She had completely messed everything up because she couldn't keep her know-it-all mouth shut. Merlin, what kind of idiot was she, that she couldn't contain her curiosity and just had to push and push and keep pushing until she went one step too far? And Madam Lazarov had sent her home even though it wasn't quite the end of the day, which just showed how badly she'd bungled things. At least she hadn't just told her flat out not to show up tomorrow, which, Merlin, was her first official match. She couldn't afford to botch things up again, especially on such an important day. No, she promised herself, tomorrow she would be perfect. She wouldn't do anything wrong. She'd hardly speak and wouldn't ask questions. Tomorrow, she would be the ideal apprentice.
Disconsolately, she cut an apple and carried the plate full of slices into the garden, absentmindedly summoning a book from upstairs. It was strange, she thought for a moment, how natural it felt to use her magic for everything, even fetching books. It would be nigh-impossible after the end of the summer to go back to being unable to use her wand off of Hogwarts grounds, but the special dispensation she had gotten had a finite end date, and she would return to being just like everyone else. A little brainier, perhaps, but normal all the same.
She settled in to read, comfortably ensconced on the wooden bench with her feet tucked underneath her, and was soon lost between the pages. The vibrant smells of the flowers and the warm heat of the sun—yet another clear day, she marvelled—lulled her into a dozing haze, the book in her hands sinking lower and lower until it rested on her lap facedown.
"Gone for a bit of a lie down, hm?"
The unfamiliar voice snapped her out of her doze instantly, and she was upright with her wand in her hand before she was fully awake. A grinning Sirius Black stood before her, hands tucked comfortably in his trousers despite the wand she was pointing her wand at him. "Hello, kitten," he greeted, blonde hair falling over his eye roguishly.
She lowered her wand, her free hand coming to rest on her chest. "You scared the daylights out of me, you oaf. I could have hexed you!"
"Me?" Sirius asked, arching a brow. "I doubt it. I'd guess I've been in a few more duels than you have."
Her interest piqued, Hermione asked, "You have?"
He nodded, smirking as he elaborated, "There used to be a duelling club at Hogwarts. James and I had the best time hexing and cursing those snivelling Slytherins to hell and back. I was reigning champion two years running. Lily probably would have wiped the floor with us if she'd been interested, but she was too busy disapproving of our, uh, extra practice sessions—" she assumed hexing Slytherins in the corridors "–and being a Prefect to even join in. Bit stuck up, sometimes, she was, but if you ever made her mad..." He shook his head, wincing at a memory. "She was something else to see. Or feel, if you were being hexed. She knew some nasty curses."
Fervently, Hermione wished Harry were here to hear this. She resolved to write him a letter as soon as possible to detail everything Sirius had said.
"I'm impressed," Hermione told him, "although duelling people outside of a sanctioned area really is against the rules." Wisely, she refrained from mentioning her own experience of punching Malfoy on the castle grounds.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Rules are made for bending, kitten. Or breaking, really," he said, waggling his eyebrows. "I'm not meant to be chained by such trivial things."
Incredulously, Hermione said, "Trivial things? Rules are important! Rules are there for a reason!"
"Says the girl who used a Time-Turner to save me from certain death," Sirius pointed out wryly. "Oh, and who's helping me brew a, hm, sensitive potion." He arched a brow. "Not such a goody two-shoes after all, are we?"
Flummoxed, Hermione stared at him mutely. Rules dictated her life, helped set a regimented pattern. In her experience, rules determined not only what she could do but also how and when she could do it. But it seemed, she thought, that perhaps she wasn't so good at following rules after all. To be fair, she usually only broke them when she had a good reason.
But not with Malfoy. Punching him had been just for sheer satisfaction.
"Now that we've discussed what an amazing bloke I am," Sirius preened for a moment, flipping his hair out of his face with a quick jerk of his head, "we need to discuss something much less exciting: tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" she repeated, startled. "What are you talking about?"
"Hermione," Sirius exclaimed, exasperated, "you're going to Morocco tomorrow! Or did that slip your mind?"
"Well, I—I suppose it did," she admitted, not having really thought about what it meant that the game she was preparing for tomorrow was in Morocco. "I've been rather focused on work."
"Which is the entire reason you're going!"
"I know, I know." She sighed, shoulders slumping. "But I wouldn't be surprised if this was the only time I got to go."
Puzzled, he asked, "What do you mean?"
She winced, knowing she'd have to explain her mistake now that she'd made another mistake in bringing it up. Biting her lip, she took a deep breath and plunged into with her explanation. His eyebrows went higher the further she explained until she half-wondered if they wouldn't just climb all the way into his hairline.
"I can understand why you thought you should ask," he told her after a moment, "but having a scar from a Dark curse...it's something you don't really talk about, because it's not something you want to think about. The unspoken rule, really, is not to mention it at all unless the person bearing it does first."
Didn't that just make her feel like a right heel. "Oh."
"Oh, indeed," he responded dryly. "I suppose an apology or something of the sort might be in order?"
Mutely, she nodded, still feeling chagrined, and he clapped her on the shoulder consolingly. "Chin up, kitten. I doubt the Healer—what's her name, uh, Lazarov?—will give you the boot for that if Krum didn't make a stink about it. I think you'd have heard about it by now, anyways.
"So!" He clapped his hands together. "Assuming you still have an apprenticeship tomorrow, let's talk logistics. The game is in Morocco, and the Portkey came by post yesterday in a nice official package from the Bulgarian Ministry by way of the Quidditch team. Because you're still underage, you must travel with me, or, really, I have to go with you." He grinned at her look of dismay. "Have no fear—I have many things with which I will amuse myself far away from you. A man like myself can find many, many—how shall I say this?—diversions at a Quidditch game." His grin morphed into something more lascivious.
"You are disgusting," she primly informed him. "Don't get too drunk off your arse while you're being 'distracted'," she said, and affected a wide-eyed, scared look. "What if I need you? After all, I am a hapless, helpless teenage girl."
He snorted outright at that. "Don't think I don't know who you are. I was there during all that mess a couple weeks ago, and helpless is certainly one thing you are not."
She flushed in pleasure at the compliment, and they hammered out the logistics of when to depart. After a quiet evening, she turned in early so as to be rested.
The Portkey the next day went without event, though international Portkey really did make her feel nauseated beyond belief. Looking a bit green himself, Sirius helped her navigate through the stadium to the visiting team's infirmary, where he dropped her off with a promise to retrieve her later.
Upon her first glance through the large floor-to-ceiling window that all Quidditch infirmaries seemed to have, her jaw dropped. Hermione had never seen so much sand in her entire life. The Moroccan Winders ("Shortened from Ashwinders, which are numerous due to the high heat and dry conditions," Madam Lazarov had told her a few days earlier as they prepared a variety of potions for transportation) had stationed their stadium in the outskirts of Marrakesh, nestled deep between the orange-gold sand dunes that stretched as far as the eye could see. The stadium had been built into the ground rather than being built up as the Bulgarian's stadium had been, making the top of the stadium only slightly higher than the dunes surrounding it.
"Doesn't that make flying rather uncomfortable?" Hermione asked, thinking of the wind that would carry the sand into the players' eyes.
"Why do you think they wear full body uniforms and goggles?" Madam Lazarov responded, the question rhetorical. "It's certainly not because they're cool, although the fabric has been spelled to help with breathability. The wind and sand here has been known to strip the skin right off those who weren't protected enough. I think you'll see many who have tickets closer to the surface will be dressed in similar protective clothing."
Interesting. She peered up through the infirmary's window and into the thin blue sky far, far above them. For a moment, she fancied she could see streams of sand dancing in the wind, so much like ribbons, but knew better than to think her eyesight was that keen.
"Once you're done gawking, place the potions over there," Madam Lazarov pointed a finger at a large counter against the far wall between the two rows of beds, "and unpack them and sort them in terms of likelihood of use."
Hermione's cheeks burned. So much for perfect, she thought, then hurried to do as the Healer bade. She stared at the variety of potions, all neatly bottled and labeled, then pushed up her sleeves before getting to work. Ultimately, she decided on grouping them into four main groups: potions that were boosters, like PepperUp; potions that treated minimal injuries such as scrapes and deep bruising, like Essence of Dittany and Balm Paste; potions that treated midrange injuries such as broken bones, with the ever-present SkeleGro and lesser known but more effective Karrigan's KnitNoMore; and finally, potions that treated more extreme injuries such as internal injuries, like Uriam's Tears of Ystria, which Hermione had never heard of until Madam Lazarov handed her a treatise on its uses and dangers and instructed her to write two feet justifying when she would use it and when she wouldn't.
"I'm done?" Hermione said finally, though it came out more like a question than a statement.
"Are you?" Madam Lazarov snapped a sheet over a cot, the color going from starched white to Bulgarian burgundy as it floated down to rest against the mattress.
She pushed a loose strand of hair away from her face, staring at her arrangement of the potions, then finally nodded again more confidently. "Yes, I am."
"Good. Now help me get this room into order. Blasted Moroccans think they can place us in a transfigured storage room and I wouldn't know it?" She huffed. "At least it's not as bad as that time in Australia last QWC. Now that was truly a disgraceful situation."
Both Hermione and Madam Lazarov worked through the day into early afternoon without pause, stopping only to eat a light lunch. She could hear the stadium filling up, and butterflies began to take root in her stomach. In just an hour or so, the match would begin.
"Where are the players?" she asked Madam Lazarov. "When do they get here?"
"They usually warm up at the stadium back in Bulgaria before coming here to finish warm ups and get a feel for the stadium. I know many of them have had matches here before, considering they all play on professional teams outside of the World Cup—well, except for Viktor," she amended, "considering he's still a student at Durmstrang. He very well might be the only player that hasn't been here before. Still, they all prefer to get some air time before the match starts to get used to wind and weather conditions and to the noise, though I think they eventually learn to tune that out."
"Lev is likely already here," she added as an afterthought. "He likes to Portkey in a bit earlier than the others—he doesn't do well with Portkey travel, makes him ill—and then hide in the locker room until he's all fixed up. If the man would just come get an anti-nausea potion—" she cut herself off before she could start reciting what was obviously an old grievance and shook her head.
Hermione frowned. "But aren't they all coming together?" Like she and Sirius had before he Apparated away to who knew where with only a mumbled, "I'll see you this evening, kitten."
Krasmira shot her a look. "Miss Granger, it's the Quidditch World Cup. If you think the Bulgarian Ministry is going to count their Galleons when we've made it this far, you're sorely mistaken. No, they each get their own Portkey. It takes them straight to the locker room so they don't have to deal with fans prior to the game."
She had yet to see any of them interacting with fans, but she supposed it was because she only saw them when they were really, truly working. And it was work, she recognized that now. They all bore the hallmarks of workaholics, coming early and staying late long after the sun had set and she had left, working to be the best they could be.
Luckily, given her experience with Harry, she knew the drain that fans—or haters—could have on a person, so she refrained from asking if it was truly necessary. "So it's that bad, then?" she asked.
Madam Lazarov looked up. "You have no idea. And poor Viktor." She made a clicking sound of disapproval. "He's got it the worst, and he's the youngest. It's a good thing he's got his head on straight, or it would be going to his head. No, he's the least likely of them all to become truly egocentric—he hates the attention. Truthfully, he's a bit of an introvert. He'd have my head if I told you this, but he's a decent wizard, all things said."
She thought of the Viktor she had seen thus far, arrogant and irritable, and couldn't imagine him as the Viktor the Healer had described. "I suppose so," she responded doubtfully.
"You'll see," the Healer assured her. "I know you haven't gotten off on the right foot, but give him time. Not that it matters to me, of course," she added, "so long as you two are able to interact well enough for you to get your job done."
"Right. Of course." The reminder made the pressure of needing to talk to Viktor and apologize build.
Just then, a disembodied voice, made louder by a Sonorous, echoed through the stadium, announcing the game would start in the immediate future. The lights in the stadium brightened, brightening it up even more as the evening's summer light streamed in from above. The dim buzz of the crowd swelled to a deafening roar, as the players took to the field in a spectacle reminiscent of the Muggle football matches she had seen in the past.
After some laps around the pitch and some warm up drills she had seen them do on the home pitch, the players, mere specks in the sky, settled into formation. She could see Lev's sturdy form hovering by the hoops, and Clara and Pyotr floated next to each other, Pyotr flanking Clara on the outside in a protective position.
Her mouth was getting dry and her body tight with nerves, and she wasn't even a player. She shook her head at her antics but watched as several referees strode out on the field carrying a trunk between them. One mounted their broom and took to the skies, stopping between the burgundy clad Bulgarians and the sky blue Moroccans. "The game begins in, three, two, one…" she counted down, her voice amplified, and on 'one', the referee on the ground released the latch on the trunk and stepped away as balls hurtled upward.
The game was absolutely brutal, there was no question about that. Everyone was out for blood, it seemed, as beaters hit bludgers at the opposing sides with savage accuracy, many of the players getting clipped. When one of her players got hit side on by a rocketing bludger, she gasped, tensing.
Next to her, Madam Lazarov was completely calm, her eyes scanning the play above. "He'll be fine," she told the girl standing next to her. "I've seen Vasily take much worse and keep going."
Hermione wasn't quite sure she'd want to carry on after being hit by a missile going thirty-five kilometres an hour, but apparently that was par for the course.
It was what happened another half hour later that had them racing to the field, robes flapping behind them. Alexei had been racing towards the hoop with a quaffle tucked under his arm, his lean form bent over the handle as close as possible, when one of the Moroccan beaters sent a bludger toward his unsuspecting form.
"No, no, no," she chanted, wincing away from the view even as she watched it happen. The bludger rammed into Alexei's back with an almost audible thud, and the Chaser, taken by complete surprise, was sent plummeting from his broom, his robes flapping around him as the quaffle fell from his grip.
"And Alexei Levski is off his broom!" the announcer yelled, voice taut, even as she and Madam Lazarov sprinted to the middle of the field. "He's falling, he's falling—ah, he's been caught by two of the wizards who are stationed directly below precisely for that reason. His replacement's been substituted in—that would be Dobromir Anev, ladies and gents, but wait—wait, has Krum caught the snitch? Has he done it while all this has been going on?"
The crowd roared as it was confirmed that game was, in fact, over, and the Bulgarians would be advancing to the next round, but Hermione tried to tune it out as best as she could. Alexei was completely unconscious, his body twisted in an unnatural way as the two Safety Wizards held him suspended. "Hold him exactly as you are," Madam Lazarov instructed the two wizards that had caught him as he fell before casting Petrificus Totalus on him so he wouldn't move while she and Hermione transported him back to the infirmary. She then cast her own Wingardium Leviosa on him and held him at chest level.
"Miss Granger, the basic scanning spell if you will?"
Hermione nodded, quickly casting the spell with an air of experience, although she attributed it more to the sudden calm that had descended upon her than actual experience. Immediately, all sorts of alarms went off, and both she and Madam Lazarov looked at the readings.
"As I thought," the Healer murmured. "Come, we must get him back to the infirmary quickly. He's broken most of his ribs on the left side and a few of his vertebrae. The ribs are nothing we can't fix, but I am rather concerned about any damage to the spinal cord."
Quickly, they moved to their side of the field, and Madam Lazarov instructed Hermione to Vanish the large floor-to-ceiling window that Hermione had used to look out of earlier. "Why do you think it's that way?" she snapped when Hermione hesitated for a brief moment. "Don't waste any time—get on with it!"
Hermione didn't spare a moment in doing so, keeping abreast of both Alexei and Madam Lazarov as the two entered the infirmary. Madam Lazarov kept Alexei floating above a cot as she and Hermione quickly cut his robes off of him, revealing rapidly darkening flesh that was turning a mottled black from his sternum to his back on the left side. "Merlin," Hermione couldn't help but whisper as she caught sight of a glint of sharp white bone protruding from Alexei's side. It was part of his rib. A simple Episky couldn't fix something like that, she knew for certain.
"Hermione. Look at me," Madam Lazarov instructed. She met the Healer's eyes across the bed, and the woman looked at her intensely. "If you're going to be useless, then leave. If you want to help, then stay, but I expect you to do everything I tell you to without questions or hesitation. Alexei is hurt very badly, and I need to know if I can rely on you to help me fix him. Can I do so? Be honest."
Everything in her calmed to a perfect crystalline clarity. Alexei needed her, and so did Madam Lazarov. She was needed, and she would perform. "I can do it," she replied crisply. The Healer nodded once, and then began telling her exactly what to do. About halfway through helping her manipulate Alexei's vertebrae back into place after pouring potion after potion down his throat, Hermione began wishing for her Time-Turner simply so she could be yet another set of hands. Wishing wouldn't do anybody any good in this situation, so she bent her head to the task and continued with grim determination, remaining unflinching even when Alexei's bones began visibly moving underneath his skin.
What felt like hours later, she stood up from her cramped position over Alexei's form, blinking rapidly to restore moisture to eyes that had been open for so long they had gone completely dry. "Is it done?" she asked, unable to keep from double- and triple-checking the readings from the multiple status spells they had cast and stuck to the wall with a semi-permanent sticking charm. "Is he going to be okay?"
Madam Lazarov straightened up from a similar pose, one hand going to the small of her back as she stretched out a kink. "I believe the worst of it has passed, yes," she responded after casting a critical glance at first Alexei, now sleeping on the cot, and then the readings, her eyes coming to rest on Hermione. "He'll need several days worth of further observation and incremental healing, with a larger session tomorrow and the day after, but I believe he should recover fully."
Hermione couldn't help the exclamation of joy that escaped, and Madam Lazarov smiled back in return, the two of them slightly giddy with relief. "You did well, Hermione," she told her apprentice with a slightly approving expression. "You never once baulked, even when it got dicey in the middle. I'm proud of you, and you should be proud of yourself. What you did today wasn't easy for anyone, let alone someone as young as you. You shouldn't have been able to learn on the fly as you did, considering the complexity of the wandwork and the spellwork."
"I'm just glad I could help at all," Hermione replied honestly. "I would have thought I had been useless. I know I don't know all that much, despite how much I want to know—want to help."
"Well," Madam Lazarov told her as she briskly washed her hands in a basin set against the wall, "I would say your compulsive book learning paid off in this case." She smirked at Hermione's flabbergasted expression. "Poppy and Albus may have mentioned something about your penchant for….over-preparation."
That was one way of putting it, Hermione thought wryly. "I'm glad it helped me be of use here. What we did…" She shook her head. "I never thought something like that was possible. I mean, I knew it was in theory, but reading about it and seeing it in action is something worlds apart. I feel...I don't even know. Rewarded?"
Healing Alexei had lit something deep in her belly that had spread through her body like wildfire, sparking her heart and mind. Here was something that took everything she had to offer and more. Here was something where she made a direct, discernible difference. Alexei wouldn't suffer any permanent damage like paralysis, or even broken ribs, and she had helped make that happen.
Madam Lazarov nodded. "I know the feeling you speak of. It happened to me the first time I helped heal someone, too. It's an incredible feeling, and it never goes away. Every time I heal someone, no matter how big or small the injury, I feel it. What we can do, it's a miracle. It's why I didn't want to only go into research. I believe I had a duty to heal those in need, even idiotic Quidditch players."
The light in the Healer's eyes was one of true belief, and Hermione felt humbled to be able to work with her and under her guidance. "I'm really glad to be here," she told her. "I had thought you might sack me yesterday, what with the mistake I made with Viktor, and I promise I'll try not to do something so idiotic again. I want to stay here. I want to learn." Really and truly, almost more than anything she had ever wanted, she found. The only thing she had wanted more was to go to Hogwarts when she first discovered she was a witch.
Madam Lazarov rolled her eyes and waved a hand dismissively. "Viktor's a bit sensitive, as are some of the other players, you'll find, although him more than most. He's a temperamental little thing. I trust you learned the errors of your ways?"
"I'm going to apologize to him," Hermione said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other nervously. "I didn't realize that asking about Dark marks or scars was taboo, and I pushed when I shouldn't have."
An as-of-yet unnoticed figure moved into their line of sight from his place against the Vanished
window's frame. It was Viktor, showered and clean from his victory after the game and clad in black trousers and a white shirt open at the throat. "It's all right," he said, shifting awkwardly. "I shouldn't have made such a fuss over it. You couldn't have known, I don't think."
He paused, taking in Alexei's still form under the burgundy covers, and asked the question he had clearly come to ask, "Is he okay? I didn't know until after I caught the snitch that anything had happened. By then he was in here with you, and we haven't gotten word. I think the others will be coming by shortly—we just got done with the presser." The words ran together a little at the end, and Hermione realized with a start that he was anxious about his friend.
"He's stable for now," she told him after a quick glance at Madam Lazarov, who nodded at her. "He had several broken ribs and several cracked vertebrae after those bludgers hit him at once, but we managed to repair the broken nerves and bones. Madam Lazarov said that he needs to be kept under observation for a couple days, and I don't think it's wise to move him quite yet…" She nibbled at her lip in thought of how that was supposed to work, given that they were supposed to leave the country that evening.
"She's quite right." At his look, Madam Lazarov made a dismissive noise. "Don't look so concerned. We've weathered worse. Alexei will be fine. I'll stay with him overnight, then transport him to the nearest hospital to use their floo—they're designed for cases like this and connected to the international floo network. They're also big enough for bed-bound patients to be transported across," she explained. "I'll bring him back that way, so he can be in comfortable surroundings while he recovers."
"My family employs a Healer with a specialization in nerve damage," Viktor told Madam Lazarov, his gaze resting on his friend. "I would be happy to ask them to come in for a consult." His expression twisted for a moment, and Hermione thought for a moment of the times she had seen the two flying together during warmups or in conference up in the air, their brooms angled close together with Pytor's. It would be terribly hard to see a friend injured like that, she thought, shuddering at the thought of either of her boys taking Alexei's place.
Madam Lazarov shrugged. "It wouldn't be a bad idea to cover all the bases. We can talk about it tomorrow. For now, though, both of you should go home. Especially you, Hermione. It's been a long day, and your Portkey is likely to expire at midnight. I trust you can find your guardian?"
Knowing him, she wouldn't put it past him to be getting shagged or pissed right this instant. "I'll manage," she said evasively. "Are you sure I can't do anything else?"
"Or I?" Viktor echoed her offer.
"No," the Healer said firmly, and made shooing motions. "And he needs peace and quiet, so go tell your teammates what I said and that we're not to be disturbed! Get gone, both of you."
Obediently, they made towards the exit, though Hermione saw him tuck something small and gold into Alexei's hand. The snitch, she realized, so that when he woke up he would know they had won.
Yes, she thought at the thoughtful gesture, perhaps he wasn't so bad after all.