"Trust me, you shouldn't want anyone like me on your back."
"Maybe I don't want anyone like you on my back," His eyes darkened as he stepped closer, confining me tighter into barely any space as my back pressed against the wall.
"Maybe I want you. U...
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
SOMETIMES THERE WAS NOTHING more humiliating to me than my own desires. When I had asked Krum who he would want to bring back from the grip of death, with the crystal Resurrection stone glinting something scarlet in the center of my palm, I had had the acute tension to take the thing for my own—to consume it suddenly, to have such a thing become a part of me.
Bringing back someone from the underworld was sinful—at least it seemed so. An act so vile and unholy that no matter the amount of love and grief it was done with, it would never be acceptable in front of any pious mortal or immortal eye. I had no one I wanted to bring back from the dead. Grindelwald's corpse was still fresh, his soul would still be at the brink of beginning its torture for his acts in the world—if such a thing was true.
Would I bring him back if I could? The answer was stark in me, and it was so abrupt, as though my brain had spent no amount of time dwelling on the intricacies of it. Yes. Yes, I would. But I won't, and that argument overpowered everything else. He would hate me, if I brought him back from the place he had begged to go to. And with his mark ingrained on my skin, I felt no humiliation in admitting that I didn't want his hate.
So, I had asked Viktor Krum to hold it. Willing for the deathly hallow to be kept away from me, though I wasn't sure if he could sense the intention.
"Strange how it had no protection," The Bulgarian seeker's voice interrupted my reverie, our feet tapping along the stone Hogwarts hallway as we headed to the Great Hall for dinner.
The castle was lit up by a cluster of burning logs held by iron casings along the walls at intervals, and the portraits adorning the walls buzzed and hummed with dazed conversations. I could hear muttered exclamations as Krum and I passed by, the words Durmstrang, Viktor Krum, Quidditch, and Beauxbatons, salient in the abrupt declarations.
Hours ago, when we had made our exit from the Girls' Bathroom after having extricated ourselves from the Chamber of Secrets with the annoyed form of Yordanka Hristova and a nonchalant Zubair Dimitrova at our heels, I had heard the words Huntlock and Ilvermorny in the same sentence from one of the portraits we had passed by.
Having grown accustomed to paying no heed to fruitless conversation emanating from portraits hung on castle walls, I felt myself turn to see who had spoken the words, only to find a grim looking old woman on a rocking chair staring intently at her crochet project crocheting itself in front of her face. She didn't look at me, but I could tell she knew she had my attention. I didn't know what exactly she had been saying, but a feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that it couldn't have been anything polite. It threw me off slightly, thinking of what she knew. The Huntlock champions were in Hogwarts, and that was not where they were supposed to be at present.
