"What?"

They tell a story in the family, in their dreams when they hope no one else is hearing.

Grandfather's poor heart had burst in two as they had waited for the chime of the ambulance to sound. Father had gone running for help into the next house, Mother was in the kitchen making a cold compress because there was nothing else she could think of, crying into the basin as she heard the screams and the grunts.

Viktor had come to the bed; the face was turning purple and the body was convulsing. Grandfather's hand snatched out and closed around his, nails bit into the skin of Viktor's wrist. Suddenly it just stopped.

When his mother came back he was shouting, mouth opened to a wide hole and his hand still caught in the skeletal grasp of an old man. "Now, now, hush," she took him to his bed, "it's all right, all right, stay here."

Sometimes, out of odd flimsy, he tries to recall what happened. The grip of the dead. He doubles over, hollers just like on that day and wakes up. He'd felt it again.

*

"What?"

Flying is the only freedom he's known intimately. On a broomstick it's being alive squared, millions upon millions of sensory receptors multiplied, and the flight becomes something rather intellectual even, like riddles they solved with Father when the hours were slow. You give into it.

The magic is never in the learning to fly, it's in becoming the flight. Some outcomes: blood spilling down his face at the the Quidditch World Cup, and the Snitch fluttering in his hand. Reasons: it's in finding the limit of oneself, and then stepping over it. For a small fraction of time, as an infinitesimal particle of a vast space - absurdly, there is a purpose.

The soccer player died on the field. For a moment the surprise on his face was caught from five different angles by five different cameras, and then he fell on the grass. It's Muggle games, but he likes to watch every sport where there's speed.

In fact, the player died a thousand little deaths in each eye that saw and recorded. A public death, a ridicule, the flash of blade of the guillotine and the roar of the crowd.

He died in this eye - watch closely - this one. Flying is, after all, a flirt as well: how far can you go, what boundaries break, hear the insane flutter of heart and hear it not give in (not quite). Keep your death out of the pitch, keep it private.

*

"What?"

There are secrets to hide and secrets to tell. The boy with the black hair and the black and green scarf stood across him, and for a little while Viktor wasn't sure if he was staring at his own mirror image.

He saw this, too, that boy. He kissed Viktor, thrust his tongue into Viktor's mouth, dug his nails into his shoulder blades and left brittle red marks - there. He smiled. A flash of white and he stole Viktor a day.

Later they told him his name was Riddle.

*

"What?"

Wait and I'll answer you.

At The Triwizard Tournament, in the labyrinth, there was a bright little moment when Viktor had stopped fighting the Imperius and uttering particular words became easy. No restraints, a freedom of another kind - to hold your thumb on someone else's pulse (tick tock tick tick tock), and to shut it down at will.

One can describe malice. It's the colour of black and green, the taste of ashes in one's mouth. One can describe rage. It's a blindfold, the flame that gluttons the flesh and all decisions become simple.

What's the colour of despair? Or is it a mix of something else? Black, no. The red of blood? What is its smell? Its taste? For a little while, at the labyrinth, Viktor Krum felt as if he had renounced his private death - thrown it for the mob that had greedily inspected it, played with it, counted its particles. Demolished it to little bits and then sewn together again.

He can recall the nails biting into his back, like stitches.



(syn-es-the-sia n. Physiol. Sensation produced at a point other than or remote from the point of stimulation, as of a color from hearing a
certain sound (fr. Gk, syn = together aisthesis = to perceive).

Synesthesia is an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. In addition to being involuntary, this additional perception is regarded by the synesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye.

http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.html)

End.