A/N: This is something very different; set in 1771 and revolving around two OCs. I'm a bit miffed about the fact I had a max word count to stick to. This really wasn't how I was planning on this fic turning out (that is, the stuff I've written was all planned, but there was meant to be an extra bit at the start and end that would've totally changed the vibe and made it better, making the title 'Found, and Lost' instead, but I ran out of time...) *sigh*
Word count: 3264
Written for: QLFC rnd 11 (Harpies Beater 2) [Set in 1771 - a school day - (poem) Indeed, Indeed I Cannot Tell - Henry David Thoreau]; Disney comp [Periwinkle - siblings find each other again/ first time]; HP Chapter comp [GoF - The Triwizard Tournament - someone entering their name]; Butteflygirly's Quote comp [sad, family - The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk grow away from it." ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables]
Lost and Found
Indeed indeed, I cannot tell,
Though I ponder on it well,
Which were easier to state,
All my love or all my hate.
XXX
31st October 1771
The Slytherin dormitories were dark and gloomy when Caitlyn Elwood woke up. Being housed in the depths of the Black Lake, she was used to this; however the days were becoming increasingly short, so it still felt like the middle of the night. Suffice it to say, Caitlyn didn't feel like getting up, and adamantly snuggled herself further under the duvet.
Her bliss lasted for all of five minutes until she was smacked in the head with a pillow.
"Get up, lazybones," her roommate and best friend shouted across the room.
"Shove off, Connie," Caitlyn mumbled groggily, rubbing her eyes and stifling a yawn. "I was up until two a.m. doing that Charms essay."
The sound of creaking bedsprings rang through the room as Connie stood up. She walked over to a mirror and started to clip her hair up, speaking to Caitlyn through a mouthful of grips. "Why did it take you so long?"
"I could barely read my parchment half the time," Caitlyn said. She then scoffed to herself, wondering why on earth there was no charm in existence that could produce light. Maybe then she could have avoided feeling like a troll this morning and gotten a decent amount of sleep.
"Hurry up, Caitlyn. I'm starving," Connie said as she secured her black bonnet over her head and tied the emerald-coloured straps under her chin.
"All right, all right," Caitlyn sighed, conceding that she couldn't stall any longer. Not even bothering to walk into the bathroom to get changed, she pulled her nightgown off over her head and swiftly replaced it with her uniform: a white shirt and house tie followed by a restrictive black pinafore dress.
"Ugh, I hate these things," she scowled as she finally got her head through the proper hole in the garment. "There's zero elbow room to get your arms through; it's like a bloody battle. It'd be much nicer to wear breeches like the boys."
Connie's nose wrinkled in disapproval. "Honestly Caitlyn, don't you have a girly bone in your body?"
Caitlyn pursed her lips in thought as she pulled up her knee-length woollen socks and buckled her shoes. "I don't think so," she admitted. "The last time I did something girly was…" her voice trailed off as a particular memory drifted through her head. Caitlyn sniffed and blinked it away, not wanting to think of her. "… Years ago," she finished.
Connie rolled her eyes stepped aside so Caitlyn could use the mirror. She examined her reflection with a slight grimace; her dirty-blonde hair was horribly tangled and messy, but she was already late enough as it is so didn't bother to try and brush it. "I have long hair," she commented as she shoved her bonnet over the knotted mass. "Does that count as being girly?"
Connie laughed. "Please, that Neanderthal of a teacher from Durmstrang has hair that reaches his arse; long hair does not equate to girly."
Caitlyn shrugged. "Worth a shot. Now let's go down to breakfast."
"What's left of it," Connie said dryly, following Caitlyn out of the dormitory, through the common room and out into the Entrance Hall, where the usual crowd was milling around the pedestal on which the Goblet of Fire stood.
"How is that thing still attracting so much attention?" Caitlyn scoffed. "Isn't this the last day for entering your name?"
"Oh that's right," Connie exclaimed. "After classes there's the Halloween feast and the Champions selection," her blue eyes glazed over as she began to daydream about what was to come that evening. Caitlyn smiled affectionately and shook her head before turning her attention back to the goblet. A group of Beauxbatons students were huddled around it, and cheered raucously when one member of the group placed her name into the cup in a particularly deliberate and snobbish manner.
"Oh give me a break," Caitlyn rolled her eyes.
The Beauxbatons girls exchanged bemused glances and giggled. The brunette girl who had entered her name advanced to the front of the pack and faced Caitlyn. She folded her arms and cocked her hip out to the side, and began silently challenging Caitlyn to enter her name also, as if not putting yourself up for almost certain death was something to be mocked.
Well, Caitlyn certainly wasn't going to stand for that. She harboured a generic hatred for all things French, and had done ever since her little sister had decided to move to France with her estranged father five years ago; but the fact that the Beauxbatons girl bore such a likeness to Sophia just infuriated Caitlyn even more.
Potential for eternal glory seemed vastly more appealing now that it came with the bonus of showing up a group of uptight French girls. Caitlyn just saw it as a means to indirectly score a point against her father, and her sister for that matter. Her innate Slytherin need to prove herself couldn't really turn down the opportunity.
Caitlyn swiftly ripped a length of parchment off the bottom of her completed Charms essay, and held it high. She smirked as the brunette girl bristled at her unspoken acceptance of her challenge, and plunged her hand into her satchel.
"Hey Connie, can I borrow a quill and some ink?" she asked when she realised she must have left her equipment sitting on the table in the common room.
"But…" Connie turned her head towards the Great Hall. "Food."
Caitlyn sighed. "Noah will have something on him. He always does," she said simply. She beckoned for the equipment urgently with her outstretched hand.
Connie looked at her friend and gasped, suddenly realising why Caitlyn needed her quill. "You can't enter the Tournament!"
"Why not?" Caitlyn asked.
"You're sixteen! People have died in these things before, you know?"
Admittedly, Caitlyn's stomach lurched uncomfortably at the comment; there was a reason why she'd avoided submitting her name until now, after all. But she felt like she couldn't back down. Not now.
"There's no age restriction," she dismissed with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders.
Caitlyn did feel a little bad when she saw the blatant worry appear in Connie's eyes, but she remained persistent, and eventually she had a quill and a pot of ink in her hands. She hurried over to the wall and pressed the parchment against it before scrawling her name and school onto it. After that, she stuck her nose in the air and pushed through the bewildered Beauxbatons girls.
Stretching onto her tiptoes, Caitlyn took a deep breath and dropped the parchment into the flames. She was suddenly overcome with a sense of disappointment, like she'd been anticipating some kind of great rush of adrenaline or triumph. It was like the feeling she woke up with on her last few birthdays… only, without the sense of impending doom entering her name had brought on.
All of her bravado lost, she staggered back towards Connie. "Look, you can go have breakfast without me. I'm not so hungry anymore," she said.
Connie sighed and rolled her eyes. She was clearly unhappy that Caitlyn had kept her waiting for essentially no reason at all. Caitlyn didn't have the heart to brood on that, though, and sloped off to Transfiguration.
"Miss Elwood?"
"Mm?" Caitlyn grunted as she reluctantly turned her head to the front of the class, where the new Transfiguration teacher – Professor Grahams – was looking at her sternly.
Though it was her first N.E.W.T year, Caitlyn couldn't help but rebel against the man in this class. It just hadn't been the same since Professor Derwent (the previous headmistress and Transfiguration professor) died three years ago. She actually made the difficult subject fun, whereas Professor Grahams wouldn't understand such a concept if it thwacked him like a Bludger into one of the Quidditch baskets.
Then Caitlyn began to giggle, finding the mental image of the portly professor being stuffed into such a cramped space thirty feet in the air incredibly entertaining.
"Care to explain why you have been daydreaming instead of concentrating on turning your plate into a mushroom?"
Caitlyn's expression immediately dropped, and she simply shrugged in response, not really wanting to explain to the entire class that her sister had been at the forefront of her thoughts. This was mainly because… well, nobody actually knew she had a sister. As far as Caitlyn was concerned, she hadn't had a sister since she decided to leave with their father. Being only eight at the time, there was really no reason why Sophia would have been able to look at the situation objectively or even be wary of their dad's manipulative silver tongue at the time. In short, Caitlyn shouldn't resent her as much as she did. But she and Sophie… they used to be so close: inseparable, in fact. Until their parents started fighting…
"Miss Elwood?" Professor Grahams' face had turned a beet-red. He was evidently angry at her lack of communication.
Caitlyn rolled her eyes but decided to hold her tongue, which always had a tendency to spit out venomous comments before her mind could properly think it through. It was a bad trait, and one she'd inherited from Samuel Dubois, her father. She wrinkled her nose up then: Dubois. It was such a pretentious-sounding name, and Caitlyn was glad to be rid of it.
"Psst."
Caitlyn looked down when she felt something poke her in the leg under the desk. It was Connie's hand. She was holding a Pumpkin Pasty.
"From Noah," she whispered. "You looked grumpy so he figured you might be hungry."
Caitlyn was about to decline, but then her stomach growled, and she took the pasty gratefully. She leaned across the desk to look across Connie at Noah Grimes: a fellow Slytherin and one of her close friends. Caitlyn smiled and nodded in thanks at him before faking a cough so she could sneak a bite of pasty.
After that, she proceeded to half-heartedly attempt to transfigure her plate to satisfy Professor Grahams, who watched for a while before shaking his head in defeat and walking away to check on the progress of some of the other students. As soon as his muddy eyes left Caitlyn, she put her wand down and resumed staring out of the window.
Her eyes wandered subconsciously over to the forest as Caitlyn followed her previous train of thought again. Maybe it was because 'Elwood' – her last name – translated to mean 'elder tree forest'; or perhaps it was because 'Dubois' – Sophia's last name – means 'from the forest' in French.
Caitlyn sighed. What were the chances that those two names meant the same thing? It was like she still couldn't distance herself from Sophia. They'd been connected by name when their parents were together, and they still were even though Caitlyn was now an Elwood and Sophia remained a Dubois. Well, that was how family worked, wasn't it? You can only grow apart from one another, never truly breaking away. Just like how branches can only ever grow more distant from a tree trunk; unable to become permanently detached.
It wasn't that Caitlyn hated her sister; in fact she often found herself missing her. Though they were always close as children, cracks in their relationship began to form when their parents started arguing. Sophia, too young to perceive which party was in the wrong, was always a daddy's girl, and picked his side. Caitlyn, on the other hand, was shrewd and quickly learned that her father was very controlling. So what if her mum wanted to work extra shifts in the Diagon Alley dressmakers? Common sense determined that this would provide extra income for their family, but apparently her father preferred her mum to stay at home and do all the cooking and cleaning like a 'good little wife'.
Since Sophia obviously had her 'favourite' parent, she'd become upset whenever Caitlyn sided with their mum, and therein laid the problem for them. The girls always picked sides, but it was never the same one. Very soon, parents started to dote on their respective supportive daughter, and a constant competitive tension hung over the Dubois household for several months, until Samuel announced that he was moving to France. He'd taken Sophia with him on the year she and Caitlyn were set to start Hogwarts together, and she hadn't seen her little sister since.
"Merlin's breeches, what the he-?" Caitlyn jumped violently when the bell sounded, signalling the end of the lesson. Had she really been brooding for a whole hour?
"Language, Miss Elwood," Professor Grahams said.
"Whatever," Caitlyn muttered, hastily shoving her wand and pasty into her satchel before leaving for Charms class: a lesson Caitlyn always looked forward to. She was especially relieved to have it on her timetable today; her brain really needed a distraction.
Before she knew it, double Charms, lunch, Potions and Arithmancy were gone, and Caitlyn was traipsing into the Great Hall with the rest of the staff and students from the three schools. Connie and Noah walked faithfully at her side, stealing nervous glances at her and at each other every so often. Of course they were both pretty smug about their friend, their house and their school potentially winning the Tournamant, but neither of them could bear to think about the alternative, which saw Caitlyn dead or seriously injured by the time the year was over.
None of them were particularly hungry, and picked at their food during the feast. Although, Connie did make a point to stash several decadent treats into her pockets and under her bonnet to save for later, and Caitlyn forced herself to eat and not seem too nervous to put on a confident façade in front of the Beauxbatons snobs.
By the time the food and plates disappeared, she was feeling incredibly nauseous. She did begin to feel less bloated as the speeches and notices progressed, but then the flames of the Goblet of Fire turned red, and suddenly she felt like she needed to throw up again.
The Durmstrang Champion was called first, and Caitlyn watched as a particularly fierce-looking boy stepped forwards. He bowed deeply at the crowd before making his way through to the Trophy Room with a triumphant smirk on his face. Caitlyn gulped; he didn't look like he was any older than fifteen: just one year younger than her. She didn't know if she was ready for this.
"The Hogwarts Champion…" the headmaster boomed. Caitlyn, Connie and Noah all held their breath. Several fleeting heartbeats later, he unfolded the parchment in his hands and read the name. "Caitlyn Elwood."
Caitlyn felt the eyes of every Hogwarts student and professor on her. She didn't really hear the cheering, or feel the congratulatory claps on the back she received as she walked in a daze to the front of the hall. She felt completely numb, and only hoped that she was ready for whatever tasks they were going to throw at her.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she was out of sight and in the quiet Trophy Room with the Durmstrang Champion, who didn't even look up when Caitlyn walked in. The silence suited her just fine; she wasn't really in the mood for idle small-talk right now.
She soon decided to look at the positive: that her French opponent would be joining them very shortly. Caitlyn sincerely hoped it would be the snooty brunette who'd silently beckoned her to enter her own name earlier that day…
Footsteps, delicate and quiet, sounded at the top of the staircase. This is her, Caitlyn thought. She put on her best false-smirk and turned around so she was facing the entrance, and leant with an air of indifference against the wall. The footsteps became louder as the Beauxbatons Champion descended the stairs, and her figure came into view. Sure enough, she was brunette… but she was not the girl from that morning. She was too petite and too… familiar.
"Sophia?" Caitlyn spluttered as the startled girl entered the room, having just been jolted from her thoughts. "What are you doing here?"
Sophia folded her arms and shrugged, "Same as you, apparently."
Caitlyn couldn't help but cringe at the faint French accent that was now present in her sister's voice. Her confident façade forgotten, Caitlyn stared at the other girl, her stomach knotting up. Sophia had definitely grown up since she last saw her, but she was still the Sophia she remembered… in appearance, that is.
All of her body language was cold and distant, very much unlike the bubbly girl who used to braid Caitlyn's hair and give her makeovers against her will. The intent in Sophia's eyes was crystal clear; she'd entered this Tournament to win – in many senses of the word.
"Did Dad put you up to this?" Caitlyn found herself shouting, a bubble of fury bursting out of her mouth. "You aren't ready for this, Sophia. You're thirteen!" Why the heck was there no age restriction for this Tournament?!
'People have died in these things before...' her stomach knotted tighter still as she recalled Connie's earlier words. A horrible image of Sophie's dead body quickly flashed through Caitlyn's head, and she blinked away her own tears.
"Who are you to tell me what I can and can't do, Caitlyn?" Sophia, alive and well, snapped Caitlyn back to reality. "I don't even know you anymore."
Caitlyn flinched. That comment stung. Badly.
"Well, you would if you hadn't left with him!"
"You never even gave him a chance, Caitlyn!"
"And you never gave Mum one," she hissed, her shock and brief moment of melancholy from seeing her long-lost sister again now behind her. Grudges and bitterness had apparently matured over time, and it was clear that Sophia wanted to win the Tournament for their dad's sake, not her own.
"I was eight!" Sophia yelled. "I didn't know what was going on. I – I needed you but you pushed me away just because I went to Dad instead of Mum."
That's when Caitlyn noticed them; the tears that started to fill Sophia's blue eyes. Completely against her will, her heart squeezed in sympathy and her body was moving forwards before her brain could protest, and soon she was hugging her sister again. Even now, after all this time, Sophia still felt the same in her arms. And that was enough for Caitlyn to accept the fact that she still loved Sophia a great deal, even though she'd been convinced she'd hated her.
"Shh, don't be scared," she whispered.
"But you're right Cait," Sophia sniffed. "I'm too young. I'm not ready. I just thought I could show Dad that I could be just as grown-up as he always says you are."
Caitlyn stiffened, and pulled away. She took a moment to silently curse her dad for making Sophia feel inadequate, making Sophia resent her. "He says that?"
Sophia nodded and wiped her eyes. She then looked down at her blue uniform, seemingly realising that she and Caitlyn were no longer one and the same, and took a pace back.
"Sophie," Caitlyn said, pulling her in again. "We can work together, you know, even if we're technically supposed to be against each other."
"I thought that's what you wanted – for us to be opponents," Sophia smiled weakly. "Why else would you enter your name?"
Caitlyn shook her head. "Honestly, I had no idea you were even here. But we can get through this together. I promise."
Sophia arched an eyebrow dubiously at this, not that Caitlyn could blame her; it was going to take a long time for them to get back to how they used to be.
But this was a start.
XXX
O, I hate thee with a hate
That would fain annihilate;
Yet sometimes against my will,
My dear friend, I love thee still.
Henry David Thoreau
A/N: Thanks for reading :)
Note: In case you thought the line about the Quidditch baskets was out of place, that is correct given the time period I was given. They had baskets attached to the goals instead of just hoops. See, I did my research haha ;)