Yuletide
He finds her on the Viaduct, shivering, stubbornly pointing her chin into the wind. Her shoes, small and satiny, lie abandoned behind her in a fine slash of moonlight.
Almost immediately he regrets leaving the drinks he’d been carrying balanced on the lip of a fountain in some dark corner of the rose garden. He’d let his ego get the better of him, overly aware of how pitiable a sight he must have been – warm glasses growing cooler and cooler in his hands, his pretty date nowhere to be seen.
But he’s found her now – looking beautiful and half-wild, the wind whipping tears from her eyes and her hair from its careful knot at the base of her neck.
He lets his feet fall harder as he approaches her but she still startles, conceding her staring match with the moon as she whips around to face him.
“Viktor!” she breathes, fight draining from her stance as she recognises him.
It bolsters him somewhat, to know she trusts him enough not to be worried about him seeing her this raw, her sadness gathered about her like a shawl. Still, watching her surreptitiously dab at the wetness around her eyes, the mass of concern in his chest continues to expand.
“Hermione,” he begins, then stops abruptly, realising he has no idea what he intends to say to her.
He’s come to her with his hands empty, his mouth wrought so faithfully around his native tongue that he still can’t pronounce her name, no matter how much he practices.
As he stands frozen before her she sucks in a breath ragged with stale tears, brushes a stray tendril of hair out of her eyes. She smiles determinedly up at him, her face pale in the moonlight, until her gaze flickers momentarily over his shoulder and her expression falls.
“Oh Viktor, I’m really sorry I shouldn’t have – I mean, it was so rude of me to leave without telling you, I just, well –,” she pauses, biting nervously at her bottom lip. “Honestly I don’t even want to think about it anymore, it was just – well I…”
He watches her smooth the perfectly pressed wafts of fabric below her bodice, content to wait for her mouth to find pace with her quicksilver mind.
She sighs smally, finally meeting his eyes again. “I was… hurt.”
His alarm must be writ large across his face because she rushes to correct herself: “Oh no, not like – not hurt, I only mean… upset.” Her shoulders fall, recollection weighing on her. Her hands resume their nervous rearranging of her skirts. “I was upset,” she repeats, her voice soft and thick with grief. “I fought… with a friend.”
He nods his understanding. Although they have not been introduced he suspects he knows exactly which friend she means.
“Your friend, he is… displeased that you attend ball with…” he adopts a wry smile to assure her that he is only teasing, “with dark wizard from cold Durmstrang?”
Despite herself, Hermione releases a weak puff of laughter, and she nods, smiling frailly.
“I do not blame him.”
Immediately her face alights with incredulity, a fierce flame in her eyes that Viktor cannot help but be warmed by. He takes one step nearer to her, continues unperturbed: “For to watch you attend ball on arm of another… this too can displease me much.”
A quickly as it had arrived the fire in her subsides, latent warmth rushing to her cheeks which pinken sweetly.
He steps again, until there is less than a foot of black night air eddying between them. She does not look away from his face.
“But… for make you hurt…,” hesitating for only a moment, he leans forward and takes her cold hands in his, feeling buoyed as she breathes in sharply but makes no move to pull away, “for make you… upset. This, I blame him.”
He runs his thumbs over the backs of her icy hands.
“I can offer from him duel, if this please you?”
He’s mostly joking.
Hermione laughs softly, clear as a bell, before humming quietly in mock consideration. Her eyes are fixed on where her hands are swallowed wholly by his own.
Slowly, he lifts one of her hands to his mouth, tilting it gently so that he can press a kiss to the bare inside of her wrist.
She shivers.
Coming to his senses, Viktor huffs in self-admonishment.
Of course. She’d left her wand in her dormitory before the ball. It's no wonder her hands are so cold – she had to have been out here for at least twenty minutes before he’d come upon her – she must be weak with it.
His hands fly to the clasp of his cloak.
“Forgive me, Hermione,” he murmurs, sweeping it from his shoulders and around hers as gracefully as he can manage, “standing here in big warm cloak while you are freezed.” He squints, leaning closer to do up the clasp near her delicate brushstroke of a collar bone. “I am too distracted.”
He doesn’t need to explain by what.
“Thank you,” Hermione whispers, fingers stroking absentmindedly at the fur trim that lines the bottom of the cloak – waist height for Viktor but falling at least halfway to her knees.
Her gentle acquiescence is proof enough that her stand against the frigid wind has sapped her of some of her usual strength.
He offers her his arm, and is no less exhilarated as she takes it for the second time that evening – this time encircled by his cloak, pale and breath-taking as a winter rose.
“Is important we get back to castle,” he says, beginning to walk slowly in that same direction, “before the cold take you forever.”
He turns his head to smile down at her, his heart sputtering momentarily in his chest as he finds her already looking up at him, her eyes warm and dark.
“Viktor, wait,” she murmurs, bidding him pause with a hand pressed lightly against his chest.
“You are okay?”
His hands hover at her elbows, waiting lest she need him to hold her steady.
“No – I mean yes, yes I’m fine, I just…” Hermione trails off. Her eyes flicker over his face, down to his mouth and back up to his attentive eyes before she sets her jaw determinedly.
The moon shudders, and Hogwarts looms down over them a quiet sentinel, as she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him.