I woke the next morning with a dull headache that came from drinking the sleeping drought the night before. Sitting up, I turned to the nightstand and went for the water glass that sat waiting for me. The clock on the table showed that it was 10:27am, making me shift in my bed.
Wasn't I supposed to be at the station by now for Beauxbatons?
I was out of my room a minute later, wrapping a silk robe over my nightgown as I walked like a mouse through the deserted hallway.
No lights were on in the house, the only source coming from the open windows. When I passed my grand'mère's room, I found the door fastly shut. I slowly went down the steps where I encountered two house elves in their blue uniforms cleaning an oil painting of a young witch sitting by the river sine. She waved to me graciously as I passed before returning to look affronted at what the house elves did to her portrait.
The eyry quiet spell that came from the house broke the moment I walked into the bright sunlit kitchen, finding my mother sitting by the small table with a cup of coffee resting beside her. She looked up from her newspaper when I came in and her face brightened a bit.
"Good morning, mon ange. Sleep well?" I nodded as I moved to sit with her. An elf appeared with a quick snap next to me and asked in a squeaky voice what I would like to eat.
"Chocolate crepes and strawberries, please"
"Add an egg to her dish please with a glass of milk to follow," My mother added with a quick look to the elf. The creature bowed low before disappearing into the air with another small pop.
Her gaze turned to mine.
"You will be hungry on the trip if you eat nothing but sugared bread and fruit. Protein and dairy will keep you full."
I said nothing in response and took my mother's coffee and took a long sip.
"When did you start drinking coffee, mon ange?"
"This is my first," I said with disgust as I lowered the glass back to the table. My mother's eyes glimmered as she chuckled and returned her attention to the newspaper.
The food arrived then with a cool glass of milk following shortly afterwards. I ate my food slowly while my mother went in to steal a strawberry every so often. When I finished the last of my milk, my mother lowered her newspaper, looking rather dull in her curlers.
"I hate this place. Even the newspaper is terrible," She mused, making me glance at the paper where an older wizard stood with a box of dragon eggs resting neatly in his lap.
"You're leaving after I do, right?" I asked, making my mother nod absent mindedly.
"Yes, but by then, your grand'mère will be the death of me. I won't have you as a buffer anymore." I grinned impishly making my mother give me look.
"When are we supposed to leave? I thought I had an early train to catch like at Hogwarts." My mother frowned and shook her head.
"Beauxbatons does not uses trains to get to school. You will be flown in a carriage, mon ange." She glanced to the wall where a black iron clock stood showing the time.
"Ah, we will need to leave in a little under two hours, if only your silly grand'mère could come back-"
"Good Morning!" The little old witch's voice came from the front hall, making the two of us turn in our seats.
My grand'mère came into the kitchen in her classic black cloak and witch hat that was held lightly in one of her pearled hands. The other held a basket filled small vials of who knows what.
"Took the pair of you long enough to get up. You missed the sun rise, me belle," she cooed as she walked past me and through the door leading out of the kitchen. My mother frowned at grand'mère and back to me.
"Mamen, where were you?" My mother asked as she closed her newspaper.
"At the market, Emmeline. Every morning, Miseour Bolzar brings me some of the best ingredients for my potions. And since the pair of you were not up yet, I thought I ought to go have a look. Now, have you both eaten?" She asked, peering her head back into the kitchen to face us.
"Oui, grand'mère," I said with a smile, making her wink my way. My mother was not impressed.
"Mamen, shouldn't we be getting ready for the stables? Ava needs to be there at 12:30 if she is to make the-"
"Emmeline if you keep worrying so you will have more wrinkles than I at age 80. As for the plan, I have this all figured out. We will meet Célia at 12 and go down to the station together at 12:30. Ava doesn't need to be on that carriage until 1pm when those horses will take off. Until then you have the afternoon to do as you wish. Does that satisfy you?"
My mother looked at grand'mère pensively but nodded all the same. Grand'mère gave a final nod before turning to me and motioning me over.
The rest of that morning went nicely, where I spent the time with grand'mère looking through all her new ingredients for her intricate potions.
"Bloods, nails, powdered insects and hairs along with different plants and fungus are all here for my potions, me belle," she would muse as she gave me various vials to look at while she put the rest away in a big cupboard that would make even the likes of Snape impressed.
As noon arrived as I was washed and wrapped in my Tante Amélie's lavender summer dress with my trunks moved from the room to the car that waited patiently for its patrons to enter.
When my mother saw me in my dress, her face constricted a moment before giving me a nod and returning her gaze back to a letter she had received earlier that morning.
"Is everyone ready?" Grand'mère asked as we neared the car a few minutes later.
"Just a minute!" A squeaky voice of an elf was heard from the entrance. I watched with surprise as two little elves came out of the house chasing after my black cat Oliver, who looked ruffled and annoyed.
"What on earth?" My grand'mère muttered as I ran past them and called Oliver to me. He came quickly and jumped up to my arms in a single bound.
"Ava Fountaine, did you bring a cat into my house without telling me?" Grand'mère asked horrified. My mother, who was having a hard time hiding her surprise, let out a sigh before taking my side.
"Mamen, Ava held Oliver when we first arrived. If you had been paying better attention, you would have met him earlier."
My grand'mère gave Oliver a pensive look before waving her hands at the situation and ushering us into the car.
Since my travel to Beauxbatons would include a carriage and numerous horses, our destination was not in Paris as I had originally assumed. Rather, we were to travel to the Domaine de Chantilly, were one of the largest stables in all of Europe rested an hour outside of Paris.
With a bewitched car to do most of the legwork, we reached the Château in half the time.
Crowded with various no-maj tourists, the Stables and Château seemed to be the worst place to house a large number of magical animals, but the French seemed to think otherwise.
Entering a side entrance, masked by no-maj eyes, we entered in a very 17thcentury designed hall busy with various wizarding folks running around carrying baskets and trunks and others with tour guide maps and Elves showing the way.
In the middle of all this chaos, stood Célia next to her mother, Charlotte, reading off of a menu to the one restaurant behind a marble archway.
Charlotte, an older witch with surprisingly few wrinkles for her age, saw us first and rushed on over to start the greeting process of kissing cheeks and making up pet names for the American relatives.
"Ava looks so much bigger since the last I saw her. What have you been feeding her, Emmeline?" She joked in a high pitched voice that took some getting used to. Célia, fully aware of her mother's dramatics, ignored the sidelong chitchat and took my hand, ushering the rest of us to get into line for a table for lunch.
"Mamen has done nothing but fret about getting her on time. You should have seen her Mon Chou! Sent her three different owls in a span of fifteen minutes to see if I was going to come here on time!" Célia mused in a funny manner before turning her attention to the wait staff ready to steer us to a table.
Once seated, I watched as Charlotte made a big deal about running various scenes from her social life past my mother, who only nodded and gave small advice whenever an empty pause came over the dinner table.
My grand'mère spent the time looking over the menu and bossing the wait staff around about what type of cheese board and elder wine she wanted served and so on.
By 12:45pm, I was properly stuffed with cheese and La Capitainere's famous whipped cream.
The Stables were near but not attached to the Château where we ate. We walked down a pathway clearly lined with marble rock to the entrance of a very crowded station. Students of various ages were rushing about with their parents through archways with signs directing to different platforms.
It was as I walked toward my prescribed platform that I realized that a lot of the students walking with their parents were not just girls. Boys of various ages also walked alongside us, some wearing navy blue undone ties around their neck of their clothing. Parents were hugging one another, glad to be reacquainted. Some families with both boys and girls present stood in the middle of two large marble platforms tucking their daughter's hair back or questioning their son's impish look.
My family steered me toward the right platform where a lot more girls stood waiting with excitement and anxious energy for the carriage to arrive.
Everyone on the platform was speaking rapid French that I wasn't altogether used to even with all the French studies Mamen had me geared on. I felt like my brain was going on overdrive to try and register what people were saying. If I was already feeling suffocated by the language shock, how was I ever going to do well at a French school like Beauxbatons?
While I was having a miniature panic attack, my grand'mère was having a lovely time starting up a conversation with a mother standing by herself in a pink jumpsuit. Célia was busy waving at older girls who came running up to her with hugs and kisses galore. My mother was looking about with a sense of familiarity while Charlotte went on chatting nonsense that no one listened to.
Just when the noise of the two platforms reached an all out high, a loud sound of stall doors were heard opening from both sides of the platform, causing everyone of the platforms to stop chatting and look to their left in anticipation.
I watched awe stuck as two lines of three horses of white hair and wings were guided out by a trainer, attached to a carriage of raven blue and red that rolled on behind.
The trainer made a sudden stop, making the rest of the horses pause at the ready, their wings shining through the sun beams that lined the glass windows. Célia rushed up her mother with excitement stating, "They redid the carriage this year! Marie said her mother got to decorate the thing herself and they added classrooms!"
"Well isn't that interesting. Why would they add such a thing to a transport vehicle?" Charlotte questioned, glancing up at my mother who she assumed knew all things.
My mother who was looking at the horse drawn carriage with knowing eyes ignored my Aunt and motioned the family to say their goodbyes to me.
One after the other my family kissed my goodbye, while a porter came by to load up my bags. Grand'mère handed me a box of petite fours for the road with a promise from me to write to her while Charlotte wished me the best of luck. Célia said I was always welcome to visit her during one of the schools many breaks if I wished it leaving me to walk to the carriage with my mother alone.
As we waited in line to enter the single door carriage, my mother started to gently run her fingers through my hair in silence. Surrounded by so many girls laughing and talking to their mothers and fathers made this small moment with Mamen feel so much more important than any words she could say to me in warning.
When we neared the door, she let go of my hair and made me look up at her.
"I wanted to wait to give you this when we were not surrounded by family," she said as she opened up my hand and placed a silver ring into my palm.
I rolled it over to show a crest with the letter B surrounded by two wands in a cress-cross formation underneath a pattern of lines. The year 1968 was written in cursive at the bottom in blue metal, the color of the carriage.
"That was my class ring and it will help you make easy friends here." She took the ring from my palm and took hold of my left hand.
"I would wear Grand'Mere's class ring before I had my own and we usually wore it on our pinkie fingers like this." She placed the ring on my left pinkie where it fit me like a glove. My mother seemed satisfied.
"We were told only rings from your bloodline could change their size to fit the next family member in line perfectly. It seems like the rumors are true."
I thanked my mother with a final hug just as I reached the front of the line. My mother promised to see me very soon, which I didn't think was necessary, after all I wasn't as home sick as I was last year, and then I turned and entered the carriage.
-
Hello There!
I'm back with a schedule thank goodness. I'd apologize for how late this chapter is but I am sure by this point you've read that statement various times in the last hour so I will skip all that and say thank you for reading this far into the story.
I've found it both a challenge and a bit of fun to write about Beauxbatons for this story. I hope to be able to put my idea clear across paper but we will see if I can write simply for a change.
Until next time.
Lots of Love,
-WG-