[1990 Pt.7]

[August 2, 1990.]

[Somewhere in Rus.]

Nathan's disorienting journey via the international portkey ended with a jolt, and he felt the unsettling tug around his navel vanish as his feet touched solid ground.

A gasp escaped his lips as waves of nausea overcame him, a firsthand experience of the joys and discomforts of portkey travel.

"Breathe, my boy, breathe," his grandfather urged while rubbing his back, but Nathan was too focused on not emptying his stomach on the ground to respond.

It took a while for the pounding in his head to subside, and he managed to growl out, "Is there any less inconvenient way to travel?"

"Magical carpets used to be cosy, but the ICW banned them due to their creators causing instability in the Middle East," the man said with a grin, meeting Nathan's gaze.

Nathan glanced at the man and inquired, "You're Dad's friend, right?"

"Yes," Nathan's father interjected, hugging the man. "It's been seven years. You've been quite busy, Mugwump Bishop. Your letters have been sparse."

The man chuckled, responding, "Indeed, I've been all over, from Bhutan to Albania. Never really had a chance to settle down."

Nathan seized the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity, asking, "Are you related to Adriana Bishop by any chance, Mugwump Bishop?"

The man smiled and replied, "She's my niece. I assume you know each other from school."

"We're acquainted. She taught me a thing or two about divination spell casting," Nathan explained.

"Is that why you suddenly took an interest in it?" Nathan's mother chimed in with a grin, then turned to greet Mr. Bishop politely, saying, "Hello, Damian."

"Irene," Mr. Bishop nodded to Nathan's mother and added, "You look just as lovely as the last time I saw you."

"I've been blessed with a peaceful seven years," she responded with a smile.

"So it seems," the man smiled, before moving forward, breaking his hug with Nathan's father and shaking hands with both his grandmother and grandfather and greeting them.

The man leaned forward to take the luggage that Nathan was carrying but Nathan shook his head denying the offered help. The man shrugged before taking Nathan's grandmother's luggage.

The man started walking down the hill that the portkey had landed them on, Nathan and his family followed after him towards what Nathan thought was a carriage that looked like it was being drawn by two very large winged horses.

"It was lucky that you sent that letter accepting the tickets when you did, Alex. Had you been a day or two late, I wouldn't have been able to book the cottage I did."

***** ***** ***** **** **** ***** *****

[A cottage on the bank of Lake Baikal]

Nathan looked through the window of one of the cottage rooms that he had taken residence in.

The scenery that he found outside the window wasn't all that special to Nathan who had seen very similar scenery everyday at Hogwarts. The main difference was the colour of the water between Lake Baikal and the Black Lake of Hogwarts. Where Lake Baikal had a deep ocean blue colour, the black lake just like its name had black and murky water.

Nathan sighed out, a little disappointed by his journey to Magical Russia. He had, after all, been expecting a new magical culture that he could explore, but his excitement was washed away when he found out that the World Cup would be held somewhere near Lake Baikal, far away from the epicentre of magical Russia that Nathan had been hoping to explore.

Russia was too bloody massive to just have to take a ride to western Russia from eastern Russia. It was made worse by the lack of the floo network which still hadn't been implemented in Western Rus.

Novgorod was supposed to be a sight that was so beautiful that it made the coldest of hearts melt. Tower Novgorod, the massive building that was supposedly second only in its beauty to Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons when it came to confirmed human creations.

Nathan lay down on the bed and slowly let out a pleased sigh as he felt the tension of his body vanishing. Nathan was treating this vacation as a trip to get rid of the stress he had been putting his young body through.

Nathan focused on his eyes and activated the contact lenses that he had recently created after experimenting with the pair of glasses that he had gifted to Alan.

These lenses were similar to Moody's eye but unlike the auror, Nathan had created seals upon the enchanted lenses. He could release various seals consciously to use the lenses at different levels, but normally the lenses were nothing more than clear mundane lenses.

Nathan had limited the lenses in such a way because of many reasons. The foremost being that he was not interested in having to always watch people walking naked around him. The second being that even though the lenses allowed Nathan to look at enchanted objects, always having to deal with a white or black glow inside his room was very distracting and eye-straining when Nathan needed to focus on enchanting or looking at other enchanted objects. The final reason was that whenever Nathan unsealed the lenses, the runes that he had engraved on the engorgioed clear lenses that he had bought would start to give out the familiar golden glow that any active runes would give of.

It made it very easy for others to tell that Nathan was using some kind of innate ability related to his eyes.

Nathan, already aware of the flaw, planned on using the lenses for a brief moment to scan for enchanted or cursed objects before he sealed away the lenses again.

"It has been years since I have seen a sky so beautiful." Even Hogwarts did not have a night sky as beautiful as the one Nathan could see as he looked through the ceiling of his room.

Nathan enjoyed looking at the sky for some time before he sealed the lenses again and allowed sleep to overcome him.

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[4th August, 1990.]

Nathan followed his family as he looked around the massive crowd that had gathered around the flying boats that were being employed to carry people to different parts of the Quidditch stadium.

As he finally reached the section catering to the VIP tickets and got a good look at the stadium that the Russians had built on the surface of Lake Baikal, Nathan was amazed by the sheer audacity of the Russians to attempt such a logistical and architectural nightmare with a horrified whisper, "Is the whole stadium made up of ice that is floating on the surface of the lake?"

Nathan had read the booklet that Damian had given him a day ago.

There had been something about an eighty thousand audience capacity stadium being built by the Rus ministry for the Quidditch World Cup, but Nathan had sadly never paid much attention to the details, having imagined it to be similar to the 1994 Quidditch world cup.

Though in hindsight it also made sense to Nathan. Quidditch was one of the largest money-making ventures that could boost the economy of a magical government to new heights in the short term easily. It would make sense to invest heavily in such an affair.

Curious about how many enchantments the stadium held, Nathan decided to activate his lenses briefly. As soon as he unsealed the lenses, Nathan saw the hundreds of enchantments placed upon separate sections of the stadium.

Nathan sighed in amazement at the scale of magic being employed. It sent a thrilling tingle down his spine as he saw what wizards could achieve just to satisfy their vanity.

He looked around himself and could see a few other people marvelling at the monstrous stadium the Russians had built. Nathan was about to seal his lenses back again when he noticed something that he found interesting.

Quite a few people who were acting as the security personnel for the event were carrying something very heavily enchanted close to their ribs. Nathan would not have batted an eyelash over something like this if he had not been carrying something very similar to the security personnel with himself as well.

Nathan unsealed another restriction on the lenses to see what was being covered by the auror robes. The view that the lenses provided to his eye did not lessen his questions and merely led to a higher curiosity as Nathan found himself wondering why some of the Russian law enforcement carrying enchanted pistols that were clearly in violation of international laws. Nathan guessed that countries did not need much reason to violate international law but it still was a curious addition.

Nathan was also silently thanking his lucky stars for having the common sense to enchant his clothing to be resistant to detection and discernment spells.

"Let us go, Damian's got a boat for us."-- Hearing this, Nathan immediately followed his family towards one of the many flying boats. He just hoped that the match was not boring.

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[Five days later.]

Nathan had seemingly jinxed the match as he and his family had to sit through five days of the Canadian team absolutely demolishing the Scottish team. They did come and go but seeing the Scotts getting their arse handed to them for five days straight did not bring them any joy.

The beatdown was so bad that Nathan felt bad for the Scotts. Surprisingly, Nathan had even seen a very angry Minerva McGonagall hurling insults at both the Canadians and the Scottish. The Canadians were being jeered for winning while the Scotts were being berated for winning.

Nathan had even seen one of the Scotting chasers seemingly go pale as he lost the quaffle close to where she was sitting in the stadium.

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A|N: 

Hope the chapter was satisfactory and worth the time you all spent reading it. 

I was originally going to make the venture into Russia last five-six chapters before I decided otherwise for this year.

If you like the fic is going- Support it on Patreon: Pa(T)(r)eon.com/dukeofvirtue