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Tweak says, "BRUSH YOUR TEETH"

Melinda Bobbin (_melinda_) wrote in finnigans_rpg,
@ 2015-04-13 12:05:00

Entry tags:

character: melinda bobbin, character: viktor krum

Who: Melinda and Viktor
What: Talking after afternoon tea
Where: Viktor’s house
When: Monday 13. April 2005, afternoon
Rating: SFW, most likely

A lot of people would probably claim, that making a stereotypical English afternoon tea with the 7-year old daughter of a famous Quidditch player was the perfect ruse to get closer to him. Melinda didn’t doubt that even her friends would tease her about it, but as it was neither ‘a lot of people’ nor her friends – or anybody for that matter – knew that Melinda was going to Viktor’s place today, to make tea with his daughter. Of course, seeing Viktor again and getting to spend time with him had a lot to do with why she was there, but her main reason truly was to make the tea with Tsveta. Something about the little girl’s enthusiasm had made her want to show her, want to give her that experience, and she wanted to see the delight she had only had described by Viktor up to this point.

Monday being her day off, she had made good use of the morning to get everything together, and had shown up at Viktor’s house – as agreed – in the early afternoon, carrying a hamper with finger sandwiches like her mother made them, freshly baked scones and a selection of preserves and a few cakes from the shop. Although she wasn’t sure that it would fall in Tsveta’s tastes, she had also brought along a small tub of clotted cream, just to round off the experience.

And it had been wonderful. It had been so much fun watching Tsveta unpack everything and neatly arrange sandwiches and cakes on the cake stands that Melinda had brought along, and even more so seeing both Misha and Tsveta’s reactions to the different things.

Once they were done, she looked over at Viktor with an amused smile. “You have two amazing children,” she told him genuinely. “Thank you for letting me spoil them a little like this.”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-13 12:15 pm UTC (link)

Viktor was incredibly pleased on several counts. For one, he was thrilled that Melinda had taken an interest in his daughter; Tsveta, though she'd deny it all day long, needed women role models who cared for her. For another, he was very pleased to have her in his home, where he got to enjoy her company in relative privacy (one never had complete privacy when there was children).

The tea had gone splendidly in his opinion, though the one that truly counted was Tsveta's, and she seemed very happy. Very adult, he thought, for having the responsibility of setting things out and having proper tea for once (because "dad doesn't know how to do it right, Miss Bobbin!").

He beamed in his quiet way at her praise. Of course, the two had been on good behavior with her, so she hadn't seen their terror sides (every child had one, he was convinced, even if they didn't show often). "Thank you. I happen to think they're quite amazing as vell," he told her.

"It is no hardship. I should be thanking you -- you have made her week, making her feel so grown up and teaching her things." And Misha had even participated and hadn't managed to break a single thing -- yet, at least.

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_melinda_
2015-04-13 07:45 pm UTC (link)

Melinda’s smile brightened; Viktor was by no means a man who flashed his emotions or status, and yet there was no mistaking the look on his face for anything but immense pride in his children. “I had fun,” she admitted. “It’s… refreshing to do this with someone who finds it interesting and who wants it done properly but without it being part of a business agreement.” Melinda paused for a moment, her smile turning slightly pensive as she thought back to when she had been Tsveta’s age. “It almost felt like being a little girl again.”

It felt good to hear that she had made a difference for Tsveta. No, she didn’t know her really, but she was a sweet kid. “I hope Misha didn’t find it too boring.”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-13 09:51 pm UTC (link)

He grinned a bit. "They are a good reminder of the... innocent look through new eyes feeling," he said, knowing he didn't quite have the words he wanted but hoping she would understand what he was trying to say. English still wasn't always his best language, though it wasn't for lack of trying. "You must haff been a cute little girl," he added, his grin growing a little. He could imagine it; pretty as she was now, she must have been an adorable little girl. She would have, he thought, resembled Tsveta a little, in some ways, for Tsveta didn't look much like him at all, for understandable reasons once a person knew.

Viktor glanced over to where his son was contentedly playing with a set of blocks and a small Muggle car toy. "He seems to have done vell, actually," he said. "He did not accidentally break anything, and he wandered off to play vhen he vasn't as interested, so it is very much a good experience." He hadn't wanted to press Misha to stay and then be fussy, but the way the boy had returned several times had boded well for interacting with people.

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_melinda_
2015-04-14 08:05 pm UTC (link)

Innocent look though new eyes feeling. Maybe there was a word for that, but Melinda didn’t think Viktor could have found a more perfect description. Having grown up without any siblings and with none of her friends having children, she found herself surprised to realise how wondrous it would have to be to witness a child experiencing the world for the first time. Even at 7, it was bound to still be happening to Tsveta.

“Cute?” she chuckled, enjoying the grin that was on Viktor’s face. “I’m hardly the best judge of that, so I’ll let you hold onto that thought until the opposite has been proven.” Had she been cute as a child? She honestly hadn’t a clue.

Melinda looked over to Misha as well, smiling as she watched him play. “He looks like you,” she smiled. “Going to grow up to be a handsome man someday, isn’t he?”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-15 12:23 pm UTC (link)

"Cute," he repeated, his lips curving up. "You are quite lovely now, and I think you must have been a cute child." He stated it quietly and honestly, not to flatter but just stating a truth. He did think she was lovely, quite a bit so, and he found her very attractive, both for her looks and even more so for her kindness and personality.

Viktor laughed. It was amused, not bitter at all, and neither were his next words. "Me? I can only hope that in the ways of looks he takes a little less after me," he said. "I vould not vish that on him." He didn't think he was ugly, at least not in the way he had in school. But he knew he wasn't the most attractive person in any room, and had come to peace with that long ago. "Perhaps more like my brother, that vould be good. Though it is nice to see he does take after me somevhat. And he seems better coordinated than my mother said I vas at his age."

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_melinda_
2015-04-18 05:01 pm UTC (link)

There was something so unassuming about the way the compliment rolled off Viktor’s tongue, that Melinda simply took it in and didn’t feel the need to be demure and brush it off. Instead she sent him a small, warm, genuine smile. Again, it really wasn’t for her to say whether she had been cute or not, but the way he said it made her think that he was right.

His laugh had her smiling, too. She hadn’t heard it before, and though he appeared amused by her observation – thus objecting to her calling him handsome in a backwards kind of way – it still suited him. She quirked an eyebrow at his claim that he hoped he would look more like his brother before she shook her head, barely, and blinked slowly. “No, he takes after you,” she stated, “I stand by my claim.”

Melinda took a sip from her tea, mulling over what he had said about his mother. “I already told you that I don’t really follow Quidditch, so I don’t have anything from that to back this up,” she started, “but I remember seeing you at the Tri-Wizard Tournament and dancing at the Yule Ball, ‘uncoordinated’ isn’t an adjective I’d use about you.” For a moment, she paused, then amended; “of course at that point you’d be quite a bit older than Misha is now, but still.”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-18 06:52 pm UTC (link)

Though Viktor knew he'd changed a lot since he'd been that awkward teenage boy, whose shoulders always hunched, there was part of him who always pictured himself that way, no matter that he'd learned more grace on the ground. Though too he'd learned to take a compliment, mostly, so it was a quandary of just how to respond. He looked over at Misha, and his lips curved up unconsciously. His boy was a terribly cute toddler, cuter, he thought, than he'd ever been. "I just hope he won't spend all of puberty with his nose dominating his face. It's terribly awkward, I'll tell you." Misha could tell he was the topic of conversation, and he ran on over, demanding to be held.

Viktor swung him up with him, kissing the nose he'd just been talking about. "English, please. Miss Melinda speaks English," he told the boy with a smile. It was something he was trying to work on, given their polyglot heritage.

He smiled back at her. "I vas awkward, and I admit it," he said easily, settling the boy on his lap. "I haff improved since then. Though the dance vas fun; it had been the first time I'd done something like that."

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_melinda_
2015-04-18 07:53 pm UTC (link)

“To be fair,” Melinda chuckled, pausing when Misha came running over, and she watched as Viktor picked him up. He looked so at ease, made it look so easy, though she had no doubt it was anything but. “To be fair,” she started again, “I think that’s puberty for you. One day one body part just grows disproportionally big overnight and then you spend however many years until the rest of your body catches up worrying and fretting over it.” Even if she thought about it, she couldn’t name one person that hadn’t happened to.

“No, no, I believe you,” she conceded with a smile, “I’m just saying that I don’t remember you being that way. But you’re right, the dance was fun. First, and for some only, time I saw my friends really dressed up like that. Felt like something out of a fairytale.”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-19 12:23 pm UTC (link)

Viktor chuckled. "Ye gods, you are very right," he agreed fervently. "I am thinking I was all arms and elbows and nose." It had certainly felt like that, anyways. The only place he'd felt at home had been in the air, and he'd spent a disproportionate amount of time there.

"It vas the first time I'd really done something like that on my own," he admitted. "There had been some things, vith the team, but I vas still much younger than most of them, and so it was easy to stay on the edges. Plus formal dancing, it vas much nicer than trying to figure out vhat else to do with all the body." He shook his head slightly, grinning. "The clubbing thing, it is still not something I am good at."

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_melinda_
2015-04-19 09:01 pm UTC (link)

“Feet and legs,” Melinda laughed softly, raising her hand as volunteering for a team. Of course, her feet and legs hadn’t been her biggest problem as a teenager, but somehow bringing up how she had been much later than all of her girlfriends in gaining anything even remotely resembling female curves, didn’t seem all that appropriate at this time.

“I do like clubbing,” she admitted with a smile, “but I fully confess that having pretty set guidelines for how to do something is much preferred.” She met his eyes for a moment. “Maybe not so much dancing, but… cooking, for instance. How old were you when you joined the team?”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-20 12:18 pm UTC (link)

He gave her current feet and legs a subtle once over, grinning over at her a little mischievously. "You seem to have grown into them quite wonderfully," he said. Misha took that moment to wiggle off his lap and head over to Melinda, holding out his arms hopefully.

"I am not very good at cooking," he admitted. "I am not awful, mind you. But I vill never vin any awards, or make anything as delicious as you did today," he told her.

He tilted his head and did a quick mental calculation. "I vas seventeen vhen they recruited me, and eighteen at the time of the World Cup," he said, remembering how terribly awkward he'd felt once thrust into the spot light he'd only skirted occasionally before with his playing.

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_melinda_
2015-04-21 09:31 pm UTC (link)

The side of Melinda’s lips quirked up into an amused, gently teasing, and oddly flattered smirk as Viktor looked over her legs. She blinked slowly when his eyes finally met hers, and held his gaze for a bit longer than was deemed appropriate; like she had apparently grown into her legs, so had he grown into his nose, now making it a distinguishing feature on his handsome face.

Her attention to him was broken only when Misha was suddenly in front of her, holding his arms out to her. Melinda’s face lit up in genuine joy as she picked up the little boy, settling on his lap. “Hello, big boy,” she smiled at him, loving it when she was rewarded with big smile in return. “You came over to say hello?” As he turned his head, she looked in the same direction and reached over to take one of the scones that he seemed to be looking at. “This what you came for?”

“I can’t cook either,” she admitted, looking back to Viktor. “Real food, I mean. This thing with a dash of this, some of that, a little of those, and a few of these..?” With a chuckle, she shook her head. “No, give me set directions, precise measurements, like making Potions… that I know how to do.”

“Seventeen…” Melinda thought back to where she had been when she was seventeen. At that time she was about to start her seventh year at Hogwarts, and she was pretty sure that had she had the level of attention her relationship with Oliver had had back then, she would have cracked in a matter of hours rather than days. “You were still a kid.”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-22 06:51 am UTC (link)

The look warmed him. He definitely liked this woman, rather a lot. It had been a long time since he'd really had that feeling, but it was a good one. He smiled a little more broadly before the moment was broken by his son.

Misha chirped a hello and something that almost resembled 'thank you,' when she handed him a scone. He started eating on it happily, and Viktor had to chuckle under his breath. Ah, the sweet tooth, he thought fondly.

"I can do some. But I've not had to do much, which is perhaps good, as I haven't ever poisoned the children with experiments." He grinned a little bit. "I can do stuff with a recipe, sometimes, unlike my mother. She is vone of those, as you say, dash and dollop sort of people."

He lifted one shoulder a bit. "I vas still a kid in many vays. I'd been playing at a higher level for a little bit, under the spotlight, so it vasn't the biggest surprise? But if vas a huge change. I am not from a big city, or anything like that, or even used to attention off the field. But it vas a good opportunity, and not something I could pass up." There were a lot of times he wished he'd been better prepared for a lot of things, but he'd learned relatively quickly.

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_melinda_
2015-04-22 09:35 pm UTC (link)

The rush in Melinda’s system, the heady feeling of clicking with someone, knowing that even if she didn’t know him well enough – yet – she still felt both an attraction and a connection to him, made her want to smile.

But it also scared her, made her wonder if she really had a right to this. Could she really justify wanting to get closer to this man and his beautiful children, when just a few months ago she had been deliriously happy with another man, and the only reason it had ended was because everything pointed to him having second thoughts about her, based on rumours cooked up by The Daily Prophet. Which… oh, sweet Rowena, how could she even justify that? If anything happened between them, if they were seen together in public, how could that be seen by those who believed the Prophet, as anything other than her having sought out a new victim: Melinda Bobbin doses yet another Quidditch star.

Looking at Misha, though, she couldn’t let those thoughts cloud her mind, especially when he fed her a piece of scone and she thanked him with a chuckle. Such a generous boy.

“I haven’t ever poisoned anyone either,” she chuckled, looking back to Viktor, “or Potioned, but I have made my staff act as guinea pigs many, many times, and not all of them has been, well, as delicious as was intended.”

Viktor’s tale of how it had been for him when he had first started out had her smile softly. “And if you hadn’t been given that chance to play?” she asked. “Then what would you have been doing?”

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snitch_snatcher
2015-04-23 04:48 am UTC (link)

There were plenty of attractive people around Viktor, but not many that he was actually attracted to. He had long since learned the value of things other than looks, though her looks were definitely something he liked. He wondered if she felt that jolt of attraction too, and hoped she did. He wanted to get to know her better, and see if there was something there. There definitely was on his end of things.

He chuckled softly as his son shared his treat. He was such a good boy, he thought. He liked knowing that he seemed to be doing something right with his son.

He remembered now, vaguely, the articles somewhat recently about something to do with her and Oliver and potions. Nothing about her since he'd met her, however, suggested to him that she was still with th eother man, and so he wasn't overly worried. Nor was he worried in the least about being potioned. "Trial and error, it definitely happens. I haff burned some of the dinners I've tried. I end up banished, often."

Viktor leaned back and steepled his fingers in thought, the points resting just under his chin. "If I hadn't? I'm not completely certain, though I haff ideas for what to do vhen I cannot fly professionally anymore. But back then, I probably something vith languages, which have always been fun, or transfiguration, which has been my favorite subject. But I alvays vas good at flying, and it is something I both love and something I vas able to use to help my family, so it vorked nicely all around." He smiled a bit. "I know you love your baking, and you are very good at it. But if you could haff picked something else, vhat would it be?"

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