listen to the man -- emile

[Deleted]

@emile

so it had been a while since eli had been able to spend more than a few minutes in his cousins presence but he was planning on hanging that today. they had both been busy with classes and emile had been chasing after a girl and he'd been busy with homework, the teachers were seeming to pile homework up on the students before the tasks to either wear them down or so they'd be enticed to do their work so they could go watch the tasks, either one of those was plausible but he didn't really want to give it much thought. he'd done what he had to and now his day was free. he made his way down to the carriage that held the students from the visiting school and he ran the last little way, careful of where he put his feet because the last thing he wanted was to slip and cover himself in mud. he made his way up to the doors, walking past a few students that were coming out at the same time and he grinned at them. he knew some of them, not all but some from his time in france and by chance meetings of families but he wouldn't go out of his way to say he knew any of them well. he made his way inside and found himself inside a large room with a few students that were making themselves at home in the space, which made sense because they were in fact living there. "i'm looking for emile? any of you know him?" he said with a grin as he held his hand up to the rough height emile stood. "he's about yay high, likes to talk about himself, loves a good mirror and seems to be permanently cranky?" he said with no jest in his voice just a smile on his face as he waited for someone to tell him where emile was or for his cousin to appear at the sound of his name.

[Deleted]

@alexandre

Émile had been lounging about all day. He had finally gotten a break amidst the worry about Ripley and with the impending second task coming soon. He had already been given the information on what he had to do to prepare for everything, and at this very moment his new friend and murtlap companion was hanging out in a tent just across the grounds. What the task was going to be about was a question he still hadn’t figured out yet, but he assumed it was moving the creature from point A to point B without any harm befalling them. That or they would be pitted against some difficult creature or obstacle with the same task of keeping the creature safe. Émile had already gone up against some nasty beasties so far, so he wouldn’t mind testing his luck out with a few new ones as well. As long as the task wasn’t another maze, he would be perfectly content with winning again.

The Beauxbatons carriage today had been rather quiet, and Émile had found a relatively nice chair in the back corner away from the rest of his peers. He had a few magizoologist books laid out on the table in front of him, hoping they’d give him more insight on murtlaps and how to harvest the tentacles for a potion that apparently fixed minor wounds. So far it seemed like he’d need to win over the creature to be able to get the tentacles off, and then they needed to be pickled. Hopefully he could get the thing to like him sooner than later, that way the potion could be prepared in a timely fashion for the second task. As he flipped to a new page in the book he had open on his lap, a familiar voice reached his ears. Peeking around the back of the chair he was in, Émile spotted Eli standing inside the carriage, asking some of the Beauxbatons if they knew Émile at all. Standing up, he made his way across the room quickly. “Of course they know me, it’s hard not to. Whether they want to know me or not is a different story.”

[Deleted]

@emile

eli spotted emile's head peek out from behind the back of a large chair and he couldn't help but grin at the sight of his cousin. he couldn't tell if emile was happy or annoyed he'd announced himself in such a way but it didn't really matter now. it was done and it had garnered the required outcome to “Of course they know me, it’s hard not to. Whether they want to know me or not is a different story.” eli smirked slightly and shrugged his shoulders before raising his hands to rest them on the back of his head, stretching out his back slightly and he looked at emile. "okay you caught me. i was seeing how many of them would admit to it." he joked. he glanced around the carriage as he dropped his arms back down to his side and he bounce on the balls of his feet slightly as he took a step backward toward the door. "so, feel like spending the afternoon out there?" he said as he pointed behind him with his thumb. "gotta be better than being in here." he wasn't sure what emile had to do for the next task but staying inside probably wouldn't help it. unless it was an inside task .. then well. he needed to stop thinking about that, the possibilities for what it could be were endless. he was also aware of the fact that a certain redhead that emile had been spending a lot of time with was currently laid up in the hospital wing. gossip was after all one of the most utilized talents of the student population at hogwarts. so that was probably on his cousins mind too, other than the task and the stuffy inside of the carriage. not that it was stuffy really, it just felt like it .. probably the people that occupied it.

[Deleted]

@alexandre

Émile let out a small laugh as he peered around the common space of the Beauxbatons carriage and his classmates that were there. Somehow he had more ‘friends’ at Hogwarts than with this lot. They were all rather sore about him being the champion and winning the First Task still. “You’re lucky they didn’t toss you back outside for asking where I was,” Émile whispered to his cousin as he stepped up, some eyes still locked onto their conversation. Eli hadn’t really been subtle about entering the carriage, which was the opposite of how it usually was. The weird thing was that his cousin was just as French as they were, if not more sometimes. He shouldn’t be treated like an outsider simply because of the school he decided to attend to. But those were the politics that they were subjected to these days. Émile was sure he didn’t help with it much on his end, the way he acted around the other champions, pretending not to know their names or acknowledge their skills. He was still better than they were, of course, but the Hogwarts girl was far better than he had initially thought, Greyback the complete opposite.

He contemplated the idea about going outside. Most of his day so far had been spent researching the murtlap, and he was starting to feel pretty confident about his knowledge on the creature. The key was befriending it fast enough so that he could harvest and pickle the weird tentacles on its back so that he could make a healing potion from it. From what he could tell, it’d only help with minor abrasions and burns, but that was more than enough. If he had learned anything from the first task, having a potion was better than not. “Why not? I deserve a break from this every once in a while,” Émile exclaimed rather loudly, ushering Eli to move towards the door as he spotted numerous eye rolls from his classmates. They were all missing out on the fun.

[Deleted]

@emile

“You’re lucky they didn’t toss you back outside for asking where I was,” eli snorted softly as he laughed and he shook his head as his cousin, making sure to slowly glance around the room, the stares of the other students not avoiding his knowledge. so they didn't want to like emile but they would listen in on and watch the conversations that took place when they involved him. perfect sense. "nah, they'd have to take their eyes off their noses in order to see me first." he said, whispering out loud enough for the ones closest to hear him. "they're all too busy staring at the ceiling as they walk." eli said with a grin as he pointed his finger into his own nose and pushed it up slightly, so his head tilted to the ceiling. the conduct of the beaubaxtons students had made him feel glad he'd gone to the school in england rather than back in france, which would have been easier for his aunt and uncle when he and his siblings returned to france for the holidays and summer.

“Why not? I deserve a break from this every once in a while,” he clapped his cousin on the shoulder as he turned back to the entrance of the carriage. "it's okay, i found him myself. thanks so much for your help. merci beaucoup!" he added sarcastically as he walked out of the carriage and back onto the solid ground that hogwarts and it's ground stood upon. "so, heard from your parents? i really should write to them .. i'll think of it one day i'm sure." he said with a grin. he did always plan to write to them but it always seemed to slip his mind.

[Deleted]

@alexandre

Émile chuckled at the thought of his classmates getting over themselves. In a way, he was just as bad, if not worse than they were. The only difference was that he was fully aware of his personality and attitude towards everything. That was the first step in becoming an obnoxious, rich person who was good at everything. Self-awareness was key when it came to being the best. And they wondered why the Goblet chose him to be a champion. Quite obvious just from that, wasn’t it? “Careful, you have family that might take offense to that,” Émile cautioned, laughing again. He didn’t care at this point if the other Beauxbatons students heard him. It would just be another thing to add to the long list of reasons why they hate him, or why he is a failure of a champion. At least he had proved that he was a winner. Greyback and the Hogwarts girl had a rough time in the maze from what he had heard. That didn’t surprise him in the slightest though. He had placed bets down that one of them would have flunked out, maybe even died. They were just good enough to scrape by those. “Not me though,” he commented as they stepped outside the carriage. “I don’t really care what others think about me. Gives me fuel to do better. Prove them wrong.” And that was exactly what he had been doing since day one at Beauxbatons. How they hadn’t caught on yet was beyond him. The best way to get rid of him would have been to not acknowledge his existence. Every scoff, every challenge, every everything to try and spite him for who he was, was just another reason to do that much better than them. The tournament multiplied it exponentially as well.

He gave a wave goodbye over his shoulder as the door to the carriage closed behind them. Eli’s sarcastic comment as they stepped out only gave him a grin that was picture worthy. “If only you had gone to school with me. They wouldn’t have known what to do with themselves.” Probably try to kill the Chevaliers, that’s what. Émile wished someone would. To show their failure and win over sympathetic voices would be the pinnacle of his existence. Eli’s next comment, about getting any letters from his parents, made Émile stop walking. He had. And not the kind that he liked too. Eli was family though, and keeping this all hush hush wasn’t exactly smart to do. He would eventually find out anyways. Émile had planned on telling Ripley once it was possible as well, so there really wasn’t a reason to not say anything now. “Unfortunately. You remember Lyla? Apparently our parents decided to have us betrothed,” he rolled his eyes at the whole thing again. “The whole thing is absurd. I’m fighting back as best I can.”

[OOC: sorry for the late response. second task took hold]

[Deleted]

@emile

“If only you had gone to school with me. They wouldn’t have known what to do with themselves.” that was true enough. god forbid the school had more than one student willing to share their honest opinion. from what he'd heard from his cousin and seen while they'd been at hogwarts it wasn't something that happened, or if it did they handled others being outspoken better than emile. "from what i've seen they already don't." he said with a shrug and another grin. when he raised the question about letters from emile's parents he had a feeling he'd struck something. though he wasn't sure it was a good something. he stopped walking about a step after his cousin, it had taken him that step to figure out emile wasn't next to him anymore and he turned to face him as he spoke.

“Unfortunately. You remember Lyla? Apparently our parents decided to have us betrothed, The whole thing is absurd. I’m fighting back as best I can.” eli's brow raised a little. well that was news. big news. something that deserved more than a letter in his mind. he ran his hand through his hair and then folded them across his chest, rocking back a little on the heels of his feet as he thought. "lyla, you mean the girl who used to follow you guys around all the time?" clearly his aunt and uncle thought this was a good thing, the question was whether emile did. "do your parents know about a certain red head?" he asked as he shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back onto the toes of his feet. he'd never really done well with standing still, so he had the habit of fidgeting. "what are you going to do?" he asked, curious to see whether emile was going to tell his parents he didn't want to do it or actually go through with it. either way, it would be interesting.

[Deleted]

@alexandre

Émile couldn’t help but laugh at his cousin’s comment. He wasn’t wrong; most of the students didn’t know what to do with him. Those from Beauxbatons that had managed to make it this far (and ultimately fail at being the best student from the school, because that was him), had virtually unanimously moved to ignore him. Eli had gotten a good taste of that upon entering the carriage. Émile didn’t have a supervisor anymore, not like he needed one anyways, and he had pretty much taken free reign of what he said to the media sources. The newspapers clearly didn’t know how to handle his positivity and straightforward confidence because every article and interview they published about him was heavily edited. Were they afraid that their readers would revolt against his honesty? He was starting to think so. The Hogwarts school paper was the only one that hadn’t censored itself in its entirety. The dull journalist, if the boy could even be called that, was either too lazy to edit the interviews down, or really, really disliked Émile for some reason. Everything he said was right there in the school paper, raw and as real as if it had just rolled off his tongue. Émile preferred it that way. Muting his personality was no way to go about things, and he had already seen the other two champions taking precautions to guard themselves by the onslaught of media and fan presence. How either of them had fans after their abysmal first task showings (and that was putting it nicely), was beyond his knowledge. “They’ll learn to deal with it eventually. Either that or ignore me. Whichever works.” It would more than likely be the latter.

“That one,” Émile affirmed, clapping his hands in front of him as he did so. “And they will soon enough,” he added about Ripley. “I sent a response as soon as I found out, which wasn’t from them. Their letter arrived a few days after Lyla stopped and told me.” Émile was used to being thrown into physical environments and told to deal with them, but mental hurdles like betrothals were far out of his league. Unfortunately this wasn’t the first one, and more than likely wouldn’t be the last either, assuming he got his way this time and his parents did see anything in Ripley. Which would be stupid. She was a Krum after all. Passing up on her as a potential future daughter-in-law would be beyond stupid. While his parents certainly had their moments, this one included, they weren’t that stupid. “I’m hoping the letter I sent gets them to back off a little. At least until I’m home and can fight them over it. The strangest part about it though, was I think Lyla liked the idea of it.”