The wind and rain were no more bothersome than they had been on the day of the third task. Magdalena’s garments were still water-proofed, the rain slicking off easily, boots evading the damp. She needn’t an umbrella when she had a wand, and a warming charm would have been overzealous for the mildness of March. Hogsmeade was less of a gingerbread village than it had been around Christmas, but it was no less cheerful, even under a gray sky. It seemed to be anxious for spring, ready for new blooms in the mountains that bordered it. Each visit had brought something new, despite its smallness, and Magdalena could not deny that she enjoyed walking through the town. It was a busy time of year, the final stretch before exams, and she had earned it.

The weeks following the third task had assured that. Its conclusion had left her furious for days. Not finishing had not been an option going in; when they had come for her, an abrupt retrieval, she had at first wanted to believe it was another obstacle, a lie to catch the champions off guard. But even the task makers were not so incompetent to use that particular lie. There was too much red tape to allow such a thing. As time-consuming as it had been, navigating those woods with two strangers of questionable competence and even less trustworthiness, it had not seemed too long to Magda. They might have left them out there longer, let them finish, thrown more fire and wind and shaking trees at them, but they had chosen instead to coddle them, end it like a quidditch match, tied with the pretty bow of fingers closing on one snidget. And the scores… There was only one Salem student worth those scores, and he had not competed in the task.

No, she would not linger on that injustice. Revenge was the best form of victory. Magdalena had been training for it. The moment her boots had hit the ground after the task, before they had announced the scores, she had ached for a target to practice on, a way to relieve the stress that was all of the things that a Durmstrang Oberteil should not and could not afford to feel.

There were doors in Hogwarts that had weathered her storm, and fellow Durmstrang students, too. The spells had been loud, staticy, cold. Hot, quick, dangerous. Red lights, smoke, and chards of ice. Promising. She had not held back, and neither had her classmates. The soreness she had been feeling for weeks was earned, an invisible badge that she wore with shoulders back and long strides. A lack of sleep beneath her eyes went unquestioned by all but a few. Underlings who were not allowed to wear red had averted their gazes in the corridors, thinking it better to look away than to betray their curiosity or their sympathy.

At the very least, this time she had not had to deal with an overly emotional half-giant on a mission to save the unicorns.

That thought brought an eye roll, which was shared with the toys in a window. Magda lingered on the toy witch whose perma-smile promised children security and good fun; it plush arms were open, friendly, and hugging a cauldron full of wrapped sweets. Magda had not been a child for years, could not remember the last time she played with a doll that wasn’t used specifically for practicing spellworks. She carried on up the high road, passing several more shops before arriving at the bookshop. Hogwarts was full of books, but Magda was determined to find one absent from the school’s shelves— one that might fit better nestled among the Restricted collection than squeezed in with the general populace.

The shelves were slim and tall, closer together than those of the school library, offering smaller nooks and the unassuming, dark handsomeness that only shelves of books could offer. But Magda knew better than to think the contents of advanced spellbooks unassuming. There were words printed on those pages that could kill a man. While her peers enjoyed their butterbeers, she roamed leatherbound spines, thumbed gilt-edged volumes, waited for the right title to jump out at her.

---

title reference

Her name had not been called again.

Heinrich, Fyetka, Lyov, they had been called for the first time. Magda and Katya for the second. When their summons had been set with hers absent—replaced, even, by another, for the order echoed the that of the first challenge—Vladlena had immediately expected the letter that sure enough she received the next day. And she found that she felt precisely the same towards the letters written on parchment as the words implied the authors did towards her. Cold, abrupt, and dismissive. Perhaps, she reflected not without a vague sense of disgrace, perhaps she felt nothing because she agreed with the presumption that she was, somehow, no longer fit to be called Champion.

If Magda, in the past weeks, had been a storm to weather, then Vladlena had been, simply, a chill. A frozen breath of biting stillness, settled and creeping with each slowed heartbeat, and in her time at the strange school, the temperature had only continued to plummet. Certainly, she was difficult to beat. She almost prided herself on being so, save for a vaguely lacking self awareness that would have allowed her to see the triumphs as anything but intellectual exercises to completed and moved on from. She dueled, as always, with ice instead of fire, and cold logic guided her wand in a way heated passion never would.

No, for a cup that summoned from flames, she had nothing to recommend herself.

She might not have finished reading the words that scathingly said as much at all, but for a quick scribble towards the bottom of the page, added when, perhaps, her parents had not been looking, written by a hand that was impeccable but impatient. The smile it had summoned had felt stinging, like a sleeping limb brought painfully to wakefulness, unfamiliar and uncomfortable, and it had not lasted long. But Sasha at least, the bright eyed boy who'd written the quick words, wished her well.

An odd thought.

Vladlena wasn’t quite certain when anyone else had ever wished her well. It was not a sentiment that suited the competitive nature of her primary companions. It might have surprised her to recognize the fondness she held for them all, despite it. But then, there were a lot of things about herself that would have surprised the young woman if she had any cognizance of them at all. But though she was automatically prone to analyzing with effortless scrutiny any task set to her hand, she was far less interested in supposed mysteries of mankind and the mind, and tossed any musings aside as a waste of time compared to more concretely scientific pursuits.

She watched Magda with the sweeping detachment typical of her gaze, with eyes that saw, as they always did, measurements and calculations, muscle structures and potential movements, but none of what fueled them. "Are you looking for hexes or how-to's?" It may have been a joke, with the straight-faced lips and cool tone that had formed the question, there was little indication one way or another. The unblinking stare slid from the blonde's face back to shelves, and slim fingers began sliding books back into place from a stack balanced on one arm that had from a previous visit. The store owner had insisted they ran a store, not a library, but they had a reached something of an agreement at Lena's cold persistence of purchasing and returning, and she now paid a retaining fee that spared them both legal headache, and hinged upon her ability to return the would-be purchases in pristine condition.

As if she would do anything less.

Set at her task, she seemed to have lost her awareness that Magda was there, a trait that often irritated professors though the focus-at-hand served her well otherwise, until her hands fluttered unerringly to the spine of a deep, rich green tome, with unsatisfied snakes shifting restlessly on cover. She pulled it neatly from the shelf and turned it smoothly around, offering it. And odd gesture, considering she didn't know with certainty what Magda was seeking, but whether Magda sought something similar or not was a point of utter irrelevance to the Russian. It was a good book. She wanted to share.

Magda appraised Lena in the way they had very much been trained to look at others, but there was a familiarity there, just beyond her lashes and dark brows, reserved for a number of people she could count both hands and still have fingers to spare. Her face and movements were more relaxed, her words less careful around companions like Lena. No, the Russian was not an unwelcome sight here in this little Scottish shop.

Thus the appraisal only lasted a few blinks (during which time, neither one of them did, in fact, blink at all). “I don’t know.” Those were not words she spoke often, but it was not a bad sort of unknowing Magda felt so much as it was a promising one. Despite Vladlena’s own coldness, that tone Magda had come to know and respect, the Danish witch was sure that her friend meant well in a way that a Hogwarts stranger might not. Thus her own words had certain curious edge, an adventure on the tip of a military-sharp tongue, further softened, no doubt, as she voiced her thoughts in Russian; her northern accent seeped into the Slavic vernacular despite learned fluency. “Both, perhaps.” A nudge of a smile crossed her lips.

Her eyes shifted down to the green volume, whose animated cover certainly made it worth a look. If Vladlena found it noteworthy enough to recommend (if not in so many words), certainly its interior was substantial, too. Her fellow Oberteil was not the sort to deal in fluffy premise. The Dane took in the title, the handsome charmwork. She opened the cover, flicked past the title page, and looked at the table of contents, neatly listed chapters in small writing that distinguished itself from ugly muggle print. Her gaze rose back to Lena’s face. “This may be a good start."

Closing the book, Magda tucked it under one arm, ignoring the thundercloud promise of the snakes. “Of course, if there is a fourth task, who knows whether it’s worth preparing for,” she joked darkly. They both knew what their professors might say. They both knew that was not an option. It was more an insult to the scoring than a surrender of control that colored her words. Frustrations of the last task aside, Magda had not faltered in her training. “What are you looking for?” And then: “Have you been here all morning?"

Her shoulders relaxed, slightly.

Had it been any other Obertiel but one of the favored few Vladlena preferred, they wouldn’t have. But Magdalena, though Lena wouldn’t use the word herself, was a friend. Or as much of one as was ever allowed in their ranks. But the tall young woman didn’t change her expression, or the thinking behind it, as Magda acknowledged her quest. If ever there was a place to have an unguided search, surely it was  a place of learning, and the bookish Russian accepted this as a statement of intent, not a lack of it, and she smiled, the expression small and swift and terribly rare, for this sort of feeling, at least, she recognized.

There was a flutter of hesitance as Magda took the book. What she thought of it mattered, in a way that appearances or opinions of others so rarely did, but offering a book was offering a summarization of one’s intellect,  of their morals and standards, of everything that was important about who they were, and if the Danish girl looked up, she may have seen it, briefly, in Lena’s eyes. The smile, which had not left, did something terribly peculiar at her peer’s approval—it warmed. As did her voice, as she said softly, “May it be so.”

But the warmth faded, though not from additional chill, merely habit, and Vladlena looked surprised, and her hands paused in her search to turn and gaze questioningly, piercingly, at the blonde. “It’s always worth being prepared, for any event.” She murmured, and though her tone didn’t suggest it, it was clearly a question as to why Magda thought otherwise, for as usual the Russian missed the emotional undertones to the statement. “Unless you prefer to test your reactionary talent in raw form?” Her unblinking gaze turned away at last, as she added, thoughtfully and almost to herself, “An interesting notion.”

Lena thought before answering the question, as she always did, but the consideration she gave her answer was swift as always. “I have not.” A year ago, she may have said nothing more, answering the question literally and completely but without embellishment. But she was learning. So after a pause, she added in a murmur, “I ran in the morning. There is a tea shop here that is appallingly pink. One would think it poor business practice to fling confetti into drinks that have been served, but judging from the number of patrons, I am forced to assume not.” It seemed a bit non sequitur, for Lena had neglected to mention that she had gone to the tea shop after her run, but she assumed Magda to be possessed of sufficient reasoning skills to make the determination herself from the logical flow.

With a slightly furrowed brow, and a look of quite serious concentration, Vladlena considered the next step. Ah. Yes. That's what it was. “And your day? Has it been spent productively?” it was as close to, 'how are you' as Vladlena was liable to ever get.

Vladlena’s social peculiarities mightn’t have suited anyone else, but worn in the acute mannerisms of the hyper-intelligent Russian, they were as endearing as quirks could be to the Eisenberg witch. Like Aliya’s softness, Lena’s innate… remoteness… was strangely comforting, familiar, spiced with an unexpectedly human quality that was at odds with their wintry fortress.

“It’s always worth being prepared, for any event.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and if there was a hint of disappointment, it was no more than that. It was not a secret that Magdalena was almost fed up with the tournament, but she knew better than to give up. A smile danced onto her lips as if Vladlena had shared a private joke. She never minded raw form, but preparedness was mandatory for this task of Tasks. “I can test that off the field,” she mused aloud. And then: “It does keep things from becoming too tedious.” And often brought out the best of Magda’s claws. Lyov knew as much, and brought his own rawness to the game.

While it would not have surprised Magda in the least to know that Vladlena had spent the entire morning in the bookshop, her interest was piqued knowing that she hadn’t. There was a laugh hiding behind her smile; she tried to imagine such a place as the pink teashop nestled near Durmstrang. “They can be very cheery,” she said, of the students, the people here, the overall culture. Her eyes roamed upward as she said it, sweeping shelves for more text to add to the book at her side. She landed back on Lena before adding, “Tea is tea, even pink.” There was little practicality, a valued Durmstrang trait, in pink tea. But Durmstrangen were not without their grandiosity. And Magda knew, too, that some types of tea were superior to others. “You’ve managed to escape without confetti in your hair. I think that qualifies for whatever they plan to throw at us next.” And then: “I breakfasted with grandfather and then had target practice.”

They strolled into the Beasts section. The texts here were thick, stuffed with illustrations. Magda scanned the spines, such gems as Faerie Fatale, Encyclopedia of Native Scottish Fauna, and the colonial darling, Hunting Half-Breeds. Printed in forty languages. First edition copies still went for obscene piles of galleons. English had a vulgarity with which it was not often credited. Magda continued searching. “Is there anything on dragons you recommend?” She asked, gaze flicking over Vladlena again.