Chapter 7:
My first commission: Deiphobus, Menelaus... Helen
The Following chapter was commissioned by MasterKronos.
I am breaking my rule to keep commissions for patrons only and sharing it with you, seeing as it is a commission for a side-story of his invention in my story's canon that he gave me enough leeway to work into it enough of my own ideas to make it a suitable addition.
You too can commission me by sending me a story outline and getting a quote.
Edited/Proofread by Demon Ging
Hermione hiked along the shores of the black lake in three whole layers of coats and a bundle of books pressed against her chest.
With the grounds so full of students from the overflow of extra students, compliments of Bauxbatons and Durmstrang, Hermione had to go out of her way to find a quiet place to read. Solitude was even more difficult to come by when the many reporters, politicians, and extended families or friends group of both from all over Europe haunted the grounds.
Today, Hermione's hunt for a quiet rock to sit on led her all around the black lake. She must have hiked five entire kilometers along the deer trails before coming upon a half-frozen lagoon bereft of nosy reporters and nostalgic alumni. It was situated at the far shore of the lake near the mouth of the sea where the freshwater and saltwater mix. She even had a nice rock, free of snow, on the shore with a nice view of the islets near the lake's mouth.
With a satisfied sigh, she plopped down and untied her bundle of books on the Beastmasters.
With them taking such an interest in her Harry, who really was doing his absolute best to court such negative attention lately, she decided to take an interest in them. She even wrote to the courts to get any public records regarding open or closed lawsuits against them, or by them. She was still waiting on that.
Before she could get through the first paragraph on the founding of the organization her peace and solitude was broken by a man in a thick coat stomping into the clearing.
She quietly packed up preparing to leave and sent a glare in the man's direction only to see he was clearly unaware of her presence. For why else would he be disrobing?
Was that Viktor Krum? Surely, he wasn't planning to take a swim in that lagoon, was he? It was practically frozen over.
These and other questions flooded her mind as she cowered behind the rock and peered at the increasingly naked man. Above all else, she marveled that she never understood the obsession other girls had with him, until now. This man was beautiful. From the great mass of his chest and the thick locks of black hair adorning it, to his similarly adorned tree trucks of legs. He kept his trousers on, but they were so tight that the only thing she couldn't be sure about was if his front and back nether regions were also hairy.
She got an even nicer view of his bottom when he leaned over to retreat a large, golden egg. When he opened it, her sudden voyeurism was nearly exposed when she cried out and clasped her ears as the sound of screeching erupted from the egg. Fortunately said screeching must have masked her yelp because it went on for several moments before being drowned. Presumably literally, as its disappearance coincided with a loud splash and cracking of large ice.
It was then replaced by a much stranger sound. The most beautiful singing of women's voices, muffled as if being sung underwater.
Hermione glanced back over her hidey rock and found the clearing around the lagoon empty, but the water itself was disturbed. Not just disturbed, but alive with lights and haunting music whose words she couldn't recognize. She squinted and could just make out the shape of the man she was peeping at moments ago submerged with the egg.
Then silence returned and the lagoon went dark; she wasn't given enough time to worry about the foreign champions safety as he broke the surface seconds later, egg in hand. He saw her then, because apparently she had crept from her hiding space to get a better look without realizing it. He skipped right over the anger she would have expressed at being peeped on by a pervert straight to laughing.
"Zdrasti!" He called with a wave. "Vill you not offer me a kerpa?"
Hermione was frozen in place, her knees bucked and hands clasped before her chest. She must have looked like a deer in the headlights.
"Um... Kerpa?" She asked.
He made a motion as if drying himself off with a towel and she got the message. With a smooth motion she withdrew her wand and conjured a towel, holding it out in front of her diligently.
He smiled patiently, if a bit disappointedly, but exited the lagoon and walked towards her. She realized then he probably expected her to bring the towel to him. Her heart beat so hard with every step he took she was worried this interaction would end with him carrying her off to Madame Pomfrey for resuscitation, but unfortunately her hypothetical cardiac arrest never arrived, and the beautiful man was before her and gently lifting the towel from her grip.
She curled back into herself as she watched him dry off before he ended the awkwardness by flicking his wand at his clothes and cast what she suspected was a modified switching spell on his clothes, and the next second they were wrapped around him. She almost regained her composure then to complain at the sin of hiding that body from sight.
"You. Come to Yule ball with me?" Krum asked rather suddenly.
Her brain, already deprived of her usual level-headedness, stalled further. It stalled so badly it shut down completely and took a rebooting before she could register the words. They still didn't make sense.
"Yule ball?" She clarified.
"Da. Dance vith me?" He pleaded.
"You want to dance at the Yule ball... with me?!" She clarified again.
"Da."
"Why?!" She asked in genuine confusion as her senses finally returned.
He flinched away from her at that. Was her lack of self-confidence and confusion at being asked to a ball by an exceptionally hot champion so surprising?
"Vell, you have seen me in the nude. I am accustomed to at least taking a lady on a date before that. So I feel obligated," he joked, or at least she hoped he was joking.
She snickered and hid her face behind both hands.
"Do I have to answer now?!" She begged as her blush reached her toes.
"Not at all. I'll leave you to think on it. But I will need an answer. Good day, daughter of Sparta," He said by way of goodbye with a polite bow.
She watched him leave the clearing and, as soon as he was out of sight, she quickly snatched up her things and sprinted back along the der paths up to the castle.
By the time she returns to the castle, it was dark out. The grounds being too enormous to trek in a timely manner made her ache for any skill at all with a broom. No wonder so many students got around on the. Naturally, she immediately ran up to the boy's dormitory to tell her one true friend about what she saw.
Not the part about Viktor. If Harry were a girl, then maybe, but between her only friends being icky boys with the emotional complexity of teaspoons and her dormmates being chatty cunts she'd keep that to herself until she came to a decision.
Maybe she ought to write to Mum? The age difference with Viktor was concerning. Though her age difference to Dad made her worries look childish in comparison.
She was disappointed to discover that Harry was missing. The other boys were all there, chatting the night away and preparing for bed. They all gave her an unenthusiastic greeting, likely used to her occasional invasion of their dorms and regarding her with the same interest one would give a particularly bland piece of furniture, likely due to her, admittedly rude, invasion of their private, girl-free space.
"Where is Harry?" she asked.
"On an adventure that doesn't include us," said Ron. "A lot of those this year. He took his cloak and the egg though."
He nodded towards Harry's trunk, and she descended upon the container like a vulture on a carcass. Egg is gone. Cloak is gone. Map is not?! Ohoho! Well that narrowed down the possibilities. Either Harry was going somewhere he knew he wouldn't need more than the cloak—see also Restricted Section; anywhere on the Hogwarts grounds or Hogsmeade—or he was meeting with somebody and couldn't risk revealing the map to them.
Her mind immediately jumped to her earlier interaction with Viktor, and her argument with Harry at the table that led to the girls of Hogwarts suddenly growing a pair and asking boys out. Perchance Harry wasn't so unwilling in his choice of date to the Yule Ball? Perchance he too liked the idea of accompanying a seventh year?... Not that she particularly warm to the idea. Or at least she didn't think she was.
"See you for breakfast," she told them as she left the boys dorm, pocketing the map as she did so.
Their grunts of confirmation and apathy followed her as she left, and a few moments later she was back out onto the seventh-floor corridor. She found a hidden spot around the corner and activated the map. She scoured the dungeons for the names of her best friend and the head girl, but found no luck with the former. In fact, Arriane Cauderdale was up studying in the Slytherin common room with the other seventh years. With that theory gone she checked the grounds, starting with where Viktor had used the egg. While she did spot several students, including several alumni sneaking onto campus to see their girlfriends and boyfriends: no Harry.
Working backward, she started on the map from her position and followed the map along the Gryffindor tower and finally caught a glimpse of him crossing the skyway between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tower. Odd, but perhaps he knew a shorter route to his destination by crossing over there first. Then she became really confused when he started going UP the Ravenclaw tower.
Well now she was really curious.
She was off on his trail without another thought, checking each corner on the map before each turn. Of course, she managed to move quicker with the aid of the map than Harry because he had to be much more careful with nothing but the cloak. In fact, she caught up with him just as he reached the Ravenclaw entrance, an entrance she herself had gone through twice before. Quite possibly the easiest house to sneak into of all four. She stopped just shy of confronting him and pressed herself against the wall beside the door to the final flight of stairs.
She checked the map, dying to know who he could be meeting with but all she found there was more confusion.
Sue Li? She couldn't recall any of their trio so much as having a conversation with the sad, quiet girl. When had THAT happened? She was quite possibly the only student more shy and awkward than Harry in their year...Okay, now it made a little sense, but really?! Wasn't he attending the Yule Ball with another girl? A much prettier one, at that.
She heard quiet whispering between the two but couldn't make out anything they were saying. She kept her eyes on the map and saw them huddle beneath the cloak and saw the moment they began the four-legged race down the stairs towards her. She shuffled away from them and int a dark alcove. She squinted past the suit of armor to see if she could make out any outline. But as always the cloak was perfect, impossibly so, and the only indication they passed her was the sound of Sue's unconfident footsteps.
"Do you take girls under this cloak all the time Harry?" She hear the girl tease in a whisper.
Oh, Harry was it? First name basis? She felt SO out of the loop.
"Just Ron and Hermione," He said.
"I said girls." Sue retorted
"I named two," Harry deadpanned.
She had to stifle her own giggle at the joke as they passed far enough to be out of earshot, the sound of Sue's own giggles fading fast.
She followed them like she had with Harry before, fuming harder than she had since Wormtail faked his death and framed Crookshanks. She kept a wide berth from them as she lacked an invisibility cloak and the sneaking skills Harry and Ron had mastered through three years of afterhours adventures... without her. Yeah, her often exclusion from adventures—through no malice on Harry or Ron's part—stung a little. Maybe moreso because her absence from their adventures was mostly her fault. Either overabundance of caution with the Firebolt or bad/good luck with the basilisk and the mirror. And now he was having adventures with another girl?!
Yet Sue was even worse at sneaking around than Hermione because she practically followed them by the sound of Sue's footsteps alone, checking the map to see if any teachers or other unwelcome visitors might cross their paths.
She lost them on the fourth floor, but a quick check on the map showed they had gone down the left hallway. She crept slowly towards where they were and lost them again, and was going to recheck the map when that atrocious screeching sound filled the hallway. The same screeching sound she had heard earlier that day. It died away as quickly as it came, but second later was replaced by that beautiful singing. Three doors down from a statue of Boris the Bewildered was a small crack of light. The door wasn't completely closed.
Really, Harry, you should be better than that.
As slowly as she could Hermione crept closer but was too slow because, by the time she reached the door, that beautiful singing ended.
"... into the black lake and I have an hour to get it back?" Came Harry's voice.
She missed out on the solving it seemed. But curiosity was still winning out over caution and she peered through the crack in the door and her breath hitched.
It was a beautiful bathroom—the most beautiful she had ever seen. Among its decorations were vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows, silver pipes, multicolored tiles, and a completely naked Sue Li.
Hermione had never been comfortable seeing other people, regardless of sex, naked. It was the main reason she never got involved in sports. Locker rooms with other girls in various stages of undress up to and including full nude made up the majority of the worst memories of her life, prior to Hogwarts that is. And returning to the crack in the door reminded her why.
Sue was perfect. Not a single blemish on her skin, so very unlike the dalmatian-like freckles pockmarking Hermione's entire body. In fact, Sue was especially lovely to look at, her skin like pearly porcelain and a sharp contrast to her perfectly long, perfectly straight and perfectly black hair. Even her nipples were perfect, small and petite, like her. Meanwhile Hermione... well, being almost a year older than her grade group meant being a bit more developed. She'd been called "dinner plate nipples" more than once by the meaner girls.
Then she came to a much more exciting discover. Harry was naked too, and her dislike of seeing other people naked vanished as she pressed her face as roughly against the door as she could manage without disturbing it and blowing her cover.
Difficult though it was, she peeled her eyes away from the doll-like perfection that was the object of her envy to her best friend. And it was glorious. She had heard the other girls giggle over the prospect of joining the house Quidditch team just to share a shower room with Harry, but she had never taken them seriously, mostly because the boys and girls on the team definitely had separate showers. But now? Now she very much regretted her lack of athletic ambitions.
Skin tanned from summers of gardening and three years of Quidditch practice was pockmarked with a roadmap of scars from his constant heroism and honor. Her personal knight laid bare and covered in bath suds... in a tub with another woman who never before even registered as a possible rival for Harry's acquaintanceship, let alone a candidate to be the first one to share a bath with the beautiful boy who risked his life to save a silly little girl he barely knew from a troll and her own melodrama.
Oh, vicious burning envy, where were you before it was too late to do anything about it?
She watched as Harry slowly approached Sue's confident and inviting form. The utter silence between them and heat in his eyes told her roughly what was about to happen, and when he gently lifted Sue's crossed-left and planted a kiss on top of her foot she had to stop a moan that would have matched Sue's.
He trailed more kisses just like it up her pale shin, along the inside of her thighs and finally pressed his face into the pitch-black tresses between her hips. Sue covered her mouth with both hands and Hermione did the same as she watched Harry grasp the miniscule girl by the top of her thighs and roughly drag her closer to him for an easier time devouring her.
Sue's hands weren't enough to keep the sound of her moans and, of all things, giggles from echoing across the walls. Her muted moans and giggles definitely weren't loud enough to cover the filthy sound of Harry sucking on her. He had to be exaggerating the sound on purpose, right? There was no way it was supposed to sound like that, but she liked that it did. Did that hurt? She knew other stuff was supposed to hurt, but Sue wasn't complaining.
Harry let go of her thighs and stopped his sloppy eating to trail bites and kisses on her pelvis and hip bone, his dark, tanned hands gliding over her stomach and chest. Then he squeezed. With both hands. Hermione saw the skin turn red where his nails dug in, before going back down on her.
Sh retreated from the doorway and buried her face into her hands. The full body blush and embarrassment by proxy overwhelming her. What was she doing?! Spying on her friend and wallowing in jealousy as he was being intimate with another girl?
Hermione suddenly came back to her senses and withdrew the Marauder's map to check it. Sure enough, the Hufflepuff prefects were on route along the fourth floor and coming in their direction. She still heard what Harry said next.
"You can send messages with the Patronus?!"
Oh. Was sexy time over? Wait, Harry didn't know you could send messages with the patronus? Seems like something Moony ought to have explained during the months he spent teaching the spell to him.
As much as she hated to interrupt—oh who was she kidding, envy and spite were enough to make her want to put an end to this—she grasped the door and slammed it shut. She then ran as fast as she could away from the direction the prefects were coming from. Once she cleared the corner she glanced back down at the map to see Sue and Harry's dots running around the bathroom like headless chickens, and she could just imagine them trying to clean up and cover themselves. But soon enough their two dots became one and Hermione knew they had made it underneath the cloak just as Derrek and Wanda reached the door.
She fled back to Gryffindor tower, knowing they'd make it out with little trouble. And with her head start, and with Harry having to escort Sue back to Ravenclaw tower, she made it back with plenty of time to spare for returning the map and getting to bed.
Viktor was practically ripping his hair out in stress as he poured over the books on merpeople, aquatic creatures, and the effects of different spells underwater. So far he had come up with bunk, other than a list of combative spells to practice while swimming.
The question still remained, how in the world was he going to stay underwater for an entire hour? Selkie and sea serpents—which he was sure they wouldn't use with one of the participants being a parseltongue—he could handle, sure. But breathing underwater? That was going to take some creativity.
He had the cunning forethought to "accidentally" let Potter's friend see him "solve" the egg. Partly because he wanted her to notice him—she was a very cute little book worm, and a far cry from the more ostentatious Veela and fangirls he had tried dating in the past—but mostly so she could get word to the Potter boy. Brag about killing basilisks and dragons all you like; this task definitely took some serious forethought and planning. The possibility of Potter coming up with better solutions he could steal was just an added bonus.
That didn't mean he wasn't going to at least TRY and come up with a solution beforehand though, which he was. He was trying very hard.
"Viktor?"
He jumped at the sound of his own name, not exactly being on a first name basis with any Hogwarts students, let alone fangirlish Hogwarts females. He was pleasantly surprised to find the source of the voice to be the blushing Hermione Granger. Suddenly his mood wasn't so sour anymore.
"I accept," She said confidently, standing up straighter and raising her nose into the air as if saying it aloud was what finally cemented the decision.
Without another word, and without giving him a chance to melt at the good news, she turned heel and walked away. he was left to stare in confusion at the suddenly ostentatious and less demure girl and wondered if he had actually found the more conservative girl he was hoping for.
His sour mood returned, bringing with it a headache.
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