Magical Hogwarts

such an aggravation
rybinsk; 28 july 2005

The easy thing to do would have been to take a Portkey, but -- just as when he had left Germany, a year ago, Conrad was not confident in his ability to take a dog by Portkey. She was a very well-behaved dog (she was better-behaved than he was, honestly) and he suspected she had a stronger stomach, he knew he didn't always arrive in time to stop her eating things she shouldn't, but he doubted the Portkey office would be persuaded to let his dog grab onto a Portkey in her mouth even if Conrad was totally fine with it, and in any case he liked traveling the slow way. His family had made their living on boats and trains -- it was fun to be on either without having to work for it. Fun just to ride.

His dog liked it less; he'd had to take her out of the compartment every time the train stopped for fuel or to let its employees have a smoke, and let her run around. It would have been annoying if he didn't also need the run around -- what he hadn't anticipated was that it was boring just to ride. He had brought nothing to entertain himself with, no books (he didn't like reading anyway) nor letters (ditto writing) nor cards (his father had been fond of Exploding Solitaire as a travel activity, but Conrad was too stupid for it) so he had spent a lot of time just looking out his window. And a lot of time asleep.

He was better-rested than he'd been in months when he finally arrived, and in a rather better mood too -- how long had it been since he'd had something he was looking forward to like this trip? He was so pleased about it that he felt very stupid.

Less pleased now. Zhenya was supposed to meet him at the station, and was still nowhere to be seen after (he glanced over his shoulder at the clock on the wall) eight minutes, and all of the energy he'd felt as the train pulled ever closer to Rybinsk was being redirected swiftly into a jittery, impatient unease; the longer he sat here on his trunk, just outside the station, the more he tapped his feet. Even his dog was getting restless on her leash. He checked the clock again, then stood -- if Zhenya was coming to meet him, then he would meet her in the middle, and the artistic flying school was close enough to the hotel anyway -- if she wasn't there (where would she be, if not at the school?) then at least he could drop off his trunk.

Nobody had given him a second glance at the train station, but the nearer he grew to the artistic flying school, the more conspicuous he felt. This was pure paranoia, he reassured himself -- none of these were people he would have expected to know him, former classmates or security guards who'd taken issue with him -- but it was difficult to shake the sense that he was attracting more attention, more furtive frowns, than he had expected. This was an almost usual amount of suspicion, which was totally unfair in Rybinsk. At least at home on the island, or at the villages outside Durmstrang, he'd actually earned the neighbours' distrust of him. What had he done wrong, here? Nothing he remembered, aside from make Zhenya cry once, which nobody else had even seen, so --

Ah, there she was.

"Zhenya," he greeted her, suddenly grateful to have his unwieldy trunk in one hand and his dog's leash in the other -- it would save him the awkwardness of shaking her hand or, worse, holding it. "You forget the time?"

@Zhenya Shishkina

Zhenya had woken up with a smile this morning. She was finally seeing Conrad again. He was actually coming to visit her in Rybinsk to see her! Since she hadn’t qualified for the European championships at the recent national championships, she’d even have time to actually enjoy some time away from the flying school with him.

Sadly, her smile already  vanished at breakfast and, soon enough, even Conrad’s visit wasn’t on top of her mind anymore. Rumours were spreading fast among the artistic flying family in Rybinsk and, while Zhenya thought that her parents were definitely a reliable source, she could not believe what she heard them talk about behind closed doors.

Sveta? Dead?

No, it didn’t make sense and yet, given the incidents over the past months and years, Zhenya couldn’t help but wonder. What if it was true after all? It seemed unreal now, she had talked to Sveta less than twenty four hours ago, but so many things seemed unreal until they were, in fact, proven to be veritable.

Her parents didn’t talk to her about it, though. They exchanged looks and said they couldn’t say anything yet. She was of age now. Why was she still treated like a child? Zhenya felt increasingly annoyed and actually scared. Forgetting all her previous plans for the day, she made her way to the artistic flying school. She needed to find out what was going on.

While the news of her cousin’s death was shared among the athletes in a whisper. Even here, at the flying school, nobody seemed willing to give her any details. The rumour hung over the artistic flying school like a heavy dark cloud that threatened to bring heavy rain but that so far only created a gloomy atmosphere.The investigators that had disrupted everyday life at the artistic flying school for a while already, were busy talking to people, but hadn’t approached Zhenya yet.

She spun around when she heard her name, her heartbeat quickening. Conrad was there. Was it already that late?

“Conrad!” she said, hastily closing the distance between them and pulling him into a hug whether he wanted it or not. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I totally lost track of time. Something awful seems to have happened.”

At the artistic flying school itself, it was harder to ignore the unfriendly atmosphere, whispering and furtive glances -- Conrad, feeling distinctly unwelcome, kept having to suppress the urge to fuss at his hair, kept having to remind himself that it got worse the more he touched it.

Conrad did not like being hugged. His mother had hugged him often, in an overwhelming and constricting way -- too tight, too long, clutched around his head and neck -- and he had generally never been in the mood for it, since she was only beset with strong, passionate affection for him after first losing her temper and putting him in the wrong mood. He wasn't in the wrong mood now, exactly, but he was rarely in the right mood -- he didn't think he'd been in the right mood at any point while they'd been dating. He stiffened unconsciously in her hold, his shoulders hitching up. He could stand it for a few seconds only before awkwardly disengaging himself.

He had wanted to make her feel a little bad for abandoning him at the train station, but not this bad -- he was unprepared entirely for the look she was giving him now. He said, frowning in what he hoped was a reassuring way, "It's not a long walk, it's not so bad."

“Yeah,” Zhenya said distractedly, nodding but at the same time glancing around.

“Come with me,” she demanded and led the way into a corner of the entrance area. She didn’t know how to put it. In fact, she didn’t know how she even felt right now. However, she knew that she owed to explain the situation to him and give him the choice if he really wanted to check in at the hotel or not.

She glanced around again although they had put quite a few steps between themselves and the other people at the school so there was no real danger of being overheard.. Zhenya chewed on her lip as she tried to figure out how to break the news to Conrad.

“It seems like someone killed my cousin, Sveta,” she said quite unceremoniously. “I don’t know a lot yet. There are mostly rumours going on but the investigators are talking to people...”

She wanted to see Conrad’s reaction and at the same time she didn’t have the courage to face him and so she looked at her feet instead. He had told her to watch her back even before he had known about this murder. It was awful and Zhenya felt that it would change the world she grew up in. Maybe this was enough of a change to make her gather up all her courage and find a new environment for herself. Yet, right now, there was no time to allow this thought to form in her mind.

“Do you still want to stay?” she asked hopefully. “Since I failed at the national championships I’ll have plenty of time.” Maybe she was bitter about her performance at the national championships. She knew she could have done better. However, she doubted that she could have made the cut for the team for the European championships even if she hadn’t lost her nerves during her performance.

Zhenya was unable to actually see it or put it into words, but she needed Conrad to deal with the situation. He always helped her to put things into perspective. It was not like she agreed with him most of the time, but it seemed like a combination of their opinions was usually a guiding light for Zhenya.

"What? No," said Conrad -- he'd been here for five seconds, why was she bossing him around? -- but he followed her around the corner anyway, setting his trunk down with a thunk to signify that this was as much as he was willing to be dragged around like a dog on a lead, before he remembered that the trunk was essential to not letting Zhenya hold his hand. He stuck it hastily into his pocket.

Immediately all this fuss he was making on his own behalf felt absolutely moronic. "Oh," he said, his eyes wide, his mouth open in a little 'o' -- he had not expected this brand of disaster. He had assumed something more classically Zhenya-like, that she had bungled a jump and been crying all morning or something, not -- well, even if he'd warned her, weeks ago, that she ought to watch her back, he hadn't truly expected the warning to be necessary. He lowered his voice.

"Sveta -- did I read her name in the paper?" He knew he had, but he didn't remember who Svetlana was; he mostly skimmed the artistic flying results for Zhenya's name, and it had taken him an embarrassingly long time to find her (Yevgeniya, not Zhenya) as transliterated in the English Prophet. (Nobody had ever said he was smart.) "Was she -- you said there are investigators? Did they talk to you? Don't say anything to them, they try to trip you up, they try to trick you."

Zhenya asked if he wanted to stay. Conrad, truthfully, did not have much choice in the matter -- he had been banking on the friend-of-the-family discount he was getting at the Rybinsk hotel, for shelter, and had been hoping to pick up some longshore work to make the money to leave again. It didn't seem like the time to say so, though -- better to let her think he was doing this for some noble reason. "Yes," he said, "I can still stay. I was sorry about your championships. Maybe I should have went to Switzerland, hah?" He didn't believe this himself -- Switzerland was expensive and Gruyères was French-speaking. Besides -- "I want to see your town, I never looked around the last time I came here."

Conrad’s protest was feeble and Zhenya barely heard it anyway. After all, he followed her into the corner. If she had paid any attention to the fact that he had to carry his trunk further, she might have felt guilty, but as it was, she didn’t really notice anything.

“Yes,” Zhenya whispered, “she won the national championships because of her big lead after the technical exercise…” It felt silly to speak about Sveta’s latest accomplishment when it was of no consequence to her anymore. Sveta had earned herself a ticket to the European championships in Switzerland but that was of no importance now. Zhenya wondered if Lara would take her sister’s spot. She shuddered at the thought. Had someone killed Zina and had that meant that she’d get a spot on the team, she’d refuse for sure. Then again the family often blamed her for not being professional enough.

“Nobody has spoken to me yet,” Zhenya said, glancing around as though she was expecting to be approached at this very moment. “I guess, they don’t suspect me because…” she shook her head. Saying that she likely wasn’t a suspect because she had finished so low in the standings that she had nothing to gain from her cousin's death seemed petty and whiny.

“I don’t know who they’ve spoken to so far. It’s still really fresh news.”

He said he’d be staying anyway. Zhenya took a deep breath and looked at her friend, her eyes slightly watery. “Thank you,” she said. “I know I could never have earned one of the top spots this year. I could have performed better, but I doubt it would have changed the result much.”

It still hurt, though. Zhenya tried to look at it professionally. Her routines, even if performed flawlessly, wouldn't have put her in immediate competition with the likes of Sveta, Aglaya and some of the others. A medal hadn’t been a realistic goal and so it didn’t matter too much that she hadn’t done a great job on her broom. Besides, in the light of the current developments Zhenya wasn’t sure if she really wanted to pursue this career anymore. Maybe artistic flying wasn’t her future after all. It was too early to voice these thoughts, though. Especially because she could imagine Conrad’s reaction.

“Shall we go to the hotel?” she asked, suddenly eager to leave the flying school. “Once you put your trunk into your room, I can show you around some more.”

Despite himself, Conrad couldn't help the twitch of amusement that pulled at his lips. "How she was killed?" he said. "Maybe they don't ask you because you are so lousy at magic." At magic, at alchemy, he even suspected that Zhenya lacked the grip strength to strangle somebody. On the bright side, most of the same advantages applied to him, too. Not the grip strength -- he'd spent much too much of his life holding the lines for his uncles' boats or in detention with the dragons, in the first place, and he wasn't a girl, in the second.

The tiny smile faded quickly, though -- really fresh news could mean anything, but the way Zhenya was acting it must mean this was really fresh. He had such rotten luck, coming into town right when there'd been a killing. "How recent?" he said. "It was before I came, right? I don't have..." what he didn't have, most of all, was money, which he thought might have solved all the other things he didn't have: a good reputation, a good alibi, basically anybody's trust at all. Would it look more suspicious to just leave now? He didn't want to.

Here, they were on more familiar ground now. Conrad shook his head, fell back on his favourite reassurance -- "You were still a student all year, you had less time than any of these other witches. Nobody should have expected you to outperform them. They do this for full time."

Zhenya suggested going to the hotel -- Conrad reached eagerly down to pick up his trunk again. "Yes, thank you," he said gratefully. "Are you hungry, did you eat? I only had coffee on the train."

“Very funny,” Zhenya said, her voice brittle. Conrad had a point, though. She was pretty lousy at most kinds of magic. However, she thought she could very well accidentally kill someone. A strengthening potion gone wrong could possibly be fatal. Besides, due to her sport, she was stronger than she looked and she could always hit someone on the head with something heavy, stab them in the back or buy a poison.

“She…” Zhenya looked around again to make sure nobody was overhearing their conversation, “she has been poisoned.”

Conrad asked when the murder happened and Zhenya took a deep breath to calm herself. Talking about it was hard.

“They think it happened late last night after the official practices ended.”

Her friend’s reassurances lured a small smile onto her face. “I know. You’re right. My family didn’t really expect me to medal, but… oh, it doesn’t even matter anymore…” She sighed. “I should have sat out the season. Recent graduates should still be allowed to perform in the junior competitions. That would be so much fairer.”

As Conrad picked up his trunk, Zhenya glanced around once more. It was a relief that nobody seemed to pay them any attention. Maybe they could leave the flying school unnoticed and spend the day in a way as if nothing awful had ever happened.

“I’m not sure I have much appetite, but I only had a small breakfast a few hours ago. We could go to the Repin. They have great sandwiches.”

Zhenya had not found that very funny, Konrad thought, which did not reduce his amusement one jot. Still, she seemed so spooked that it was taking some of the wind out of his sails -- he dug his hand deeper into his pocket, adjusted his grip on his dog's lead. It occurred to him for the first time that mysterious deaths here weren't normal, that this wasn't like when his uncle had died on the job when Konrad was fifteen and his father had said, in an undertone at dinner when it came up at dinner, that the man had been courting death for years, working the way he did.

There was a chill going down his spine suddenly -- it occurred to him that being bad at Alchemy was a good way to poison somebody, too. "Oh," he said, a little aghast. "Last night? Did you -- did you see her yesterday?"

Even before she could answer, he was hunching his shoulders, as if to stave off the heebie-jeebies. He was grateful that Zhenya seemed as unwilling to discuss her dead cousin as he had just decided he was. "Much fairer," he echoed faintly (though he didn't think it would be fair exactly.)

His trunk was pulling heavily on his arm already; he was eager to put it away. His dog, too, was getting restless by his side, which he could tell not because she was obviously agitated but because she was too attentive, watching him for some (any) indication that they were going somewhere (anywhere) else soon. Even if Zhenya wasn't hungry, and he couldn't blame her after what had happened last night (not to mention how it had happened), Konrad had been on a train for two days subsisting largely on coffee and cigarettes. "I would like a sandwich," he said. He hoped this restaurant wouldn't be too expensive, or -- failing that -- that Zhenya's family also owned that, like they seemed to own everything else in magical Rybinsk; he had money but he was not rich.

Zhenya nodded, but didn’t get to say anything before Konrad spoke again, confirming that recent graduates should better be allowed to participate in the junior competitions for another summer. She wasn’t quite sure if Konrad actually agreed with her or just wanted to end the topic before she could launch into a lengthy rant about it. It didn’t matter much now anyway. Not after the things that were happening now.

“Okay,” Zhenya said, trying to sound cheerful. “Sandwiches it is. Come, let’s leave quickly before anyone stalls us.” She led the way out, checking several times that they were not being watched.

It wasn’t like she wasn’t allowed to leave the flying school. She had no practice up now, she hadn’t been asked to stay for questioning, and her family was probably quite busy anyway. Still, it felt somewhat strange to turn the back on the flying school and all the recent drama.

Once they stepped out on the street and into the sun, Zhenya took a deep breath. Konrad’s earlier question still remained unanswered and she felt she had to talk about Sveta, at least until they’d reach the Repin and order something to eat.

“I saw Sveta in practice yesterday. She was doing really well. Her confidence was so admirable…” She shuddered. Sveta had been in high spirits after her training session. She clearly had had no hunch that her life was about to be terminated. Her preparations for the European championships had been going very well and she seemed determined to fight for the gold medal there.