Chapter Text
It takes less than a month for Viktor to start hearing rumors about one of the new students at Durmstrang. The first years whisper about her, about a ruthless muggle raised student, and that rumor spreads to the upper years. Viktor, in his fourth year, pays little attention to the rumors at first. It starts out as typical schoolyard gossip after all. How was he to know the depth of feeling the subject of those rumors would one day inspire in him?
It isn’t until he witnesses what the rumors were talking about for himself that he starts to get an inkling.
He’s walking from his transfiguration class to his potions class when he happens upon a scene. Two children, both first or second years, standing across from one another in an isolated hallway. A boy has pulled his wand and pointed it at a girl, who stands unbothered by the explicit threat in front of her.
“Mudblood! You don’t belong in this school!” This is what the boy is saying.
Viktor’s eyes go wide. He connects the rumors immediately of course, and then frowns in anger. There were few students at Durmstrang who weren’t purebloods, only a handful of half bloods and even fewer muggleborns. He’d heard that one had been admitted this year, but--
Viktor’s hands clench into fists. He steps forward, ready to interfere and teach the boy the meaning of consequences for picking on someone less privileged than him, but the girl laughs before he can.
“That’s cute. Is this supposed to threaten me?” she says, sounding thoroughly amused.
Then she moves.
It’s like watching a dancer more than a fight. She twists around him, plucking the wand from the boy’s grip and sweeping his feet out from under him. She catches him from behind before he can fall and suddenly, without warning, there is a knife at the boy’s throat. The boy freezes. Then he goes pale.
“Y-you--” The boy starts to stammer.
The girl smiles sweetly. “Shhhh. It’s alright. Did you honestly think that you could beat me? It’s sweet that you think that someone as weak as you could so much as scratch at my boots.”
“Y-you won’t get away with this!” The boy says, looking terrified. “They’ll throw you in--”
The girl’s hand is steady as she presses the knife closer to the boy’s throat. “Now now. Don’t struggle. One slip and your throat would be split open on this blade and you’d bleed out onto the ground. Just one more corpse to the pile. All people die the same. You’d be no better than any other dying animal. Is that what you want?”
The boy whimpers. “P-please.”
“Hmmm…” The girl hums in contemplation. “...Alright. I’ll let you live. But no more of this, okay? You want to target someone, you target someone else.” The girl lifts the knife from the boy’s throat and steps back. She holds out his wand for the boy to take, and when he does she watches him run away as quickly as he can.
“Was that necessary?” Viktor asks, walking closer. The girl looks unsurprised by his presence. Had she really just threatened to murder someone while knowing there was a witness?
“Of course it was. I know his type. You need to treat him with a firm hand or he’ll never learn.” The girl turns to him fully, the knife in her hands vanished to the winds. Where did it go? A pocket? Her sleeve?
Viktor observes the girl in front of him. She’s clearly a first year, but not a normal one. She stands tall and proud, her curly hair tied up into a bun with a feathered band. Her hair is black as pitch and her eyes are an eerie green. There is an air about her that feels dangerous.
Viktor sighs and concedes. “Alright. But if I ever find out you really killed someone for something like this, I will make sure you are punished.”
“Ho?” The girl smiles. “And how will you do that?”
“I would punish you myself,” Viktor says.
The girl’s eyes twinkle with delight. “Good. You know what? I like you. What’s your name?”
Viktor, momentarily taken aback, takes a second to respond. “Viktor Krum.”
“Viktor Krum,” The girl sounds out his name on her tongue, then smiles wide and low. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Viktor Krum. My name is Lucrezia Vongola.”
Viktor, suddenly uncomfortable, nods.
After the incident, Victor starts seeing Lucrezia everywhere. He sees her during meal times and in the library. She waves to him sometimes in the halls. Twice, she has come up to him and asked him questions about magic and how to perform it. At first it felt a bit like some of his fans do--Viktor is in the Durmstrang Quidditch club and has gained something of a reputation there--but something was different. So Viktor… he doesn’t chase her away.
Eventually, he even starts to respond.
Someone takes a seat next to Viktor in the library. Viktor needs only a glance to confirm it’s Lucrezia. She calmly takes out her school supplies and begins to work on homework. Viktor goes back to his own.
Durmstrang has a teaching style that disallows notetaking in class. It’s very heavy on the practical side of magic, so much so that if you forgot something on the theoretical side, you needed to research it yourself rather than ask a teacher. Durmstrange didn’t have the largest library in the world, but it was more than adequate for the students' needs.
The two of them worked in silence for sometime, the only sound being the flipping of pages and the scratch of quills on paper. Eventually, she flips the book closed, takes out a different parchment and starts to write what looks like a letter.
“Writing home?” Viktor asks.
“Close,” Lucrezia responds. “I’m writing to my best friend first. He’s in Britain attending Hogwarts at the moment, and we swore to exchange stories.”
Viktor’s eyebrows scrunch up slightly. “May I ask his name?”
“Blaise Zabini,” Lucrezia responds easily. “Son of the Black Widow, if you’ve heard of her.”
Viktor shakes his head. “I have not.”
Lucrezia hums. “She’s rather well known in Italy and in Britain--a woman who has a tendency to kill her husbands, not that anyone has any proof.”
Viktor shifts in his seat, somewhat uncomfortable. “And your parents?”
“I’m adopted,” Lucrezia admits easily. “My birth parents are a pureblood and a muggleborn, and the man who raised me is a muggle.”
Viktor recalls the way she seemed to dance around that other student when they first met. “Is he the one who taught you to fight?”
Lucrezia laughs lightly. “He’s one of them. The other two were my uncle Belphegor and my uncle Lussuria.”
Those are quite the names, Viktor thought to himself.
“It was Uncle Bel who taught me knifework, and Uncle Luss who taught me hand to hand,” the girl continues. “And my dad was the one who taught me how to shoot.”
“I see,” he says, thinking of his own family. “My father is a somewhat distant man, and I don’t speak to him much, but I know he is very proud of me. My mother is a wonderful woman with many stories. I care for them both a great deal.”
“Any siblings?” She asks
Viktor shakes his head. “No, just me.”
“Same,” Lucrezia says. “But I like it that way. If my dad took in someone else I’m not sure what I’d do.”
Viktor glances at her, at the pleasant expression on her face, and then looks back to his essay.
Things continue like this for some time. They meet--in the halls, in the library, in the courtyard, in the quidditch pitch--and talk, exchanging stories about their personal lives and their families.
Viktor learns that Lucrezia grew up in the outskirts of Naples, but she was born in England. He learns that outside of Belphegor and Lussuria, Lucrezia also has relatives by the names of Levi-a-Than, Squalo, and Mammon. He learns that she likes cats more than dogs, that her favorite color is red, that her favorite game is chess.
He learns that Lucrezia loves her father more than anyone else in the world.
“Is something wrong?”
Viktor looks to where Lucrezia is sitting beside him in the courtyard. She’s closed her book and has given him her full attention.
Viktor considers for a moment, about what he is going to say. He recalls the way that boy had looked, pale and shaking, when Lucrezia held a knife to his throat. He makes a decision.
It is one he does not regret.
“I found a symbol carved into a wall earlier today. It was the symbol of Grindelwald, one I suspect he carved into the wall in his youth.” Viktor’s hands clench. “My grandfather was murdered by Grindelwald. Seeing it has left me… unsettled.”
Lucrezia’s eyes glint in the light of the sun. She nods. “I see. Did you destroy it?”
Viktor nods sharply. “Of course.”
Lucrezia smiles, wide and low. “Good.”
It is unfortunately not the last time he sees Grindelwald’s symbol. A few days after the incident, he sees one of the boys who was with him when he found the symbol wearing it on their uniform, smirking at people who approach him. Viktor walks up to him calmly and then promptly punches him in the face.
“People have taken to wearing Grindelwald’s symbol,” Viktor tells Lucrezia when next they meet. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ve seen it in the halls too. I’ve been hexing them whenever I see it but…”
Viktor looks out the window and to the courtyard beyond. It’s snowing heavily. Even the inside of the castle is cold, despite the tapestries and charms. Viktor wears heavy clothes, as do most students during this time of year. It’ll be Yule soon, he thinks.
“Hmm… Perhaps I could…” Lucrezia murmurs to herself, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.
Viktor turns to her. “Could what?” he asks.
Lucrezia’s eyes glimmer in the low torchlight. She smiles. “Viktor. I just might have a solution to our problem.” She turns to him. In the light she stands in, she looks less like a girl and more like a monster. Her green eyes seem to glow. “What do you say to using a firm hand on these poor fools?”
Viktor watches her, unsure. He has gotten to know this girl, but does he know her truly? Why does this feel like he is making a deal with a devil? Still. She is his friend, and he has come to trust her. He nods sharply.
So their game begins.
Alexander Gerrad wakes in a dark room.
He comes to with a jolt, then realizes that he can’t move--he’s tied up. Rope winds its way around his body, constricting it utterly. He looks around, squinting in the dim lighting, and sees he’s not alone.
There is a girl there, lounging in an armchair like a throne. She reads a book idly, the only light with which to read a small candle sitting on a table beside her. It illuminates her face, the eeriness of her green green eyes.
She glances up at him. She smiles.
Alex shudders at the smile, wide and arrogant and cruel. “What do you want? Why have you brought me here?”
The girl ignores him. She simply goes back to her book, flipping a page and continuing to read.
“Well?” He says. “Aren’t you going to say something? Do something?”
“Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to burn alive?” The girl asks idly, not taking her eyes off her book.
“Wha--?” Alex startles. He struggles in the ropes. “The hell is that supposed to mean? Let me go!”
“The smell of it--roasted human flesh spells like pork, you know. Like barbeque. And the smoke… Did you know that most people burned alive don’t die from the fire? It’s the smoke that kills them. Magic can fix that, though. It would be a much longer death that way,” The girl continues.
Alex shudders, afraid. “Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?”
“Grindelwald’s symbol… How gauche, really,” The girl says. “How pathetic to use a failed man’s legacy to try and gain some popularity. And now, by request, you will die for it.”
She snaps the book closed with a quiet thump. Alex can barely hear it over the pounding of his heart. “D-die for it? You've got to be kidding! Merlin, you have to be joking.”
The girl stands from her chair, languid and unbothered. Then she holds out a hand and sets it alight.
The fire is redder than Alex thought it would be.
It burns with a color like hot coals, but somehow angrier. Alex could feel it--the rage that radiated off those flames burning in her hand. And Alex knew, he knew, that if that fire touched him, he would die. It wouldn’t be quick either. It’s the smoke that kills them. Magic can fix that, though. It would be a much longer death that way. That’s what she had said to him.
“P-please!” He begs, he screams. “I won’t wear it again! Please! Please!”
The girl crouches before him. She’s smiling. It makes this whole thing all the more terrifying. She’s enjoying herself, doing this reprehensible thing.
“I swear! I’ll make a vow, even! Just please!”
“Hmmm…” The girl hums as she looks at him. Light glints off the feathers in her hair. “What do you think, Viktor?”
It isn’t until that moment that Alex notices another person in the room. He’s stood in the darkest part of the room, behind where Alex is laid. Viktor Krum. The guy who punched Evan for wearing Grindelwald’s symbol just last week.
“Should I kill him or should I spare him?”
Viktor watched with impassive eyes.
“P-please,” Alex begs. “I won’t wear it again, just please.”
Viktor watches him. Watches as the tears roll down Alex’s face, as he sobs in the face of death. He crosses his arms, tilts his head as if to consider. Then, after a long, long moment. Viktor nods and says.
“Let him live.”
There were five boys in total who wore the symbol of Grindelwald, who stitched it onto their clothes and drew it in their books. Each one got the same treatment, the same face of death.
Each one caved eventually.
And each one never wore the symbol ever again.