Fic: Passing Notes , 1/4

Title: Passing Notes, in four parts
Author: Sare Liz
Series: Firebolt Ring
Pairing: HG/VK
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Warning: Rated PG-13 for some double entendre and flutterings in the stomach. It’s strangely contiguous with both GoF book and movie (does this count for the heresy of syncretism?). And yet, this is possibly OOC for Viktor. Not that we have a heck of a lot to go on, but I’m betting there’s more than one story behind his glowering façade.

Notes: So, this is my first sojourn in this fandom. I’m so very excited. And I have no beta, yet. Perhaps this will become very clear to you as you read on. If anyone is willing to take on that heinous task, let me know.


*

Languages were horrible things. This was especially true if you were nervous and trying to start a conversation with a pretty girl. Conversations that didn’t occur in Bulgarian were particularly bad. Even in Bulgarian, though, it would be very difficult. That is why, in Viktor’s opinion, languages were horrible things. And spoken language was the worst.

This is why, after three days of lurking, he decided a new strategy. There was more than one way to catch the snitch, after all.

Meet me by Muggle Studies?

The scrap of parchment floated down onto her book as he passed by her table, ostensibly going into the stacks to look for something. He’d tested this out before. If he didn’t linger too long, the ones who trailed him didn’t get too bold.

She found him crouched down in the nook, next to but not on the squashy chair that occupied most of the space between the bookshelves. He was fingering a likely looking book. He’d never heard of the author, but the title looked promising. Pride and Prejudice.

“Um, hi,” she whispered tentatively, looking uncertain.

He smiled in response. She came. She actually came. His heart nearly skipped a beat.

Viktor indicated the chair he was next to and whispered, “Vill you sit?”

Her blush was cute, and rather encouraging. When she sat, he came out of his crouch and kneeled down, sitting back on his heels.

“Ve don’t haff much time,” he whispered, to start.

Her expression asked her question, and he nodded in the direction they’d both come. “The other girls,” he whispered. “They are a little crazy. They vill come to find me, if I take too long. I do not vant that.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Quiet?” he asked softly, a bit of a wistful look on his face.

“Good luck,” she responded, smirking.

“Not so hard, sometimes, but harder here, in the Library. They alvays find me before I get here.”

“Where don’t they find you?” she inquired, seeming to be genuinely interested.

“The ship. The quidditch pitch. The forest. Sometimes before lunch, or dinner they are not around, and never in the effening.” It had only taken the moonstruck girls two days to learn his schedule. He’d lost the bet. Viktor didn’t think it could happen in under two weeks – oh, how wrong he’d been.

“Oh,” she said. The quiet that followed was filled with Viktor Marshalling His Nerve.

“Does not alvays mean being alone, this Quiet I hope for.”

“Oh?”

“No. I… Vould you go flying vith me?” God, he was desperate to impress her. He had no idea why. And flying? It really was his ace card, and maybe his only card. Was it the right place to start? …But her face was draining of color. This was not good, not good at all.

“I, um. I don’t fly. Er, that is, I don’t fly well…”

“Oh,” he said, looking around, stunned. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. “I…”

“Yes,” she said suddenly, definitively, and rather loudly. “When?”

Viktor was a little disoriented, but got his bearings quickly enough. His grin was threatening to take over his entire face. “Tomorrow? In effening? Ve fly tandem, you need no skill. Is okay.”

She was smiling shyly now. “Alright. Where?”

“Em…” He was trying to think of a place that wouldn’t invite instant scrutiny. “Between stone cabin and forest? Do you know the place I intend?”

“Behind Hagrid’s hut? Yes, by the pumpkins.”

“Yes, there. At eight? Can you come at eight?”

She nodded, and a strand of her hair came loose from where she’d secured it at the back of her head, sliding forward only to have her tuck it behind an ear. “I have to be back in the castle by nine to make curfew.”

It felt like he was already flying.


*

Tomorrow had very quickly become today, and today’s tomorrow was the day, the day they would find out who the champions were to be. If he won tomorrow, it would mean that much more leverage with Karkaroff. If he won today, he’d need all the leverage he could get.

She was muggleborn. He hadn’t known, not that it made such a big difference, at least, not to him. Karkaroff was a different matter, though. The white-haired boy, Malfoy, had told him gleefully all the inflammatory things that could be said about her and the group she ran with. There was something familiar about that quartet – Malfoy, Hermione, and her two friends, but he couldn’t place it. There was no reason they should be familiar, anyway. It was probably just his imagination.

Malfoy wasn’t his imagination, however. He was, in fact, a giant pain in the ass, and about as moonstruck as the cows that followed him around when he went running. How he wished the entire contingent hadn’t been assigned to the Slytherin table. Life would be so much more interesting if he were allowed to sit with the Gryffindors. He might not have to pass notes in the library.

He’d researched the rightness of the colloquial phrase, and had toyed with the idea of simply bending over her in the library and whispering in her ear, but wondered if it might not get him kicked out by the librarian. He settled on writing it, instead.

Are we still on for tonight?

He stalked passed her as the parchment fluttered down and wandered over to the comfortable chair, this time sinking down into it. It really was nice back here. If only it afforded a decent view of Hermione studying, it might be perfect. He crossed his legs and soon was lost in thought about exactly what he should bring for their evening, and what he might say. He’d never gone out on a date before – he’d escorted girls to balls, sure, but nothing beyond what was strictly required of him.

“You look comfortable.”

Her soft voice full of irony jarred him from his musings. When he looked up, he couldn’t quite tell what the expression on her face meant as she was only half looking at him, half perusing books on the shelf.

“I saw you, today. Putting your name in the goblet, I mean.”

Viktor cracked his neck and uncrossed his legs, stretching them out in front of the chair.

“I saw you, too.”

“I know.” She looked down at the floor in front of her shoes, and he thought that perhaps she was beginning to blush again. “I mean, I think a lot of people noticed that. It was very, um, deliberate, your stare. It was like you already knew where I was in the room, and like you were trying to tell me something.”

“Is true. From moment I valk into hall, I know you are there. And I do say something vith my eyes,” Viktor paused, and cocked his head to the side. “But maybe I say in Bulgarian, and you do not understand?”

She giggled and ducked her head again, but Viktor found that he quite liked it when she giggled. It was a far different creature from the giggling of the cows.

“Can you not guess?”

She looked back up, bit her lip, and shook her head.

“I do not know the correct words in English, but I vill try to explain. I look at you vhen I apply to become a champion, because of old days. In old days… in old days, a champion did not get honor for himself, or even for prince alone. There vas… another.”

As he spoke, she looked up, and her eyes had gone a bit wide.

“You understand now?”

“I think so.”

Just then they heard the stage whisper squeal of a discontented groupie. The pack was on the move.

Viktor sprang from the chair, but before he passed her at the shelves, he stopped. Hands lightly on her shoulders, and standing just behind her, he bent his head slightly and whispered in her ear. “Vear varm clothes, okay?”

And then he was off.

*