Meet the Team
Hermione arrived in the stadium and immediately covered her ears with her hands. There was a loud, deep bell ringing, and several higher pitched ones, over and over again, so loud that it felt like it the deeper bell vibrated through her flesh. In a flash, her headache was back.
They were met immediately by a large, man with dark hair streaked with grey, and the strong figure and bearing of someone who had spent a lifetime doing sport.
“Iskra! There has been a breach at the north-ward!”
“Yes, yes, Vasil, I know,” Iskra huffed, as she hurried away from the fireplace at something just under a run. Hermione found she had to awkwardly half walk/half jog to keep up with her, and envied the older witch for how she made it look dignified and unhurried. “The inner ward wasn’t triggered, though. Is anyone still visible?”
“No, and no,” he said. “But Iskra – the team arrives in an hour for the first practice. I need to know it’s safe.”
“Yes, yes, Vasil. I’m heading to check it.”
Iskra led them outside, to where an obvious scorch mark was present on the cobblestones surrounding the stadium. She pulled out her wand and began muttering soundlessly, and Hermione watched the ward line light up in blue fire, rearing back. It formed what looked rather like a giant cake-dome around the stadium – a straight sided cylinder, capped with a half-sphere. Looking at how high the wards passed above the stadium to allow for Quidditch, Hermione could see why Iskra had chosen the more geometrically difficult shape. A half-sphere alone would need to have a base that would take up most of the city to get enough height! Iskra muttered again, and the ward-alarms quieted, finally. She kept muttering, and the wards flared in front of her in colours as Iskra watched intently, and Hermione and Vasil watched without understanding.
“It looks like it wasn’t a simple breach,” Iskra said, and Hermione could hear worry in her voice. “Someone was probing and trying to decipher them, not just attacking them, or trying to enter.”
“What does that mean?” Vasil demanded.
“It means it was deliberate, and done by someone with enough wardbreaking experience to be trying to probe for weaknesses, not just blindly attack. I see two signatures here, too, which may mean there’s a larger group working on it.”
“Then I should call the aurors! What if they come back and try again?”
“Oh, we don’t need to worry about those particular people for a while.” Iskra grinned viciously, showing plenty of teeth and pointing at the scorch mark, which, when you peered at it, did indeed appear to be two marks just barely touching. “Whoever did it triggered one of my backlash curses. They should have a nasty case of magical exhaustion for the next week or so. I put a backlash on my first set of wards, so that anyone who tests them, deliberately or “accidentally” has no excuse to claim they weren’t warned. The wards hold, as they were intended to, and the team knows to arrive by floo. I don’t think we need aurors, yet, but I will update the wards and perhaps add a trap-layer.”
“Are you certain no one made it further, to the inner wards?” Vasil fussed.
“Are you questioning my skills as a wardcrafter, Vasil?” Iskra asked, voice suddenly icy.
Vasil’s face went suddenly pale. “Of course not, Gospazha Dobrenova!”
“I am relieved to hear that, Gospadin Daskalov,” Iskra replied, staring him down. “I’ll update the inner wards with a better identification feature, too, I think. It concerns me that a group was trying to breach them right before your first team practice.”
“Thank you, Gosprazha Dobrenova.”
Iskra turned, seeing Hermione watching, and beckoned her closer.
“Gospardin Daskalov, this is Ioana Petrova, my assistant for the summer. Gospazha Petrova, this is the manager of the Bulgarian National Quidditch team, Vasil Daskalov.”
Vasil Daskalov held out his hand and Hermione shook it. “Welcome to the team, Gosprazha Petrova,” he said.
“Thank you, Gospardin Daskalov,” Hermione replied. “Thank you for allowing me to assist the team this summer.”
He laughed, “No one says no to Gosprazha Dobrenova. I’m merely glad that she was able to find an assistant after Violeta came down with spattergroit. She has little patience for “brainless athletes”, so I am glad she found someone to mutter with, so she won’t take it out on my poor team.”
“You make me sound like an ogre, Vasil,” Iskra chided. “I am sure I’ll do quite well with Ioana. Vasil – if you could take her and get her team robes, I’ll begin working on the wards. I’ll add a few more features, now that I have someone to help me cast. By the time you return her, hopefully I’ll have some equations for her to work on.”
“As you wish, Gosprazha Dobrenova,” he said. “So, you believe it is safe for the team to begin today?”
“Yes, certainly. You know I wouldn’t permit anything else.”
///
“Ioana? Ioana?” Hermione was bent over her arithmancy, incredibly frustrated. It wasn’t balancing. Ah! There! She’d made a transcription error. She’d mistook 6θt for 60t...
“Ioana!” Wait, was that supposed to be a Ѳ? Nope, definitely a θ. Throwing in Cyrillic letters in her arithmancy in addition to the normal Greek was certainly making things interesting, and she’d not quite figured out the specifics of Iskra’s handwriting yet. She erased the last few lines with her wand, and rewrote them quickly, nodding with satisfaction as the solution flashed silver, ignoring that some parts of the parchment were becoming thin enough to see through due to repeated erasing. She started to write the next section of the proof.
“Ioana!”
“Almost got it – I’m busy,” she muttered, scrawling down the next few lines, taking joy in the way that her equals signs lined up neatly on the paper as she progressed downwards, and the equation balanced again. Lovely.
“Her-my-own ?!” Ah, yes! And she could factor here again, and simplify and then the equation would...
“Hermione!” someone hissed. “Look up, please,” he said, his low, amused voice near her head as he touched her shoulder. Hermione startled, and turned her head backwards to see who was interrupting her, bent over her and reading her work.
“Oh! Viktor!” Hermione said. “I’m sorry – did you need something?”
“I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last few minutes,” he said. “You’ve almost missed lunch, and my aunt sent me to fetch you.”
“I’m sorry – this equation just refused to balance, and I’ve been redoing it for the last while. First, I’d missed Fermat’s factorization, and when I finally realized I should use that, nothing would balance, so I tried a few more theories, before finally realizing I’d mistook a theta for a zero in the second line and-”. Viktor was standing and watching her babble with a polite smile, and Hermione forced herself to shut her mouth.
“Ioana-” Viktor said. “You’ve been doing arithmancy for the past four hours. We’re safe enough here, and my aunt’s arithmancy can wait, you need to eat before the team eats it all. Mora knows that her warding is comprehensive, without whatever updates she’s decided to add in her paranoia. And I’m sure, knowing my aunt’s handwriting, that half of your issues were from trying to decipher her writing – she always chooses the most confusing variables.” He pointed at her text. “Before you miss it, that there on the next equation is a gamma, not a lambda, even though it looks like one.” He grabbed her quill and quickly wrote over it, making the letter more clear.
Hermione stood up, suddenly realizing that her back and her shoulders ached from way too long bent over parchment. “Oh! Thank you. I lost track of time.” Her stomach suddenly growled.
“I can see that,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t think you even noticed the practice going on right over your head. You’re worse than my aunt.” Viktor was more or less correct. She’d noticed red-and-black-robed Quidditch players flying around, when she’d heard a particularly loud shout, but she certainly hadn’t noticed when they’d started, or when they’d stopped.
Viktor gestured and led her through the team lounge and into the dining room, where mostly destroyed piles of food. A few people lounged around, finishing the last of their plates. Everyone was dressed in vaguely-wizarding athletic clothing – loose white shirts, and tight-bottomed trousers that looked like something you might see worn by horse riders in an old painting, and there were bright red team robes, similar to the ones she now wore, draped on hooks on the wall.Bulgarians were obviously less traditional than the British, who seemed to consider trousers to be a strictly-muggle invention.
Hermione felt far more comfortable in her own team robes than she would have in her Muggle trousers. On the back of her robes was “Petrova” in large black letters. On the left breast of the robes was an embroidered gold lion rampante wearing a crown that moved and pawed the ground as if it was roaring, beside “1994” in vertical text. The lion and year was encircled by a dragon-like snake, with “Bulgarian National Quidditch Team” in ornate Cyrillic letters arched above it. Below the crest, Gospardin Daskalov had charmed it to read:
Team Assistant
Ioana Petrova
Uniforms always made Hermione feel more comfortable. Between the uniforms of primary school and Hogwarts, and living in two worlds, she’d never developed a sense for what was comfortable and appropriate. Having a uniform with her NAME on it made her feel like she really belonged.
“So, what are you doing here, anyways?” Hermione asked Viktor as he handed her a plate, and she began selecting food from the table. “Did you come to visit your aunt?”
She had to admit, it was... nice... to see him, especially so soon after yesterday. He hadn’t mentioned her embarrassing vomitting the day before, and Hermione felt grateful. Ron would have teased her mercilessly for it, for days. He hadn’t even, really, made fun of how caught up she had been in her arithmancy! And it was a huge relief to have a friendly face beside her the first time she was around the team. Hermione did not have a good track record with meeting Quidditch players, most of the people on the Gryffindor team considered her an unbelievably uptight swot.
“Obviously I am here to save my aunt’s new assistant from death by arithmancy on her first day,” Viktor said, smiling as he snagged some sort of a pastry from the table.
“The little assistant doesn’t know who the great Viktor Krumov is?” one of the wizards exclaimed, wandering over to grab seconds, and elbowing Viktor in the ribs, rather harshly. He was maybe in his late-twenties, with the wide shoulders and strong arms of a beater.
“Maybe she just can’t recognize him with his shirt on and not scowling,” the only other witch in the room, a young woman in her early 20s piped up from one of the tables.
“I’m sorry, I’m not from Bulgaria,” Hermione said, suddenly feeling out of step. “Should I know him?”
The whole room broke out into incredulous laughter, and Viktor scowled. Hermione felt her face go red with the kind of mortification only a teenager in a new place, being laughed at by strangers, could feel.
“Should you know him?” the beater repeated, incredulous. “Oh, no, he’s just the top ranked seeker in the world, despite only being 17.”
Oh Merlin. Ron and Seamus had been gossiping about some rock-star of a seeker right before exams when Hermione had gone over to force Ron back to studying for History of Magic... They’d sounded besotted and worshipful, and Oliver Wood had piped up too, asking her how even Hermione could not know of the greatest seeker of the century. That was Viktor? Viktor, who chatted with her about arithmancy?!
“Started playing Quidditch professionally at 16, while still studying at Durmstrang,” the witch put in. “And, of course, he’s one of the Krumovs.”
What had Hermione said about Quidditch, and why hadn’t Iskra stopped her while she made a fool of herself over it? She thought she’d finally met a wizard who DIDN’T think Quidditch was more important that studying, and here Viktor was, missing out on his final years of school to play the stupid game!
“The Vratsa Vultures haven’t lost a game since he became seeker,” a slender young wizard called out from across the room.
“There’s a merchandise deal out for him for the World Cup, he’ll be rich, win or lose, not that he needs the money,” the beater continued. “No one wanted my face on a banner, but apparently everyone wants young Viktor’s scowling face. He’ll have his face on every teenage witch and wizard’s wall by the end of the summer.”
Hermione stole a glance between the weathered beater, and Viktor, who was indeed scowling, and silently agreed she’d rather have Viktor’s face on her wall, scowling or not.
“He’s going to singlehandedly win Bulgaria the world cup,” the younger wizard said. “ ‘Did you come to visit your aunt?’ ” he mocked. “More like, Gospazha Dobrenova graciously conceded to ward the rest of the Bulgarian team, to keep her darling nephew safe.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow Quidditch,” Hermione said in her most quelling voice. Sadly, she thought it probably worked better on her classmates than on thirty year old wizards. Merlin! She’d reread Harry’s copy of Quidditch Through the Ages on the train, claiming she’d exhausted all of her own books, to try to make up for her years of ignoring the sport, only to expose herself as completely ignorant about current standings in front of the whole team.
Top ranked seeker in the world? She silently kissed goodbye to yesterday’s dreamy crush. Not only was she most definitely NOT interested in a Quidditch player, or someone famous, there was zero chance he’d be interested in her, no matter how kind he’d been to her for his aunt’s sake.
“Ignore these idiots, Ioana,” Viktor said. “They just can’t understand that some witches have more in their brains than just Quidditch.” Hermione smiled at him, grateful for the rescue. He was just so... kind, and it really wasn’t helping her put up the emotional walls she needed to. But Godric, it would be SO embarrassing if the team realized she had a crush!
“Don’t mind them,” another man, who’d been silent, agreed. “Radimir’s still feeling sore that the Vratsa Vultures beat the Sofia Zmei every game since Viktor joined, and Mora knows that Polina and Emil couldn’t find a job if it wasn’t for Quidditch, they couldn’t solve an arithmantic equation if given a week and a heap of textbooks.”
“Hey!” the witch (Polina?) protested. “I took artithmancy!”
“Yes, but did you pass it?” the wizard shot back. Polina threw her fork, which hit him on the side of the head.
“Ow!”
“It’s good to see our new wardcrafter will have her mind thoroughly on her work,” another, slightly older man broke in, standing and walking to where Hermione still stood awkwardly with her half full plate in hand. “And it does Viktor’s ego well to know not every pretty young witch in the world is mooning over him. Welcome to the Bulgarian National Quidditch team – Ioana, was it? I’m Kosta Vulchanov, a Beater, and the team captain.” He held out his hand, and Hermione juggled cutlery and plate to reach her hand out, and shake it. He had a nice, firm grip, strong, but was not the kind of man who’d try to strangle your hand, and Hermione liked him for it.
“This is Ioana Denisova Petrova,” Viktor said. “I understand from my aunt and cousin that she’s top of her class at Hogwarts. She’s got something unpronounceably British for a name, but my aunt said if she’s to be on the Bulgarian team, she needs a real name, so we’ll call her Ioana. I figure that if they’re going to Anglicize my name every time I’m in the papers, the least we can do is Bulgarianize the name of our British witch. She doesn’t follow quidditch, but who can blame her, with what the English team looks like this year?” Everyone laughed.
“Actually, my first name’s Greek,” Hermione objected automatically.
“That’s worse!” Polina protested. “No, I’ll stick with Ioana. It’s bad enough I’ll have to deal with the British when we get to England, I’ll stick to sensible Bulgarian while I can.”
“That’s our chaser, Polina Ivanova,” Kosta said, and the witch waved.. He went around the room, gesturing at people in turn, who waved. “That old grump in the corner is Asen Zograf, the Keeper. Radimir Volkov is a loudmouth, and the other Beater. Emil Dimitrov is the jealous one, who I can confirm, having seen his school records, definitely did not pass arithmancy, is also a chaser, and so is our diplomat, Stoyan Levski,” he gestured to the man who’d told Hermione to ignore the teasing, “And of course, you know our resident celebrity, Viktor Krumov.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Hermione said. She was a Gryffindor, and she would rise above the embarrassment of having a whole Quidditch team realize she knew nothing about Quidditch stats, and she would NOT go running to hide in the loo.
“You’re at Hogwarts, right?” Emil said.
“Yes,” Hermione said.
“Do you know Harry Potter then, that British baby that killed your last Dark Lord?” Polina asked.
Oh, how to answer that question. Would it sound like she was bragging if she said, “oh yeah, he’s my best friend?”, especially after she’d just admitted to not knowing “the top ranked seeker in the world?”. And besides, Iskra had been offering her the opportunity to establish an identity in Bulgaria, if things went wrong back home. Tying the British wards-assistant too closely to the muggleborn friend of Harry Potter was probably a good way to destroy her “secret identity” in less than a day. And beyond that, honestly, she was so tired of her whole life being defined by her relationship with Harry, best friend or not.
“Yes, he’s at Hogwarts. It’s a big school,” was what Hermione settled on.
“Ah, yes, Hogwarts sorts students into houses, doesn’t it?” Stoyan said. “I’m guessing you’re that brainy one, what’s it called?”
“Ravenclaw,” Hermione supplied. She didn’t correct his assumption of her house.
“Right. And which house is the slayer-of-dark-wizards, Harry Potter in?”
“Gryffindor, home of the brave,” Hermione said. “It’s a good fit for him.” Hermione smiled a bit, thinking of Harry. Well, thinking of Harry, and trolls, Devil’s Snare, cerberuses, hippogriffs, and the dangers of DADA professors.
Sometimes, on Hermione’s worst days, she wished that she really HAD been sorted into Ravenclaw, which was the second of the three options that the Sorting Hat had offered her. The hat had called it the “easy” option for her, the unchallenging one, and Hermione, never one to settle for easy, had chosen Gryffindor.
She doubted she’d be friends with Harry or Ron if she was a Ravenclaw, but during the several months last year when they’d been pouting and ignoring her over that stupid broom, she’d certainly had time to consider if that friendship would have been an acceptable loss. Hermione took a bit of private, vindictive pleasure at denying them as friends this time, even if they’d never know she had done it. And then she felt immediately guilty. It wasn’t like enough people could stand to be around her that Hermione could afford to repudiate her best friends over a misunderstanding.
Kosta clapped his hands together, drawing the attention of the room. “Now, team – I think you’ve rested enough. Back to the strategy room to digest lunch, and then another few hours of teamwork practice this afternoon to get this team working together. Ioana – pleasure to meet you, and welcome to the team.”
Kosta filed out, followed by the rest of the team who dropped plates and cutlery, sometimes with a groan or a grumble, but grabbed their robes and followed him nevertheless, looking rather like a flock of over-athletic red ducklings as they trailed him out the door and down the corridor.
Hermione sat at a table, and picked at her food, appetite gone with her bitter disappointment.
Forget about anything romantic, it would have been nice just to have someone her age to talk to here. Someone who wouldn’t laugh at her for reading, or for pouring over arithmancy and runes. Someone who understood that Quidditch was just a sport, and there was a world of magic to learn beyond it, and far more interesting things. She’d let her imagination run wild and invented someone who wasn’t real. Viktor was polite, and kind, and fit, but he was also 17, and the sort of boy who’d ignore school for on Quidditch before graduating. What would Hermione have in common with someone like that?
It was going to be a long summer.