Ireland vs. Bulgaria

Chapter 34: Ireland vs. Bulgaria

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

The valley below them sloped gently into a plateau at the middle, like a massive sculptor had pressed her palm into a loaf of emerald clay. Purple flowers spilled across the slope in a crust of amethyst, waving in the salty breeze that wafted off the shell-white cliffs behind them. The most populous foliage in the valley, however, was not flowers but tents: big tents, small tents, square tents, round tents, tents the size of houses, tents the size of tables, neon tents, pastel tents, tents in city blocks and tents in tangled circles like pages of runes, tents with chimneys and bellpulls and weather vanes, tents with gardens and wells and wisteria running up the sides, two-story, three-story, four-story tents, and tents which, one finally had to admit, were not really tents at all.

“Looks like we’re Section T-394,” exclaimed Arthur, brandishing an enormous foldable map. “Think that’s just down there, by that charming fellow with the alligator moat.”

“Shame, we’re T-611,” said Amos. “That’s us. Well! Pleasure to see you, Artie; you and your boys come over any time you’d like your arse handed to you on a broomstick!”

“Or just tea,” said Cedric, pained. “Like normal people, Dad.”

“Ha!” bellowed Amos, and with an arm around his son’s shoulders, they parted ways.

They waded down through the early-morning mist. They passed a tent with a garden of pink puffball mushrooms the size of sunflowers, a tent surrounded by eight-foot lavender peacocks that made Draco miss the Manor terribly, and a tent with a lopsided stone turret covered in ivy.

“That’s the Lovegoods,” said Arthur, “it has Xenophilius written all over it. I wonder if they’ve come alone…? Ah, here we are.”

Their space, marked with a sign that read WEEZLY, was the size of a carpet. And not a big carpet.

Arthur emptied a bag of poles and pegs onto the ground and proudly announced that they were going to do it the muggle way. (Draco started to walk away in protest, only for Hermione to tug him back.) Practically, this meant Arthur fumbled away with the mallet and ropes while Hermione (the only one there who had ever actually been camping), ordered everyone around, an arrangement that left them both happy, and nobody else.

By the end of an hour, they had two shabby but serviceable tents, and only two posts had been hammered in upside down.

Hermione wiped some sweat from her forehead and put her hands on her hips. “There,” she said. “That’ll do for… er… the gnomes, I suppose.”

“Well, it’s no palace, but after the Burrow, it’s hardly unlivable,” said Draco, puzzled by her not unwelcome bout of snobbishness.

She glanced at him, then surreptitiously crooked her finger, and he ducked his ear.

It was getting harder and harder to do that. She seemed to be shrinking every summer.

“We can barely fit four people in there,” she whispered.

“Four? This will fit twelve. Unless you need your own bedroom.”

She opened her mouth, and then pressed her finger to her lips.

“Magic,” she said, after a moment.

“I always like watching you remember you’re a witch,” he said. “It must be such a relief.”

Arthur drew back the tent flap grandly. “Ah! Paradise!” he declared. “Come have a look.”

Draco ducked under the flap, and was pleasantly un-disappointed. Paradise, it was not, but it was an airy cabin, with a kitchenette finished in cherry wood, a small living room stuffed full of musty antique furniture in atrocious florals, and a spiral staircase that led up to the loft, where all the cots were. The whole place smelled musty and sweet, like mothballs and wood varnish.

“Is this yours?” he said curiously. It was almost as big as the Weasleys’ real living room. He’d have thought it was out of their price range.

“Not for long. Borrowed it from Perkins at the office. Doesn’t camp much anymore, poor fellow, he’s got lumbago — how shall we do it, then? Girls in one tent, boys in another?”

“That’s not fair,” said Ron indignantly, “there’s only two of them!”

“And one of them’s Ginny,” added Fred. “She doesn’t count. OW!”

Ginny had punched his arm.

“It’s up to you, dear,” Arthur reassured Hermione, ignoring his sons. Draco imagined he must be rather practiced at it by now. “Whatever makes you comfortable. If you need your own bathroom…”

“Thank you, Mr. Weasley, but I don’t mind sharing. Maybe we could break it up by age? That would keep the four of us together, since we’re here as Ron’s guests.”

“I want to stay with Ron,” said Ginny.

“With Harry, you mean,” said Ron, and snickered when she tried to punch him, too. Harry rubbed his arm uncomfortably.

“Let’s put you with Fred and George,” decided Mr. Weasley. “The four of you go in the other tent — I’ll put Bill in with you, so you’ve got an adult — Ginny and the other boys will stay with me.”

“Why’ve we got to share with Perce?” said George. “He snores like he’s trying for the opera.”

“It’s not bad as all that,” said Arthur, lying valiantly. “You’ll sleep well after the match. Now! Time to make camp. Ron, why don’t you take your friends and fetch us some water? The rest of us will chop firewood.”

“With an ax?” said Ginny, eager at the prospect to hone her young biceps.

“We’ve got an oven,” whined Fred, who was not.

“Authenticity, boys!” said Arthur, with relish. “Muggles camp around outdoor fires, don’t they, Hermione?”

Hermione found herself the sudden target of a few resentful stares. “Yes, but I suppose they only do it because they can’t make their own,” she said haltingly, “so there’s really no need…”

“Nonsense! You heard the girl! Off, off! Now, where did I put the tools…?”

“You should’ve kept your mouth shut,” mumbled Ron. “Hope the twins don’t distract him, or he’ll lop off his own toes.”

The sun had come soaring over the sea-cliffs and peeled back the curtains of mist. Their path through the tent city was circuitous, doing zigzags and loops that doubled back or terminated entirely, forcing them to hop gates or duck under archways, a route defying space and reason in ways that made perfect sense to Draco and Ron, and utterly distressed Harry and Hermione. Campers had crept out and were starting to make breakfast over tiny cookstoves. The smell of sizzling fry-up filled the air, but for every British wizard shaking a pan of sausages, there were a dozen others making breakfast quite differently: a witch in a blue yukata with white flowers and a pixie cut spooned dollops of something pungent and sticky onto her childrens’ bowls of rice; a man in an embroidered red skirt and beaded locs was frying some kind of flat square doughnuts, with some difficulty, as his young daughter levitated one into her mouth whenever his back was turned; a woman in a queenly full-body covering of scarlet red and gilt nibbled from a platter of olives and herbed butter with flatbread, while her husband read to her from a newspaper in Arabic. Two little girls in festive green-and-pink shawls shot past, riding tandem on a toy broom, while their older sister hurtled after them on foot, crying: “Basta! Basta!”

Closer to the pitch, there were booths for tabling: one for the Salem Witches’ Institute, decked out with so much red, white, and blue you’d think the Americans were playing in the final; the Ministry of Magic Wizarding Union had a considerable crowd, and several bedraggled interns were handing out flyers; the Divinus Haruspex Association of Clairvoyants sat under a glittering fringed canopy, surrounded by floating candles and wreathed in blue smoke; even the Snallygaster Protection League had a little table of its own. They had brought biscuits.

They lost Hermione somewhere in the crowd, and spent a harrowing twenty minutes searching only to find her, predictably, glued to the table for the Allegiance of Muggle-Born Wizards. She had cornered one of the frazzled representatives, talking like they were about to outlaw the practice of English, and got in one last cry of: “—send a reading list — I’ll owl you!” before Draco hauled her away.

“Wait, wait, I didn’t give them my address!”

“Good. They can thank me later.”

The grass under their feet gave way to shamrocks, and into a pocket of the city where every tent was green from ground to roof. All the wizards here wore green robes, or scarves, or jerseys, and some had even dyed their hair and faces green, too.

“Hey, you lot! Harry! Ron!”

It was Seamus Finnigan, waving them over. Beside him sat a sandy-haired woman and Dean Thomas, who was wearing an Ireland jersey and a knit-wool cap. Muggle rock music pounded from a speaker he’d affixed over the door of his green tent, a snarl of gritty, gloating guitars and smugly nasal vocals: he recognized a few, like “Sabotage,” from the Gryffindor end-of-year party.

“Great to see you!” he said, pumping Harry’s hand. “Ready to watch us punt those manky Slavs back to the Black Sea?”

“Pure keen on it,” said Harry, grinning. “Good summer?”

“Corking. Oh, Ron, by the way, are Fred and George ever coming out with those order forms? Wouldn’t bother you over it, mate,” he said, with a glance at his mother, “but I asked them to hold some of the fireworks for me, and they never wrote back, so I dunno if they got the message.”

After assuring Seamus they would pass it on, and declaring vocally in support of Ireland, they set off again. Occasionally someone stopped them and offered them a free shamrock, or an Ireland flag pin, which Hermione took and almost put on, before Draco summarily removed it.

“What’s wrong with it? I like Ireland,” she defended.

“Yes, but we’re about to go into the Bulgarian tents, and I’d prefer you didn’t get us mugged.”

The Bulgarians had not the decorative eye that the Irish did, but lacked nothing in spirit. Tall banners in red and black fluttered over the rows of dark tents, each one bearing a surly, muscular young man with a sour mouth and hirsute eyebrows. He folded his arms and scowled at them as they passed.

“Krum,” murmured Ron, like it was the name of a saint.

“Who’s Crumb?” said Hermione.

Ron and Harry chorused in sighs of pain.

“Viktor Krum is the Bulgarian seeker,” said Harry. “He’s a genius.”

“An artist,” said Ron.

“He’s already being called the greatest seeker of all time. And he’s only seventeen!”

Hermione squinted at the poster. The poster squinted back. “Why does he look like he’s got a cramp?”

“Who cares? He’s a prodigy!” Ron’s hands implored the heavens for patience. “He’s got the world record for fastest snitch-catch in a World Cup game! He’s been on the cover of every quidditch magazine in print! He can scowl as much as he wants.”

“Maybe so,” she said primly, “but I wouldn’t like to be stuck at a dinner table with him.”

“Well, call me to swap, if you ever get the chance,” said Ron incredulously.

They had to wait in a queue to pump water. Several other familiar faces swam out of the crowd to greet them: Oliver Wood, who had graduated that spring, came galloping up in a Bulgaria jersey. Draco hadn’t seen him stop smiling since they’d won the Quidditch Cup.

“Potter! Malfoy! Good show, isn’t it?” He planted his hands on his hips, beaming. “You’ll never guess who I just spoke to.”

“Don’t tell me. It’s Ireland,” said Draco. “They want you to sub in.”

The irony floated harmlessly over Oliver’s dreamlike face. “Better! I just spoke to Eggers Eccleston! Of Puddlemere United! He wants to sign me!”

“Oliver, that’s wicked!” cried Harry. Draco, being much cheered about Puddlemere’s prospects in the League, told him so, and Oliver pumped all their hands.

“If you want to know another thing, the seeker’s getting old,” he said confidentially. “She’s nearly thirty-four, and expected to retire after next season. If you want a tryout, Harry, all you need to do is call…”

“He’s fourteen!” said Hermione, appalled, but Harry took Oliver’s card when she wasn’t looking.

Further down, getting her own water at the pump, was Cho Chang, her long hair pinned up in its usual ponytail, wearing an Ireland bomber jacket and black jeans. When she saw the four of them, she stood up and waved; when she saw Harry, she waved harder.

Harry fumbled about half the kettle of water down his shirt waving back.

“Good Lord,” snapped Draco, stepping clear of the splash. It was a good thing Ginny hadn’t come.

As the sun edged closer to a blinding peak, salesmen prowled up and down the lanes of tents, pushing carts and yowling their wares. Harry gasped and dragged them all over at the sight of a tiny Firebolt replica that flew wherever you threw it and returned, and bought two, even as Draco’s groused that it was overpriced junk. There were a forest of Christmas-colored rosettes that pumped sparks when spun, stovepipe hats that opened up to issue green smoke, sparklers that spelled ‘IRELAND’ or ‘BULGARIA’ when lit, shirts and jerseys of every conceivable design, including one that represented Krum merely with a blank face and eyebrows — Hermione thought that one was funny, and bought it — and a special-edition Quidditch World Cup chess set, where the pieces were all represented by real players. When he saw it, Ron gasped in longing.

“Fan of chess, are you?” said the saleswizard, with a glint in his eye. “Lucky you, it’s on sale. Only five hundred galleons! Special price! What? No, where are you going? Hey — alright, four fifty! I’ll throw in a Krum jersey, too!”

Draco had dragged them all away from the vendor. “Don’t stare like that if you want to buy it,” he muttered to Ron. “It was probably two hundred before we showed up.”

“Yeah, and that would’ve been a real steal, at two hundred,” said Ron, rolling his eyes.

They stopped in at a different cart, where the vendors were less pushy, and where Draco relented to let Ron buy a green rosette for a galleon. He refused, however, to let Ron pay the fifteen sickles the vendor wanted for a dancing shamrock hat, and haggled him expertly down to six and a half, along with a free Bulgaria poster and a set of commemorative 1994 World Cup pins.

“I’ll be expecting a splendid Christmas present this year,” Draco informed him, as Ron happily mashed the shamrock hat on his head. “And I want to see you wearing that, since you were so desperate for it. Your father didn’t bring omnioculars, by chance…? What am I saying? Never mind. Wait here.” He stepped over to the nearest cart.

“What will a pair of omnioculars cost me?” he said boredly.

“Our omnioculars aren’t like any omnioculars,” said the saleswizard. “Ours have rapid replay and a built-in autofocus— I couldn’t part with them for less than fifteen galleons.”

“The fellow down the block said nine.”

“Well maybe his omnioculars don’t have built-in autofocus,” said the saleswizard haughtily. “But I might be able to part with them for twelve.”

“It’s a short block,” said Draco.

“I can’t do less than twelve, really, I can’t. I have to make a profit somehow.”

“Of course. And so does the fellow down the block.”

“You might as well rob me. Eleven.”

“Ten,” he said, “and I’ll take four.”

Ron said nothing when he got his pair. His cheeks were distinctly red. Harry, however, chirped “Thanks!” and bought them all cinnamon fritters.

Down the lane, a witch sold books, maps, and pamphlets from a newsstand on the corner, and Hermione predictably dragged them into its orbit. Draco waited indulgently while she inspected the offerings, leaning against the wall. Harry stole and ate her fritter while she was distracted.

“See, this is actually useful,” she crowed, flipping through a pocket-sized English-Bulgarian dictionary. “I’ve seen at least three Bulgarian food carts where I can’t read a thing.”

“Get it, then.”

“I would, but I spent the last of my galleons on that shirt. I have money, but the rest is in pounds—”

“I’ll buy it for you,” said Ron abruptly. He held out his hand. “How much is it?”

Draco’s head twitched up. He eyed Ron, who had just earlier balked at buying a bag of popcorn because of the price.

There was something not altogether wholesome in his eagerness, he thought. He didn’t like it. Of course, Ron could be generous, if he wanted to; but he hadn’t been generous to Harry, or Draco, when they’d passed the snack carts, and he hadn’t offered to buy anything for them.

He didn’t know what to make of it, except that it made him uneasy. Hermione didn’t seem to know what to make of it, either, because she stuttered: “Oh — er, thanks. I’ll pay you back when I get to Gringotts. It’s eleven sickles.”

Ron plumbed his pockets for change and came up with not half that. “Here,” he said awkwardly, “I’m pretty sure I’ve got more in my bag, I’ll just run back to the tent—”

Draco stepped forward and dropped a galleon in front of the saleswitch.

What followed was a beat of silence as ugly and naked as a newborn rat. Hermione handled it the worst, swinging her head between them as if she were following a very fast, very heated telepathic exchange; Ron turned the color of bruised beets, and Draco said nothing, refusing to speak first.

“Nice of you, mate,” said Ron neutrally.

“Don’t fret, I’m sure you’ll get your good deed for the day elsewhere,” said Draco.

Hermione shoved the contentious article into her pack and buried it under her teeshirt. “Lunch!” she declared. “Lunch? Anyone? I think we should all have lunch. I think we’re all hungry. Aren’t you hungry? I’m starving. It’s almost two, we haven’t eaten anything but doughnuts in seven hours. And someone should really convince Mr. Weasley to use magic for the firewood — oh, I hope he didn’t try to use the ax without us, I don’t know hardly any first aid.”

---

As the afternoon trailed into dusk, the volume of activity in the campsite had risen from a buzz to a clamor. The saleswizards made a last desperate press to empty their stores. Lanterns in green and red spread like twin rows of vertebrae towards the distant crown of the stadium, where searchlights swayed drunkenly across the lavender carpet of the sky. They ate cheese toasties and Mrs. Weasley’s homemade tomato soup around the campfire, and as Bill and Charlie put out the embers with jets from their wand, a deep gong boomed over the campsite. The lanterns blazed white.

“Quarter past seven at Atherfield Green. Please proceed to the stadium.”

Mr. Weasley sprang up and clapped his hands. “It’s time! That’s it! Alright, everyone, find a buddy — this crowd’s about to be pure madness, don’t want anyone getting separated — hold on to your buddy, let’s go!”

Harry slung an arm around Ron’s shoulders, and Ginny leapt piggyback onto Bill’s back. Draco understood at once what Mr. Weasley had been afraid of. Amidst a feverish crowd of thousands, they were packed shoulder to shoulder in a mass of people that moved like a body of water, rippling this way and that, with cross-currents that threatened to wrench a distracted sod away from their group and drop them three blocks down. Magic crackled overhead, noise-making spells and showers of sparks, and the occasional flash-crack of a firework that left all those under it blinking away blindness. A crowd surge at his back nearly shoved him to the ground, to be trampled underfoot, but Hermione caught him at the last moment and hauled him up in no small show of strength. He clung to her shoulders and caught his breath, trying to ignore the lingering fear of being stomped to death.

In a heartbeat, the other Weasleys were swept away into the crowd.

“Stay together,” Hermione shouted, hardly audible above the din. Then she grabbed his hand and laced their fingers tightly. “Doh— ge— parated.”

“What?”

She lifted their joined hands and pointed at them. Then she turned and plunged into the crowd, steering him by the arm.

If you took Notre-Dame de Paris, stacked it on top of two other Notre-Dames, glued another pair of Notre-Dames on either side of it, and then gilded the whole goddamn thing, you would end up with an approximately 1:3 scale model of the Quidditch World Cup stadium. Stairs trailed up in dizzying flights up dozens of floors, and elevators wheeled up and down in constant motion, ferrying groups up and down the stands. Ministry ticketmasters in purple robes stood at each gate, checking tickets.

“I’m sorry,” shouted Hermione. “The person with our tickets went in already — our group’s on the other side—”

The witch shook her head. “No tickets, no entrance! Next, please!”

“No, we have them! We got separated, but if you let us in, we’ll come back—”

“Next, please,” shouted the witch, pretending not to see her.

Draco shouldered in front of Hermione. “Our names are in the registry,” he snapped. “Draco Malfoy. Hermione Granger. Look us up.” He flashed his signet ring.

The witch suddenly rediscovered her ability to see both of them.

“Malfoy, you said?” she squeaked. “The tickets are… they’re under Malfoy?”

“Will that get us out of this godforsaken line any faster?”

“I… well, I, er… maybe you can just… come back,” said the witch weakly. “When you do have them.”

She waved them through.

“That was absurd,” Hermione said, inexplicably irritated that things had worked out for them, while Draco towed her along into their good fortune. “You didn’t do anything. I bet there are loads of people in this line who don’t really have tickets—”

“And we do, so what’s your issue?”

“Because she didn’t know that! All she knew was that you had a famous name, and she let you break the rules!” Hermione sounded torn between finding their seats and turning back to give the witch a piece of her mind. “She’s not supposed to do that. In fact, not doing that is the one thing she’s there to do. I honestly can’t think of any way she could have failed further.”

“You’re right. You know what, you should file a complaint once the match is over. I won’t sleep so long as there’s a person like that working in government.”

“I just might!”

He laughed at her. She dropped her eyes to the floor, muttering something mutinous.

“Draco! Hermione! There you are!”

Arthur came hurtling down the stairs and wrestled through the crowds. “We thought we’d lost you!” he hollered. “Merlin’s bones, I had a heart attack!”

“Had a bit of trouble at the ticketstand,” said Draco. “I smoothed it over.”

“Yes, well! Glad you made it! Come on! Top box, straight up!”

They really weren’t good seats. The top box was so far up the nosebleed section that if your nose did indeed start dripping, it would reach terminal velocity before it hit anything. The others were already packed in, their faces painted with the glow of the giant crystal ball that hung suspended over the field, where advertisements flickered: Gladrags WizardWear… Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment… The Bluebottle: A Broom for the Family…

Two seats were left near the back of the box. Hermione slipped her fingers free of his, which was obviously appropriate, since they were in no danger of getting lost anymore, and there was a moment of tingling sensitivity in his fingers as blood flow returned. He shook his hand out and put it in his pocket and sat down without looking at anyone.

“POPCORN! LEMON POPS! MEAT PIES!” A vendor staggered down the stairs, almost crushed by the weight of his own wares. He roared: “POPCORN! LEMON POPS! MEAT PIES!”

“Can I have a lemon pop, Dad?” said Ginny at once, twisting around in her seat. “They’ve got the ones that turn your tongue green! Have you ever had one, Harry?”

“Yeah, and I want popcorn,” said Fred. He and George were the only ones not wearing any gear; Draco had a suspicion as to where their galleons went. “Georgie and I can split a bag, we’re not greedy.”

“We’ll all have a lemon po,” said Mr. Weasley grandly. “How much will that be?”

The vendor told him. Mr. Weasley balked.

Draco, who still wanted a water in any case, reached for his pocket to buy his own; but hesitated. Fortunately, Harry shot up. “I’ve got it, Mr. Weasley,” he said hastily, scrambling over Ron and Charlie’s legs. “Here — I lost a bet with Ron.” He shoved a handful of galleons at the vendor before Mr. Weasley could call this falsehood what it was, and there were rounds of ice cream and embarrassed mumbling for all.

“Have we got everyone?” gasped Arthur, mopping his brow with a tattered handkerchief. “Are we ready? Oh, hell — where’s Percy?”

The redheads consulted each other, and it was determined that none of them were hiding Percy in their pockets.

“Damn. I told him to stay — alright. All of you stay here, I’ll go find him.”

“Dad! The anthems are about to start!”

A hundred-piece brass orchestra was marching onto the field, accompanied by scores of leaping and whirling colorguard.

“I’ll go,” said Hermione, standing up. “I don’t mind if I miss something — it’s only a bit of quidditch—”

The reaction was immediate.

“Not HERE!” roared Ron.

“Take it back!”

“Come on, Hermione—”

“Turn around three times and spit!”

“FINE! It’s only the noble and very serious game of quidditch, which so important it’s worth the hundreds of thousands of pounds the Ministry spent on a stadium that’s going to be abandoned in twenty-four hours, and obviously worth the tens of thousands of injuries it causes a year—”

“Yes it is, thank you,” said Draco. “Speaking as one of them.”

“—so I’ll be just heartbroken to miss even a minute of it!” said Hermione. Her hair, whose volume could be relied on to gauge her level of fury, clocked in at a Cat 3. It was both impressive and harrowing.

“Well, someone’s got to go with her,” said Arthur, who was in the fight of his life not to laugh. “She can’t go alone.”

Hermione looked at Draco. Draco looked at Hermione. She looked back, harder.

“They’re about to do the anthems.”

“Fine!” she said. “God forbid you miss your stupid anthems. Ron, how about you?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going. Give me a minute to stand up, witch, my legs are still numb from those stairs.”

“I can go,” mumbled Ron, but he was still watching the band. Harry shook his head subtly at him, warning him away from temptation.

“No,” said Draco, tragically. “I’ve already put my head to the sword. I’m a man of my word. Just remember me, when the match starts, and say a word in my honor: ‘In Adulating Memory of Draco Malfoy, who walked so that we might sit—’”

“Hurry up!” called Hermione, who was already two flights down the stairs. He dropped into a dignified soliloquy of muttering and slid down the railing after her.

Under the stands was a maze of narrow wooden scaffolding. Sawdust rained from above them whenever the stands cheered or thumped their feet, which was every few seconds, and the sounds of the stadium came to them muffled. The Bulgarian national anthem began with a thunderclap of fanfare and mournful brass, followed by an overture that sounded like it was written for a planet’s funeral.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to find Weasley in all this,” he called, fighting to be heard over the rhythmic explosions of cymbals. “There’s a hundred thousand people here.”

“That’s easy, we’ll check the Ministry box,” she shouted back. There was a seizure of horns, and the stands swayed as the Bulgarians leapt to their feet, sending them both listing onto the rickety metal railing: Hermione’s rosette went spinning into the vertiginous floors below them. She yelped and jumped back into his chest, and he steadied her with a hand at her back.

“Easy.”

“I don’t know what it is with wizards and heights,” she breathed. Her head knocked against his collarbone, which was probably an accident; he didn’t think she realized he’d caught her. “Or self-preservation. Limitless magical power, and what do they do? Find a million different ways to break their neck, that’s what.”

“You lost any right to complain about that the day you told me about airplanes.”

“Airplanes are actually quite safe, thank y— oh, wait! Look!”

She crouched and pointed through the railing at the scaffolding below them, where a group of wizards in purple robes were talking. One of them was a stiff-backed old man with hair that could have been parted with a straight razor, and a walrus mustache the color and texture of steel wool. He reminded Draco slightly of his father, or at least pictures of him.

He took a knee and nudged Hermione. “That’s Bartemius Crouch.”

“I know,” she whispered, distracted, “Percy showed me a picture.”

“He did?”

“The Bulgarians want another twelve seats in the Top Box,” said Crouch. He spoke as though any movement of his lips was energy wasted.

“Oh is that what they’re after?” said someone cheerfully, out of sight. “Thought he wanted a pair of tweezers. Well, tell them they can bring their own chairs, and we’ll squeeze in as many as can fit.”

“Respectfully, Mr. Bagman, I think we ought to turn them down,” said a breathy voice. It was Percy’s. “We’ve already made quite enough concessions, and they are guests—”

“Thank you, Weatherby. Ludo, while you’re at it, ask Karkaroff if there’s been any movement on the visas. I spoke to Babanin in International Affairs, and he says there’s a standstill.”

“Karkaroff?” whispered Hermione.

“Durmstrang headmaster,” he murmured back.

“Isn’t Durmstrang the one where Neville’s grandmother is always threatening to send him? Don’t they treat their students horribly?”

“That’s a rumor. They beat us in test scores, we’ve got to make them look bad somehow. But it doesn’t make sense — Durmstrang’s under Russian jurisdiction, not Bulgarian, and Bagman is in Games and Sports. He hasn’t any business with Karkaroff.”

“I will,” said Bagman, “if I see him. You know, he is all the way down in the diplomats’ box—”

Crouch interrupted him. “Be sure to tell him that Scottish immigration services will expect EU passports from all of his students, quidditch stars or no.”

Bagman sighed and Disapparated. Percy said, “Masterfully done, sir,” but Crouch didn’t hear him. He had gone tense at the sight of someone down the stairwell.

“Minister,” he said. “Good evening.”

Percy spasmed and nearly dropped the clipboard he was holding.

The Minister of Magic wore clean gray pinstripes, and tied his black hair in a purple velvet bow. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his posture genial, and leaned against the railing.

“A great success, Barty,” he said kindly. “It was what, five hundred Portkeys? Six?”

“Five hundred and forty-four,” said Crouch stiffly.

“No small feat.” Runcorn turned to Percy, who whimpered. “Did you help him, lad?”

There was a moment of confused disconnect before Crouch remembered that Percy existed. “Hm? Oh. Yes. Percival Weatherby. Helpful chap.”

“Wsslee,” croaked Percy inaudibly.

“What?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nice to meet you, Percival,” said Runcorn, shaking his hand warmly. “There’s always a need for enterprising young men at the Ministry. What draws you to the work?”

Percy mouthed wordlessly. “Law and order,” he said hoarsely, at last. “I like — rules. Sir.”

“That’s very good,” said Runcorn easily. “There aren’t many young people who appreciate them. Everyone in my administration has an interest in the careers of promising young men. I’m sure you remember what that’s like, Barty?”

Whatever Runcorn had meant by that, it was obviously not praise, for Crouch’s shoulders crept up like a boxer’s.

“It appears we both do.”

“I like to keep tabs on my people,” said Runcorn pleasantly. “Speaking of which. If you catch any pickpockets, point them in my direction, would you? Nott’s wand’s gone missing, and it’s been a nightmare trying to make do without him. Like riding a broomstick without my own left hand.” He made a silly little gesture with his right, to illustrate. The whole effect was quite disarming, agreeable, and clever. He reminded Draco of some cheerful pureblood great-uncle who gave nice presents and thought he was funnier than he had any right to.

“Perhaps not a very dextrous one, if it has a tendency to misplace vital objects,” said Crouch.

Runcorn laughed. “Misplaced?” he said. “If you think so… of course, Nott thinks it’s stolen, but then, he is a suspicious old miser… that’s why I like him. It means I don’t have to be.”

“If only we all had such enterprising lieutenants.”

“Don’t fret. I’m sure young Percival here will be quite the bulldog, if you give him the opportunity. Isn’t that right, Percy — may I call you Percy?”

Percy did not reply: he had caught sight of Draco and Hermione, crouched on the railing above him, and was trying to shoo them away with tiny jerks of his jaw, which made him look like he had St. Vitus’s. Hermione shook her head and beckoned him furiously.

“No, sir. I mean yes! Sir! I’m sorry! I’m afraid I have to — you’ll excuse me, Mr. Crouch?”

“If you like,” said Crouch, still locked in a queerly charged stare-off with the Minister.

Percy grimaced, bowed to both of them, and scurried up the stairs to Draco and Hermione, where he swept them away from the railing with an ungentle hand on their collars.

“What are you two doing?” he snarled. “How long were you eavesdropping?”

“Take your hands off me, you wretched ingrate, or I’ll jinx your tongue into a tapeworm, and see how long it takes your Mr. Crouch to notice you can’t talk,” snapped Draco, wrenching himself free. “We came to get you. Your father was missing you.”

“Oh,” said Percy, deflating somewhat.

Hermione, trampling breezily over all pretenses of subtlety or discretion, demanded: “Percy, what did Mr. Crouch want with Karkaroff?”

“That’s none of your business, and I’ll thank you to pretend you didn’t hear it. You’ll find out soon enough.”

The words ‘none of your business’ were the only four not included in Hermione’s vocabulary. “Is it to do with that secret thing you were telling your father about? The one at Hogwarts? It is, isn’t it? It’s something to do with Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman, and there’s another school involved — is there a new exchange program?”

“I don’t know whether the Hogwarts curriculum has changed since I went through it,” said Percy, “but when I was there, I was taught that none of your business means none of your nosy business, and nothing more! Both of you, back to the box, and if you want to know anything more, you should go spy on someone else!”

“With pleasure, Weatherby,” said Draco coolly.

At that, Percy fumed in silence all the way to their seats.

The Irish anthem had tapered off, and they slipped back into the box just as Ludo Bagman’s amplified voice boomed out a loud welcome. Their entrance was swallowed by a rash of roars, but Harry noticed them, and waved. “You made it!” he shouted. “Corking! They’re about to do the mascots!”

“It hasn’t even started?”

“Not yet! They’ve got to get everyone excited!”

“I can barely hear myself think,” she said flatly. “How much more excited can they possibly be?”

“AND NOW — WITHOUT FURTHER ADO — ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL TEAM MASCOTS — THE VEELA!”

“Oh, great,” muttered Ginny. She slumped low in her seat, arms folded, while her brothers erupted in cheers.

A hundred veela glided onto the field, their feet almost floating over the grass. They were in human form, which meant each had long, feathery white hair, spilling down their back like a crest of gilt, and legs so long it was almost unsettling. From a distance it was hard to see, but they were all between six and seven feet tall, and wore tutus of voluminous white tulle that fanned from their hips like a calla lilies. The male veela, of whom there were only two or three, wore silk tunics with low necklines instead.

“What’s a veela?” shouted Hermione.

“Dark creature,” said Bill, leaning over the back of her seat. “They’re from the same family as sirens. Nasty customers, I had to deal with a nest of them once. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to fight something that wants to snog you and eat you at the same time.”

Draco shuddered.

“So they seduce men in order to kill them?”

“And women, to be fair,” said Bill. “They’ll be just as glad to eat you as Draco, here.”

He might have winked; it was hard to tell.

The music had started. A plaintive wail of strings melted into an exquisite fourteen-part harmony, and the veela swept into a breathless dance of hands and fluttering footwork. Their tutus spun out like blooming flowers, and a silvery glow began to radiate from the field. Everything else seemed to dim in comparison to that glow, from the stands to the floodlights, as if the rest of the world were softening into nothingness; there was only the music, and the exquisite dance… it was Tchaikovsky, he thought, something from Romeo and Juliet, but he couldn’t concentrate on it. His mind drifted through a thick and gentle fog.

People were rising. Harry had wedged his foot on the railing. Ron was half risen from his chair, and Ginny, transfixed, had to be hauled back into her seat by a chuckling Bill. Hermione was staring at the field, her mouth parted, blinking very quickly, as if trying to wake up.

“They should… stop,” she said, with palpable effort.

“What?” he said numbly. It was hard to focus on anything. He was very warm.

“They should… look at Harry… Ron… people are going to…”

There was a scream: someone in another box had actually jumped. The wizard went hurtling down the rows of boxes, and was caught in midair by someone’s quick-handed Levitation Charm, where he thrashed fruitlessly, trying to swim toward the veela. He was reeled back into the stands and hustled away by security.

The veela’s dance ended, to cries of disappointment. Hermione, her spell broken, leapt out of her chair and hauled Harry back from the railing, hissing at him. Ron eased himself into his seat, shell-shocked.

Draco, blinking the fog away, felt first embarrassed and then deeply wrathful: he hated mind magic. And he loathed being made a fool of.

“That was something,” breathed Hermione, flopping back into her seat. “Bill was right. I can see why they’re Dark creatures.”

“Whoever approved that should be sacked.”

“You really didn’t like it?”

“I can’t stand mind tricks,” he said stiffly.

“AND NOW, THE IRISH NATIONAL TEAM MASCOTS: THE LEPRECHAUNS!”

“Thank God,” muttered Draco. At this rate he’d take dementors, as long as it wasn’t anything else that would mess with his head.

A firework in the shape of a shamrock exploded in the air over the pitch, showering sparks that turned into twinkling trails of gold. The crowd surged to its feet, two hundred thousand hands extended in a vaguely religious show of supplication, to collect the bounty as it fell.

Ron let out a cry of delight and scraped up as many handfuls of the gold as he could, but when Hermione reached to pick up a piece under her seat, Draco caught her hand.

“Don’t bother. It’s leprechaun gold, it disappears.”

“…Does everyone else know that?”

A fistfight had broken out in the box behind them, and someone’s glasses went flying. Draco caught them before they jabbed her in the eye.

“No. Don’t tell them, though, it’s funnier to watch — see, there, Box Fourteen. I think that woman just got her wig pulled off at the scalp.”

“Horrible!”

“Very,” he said, peering through his omnioculars. “Excellent Bat-Bogey Hex on her though, goddamn.”

The leprechauns left the field, leaving the audience squabbling for the last of the gold. Bagman cleared his throat.

“IT IS TIME! GENTLEWITCHES AND GENTLEWIZARDS! FOR! THE MAIN! EVENT! KINDLY WELCOME THE IRISH NATIONAL QUIDDITCH TEAM! I GIVE YOU — CONNOLLY! MORAN! TROY! QUIGLEY!…”

Emerald blurs spat from the Irish box. The green half of the stands became irrepressibly loud.

“They’re flying so fast!”

“That’s the point, Granger.”

“AND NOW, GENTLEFOLK, KINDLY WELCOME — THE BULGARIAN NATIONAL QUIDDITCH TEAM! I GIVE YOU — DIMITROV! IVANOVA! ZOGRAF! LEVSKI…”

Viktor Krum erupted from the field in a blur of red and white. The camera clung to him as though it knew no other: a serious, sallow block of muscles and frown, dark hair buzzed low to his scalp, a short beard sprouting along his square jaw. He was nothing much to look at. But he flew like poetry.

The referee piped a short blast on her whistle. The keepers assumed their positions. The game began.

It was hard to describe, unless you had flown a broomstick, what Krum was doing, in part because he was doing things that didn’t have names before he thought of them. His barrel roll was a liquid swirl, his turn a snapped hairpin, his dive a clean drop — a drop he could finish with such grace that gravity appeared to avert its eyes in politeness. He had world-class broom handling and an understanding of space and balance that no one else on the field nearly approached; during one of the warmups he slipped his leg free of its foothold and leaned down to fix his bootstrap in midair, flying with just one hand and one leg, perfectly stable. His anticipation and spacial awareness were nigh-prophetic — at one point he flew straight at a bludger, eliciting screams from the stands, only for the bludger itself to swerve away — and all of this was mere technique. What was incredible about Krum was that his flawless technique obscured what was actually impressive about him: his strategy. It wasn’t even clear that he was executing moves, any more than he was channeling a deeper, more profound form of art into practice. Watching him gave you the feeling you were witnessing the invention of something new.

“TROY SCORES!” roared Bagman. “Ten zero to Ireland!”

Draco tore his omnioculars away from Krum and squinted at the crystal ball. It showed an Irish chaser pumping his fist in the air.

“Troy to Mullet! Mullet to Moran! Great Scott, they’re flawless!”

Ireland wove the quaffle across the pitch with ease. It wasn’t even that the Bulgarian chasers weren’t playing well — they just couldn’t lay a hand on the ball. Mullet and Moran found gaps for passes in the Bulgarians’ guard where Draco would have sworn none existed.

“TWENTY ZERO TO IRELAND! Five minutes in and they’re up two goals already, now, that’s what I call luck of the Irish, everyone! Classy bit of ball-handling on Moran’s part — OH? WHAT’S THIS? IT’S TROY COMING BACK FOR A REBOUND SHOT — NO, HE CAN’T — YES, HE CAN! IRELAND SCORES AGAIN!”

The Weasleys were on their feet. Draco applauded too, from his seat, because it had been damn near the neatest rebound he’d ever seen.

“This isn’t much of a contest,” shouted Hermione. “Why does anyone think Bulgaria’s going to win?”

“Because Krum’s only lost four matches in his life,” said Draco. “Now, most of those matches have been snitch-forward, so he’s been able to cut the lights before his chasers get mauled too badly—”

“But that won’t help him here!” shouted Ron, leaning across Hermione. She sat back with a nonplussed expression. “Cup games are always quaffle-forward, snitch won’t be out before halftime at least. They need a show. Plus, Lynch is on a Firebolt this game, instead of his old Comet.”

“So? Krum disemboweled Mustafa in the semifinal, and he was on a Firebolt Two.”

“Mustafa? C’mon! In Mustafa’s dreams is he pulling some of the moves on Lynch! Besides, he’s hungry for it. Krum’s old news. It’s regicide, mate, he’s coming for the crown.”

“‘Hungry for it,’ are you joking? Look at him fly. Lynch will be prying the crown off his worm-eaten skull.”

Hermione, trapped uncomprehending between them, rolled her eyes and turned around to say something to Ginny, but Ginny was busy screaming at one of the chasers to pass.

The Bulgarian beaters managed to scatter the next Irish formation, and Bulgaria took possession for the first time in the game. “DIMITROV TO LEVSKI, intercepted by MORAN, Moran had a great semifinal, sure she’s hoping to carry that energy into today’s match, MORAN TO TROY, and — say, what’s Krum doing?”

Krum had entered the fray. Bent gracefully over his broomstick, steering with one hand, he was flanking Moran, who was swinging her arm ineffectually to shoo him away. This sandwiched Moran between Krum and Dimitrov, her guard, leaving Mullet unable to pass except to the double-guarded Troy. Moran leaned off her broomstick, shouting something angrily at Krum.

“Looks like a Scotch Pincer,” said Bagman doubtfully, “although to do it with the seeker is pretty unorthodox — not sure I’ve ever seen that before — but if there’s one thing about Krum, it’s that he’s always up to something… WAIT — look out look out LOOK OUT!”

Krum shot back, braking hard, and left Moran’s side free — she turned around, surprised, to see where he had gone — and a bludger crashed into her face. Krum had been obscuring Volkov’s approach on her left side.

Moran spun clumsily through the air, clutching her face. It was hard to see what happened, but when she pulled away one of her hands, it was dark red. Hermione cried out and grabbed Draco’s arm. He was so sickly fascinated that he didn’t even complain of her nails digging into his wrist.

“TIME OUT! That’s a broken nose if I’ve ever seen one, and I have seen one,” said Bagman, with jolly sympathy. “Mediwizards coming out… of course, they’ll have her nose fixed in a heartbeat, but if she’s got an eye injury, her game is toast… that was very nasty, head injuries at this level of play are incredibly rare…”

Hermione had found a reason to be invested in the game: she was screaming herself hoarse for a penalty. Several of the words she used he knew for a fact to be verboten in the Granger household; he grinned at her.

“Starting to enjoy yourself, Granger?”

“No! That wasn’t fun! It was sneaky and duplicitous and reprehensible and wrong—”

“Keep going, maybe you can synonym them to death—”

“And Krum should be pulled out!” The holy flames of justice were burning in her cheeks. It was quite something. “She could have lost an eye!”

“That’s what beaters are there for!” called Ron. “Anyway, she’s been running a train through Zograf, they had to do something about her!”

“They didn’t have to pummel her!” she said, sounding genuinely upset. Draco elbowed her.

“She’s alright, look. They got her some health potion, and she’s back in the air. She’s probably cross she didn’t get to score.”

“TWO PENALTIES FOR IRELAND,” bellowed Bagman. “Ooh, Volkov and Vulchanov have landed — take it from me, boys, arguing with the ref is never a good idea… that’s right, back up you go, and take a scolding for your trouble! Ireland’s conferring over who’ll take the penalty shot… looks like it’s Troy, champion of the midfield punt, best arm on the pitch, maybe not my choice for a penalty though, I think you want Mullet’s backspin in a shootout with the keeper — oh, well, doesn’t matter — HE SCORES! And the next…”

Draco’s attention drifted, searching for Krum. He found him floating near the top of the stands, surveilling the violent skirmish beneath him with a blank expression. One of the Irish beaters noticed him, too.

But Krum saw the bludger coming, turned, and swept in an astonishingly slow bank towards the ground; the bludger, as bludgers tended to do, locked onto his tail and followed him. He arced a beautiful helix across centerfield, almost dragging the bludger along, and then flicked into a dive so sharp it couldn’t follow, sending it hurtling straight into the back of the beater who’d hit it at him.

Quigley, the beater, toppled forward and almost fell off his broom. The Bulgarian stands thundered in laughter and cheers.

“Did you see that?” Harry was jumping. “Did you see that? He’s the seeker, but he plays—”

“And he’s not even trying,” said Ron. “Look at him, he’s bloody bored. Bet he hasn’t even broken a sweat.”

“I still think they should card him,” said Hermione fiercely.

The Irish were up sixteen and in possession at the start of the third quarter. The clock drove Bulgaria to take more risks. Levski floated a soft pass high from midfield that landed only because it crossed Moran’s blind side. Dimitrov shot a characteristic overhand whirling through Moran’s legs, blurry with topspin, and Ivanova caught it, raced it twenty yards downfield, feinted, and flipped it back to Dimitrov.

Against anyone else, they would have taken the shot by now, but Ireland’s keeper, Ryan, had arms like a baboon, and the only way he ever missed a shot was when he got psyched out; the Bulgarians had learned to toy with him first, winding him up for minutes on end, until he did something stupid, like try to dart out and take possession.

No such luck, this time. Ryan sat on his line like he meant to die there, stone-faced, while Dimitrov and Ivanova traded a flurry of taunting, lightning-quick passes practically in front of his face. The Irish chasers were caught in a battle with the Bulgarian beaters, who were slicing the bludgers back and forth with the Irish beaters as if it were a game of tennis, with Mullet and Troy trapped in the service boxes.

“Come on, Ryan,” said Ron desperately, “stay put…”

“Why’s everyone so quiet?” said Hermione, not quietly at all.

“If they get this point, the snitch will break the tie,” breathed Ginny. “Bet you anything if that quaffle goes in, Krum’s gonna do something wicked.”

Dimitrov sent a hard, fast topspin pass, the kind that whistled, into Ivanova’s left hand, and she feigned a shot on the goalhoop. Ryan twitched toward her, but didn’t break his line. Then she passed it underhand to Dimitrov, and he surged forward with unmistakable intent, and Ryan, seeing it, surged towards him with arms outstretched, but at the last moment Dimitrov punched the quaffle backward and Ivanova caught it from the corner of the goalie box, and there was a collective gasp as Ryan scrambled to get back to center as she lined up a shot for the nearest goal, but Ryan was fast, and he got there, skating into place in front of the leftmost hoop, and she dropped her arm and tossed it lightly in what Bagman identified, with impatience, as yet another underhand pass — until it slotted through the right goal-hoop.

Roars, cheers, and a host of Bulgarian yelling took several minutes to calm down. Fred and George were clinging to their seats with white knuckles.

“WHAT A POINT! 170-20 to Ireland, and that’s Ivanova and Dimitrov, from the same town if you can believe it, used to play together on their school team, and don’t they just show it, with that beautiful assist — they were setting up that goal four passes back, and with not a word to each other either, that’s real synchrony — WHAT’S HE DOING?”

Krum had taken a dive. Lynch followed right on his tail, so close they would have felt each other’s breathing if not for the wind that ripped back their robes. Hermione’s nails drove so deep into Draco’s arm they would soon fuse to it. Straight to the ground, they were jostling each other so hard that they started to bend the line of their dive, canting to the left in a perpetual spin, a deadly pas de deux. If it was a feint, it was a terrible one, because they were locked too close together to pull out. Any attempt to pull up might break their necks, but so would hitting the ground.

“Krum’s on it,” said Bagman, “but Lynch isn’t letting up… it’s either man’s game… oh! Oh, watch out for… they’d really better pull— OOH!”

A bludger crunched into Krum’s shoulder and sent both seekers whirling. Lynch was not unhurt, either: the momentum hurled him into the stands, narrowly avoiding a collision with a very excited group of fans. Krum swerved hard, clutching something in his neck, but steered back into his line. The crystal ball zoomed into his face: it was set and rigid with pain.

“I think the mediwizards are calling for him to land,” said Bagman nervously, “and I don’t blame him, that shoulder really doesn’t look right… oh, but there he goes again, right back into the dive! It’s Krum, all Krum, if he can just keep it together—”

Another bludger careened at Krum: he flipped under his broomstick and dodged it. The other beater smacked it right back at him, and but he was untouchable: another spin swept him effortlessly out of its path. His right hand spasmed where he cradled it to his chest, but steering with his knees, he reached out his left instead. Flecks of blood and sweat decorated his furrowed brow.

“No, no, no,” Fred moaned.

“Yes!” shouted Harry, his Ireland rosette forgotten. He was hanging off the railing. “He’s going to make it! He’s going to win anyway!”

But while the stadium had been absorbed in Krum’s two-on-one with the Irish beaters, the Irish chasers had repossessed the quaffle, and were descending on Zograf in a deadly arrow formation. Everyone had forgotten the other side of the game. Someone must have prodded Bagman about it, because he roared without preamble: “GREAT SCOTT! BUT IT’S MORAN TO MULLET, MULLET TO TROY, TROY TO MULLET, who takes it past Dimitrov, and sends it straight Tr— TO MORAN??”

It was the wrong pass. An amateur could have said so. Troy was in position for an overhand to the keeper’s left hoop, his Achilles’ heel, whereas Moran was floating out by the corner, and still had a bad eye, besides. But the quaffle dropped into her outstretched hands, and Mullet pulled back, driving hard into Levski, her guard. Moran took the shot.

But she couldn’t beat the angle. The quaffle sailed parallel to the end line, even curving out slightly away from the hoop. George wheezed like he’d been punched. Krum, who had slowed to watch the exchange, turned away and plunged back into his dive.

“That’s it,” said Ron, stunned. “Mullet just lost them the World Cup.”

Krum and Lynch had sunk into another racing dive, but Krum was so far ahead it might as well have been miles, his hand outstretched, his robes a bloody flag upon the wind.

But Moran’s shot hadn’t stopped moving. It slowed in midair, and Draco realized that what everyone had mistaken for a weak, slow shot was actually an incredible amount of backspin. And so he was the first one on his feet when the quaffle — unknown to Zograf, who was already cheering for Krum — bent back towards the goalpost.

It knocked against the side, spun for a heartrending second on the rim, and tipped through.

Krum lunged.

There was a moment, Draco thought, where exceptionally good quidditch trespassed into real aesthetic beauty. In the last moment of the Cup, Krum crossed that precipice. He had both hands free of the broom, hanging in midair like the descending divine in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. The snitch sat on the tip of his finger.

Then it didn’t, and the game was over.

The noise was so great Draco’s ears went deaf for a moment, and when they came back, the stands were still shuddering with aftershocks. An actual earthquake could not have drawn the audience’s attention away from the pitch, where Ireland had cast off their broomsticks and thronged together in a green knot of teary bellowing, lifting Moran atop their shoulders; the leprechauns stormed the field, pumping out shamrock after shamrock of fireworks. “IRELAND WINS!” roared Bagman. “IT’S IRELAND, 180-170, KRUM GETS THE SNITCH — BUT IRELAND WINS THE WORLD CUP!”

Another wave of cheering broke out. Harry toppled over the railing, and Ron had to reel him back by his shirt.

“What did he catch the snitch for?” he bellowed. “He sealed the game for Ireland! If he’d waited for Dimitrov to score again, he would’ve won!”

“Or Ireland could’ve got its lead back and thrashed them!” Harry shouted. “Or Lynch could’ve snatched it! He knew he had to act fast!”

“And think of it from his perspective,” added Draco. “Krum’s barely gotten started. He’s got at least ten more Cups in his career, and he’s sure to win some of them; but now, even if he doesn’t, he’ll always be the youngest seeker to ever catch the snitch in a World Cup Final.”

“He was very brave,” Hermione said softly. Krum had landed apart from his teammates and shrugged off the plying fingers of mediwizards, who were trying to see to his arm. “I think he dislocated his arm.”

“If he didn’t break his collarbone,” said Draco, faintly impressed. After some arguing, Krum allowed the mediwizards to pop his arm back in, but refused the healing potion that would have relieved him of pain.

The Irish players, meanwhile, were dancing a reel under a shower of gold coins and green streamers. Stovepipe hats and paper shamrocks showered down from the stands, and in a fit of spirit, Ron ripped his own off his head and tossed it, too. The orchestra kicked up, and the Irish team leapt on their brooms to lead a rendition of “Come Out, Ye Black and Tans,” in which no one sang louder than the soundly non-Irish Fred and George Weasley, who had formed a can-can line with Bill and Ginny in the back of the box.

A podium was hastily assembled by Ministry aides, and one by one, the Bulgarians clambered onto the second-place plinth. Krum, standing last in line, was in a bad way. He was holding his shoulder as if to keep the bones still, and the crest of what must have been a massive bruise had sprouted up his neck. He still clutched the Snitch. Draco noticed that he seemed much less coordinated on the ground. He had round shoulders and had a shambling gait. But when Bagman called his name, the whole stadium answered with roaring approval, green or red or neither.

He tapped Hermione’s hand, politely, and with a gasp she unearthed her nails from his wrist.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize! Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he lied. She fussed at his arm, the whole celebration forgotten, which was honestly a very nice feeling; there was a certain warmth to being the center of anyone’s attention, especially when the rest of the world was deaf and blind to it. He flexed his fingers while she rubbed at the dark indents in his wrist, massaging the blood back into the muscles. It might’ve felt good, if his flesh hadn’t been still numb from Granger’s Tourniquet. “I hardly noticed.”

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-fun fact: the bulgarian national anthem

goes so much harder than it needs to that i became a bulgarian patriot listening to it

-Official Author’s Note on the Bulgarian language, airing it out here, because it becomes a plot point later: Bulgarian is the national language of Bulgaria, so Krum speaks it, but Durmstrang supposedly exists in the far north of eastern Europe, and Bulgaria — in case you’re a geographically challenged individual like myself, who did not realize this the first time I read the books — shares a border with Greece. In related problems, the block of countries that Durmstrang serves includes huge parts of the (as of 3 years ago, in this universe) post-Soviet bloc — also implies some fascinating wizard politics must have gone down during the Soviet Era, considering Koldovstoretz is the “Russian school,” so, at what point did the block split? Did the Soviet Union’s magical counterpart try to exert some sort of control over the movement of Soviet wizards, like the Soviets did? Did Durmstrang just start accepting post-Soviet states again three years ago? What the hell happened to it during the invasion of Poland? Was everyone just fine with German students continuing to attend, even when All That Shit was going on in Europe?

-None of this matters to Lionheart, but I’ve been thinking about it, because it relates to what language Durmstrang uses. Because “eastern Europe” is a block that covers a huge number of different languages, none of which really predominate each other, and many of which are not mutually intelligible. (Sidebar: this is part of the Doylist reason that purebloods in Wizarding Europe take French as a mandatory second language — it solves this problem for Beauxbatons.) I guess you could just say it’s the native language of the country where the school resides, which means Durmstrang is probably taught in… Norwegian? Swedish? At any rate, it’s probably not taught in Bulgarian if the school’s in Scandinavia, so Krum has to be trilingual at least just in order to communicate at the basic level we read in the books. No wonder he has trouble with pronunciation. We don’t even know that he’s taught English before he comes to Hogwarts, and Hogwarts doesn’t provide translators for any of the tasks. Kind of starts to make you wonder about the motivations of the administrators, doesn’t it.

-long-winded way of saying I’m putting Durmstrang in Norway and sticking to it. In fairness, I don’t think it’s too far to assume there might be some magical fix to the language barrier, like a Babel fish type of situation, or possibly an enchantment of mutual intelligibility on the castle itself. It’s Harry Potter worldbuilding. “Magic does what the author (me) wants it to do” is like, a rule of physics.

-the song the veela dance to is Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture, from Romeo and Juliet, starting at 14:18.

and, if you haven’t listened to it, it damn near perfectly captures the feeling of watching a heartbreakingly beautiful creature that may or may not try to kill you.

-UP NEXT: Slytherin guest appearances; a content warning, for a few things you’ll recognize, as well as a few you won’t. It’s called “The Herald.”

-All the love in the world to all readers, and bonus for all those who have already commented on chaps 31-33. the GOATS of commenting are in my comments section, it’s really unbelievable. cheers!

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