The Cedric Diggory Quidditch Cup
By the time the Hogwarts Express had settled back into its regular rhythm, the broken windows repaired, and the Slytherin's stocked up on chocolate, the train was abuzz with frightened chatter about the attack, though few people knew about the message on the side of the train yet. Undoubtedly it would be hard to cover up when the train stopped in Hogsmeade. Harry, Ginny, Neville, Luna, and the Slytherin girl, Regina Corsica, huddled in one of the compartments to discuss what had just happened. "D'you think they were what's left of the Death Eaters?" Ginny asked, squeezing Harrys hand.
"I don't think so," Harry said, his face set like stone, his eyes swimming with deep thoughts, "Kingsley's been rounding up and interrogating anyone with even a remote connection to the Death Eaters, they wouldn't be so bold, not right now. These people weren't experienced fighters. Definitely powerful, and they had a Dementor in tow, so it isn't good news. We need to get a message out to Kingsley, let him know before the Prophet prints it across the front page. He'll be able to flatten the story and dispatch some Aurors to pick up the ones we left by the tracks. The last thing we need is for them to become experienced fighters."
The compartment nodded their agreement, and for the next hour they shared theories on who the mysterious attackers could be. Death Eaters was the popular theory, but Harry still wasn't convinced. The Death Easter's wouldn't have needed to attack the carriages from outside. A group of battle-hardened murderers like them would board the train and simply cut down anyone who got in their way. The Death Eaters were also much more organised, even without Lord Voldemort, and hit and run attacks weren't really their style. Could the loss of Lord Voldemort have made the small group of free Death Eaters so desperate and reckless? Harry doubted it, and he also doubted that they would simply have told him to go home. But he didn't want to worry the rest of the students on the train, and so for now, he decided to keep his theories to himself until he could speak to Kingsley, or to Professor McGonagall. A thousand miles away, a young French witch named Gabrielle Delacour stepped into the courtyard of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, ready for another year of learning to begin.
The Beauxbatons grounds looked magnificent in the afternoon sun as Gabrielle Delacour stepped out of her parent's car and onto the pristine cobbles of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic. The gardens were a luscious green, even as autumn drew in, and birds chirped happily in the trees. Students who had already arrived hung around in droves, some strolling through the Beauxbatons Park, while others unloaded heavy trunks from one of the school carriages. The main doors of the chateau had been held open for the crowds of arriving students making their way to their dorms. Over in the distance, Gabrielle could just make out the grandstand of the Quidditch Pitch and imagined that soon after her broom had been delivered to her dorm, she would be sprinting down there and taking to the skies.
"Ah I will miss you so mon Chérie," Gabrielle's mother said, pulling her into a hug, "promise you will write often?"
"I wrote my first letter to home whilst we were in the car," Gabrielle smiled, "and I'll finish Monday's letter tonight."
"Don't forget, your studies are more important than flying," her mother said with a tone of warning, "and if I get another letter from Professor Bordeaux telling me that you've been caught sneaking out again to play night Quidditch with Josephine and Juliette I will send that broom straight back to England!"
"Yes Mama," Gabrielle replied, more seriously this time. Her Nimbus Two-Thousand Five Hundred had been a gift from Nimbus themselves after she had scored the most points of any player at the European Youth Cup, and had quickly become her most prized possession, even though her parents had only allowed her to fly it once in their back garden. She couldn't wait to show it off to the rest of her teammates from Ombreluna, her Beauxbatons house who had won back-to-back Quidditch Cups. After some more warnings about her wayward behaviour, and further instructions to write home every week, Gabrielle's mother kissed her on the cheek and stepped back into her car, leaving Gabrielle to make her way to into the Palace of Beauxbatons and begin climbing the stairs to the top floor.
When her older sister Fleur had attended Beauxbatons, she had been sorted into the house that occupied the second floor of the palace, Papillonlisse. The Papillonlisse students were artsy and creative types, often found obsessing over their looks or gossiping amongst their fickle social circles. When Gabrielle arrived, everyone expected her to follow suit, but though she and Fleur may look like twins, they couldn't be more different. Fleur was the beautiful and artsy sister who had a knack for Defence Against the Dark Arts and always strived to see the best in people, Gabrielle was the rebellious, sporty one who thought most of her time not spent flying was wasted, and whose sole and all-consuming ambition was to play as Central Chaser for France. In fact, Gabrielle had been on the receiving end of so many detentions in her first year at Beauxbatons that Josephine DuPont, her team captain, had suggested she might have been better sorted into Bellefeuille, a house whose reputation for charging headlong into sketchy situations without any thought preceded them.
Gabrielle had known from the moment she stepped into the Ombreluna dorm though, with its creaky floors, and its notoriously messy common room, and its loud parties after each Quidditch match, that she had found her place in school, away from her sister. She greeted a few of her housemates who were lounging around in the common room and made her way up the stairs to the girls' dorms, where she walked down the corridor until finding a plain white door with her name written on a small brass plaque. Her room was just as she'd left it in July, neat enough to pass inspection from Professor Bordeaux, but with a little of her characteristic messiness to make it feel like home. The posters of Elise De Laserre and the Quiberon Quafflepunchers in their shocking pink robes were still tacked haphazardly on the wall above her bed, and the shelf above her desk was groaning under the weight of trophies she had collected in an impressive first year for the Ombreluna House team and the Quiberon Quafflepunchers youth team. She smiled as she admired her two Golden Quaffle awards, her player of the tournament award from the European Youth Cup, her house cup medal, and a glass trophy from Butterbeer for Goal of the Tournament against the Heidelberg Harriers.
She knew that doing so well, perhaps too well, in her first year playing Quidditch would bring about lofty expectations from her housemates this year, but she was confident Ombreluna would bring home the trophy for a third year in a row. In mere minutes Gabrielle had unpacked the trunk at the foot of her bed and changed into her pale blue Beauxbatons uniform with her silver Ombreluna ribbon tied loosely around her neck. She was just arranging her desk when a knock at the door signalled the imminent arrival of one of the DuPont twins, or both, as was sometimes the case.
"Un péché" Gabrielle called, and Josephine DuPont waltzed into her room and plonked herself down onto Gabrielle's bed. Josephine and Juliette were two years above Gabrielle, but having been neighbours since Gabrielle was born, the trio had been as thick as thieves for as long as anyone could remember. "Don't feel the need to stand there in the doorway Jo, make yourself comfortable."
"Oh thanks," Josephine smiled as she stretched out on Gabrielle's bed, "my legs were starting to ache."
"Good summer?"
"Ace, we went to the De La Serre's beach house in Sardinia. You?"
"I wanted to go and visit Fleur in England, but she and Bill were attending a lot of funerals, so I stayed home." An awkward silence fell over the room. The war in Great Britain had never really caused much trouble in France, aside from a few skirmishes in towns on the English Channel, but it was tense time for the magical community across Europe. French Aurors had been stationed all around the coast, and a ten o'clock curfew had been imposed across the country, with people encouraged to stay home unless absolutely necessary. Being in hiding in England, Fleur hadn't managed to sneak herself and Bill to the safety of their parents' house in Quiberon, and both had fought in the final battle at Hogwarts. Bill lost a brother, and many friends. Deciding to gloss over the subject, Gabrielle continued, "still, a few trips to Paris, and a weekend in St. Tropez so I at least got plenty of shopping in."
"Did you manage to fit it all in your parents very fancy car or did you have to tow it behind?" Gabrielle's parents owned an enchanted Panther DeVille, a classic car normally reserved for the rich and famous in the muggle world. Not many Wizard families in France owned cars, and even fewer owned cars that were as ostentatious as the silver and black Panther Gabrielle had been dropped off in.
"Ha-ha. I'm sure now that Daddy is President of France your travel arrangements are positively third-class."
"Feels like it sometimes," Josephine sighed, "I understand his job is very important, but do we really need Aurors following us every minute of the day? They're outside the house, outside his office, and they follow him everywhere he walks. There's even two stationed permanently here at school for me and Julie."
"So, you spent your summer in a fancy beach house in Italy, in the sun, surrounded by hunky bodyguards and famous Quidditch players? Sounds awful, I'm glad I wasn't invited."
"I couldn't invite you," Josephine said with a mischievous grin, "Elise was terrified you'd try and snog her like you do with that poster up there." She jerked a thumb at the poster above Gabrielle's bed and ducked just time to avoid the book Gabrielle had thrown at her.
"Do not," Gabrielle said hotly, her cheeks filling with colour.
"She watched us play at the European Cup, said you were brilliant, but a bit selfish."
"Selfish?" Gabrielle's head snapped around, incensed.
"Be honest, you didn't need to score that one against the Appleby Arrows while you were upside down with two Beaters hovering over you."
"Well Julie had already been hit, and I couldn't see you because Sebastian was in the way. Didn't have any other choice." Gabrielle shrugged.
"Sure," Josephine winked, "Well, best you still have more goals left in you, we're going to need them for our trips abroad."
"The World Cup is France this year, and they haven't announced the Under-16's team yet."
"No," Josephine agreed, "but there is the Cedric Diggory Quidditch Cup. Madame Maxine is going to announce it at dinner. Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and Hogwarts are all going to take part, and we'll need to put together a strong team if we want to win." Gabrielle's mind went into high gear. Not only would she be playing for Ombreluna and Quiberon this year, but she might play for Beauxbatons and France too if she was deemed good enough. In the back of her mind, her mother's constant warnings throughout the summer about not concentrating on just Quidditch played on repeat. If she kept her grades up, Her mother would let her keep playing, and if she kept playing she could get picked for Beauxbatons, and if she got picked for Beauxbatons, she might get to see Harry Potter…
Authors Note
Hi Everyone,
Thank you for taking the time to read this chapter, I hope you enjoyed it. I've not explored Beauxbatons in any of my stories, so this was fun to write and to begin exploring a new school. I've tried to use the little canon info we have for Beauxbatons and blend it in with some of my own fiction work to paint a picture of what I think the school might be like, and I'll explore this further in later chapters. I must be fully transparent and tell you that I did not come up with the three Beauxbatons houses, Ombreluna, Papillonlisse, and Bellefuille. I have seen these houses appear on numerous websites and forums, notably the Beauxbatons Academy Roleplay Wiki, and Quora.
I do not know who originally came up with the idea for these houses, so unfortunately I cant give them the proper writing credits they deserve, if anyone does know, or would like to claim credit please feel free to leave the details in a review or PM me so I can add them to my disclaimer. These houses seem to be widely accepted as a sort of 'fanfic canon' on the internet in numerous forums, so I have used their names and a little information on them I could find to write my own version of them. They wont feature heavily in the story, but it helps to do a little worldbuilding in France.
As ever, the rest of my story is based on the works of J.K Rowling and George Norman Lippert, and I make no money from my writing, I just enjoy coming up with stories and sharing them here.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter and would be delighted if you would leave a review!
Till the next,
IronManRidingaFirebolt.