Bloody Russia
Eugene Dent surveyed his troops in the English national team locker room. They had just beaten France in the opening round of the 1946 Cup run a week ago and now it was the first of October and they were about to take the field for practice.
But today he stood in the center of the room and they hung onto his every word because he was about to announce who they would be playing at the end of the month.
“Finland beat Australia. China beat Brazil. The United States beat Norway. Russia beat Argentina. Portugal beat Egypt. Mongolia beat Canada. Mexico beat Chile. England beat France-”
“No shit,” muttered Ricky Webster from his locker room stall. “I was there.”
“We were all there, moron,” snapped Natalie Malfoy from across the room. “You almost killed me, remember?”
“That was an accident,” he pouted and gave her puppy-dog eyes which would have worked on any witch who wasn’t Natalie Malfoy. Dent wasn’t sure why Ricky was still trying to get her to sleep with him.
“Ricky, shut up,” droned Dent without losing a beat. “And you did almost kill her. If that Bludger went any further right it would have knocked her out of the air and we would have lost.”
“That’s a bit dramatic,” muttered one of the Pottinger triplets who immediately fell silent when Dent glared at him. He thought it might be Ted. Or Tommy.
“I’m sorry, beautiful,” crooned Ricky, flicking a curl of blond hair and sending a seductive smile across the room at Natalie. “I was aiming for the ugly French bloke. Didn’t want him ruining your moment.”
“Webster,” growled Dent, trying to prevent Natalie from exploding. He didn’t want things getting violent right before a team practice. It would ruin the team dynamic and be a complete waste of energy. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
Webster’s expression didn’t change. “Yeah, and?”
“Who are we playing?” asked Leonard Cadwallader as if he hadn’t paid attention to anything that had happened in the past few minutes. Which he probably hadn’t.
Glad to return to the topic, Dent grinned, looking around at them all before declaring, “Russia.”
“Russia?” exclaimed Natalie and Dent warily glanced at her. “Russia!?”
“Yeah,” he said, not sure why it bothered her so much.
She didn’t say anything; instead an infuriated expression crossed her face and she seemed to be glaring at something he couldn’t see.
Dent stared at her, an awkward tension had bloomed within the room. Even Ricky fell silent. Caddy gaped at Natalie with his mouth hanging wide open.
After a minute of her glaring at thin air, Dent shrugged and cleared his throat, regaining their attention. “Everyone get ready to practice,” he ordered and walked over to his own stall next to Natalie’s.
Three sides of the locker room had three sets of stalls — one wall for the Beaters, one for the Chasers, and one for the Keeper and Seeker. The fourth wall had the doors to the tunnel out to the pitch and the showers, and the board that Dent used to maniacally draw on before every game. The setup delighted him. What delighted him even more was he got the feeling that Natalie would prefer to sit next to him over the rest of the team. He couldn’t blame her.
“What’s the deal with Russia?” he muttered as he began strapping on his Keeper equipment. They were the only two who came dressed in their Quidditch robes, unlike Ricky, who preferred to make a big scene of changing while flexing his muscles.
“My family company is just in a huge fight with them right now,” she explained, plucking a bent twig from the tail of her broomstick. “Russia is all I hear about.”
“Your family’s in a fight with an entire country?” he asked in astonishment.
She gave him a look. “Why’s that so surprising? We’re the English national team. We represent an entire country.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said but then grinned at her, a gleam coming into his eye. “But doesn’t that make you want to beat them?”
She returned his grin. “Obviously.”
Domitia Malfoy dropped the parchment onto the desk in the study of the Malfoy Manor, leaned back in the custom leather armchair, and sighed. Pursing her lips and running her fingers together as she stared blankly across the room at the flickering fireplace.
Her grandson, sitting in a chair to her right, gave her a grim smile.
“Well. . . at least the pressure is off us. . . somewhat,” Abraxas weakly tried to see the bright side of what the parchment contained.
Domitia scoffed. “Yes, the Russians insist Gringotts will be granting their loan any day now. The only reason we’re still bothering with this deal is because cutting off an entire country would cast a bad light on the company — and the Ministry, with your father as Minister. But the Russians begging us to wait just a bit longer — as if we don’t know they are never getting that loan.”
“It’s still a possibility,” said Abraxas, “we don’t know exactly what they’re discussing with Gringotts. . . or if they bring anything new to the table.”
“Adolphus and Eric reported they wanted fifty million. That was nearly a month ago. I sincerely doubt anything has changed — what did you say they were offering as collateral?”
“Some sort of Muggle explosive,” chuckled Abraxas, “though apparently they don’t even have it.”
“Muggle explosives,” Domitia let out a real laugh at this. “What is the world coming to?”
Abraxas, knowing it was a rhetorical question, elected to change the topic. “At least the contract with Natalie became much more lucrative than we expected.”
At the mention of her granddaughter, Domitia morphed from frustration to delight. “Yes, yes, though who knew the English national team was going to require so many Pepper-Up Potions. . . .”
“I’ve heard the captain is a bit. . . hard-lined. . . .”
“More so than our own?”
“Yes — as a matter of fact — she should be arriving any moment. I’ve told Adolphus and Eric to let us know-”
At that moment, the door to the study flew open and in burst a gaggle of young people.
“Sorry!” exclaimed Adolphus Lestrange, in the middle of putting Natalie Malfoy in a headlock. Eric Dawson beside him, trying very hard not to laugh. Winky Crockett was behind them all, looking disgruntled at the mischievous actions of the others. “Forgot to tell you she was here-”
“Let go of me!” shrieked Natalie, half-heartedly struggling against Lestrange’s grip.
“Sorry,” repeated Lestrange, not sounding sorry at all, and he released her. She stumbled, nearly falling to the floor before catching herself. She straightened up and glared at Lestrange, who gave her a smirk in return.
“Grandmother,” Abraxas made his voice loud and taunting, “the children are here.”
“Yes, thank you, dear, I’ve noticed,” Domitia smiled as the “children” all turned red and shuffled about. “Hello, Winky.”
Winky Crockett looked decidedly uncomfortable at having been directly addressed by Domitia Malfoy. “Er, hello, Mrs. Malfoy. . . .”
“I see you’ve gotten stuck with babysitting the princess,” observed Abraxas and he grinned at his cousin. Natalie scowled, flounced over to the nearest couch, and threw herself onto it. Lestrange and Dawson were quick to join her, with a lot of jostled elbows, weak punches, and annoyed shoves between the three of them.
“It’s not entirely awful,” replied Crockett, though his eyes grew scathing as they landed upon Lestrange and Dawson. “Though when we’re being attacked it can get a bit ridiculous.”
“We haven’t seen her in weeks!” Lestrange complained with a flourish of his arm that nearly hit Natalie in the nose. “You get to see her all the time!”
“Not that often,” snorted Crockett, “Eugene Dent doesn’t let her off the field.”
“Huh,” Lestrange leaned conspiratorially towards Natalie. “Want us to rough Dent up a bit? Think he’ll still give us an autograph if we do though?”
Natalie whacked him across the shoulder. “Will you stop being stupid! I came here for a real reason.”
“Oh, not just to say hello?” teased Abraxas. “Your own family!”
She shot him a look. “No. . . I wanted to tell everyone that we’re gonna be playing-”
“Malfoy,” Crockett interrupted with a sharp gaze. “The schedule of the next round hasn’t been released yet. You can’t go around telling everyone who the team is playing. Regardless of whether or not they’re family and friends.”
“They can know!” she looked flustered and aggravated. “Anyway — we’re playing Russia.”
Reactions varied. Lestrange and Dawson collapsed across Natalie’s lap and into each other’s arms. Abraxas sat bolt upright in his seat. Domitia merely smiled.
Natalie, underneath the two wizards, stared at her grandmother, unnerved by the look in her eyes.
“What is it?” she demanded as Lestrange groaned his grievances to an equally distraught Dawson.
Domitia flashed a look at her granddaughter, completely ignoring the childish actions of her two employees. “Given our. . . history with Russia. . . fate would only have it work out that you would.”
Clearly annoyed at this fatalistic viewpoint from her grandmother, and ignoring Crockett’s glare, Natalie scowled and declared, “well, anyway, we’re going to beat them. We’re going to kick the bloody shit out of them.”
Abraxas cleared his throat with a snigger. “I’d have thought it would be us against Russia in the Cup final.”
Natalie made a disgusted sound, making Lestrange and Dawson mimic her as they straightened up to sit appropriately for the first time.
“Shut up,” she muttered.
“Shut up,” they mocked her.
“Malfoy, you have practice,” Crockett reminded her with visible impatience.
Natalie squeezed herself away from Lestrange and Dawson and jumped to her feet. “Right!”
Natalie scowled at the wooden door. She’d redesigned the door, just like she had redesigned the whole mansion. The door was dark oak now. With a silver handle and the Malfoy family crest carved into it. Except she’d never opened it. She hadn’t touched, hadn’t thought of what was beyond it. Sure, it was still her father’s Irish mansion. But now it looked nothing like what it had. Felt nothing like it had.
“Fuck it,” she muttered to herself. Steeling herself on the thoughts she had in the last Quidditch game, she reached forward and pulled on the handle.
It didn’t budge.
“Oh, bloody hell!” she grunted, tugging her wand from her robes and flicking it. The door blasted into itself, cracking into a hundred pieces and falling down the stairs in front of her. After a moment, she followed it.
The stairs did not creak under her weight. Perhaps because she tip-toed, as if expecting the ghost of her dead father to jump out at her. But that was ridiculous, of course. . . .
When she reached the bottom, she glanced around. The basement seemed to glow with a dull gray light.
“Lumos,” she hummed the spell and flicked her wand again. The ball of light rose towards the ceiling, sending sharp white beams throughout the basement.
She looked around again, unable to remember when she had shoved everything down in the basement. Last June, perhaps. It was surprisingly empty. A few boxes here and there, piles of Muggle clothing, old furniture, that old refrigerator-thingy Theo Borealis had bought before he died. Those black and white balls were nearly everywhere, dotting the scene like freckles — ugly ones. It smelled musty and nostalgic. She wanted to vomit.
Tucking her wand away, Natalie took a step forward, picking her way over the splinters of the door and wondering where to begin, how to begin, if she really wanted to begin — or even what her plan was. She didn’t have one. She just knew she had to do something.
She stepped towards an old wooden wardrobe. A thin coat of silver dust covered it. She poked the rusted handle with a finger and grimaced. It felt slimy and fragile — ready to collapse if she inspected it further. With a shrug, she tugged on the door. It creaked open and the whole wardrobe shuddered under her touch. With a cracking noise, the door fell out of her hand and crashed to the floor. She just managed to jump out of the way to avoid crushing her feet.
“Bloody hell,” she grumbled, kicking the broken door away and peering into the wardrobe. Her vision instantly turned red as she laid eyes upon her father’s old football jerseys when he played for the English national team.
She lunged forward to grab the jerseys — and found herself blown backwards with a flash of light as something seemed to rush out of her. Natalie landed on the opposite side of the basement, sprawled out on the cold floor on top of the splinters of what used to be the basement door, having narrowly missed whacking her head against the stairs. Gasping for breath and now in complete darkness, something warm and wet ran down her hands, soaking into her robes.
“Bloody hell,” she exclaimed again as the scent of blood hit her nostrils and a wave of stinging pain broke over her hands and wrists. Thinking of what Dent would say if he was here, she cursed herself for having destroyed the door — only to land on top of the sharp remains. Lifting her head, she squinted towards where she had just been. The wardrobe had vanished. A thin spiral of smoke twirled up towards the ceiling. With it, she assumed, went the Muggle football jerseys.
A creak on the stairs made her freeze. Ignoring the blood, she scrambled to find her wand. She glanced up, wide-eyed, as her gaze landed upon a tall figure standing on the stairs above her. For an awful moment, she believed it was her father.
“What are you doing on the floor?” the voice made her breathe a sigh of relief, she lowered her wand. An urge to laugh overtook her and she giggled.
Tom Riddle continued leisurely stepping down the stairs until he stood immediately above her. She could feel his burning gaze.
“Get up,” he said with a snort. “You look ridiculous.”
“You look ridiculous,” she instinctively mocked him.
“I’m not the one dramatically lying all about the floor like I’ve just been in a duel.”
“I just was,” she said, rolling onto her knees before leaping to her feet. She glanced up at him, surveying his appearance. He was dressed in all black, dapper and suave as always. His face remained in shadow, as the basement was still dark, though she could tell where his eyes were from the perpetual gleam within them.
A swishing sound and his wand was lit. Natalie blinked from the sudden light, raising her hand to cover her eyes and remembering her hands were bleeding.
“What do you mean, you just were?” his voice turned into a hiss, sounding gravelly and snappish. “With whom? Why are you bleeding?”
“Um, a wardrobe,” she said, dropping her hands and now able to observe the planes and angles of his face. They were intent and striking as usual, with the familiar hunger that seemed to outline them. She stared, awestruck for a moment.
“A — what?” he sounded baffled. It made her laugh. She burst into giggles for the second time. It annoyed him. She could tell. She could always tell.
“A wardrobe,” she repeated, glancing down at her hands and thinking of how she could stop the bleeding — but then his wand flashed in front of her eyes and she watched the cuts close, the splinters of wood fall away, and the blood vanish.
“Yeah,” she repeated, “a wardrobe.” And she dashed across the basement. He followed, keeping his wand lit.
“There,” she pointed at what was now a small pile of ashes.
“A wardrobe,” he said it as though it was a heinous enemy. “Was there a boggart in it?”
“Not exactly,” she admitted.
“Not exactly,” a sliver of sarcasm in his voice as he mocked her this time.
Humming to herself and now much more confident with him there, she pounced forward, kicking the ashes everywhere. She watched them scatter before aiming a kick at one of the black and white balls. It flew across the basement, hitting the heavy metal appliance with a loud bang.
“What are you doing?” demanded Tom, he stayed on her heels as she started tearing through the basement.
“Cleaning,” she grunted, flicking her wand and vanishing a pile of old clothes she spotted more football jerseys in. Batting a rickety old chair out of her way, she pushed a table away and it crumbled under her touch. Joining the wardrobe in ashes on the floor. She stepped over it and towards the huge metal appliance that was once used to keep food cold when her Muggle father lived there. She stared at it, ignoring Tom’s comments. Then reached forward, tugging on the door. It creaked open, allowing her to glance into its dark insides.
“What is that?” asked Lord Voldemort.
“Some bloody Muggle appliance,” she remarked, overwhelmed with a memory of how excited her father had been when it was dropped off at the front door by a starstruck delivery man. Her father had given him an autographed black and white ball and the man had bowed.
“To do what?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she growled as a wave of rage shook through her.
“Natalie-” the use of her name broke through her mind. She looked back at Tom. He was staring at her with wild eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“I told you. Cleaning.”
“This isn’t cleaning-”
“Yeah,” she turned back to the metal appliance and placed a hand on it, now with an idea. She glanced at him again, a vicious smile on her face as she felt her chest, her shoulders, her arms, her hand, her fingers tingle with a warmth that flowed down from her and into the cold metal appliance. “And?”
Except he wasn’t looking at her. He stared at the Muggle refrigerator, charcoal eyes blazing. She kept her eyes on him, and watched a flash of light spiderweb its way through his eyes as her whole body shivered.
And then his eyes were on her and she felt him grip her shoulder and she was flung back into him and they toppled over as light seemed to streak all above them. Natalie threw her arms over her head, muscles tensed as everything seemed to spin around her. She stayed frozen, eyes squeezed shut, clutching her head and curled into a ball until she felt herself hauled up to her feet.
Tom stood before her, peeling her arms away from her face in a hasty manner.
“What?” she asked, opening her eyes and glancing around. “Oh. . . .”
“Yes,” he said, as they watched the metal appliance melt before them, white flames whipped up into a frenzied tornado. “Oh.”
He dragged her back from the inferno as she stared at it in fascination.
“Oops,” she muttered with a snort.
“Oops,” he repeated, “put it out.”
“Why’s it fire-”
“Are you trying to burn the entire house down?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, then-”
“Wait, you’re right, let’s go,” she decided, grabbing him this time and dragging him after her as she bolted towards the stairs, leaving the fire raging.
“What-”
“I wanna burn the entire basement down!” she exclaimed as she tugged him up the stairs behind her.
“Are you idiotic, it’ll burn the whole house-”
She paused halfway up the stairs, grabbing the front of his robes and bringing his face close to hers. She had to lean down to look into his eyes. Bringing her mouth close to his, she whispered one word.
“Magic.”