Legal Flexibility
Hermione’s stomach hurt from laughing by the time they were summoned from the water by a loud whistle.
Daskalov, the team manager, was waiting further up the beach, arms spread dramatically as he gestured to the food spread out behind him on an outrageously long, incongruously-white-tableclothed table.
“Eat!” he ordered, a sonorous charm causing his voice to boom, and like, well, a flock of hungry professional Quidditch players, the group descended upon the table.
Hermione held back a little, not wanting to fight for her dinner, but there was plenty left by the time she got there and she loaded a tray – tarator soup, a new favourite, a cold, creamy soup like watery tsatsiki; shopska salad; chicken shischeta, meat on a skewer with mushrooms; and curious little deep fried fish that Polina said were “tsatsa” and proceeded to pile on Hermione’s plate.
“Here -” Polina said, passing Hermione a cold brown bottle. Hermione took it reflexively, then scowled at the label.
“This has alcohol, Polina! You can’t give me that, I’m underage!” Hermione protested.
“It’s just beer,” Polina said. “You’re hardly going to get drunk on a bottle of beer with your dinner.”
“It’s the principle of the thing!” Hermione huffed, putting the beer back. “You shouldn’t give alcohol to people who are underaged.”
Polina rolled her eyes expressively, but poured her a glass of something from a pitcher of filled with some sort of clear pink-orange liquid.
“What’s this?” Hermione asked, sniffing it suspiciously. It didn’t smell like alcohol.
“Don’t worry, little English child, it’s just kompot, no alcohol at all, it’s a fruit drink. It’s too hot to be on the beach without something to drink.”
Hermione sipped it – it was good. It tasted like peaches and cherries and a touch of honey, refreshingly cool enough that she found herself draining the glass without even realizing it, and pouring herself a second glass.
“Come now, I think Viktor and Emil have saved us seats.”
They had, indeed. Emil was casually sitting under the umbrella that he’d conjured for Polina, and Viktor had conjured or transfigured another beach umbrella and a picnic blanket that put Emil’s to shame. The umbrella was red and black, with charmed golden zmei playfully chasing each other around the edge. Charming a transfigured item was hugely impressive work – way beyond NEWT standard, and Hermione found herself a bit sad that Viktor was wasting himself on Quidditch. The blanket had a woven geometric pattern in patriotic red, white, and green, and everyone knew that transfiguring detailed woven fabric was notoriously difficult.
Hermione would not have presumed to assume he’d made it large enough to share on purpose, but as Polina lead her over, Viktor beamed, leapt to his feet, and gestured for her to sit under his umbrella, which was really quite polite of him.
“Ah! You found us!” Viktor said happily. The four of them chowed down on their dinners, ravenous, and near silence descended on the beach.
The food was, as usual excellent – fresh vegetables, dairy, and spiced meat. Hermione eyed her tsatsa suspiciously but finally – seeing Viktor demolish an entire plate of them – tried one, crunching on the tail suspiciously before eating the whole thing like the Bulgarians were. It was... surprisingly good. Salty and perfect for the beach. Viktor looked over at her plate, hopefully. “Are you going to eat all of those?” he asked, plaintively. Honestly, he was worse than Ron! Still she sighed, snagging one last little fish, and pushed her plate over to him. He positively beamed.
“You are truly the kindest of witches,” he said as he took it, and Hermione felt red spread over her cheeks when their hands brushed and they both paused, just for a moment too long.
“Ioana!” Tsveta hollered, stomping over. “Have I not had enough burn wounds to treat today? Where’s your sun-charm?”
Hermione lifted fingers to her face and the back of her neck and wincing a bit. Her skin was hot, tender when she touched it. Oh. Some of that heat she’d been feeling was NOT just proximity to Viktor.
“Oh – I’m burning, aren’t I?” Hermione said, feeling quite dumb. She’d been having so much fun she hadn’t even thought about her pale English complexion.
“Yes, you silly witch! I know the young witches like to get a bit of colour, but you’re well on your way to having your skin match your swimsuit! Lovely and patriotic, I suppose, if you move the strap over a bit to show your white spots, and I transfigure your hair green, so you can truly look like the flag? You have a uniform for a reason!”
“Oh Merlin, I’ll look like a lobster tomorrow!” Hermione moaned. “I didn’t even think to bring sun cream!”
“Well, it’s too late now, but let’s not make it any worse than it needs to be. Cast your sun charm, and I’ll get you burn potion for it in a bit.”
“Sun charm?” Hermione asked, eagerly. She absolutely hated the gloppy feel of sun cream on her skin.
“Oh - muggleborn!” Polina interjected. “I should have thought. Sorry, Tsveta, Ioana – I should have shown you. Here!” she said, digging her wand out. “Watch! Reflectunt solis!” she cast, with an expressive downward flick of her wand that ended pointed at her leg. “Now, you try it.”
Hermione copied her with her own wand, and felt a curious shimmer over her skin as the spell settled. Mildly unpleasant, but far easier than trying to get sun cream everywhere without missing a spot.
“Just remember to recast every few hours.”
“I’d do it every hour, with your pale skin,” Tsveta interjected.
“Right, and after swimming, too,” Hermione agreed, in the tone of one who had heard that lecture more than once.
“After swimming?” Tsveta said. “Why after swimming? It’s not a potion!”
“Muggles use some sort of potion instead of a sun charm, don’t they?” Polina said.
Hermione nodded – then shook her head. “How do you know so much about Muggles, Polina?” she asked.
“Oh, my family’s in business,” she said airily. “You could make good money up until the last few years, bringing in muggle products from western Europe to the muggles, but you did have to know what they’d want! Cosmetics – and yes, the fancier sun creams - were quite lucrative. With the borders and trade opening up, we’re really having to pivot the business. Makes me glad to be playing Quidditch, honestly.”
“Isn’t that... illegal?” Hermione asked. “I mean, the statute of secrecy -”
Polina rolled her eyes. “Only if you’re caught.”
“That’s not how laws work!” Hermione protested, then watched with irritation as Polina, Viktor, and Tsveta traded patronizing smirks, and Tsveta finally conjured a beach towel and dropped down on it.
“I’m afraid it is in the wizarding world,” Polina said. “Surely you’ve noticed at school?”
Hermione flashed back to her hours of pouring over law books last year, for the sake of a certain hippogriff, and of how, with all legal avenues exhausted, it had ACTUALLY been saved and bit her tongue. It shouldn’t be like that! Laws were laws, not suggestions.
“So, Polina,” Tsveta said, very unsubtly changing the topic, “how is your burn doing?”
“Much better, thank you again, Healer.”
“Good, good, you’ll let me know if that changes. And Viktor, I see you’ve been working on your transfiguration?” she said, gesturing idly at the beach umbrella where the zmey continued to frolic.
“Oh, just practising a bit,” he said. “Final year exams this year, you know, and I won’t have much time this summer to study.”
“Oh, are you still in school?” Hermione asked eagerly. She’d thought he was playing for one of the Bulgarian teams.
Viktor nodded. “Yes, it’s my final year – I go to practices on the weekends, and in the evenings, and my schedule was arranged last year so I had one day a week off to go to the stadium, too, but usually, yes. My headmaster, Karkarov, is Bulgarian, and a huge Quidditch fan so he is very... accommodating.”
Polina wrinkled her nose. “I don’t miss him. He became headmaster in my final year at Durmstrang, but was the Dark Arts teacher before. He’s smarmy, and plays favourites, but the board finds him convenient.”
“Your headmaster taught Dark Arts?!” Hermione squeaked, horrified.
“Oh, they don’t teach Dark Arts at Hogwarts, do they?” Tsveta said. “It’s rather impractical, or at least it was when I was at Durmstrang, but you really do need to know about them. You see a surprising number of nasty curses as a healer.”
“Wouldn’t you see fewer if you just didn’t teach the Dark Arts?”
Viktor shook his head.“If you saw the contents of the average family library, you wouldn’t ask that question. You need to be taught to respect the Dark Arts, and it’s best to do it in a safe school environment.”
“Viktor! Emil! Polina! Get over here!” Kosta shouted, interrupting the conversation. He was standing next to the water, holding a broom, flanked by his two daughters, also holding brooms. “Enough lazing about on the beach – time to play!”
“Tsveta?” Polina begged, with puppy eyes.
Tsveta rolled her eyes. “Fine, Polina, but play gently!”
“Come on, Ioana,” Viktor cajoled. “Come join us! There’s spare brooms.”
Hermione laughed. “I’ll keep my feet firmly on the ground, thank you very much,” she said. She suspected even Stoyan’s five year old son would be a significantly better Quidditch player than she was. She wasn’t going to lose all the respect she’d worked for by showing them how horrible she was on a broom.
Viktor looked like he was about to argue, but Tsveta agreed, dangling a bottle of burn potion. “Cousin?” he suggested, and she shook her head. “I’m the healer, I need to be on the ground in case one of you does something even stupider than usual.”
Soon, Hermione found herself lounging on the beach, with Tsveta and Daria - Asen’s wife- ,slathered in an icky, mucous-like substance that Tsveta claimed was the best thing for sunburns, but that was like glue when sand touched it.
The team was playing some sort of bizarre Quidditch variant with twice as many players as normal, to include all the kids and partners (and even Daskalov!) who wanted to play, and an extra quaffle and bludger. It was chaos.
The rules seemed to be that none of the professionals could play their “normal” position, they’d replace the normal bludger with a kid’s set made of foam, and the snitch was about three times it’s normal size, and sluggish, with a kid acting as seeker for both teams. Teams were marked with outrageously decorated hats, in either yellow or blue. Loosing your hat also lost you the ability to play, and they watched as Emil and Stoyan duelled it out, trying to snatch each other’s hats and forgetting to play entirely.
Viktor was a beater, and Tsveta and Hermione had cackled as they watched him struggle not to drop the bat and go after the snitch that had decided to hang out at his feet, while the opposing team’s seeker was closer than his own seeker, but oblivious. A bludger had whizzed right by him, heading towards one of his chasers while he stared at the snitch, resisting the urge to dive for it.
Daria hummed appreciatively as she watched her husband – still in his swim trunks – dive to catch a quaffle, barely holding onto his hat, sweat on his skin shining in the setting sun.
“I don’t normally bother to come to games, but I think I would, if this was the uniform,” she said wickedly. Tsveta raised her glass in a mock toast while Hermione very carefully did not comment on that statement, her eyes flicking back to Viktor. This was certainly the most interesting Quidditch game she’d ever watched, and it wasn’t just because of the hilarious chaos of the hyper-competitive children playing.
A huge cheer went up as the seeker on the yellow hat team caught the snitch, raising it above her head like a trophy. She was seized by her father, Kosta, who had been playing on the blue team, and picked up and flown around like a victory dance, while the kids laughed and cheered. Daria stood up and threw out her wand, creating cheerful yellow smoke dragons that danced above their heads, which were echoed by some of the other adults.
Viktor grabbed the little girl from her father – “She’s MY seeker, not yours!” he yelled- hoisting her above his head before settling her down on the broom in front of him. They rocketed down the beach, chasing after a yellow smoke dragon while the girl whooped.
“He’s gone too far!” Hermione shouted. “Viktor, come back! You’re past the ward lines!”
But between the wind, the speed, and the waves, he didn’t seem to hear her, disappearing far into the distance as he rocketed down the coast and out of sight. Finally he returned, dipping the broom down in deep dives between the waves, holding his legs up so that the girl’s toes just brushed the water before rocketing up higher again, sometimes even spinning in a loop upside down before diving again. Hermione had her heart in her throat every time they did it but Kosta just watched with a grin until they finally came back, and Viktor handed the girl off to her own broom. Didn’t they know how dangerous this was? The girl couldn’t be more than 7! The other kids tried copying what Viktor had been doing on their own brooms, showing off their tricks, and Viktor and the rest of the players helped them, correcting their grip and their posture for their dives, and providing an admiring and encouraging audience.
Finally, the sun almost set, jubilant players returned to land.
But Hermione was not jubilant. She was fuming. She stormed over to Viktor and poked him in the chest.
“What were you THINKING?!” she demanded.
He looked at her confusedly, grin fading into his characteristic scowl. “About what?”
“You went way past the ward line!” Hermione shouted, stamping her foot and gesturing wildly into the distance, like he’d just flown. “We’re here because it’s not safe for people to go home, and you just flew way past everyone else. If something happened, I doubt anyone would have been able to get there in time to help.”
He patted her shoulder indulgently. “Ioana, don’t worry – I had my wand with me, and I was going so fast, I’d challenge anyone to catch me.”
Hermione was undeterred. “And you had a child with you! Did you not see Polina this morning – what if that had happened to her?!”
“It was fine!” he said, looking offended. “No one knows we’re here. It’s fine.”
Hermione heard an odd squealing noise in the distance, the tone going up and down repetitively and spun towards it. Was that a siren? It got louder. Yes, it was a siren, just with a different pitch than the ones back home in London. Oh no. She could see the lights reflecting in the distance in the rapidly darkening night. She swung to Viktor.
“Viktor, what have you done?!” she hissed.
“What?” he said, throwing up his arms.
“It’s a siren! Did someone see you?”
Polina, behind her, swore colourfully- something about Viktor engaging in sexual acts with his sister, a badger, and a mountain troll, Hermione translated primly. “Viktor, you idiot!”
Hermione watched in horror as the cars appeared, and suddenly squealed to a stop at the edge of the ward. The police stumbled out, looking confused, and were rapidly swarmed by the parasol-wielding Bulgarian aurors, while yet more police cars appeared behind them.
“Viktor, where did you go?! The Muggles must have seen you!” Polina practically yelled. “Those are their aurors! This is bad!”
“Seen me, well, what about the dragon?” he blustered.
“Even worse!” Hermione said.
“Well, I don’t see how it’s the yourjob to scold me. Neither of you are the team captain, you’re not the manager.”
“They’re going to arrest you!” Hermione said. “And you’ll deserve it! A bunch of people must have called it in, for this many police to show up. You just obliterated the Statute of Secrecy!”
Viktor scoffed. “And lose the World Cup? It’ll be fine. See, Vasilov there, with the purple parasol? He’s on the Obliviation Squad. We’ve got anti-photography wards on our brooms, so nobody will have a photo.”
“And whoever saw you?”
Hermione watched as more aurors apparated in on the ward lines, and were quickly sent off in groups down the coastline. There had to be at least thirty now.
“See – they’ve brought in a bigger team. It’ll get taken care of.”
“He’s a Krum,” Emil said from behind them. “Even if he wasn’t the best hope Bulgaria’s had at the World cup in a century, he could have flown loops in the centre of Sofia, and they’d cover it up without a word.”
Polina nodded, and Hermione’s jaw dropped.
“That’s horrible. Laws need to apply to everyone.”
Viktor shifted uncomfortable. “Anyway, what’s done is done. Maybe I acted a bit too rashly, but it’ll be fine. There’s lots of people to take care of it, and there won’t be any photos. Someone on this beach gets sighted a few times each summer, there's a whole procedure for it.”
“That is NOT the point!” Hermione huffed. “You can’t just go around breaking the Statute of Secrecy, Viktor!”
“Why not? It’s a bit time consuming to cover up, but really, this is nothing, compared to what will go on for the World Cup.”
“You are so irresponsible!” Hermione said, hair sparking with her rage. “It’s not “nothing!” Obliviation on Muggles can cause long term damage – there was a study done in Germany five years ago, and they found that 10% of Muggles never recover full cognition after Obliviation.”
“They’re just Muggles!” Viktor said, and Hermione’s jaw dropped. “You should see how many Obliviations we have to do for tournaments. It’s unfortunate, but it’s all just part of the game.”
“They are people, Viktor!” Hermione screeched, and stomped away to the changing area. She hoped Iskra would be done fiddling with the wards soon, because Hermione was done with hanging around on a beach with a bunch of Quidditch players.
Later that night, Hermione was still fuming as she got ready for bed. She grabbed the fading roses from her bedside table and with a vicious incendio, set them ablaze, replacing the remaining sweet perfume of roses with the acrid smell of smoke before hurriedly dousing the fire and opening the window.
As Hermione lay in bed, waiting for sleep, she reminded herself that she was very, very grateful that she’d not made her VERY MINOR crush on Viktor public or obvious. She’d learned her lesson in second year. Oh, why did she have to have such awful taste in men?
Obviously, Viktor’s ego rivalled Lockhart’s, and, despite his original politeness, Viktor had no more respect for Muggles than Draco Malfoy and his ilk.