…and Hitting only Air

Shapes swam before his eyes, shadows smudged bluntly at the edges so that everything was out of focus and the only thing he could see clearly was the fierce white glare of the lights above him. He felt sleep tugging at his senses once more, beckoning him down, wrapping itself warmly around him, but the round shape of his name had hooked itself into his consciousness and was pulling harder, so that ignoring it was unthinkable and he allowed himself to be nudged gently from sleep entirely.

"What is happening?" he croaked hoarsely, groping uselessly for words and panicking when his fevered questions were met only with blank stares of confusion. "What happened? Where's Cedric? Tell me what's going on!"

He was babbling now and he knew it. The words were tumbling from his mouth before he had time to collect them and place them in any kind of coherent order. Flashes of memory fired in his mind and all he could think of was that he wasn't in the maze anymore; he was in a strange bed and he couldn't focus on the people around him. Was the Tournament over? Had he been injured in the enormous maze?

"Viktor, it's okay, calm down – Viktor!"

As the voice penetrated his senses once more he felt a pair of strong arms pushing him down to sink once more into his pillows, and he forced himself to concentrate only on the melody of the voice, unable to see its owner clearly. It sounded lyrically familiar, with a cadence to it that echoed dimly somewhere in Viktor's panicked consciousness, so that it was only when he was lying comfortably back amongst the pillows that he registered the fact that the words had been Bulgarian.

"Dmitri? Is that you?"

"Yes."

Dmitri's answer was as brief as it was softly-spoken, revealing nothing, and forcing as much calm into his voice as he could muster, Viktor said, "Tell me what is happening. Where am I; where is everyone else, the other champions, the crowd?"

By the remaining few words his voice had risen once more from barely-controlled to mildly hysterical, and Dmitri sighed loudly.

"Viktor, you must calm yourself. If you don't you will only make things worse for yourself and then you'll be in real trouble."

The calmness his voice exuded enraged Viktor, and now that his vision was clearing as the fug of sleep slowly lifted he could see that his friend was slouching casually in a chair beside his bed, one ankle resting daintily on the opposite knee, and he was regarding Viktor with a mild amusement on his angular features. He was the only other person in the room besides Viktor; the disorientation must have made him hallucinate, duplicating the image of his single visitor. He was quiet for long moments, so that Viktor felt ready to scream at him once more, but just as the cry of frustration was collecting at the base of his throat, Dmitri leaned forward and said, clearly choosing his words carefully, "What do you remember?"

Viktor rolled his eyes back as if physically searching for a memory that eluded him effortlessly. The last clear image he could bring to mind had been the high keening cries he had known to be Fleur's; him running blindly in the direction of the sounds; seeing Cedric. And then everything went fuzzy, as if the camera recording his movements had slipped out of focus, and the sound went haywire so that there was a heavy silence to the blurred images which screeched occasionally with the faint notes of an awful screaming that made Viktor's insides lurch.

"Where is Cedric Diggory? Why can't I remember anything – the last I remember is Fleur Delacour screaming and Cedric on the floor –and screaming, someone screaming – why can't I remember, Dmitri, what happened?"

Dmitri looked into his friend's eyes and Viktor could see a kind of internal struggle going on within him as he battled with himself over whether or not to tell Viktor the entire truth. Finally, he decided that he deserved to know everything, and when he spoke his voice was controlled, and quiet.

"You attacked Cedric. You used the Cruciatus Curse on him – oh, don't worry, they know it wasn't you, Viktor, there's been a confession. It's very complicated to explain, you must forgive me. It appears that there has been deception, here – a Death Eater has been pretending to be one of the teachers here for most of this year. He has admitted to placing the Imperius Curse on you to make you attack Cedric, after he got rid of Fleur – she is quite safe, Viktor, relax. You hit your head when you fell – Potter Stupefied you – which appears to be why you can't remember very much."

Mortified, Viktor closed his eyes. "I attacked him? Where is he? Take me to him, Dmitri, tell me where he is – I must apologise for my actions – where is Cedric?"

"He…isn't here." Dmitri's words seemed carefully selected and even more carefully spoken. He continued with his story, ignoring the feeling of Viktor's penetrating stare. "They sent up red sparks over you, so that you could be safely collected, and they continued through the maze. Eventually they reached the Cup…"

Here Dmitri faltered, seemingly reaching a point in his telling at which he was reluctant to continue. Sensing this, Viktor leaned forward slightly in his bed, pushing his friend with his eyes to continue, needing to know what happened, how he came to be here.

"What happened, Dmitri? Why isn't Cedric here? And Harry Potter, too?" he said, waiting for the answer he wanted to hear, feeling the buzz of the tension in the air around them and knowing he wouldn't like what Dmitri was about to tell him.

"The Cup was a Portkey. It took the two of them to the Dark Lord. Cedric was killed."

Viktor sank back into his pillows once more, stunned into silence. Staring blankly ahead of him, his mind raced and fizzed as he struggled to remember the last time he had seen Cedric, trying to recall the attack he had apparently carried out on him, but all that came to mind was the way his poor parents would feel when they discovered their son had been killed, what a worthy opponent he had been. Finding his voice once more, he turned back to his friend.

"But Harry and Fleur are okay, aren't they, Dmitri?" He was practically begging, and Dmitri closed his eyes, not wanting to see.

"Fleur is fine – she has been treated for shock. You're going to be let out later tonight, once they've made sure you're okay, and Harry – I don't know where he is right now, but I hear that he is okay too. I do know that he is alive."

Viktor narrowed his eyes at his knowledgeable friend. "How do you know all of this, Dmitri?"

Dmitri simply shrugged evasively and smiled at Viktor. "I hear things, my friend. Now get some rest – I expect the matron will be along soon to check you over."

And before Viktor could press him for more answers, Dmitri had crossed the room swiftly and swept out of the doors, leaving Viktor alone with his thoughts and his conscience.

OoOoOo

Three days later the pain in Viktor's head was completely gone, taking with it the residual droning buzz that accompanied it. Madame Pomfrey had initially been reluctant but eventually had relented and allowed him to leave the Hospital Wing the next day, satisfied that he was sufficiently healed. Privately Viktor suspected her change of heart had less to do with his physical stability and rather more to do with the fact that once Viktor was discharged from her Hospital Wing, he would take with him a rather annoying visitor of his, one who had insisted not only on visiting him at every given opportunity (not to mention attempting to visit at some not-so-given opportunities) but also on talking loudly about how it wasn't good, decent people like Viktor who should have been attacked, but the scum who didn't deserve to come to Hogwarts in the first place.

Viktor smiled at the memory. It was a shame, really, that she had evicted Viktor when she had. She missed all of the fun of Viktor, finally taking the bait after almost a year's worth of constant irritation and fawning adoration, telling Draco Malfoy in no uncertain terms to shut up and leave him alone, except in rather less polite words. He didn't feel guilty; the damn boy had literally ambushed him as he had left the Hospital Wing, firing questions and idiotic sound bites that clearly originated from his father's mouth relentlessly at Viktor, picking up pace as Viktor tried to walk faster to remove himself from the boy's company. Finally, goaded beyond endurance, Viktor had snapped.

"Do you ever stop talking?" Viktor had exploded, stopping abruptly in the narrow corridors and turning to face Draco, who had been following him down the hall. "In all the times you have insisted on speaking to me I have never said more than two vords! It vud be better if you said something interesting every vunce in a vile but you do not! All you talk of is how vunderful you are and how rich! I do not care! Do you not vonder vy everyvun you speak to vears the same bored look on their face? Even ven I yawn in your face you do not stop! All you have said is that other people deserve to be in the hospital instead of me but that is wrong! No vun should have that! You have not vunce asked me how I am; you haff not answered any of my qvestions about the other champions; you only come to tell me things that are wrong and stupid. Leave me! You haff nothing to say that I vant to hear!"

There had been a great deal more in his mind that Viktor wanted to say, but seeing the shocked expression on Draco's crestfallen face he decided to stay his tongue and contented himself with striding purposefully down the corridor, each step feeling better than the last as he put more and more distance between himself and the source of his once-constant irritation. The sheer vehemence of Viktor's response had shocked even him; he had not known he possessed such venom, and really, he knew, he should not have vented himself upon someone so ridiculous as Draco Malfoy, not when he knew his anger was directed at himself; anger for having been so easily overpowered, for not having reached Fleur in time though he knew now that she was fine, and for, especially, not having the courage to speak to Harry when he had been brought into the Hospital Wing.

At first, admittedly, he had been unable to; Harry's bed had been surrounded by visitors of his own, and he had then taken a potion to make him sleep. Viktor had watched him from the safety of his own bed; seen the slow rhythm of his pulse pushing against skin the bleached colour of bone. But he had woken in the smallest part of the night. Viktor had heard his muffled whimpers as he was slowly roused from sleep; he had listened to the faint rhythm of his frantic breathing as he fought to regain control of his senses, to the dry shaking sobs as the first pains of remembering where he was and why threatened to crack him in two. Viktor had listened and he had not said a word, embarrassed, made small by the enormity of what had happened to his opponent and searching in vain for words big enough to bridge the gulf between them. And finally, as he heard Harry sinking gratefully into sleep once more, he had felt shame burning his insides as he realised that there was nothing he could possibly say to Harry, at a time when he would not want to speak of what had happened any more than Viktor wanted to hear it and when inane niceties would simply be an insult. He could, and would, say nothing to Harry.

OoOoOo

The time finally came, slowly, painfully, but surely, when Viktor was packed, ready to return home. He had not spoken to anyone throughout the Leaving Feast, preferring instead to listen to Dumbledore's carefully chosen words and feeling his skin heat rapidly as the news of the circumstances of Cedric's death became known to the students. He had spent the time since the final Task largely alone and was now carefully folding the last of his robes back into his trunk aboard the ship. There had been some mild debate over whether or not they should return home as scheduled after Karkaroff's disappearance, but eventually Dmitri had pointed out that they hadn't required his assistance to get here, so why was it needed for them to leave? Privately, Viktor was not sorry to be leaving; although no one had been asking him anything with regards to the Tournament, Cedric or otherwise, he was becoming tired of the strange looks many of the Hogwarts students had taken to giving him whenever they saw him. He knew his association with Karkaroff, and by extension any Dark wizard, was the source, but it irritated him nonetheless, though he had thus far refrained from retaliating, knowing that would only worsen things.

Closing the lid of the trunk slowly, Viktor clicked the lock shut and sat down at the edge of his bed, thinking. The only thing he would miss would be Hermione's company, and yet the strangest thing was that he had barely spoken to her since the final task. Once or twice he had spent long hours in the Library, barely skimming through books whose contents he forgot instantaneously, trying vainly to convince himself that he was sitting there in an effort to catch up with some missed schoolwork rather than because the thought that she might reappear made his heartbeat buzz beneath his skin.

He had seen her only once during his time in the Hospital Wing, and then she had been tending to Harry. He understood, of course, that Harry needed her, and so he had not pried, had not forced his company upon her, but there was something else too. It had been subtle at first, like the disdain caught in the teeth of a fake smile, but once Viktor had noticed it, it became glaringly obvious to him, so that he saw it every time, so that he couldn't understand how he had missed something so apparent for so long. Whenever she moved carefully through the corridors of the school, silencing the tactless would-be questions from curious students with a momentary but absolutely ferocious glare, two pairs of eyes followed her hungrily, though she noticed neither. As she tiptoed cautiously around the plethora of subjects that she couldn't discuss with her friends any longer, two sets of ears were tuned greedily to the rich tones of her voice. When she reached over suddenly and wrapped her arms around Harry, a silent sign of unwavering support, Viktor knew that the hot swoop of envy he felt in his stomach was not a unique feeling for him alone; it was shared.

Sighing, Viktor stretched and stood. The last day of school was as chaotic as ever, and he had now checked the contents of his trunk so thoroughly for any missing items that he thought he would scream if he looked inside again. He stared pensively out of the window for long moments, watching the shafts of golden light rippling serenely on the still waters of the lake, before suddenly seeming to come to, as if arriving at a sudden decision, the kind of decision that, once arrived at, is as unshakeable and unavoidable as the steady advancement of one's last day on earth. The kind of decision that seizes your limbs and forces you to move, to enact it right this second, before you have a chance to think it over and realise that your heart is crying its feeble protests at the idea of it. Moving quickly he swept from the cabin, disembarking the ship and moving across the grounds of Hogwarts with the determined ease of one on a mission.

OoOoOo

The Entrance Hall was crowded, the air positively vibrating with the hum of a thousand conversations, so that the words pressed against his skin as he moved through the huddles of students, words packed so tightly he felt them soaking through into his blood, so that in the middle of the night illogical snatches of conversation would float seamlessly before his eyes. He pushed carefully through the crowd, gently moving students aside with a calculated sweep of his muscled arm, eyes searching keenly for hair the colour of summer's skin, eyes that smiled in the heartbeat-space before her mouth did.

She saw him before he found her, and the smile that hitched about her mouth did not go unnoticed, though it wasn't Viktor who filed it away in his heart. When he finally located her face he moved purposefully towards her, hearing the tail-end of their conversation and ignoring the flicker of annoyance at the innocent assumption.

"Karkaroff did not steer," he said gruffly, and he felt a grim stab of pleasure at Ron's slight embarrassment. "He stayed in his cabin and let us do the vork." He let his gaze land upon Hermione, who reddened slightly. "Could I have a vord?" he asked her.

She looked flustered but she agreed, as he'd known she would. Viktor tried to ignore the sensation of being on the receiving end of that shared feeling, though he could feel the sharpened eyes in his back, could almost taste the shape of the unspoken words being fired in his direction. When he was sure they were out of sight, he stopped and turned to face her, weighing the words in his mouth carefully, trying to find the right combination.

"I just vanted to say goodbye. Ve all go home today, and I just vanted to say goodbye to you, and thank you."

Hermione smiled softly, her whole face brightening as she did so. She opened her mouth to speak but Viktor put a hand up, so that she fell silent. The words in his mouth were collecting more rapidly and he knew he had only moments to arrange them properly before they all spilt out, before they got everything wrong.

"I do not think you should come to Bulgaria." There. He'd said it. Her face seemed to crease with confusion but she didn't say a word; she merely looked at him quizzically, as if knowing he would explain and simply deciding to wait for it.

"Vell, I vood like you to come to Bulgaria," he said, stumbling over the words, caught in her half-smile. "But I vood like you to come as my friend only."

He stopped and looked at her. Her face was unreadable; she frowned almost imperceptibly, as if digesting this information and trying to decide how best to process it.

"Just as your friend?" she asked finally. The words were drawn out, carefully, as if she were expecting the truth behind his own to be revealed if she spoke slowly and clearly enough. "Is there a reason for that?"

Viktor smiled. "I think you know vy," he said, and though he made no motion in that direction he watched as Hermione turned her head back in the direction of her friends. Above the swarm of students they could both make out the bobbing red head craning for a look in their direction; they could smell the desperation of wanting to hear their words. Hermione returned her gaze to Viktor once more, her eyes softer than he has ever seen them, so that he is sorry for every word he is saying now.

"He does that a lot," he explained. "I have noticed it. I think you have noticed it also."

Hermione's answer came in the form of a slow-tipped nod and a single offered word. "Yes."

"Then I do not vant to stand in the vay. But I vill miss you, and I hope that you vill still vant to visit me."

He stood before her, looking so sad and so serious that Hermione couldn't help herself; standing on tiptoes to reach him properly she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly, ignoring several surprised looks from students at the edge of the mass.

"Of course I will," she said, her breath hot and sweet in his ear. "And I'll write to you lots, too."

She pulled back. "Thank you," she said softly, pressing the word into his upturned palm like a prayer, and then she kissed his cheek carefully. "I'd better get back."

"Of course," Viktor said, smiling despite himself. "I vill come vith you; I vood like to say goodbye to Harry."

Ron's eyes were fixed searchingly on Hermione's face, as if he could read the words of their conversation in her eyes, but he found nothing.

"I liked Diggory," Viktor said abruptly, facing Harry. The first words he had spoken to his opponent since the Final Task seemed oddly appropriate, though he couldn't have said why these more than any others seemed to slot so naturally into place. It felt important to him somehow that Harry knew this. "He vos alvays polite to me, even though I vos from Durmstrang – with Karkaroff." He scowled at the memory of his headmaster.

"Have you got a new Headmaster yet?" asked Harry, and Viktor shrugged. He held out his hand, shaking Harry's and then extending it to Ron. It took a few moments for Ron to tear his eyes from Hermione's face and then the startled look on his face was almost comical. He seemed to fight it out within himself and for a moment it looked as though petty jealousy had won; Viktor shrugged once more and turned to walk away.

"Can I have your autograph?"

The voice was as unexpected as it was suddenly amusing, and Viktor had to swallow his smile as he turned back to Ron. He couldn't meet Hermione's eyes as he signed the proffered fragment of parchment, knowing she too was barely stifling laughter and knowing equally that looking at her would prove fatal.

OoOoOo

Her eyes are green and endless and make him forget how to breathe.

She beckons toward him, the laughter tipping from her mouth and curling up at the ends, wearing the twilight like a cloak. He tries to walk to her but she seems to shrink from him, laughing delicately all the while, the sunlight dancing in the long strands of her shining mane of hair. All he can think of is to touch her, to run his fingers through the tangled blonde curls, to press a kiss against her lips, a stamp of his desire for her.

He moves more forcefully, but she continues to evade him, and so he begins to run, faster and faster, pumping his legs until his lungs feel studded with shards of glass, until his vision narrows from exertion and all he can see is her. Still she outruns him, easily, happily, and he forces his legs to work harder, faster, blinded by the overwhelming desire just to touch her, so that all he can see is the shape of her smile, a moonbeam.

And then from nowhere he feels surge of adrenaline pulsing through his veins. He pushes himself harder, running faster than he has ever run in his life, faster than breath, faster than dreams, feeling the soft net of grass sliding easily between his toes, feeling the light of the stars above sliding across his skin and focusing so hard on reaching this beautiful girl that he doesn't pause to register the fact that she has stopped running until it is too late and he has built up too much speed to stop. She has not only stopped running; she is holding her arms out to him, the ripples of her dress flowing and unfurling in the light, cascading from her figure, her smile the softest thing he has ever seen, even as he hurtles into her, even as they crash, laughing, to the ground, his arms wrapped tightly around her so that he will not lose her.

It isn't until he trusts himself to unwind the coil of his arms around her that he realises that she hasn't let go.

Author's Note:

There we are. Falling is one hundred per cent finished and I will only be tweaking from now on, not adding anything new. I apologise for the long wait between chapters and I hope this was satisfactory for everyone who has been waiting!

If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to let me know. Thanks to everyone who read my story and I hope you all enjoyed it.

dogstar