Krum had read the legend of the Goblet of Fire so long ago that he wasn't entirely sure that he remembered where he'd read it. Back home, he had shelves of books in his bedroom, books stacked upon books upon books. A lot of them had been about horses, sure, but the ones that weren't were full of exciting mythology and legends - stories of Slavic gods of the olden days, of the Greek, Roman, and Norse gods, too, and fairy stories and elven lore and pirates and loads and loads of different fantastic, dramatic adventures that had formed and shaped the mind of the young Viktor Krum. They were stories that had made him believe in things like fate, destiny, and love. Things that Oskar Krum, his father, now seemed keen to stamp out of him.

But no one can remove the things that hold residence in the soul.

If he recalled correctly, the legend of the Goblet of Fire was that there had once been a seer, so many centuries ago, who had lived on a Grecian island and travelled day and night by boat into Bulgaria and climbed the most famous mountain, Musala, which was known as a peak "near the gods", a place where the prayers of the Bulgarians had long been heard. The seer had been given a vision to go to the Rila mountains and climb to the peak of Musala to receive a gift.

The gift had been revealed to the seer as well - it would be starfire, given to the seer by the god Svarog, along with a powerful promise  that whomever Svarog gave this starlight to, the greatest god - Perun - would protect for all eternity against the seer's great nemesis. The starfire, then, could be used to divine things with the knowledge of the very stars themselves...

On his way to collect the starfire, the seer had encountered many dangers - which had made up the bulk of the excitement of the story. Viktor remembered being unable to put the book down as he read about the seer's harrowing experiences being shipwrecked, washed upon the shore of a bloodthirsty cannibalistic island where he read the bones and entrails of other long-dead victims in order to divine his way of escape. The seer had been met with torrential downpours, nearly lost his life in a bog of sinking sands that had swallowed up the horse and much of his personal belongings, and been chased by ravenous wolves into the thick of the forest. The seer had nearly died many times - from starvation, from freezing cold temperatures, from attacks of wild beasts - but he had seen that he would make it to the peak of Musala and so he pressed on, no matter how hopeless his cause had been. He lost everything - including his wand, for the seer was a wizard as well - and by the time he'd arrived at Musala, it had been with an empty hand, with no way to carry the gift of the starfire that would be offered to him by the great god.

In his desperation, the seer had searched the mountain for three days and nights, looking for any tree which might contain bowtruckles to indicate a wandwood tree, but he did not find a single one on the mountain. Finally, he settled for a single oak that he found, which he'd located on a shelf of the mountain. How the seer had cut down the oak and managed to whittle a goblet from the wood, the story did not specify. Viktor had always imagined the seer sitting on a cliffside watching the sunset with the wood block and a particularly sharp rock, scraping wood shavings away that fell away into the valley below like brown flecks of snow... but that was Viktor's own head that had added those details. Whatever the way the goblet had been created, the rough hewn shape of it made sense.

The seer had then brought his wooden goblet to the peak to meet Svarog that night.

It was said that if the seer was not blind, he would have been when Svarog came to greet him for Svarog's light would steal the vision of any who looked upon him. But as the case was, the seer was blind already and it was the only reason that the Svarog had bestowed the starfire upon the seer's lowly goblet. For Svarog had a thing for the hopeless, for the men who sought light to fight against darkness. The starfire, then, was put into the goblet and had burned for nearly 3,000 years by this time.

Of course, this was only a legend, lore buried deep in storybooks.

Viktor stared at the Goblet of Fire, the blue flames flickering up over the brim.

He wondered how much of the story was truth, then, if the goblet itself was... if the fire it contained was... and he wondered about the seer, about the god, and about the promise the end of the story's ancient texts had always pinned on as a final word: when all seems lost even our most humbling efforts can successfully carry the light of hope.

"Anybody wishing to submit themselves as champion must write their name and school clearly upon a slip of parchment and drop it into the goblet," Dumbledore's words echoed around the room. "Aspiring champions have twenty-four hours in which to put their names forward. Tomorrow night, Halloween, the goblet will return the names of the three it has judged most worthy to represent their schools. The goblet will be placed in the entrance hall tonight, where it will be freely accessible to all those wishing to compete."

Viktor shook his head, tuning out the next things that Dumbledore was saying. "Insulting," he whispered.

"What?" Aleksander looked 'round and Viktor's heart skipped a beat as the other boy's eyes met his. "What is insulting?"

"This - it is degrading that this Ministry uses this most glorious artifact for such a trivial purpose," Viktor said, his voice low. "They take something great and make it do this, but the Goblet of Fire is capable and worthy of such better things than what they force it to do. It is heart breaking and it should not be allowed."

Aleksander stared at Viktor for several long moments.

"...constitutes a binding magical contract... there can be no change of heart once you have become a champion..." Dumbledore's words echoed over the Great Hall.

Finally, Aleksander said, "You see how it is wrong for this cup to be forced to do things and feel so much defensiveness, and yet you do not see yourself as worth more than this piece of wood and bit of fire?"

"It contains the starfire of Svarog," Viktor argued passionately, "It is not right to waste it!"

Aleksander's voice was firm and sad, "Do you not know how bright you burn, Viktor?"

Viktor stared at Aleksander, unable to form words.

Aleksander shook his head, "You foolishly treasure the wrong things," and he turned away, stone faced once more.

Viktor felt as though his heart was enmeshed in a net by these words - a net caught in a tide that drew the water of his spirit in and out, back and forth, pressing his heart against its captivity and bruising it. So many things held him back, so many expectations captured him, and his desires were entirely different than the things he was obligated to do. For example, what Viktor wanted was to sit on a cliffside and whittle a cup from a block of wood and watch the shavings fall away like snow, he wanted to earn a gift like starfire, but he was obligated to sit here in this seat in this Hall, with these stupid gold spoons before him, his life mapped out with trainings and expectations and girls tittering about asking for autographs and whatever he did, above all else, Viktor Krum was absolutely obligated not to cry - however much he now fought it because of Aleksander's words.

Viktor had not yet fully extricated his thoughts from the entanglement that Aleksander's words when Igor Karkaroff came up behind him, laying heavy hands upon his shoulders. "Back to the ship, then," he was saying. "Viktor, how are you feeling?"

Like I am on fire and drowning all at once Professor.

Like I am trapped and unable to escape being ensnared, Professor.

Like I am in the wrong place, Professor.

Like I am starfire being forced to perform tasks that mean nothing to my heart, Professor.

Like I am nothing myself, Professor.

Viktor's voice was tangled in his throat, he couldn't answer so he nodded instead. If he opened his mouth, the scream he could hear inside his head would come out, he was sure of it. His eyes fixed on the blue flames of the goblet, flickering at the front of the room.

"Did you eat enough?" Karkaroff was asking. "Should I send for some mulled wine from the kitchens?"

Viktor reached for his fur coat and he shrugged it back on, shaking his head at Karkaroff's over attentiveness, wishing that the headmaster would just leave him alone, just leave him alone so he could falter in the strength he was obligated to.

"Professor, I would like some wine," said Sven Poliakoff.

"I wasn't offering it to you, Poliakoff..." Karkaroff barked at the other boy, insulting him as he guided Viktor by the shoulders along, toward the doors of the Great Hall. The other students were also up to their feet, leaving the Hall, and Karkaroff was carefully steering Viktor among them, forcing the boy forward through so that Viktor stumbled along, numb and unfocused, until suddenly he'd nearly stepped on the feet of a boy and he stopped dead in his tracks.

He found himself staring into the wide eyes of a ginger haired kid that stared up at him with a gap-mouthed trembling awe.

"K-Krum," gasped the boy before him.

But Karkaroff stared at the boy beside the ginger-haired one before Krum.

The boy looked familiar to Viktor, though for a moment he couldn't quite place where he had seen that face before.

"Yeah, that's Harry Potter," said a growling voice and Krum felt Karkaroff's hands tighten on Viktor's shoulders so much that it hurt even his strong muscles to the point that Viktor winced.

Harry Potter - of course Viktor knew who Harry was. There was not a soul in the wizarding world that did not know of Harry Potter. He was famous, famous beyond compare, for destroying the great wizard Voldemort when he was nothing but a baby... Harry Potter's face had been splashed about newspapers all of his life, newspapers that the boy had no idea existed until recently, so the story went.

But that wasn't where Viktor knew that face from.

"You!" said Karkaroff.

Viktor looked to see a horribly disfigured man thumping closer on a prosthetic wooden leg. "Me," said the man gruffly. "And unless you've got anything to say to Potter, Karkaroff, you might want to move. You're blocking the doorway."

Karkaroff glared at the disfigured man then roughly turned Viktor and pushed him forward so that the ginger-haired boy staggered backward into the other as Viktor was shoved through to make a path.

Viktor realized when the cold air hit his face on the stairs outside the entrance door that the boy had looked exactly like a photo he'd seen in Oliver Kent's living room countless times... but the face Viktor remembered had been on an a man. 

"Who is that?" Viktor once asked, staring into the blinking eyes of the photograph.

"The best quidditch trainer that ever lived," Oliver Kent answered.

Krum stared at the portrait - it was a picture of Oliver with this man with black hair and spectacles. He smiled at Oliver, "I mean the man next to you in the portrait, Mr. Kent, not yourself."

Oliver Kent had flushed and shaken his head, "Oh Viktor, I am nothing compared to James Potter."

Karkaroff pushed Viktor across the dark grounds.

"Tomorrow, Viktor, we shall go early and put your name into the Goblet. Then you will train. Mr. Balisvaard will arrive tomorrow to begin."

And Krum's heart broke for the loss of Oliver Kent all over again.

"We do not yet know what the first task shall be, but I have for us several contacts who are working to find out the information as quickly as possible so that we can focus your training more effectively. I saw no opponent in that Hall worthy of besting you, so it shall be nothing short of disgrace if you lose!"

The ship's light glowed on the surface of the black lake and the air had turned cold. Viktor was dangerously close to tears - he knew because he could feel the wind blowing across his face drying them, making his lashes stick to the skin around his eyes. How he held on until he got to the private cabin that Igor Karkaroff had provided for him below deck, Viktor did not know.

He sank onto the bed once he'd seen to it that the door was locked, face first into the pillow, hugging the edges of it so that no sound would escape. He could feel the tears soaking into the fibers of the pillow, could feel the flush of blood heating under the skin of his face, and his mouth parted open as though to let out the scream... but it wouldn't come. All that would escape him was a quiet, broken sound.

It was like he couldn't fully let it out.