Marcelle had thankfully overheard some of the girls in her year talking about the champions being picked at the feast, and so had time to mentally prepare herself and to work on her English skills. Still, she had been so shocked when the Headmaster Aleksandrov had read out her name that she had not registered it at first.
"The Beuxbatons champion," he had said, Marcelle hanging on to his every syllable. "Is Marcelle Alix."
She had frozen, shock paralyzing her body.
"Marcelle Alix?"
Finally she stood up, shaking, and made her way in to the chamber off the hall, trying to ignore the stares of the Beuxbatons girls in her year. She nodded at the Hogwarts champion, a deathly white, ebony haired girl with a loose corset and horrible rectangle glasses, and leaned against the cold stone wall.
To be honest, she was having second thoughts about entering the Tournament, and thinking about beauty wouldn't help in this situation. There's no going back now, she thought. You have to stay in the Tournament once your name's been pulled out, it's the rules. There was nothing Marcelle could do. She nervously tightened her corset and blinked very fast, willing the tears not to come, willing to wake up and this had all been a dream…
"Marcelle, could you come inside please chéri?" Her mother called to her from inside the house.
"I'm milking Aidé, mother, give me a moment," she called back. In these early days when Marcelle had been young the family had a cow. The poor underfed thing was so thin you could see every rib on the its chest. Marcelle had loathed milking the cow out in the freezing cold air with her tatty, frayed clothes that the wind cut right through.
"Please chéri, this is important, we have news," Marcelle could hear the longing and badly concealed excitement in her voice, so she wrapped herself up in her coat and made her way back inside through the stiff, bitter cold air.
Entering their tiny, crumbling wooden cottage, Marcelle felt slight relief from the cold as she sat down next to the wood fire and stared expectantly at her mother as she sat down on the log in front of her. Marcelle saw her flinch at the effort it took her to sit down, feeling instantly guilty for every hassle she had ever given her mother in her illness. Marcelle had known, even when she was a child, that her mother would never truly recover from her sickness, it would only get worse and there was nothing she could do but work that little bit harder to try and earn a little more money.
Her mother took a deep breath and pushed her long, thin grey hair out of her face.
"You got in," she said, beaming. "You are enrolled in Beuxbatons Academy of Magic!" Marcelle leaped up and hugged her mother tight, purple sparks exploding from the fireplace from a surge of uncontrolled magic. They broke apart, both giggling, with tears in their matching inky blue eyes.
Marcelle continued to laugh and cry with joy for several minutes, but her mother broke out in a fit of coughing and had to run to the kitchen to get a handkerchief. When she removed the white cloth there were scarlet specks of blood on it. Marcelle stared on anxiously, the short-lived joy of being accepted to school gone and replaced with her usual worries and fears for her mother and for her terrible penniless life.
The memory disappeared, vaporizing in to the bowels of her mind. She watched as the third champion strolled in and tried to listen attentively to Professor Aleksandrov as he described the challenge to come in a boring, drawling voice, but at least she could understand. Afterwards she stalked out of the room, trying to look as confident as she could, and ignored the other champions, who already seemed to know each other, completely.
Marcelle lay in bed and thought about what she had done. A tear slipped down her cheek.