Darkest Shade of Light| Dramione

.xvii. gold

She looks like morning.

The eagerness of sunlight as it spread across the mountaintops of his hometown, blinding yet pure. The only time of day that the hard grey rocky groves soften. Shy and tentative at first then slowly, surely, bit by glorious bit, spilling over everything. Golden and bright and unstoppable.

It took his breath when he was eighteen and it took his breath again.

Just now.

Victor Krum was lucky to survive it then but he's not so confident now.

He thought he was a man at eighteen. Crowds knew his name and people sang of his glory. If he only looked at their hollering faces and not at the snitch, he could have lost himself to the revelries and brainless admiration. But his quest for personal greatness managed to keep his feet on the ground even as he zoomed around the arena on his Firebolt Supreme.

Until showing strength required more than an aerial stunt against two bludgers.

She tried to reach out to him during the first of the darkest days, right after the battle of Hogwarts. After Harry's death. Once and only once. A call for alliance.

Victor tried his hardest not to be sentimental, it is not in his upbringing. Whatever softness he had, he squeezed into the all the small cracks and crevices of his soul. If the soul was akin to a boulder, which he had all the reason to believe, his is big a block of stone. A plain, cold slab.

He watched her from the trees outside the library. A weak concealment charm cloaking him as he stood by the trees. Just like before, just like always. She was sitting on the window sill, a book open on her lap. Her amber colored eyes closed, if you didn't know her you would think she's sleeping. Her hands were on either side of the book as tiny sparks of wandless magic tried to flip a page. It rose and fell. Rising and falling. Not entirely flipping.

He never had the words, they never come easy to him. Whatever drew her to him in Hogwarts was not the same thing that drew the other girls to him, even this he knows. She saw something in him, something small that he kept as hidden as he could. In his circles, the thing that she liked about him would be considered weakness. But in their secret meetings in the library, with every conversation, with every accidental brush of their fingertips as they read, it grew. When she's near, he wore the small thing on his sleeve. Exposed and vulnerable. Because she knew, she understood. Like in the stories of old that they shared.

She still wore the tattered Hogwarts uniform, her curls spilling over everything. He tried not to look at her body, he tried not to imagine what happened after the monster made him leave the room. He imagined meeting her again in a secret party perhaps like their last meeting at Bill and Fleur's wedding. Their last dance. Not like this. He felt shame at the way he held her roughly, so basely. That part of him was not meant for her, not like this. But the memory of her in her arms, so soft and warm, felt so right. Like it was still the two of them at Hogwarts before sunset.

They have a saying in his native Bulgarian, "First love does not rust".

And her.

She's gold.

The page rose, stood like it didn't know what to do next and managed to turn.

It is never too late to answer.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, hey! It has been a wild minute. Shoutout to King Charles for getting crowned cause if it weren't for that bank holiday I wouldn't have picked up the pen and tried writing again.

Man, it's good to be back.