In the Scottish Highlands in June, the early morning air always carried the scent of damp earth and the crisp moisture peculiar to the Black Lake.
Sunlight pierced the thin morning mist, scattering like flecks of gold across the gently rippling lake.
The enormous Durmstrang sailing ship, a sinister vessel that looked as though it had sailed out of a ghost story, was slowly sinking into the center of the Black Lake.
As its last mast vanished into the whirlpool, the lake grew calm again, as though those guests in fur cloaks, who brought a chill wherever they walked, had never appeared.
On the grass by the shore, Viktor Krum stood like a silent granite statue, gazing motionlessly at the lake.
Seen from behind, he looked not forlorn, but steadfast, like an oak rooted in that very spot.
"They've gone."
Hermione Granger spoke softly.
She stood half a step beside Krum, her hands folded in front of her. The morning breeze tousled her long, bushy brown hair, and a few playful strands brushed against his heavily robed arm.
It was a subtle distance.
Neither suffocating intimacy nor distant politeness, it was companionship at just the right distance, touched by the haziness peculiar to a June morning.
"Yes, gone."
Krum's voice was still somewhat stiff and heavily accented, but when he turned to Hermione, a barely perceptible glimmer of softness appeared in his deep, perpetually gloomy eyes.
"Will you miss that ship? I mean... it was where you lived for seven years, after all."
Hermione tilted her head, her gaze settling openly on his face without any attempt to look away.
Krum shook his head, his thick black brows relaxing slightly.
"A ship is only transport, Hermione. And..."
He paused, seemingly struggling to put his words together, trying to express a