dead_caribou's Journal

Entry to Laurel_tx's next fic challenge
Second verse, same as the first. A littel bit louder, a little bit...better!

--

Horrible.

Hermione had heard a fair amount of adjectives hurled at the Weasley boys, but "horrible" seemed to her the most appropriate. It fit squarely in between "insufferable" and "loathsome," the other adjectives that stuck in her mind. The dormitory she shared with the other Gryffindor girls floated blurred in front of her, seen through lashes and blurring mascara, while she perched upon the edge of her bed in the near-dark, chin in hand, able to think of nothing except Ron.

Horrible.

She sniffled, wiping angrily at her nose, smearing a bit of makeup across it and snuffling angrily at herself for shedding even one tear for the red-headed bastard. His gap-toothed idiot grin sat fixed in her mind's eye, suspended between his two loutish ears--horrible. The boy was absolutely horrible, horrid, awful. At that last adjective, her brain seized on the exercise of sorting out one disparagement for Ron Weasley for each letter of the alphabet. Awful was a cracking good place to start. She sat up a bit straighter, narrowing her eyes. Awful, then barbaric, and cowardly, and disgusting--

Almost at the edge of her hearing, a soft tapping registered from the direction of the window casement. It startled Hermione, breaking the stillness of her concentration. High in Gryffindor tower, the dormitory was out of reach to anyone not on a broom--and, judging by the intensity of the snowfall this evening, it would have to be a freezing madman on a broom at that. The tapping repeated, more insistent, threatening to rouse some of the other girls, and Hermione stood and lightly tiptoed to the window, stepping around the blue gown she had angrily discarded upon her return from the great hall. Soft snoring issued from most of the other bunks--good Gryffindor girls, dreaming dreams of dashing Gryffindor boys, no doubt. Hermione rolled her eyes and peered through the window, but the glass was dusted with snow and filmed with ice--if she wanted to find the source of the noise, she would have to open the portal.

Her lower lip quickly drew up between her teeth as she considered this, and after a moment's pause she wandlessly incanted "Lubricato," concentrating on the hinges. There was no thunder and no sparks issued forth, but as she placed her hands on the latch and began to swing the window open, the ancient mechanisms did their duty soundlessly. She smiled in spite of herself, thrilled at the idea of pulling off a wandless spell--so thrilled that she buried for a moment the absurdity and potential danger of peeking out the window in the middle of the night at a stranger gently tapping. She almost stopped, then, but by that time the window was open nearly a foot and a vermillion-cloaked and hooded visage stared at her.

She had time for a squeak, no more than that, when the figure's gloved hand darted out and seized hers in a grip of cold iron. Terror burst through Hermione's veins and she opened her mouth to shriek--while at the same time, a familiar voice issued softly from the folds of the hood: "Hermione!"

The voice, deep and Slavic, stopped her terror flatly in her breast, and drew her eyebrows down in surprise and automatic disapproval. "Viktor? What on earth are you doing out there?"

He loosened his grip on her hand and flipped back his hood, to reveal his close-cropped hair and strong cheekbones. Ice-bright eyes held hers even more firmly than his hand on her arm, and his lips were set in a pleased smile. "Ah, I hoped you would answer window! Other girls are asleep? You are alone?"

Hermione glanced back to the dorm. "Well, yes, everyone looks asleep, but what are you doing here? Answer me! This is terribly improper! If the headmaster--yours or mine!--learns of this, you'll be punished!"

Krum shook his head, his smile widening into a grin. "Then I will make sure they do not find out. Besides, I often sneak out. I am, you would say, bad boy." He jerked his head toward the empty space behind him. "Come with me. We go for midnight adventure!" Hermione leaned out the window and did her best to ignore the terrifying distance that lay between her and the craggy ground below. Viktor, perched on his broom, seemed not to notice at all--nor did the driving snow or cold appear to affect him. Hermione snorted.

"Come with you? Midnight adventure? Are all boys idiots?" Still, his grin tugged at something in her--stirred some warmth, tickling her in an unfamiliar way. When Ron grinned, she often wanted to smash his face with the nearest book. Viktor's grin made her feel...wild. Rather than following her head, which yelled at her to slam the window in his face and go back to bed and resume her satisfying litany of hatred for Ron, she paused.

"Idiots? Perhaps--but will be fun adventure! Come! I have spell to keep you warm!" He let go of her arm and floated away from the window, then yawed his broom parallel to the casement and came back. At that angle, she would merely have to step out onto his broom and nestle closely behind him.

All the hand-holding, the shared looks and stolen kisses and hugs, all flooded through her mind and set her heart nearly to bursting in her chest. This was forbidden, absolutely forbidden, and she was Hermione Granger--if ever there were a better good girl, she had yet to meet her!

And yet...

He looked so confident. So powerfully confident, with his head cocked at her and his grin. Almost as if he knew she wanted to sneak out and fly off with him, as if he knew she had already decided to, no matter what the outcome of the war between her head and her heart. Eyes widening with fear and anticipation, she realized that she was going to step off the parapet and go with him--she couldn't say no to that confidence, that power, the surety held in his gaze and grin.

Wordlessly, she gathered her nightgown in one hand and stepped over the casement, dropping lightly down on Krum's broom behind him. He chuckled slightly and swung the window shut, and the broom rocketed into the darkness.

*

True to his word, though the wind buffeted her, she remained warm--there was an aura around the broom to shield its riders from the elements. She wrapped her arms about Viktor and buried her face in his back so she would not have to see the landscape speeding by so far below them. Dimly, she was aware of the soft weight of her breasts pressing into his back, and her cheeks colored a scarlet to match the fell vermillion of his garb.

She cracked on eye, risking a peek, and found them skimming no more than a meter over the lake. A small peep escaped her lips and she shut her eyes tightly, giving herself completely over to Viktor's care and skill. It terrified her, to so fully surrender, and thrilled her deeply at the same time. Without any warning, her stomach lurched as Viktor pitched the boom up to a near-impossible angle, and then a moment she felt the sickening sensation of free-fall Just as she opened her mouth to scream, though, the broom came swiftly, yet gently, to a halt.

Hermione felt Viktor’s weight shift, and she brought her head up. They had come to rest on the bridge of the enchanted battlewagon that had sailed from Durmstrang, and Hermione’s eyes widened at the idea of being so close to the ship--the sons and headmaster of Durmstrang kept their secrets close, and that included barring anyone not from that school entrance to their vessel. Quickly, she looked askance at Viktor, but he did not meet her gaze--he was busy looking around, apparently to make sure their approach had gone unspotted. No other souls were in evidence, though, on the bridge or across the vast expanse of the main deck, and the ship was anchored firmly and unmoving. Hermione guessed that a skeleton crew--man or elf--should be aboard tending to the vessel and guarding it, but perhaps Viktor possessed some enchantment or charm that allowed them to approach without raising alarm.

"Is clear," he murmured. "We have been seen by no one. Come with me!" He paused long enough to shed his cloak and drape it over Hermione’s form, and then he grasped her hand and hurried her toward one of the hatches, heading below.

"Wait!" she hissed, pulling on his hand and stopping him short. "Where are we going? Surely you’re not taking me to your cabin! That’s indecent!"

Her outburst seemed to draw him up short. "We cannot talk on deck! We will be seen!" He shook his head, and then tugged her hand. "Come. We must talk, and Gryffindor girls’ bedroom full of Gryffindor girls is not good place. I have private cabin. Will not be improper--I swear!"

Misgiving swelled in Hermione’s breast, tempered by a powerful thrill, a frisson across her nerves that left her both terrified of being out after dark and unbearably eager to experience everything such an outing had to offer. She drew the cloak around her, reveling in both the warmth it provided and also in the scent of Viktor surrounding her--rough and clean, like the smell of a high and lonely forest blanketed in sweet snow. He looked so proud, standing on the bridge as if he were the captain of the ship, and in spite of her logical brain’s screamed protests--this is ridiculous!--she felt her heart and her resistance begin to melt.

Still, she might have insisted he immediately return her to her "Gryffindor girls’ bedroom full of Gryffindor girls," had her brain not suddenly flashed to a picture of Ron’s sickeningly callow, vacuous smile. Where was I? E? Effete, foul, gutless…and damn him for taking up so many of my thoughts! I’m with Viktor right now! Firmly, as if Ron were standing beside her with his awful fish-mouth stupidly agape at her actions, she strode toward the hatch. "Well, come on, then--let’s not stand out here and freeze!"

Viktor grunted, surprised at her movement, but was ahead of her in two long steps and opening the hatch. Quietly, unnoticed by anyone, they descended.

*

Hermione’s eyes widened slightly and a small smile played on her lips as she took in the cabin. The decoration was Spartan, of course, but Viktor had allowed himself--or been allowed--a few amenities. At the foot of the bunk, an enormous chest bulged, hinting at personal effects or clothing. A picture hung on the aft-most wall, showing Viktor dressed in his full Quidditch uniform, standing balanced proudly atop his broom with some manner of enormous trophy held aloft in his hand. Other than that, the room had no other furniture or decoration.

"I see," said Hermione carefully. "No chairs. So we are to sit on the bed, then?" The burst of surety which had earlier powered her forward had left her, and she again hugged the cloak around her--this time not for warmth, but because he was suddenly painfully conscious of the fact that she wore only her thin cotton nightgown beneath it.

Viktor showed no alarm. The boy radiated nothing at all except confidence and warmth, the exact opposite of Ron Weasley--hateful, inconsiderate, jelly-spined--as he stripped his own outer coat off, then stepped out of his boots and kicked them to the corner. Dressed now in a mostly-unlaced linen shirt and regulation Quidditch breeches, he shook his head. "You can sit on bed. I will stand, if you like. I do not want to make nervous." He smiled at her, his eyes bright. "Like you, Herminnie. Not want to scare you!"

She smiled at that, and perched gently on the edge of the bed. It was surprisingly soft--she had expected an impossibly hard nautical mattress topped with thin sheets, but this was the kind of bed she’d expect to find in a well-appointed English country house--or perhaps the bedroom of a Quidditch champion. "Your bed is very comfortable," she said in spite of herself, and a blush sprang furiously to her cheeks.

"Herminnie--" Viktor looked at her while his grin slowly vanished. The moment stretched into an uncomfortable silence, and Hermione looked fixedly at the floor, waiting for her blush to subside. The burning in her cheeks stubbornly refused to drain away.

"What did you--" she said, talking over Viktor, who also spoke at the same time with "You look beautiful when--". She started at the word "beautiful," her eyes flying wide.

"What did you say?" she said.

"No," he shook his head, fluttering his hands slightly. "You go first."

"No, you talk first!" The thrill pounded within her, her heart beating as if it meant to heat her blood to boiling.

"I said--I said that you are beautiful when you blush. Like flower--or like red morning sun when it touches snow." Unbidden, he stepped closer to her and reached out a hand to her and brushed her cheek, and Hermione stopped breathing. Was this truly what she wanted? He had seemed so powerful before, pulling her with him by the sheer force of his confidence that she would follow, but now his finger trembled as it traced the gentle arc of her cheekbone.

Ron would never do this, she thought. The sod would probably tell me I looked pretty, then pull my dress up and spit on me. Knuckle-brained, limp-wristed, malcontented…

Now Viktor pressed his palm gently against her cheek and Hermione’s eyes closed. Her breathing started again, but before she could fill her lungs more than once, Viktor dropped to his knees, gently took her head in his hands, and kissed her.

The smell of him, the taste of him--the warmth that radiated from his face and hands on her face filled her, overwhelmed her. Her own heart and belly heated to match his, and all thoughts of Ron or anything other than kissing him back vanished in the fire that suddenly raged in her body. She forgot where she was, who she was--everything except that pressure, that connection between them. When he stepped back, a half-minute and a billion years later, she found that his cloak had slipped from her shoulders and pooled on the bed around her. She minded that less than she would have a few minutes ago, as if his lips on hers had signaled a bridge crossed, a door passed through and then closed. Viktor looked at her with wide eyes and she wondered why he’d stopped kissing her, but then she considered where she was looking--really considered it--and realized that her thinly-covered body was showing its own signs of arousal.

She contemplated--briefly, at the speed of thought with which one contemplates such things--pulling up the cloak and fleeing from the cabin, but then discarded that thought. She was a fourth-year student. She was old enough to play kissing games with boys, or whatever this led to. She’d read books. Gamely, she squared her shoulders.

"Where I come from," she said, "It is rude to kiss a lady so thoroughly and then stop." She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"I--yes," he said. "Forgive me, Herminnie. I want to kiss you more. Much more. But I--I need something, first."

She frowned. "Need something? What ever do you need that isn’t right here, you silly boy?"

"I am seeker for Bulgarian team, yes? Here." Quickly, he spun away from her to the footlocker by his bed, and muttered at it. The lock unlatched noisily and the trunk lid swung open, and Viktor vanished for a moment as he bent over to rummage inside of it.

"What on earth? What are you doing? Are we snogging or not?!" Hermione began to feel a bit impatient.

"Ah!" Viktor straightened, then stood and kicked the trunk closed. In his hands he held…

"Oh my," squeaked Hermione. Her eyes flew wide. "You cannot be serious."

"Yes," he said softly. "I need you to wear this. Please. Will help me. Will help me to fulfill you! I will kiss you until toes curl--I will take you on rapturous journey, but need--need you to wear this."

"Oh my," she squeaked again. "You--you truly mean it? You need me to wear--that?"

"Yes," he said. "Please." His eyes beseeched her, holding hers, and he leaned in closely and kissed her forehead. "Please, my heart."

In spite of herself, she shook her head and held out her hands. "Bloody hell," she muttered. "Right, well, give it to me, then." The touch of his lips on her forehead--electric, burning--had started her heart beating again, and she wanted to kiss him, wanted to do much more than kiss him, and if this is what it would take, then she’d do it--anything to feel his lips against hers again, to run her hands along his chest, perhaps even his bottom.

Viktor handed the item to her. It was an American football helmet, with the face-guard removed and the whole thing painted all in shiny gold, with two gossamer wings extending stiffly from either side. They were each about a meter long, constructed from cardboard or some other paper material, then painted gold to match the rest of the helmet and enchanted to jut out without sagging under their own weight. Every few seconds, they fluttered slightly. It was a snitch helmet. A giant, golden snitch helmet.

Uncertainly, she drew her hair back and settled the silly thing on her head, then held out her arms for Viktor to come to her.

Viktor hesitated, licking his lips. "Button chin-strap," he said softly.

She frowned, slightly vexed, then felt for the hanging gold strap and fastened it properly beneath her chin, securing it to the other side of the unwieldy helm.

"Ohhhhh….oh yes," Viktor said. His hands slowly clenched and un-clenched at his side. She held out her arms again, but Viktor quickly shook his head. "Wait. Stand up."

Feeling now more than slightly vexed, she stood, and regarded him with one raised eyebrow, barely visible under the curve of the giant snitch helmet.

"Now," he said, licking his lips again, "Run around room."

"What?!" she cried.

"Run around!" His gaze was pure fire, filled with lust and anticipation. "Run around room, flap arms! You are my golden snitch, Herminnie! You are beautiful golden snitch, and I will capture you!" He mimed reaching out and grasping an imaginary snitch in the air in front of him, and then clasping it to his heart. "I will capture you and kiss you and ravish you!"

"Are you fucking barmy?!" she yelled. The snitch’s wings bobbed gently as she gesticulated angrily at him. "You want me to run about your cabin, wearing this bloody ridiculous snitch helmet with these great bleeding snitch wings sticking out of it, waving my arms like a ninny?"

Eagerly, Viktor nodded. "Yes! Yes, oh yes, oh yes! I must have this! I cannot enjoy you, cannot even think of possessing you, until I capture you! Oh, here, wait--I have this, too!" He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a white sheet of paper with about a dozen tiny golden snitches drawn on it. "Look, is golden snitch temporary tattoos! Was thinking maybe I could put one on you, like on bottom, maybe, and then write 'Viktor' right underneath it--you know, not permanent tattoo, but just for fun? Then we--"

His words were cut off when Hermione hurled the snitch helmet directly at him. "I have never heard anything so fucking outlandishly ludicrous in all my life! You’re a fucking nutter! You’re completely cracked!"

Krum stumbled backward, aghast. "No, Herminnie! Do not cry and yell! Please! Is perfectly normal and not crazy at all! Have done this many times before!"

"WHAT?! WHAT?! MANY TIMES BEFORE?! WHAT?!" Her voice spiraled up into its highest register, shrieking out like a banshee. Many times before!

"Herminnie, come on." His gaze changed to something close to condescending, and he held his hands out, palms up. "Am famous Quidditch champion. Boff girls regularly. All girls share Viktor’s bed wear snitch helmet! Is sexy! Look, you dance around room like snitch, wave arms, you will see!" He made a motion with his hips that was obviously supposed to be suave and suggestive, but only made Hermione angrier.

"YOU TAKE ME BACK! YOU ARE A SICK AND FILTHY LITTLE BOY AND YOU SHALL TAKE ME BACK TO MY DORM RIGHT NOW!" She threw herself at him, striking his cheek with her palm as hard as she could, pounding his chest and hitting him with all the force she could muster.

"Herminnie!" He caught her fists easily, shaking his head. "Why you do this? You are terrible prude! Come on, have open mind! Is fun! Is like role-playing with sports equipment!" He snorted derision at her. "You will probably grow up and be old maid forever with Puritanical attitudes like you display here. Feel sorry for you."

Now tears came to her eyes, hot and salty, and she the strength ran out of her body like water and she collapsed on the floor. Disdain evident in every move, Viktor took up his cloak from the bed and draped it about her shoulders, then pulled her to her feet, leading her out toward the deck, his broom, and home.

"Wonder if hot Asian girl Potter has been looking at would dress up like snitch for Viktor," he muttered softly.

Hermione sobbed. "Hot Asian girl? You pig! Why not aim even higher and see if that French Veela floozy will let you ‘capture’ her?" Her words dripped as much acid as she could stuff into them.

Viktor laughed again. "Delacour? Already have naked pictures of her dressed up like snitch. Took two pints of ale at Hogsmeade. She is party girl. Alcohol goes down, clothes come off! Did not even need beads or muggle video camera!" He laughed and shook his head as he helped her up to the deck. "Ah, memories. This will be best Tri-Wizard tournament ever! Would be even better if you were not such stuck-up English prig. Even red-head Weasley boy wear snitch helmet for Krum!"

Hermione thought that she couldn’t be any more shocked this evening, but that brought her eyeballs nearly to popping from their sockets and squeezed her windpipe nearly shut. "God in heaven, WHAT?!" It came out as a croak.

Viktor nodded vigorously. "Yes, little poor boy was all, 'Oh Krum,' and 'I love you, Krum!'" Viktor affected a nancingly high-pitched imitation of an English accent when he spoke for Ron. "So I said, ‘Krum love you back, little bitch boy, if you wear this,’ and he not question it at all--put on snitch helmet and run around. Krum also give red-headed bitch boy kneepads. Krum is not heartless, after all." He began to laugh--a deep, Slavic laugh that echoed across the ship’s deck and seemed to rebound off the peaks of the mountains. It hung in the air long after Hermione and Krum boarded his broom and sped off, low over the frozen lake.

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