"Hey Dream Boy," Tseveta called down the corridor at Durmstrang with a malicious wiggle of her eyebrows a full month and a half later.

Viktor closed his eyes and begged for patience. "For the last time, will you stop calling me that?"

"What?" His stupid, moronic cousin asked. "Dream Boy? It's only the truth, my dear, sweet Viktor."

She was still chuckling at herself as he accidentally (and with great prejudice) shot a jinx her way. Deflecting it with ease, she sauntered down the corridor away from him, her blonde hair rippling behind her.

Had she really only said hello just to harass him?

Yes, he thought, watching her vanish around a corner, yes she had.

Next to him, Nikolai sighed wistfully. "I'm going to marry that girl one day."

Idiots. He was surrounded by idiots.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Viktor said, "Nikolai, you wanted to kill her last week."

His best friend sniffed. "That was last week. This is this week. I'm a grown man who has seen the error of his ways."

"You're a moron is what you are. She'll hex you in your sleep and claim it was a prank."

If possible, Nikolai's expression grew even dopier. "But what a way to go."

Viktor sighed again, feeling extremely put upon. "Let's just go to Divination."

Hopefully this time he would get a different reading than the one he had been getting every reading since the beginning of October: a cross for trials and suffering and a sun for happiness.

"I certainly don't feel happy," he grumbled, idly constructing a plan to accidentally knock his teacup off his desk.

"Are you still whinging about your tea leaves?" Nikolai asked as they crossed the snow covered courtyard. "It's been two months, Viktor. Get over it. The tea leaves are going say what they're going say, and nothing you do is going to change that."

"Easy for you to say," he shot back. "My soul mate thinks I am literally a figment of her imagination, Tseveta keeps taunting me and the tea leaves are in on it, and I still can't figure out how to astral project so I can connect to my soul mate, whose name I still don't know."

Nikolai affected a long suffering expression. "My name is Viktor Krum and my life is so difficult," he mocked him.

In response, Viktor shoved him. His best friend, who had truly been sympathetic to his plight and was likely trying to pull him out of his funk, laughed before shoving him right back.

Moments later, a handful of snow, aided by Viktor's wandless levitation spell, found itself neatly deposited on the dark haired boy's head.

The resulting outraged yowl made Viktor's lips curl, but his momentary self-congratulation was cut short when Nikolai threw a snowball directly into his face.

Needless to say, they didn't make it to Divination on time.

In fact, they were so busy hurling snow at each other with deadly accuracy they failed to notice Professor Strömberg's arrival at the scene of the crime until it was too late.

One moment they were laughing, Viktor summoning a huge pile of snow from a nearby tree and Nikolai building a wall to hide behind, and the next they were suspended in air completely upside down.

"What, exactly, is going on here?" The Dueling teacher, who was known for his cruelty and loyalty to Karkaroff's rather brutal disciplinarian measures, asked in a soft, menacing tone.

All feelings of laughter fled Viktor in a rush, leaving only dread. Nothing he said would help them escape what was likely coming, and they'd be left patching each other up in the Fourth Battalion's common room yet again, so he kept quiet.

Nikolai, whose face had closed down, becoming flat and opaque, appeared to be of the same mind and chose to remain silent.

When it became apparent neither of them would offer any explanation, Professor Strömberg hit his wand against his thigh several times, always an ominous sign. "Two delinquent cadets," he drawled, "out and about causing mayhem when they should be in class. Not to mention that you are willfully disrespecting the chain of command by refusing to answer me. Two stiff infractions indeed. I suppose I shall just have to take you in hand myself until you apologize for your misdeeds."

He raised his wand, an instrument used more to inflict cruelty using the very dueling techniques he taught them than to demonstrate proper technique at all, and began casting.

o-O-o

Steffan, captain of the Fourth Battalion's Quidditch team and second in command of the Fourth Battalion, found Viktor sitting stiffly in front of the fireplace, an open tome beside him detailing the methods of astral projection.

"I heard you got caught by Strömberg today," the older wizard said in greeting, his tone crisp. "And right before a match, too."

"Nikolai was trying to help me blow off steam," Viktor replied, trying to shift the blame onto himself. He could get away with more because of his heritage and star status than Nikolai, who was of impeccable lineage but less fame. "I was feeling stressed."

"Because of the match?"

Despite what many thought, Viktor had higher priorities than Quidditch, but he wasn't exactly going to broadcast that, especially since his uncanny skill with the broom garnered him a lot of leeway in Durmstrang's ironclad hierarchy.

"Something like that," he hedged, refraining from glancing down at the book beside him. "I've got a lot on my mind."

Steffan shifted on his feet, the heels of his boots clicking on the stone floor. "I know you're not concerned about our upcoming match—" the Second Battalion, often referred to as the Näcks, were absolute rubbish at Quidditch "—then perhaps the Bulgarian qualifiers for the World Cup?"

He thought of the burgundy robes hanging on the chair by his bed and of the newly minted Firebolt, given to the team only last week, carefully underneath his bed. "There's a lot on my mind," he repeated, skirting any hard truths.

Steffan looked at him for a long moment. "Whatever is going on, don't let it affect your performance or behaviour again. Karkaroff is watching you. He's got something planned for you, but I don't know what."

Coming from Steffan, that warning was unexpected. The older wizard was normally completely straight laced and by the book. Whatever Karkaroff had in store for him must be worrying his compatriot indeed, which was doubly worrying to Viktor. "Do you have any idea of what it could be?"

The other boy grimaced, running a hand over his stern, angular face. "I'm unsure. I heard something about a ship? But that makes hardly any sense."

Viktor frowned. "If they've come up with something else for us to endure…"

They both fell silent at the thought. It didn't bear thinking about. The swift turn for rather draconian punishments that the school had taken under Karkaroff's guidance had caused many students to either leave or be pulled from the school in a slow trickle. Those that remained suffered with little recourse but to band together.

Rikard, who was one of the toughest of the Fourth Brigade, had been left in the frozen lake at the mercy of the Hulda lurking in its depth for hours just last week for a minor infraction. His cries had woken the rest of his year mates every night since, to the point that Ivan had rummaged up some Dreamless Sleep somewhere.

Briefly, Steffan gripped his shoulder. "Try not to do it again in so public a place as a courtyard," he told him. "It's too early in the year for something like that."

He nodded shortly thereafter retired for the night, still sore from his time under Strömberg's...tutelage. As soon as he slid between the sheets, he was asleep.

Some indeterminate time later when he became aware again, he was by a lake, the golden light of the setting sun casting everything in shadows.

His heart leapt at the familiar sight and then began to pound. Mother had been right. The connection, once established, would cause them to dream no matter his skill at astral projecting.

The sound of feet crunching on leaves behind him heralded the arrival of his star, who had dismissed him so out of hand last time. Although he was exhausted, he swore to himself he would do better this time. Because he had been so ineloquent in the face of her shining brilliance the last time, he had thought over and over about what he'd say when he next saw her.

This time, he wouldn't let her get all the talking in. This time, he'd prove once and for all that she wasn't just dreaming him up.

This time, he'd prove that she was his.

Turning to face her, he drank her in. His brilliant, stubborn witch was looking a little the worse for wear, with dark circles painted under her eyes. Probably the Time-Turner, he thought. Using it like she was would drain even the most powerful of wizards.

"Oh," she said curiously, "it's you again. And it's this place again. Hm. Intriguing. Well, at least it's not another strange nightmare about an escaped convict murdering Harry. I see enough of those kinds of horrible thoughts in the Prophet."

Seriously, he had thought Durmstrang was bad, but whatever was going on at Hogwarts seemed infinitely worse.

"A what?" he asked before catching himself. No, no. He was not going to get sucked into that vortex of insanity before he got some good, basic things established.

Like her name. A motivated wizard (which he most certainly was), could do a lot with a name.

She looked at him with a jaundiced eye. "Are we going to do this whole song and dance again where you pretend you don't know what's going on even though you're part of me?"

Viktor stared at her and mentally revised his estimation of her intelligence down. Or perhaps she was more tired than she seemed, which was also likely. "Has it occurred to you that the reason I don't know things is because I'm still, in fact, not actually part of your imagination?"

"My research didn't indicate that that could be possible." She arched a brow. "I didn't find any accounts of successful astral projection outside of the groups I mentioned last time, though there's extensive literature on how it could be accomplished in theory."

"And yet here I am," he replied, spreading his arms out. "Viktor Krum, Bulgarian wizard and Dumstrang student, at your service."

"Don't forget international heartthrob and ace quidditch player," she said mildly, her eyes sharp but amused.

He waved it away. "That, too. But most importantly, your soul mate."

Almost idly, she tapped a finger against her mouth. "Does that line work on girls a lot?"

His head jerked back. "Line?"

"Yeah. You know, like 'Am I dead, because I'm seeing an angel' or, perhaps most appropriately, 'Do you remember me? Because I've only met you in my dreams'. That kind of thing."

Taking a minute to parse through that, Viktor finally landed halfway between horrified and amused. "No. No, that is definitely not what is happening. What has happened, and I will reiterate for your elucidation—"

"—Nice vocabulary."

"—is that the Krum family did a ritual at Samhain that each son undergoes," he pressed on over her interjection, "at which point the familial magic casts to find the perfect match and then connects their souls. Afterwards, they share dreams frequently."

"So you're saying," she responded skeptically, "that the Krum family magic scoured the world and selected me, one Hermione Jane Granger, muggleborn know-it-all swot, as your perfect match."

Hermione Jane Granger.

He resisted the urge to pump his hand in victory. Got her.

Instead, he replied, "I am saying exactly that, yes."

"That's a load of rubbish," she said definitively, crossing her arms. "There is no way that I am a perfect match for you. You're….athletic," she said the word like she had smelled something bad, "and I'm not. You're certainly not interested in the things I'm interested in."

"You're making an awful lot of assumptions, Miss Granger," he returned, taking a step forward. "Just because I'm athletic, as you put it, doesn't mean I'm not intellectually inclined. That is a prime example of stereotyping, and I won't stand for it."

For the first time, she appeared taken aback. "You—I—" she opened her mouth and closed it several times, at a loss for words.

"You're right," she admitted finally. "That was unfair of me. But even though that is the case, I still struggle to believe that this is actually happening and why I would be the one picked for you. It seems beyond the realm of possibility."

"Humour me," he said flatly. "I can guarantee you that you won't have any issues believing me in the next few days."

He had her name, and he had the considerable resources of the Krum family behind him.

As soon as he did some digging and got her direction, Hermione Granger wouldn't know what hit her.

The courtship had officially begun.

A few things:

1. In all my research about Durmstrang (of which there is not a substantial amount of information), it was mentioned that it was more military oriented and that it was based in either Sweden or Norway most likely. For the purpose of this story, Durmstrang is in Sweden and instead of houses there are battalions, with smaller groupings underneath. It functions in some aspects similar to militaries.

2. Things are pretty tough right now for me and for us all, I think. I read this like five times and don't have time to OCD redo it and edit like usual, so here it is. I hope you guys like it and it makes you smile. We could all use some of that right now.