Viktor and Hermione exchanged a flurry of letters before agreeing to meet in the park later that week before heading to lunch with their parents. Hermione could feel her nerves growing the minute she read that letter. She worried what her parents would think of Viktor, and what his would think of her.
He had to be at least two years older than her. She got the impression it was closer to three, possibly even four, years between them. And she knew that her mother at least desperately wanted her to make friends her own age. But he did have answers for most of the questions she had.
The day that they were scheduled to meet, Hermione was a ball of nerves. Half of her wanted to curl up into a ball on the floor and not move an inch. The other half of her wanted to bounce around the house until it was time to leave. She was fighting both to move and to stay still.
She wound up doing neither of the actions she so desperately wanted to. She helped cook breakfast and clean it up. She rationalized that if her brain was busy she shouldn't be as anxious. She couldn't tell if she was more nervous or excited. She simply decided that anxious was the best word.
Helena watched as Hermione cleaned, not just the kitchen but the whole house, fastidiously. She knew that Hermione wasn't one to leave a mess. But, Hermione wasn't usually as picky as she was being right then. She had straightened one shelf half a dozen times.
"Everything alright?" Helena asked.
Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin. She hadn't been paying much attention to her surroundings. Her mother had startled her, even though it was unlikely that she had been sneaking around.
"I'm fine," Hermione attempted to reassure her mother.
Helena looked her daughter over dubiously. She knew that Hermione was feeling at least a little nervous. It had been over a year since she had last seen Viktor. Something might have changed in that time.
Helena doubted anything drastic had happened. Hermione and Viktor had written each other consistently over the course of the year. Surely something would have clued them in if Viktor didn't want to be friends with Hermione anymore.
Helena shook that thought from her mind. He wouldn't have wanted to meet them if that were the case. And he certainly wouldn't have invited his parents. Helena smiled. She was looking forward to meeting Hermione's wizarding pen pal.
"When are we leaving again?" Hermione asked. She knew the answer already. How could she not? But she needed to hear it again.
"In about half an hour," Helena said. "Plenty of time for you to freak out over the state of your grandmother's shelves."
Hermione groaned. She hadn't actually been retting over the shelves and whatever state they might be in. She was just fidgeting. She felt as if she was going to explode.
Helena smiled to herself. Hermione looked fit to be tied. Her entire face was screwed up in what looked to be an attempt to calm herself down.
"I suppose we could leave a few minutes early," she said.
Hermione perked up at that suggestion. She knew that she was likely to run all the way to the park. With the high level of her emotions it wasn't entirely impossible for strange things to happen.
When it came time for them to leave, which wound up being five minutes before they had planned, Mr. Granger kept a firm grip on Hermione's arm. Without it there was no doubt that she would have gone racing through the streets.
They reached the park before they were supposed to be there, but Viktor was sitting on a bench, talking with two people who looked to be his parents.
"Viktor?" Hermione called.
"Mya!" Viktor yelled back, happy to see her. "I haff to varn you, my parents English is vorse than mine."
"But we speak Greek much better than he does," Mr. Krum said in stilted but understandable Greek.
"Not that it was hard to do," Mrs. Krum added.
"Mother," Viktor hissed. "You are making me look bad."
Mrs. Krum chattered at her son in what Hermione presumed to be Bulgarian. Hermione wished she could speak it, but suddenly knew how Viktor felt about Greek. It must be so hard to learn a language without having anyone to teach you and practice with you.
Lunch was a fairly loud and chaotic affair. Their parents were talking in Greek while Hermione and Viktor were speaking English. Hermione sometimes had to bounce between the conversations, which meant that she was switching words in her languages more frequently than usual.
"Is alright Mya," Viktor attempted to reassure her after she forgot the English word for cup. "Friends do this all the time at Durmstrang. Ve sometimes speak words in Swedish because classes are taught in it. But ve do not know all the vords."
It made Hermione feel better to hear that. She still slipped up a few times, but she wasn't super embarrassed by it. And when lunch was over, though they had plans to meet up again later the next week, Hermione was sad to go.