Synthetic Evolution [Priscilla]

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

OPEN

Madeleine was unsure of what to make of Hogwarts thus far. The first week of classes was complete and in the books, and now she was left to her own devices for the weekend. The only professors that had actually assigned work following their first class were the stupid ones. They taught subjects that were useless in the working world and made it out like their field of study was the best thing ever. Newsflash: most of them weren’t. The only decent one so far, as well as her personal favorite, was their Care of Magical Creatures course. Beauxbatons didn’t let them get so…hands on. That was probably because of liability reasons. Her former classmates all came from wealthy enough families where so much as a scratch from a niffler would harken a lawsuit so large that it could possibly bankrupt Beauxbatons. The students at Hogwarts didn’t look like they had those sorts of luxuries though, which was too bad for them and even better for her. And then there were those obnoxious Americans. Good god. She had thought Émile blabbered non-stop when he was still with them; he paled in comparison to the high-pitch frequencies of their shrill accents and constant need to point out the obvious. Yes, she was from France. Yes, she was fluent in English because her mother was from the US (and no, her mother was not obnoxious like these children were). Yes, her brother was that Émile. Playing twenty-questions with every interested party had made the first week feel like it lasted forever. Persuading her parents to allow her and her brother to transfer before knowing about the Ilvermorny students had been a silly thing to do, and when the news broke, it only bolstered their mother’s decision making.

She was told to play nice though. Madeleine hated that more than anything else. Being fake was for losers that didn’t have their own identity or were insecure with themselves. There were so many people here like that. A few were okay, and she was sure she could use them for her own gains equally with how they would use her for theirs. That was how things worked with the smart ones.

Today though, she didn’t feel like playing nice. Her roommates had stayed up all night yapping about boys or whatever, and all she wanted was her beauty sleep. Attempting to charm her bed curtains to mute the noise from the outside, she accidentally did the opposite, amplifying everything. The spell also seemed to be irreversible for the time being, because she had to listen to her roommates breathing and snoring at ten times the normal decibel level. Because of this, the only sleep she did manage was in the early morning when everyone woke up and left the dorm, finally giving her silence.

Now it was lunch and she was hungry, tired, and irritated that she was going to feel obligated to sit with her roommates at the Hufflepuff table. Deciding she didn’t want this, Madeleine purposely approached a different one, far away from the wandering eyes of her housemates. “Could you move that?” she half-asked, half-demanded of a person seated at one of the tables she was interested in, their book-bag occupying the seat she was attempting to take, her bubblegum pink nail pointed directly at the object in her way.

[Deleted]

Priscilla was, for the most part, minding her own business. The sudden addition of so many new students made life at Hogwarts much more interesting. It was almost humorous to watch as some of the American students tried to figure out how, exactly, Hogwarts worked. Fortunately for her, she had the upper hand and wasn’t too concerned. Unlike some of the other girls at Hogwarts, she wasn’t particularly cruel in the way that she went about things. She personally found it unbecoming, and anyone who knew her surname and her family’s history knew who she was without her having to assert her power so obviously.

For that reason, perhaps, it was even more entertaining to see who had gravitated towards whom in the strange mixture of students that Hogwarts had become. Priscilla might not have known (or, truly, even cared) all of the power dynamics of Ilvermorny, but she enjoyed seeing how they played out in real time.

Sipping her glass of pumpkin juice at the Ravenclaw table during lunchtime, she had set her book bag on the bench beside her with the intention of saving that spot for Riley. Based on his schedule, she assumed that he would be in the Great Hall shortly, so it only made sense to save it for her fiancé.

Priscilla also assumed at first that the person approaching her from behind had to be Riley, until a girl spoke. “Could you move that?” she questioned, and Priscilla was surprised to hear anyone so bold. Turning her head to see who had spoken, she didn’t even recognize the girl as a Ravenclaw, but she had to admit that the girl had an impressive amount of nerve.

In fact, the girl—with her pink nail varnish, to boot—intrigued Priscilla enough that she would have to apologize to Riley if he showed up before they were finished eating. She moved her bag from the bench quickly, smiling at the newcomer as though she were an old friend. “Of course,” she obliged, moving the bag so that it was at her feet.

@madeleine

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

@priscilla

She was seconds away from crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her foot impatiently. That always seemed to work while waiting in a store queue, and she was sure it would here as well. Madeleine expected a look of defiance from the girl seated there, maybe even snap in response, but she didn’t get anything. That wasn’t any fun. Despite wanting to avoid confrontation with her own housemates, Maddie kind of wanted to do her best to get under this girl’s skin. She looked tacky. That was a trait she could despise without having to explain herself. Her demand worked though, and the bag occupying the free seat was moved, a flash of a smile coming from the girl. “Thank you,” Maddie responded, putting her own smile up for show. To casually take up space someone else could be using was annoying, but at least this girl was flexible. Probably knew someone would ask for it eventually. The tables were always crammed full during meal times. That tended to happen when two entire schools were forced to live together.

Placing her own bag under the table, she took a seat, her folded up robes used as a cushion. The benches here were hard to get used to after coming from Beauxbatons. They had such comfortable chairs…“So what’s the deal with this place anyway?” she asked the girl as she rolled her sleeves up to her elbows. “I was convinced there was something special going on here, and so far it’s been pretty disappointing. The professors are average, at best, and my classmates don’t know how to keep their mouths shut in class. What gives?” Reaching across the table for a sandwich, Maddie nibbled on it for a few seconds before swallowing. “Food isn’t that bad though, so that makes up for some of it.”

[Deleted]

The other girl sat down after Priscilla removed her bag from the spot she had originally saved for Riley. Almost immediately, her question was what “the deal” was with Hogwarts. That depended upon what the girl meant, Priscilla considered as she watched the new girl roll up her sleeves. Hogwarts was interesting, or at least that was one way to put it. Some people found it rather torturous, while others seemed to cling to every moment as though their existence was dependent on it. Priscilla found herself somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. Was Hogwarts the worst place in the world? Not entirely. Priscilla could think of better, though she couldn’t compare Hogwarts to any of the other magical schools in the world; she had never been.

“I was convinced there was something special going on here,” continued the other girl after her initial question, “and so far it’s been pretty disappointing.” She wasn’t wrong that Hogwarts had a thing for trying to add excitement into everyday life. Sometimes the school failed miserably—like making everyone watch as all of the students who had joined for the year got Sorted. Other efforts weren’t so bad, and Priscilla was of the opinion that the Triwizard Tournament had been probably the best thing that had happened in all her years of attending the school, though she hadn’t had too much involvement in it as a fourth-year student.

“The professors are average, at best,” the new girl went on, “and my classmates don’t know how to keep their mouths shut in class. What gives?”

Priscilla was about to answer her, but the girl then grabbed a sandwich and took a bite of it. Making her respond while she had food in her mouth would have been rude, so Priscilla took a bite of her own sandwich while she waited for the girl to finish, which she did shortly thereafter. “Food isn’t that bad, though, so that makes up for some of it.”

The food at the feasts was usually the best, Priscilla thought, though she supposed that she was also used to the “ordinary” food that Hogwarts served after having had years of meals at that same table. (Granted, having house-elves to make their meals was better than if they had to do it themselves, so she was thankful for that.)

“It’s not bad,” she agreed, and what was served was usually fairly edible. “Most of Hogwarts isn’t,” she considered with a pause, “if you know where to look.” That was, from Priscilla’s perspective, past the Muggle-borns—or whatever it was that the American students called them—and the blood traitors. On the other side were people like her.

“I’m Priscilla Rosier,” she added brightly, keen on getting the other girl’s name. She hoped—and was fortunate enough to be sitting at a wooden table for the sake of “touching wood”—that the girl would have the sense to pick up on what she was implying. If she didn’t react to her name somehow, that was a sure indication that the other girl was a Muggle-born, since she didn’t seem utterly clueless.

@madeleine

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

@priscilla

Maddie snorted when the other girl tried to say there were parts of Hogwarts that weren’t bad. What was that supposed to mean? The only good parts were the comfortable beds, decent food, and the amount of animals running around the dorms and in the Care of Magical Creatures class. Anything past that was abysmal. Seeing as she was already wearing a jacket inside the castle within the first week of September, the temperature was surely going to be miserable in the winter, and trying to function in that would be awful. Madeleine didn’t want to get back onto the topic of the other students either, because they could talk semantics all day about who was a half-way decent human and who was worth less than trash. She already had quite the list going after one week and it was only going to continue growing as the semester wore on. At one point she was even considering the idea of making a rankings chart of the Hufflepuffs, where she would give them points based on things they did for her or reflected positive qualities about themselves. Right now they were all hovering around zero because they didn’t have anything going for them.

“Rosier?” her ears perked up. That was a familiar name at home. It was a French family. “Parlez-vous français?” she asked immediately, though kind of regretted it at the same time. This girl didn’t sound French at all, so that could mean she was one of those ones. “Actually, I take that back. You look like you’re from the watered down part of the family. It’s probably been a few generations since your lot came over here. That’s plenty of time to mingle with the locals,” Madeleine mused, shrugging her shoulders as she took another bite of her sandwich. “Can’t all have clean blood forever. It’s quite sad.”

Reaching for her goblet of water, she dragged it to her mouth and took a long swig. She was now starting to realize what the earlier comment from Rosier meant. Knowing where to look never happened at Beauxbatons because it was quite obvious who was from where. At Hogwarts they were encouraged to intermingle and purebloods got this notion that they were all supposed to be friends with each other. Why would she want to be friends with a bunch of loser English purebloods? They were like lower middle class back home. “Madeleine Chevalier,” she finally answered, now turning to a plate of fries that was within reach and plucking a few of them up, examining them carefully. “You’ve probably heard of my brother. He’s one of those idiots that got himself blown up last year.”

[Deleted]

“Rosier? Parlez-vous français?”

“…Un peu,” Priscilla responded, her curiosity piqued that much more by the girl’s switching to French. It wasn’t as though she spoke French fluently, though she wasn’t lying when she said that she knew a little bit of the language. Having had Beauxbatons students at Hogwarts over the past year and having the sort of family that expected her to be well-rounded in as many endeavors as possible, she could at least hold a basic conversation.

“Actually, I take that back. You look like you’re from the watered down part of the family. It’s probably been a few generations since your lot came over here. That’s plenty of time to mingle with the locals. Can’t all have clean blood forever. It’s quite sad.”

She was taken aback to hear the other girl suggest that she wasn’t so pure of blood as she had implied. Yes, the vast majority of witches and wizards in Britain had been “watered down” by mixing with Muggles, Muggle-borns, or even half-bloods, but Priscilla was proud to say that she could trace her own lineage back generations without running into any of that. “Actually,” she interjected, “I—” Whoever this girl was, there seemed to be little point in trying to correct her. It had taken some time for her family to arrange for her and her older siblings’ marriages, simply because they were very adamant about ensuring the purity of the Rosier name.

Still, a question lingered in Priscilla’s mind, curiosity mixed with something that wasn’t quite anger but that kept her actively engaged in her conversation with this new girl, who even had the power to leave her struggling to find something to say: Who in Merlin’s name did she think she was?!

The answer soon became clear, as the new girl finally introduced herself as Madeleine Chevalier. The name, of course, was familiar to Priscilla, too, as Madeleine herself was quick to point out—her brother was Émile Chevalier. And while Priscilla would have stopped short of referring to the late students as “idiots” in polite company (or at least out in the open), Madeleine did no such thing.

So she had come to the same school that had put her brother on a pedestal for months, only for him and his classmates to die before returning home. If this was how Madeleine was mourning her brother and the rest of the Beauxbatons delegation, it was certainly an odd way of going about it, but Priscilla got the notion that Madeleine didn’t exactly miss Émile.

“Madeleine, lovely. What brings you to Hogwarts?” Priscilla asked, the next question on her mind. Why Hogwarts? Geographically, it was the closest wizarding school of any repute to Beauxbatons, which was about all that Priscilla could come up with, though staying at Beauxbatons seemed like the better option. From what she had heard about it, it was stunning and made up for everything that Hogwarts lacked where aesthetics were concerned. Was Madeleine just a masochist? Priscilla pondered the other girl’s rationale as she sipped her pumpkin juice. “You chose an interesting year to come here, ma chérie.”

@madeleine

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

@priscilla

She gave the Rosier girl a blank stare as she witnessed the feeble attempt to claim some of the French language. Whatever. She wasn’t here to educate the masses on her native tongue, or rather, one of them. While French was much more delicate and formal, English tended to get the point across much faster, something she had figured out with the maids back home. Yell at them in French and you sound too cute. Scream some obscenities in English and then you have their attention. It was absolutely fascinating the power that another language had over someone. Everyone knew when they were being sneered at or being talked about behind their backs, even if it was in an unrecognizable tongue. In her experience it was simply easier to lay it all out and be honest about what she was feeling. And if she wanted another fucking glass of wine with dinner, then she was getting one. Throwing those sorts of temper tantrums when her parents were in the house was difficult, but it wasn’t like they were around much anyways. Running the family business or whatever it was they did these days. Maybe mourning her idiot brother for dying. That was the last thing he was supposed to do.

From the reaction the other girl gave her, Madeleine knew she had hit a nerve or two. That was to be expected. Hell, she got that treatment by the super elite purebloods in France. Neither of them were perfect at the end of the day, but because she had more dirt on the Rosier family, she had the leg up and was going to use that one-hundred percent of the time. Madeleine blinked curiously a few times to see if the Rosier girl had anything else to add when it came to her blood-line, but apparently the girl thought better of it. Smart choice. There was nothing wrong with throwing a little weight around early on in the school year. It would get boring without doing so. Plus, a ‘pureblood’ like a Rosier was sure to be friends with whatever remained of the noble purebloods of England, and would start talking. Madeleine already had the name Émile had surely built for himself, and now it was her turn to add to it.

“Following in my brother’s footsteps I suppose,” she said as she popped one of the fries she had been staring intently at into her mouth. “He wrote home often, you see, and he always made Hogwarts out to be some kind of glorious place. Knowing him, that was because he could duel whomever he wanted to and play Quidditch all day. But I want to know why. I can’t really do that just from reading a dozen or so letters, and unless his ghost is floating around here still, I can’t ask him myself,” Madeleine explained with another shrug. Did she need a better reason to transfer? School was going to be school regardless of where she went, and her real studies of magizoology would come after the fact. Hogwarts did have a better course that led into that field too, so there was that. “Did I now?” she tilted her head to the side. “I think it’s more like the Americans came at an interesting time, since I applied to transfer long before their little incident.” That was half of a lie. She had wanted to transfer, and that was the final push. The last nail in the coffin for her mother to accept the deal and send them to England. But her half-lie would deflect Rosier’s terrible attempt to patronize her. As if a Rosier was ever going to be superior to a Chevalier. Hilarious.

[Deleted]

Madeleine’s reasoning, she revealed, was that she hoped to follow in Émile’s footsteps. Short of his death in an explosion, Priscilla supposed that she could see the appeal. Émile had been one of the chosen three, the Triwizard Champions. Aside from his arrogance, he had been attractive… and he’d had a better shot at winning the whole thing than Elias Greyback ever had. Madeleine wanted to know why, she said, her brother had made Hogwarts out to be a glorious place, since she couldn’t exactly ask him for herself.

That was fair enough, Priscilla supposed, and a small part of her hoped that Madeleine had some of Émile’s old letters with her; she was interested to know what exactly he had written that was so compelling. According to Madeleine, too, she had made her decision to come to Hogwarts long before the Ilvermorny students’ “little incident”—Madeleine’s own words, rather than Priscilla’s. She stated, for that reason, that it was the Americans who had come at an interesting time. It was a slightly ominous response, and Priscilla was spurred on by the enigma that Madeleine was becoming to her.

Maybe, she thought, Madeleine was right; unless she was an excellent actress, she seemed to be a force to be reckoned with. Frankly, Priscilla liked the idea of having a challenge sitting right beside her. Since Madeleine was foreign to both the students who had been at Hogwarts and to the swarms of Americans who had only just come, she would be a point of intrigue for just about everyone, Priscilla realized.

Strategy, then, was key. Priscilla knew a thing or two about how it worked in the upper echelons of society. It was practically how she was born to operate—identifying what would be mutually beneficial for the parties involved, understanding what she could gain from it, and acting upon it. Yes, if Madeleine Chevalier was about to become the subject of Hogwarts’ interest (albeit perhaps not its “sweetheart”), Priscilla Rosier would find a way to guarantee that it would be to her advantage, too.

“How haven’t I seen you before?” she asked Madeleine. “Which year are you in?” Priscilla didn’t think that she had seen her around anyone else in her year, though there were so many new people around that it got difficult to keep track.

@madeleine

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

@priscilla

Frustration was starting to kick into gear internally. This girl had barely reacted to anything she had said thus far. Was she dim as well? Mixing with the wrong pureblood families could do that to a person. The same thing happened with purebred dogs all the time. Trying to keep their traits, temperaments, and coat colours the same over generations was bound to cause imperfections and health risks eventually. It was basically an indirect way of interbreeding, because similar genes came back around eventually. Madeleine knew she didn’t have to worry with her family because they were known to outsource, in a manner of speaking. Her mother came from America, with little to no connections in Europe for several generations back. That was as pure as anyone was going to get these days. So, the possibility that this girl was dimwitted or slow wasn’t entirely her fault, and Madeleine couldn’t lay all of the blame on her if that was the case. It was her family’s fault for not diversifying their bloodline and shacking up with the same families for decades, if not centuries.

That or she was smart and knew how to hold her tongue. It was hard to tell with some of them, because they could easily be misconstrued at Hogwarts. She preferred to assume everyone was stupid unless they proved otherwise. The Rosier girl asked how she had never seen Madeleine before, and the Hufflepuff shrugged. If she was paying any attention at all, she would have noticed the hundreds of heads turning and groups of students shushing each other during the sorting ceremony. It was only a week ago. That wasn’t really excusable, considering it wasn’t just her, but her brother as well, and they had been sorted one after the other. “Sixth. And before you ask, Hufflepuff,” she answered, taking another bite of her sandwich immediately after. Rosier was going to ask that eventually anyways, so why not get ahead of her?

[Deleted]

If Priscilla was honest, she had been too busy focusing on Riley—although some might have said smothering him—during the feast to care that the sibling (or siblings, plural, as the case actually was) of the deceased Beauxbatons Champion had arrived at Hogwarts. She left the role of the gossip to other people, though she didn’t mind indulging in that gossip once it got around to her. That Madeleine was in her sixth year wasn’t too notable, but the fact that she was in Hufflepuff… Priscilla was glad that she hadn’t taken a sip of her juice right at that moment.

“Hufflepuff? Really?” she almost laughed but quickly made her tone more one of intrigue. She would have guessed Slytherin, or maybe even Gryffindor, but… Hufflepuff? Hufflepuffs were hardworking, which seemed about the only possibility there. Either that, or Madeleine had a softer side. It probably wasn’t “weakness”, per se, but it was a good indicator of… something there. “I’m a fifth-year,” she told her, pondering a thought as she spoke. Hopefully it was clear enough to Madeleine that she was at the Ravenclaw table.

“You mentioned coming here because of Émile,” Priscilla pondered. What puzzled her was that Madeleine didn’t seem like the type of person to follow someone else so willingly. “You must have something you’re looking for… Someone?” She must have had some goal in mind. “The people he knew? You must have questions for them, right?”

@madeleine

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

@priscilla

Hogwarts students seemed to have an obsession over what house they were in. Like the traits of their founding fathers were supposed to dictate every waking moment of their school life. That was kind of messed up in her opinion. Being sorted was fine; it divided the students up and would help with school spirit. Losing individuality to forced personality traits in each house though? Madeleine disliked that part of Hogwarts. “Yes, really,” she confirmed, once again. “I’ve only been here a week, but I know how others view my house. I think it’s a load of crap,” Madeleine shrugged, not caring if Rosier had anything else to say on the matter. “The houses I mean. It would be more efficient to sort alphabetically by last name, wouldn’t you say? Makes more sense to me.” Madeleine ignored Rosier as she continued talking, giving out her school year as well. Again, that didn’t matter to her at all. The only difference between the two of them (aside from her own superior blood-line to this girl’s) was a year of school and the classes they were taking. Obviously Beauxbatons was further ahead in certain curriculums whilst Hogwarts lagged behind, which she discovered while looking over the syllabus for her Charms class. At least her old school had a one up on that.

Her attention was grabbed again when she heard her brother’s name. Rosier had seemed surprised earlier to hear the mention of him, so the fact that she was using it now meant that the younger girl was trying to dig for more information. Unfortunately she was going to be disappointed by Madeleine’s answer, “Nothing in particular. Hogwarts seemed interesting from his perspective and I wanted a change of pace. It’s amazing what a dead older brother will do to your social life.” She rolled her eyes as she finished off the remainder of her sandwich. The last thing she wanted from her former classmates was pity. Most of them lost relatives or friends too. Just because Émile was the figurehead of the seventh year victims didn’t mean she thought any less of the others that had died. But they would treat her differently regardless of that.

[Deleted]

Madeleine said that she already knew how others viewed her House and that she found that to be “a load of crap”—not the tendency to think of Hufflepuff as the meek one, she clarified, but rather the system of Houses itself. She voiced the opinion that it made more sense to organize everyone alphabetically by surname, which didn’t sound like such a terrible idea on the whole. It did make sense, with one disastrous caveat: If the four Houses took the twenty-six letters and divided them up, they would have to do so evenly for every six or seven letters; otherwise, she ran the risk of being put with all of the Weasleys. The thought was enough to cause Priscilla to shudder.

Weasleys aside, Sorting everyone by their surnames didn’t sound too bad. Except, again, Priscilla would have a problem: No matter how the alphabet got divided up, she would be separated from Riley. It was bad enough that their schedules weren’t more similar; sometimes, she had had to wait all day to see him.

“I agree that the Houses have become far too… muddled,” she voiced. “The four founders of Hogwarts had very specific ideas about whom they wanted in their Houses. Well, barring Hufflepuff… She did say she’d take the rest of the students who weren’t chosen for the other three.” Anyone who had been at Hogwarts for a Sorting Ceremony knew at least some version of how the story went. Everyone knew Gryffindor wanted the bravest; Ravenclaw wanted the brightest; Slytherin wanted the purest. “I thought that I would be a Hatstall, myself,” Priscilla continued. “The Sorting Hat couldn’t choose between Ravenclaw and Slytherin for me. It kept going back and forth, though it never did give me a choice.” She shrugged; it was a moot point, overall. “Slytherin is nowhere near as pure as it once was, anyway.”

@madeleine

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

@priscilla

Muddled. What a funny word that was. Had they not just gone over the fact that Rosier could not be considered as pure anymore, since the family had moved? Was Madeleine remembering a completely different conversation now? Regardless, her eyebrows furrowed at Rosier’s attempt to talk purity and the likes, and Madeleine forced herself to let it go. The girl was stubborn, and beating her down time and time again wasn’t going to prove anything. It would just make her look like a bully. She only enjoyed that title when she was one on purpose. Stating facts was far different from going out of her way to torment a person. “Not chosen?” she cut in. “I recall being chosen, as I’m sure most of my house would. This is what I’m talking about. The system is silly. Everyone believes that they’re placed in one of the Houses and that’s how they’re supposed to be the rest of school.” This whole thing was stupid, really. Beauxbatons was much more efficient.

She was hoping the conversation on houses would end there, but the Rosier girl kept going on about it, touting the fact that the hat couldn’t decide between two of the houses for her. In her own opinion, that sounded more like an opportune Hufflepuff than any of the others. “You’re one to talk,” she said following the Slytherin comment. There was no harm telling the truth. The other girl didn’t seem interested in why Madeleine was at Hogwarts, which she had asked about directly, so Madeleine wasn’t interested in her opinions on blood purity in the students or inter-house politics. She was only going to be here for two years. It didn’t matter in the end.

“Aren’t the Ravenclaws the ones always in the newspapers for getting killed? I wouldn’t be so proud of that,” she shrugged as she took another bite of her food. Avoiding the news was difficult following Émile’s death; she had been entranced by all of the outlooks on her brother and how he had both accomplished and failed in the tournament. Beauxbatons had only allowed her to leave school for the first and third tasks, and she had already returned home before everything happened. Right under his and the other Beauxbatons and Durmstrang names were always the ones of the Hogwarts students that had been killed the previous year. She was pretty sure they had been Ravenclaws.

[Deleted]

Madeleine reiterated her point: The House system was stupid because it put people in neat little boxes that seemingly dictated how they had to behave for the rest of their school-aged lives. To this, Priscilla held her tongue, as she knew she should, because—in her eyes—it made sense. The Hat had put her in Ravenclaw because her intelligence trumped the cunningness of the Slytherins, she supposed, as it placed everyone else wherever it saw fit. Similar people would gravitate towards one another anyway, wouldn't they? What harm would the Sorting Hat do in moving that process along? Besides, it was the way it had always been done. No Beauxbatons student was going to waltz into Hogwarts and say that centuries of tradition needed to be undone.

The conversation continued with Madeleine's asking her about the students who had died, and weren't they Ravenclaws, and something about not wanting to be proud of that—all of which Priscilla took in one ear and out the other. The more the other girl spoke, the more Priscilla was intrigued. It had to be a test.

“Pride” wasn’t the first word that would have come to Priscilla’s mind in relation to the deaths of some of her fellow students, nor was she ashamed. She knew very well that the Ravenclaw students who had been killed hadn’t been made victims because they were completely stupid.

Priscilla smiled. “It’s only the Muggle-borns, really. I don’t think the rest of us have any reason to be concerned,” she answered, shrugging for herself as she nonchalantly took a long sip of juice and focused in the other direction. If Madeleine was as pure as she claimed to be, she thought, Émile probably wouldn't be dead, either.

@madeleine

[Deleted]

09.07.2024

@priscilla

Rosier kept her mouth shut. That was smart of her. The Ravenclaw house fit her then – there was some sort of intelligence there telling her to stay quiet and listen like the diluted pureblood she was. The Hogwarts girl wasn’t going to win Madeleine over at this point. Her last chance was prior to revealing her surname. Judgement was set and dictating how Madeleine preceded with their conversation. It was extremely disappointing that she had to act this way so early on in the school year but she had to make her name known. She had to uphold her name following Émile’s disappointing loss and subsequent departure. None of the Hogwarts or Ilvermorny students would understand that at all, even if she broke it down into concepts easy enough for them.

She continued working on her food since it seemed like their conversation was coming to a close. That was probably for the better. There were more interesting people here to interrogate and get close to. Rosier was dull and held desperately onto ‘pureblood values’ that she no longer had any right to claim as her own. “What do you think happens when they run out of those?” Madeleine asked. She was actually curious to hear the answer that Rosier would undoubtedly provide. Half-bloods next? Demi-humans? Werewolves and vampires were too valuable for that, but considering they were domesticated these days there was no telling what the bad guys would do. If they were even bad in the first place. “But I supposed you’re right. We probably don’t have to worry. It’s unfortunate that some have to die to come to a resolution, but that’s life,” she shrugged. It hurt lumping Émile and the other Beauxbatons students that had died into that, but she had to make her point.