Magical Hogwarts

 

25th December 2004

Three performances in one day were tough, even for a professional artistic flyer. Aglaya was still not back to her previous best shape but she was unwilling to let the crowd see that she wasn’t the same athlete she had been before the end of the 2003 season. She had had to skip the annual open day the year before. Now she was greeted with warm applause when she entered the arena for her first performance.

Toccata and Fugue was the program that had earned her the first place at the previous world championships and the music carried her through a flawless performance. Given that Aglaya had taken a cocktail of mood altering potions, she was actually able to enjoy herself. She even received standing ovations from parts of the crowd when the music stopped.

Despite the soothing potions she was taking these days, Aglaya felt no desire to spend any time in the public area of the artistic flying school. As she left the arena both Ivo and Branimir followed her. She thanked them quickly for escorting her to the private area of the school and then waited for them to give her some privacy. When they made no attempt to leave her alone she decided to enter the changing room and already switch costumes. Her black leather catsuit was probably the sexiest outfit the athlete had ever worn in public. She applied some more make up, basically to make her eyes darker and her lips redder. Her red curls, previously tied up in a ponytail were now down and just a few strands were kept out of her face by a clip. As she came out of the changing room, Branimir was chatting animatedly with Anatoliy while Ivo watched some girls warming up.

The potions always made Aglaya thirsty and she was glad when she found her sport bag in the ballet studio. Lifting the protective enchantments with a flick of her wand, she pulled out a big water bottle and drank. She still had around an hour until she’d have to perform again and her planned second program was very different from what Aglaya usually did. She was known to use classical pieces and certainly nothing contemporary and felt a little nervous when she thought about the Russian wrock piece she had chosen for the show. Maybe it was too risky to go for something so completely different. She could tell by her sudden doubts that the effects of the potions were wearing off. Quickly, she retrieved another vial and downed its content.

Then she switched on the song loudly and went through a few sequences. At first her movements lacked conviction but as the potion kicked in, she felt more and more confident. However, she stopped mid-movement when she saw a young man in the entrance of the ballet studio.

“How did you get in here?” she asked, recognising the man as Zhenya’s friend.

@Conrad Sturm

Conrad, obviously, was lost. He’d turned left out of the beam room, so he wouldn’t be following Zhenya, and then tried to find an exit without having to go back out through the crowd. He had recognised the man who had accompanied Aglaya Antonovna to Döttrar Vik last year and given him a wide berth, because the last thing he needed was to get searched and get all his tools taken away. (Ivo had wanted to confiscate his wand when they’d met last year. His wand!) This had led him to an open door blaring rock music, so he had looked in, to see if it was the cafeteria (it was not) or if it had a back door (it did not) and then had been distracted by Aglaya Antonovna herself.

He knew it was impolite to stare, but, like, she was wearing all leather and doing flips and stuff. It probably should have been very appealing, but he was in a bad mood, so instead he stared at her with something almost like revulsion. Four doors down, Zhenya was probably, like, crying her eyes out because she would never be this talented, because she felt so dwarfed by the competition coming from within her own family. Aglaya was doing three performances tonight. What a shitshow.

That wasn’t Aglaya’s fault, obviously. She might be their star athlete now but Conrad figured she was easily replaceable and probably on her last legs anyway, because she was like thirty. All the money and power in that family had to be way further up the chain with the coaches and judges, the schools and competitions, the broom manufacturers and the sport federation (he could kick himself for how much he knew about this; he hadn’t realised how much he actually listened to Zhenya when she talked about it.)

Aglaya noticed him, half-stumbling out of a fluid flip. She asked, How did you get in here? which, to be fair, was a reasonable question. Conrad, feeling at once guilty for standing there and watching her, and defensive of his probably dubious right to do so, said, “I come backstage to see Zhenya,” and readjusted his rucksack on his back. “You’re doing three performances?”

“Oh,” Aglaya said, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. “I didn’t know you were still seeing each other. I’m sure Zhenya is happy that you came.” As far as she knew Conrad had already graduated and for some reason she hadn’t expected him to be still friends with Zhenya. She was almost a little envious that he had come to see her distant cousin. There were probably many people who had come to see her perform but most of them didn’t know her at all. Conrad and Zhenya however were friends and it was nice that he supported the junior athlete although he didn’t seem to be actually interested in artistic flying.

At least the young man seemed to know the schedule. It surprised her but then again she realised that Zhenya might have told him all about it. Maybe the younger athlete had complained that she didn’t get to perform more often. However, having seen Zhenya’s practice, Aglaya doubted that was the case. Her distant cousin had struggled in the morning practice, after all. She had no idea how she had done during her performance but she had a sinking feeling that it hadn’t been too great.

“Yes, I am,” Aglaya responded, picking up her water bottle again to take another sip. “It wasn’t my idea but it is as it is. One done, two more to go…” She shrugged. Somehow, with the help of her potions, she’d get through this. She had to anyway. It was not like she had a choice. The first performance had gone well and she felt physically in a good enough shape to get through another performance at least. The third one, though, seemed to be a little much. She had deliberately picked a short and slow piece of music for that, thinking that it might be easier to get through that.

“How do you like the show so far?” Aglaya assumed that Conrad had come backstage after Zhenya’s performance which meant that he’d have seen more or less the first third of the show.

“We’re not,” said Conrad flatly. “And she’s not glad I came. I shouldn’t have wasted my time.” He leaned morosely against the doorframe, tucking his thumbs behind the straps of his bag, and held back the urge to sigh, only because sighing was a pathetic and annoying thing to do. “She looked good to me,” he added, “but she said she did bad.” When he shrugged, the fabric of his robes caught against the doorframe, making him look hunchbacked.

Aglaya didn’t seem overly thrilled to be here talking to him, but she wasn’t flat-out ignoring him either, even though she clearly recognised him, which he took as permission (albeit grudging permission) to stay and chat. Maybe she needed a break anyway; she’d gone for her water bottle like she was dehydrated. It wasn’t my idea, but it is as it is. So Aglaya – world champion Aglaya Antonovna – didn’t have a say in any of this either, he noted, for future reference, in case Zhenya ever did want to talk to him again and he needed it for argument’s sake. Colour him surprised, he thought bitterly.

He hadn’t watched Aglaya’s first performance; he remembered hearing someone announce it, but he had been hanging out with a random stagehand he had met when he had gone to look at the lights mounted on the rigging, and that had been more interesting to him. It was probably polite to lie and pretend he had seen it and compliment her, but he didn’t feel like it – his stupid, irrational sense of loyalty to Zhenya was poisoning his feelings about the entire sport, making him want to resent it and loathe it on her behalf, making him feel like it was wrong to compliment anybody else. Why did everybody care so much what he thought, how he felt about things? This was what always got him into trouble.

“Zhenya asked the same thing,” he said; at first his voice was still flat and blunt, but as the hurt and frustration left over from talking to Zhenya came roiling to the surface, it started to pitch higher and louder. “I don’t know what to say! I liked to watch her perform, and then I go and talk to her and she tells me she did a shitty job and she’s not any good, like she’s not the fourth best in the world - what’s wrong with you people? What am I supposed to think?”

“Okay.” Aglaya was surprised to hear that. She felt that the young wizard wouldn’t have come here (especially backstage) if he wasn’t still seeing Zhenya and if she didn’t appreciate his company. However, his mention that he shouldn’t have wasted his time hinted at an argument and Aglaya didn’t intend to press further. It was none of her business.

Conrad went on, though, and what he said explained why he was frustrated. It also explained why Zhenya could be frustrated. Aglaya herself had little experience talking about her feelings after a performance with someone who knew little about artistic flying. The young man was probably a bad choice for someone to talk about the sport with. He didn’t seem to like the sport and had nothing elegant or athletic about himself as far as Aglaya could tell.

Her question had just been a polite one to make him feel welcome and not cut off. His reaction to it was more than she had bargained for, though. There were a lot of feelings in it that Aglaya had not expected. She put her bottle away but didn’t resume training or even stretching.

“You’re not supposed to think anything,” she said calmly. “Honestly, I guess she was frustrated because her own expectations were high and she couldn’t deliver as planned. And she’s going to compete with the seniors this upcoming season…”

It was hard to choose the right words here. Zhenya had been considered one of the upcoming stars of the scene. Two or so years ago even Aglaya had believed that her distant cousin would challenge her position one day. Now, however, Zhenya didn’t seem to live up to these expectations.

“The transition is really hard and stressful. I remember how it was for me…” She had been second in her first senior nationals and sixth at the European championships that year. It had been disappointing after she had done so well in the junior scene but she felt certain that Zhenya’s first senior season would likely be even far less successful than that.

Yeah, sure, he wasn’t ‘supposed’ to think anything, but Conrad knew well enough that there were lots of things he wasn’t supposed to think. He’d heard reassurances like this before – you can think whatever you want, Conrad – nobody’s telling you what to think, Conrad – nobody cares what you think, Conrad – and they were usually immediately followed by clear evidence that actually people did care, passionately, about what he thought.

Aglaya was the rare adult who seemed to be listening to the words he was saying and not just his tone of voice; rather than get angry or annoyed at him, she answered him so calmly that Conrad felt almost unsettled. He gulped a deep breath and tried to mirror her even temper. He even let her finish speaking without jumping in when she paused to find the words to explain, without zoning out halfway through to come up with a response. As a result, he didn’t have a reply ready when it had become clear she was not going to discuss her own transition between the junior and senior leagues.

“But,” he said, only because his instinct was to start sentences with ‘but’. His voice sounded stupid and young to him, so he started over, standing straighter as though that would force him to think faster. None of what Aglaya said was anything he didn’t know – he’d pointed out himself that Zhenya would be competing against career athletes this summer – but he had no idea how this was supposed to help him.

“You’re the best in the world,” he said, almost accusingly. “Zhenya isn’t. She’s going up against you this year. She’s going to fail. Everyone in your fucked-up family is setting her up to fail. You pretend so hard that she can do it if she just tries harder – she tries so hard already that she has nothing else in her life! And she thinks everybody is looking out for her and supporting her – do you even believe your family is looking out for your best interests?”

Why was she even listening to this young man? Aglaya felt that he was accusing her and the whole family, possibly the whole artistic flying scene, of ganging up against Zhenya. She knew she didn’t owe Conrad a response, that she didn’t have to justify herself and even less the rest of her family.

Conrad acted as though he knew all about the sport and what the athletes went through when he really only saw the tip of the iceberg from one single angle. Aglaya’s gaze wandered off, spotting Ivo and Branimir in the distance. She didn’t need their protection here, of course. Conrad was not physically threatening her and they couldn’t fight off the thoughts that he brought up.  That was up to her. The most important task of an athlete was to stay focused and ban all negative thoughts from their mind. Sometimes that was harder than learning the technical elements.

“Zhenya is not really going up against me,” Aglaya said. “Just because we compete in the same competition doesn't make us immediate rivals.” Nobody, not even the Shishkins, expected Zhenya to challenge her this year. “She is mostly up against herself. This year, for her, is to find out where she stands and then see how to proceed from there.”

There was one more aspect that Conrad had brought up and Aglaya hesitated to respond to that. Her spontaneous reply, had she been careless enough to voice it, would have been ‘no, I don’t believe that’. However, things were far more complex and she was unsure how much she wanted to tell Zhenya’s friend.

“There are always several aspects to consider,” Aglaya said, feeling how she was getting a little defensive and hating herself for it. “Our family is not only our family but also our team. We’re athletes who dedicated their lives to this sport. We strive for success, medals, titles and our family does a lot to help there.” Admittedly that occasionally meant kicking the athletes' feelings with their feet but there was simply no time for sensitivities.

Conrad opened his mouth to retort, midway through Aglaya’s response, then clamped it shut again. Waited until Aglaya was done. Waited out the surge of anger that had flared up unbidden when he’d realised that he was about to hear the artistic flying family homily again. There are always several aspects to consider – what aspects of this did Aglaya think were slipping his mind, exactly? This was the same thing Zhenya always talked about.

“Right,” he said, smothering as much of his frustration out of his voice as he could, going back to his blunt, flat tone. “I bet you believe all that. It was stupid to ask anyway, you’re just like her.” He slid his hands down the straps of his bag, then shoved them into his pockets. All the exhaustion and emptiness and need from the past thirty-six hours – however long it’d been since he left work – was suddenly pressing up into his skull. He needed to sleep and eat and, most importantly, get the hell out of Rybinsk.

“I go now,” he said abruptly. “You don’t need your goons to throw me out. I find my way okay.” This was overconfident – the only reason he’d come across Aglaya was that he’d gotten lost – but the last thing he wanted was to deal with Ivo Georgiev again. He looked over his shoulder at her security detail, who were watching him warily, and then back at Aglaya.

It felt stupid not to say good-bye, when he was so emphatically not planning to return, but he didn’t think he liked her enough for it. Instead he said, “Luck to you for the other two performances. If you see Zhenya…” he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to say. Not that he was sorry, because he wasn’t, but he was still troubled by their fight. He frowned. “Tell her I still liked her performance. It was still pretty.” That was still okay to say, right?

If not – well – Zhenya never had to talk to him again. Whatever. It wasn’t like Conrad cared. He squared his shoulders, nodded once, and then slipped back out the door.


OUT

’You’re just like her.’

Aglaya raised her eyebrows. She had no idea why Conrad thought that she and Zhenya were alike when they had nothing in common but the sport and the family. However, she was not going to go down that route and tell Conrad how they differed. It was a waste of energy and time. Besides, Conrad’s opinion on her didn’t really matter to Aglaya. He should think whatever he wanted to think of her. Everybody did that anyway.

“Okay,” Aglaya said indifferently as the young man announced that he’d leave and didn’t need to be guided outside. While sometimes Aglaya was scared of her own shadow, Conrad didn’t terrify her at all and whether or not he stayed in the private area of the school didn’t bother her either.

Before he disappeared, though, he asked her if she could tell Zhenya something when she saw her again. Aglaya shrugged in response and waited for him to tell her what he wanted her cousin to know.

“Okay,” she said again when he had finished but she wasn’t sure that she’d forward Conrad’s words to her. She assumed that she’d forget about it before she’d get to chat to Zhenya again. It wasn’t like she talked a lot with her anyway and she had far more important things on her mind than playing the owl for Conrad.

Once he turned his back to her, Aglaya went on stretching and preparing herself mentally for her next performance.

[end]