obligation, she says yes.

And so it is that on August 19, the night before she is scheduled to depart from Bulgaria, a month before her sixteenth birthday, she gives herself to him. He tries to make it special for her, make it memorable, but really she just wants it to be over; afterwards, as he holds her and murmurs into her hair in Bulgarian, she thinks dully that at least it can be said that Hermione Granger always sees her mistakes through to the end.