The Years of Blue [2]

Chapter 36: English Exams and Potions

By the first week of September, Beauxbatons classes were in full swing and announcements for the English Proficiency exam were posted.

The girls not native to the English language had their own struggles when we first switched every conversation from French to English. While Marie and Gisele had only mild blunders in their speech, given they were already relatively versed in basic English, Jacqueline and sometimes Ana had trouble speaking altogether, not knowing where to start.

Breakfasts became the time of day where Rosalie, who had taken charge of this entire process, gave the girls new words to remember and use throughout the day to further memorize. We started with basic greetings and manners of "please" and "thank you" which everyone, including Jacqueline seemed to know, and then moved on to the structure of a sentence and the basic "I want", "I will" or "I am" and "I have". Everything else added on after that were words to add to the I conjugation.

The entire process was tiring for me even though I wasn't involved. When I learned French as a little girl, you didn't think about the difference in sentence structure or verb context. It was just as it is. But Rosalie, who had been in French 101 since the spring, had a better understanding on how to teach a crash course in a language so I let her take the reins on this one.

No one around us found speaking English weird as they would in the past. In fact, girls gravitated towards those who spoke English fluently, asking for tips and tricks to memorizing a language. The number of girls who were willing to cough up money just to have me teach them for an hour was ridiculous. I didn't take any of their bribes of course, mostly because I was above that level of paid work and didn't need the money. I took pride in being a trust fund baby sometimes and this was one of those occasions.

Through the obsession with English, girls started to gossip on who was staying and who was going and judging said girls appropriately. For example:

"Half of the seventh years are going, and low and behold, Fleur is one of them," I said one afternoon over a stretching session between dance classes. Rosalie was on my one side at the ballet barre, and Marie was on the other. Mila and Ana were at another barre angled opposite us, causing all five of us to look in on each other. Mila didn't seem surprised as Ana managed to roll her eyes.

"I did not know Fleur speakt English," Ana said sensitively while watching Rosalie shake her head.

"Speaks. Fleur speaks English. Speakt is not a word," Rosalie chided to the side while Mila added to Marie in simple English, "I hear her sister comes too."

"Sister?" I repeated, releasing my left leg to the ground and popping my right leg to the top barre to hold. "She has a sister?"

"Gabrielle, right?" Marie added with a frown. "She's a primary student." Mila was seeming to have trouble keeping up with the fast English, causing Rosalie to take off her pearl earrings and hand them Mila's way. We all knew Rosalie had a pair of her favorite earrings enchanted to translate languages when needed, and since the transition back to English, she hasn't been using them as much.

"Fleur's mother came in and explained that her daughters had to stay together."

"And Maxime just agreed to it?" I questioned back. Mila nodded slowly.

"How do you think that happened?"

Mila frowned as if the word she needed had just slipped her mind so she cursed and flipped to French, saying "corruption électorale!" Rosalie slapped Mila on the hand before repeating the word in English for Mila to repeat while rolling her eyes.

"Bribery."

"I didn't think Fleur's family could be that rich, or do something that obnoxious," Marie confessed. I wasn't surprised by the news and told the girls so.