Le Festin (Tagged)

[Deleted]

September 2026

Starting at Beauxbatons was intimidating, to say the least. Oliwia knew that it was really her only option, apart from going all the way to Ilvermorny. It wasn't terrible, at least not so far. She had expected that she would be relying on her limited knowledge of French from primary school to get her through, but it turned out that there were actually enchantments placed on the classrooms to keep most of that from being necessary. Outside of class, most of the Beauxbatons students didn't really want to give her the time of day, but it didn't matter much. It was easy enough to stick with the other students who, like her, had come to France from Hogwarts.

The year and House divisions that had been in place at Hogwarts didn't seem to matter much anymore, either. They were all from the same school (and had all endured the horror of having to make it out of the castle alive), so they had more of a reason to stick together. Maybe it was the Hufflepuff in her, but Oliwia didn't mind it, really. It was sort of nice to know that she could approach someone she recognized from Hogwarts and know that they would at least have some sympathy for the position that she was in.

Having to adjust to Etiquette lessons was a culture shock for Oliwia, whose upbringing was hardly "posh" enough to warrant such a thing. (Or maybe it showed just how much she needed etiquette lessons, she considered, because she wasn't very good at it at all.) Sitting in the dining hall before dinner was one way of trying to remedy that… if she could keep track of which utensils went where. A photographic memory would have come in handy, Oliwia thought, but alas! If there were a spell for that, she didn't know what it was.

@madeleine
evelyn rhea oliveira

[Deleted]

▲

Disregarded and forgotten. That was sort of what it felt like after some time back at Beauxbatons. Her extremely valid reasons for still being in school and a year behind from where she had been when initially leaving, were only fully believed when a French roommate saw the burn marks. All that changed was that they stopped giving her a difficult time over her intellect. The lack of money, change in social status, and dislike over her personality were all still in play and didn’t look like they were going to be forgotten at all. To be fair, that was actually easier to deal with than she initially thought it would be. Being invisible in her former school beat the constant one-upping she had grown up in. She no longer had anything to flaunt, and being seen lower than the rest of the Hogwarts students wasn’t the worst. The rest of the transfers didn’t care about those sorts of things at all, and she found that repairing the few relationships she’d broken in her one and a half years at Hogwarts was easier now that they all had mutually shared trauma. None of them even remembered her tearing out of the Great Hall at the start of that night, nor did they care. She had a good reason for it, after all.

What her new perceived status meant was that she couldn’t really sit with any Hogwarts students that were making friends with Beauxbatons students during meal times. Ruining their experience was the last thing she needed to do at this point, especially since she only had two terms to go before it was finally done. Finding the other outcasts was sort of easy, and there was also a group of Hogwarts students that seemed to be outright rejecting the transfer. Hanging around them without standing out was easy. All she had to do was sit a few spots away during meal times and no one even bothered to approach.

Tonight was a bit different, and it seemed like almost the entirety of the school was entering to eat dinner at the same time. That had barely happened even when she’d been at Beauxbatons initially, outside of holidays and other required circumstances. Taking a seat next to a girl that looked like she was familiar and from Hogwarts, Maddie quickly arranged everything she needed to eat, glancing at her neighbors set up. Yikes. “Bonjour. It’s better when it’s informal,” she commented. “Even I enjoyed Hogwarts meals more.”

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[evelyn rhea oliveira]

I just want to stay asleep,

comatose

September 2026
@oliwia
@madeleine

Evy couldn’t care less which fork was the ‘right’ fork to use when eating a salad or when eating their entrée. Or that the large spoon was not for stirring her tea. Merlin, would she even really use this in her life? She’d never envisioned herself attending any ceremonial event requiring such stringent manners. Weren’t they just thankful she chewed with her mouth closed and used a napkin like any human being should? Evy looked up at a voice that just spoke, she had a French accent, so the assumption was she was a student, but Evy recognized her face from Hogwarts. Eyes that stood out as her’s were not easily forgotten, much like Evy’s own.

”Is it always like this?” Evy frowned, the forks were barely different in size. With a sigh, she picked the inside fork. It was closer to the plate. The stares of other students didn’t bother her. The Hogwarts students were all stared at similarly, though some tried to blend in. However, it was easy to tell them apart by their badly broken French. Evy hardly tried. She knew it was a new language for her, but a word sounded familiar every once in a while since her father’s side was Portuguese. It was not spoken at home, but her father dropped a word or sentence now and then. ”A fork is a fork…” Evy muttered to herself.

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[Deleted]

September 2026

An older girl whom Oliwia recognized as having been in Hufflepuff with her at Hogwarts sat down beside her and greeted her in French. Oliwia realized that the girl was Madeleine Chevalier, the Beauxbatons Triwizard champion Émile Chevalier's sister. Looking at her plate and utensils, Madeleine commented that it was better when it was informal and that she, too, had enjoyed Hogwarts meals more. Oliwia hated that it was that obvious, though it sounded like she wasn't the only one.

A brunette girl—another Hogwarts student, clearly—asked if it was always like that. Oliwia looked over and saw that she was having similar trouble with the forks (yes, plural). "A fork is a fork…" the brunette complained, grabbing the fork towards the inside of the setting.

Oliwia glanced between the two older girls. "…It's the one on the outside, isn't it?" she asked Madeleine with considerable hesitation, suddenly questioning herself. They were meant to start from the outside and work their way in, weren't they? Or did she have that backwards? Was it from the inside out?

@madeleine
evelyn rhea oliveira

[Deleted]

▲

The cold hard truth was that none of this really mattered to her anymore. The outward appearance of being 'perfect' and caring about what was correct in the world of status. Hers was gone. Completely shredded just like her reputation. If only her brother was still around to see how much the family had fallen. His success as Beauxbatons Champion would have been all for naught, though Maddie had a feeling that they would have teamed up a lot more against their parents over this. But she was alone in that now. And alone at a school she hadn't wanted to return to. "Always is, and always will be," she responded to another Hogwarts girl that was sitting nearby.

The complexity in knowing which fork was the proper fork absolutely singled out the transfer students. They weren't heathens by any means; they simply didn't care about manners or proper etiquette. Who could blame them? Hogwarts let their students act like the children they were. Even she accepted that very quickly and ended up enjoying it. The strict nature of the French school was beyond stifling at times. At least she wasn't alone in this.

Maddie's attention was brought back to the first girl as she was asked about which fork to use. Did it really matter at this point? The Beauxbatons students were going to turn their noses up regardless. Giving them all of their ammunition now with silly little things was better than the alternative down the road. "You'll starve to death worrying about it," Maddie said rather bluntly. "Just use whichever. I won't snitch." The correct way was to start on the outside and work your way in, but following the establishment when it had basically kicked her out wasn't working for her anymore. So she planned on using the fork on the inside first. Just to make her point.

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[evelyn rhea oliveira]

I just want to stay asleep,

comatose

September 2026
@oliwia
@madeleine

Evy let out a heavy sigh, half out of despair and the other half out of frustration. She honestly felt that the ridiculous nature of fine dining would have been a topic that all of her sisters would agree on. Even Callisto. Despite her uptight and proper manner, there was nothing ‘proper’ about drinking a whole bottle of wine to oneself or ripping out the cork so indelicately as if one’s life depended on it. And that assumed the wine came from a bottle and not what resembled a juice box that had been hit with an Engorgement Charm.

The other students didn’t seem happy with this, though far less frustrated than Evy. Evy knew her last name, the one with the French accent—how could one forget the former Triwizard Tournament champions? Though Evy hadn’t gotten to know her, there were very few people she had grown close to while at Hogwarts, and most of them had gone to the American school or quit school altogether. She glanced at the younger one and then back down at her silverware. She supposed that made sense. It was easy to grab the outside fork. But Evy only rolled her eyes at the other one.

Evy scoffed. ”You won’t have to.” Even if Evy walked in with her uniform polished and perfect, her posture just so, and had even managed that strange, graceful walk the other girls did, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t one of them. ”They already think we’re unsophisticated trolls.” Out of spite, Evy picked up the middle fork, impaling her chicken a little forcefully. She hated it here, and after receiving detention within the first week for refusing to wear the uniform and opting for her Slytherin robes, she’d already gotten on certain Professor’s bad side.

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[Deleted]

September 2026

It was hard not to feel pressured to behave like the Beauxbatons students did, but the two older girls didn't sound overly concerned. The brunette, in particular, stated that it didn't matter if the girl Oliwia recognized as another Hufflepuff were to snitch; the people there already thought that they were unsophisticated trolls. The word "troll" took on a slightly different meaning in the magical world, Oliwia knew, where trolls were real creatures that were apparently massive, smelly, and downright hideous. Both of the girls with whom she was sitting didn't fit that description whatsoever, although Oliwia had to wonder if she came closer to it, relatively speaking. She was Muggle-born with an accent that seemed to make even others from her own country stick up their noses at her; it probably put her as troll adjacent… or something.

She took the fork that she assumed was correct, picked up its accompanying knife, and began to eat. Getting told off in Etiquette lessons for not being perfectly polite during some imagined scenario was better than starving during an actual meal, Oliwia supposed. "I won't miss this," she remarked, not that she had been there for so much as a month. "Hogwarts won't let Etiquette affect our NEWT results, will they?" If the older girls weren't going to stress themselves out over it, then she probably didn't need to, though.

@madeleine
evelyn rhea oliveira

[Deleted]

▲

"You are unsophisticated trolls," she confirmed as she picked up her interior fork first. And now she was as well. If she was going to be treated like dirt by her former classmates, then she might as well act like the rest of them. Hogwarts hadn't cared about who she was at all, and while that had irked her during her first term stint there, she realized after coming back the following year that it was for the better. With her family's current financial situation (which she thought about every waking moment because it was constantly being brought up by the Beauxbatons students), she fit in better with her new classmates at the English school. It was scary how accepting they were without even trying. Unfortunately she was stuck here for another year than at Hogwarts...

"But that is part of your charm," Maddie added quickly. "You're normal. Everyone here is always in one another's
business and stressing about who they can screw over to improve their own social standing." She aggressively stabbed a piece of lettuce in the salad she'd snagged earlier as she spoke. Leafy greens had never done anything to her, but the added effect to her little speech was welcome. "It's exhausting and fake." She was exhausting and fake too. But far less than any of the other Beauxbatons students were.

The younger girl seemed to be stressing herself out over the etiquette lessons though. They were pretty easy, but Maddie knew that would sound condescending if she said it out loud because she'd grown up taking them. Not everyone was as uppity as she was or had been. "The E in NEWT is for etiquette. Didn't you know that?" she teased as he incorrect fork spun the salad around more, before quickly making an amendment to what she'd just said, "I'm joking, by the way."

evelyn rhea oliveira & @oliwia ● 310 ● Song by Artist

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[evelyn rhea oliveira]

I just want to stay asleep,

comatose

September 2026
@oliwia
@madeleine

Evy immediately looked at one of the other girls, the one who had spoken. Evy looked unamused. It wasn’t as if she was looking for confirmation that somehow she was less than the students here, despite how they were treated. Thankfully she followed quickly with a compliment—sort of. The girl was French, as noted by her slight accent, so it was safe to assume she had attended this school before Hogwarts. But Evy couldn’t be bothered to remember a name. She’d kept her circle so small while at school. Which, in hindsight, just added to her current misery.

Still, Evy shook her head slightly. ”There were plenty like that at Hogwarts…” Not that Evy had bothered with them. But to think that there were students or people that were worse…Evy couldn’t wait for this year to be over. While the younger girl worried about exams, Evy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She wouldn’t put it past Beauxbatons to test on such silly things, but it was unlikely. Suppressing a laugh, she continued eating her food, even though she didn’t have much of an appetite. ”If my sister was here, she’d probably protest by using a spoon instead of a fork.” Evy wouldn’t put it past Mina. Callisto would berate her for it, naturally.

Despite their short time here, it hadn’t taken long to grow accustomed to the looks and whispers. It simply matched the schooling experience of a teenager, after all. ”I think we had a few classes together.” Evy finally spoke to the older girl. ”I’m Evelyn, but only my mother calls me that.” And Callisto, which made sense considering her nature. ”Evy.” She also looked to the younger girl, who she didn’t recognize but might as well introduce herself to any Hogwarts allies.

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[Deleted]

September 2006

The one girl deemed her and the brunette girl to be "unsophisticated trolls", but it didn't sound like as much of an insult as being called a troll usually was. "But that is part of your charm," the older blonde girl then clarified. Oliwia wasn't sure what she meant by that at first, but she was too surprised to interrupt her. "You're normal." That was true, Oliwia supposed, but she also felt very abnormal relative to everyone else in the magical world. "Everyone here is always in one another's business and stressing about who they can screw over to improve their own social standing."

"It's exhausting and fake," the girl declared.

Oliwia couldn't argue there. She didn't fit in with most people at Hogwarts, never mind Beauxbatons. It wasn't hard for her to think that she might have been far better off as an Ilvermorny student for the year instead. She had a bit more experience with the American students because they had been at Hogwarts, but even fewer of them seemed to be Muggle-born (or "No-Maj-born", as they called it).

The brunette girl introduced herself as Evelyn, or just "Evy" for short, though the fact that she seemed to be speaking more directly to the other older girl with whom they were conversing made Oliwia hesitant to jump in with her own name. Besides, her name always came with a disclaimer that it was difficult for most people to pronounce and spell because it was Polish. Having the name "Olivia" would have been so much better than "Oliwia".

@madeleine
evelyn rhea oliveira

[Deleted]

▲

Sure, one could argue that there were students at Hogwarts that had a wand or two of their backside. Maybe even a broom handle for the really pretentious ones. But the total number of them far exceeded at Beauxbatons. Maddie knew because she was one of them. Present tense, because there were old habits she still hadn't managed to shake despite her new financial situation. Her first term at Hogwarts definitely hadn't gone the way as planned, and now she was back here which had to be some misalignment in the stars. Too bad she was horrid at astronomy, otherwise she'd look to that for help. Not divination though. That was a load of mumbo jumbo to reel in the non-magique born students. Protesting the established 'rules' of Beauxbatons by using the wrong utensils would certainly get some whispering though. Ultimately, it didn't matter because none of the Hogwarts students would be subjected to dealing with them again. It was a win for the English counterparts.

"Madeleine. Maddie." She introduced herself in turn. "I should have graduated by now. Do you remember the dragons at Hogsmeade?" That would hopefully be all she needed to say for both of the other girls to understand. And then after the end of the previous year, she contemplated even going back to school. Too many dragons, too many fiery explosions. First Émile, then Hogsmeade, then the implosion of her bank account, dragons and fire at Hogwarts at the same time...she needed a vacation. A resort island in Bora Bora would suffice. Too bad she lacked the funds now. "And what's your name?" Maddie asked of the younger girl, who she was pretty sure hadn't introduced herself yet. If she had, then Maddie had completely ignored her on accident. It was easy to fall back into old habits when she was completely invested in conversations. But now she was with this one.

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