Chapter Two: Third to Last

Belinda's face was a tiny, pale diamond above the collar of her cape, giving away nothing as she began arranging her books on their table the way she liked, then began giving his the same treatment. Ivan didn't know what to think of it. If the meeting with the headmaster had gone well, he would have expected her to be out of her head with excitement, but if it had gone poorly, he would have expected her to already be in the throes of a full-fledged temper tantrum. Her Angyal blood had done very little towards lending her restraint when it was not absolutely necessary, and Belinda had never considered him one around whom it was necessary after the incident with Poliakoff's shoes in the fourth month of their first year. She wasn't meeting his eyes, which could hardly count as a good sign.

"Belinda?" One corner of her mouth jerked up in the usual half-amused, half-exasperated way it always did when he pronounced her name the proper way instead of the apparently American Bel – lyn – da she herself used. She answered, not in the rapid English he still sometimes had difficulty following, but in slow, lightly accented Hungarian.

"What is it?"

"You were to meet with Professor Magyar this morning," he began cautiously, familiar with his friend's temper, but Belinda's laugh kept him from saying more.

"Is that all you are afraid of asking me, Ivan?" He grimaced to hear his name pronounced Eye – van, but turnabout was fair play. Her face suddenly hardened, green eyes narrowing suspiciously. "You think I am unworthy for him to think well of my going?"

"No!" He knew Belinda, possibly better than anyone else at Durmstrang, and he knew that the Wrath of Angyal would fall on his head if he gave her any reason to think he thought the less of her for being a girl. "The headmaster, though, may not be so open-minded as I."

"He isn't," Belinda informed him, switching to English because she knew it annoyed him when she did that without warning him first. "But I'm a good asset, and he knows it. Proof of how open-minded Durmstrang is now that You-Know-Who is gone, bringing the part-American female with the Durmstrang delegation." She almost smiled. "That and he would like it very much if the Angyal family continued to donate money to this school even four generations out of Hungary."

"Then – "

"No escaping to France without me, Gorganov," she said, a true smile now spreading across her face whether she willed it or not. "May the best woman win."

Ivan caught himself laughing more freely than she did even as he congratulated her. If she could do nothing else, Belinda could always make him laugh.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Of course Magyar had to give a speech. Belinda had been the third-to-last to be chosen to accompany the Headmaster to Beauxbatons, the others had been picked quickly once the professors resigned themselves to her, and the still-awkward professor who had replaced Ivan's first headmaster was one who could, as Belinda liked to say, make speeches about meatloaf – whatever that was. An assembly was called after supper, boys and girls put on opposite sides of the Meeting Hall to uphold the appearance of respectability, and the professor droned while the other teachers, standing in a long, curved line behind him, stared fixedly at nothing and the students forced themselves to stay awake.

"As you all know, the Triwizard Tournament is one of the, ah, older traditions of the schools. It is a great honor, and great responsibility, to be chosen to, ah, compete, and now, with the new, ah, system of rules, it is even an honor to be allowed to submit one's name…"

Ivan stopped listening. Nothing interesting was going to be said.

"If the champion candidates would, ah, step up now…"

Curses. With a little maneuvering, he managed to end up between Igor Voronov and Belinda. Belinda stared out at the crowd that almost to a man didn't want her there without so much as a sideways glance at him, but he hadn't expected her to give him one. If they made eye contact right now, they might well end up laughing aloud in front of the entire school, which would be humiliating enough even before they were punished.

The reaction to the three girls being sent with the party was mixed, but Ivan didn't miss the faint smirk Belinda wore as her name was announced. She was enjoying this; since it was her, Ivan didn't think it would be much of a stretch to imagine her liking the disapproval. Of all the girls he would have though Magyar would select, Belinda would have been among the last, brilliant or not. If the Goblet of Fire were to select her as a Champion, Durmstrang's reputation would never be the same again.