𝐵𝑒𝓆𝓊𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 | 𝒟.𝑀.

1 | ﴾ Write Your Own Notes ﴿

The beginning of another school year was commencing. Outside of the stone walls that composed the fabric of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the air hung damp and heavy, quiet yet foreshadowing. The Black Lake resembled a sheet of glass, a mirror reflecting the turrets up towards the sky, only allowing for a few shy ripples in the early hours. It had rained heavily the night prior as students were arriving in droves, and as a result there was fog clinging to the landscape in an eerie gesture.

I had transferred to Hogwarts the previous year from the south of France, Antibes to be exact, on account that my father felt I would have something to gain from an extended education abroad. While the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic had been a delightfully entertaining experience, my English was akin to a bowling ball making it's way down a back alley. This lack in development could be attributed to my stubbornness to only participate in activities that suited my fancy, and learning another language had never been easy or interesting to me. Pushing me out of my comfort zone and right into the damp setting of England apparently was what my father deemed best for my attitude.

I had already completed one year at the school which had been painful, isolating and awful to say in the least. I hadn't made any solid friends at my first year in Hogwarts. This was partially due to the fact that everyone had already been seventeen when I had arrived and with well-established history. The older students seemed to move around in tight-knit groups as though to markedly imply they were at full capacity. The other half of that problem was rooted in my lack of English dialect, causing most individuals to show obvious frustrations while conversing with me. Because I had been sorted into a particularly unfriendly and judgmental house I was especially victim to that attitude despite having a Parisian pureblood status.

Thankfully, I had time to make up for the lost years as Hogwarts had increased it's school years to nine, and we were just beginning our eighth. This was in part due to a long and tedious study partaken by the Ministry to evaluate the secondary education style of muggles, who spent considerably more time training and preparing their kind for the world through institutions known as Universities. It seemed to have been accepted by the British wizarding community as a sign of progression, given that sending seventeen year old's out to start their life long careers was mildly winged and had been causing a lot of workplace set backs.

Due to my foreign status I had become highly introverted even though it wasn't my natural personality. As I combed through my hair that morning I mused if this year would be more stimulating and social for me, having improved my English enough to hold more structured interactions. The previous year I had typically spent my weekends reading and writing out by the lake under a large Oak tree, trying desperately to increase my ability to speak English fluently. It was that or flying around for hours trying to memorize the terrain around the gargantuan academy, or collecting samples of odd, unfamiliar plants from the grounds.

There had been boys some nights, when an opportunity had presented itself which required minimal speaking - the accent typically caught their attention, but they never tried to actually maintain conversations with me because of how difficult it was.

It was the first day of classes, mine beginning with potions - similar to many students my age. I found it odd that anyone would develop a class schedule to begin the morning down in a dark dungeon. In fact compared to the avian and airy atmosphere of the Beauxbatons Acadmeny, Hogwarts felt like a massive seven story tomb of cave-like classrooms and tunnels of stone. The rooms were frequently frigid and uninviting, and on more than one occasion the walls could be seen soaked with water or moss creeping in through the mortar.