Chapter 6
We were eating our last breakfast at Beauxbaton’s before leaving for Hogwarts. Celeste had already finished eating and was sketching a cute dog and cat in her sketch pad, once again her pencil was making its way in a dance across her fingers as she concentrated on making the next stroke.
Victor was telling a hilarious story about one of his first times on a broom to Gabrielle who listened intently. Fleur was scribbling quickly on a three-foot-long piece of parchment finishing up an essay for her Transfiguration class. Thankfully I had finished all of my homework last night, so I listened in on Victor’s story. Ivan was running a bit late, Victor having made a joke earlier this morning about how he was just going to fix his hair for the next hour so, we were just waiting for him to get down here and eat breakfast before we could go down to dance. It was our last time to fully practice the dances and I knew Madame Maxime was going to be very stressed since we were leaving for Hogwarts this evening.
Ivan finally made his way into the room, his hair meticulously placed as he sat across from Celeste at the table. She looked up from her sketch pad for a quick moment and shot him a small smile before going back to her work. Ivan smiled back, staring at her for a moment longer before turning to look at Victor who had just finished telling his story ending it with a dramatic fall off of his broom. Victor turned to face Ivan when his friend started speaking to him in rapid Bulgarian, they carried a short conversation before Victor got up and quickly left the room.
” What was that about?” I ask Ivan. His eyes were still watching the doorway where his friend had left before he quickly turns to face me.
”Karkaroff wanted to speak with him” the boy says.
We finish up breakfast and head to go change into our dance clothes. Once changed Celeste and I start on the long walk to our dance classroom joking around.
” Anyway” I continue laughing about a story Celeste had retold from her charms class earlier this week, “what’s going on with you and Ivan” I ask her teasingly. Her head snapped to face me, and I laughed a bit at the shock on her face.
“What do you mean?” She asks ducking her head a bit as she avoids making eye contact with me.
"You know what I mean" I say, "You've been obsessed with him for ages".
"Violettaaaa" She pulls my name out.
"Come on tell meeee" I say in answer, as she groans.
"First let me make it clear" she sarcastically snaps at me, "I haven’t been obsessed with him”, she attempts to clarify.
”mhm” I nod in fake agreement, “Totally” I say before we both break out into laughter.
“No but he’s just so -“ she begins.
” hot” I interrupt her.
” No, I mean yeah, but like he’s also really sweet, he carried my dance bag for me all of yesterday” she says falling back into the memory. And now that I thought about it, I did remember Ivan carrying around Celeste’s things for her as well as helping her whenever he could.
“Aww that’s cute” I tell her.
“I know right” she responds giddily as we step into the dance room.
Ivan and Victor were already in the room Karkaroff finishing up a conversation with the both of them before nodding in greeting to us and leaving the room. Celeste and I drop our bags at the back of the room, and I sit down to begin stretching my toes and ankles and putting on my pointe shoes. Celeste joins me after she quickly pulled up her hair. We both finished putting our pointe shoes on and walked over to the barre to begin warming up the boys coming up next to us to start their warmups as well. Time passed as we finished warming up and told some stories, but Madame Maxime was nowhere to be seen.
We decided to work on one of the harder lifts where Celeste and I had to run towards the boys and then jump into their waiting arms, but they had to catch us with one arm around one leg and the other around our waist while we stayed in a straight body position. This kept proving difficult because if they grabbed our leg too quickly, they wouldn’t catch our waist but our hip and the whole lift would fall apart. Sometime later after we had worked on the lift for a while and were all hot and sweaty, we decided to take a small break.
As we all finished grabbing a sip of water Madame Maxime finally walked into the room.
” Ok quickly once to music” she says clapping her hands as of to hurry us. We quickly get to our beginning positions and start the dance. As it always does the music washes over me and my muscles jump to finish the steps, and as the lift came, I quickly realized that Victor and Ivan were too close together. I slowed my run down and tried grabbing Viktor's arm to pull him farther away from Ivan, but I couldn’t grasp his arm and I saw almost in slow motion as Ivan caught Celeste and began the dance sequence, quickly turning around, bumping into Viktor and falling backwards Celeste falling out of his arms and twisting to the floor. Her leg hit the ground first and her body doubled up over it as I heard a sickening crunch. We all rushed towards her as she rolled over tears gliding over her face as her hands close around her ankle.
"Celeste i'm so sorry" gushes Ivan as he falls to his knees next to the blonde. Madame Maxime pushes him to the side and shushes him as she kneels where he had once been. She pulls Celeste's hands away from her foot and looks over the now quickly swelling limb. I sit next to my best friend and run my thumb across her cheek to gather the tears that had ran over her face, quickly enough Madame Maxime fabricated a diagnosis.
"It's broken, Ivan will take you to Monsieur Bernard to let him fix it but, I will not allow you to dance tomorrow at Hogwarts."
"But Mada-" Celest struggles to continue as our headmistress cuts her off.
"No buts, my decision is final no dancing tomorrow" she stands up, "hurry up take her to the medical tower" Madame Maxime continues directing the last half of her sentence to Ivan whose empathy was written all over his face as he stared at my best friend. He quickly picked her up and carried her bridal style out of the room. Madame turns back around and faces Victor and me.
"One more time full out, and sadly, it will have to be only the two of you performing tomorrow evening." We hurry to our spots and do the entire dance full out but, I can tell that both of us aren't putting our all into it, we are both focused more on what Celeste is going through than our dance. Madame Maxime seems to be in the same boat as she dismisses us after the dance and allows us both to go check up on Celeste in the infirmary. Victor and I walk through the halls in a tense yet not uncomfortable way we quickly, reach the infirmary and I take in the room. I always loved how the infirmary looked not that the idea of the infirmary itself was good, no one wanted to be sick or injured but the room itself was beautiful. The ceiling was domed and made of a foggy glass through which you could catch glimpses of the sky. The glass was reinforced with magic but, the view itself was fully magical. The beds were lad in a circle around the edge of the room leaving a nice open area in the middle. Celest was on the far side of the room propped up on pillows with her left foot stacked high on foam, now the foot looked fine but Monsieur Bernard liked to keep people overnight just to make sure everything was good. Monsieur Bernard was short, stout, and in his late 90s yet still spry. He had a tuft of gray hair that grew just from the crown of his head and large gray bushy eyebrows that took up half of his forehead, half the time he looked crazy, but he was truly one of the sweetest people you could ever meet. He stood next to Celeste's bed as he gave her a cup of water and then turned around and walked towards his desk which was right next to the door.
"How are you feeling Celeste" I ask her, and she responds with a quick nod of her head as her eyes begin to flutter shut, it's apparent that Monsieur Bernard gave her a sleeping potion and so I walk to the side of her bed and give her forehead a kiss "I hope you feel better soon" I whisper to her and turn. Victor had turned to go to bed once I had entered the room but, I now saw that on Celeste's other side Ivan was sleeping in a chair his chin on his chest. I walked out and made my way down to the dorms quickly getting dressed in my pajama's and going to bed as Simona and Clarissa were both already sleeping when I walked into our room.