it's not somebody who's seen the light [chantal]

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There were classes happening, but Cecelia wasn't there. She wasn't going to sit in class and pretend like everything was okay, when her sister was dead. The shattered plate in the Great Hall was just the beginning of what was sure to be a long, wide swath of destruction. Cecelia had come to the tomb, though, unsure of what exactly she intended to do. Separate herself from others? That seemed prudent, considering she felt like a whirlwind, ready to burst out of her own skin at the slightest provocation. But it also seemed like the wrong answer. Cecelia knelt in front of the tomb, her fingers hovering inches away from the white marble, and she realized that she had not come here to rage, but to mourn. Her sister was dead. There would be no burial, be no body. They wouldn't give a murderer that. Cecelia had accepted that, long ago, but it didn't change the fact that there would now be two empty graves with her sisters' names. Braelynn and Desirae, the first and the last Rousseau child, bookends to a story that Cecelia hadn't even written yet. She had thought the burden of living for two was heavy, but now, here she was, trying to live the lives of three sisters, when she could barely handle her own. Kneeling in the shadow of Albus Dumbledore's tomb, Cecelia wept.

@chantal

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It must have taken some force for the gilded metal plate to shatter against the floor of Hogwarts's Great Hall as though it were glass. Chantal hadn't once seen one of them so much as crack in the few months that she had been at the school, so watching as Cecelia Rousseau had caused one to break so easily had been a shock, although she hadn't known what to do or say. Desirae, Cecelia's elder sister, was dead, too, from what that morning's newspaper had reported.

Like her, Cecelia had been left as her parents' only child, although it had taken two untimely deaths for her to reach that point. Months before, she had lost her twin sister, and now she was alone. Chantal didn't think that Cecelia would be attending her classes that day, although she still had her own lessons to attend inside the Beauxbatons Carriage. All the while, however, she was distracted by the thought of her friend. After what had happened with Ranger, Chantal guessed that Cecelia's emotional state was the most fragile that it had been since they had reacquainted themselves with one another.

During a break between lessons, Chantal excused herself to take a walk. She needed the fresh air, and Cecelia's newest loss had brought back memories of her brother's death. Transforming herself into her genet form seemed to be the most ideal answer; her thoughts would be simplified for a little while, and then she could go back to focus on the rest of her schoolwork.

Running across the grass, Chantal was careful not to cross paths with anything that had the potential to view her as its prey. She steered clear of the Forbidden Forest, choosing to go no farther than the lake where the Durmstrang Ship was docked. It was there, on the lakeside, that she noticed the tomb and the familiar figure knelt beside it.

She wished that she could have spoken, although she wondered if her Animagus form would be more of a comfort to Cecelia. As she got closer, Chantal saw that she was crying. Sitting beside Cecelia without so much as a sound, she stared forward at the marble. The tomb had belonged to Albus Dumbledore, and its location seemed appropriately somber. Her behavior much closer to that of a house cat, she nudged Cecelia's folded leg and looked up at her.

@cecelia

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Cecelia didn’t know long she had been sitting at the tomb. She was cold, but Cece had never been much good at telling whether the cold was from the outside or the inside. Maybe now it was both. The tears that trickled down her face were beginning to feel warmer and warmer, and for some reason, that only made her cry harder. She was still warm, she was still alive, and she did not deserve to be. Of all of the Rousseau daughters, she had been the one least deserving of life, not smart like Bay or driven like Desi. Just Cecelia, who had tried so hard to be brave, but failed. Just Cecelia, who was now just Cecelia.

She hadn’t noticed the cat-like creature beside her, not until it nudged at her with its nose. Cecelia looked over, slightly confused. She had never seen a cat like that around the castle before. She didn’t particularly care. Cecelia’s own cat – well, the cat she had inherited from Braelynn – was in the Gryffindor tower somewhere, and that was the one place the Cecelia didn’t want to brave. She didn’t know where she was going to sleep tonight, considering everyone in Gryffindor was probably contemplating when they were going to dance on her sister’s grave. The grave that didn’t exist, Cecelia reminded herself. Without thinking, she rested back on her heels and sat on the ground, scooping the cat-creature into her lap. “Where did I go wrong?” She whispered into its fur, unsure whether she was asking it or Albus Dumbledore or a God that might not even exist. Where did she fail so badly that she deserved a life of torment? They said that only the good died young, and if that was true, then Cecelia’s life was going to be long and painful indeed.

@chantal

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Chantal almost wanted to laugh at how unquestioningly Cecelia had set her in her lap. As much as she looked like a cat—or perhaps more like a lemur—she wasn't, and she wondered how long it would take for Cecelia to realize that she was in the presence of an Animagus.

Until then, she curled up into a ball, content that she was making Cecelia happier. If she hadn't been so afraid of frightening her, Chantal would have attempted to climb her way up onto Cecelia's shoulder. Maybe, she thought, she would try it if Cecelia seemed to recognize who she was.

“Where did I go wrong?”

Looking at her, Chantal wished that she could have explained that bad things happened to good people, too. It wasn't Cecelia's fault; unless she knew something that Chantal didn't, there wasn't anything that she could have done to save Desirae's life. She flopped onto her side and nuzzled against Cecelia, getting as close to her as she could. Her striped tail swished back and forth, and she watched Cecelia's expression carefully.

@cecelia

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The cat-creature’s eyes were big and brown, but slightly unnerving, when it peered up at Cecelia. The Gryffindor wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw an answer in those eyes, like the animal might actually have something to say to her. If it hadn’t been for that realization, Cecelia probably never would have realized that this was anything more than a peculiarly colored and slightly disformed house cat. But it wasn’t, Cece realized, and she wondered why on earth it would be there. Unless… Cecelia sighed. Excellent. Now she had cried all over an Animagus, and one she wasn’t even sure she knew. Cecelia lifted the cat-creature out of her lap with just as much expediency as she had lifted it in, and curled her knees up to her chest. “Who are you?”

@chantal

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The realization came to Cecelia quickly, and Chantal found herself with her paws back on the grass. Chantal knew why Cecelia seemed so put off by the thought that she had almost poured her heart out to a genet who could have been anyone at all, but it had hurt a little.

She stared at the ground and then at Cecelia, trying to figure out how to give her an answer without having to return to her human form. If there were sand, she could have pulled a stick through it to reveal her name, but there was just grass, mud, and some rocks at the edge of the lake. Chantal then glanced at the tomb for an idea, but nothing came to mind.

Without another choice, Chantal made a noise that hinted at a sigh. She couldn't continue to confuse Cecelia; that simply wasn't fair to her, especially when she was already upset. In the blink of an eye, then, she transformed herself back into a seventeen-year-old girl.

Chantal hoped that Cecelia wouldn't be too angry with her, and she spoke as soon as she had returned to her human form. “C'est moi,” she smiled gently as she sat down on the grass, pausing to give Cecelia a moment to process what she had just seen.

@cecelia

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Of all the people to have dragged into her lap, Cecelia was glad that it was Chantal. Her or Ramsey were Cecelia’s two best choices, since they were the only people she was close to in any sense of the word. Maybe Grey Slater, but even that would be embarrassing, given everything that had happened. He had already seen her cry too many times. “Why are you here?” Cecelia finally asked after a long pause. Everyone else was supposed to be at classes – Cecelia was just skipping hers because she felt she had a right to. No one at Hogwarts liked Desirae, but if anyone else’s sibling had died, they probably would have been taken out of school or been allowed to take the day off. Besides, Chantal couldn’t have known where Cecelia was going to be, because not even Cecelia knew that until she was at the tomb. “What were you?” Cecelia added as an afterthought. It definitely wasn’t time for a biology lesson, but maybe it would be a good distraction from everything else that was going through Cecelia’s head.

@chantal

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“Why are you here?”

Because Cecelia was speaking to her in English rather than in French, Chantal tried her best to answer her in the same language. “I have a… pause,” she said. “A break.” She didn't really mind if she ended up missing her next lesson, though she didn't voice that part. Cecelia was more important.

It might have been purely by chance that she'd come across Cecelia, but Chantal was happy that she had. She laughed when Cecelia asked what she had been, though, particularly since she had already had her in her lap. “Une genette,” she explained with a grin, not knowing what the proper translation was in English. “C'est ma forme Animagus.”

The fact that she could transform herself into an animal at will was probably a shock to Cecelia, seeing as she'd never mentioned it, but it had never come up. What was more important to Chantal was ensuring that Cecelia was alright, and she didn't want her genet form to be a distraction from that.

“Ça va?”

@cecelia

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Cecelia had forgotten that English didn’t come as natural Chantal as it did for her, and she immediately felt selfish for the fact. The other girl said that she had a break, and Cecelia nodded. She didn’t know much about the Beauxbatons class schedule, but it wasn’t like they could have classes all the time. A break made sense, though it still didn’t explain why Chantal was at Albus Dumbledore’s tomb, of all places.

Chantal was a genet? Cecelia had never seen one – well, she had seen one now, but before then, they’d been a mystery to her. She didn’t know why she knew the word in English, but she did. Chantal continued on that it was her Animagus form, and Cecelia just nodded. Normally she would have been stunned, and perhaps have asked a few more questions, but this was far from a normal day. Nothing was going to be normal anymore. Her sister had died, and the world would never be the same.

“Non.” Cecelia answered quietly when Chantal asked if she was okay. “Est-ce que tu as lu le journal ce matin?” Cecelia didn’t feel like saying the words. It would be easier if Chantal had heard about it herself.

@chantal

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“Non. Est-ce que tu as lu le journal ce matin?” Chantal didn't make a habit of poring over the newspaper, especially not the Daily Prophet, yet she had read it that morning. She wasn't fully fluent in English, as her hesitancy suggested, but—when something didn't travel quickly enough via word of mouth—it was a decent alternative.

Mostly, she had scanned the pages for anything that might have related back to Cecelia, and finding her surname hadn't been extraordinarily difficult. “Ta sœur. Je sais,” she responded sadly. She already knew, and she didn't want to trouble Cecelia by making her repeat what she had read. Chantal knew that she could get the full story from Cecelia at another time, but there was no question in her mind about why Cecelia had been in tears: Desirae Rousseau was dead.

“Tu peux pleurer, si tu veux,” Chantal offered softly, wondering if Cecelia was waiting for her permission to mourn. She didn't need it, though; Chantal was the one who had interrupted her, and she wasn't about to stop her from crying if she needed to let her feelings out. “C'est… cathartique.”

@cecelia

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Chantal knew. Everyone knew, then. Everyone who was important to Cecelia, at least – all two of them. Once again Grey Slater crossed her mind. Cecelia wondered what they were; if they were friends or not. If he wondered how she felt about Desirae’s death, or, like everyone else, had just accepted that Desi was a murderer and contented himself with knowing that the world was safer without her in it. Chantal said that she could cry, and Cecelia just shook her head. She had been trying, but her tears had dried up quickly enough. “Si je pleurais, je pleue pour ma sœur, pas pour la personne qu’elle est devenue.” Cecelia told Chantal quietly. She cried for Desi, her sister who twirled with her in beautiful dresses, who smiled at her with light in her eyes, who told Cece she loved her and meant it. She didn’t cry for Desirae, who had bound them together with a rope of fire, whose eyes were dead and cold, who could not love anyone, least of all Cecelia. Cece cried for her sister – not for her sister’s murderer.

@chantal

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Cecelia shook her head at the invitation to cry, and Chantal frowned a little. If she was going to cry, Cecelia told her, she would cry for the sister that she remembered and not the person that she had become.

Nodding then, Chantal wanted to understand how it must have felt to have a sibling whose legacy was anything less than stellar. She had been so lucky to have her brother, Youssouf; she had never once heard anyone speak ill of him, in his life or thereafter.

Left at a loss for words, Chantal found that she was beginning to get teary-eyed. ”Je suis venue ici parce que j'ai voulu rendre mes parents fiers de moi,” she admitted. She had wanted her parents to be just as proud of her achievements as they had been of her brother's; that was why she had come to Hogwarts. “J'ai voulu rendre mes parents fiers de moi.”

“La métamorphose, c'est mon truc,” Chantal continued almost casually. It wasn't bragging if it was entirely true: Transfiguration was her greatest strength, her “thing”, in a word. She planned to devote as much of the rest of her life to the study of it as she could. “Les autres matières? Bof!” The shrug of her shoulders spoke for her. She wasn't careless, but her other school subjects just weren't a priority for her.

“Tu t'assieds ici, toute seule, comme une âme en peine,” Chantal remarked, though Cecelia had seemed to be that way to her all year. Perhaps her voice had been more critical than usual, but it was only because she cared. She didn't want to see Cecelia fall to pieces; there didn't seem to be much left of her at all. Her vision had become blurred by her own tears, and she added, “Mais tu dois vivre.” Even when it seemed like there was no end in sight, she had to keep going.

@cecelia

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Chantal’s admission, that she had only come to Hogwarts to make her parents proud, made tears spring to Cecelia’s eyes faster than thinking of her dead sisters did. She had been there – wanting so badly to please someone who probably never even looked twice at her. Not that Chantal’s parents were necessarily the same way, but the longing look in Chantal’s eyes made Cecelia wonder if maybe they were. “Ils sont fiers de toi, Chantal, même que tu ne le sais pas.” She said quietly. Cecelia didn’t know if that was true, but she knew that she was proud of Chantal. She didn’t say that, because she doubted it meant as much as a parent’s love, but Cecelia mustered more conviction behind those words than she had for nearly anything else she had ever told anyone, let alone anything else she had told Chantal. “Je ne pense pas que j’ai un truc.” Cecelia answered. There was nothing that was hers. The one thing she enjoyed as Astronomy, and the stars would never belonged to her, not the way that her Metamorphmagus form was Chantal’s. The sky belonged to everyone, which was one of the things that Cecelia loved about it, even if she hated it, too. “Quand ma jumelle est morte, je n’avais pas le temps pour lamenter.” Cecelia told Chantal. “Peut-être maintenant je lamente double.” She could live, but she could also mourn. She needed to mourn, really, because now, it was really all over.

@chantal

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Her parents were proud of her, Cecelia said, even if she didn't know that. Chantal wanted to believe it, but what had she done to show for her having come all the way to Hogwarts? The smile that she gave Cecelia in response to her reassurance was a small one, but Chantal didn't have the words to explain how much that reminder had meant.

When it came to giving Cecelia advice, Chantal's thoughts were more clear. “Si,” she countered her, when she said that she didn't think that she had a “thing”. “T'as un truc,” she said. “Tout le monde a un truc.” Chantal was sure that—contrary to Cecelia's view—everyone had a knack for something; the world would have been exceptionally boring if everyone happened to be good at the exact same things.

For one thing, Cecelia was good at speaking English. Chantal couldn't say the same for herself. More importantly, though, Cecelia was a good person. She explained that she hadn't mourned her twin sister properly when she had died, so she was mourning the loss of both of her sisters at once now. That alone, Chantal thought, was exceptionally brave.

Her voice still tinged with the hesitancy of tears, Chantal continued, trying to help Cecelia as much as she could. She thought about the things that she wished that someone had told her after her brother's death. “Tu ne dois pas demander la permission pour porter le deuil, tu sais?” If Cecelia needed time to grieve, then she needed time to grieve.

“Dites-moi,” Chantal added, “tes sœurs, comment étaient-elles?” Maybe speaking about what her sisters had been like would help Cecelia to process their deaths.

@cecelia

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Cecelia frowned when Chantal said that everyone had their own thing. She didn’t want to know what her thing was, because as of right now, Cecelia couldn’t think of anything that was unique to her that was also good. She didn’t think that attracting tragedy was a good thing to have. Cecelia sighed when Chantal said that she, Cecelia, didn’t need to ask permission to grieve. She needed to ask permission to do everything – that was what being a pureblood daughter was all about. Cece shook her head at Chantal, just in case the other girl hadn’t heard her sigh. She didn’t want to talk about her insecurities when it came to what she was or wasn’t allowed to do, and she didn’t want to talk about grief.

Chantal asked what her sisters were like, and Cecelia hesitated. How could she describe the two people who had always been there for her? How could she describe the two people who made her who she was? “Intelligentes. Plus que moi. Elles etaient aussi…je ne sais pas. Elles etaient les filles parafaites.” Implying, of course, that Cecelia was not in any way a perfect daughter. Cecelia’s jaw clacked shut after that. She didn’t have anything more to say.

@chantal