The Houses Competition: Round 1
House: Gryffindor
Class: DADA
Category: Standard
Prompts chosen: (Location) Beauxbatons, (Action) Hiding
Word Count: 1932
Summary:Beauxbatons values beauty and appearance and a rigid standard, and Alenafinds herself hiding in it before realizing she's meant to be more.
Title: Playing Hide and Seek With One's Self
Beauxbatons Academy of Magic was a French Wizarding school located in the Pyrenees mountains of southern France with the coat of arms consisting of two golden wands crossed over one another, each shooting three stars into the air. The coat of arms was a symbol of the two witches who founded Beauxbatons Academy making it into what it was known as today, a respectable school for young witches. Beauxbatons Academy was one of the three largest wizarding schools in Europe, with the other two being Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the Durmstrang Institute. The school had students in attendance from France,Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium too.
It didn't matter where the students came from, they were always impressed by the beauty that was Beauxbatons.
It was said that the stunning grounds that the castle sat upon was partially funded with alchemist gold and the magnificent fountain in the middle of the school's park, believed to have healing and beautifying properties. Of course, this was just a legend. None of it had been proven, even though many students have tried drinking the fountain's water over the years for such reasons.
The castle was surrounded by majestic gardens and fountains magically created out of the surrounding mountains. The school was magnificent, despite having been around for over seven hundred years. In the dining chambers, wood nymphs serenaded the students while they ate, and at Christmas, the hall was adorned with great, shimmering, non-melting sculptures that were like statues of glittering diamonds.
According to the students, the food served at the school was superb. Just the smell of it would make your mouth water. Beauxbatons was truthly a breathtaking place, from the view of the lake to how the trees changed colors.
Any girl would be lucky to go there, all except Alena Wood.
Alena felt like she was playing the longest game of hide and seek, the only difference being that the only person she was hiding from was herself. She always knew she was different from other girls, but she pushed it down, just wanting to be like her peers. When Alena started attending Beauxbatons, things got worse, much worse.
She hated everything about Beauxbatons, especially the class that prepared them for young adulthood. Alena knew that was bullshit; she knew what the class really was. It was meant to be a finishing class.
Like in the 1800, this class forced young girls to learn the social graces and upper-class cultural rites as a preparation for entry into society. Alena thought that these practices were all washed out during the 1900s but apparently not, and now she was forced to endure the classes and learn how to be a proper lady herself.
She would plaster a smile on her face, hiding her true feelings as she was told the proper way to act for a young lady.
Alena would grit her teeth as she was forced to balance a book on her head for half an hour because a young lady must stand up straight and proper? She endured the lessons on how to sit, back straight, with her knees straight out and her hands folded on her lap. She was even taught how to smile. Not too much but also not too little, it had to be perfect, just like the rest of her. Alena bit the tip of her tongue the day she was scolded because her hair was a mess.
That was an unspeakable offense in the Beauxbatons Academy.
Another thing that Alena hated with a passion was the uniforms. The Beauxbatons uniforms were a set of clothing that students were required to wear. It consisted of light blue clothing made of silk. The uniform came with a skirt that went past the knees, a blouse, a hat, shoes and black tights. Alena wanted nothing more than to burn the uniform.
Everytime she put the uniform on she wanted to tear her skin off.
Alena hated her body, she never felt at home in her own skin. However,the uniform made it ten times worse, it made her feel like a completely different person. She loathed the way the uniform highlighted her curves, the way the skirt clung to her hips. Alena despised her body ever since puberty started for her.
Other girls were excited about puberty, overhearing as her peers talked about getting their first period as if it was some great thing. Meanwhile,she was praying that she would never get it. Alena was already fighting off womanhood as it was; she didn't need another thing making her feel as if she didn't belong in her body.
Every morning she would wake up before her peers to get herself ready. She would sneak into the bathroom, making sure that she didn't wake anyone up. She didn't want to imagine what would happen if anyone found out what she was doing.
She was already considered a freak — she didn't need to prove it to them.
Before putting on the dreaded uniform, Alena would bind her chest, turning to her side as she looked into the mirror. She did what she could to make it as flat as she could, making her body something she could stand being in for the day.
She slipped on a pair of boxers that she brought from home before fighting to get her tights over them and smoothing out the fabric. She didn't know why, but she felt more comfortable in boxers than she did in women's underwear. Women's underwear made her skin itch and crawl as if she had ants living under her skin. Boxers made her feel more comfortable and more confident in a way, even though she could never tell anyone.
As time went on at Beauxbatons, things got more hard for Alena.
She learned that she needed to hide most of what she was in order to fit in with the other students. She learned how to make herself invisible, fly under the teachers' radar as it were. Alena learned early on to hide her Quidditch magazines along with any other sports related items unless she wanted to have it taken away.
Quidditch was meant for boys and not proper young ladies.
How Alena wished she could fly on a broom and play a game of Quidditch, even if it were only once. She would most often get in trouble from daydreaming in class, but she hardly cared. She had gotten detention more times then she could count, so what was one more time?
Alena guessed that she was never meant to become the young lady that these people were trying to form her into as if she was a piece of clay.
It seemed like everything she did was wrong.
Chewing gum was wrong, chewing your nails was wrong, playing with your hair was wrong. Everything she did was wrong in the eyes of Beauxbatons Academy! Some days Alena would have enough and do something that would send her to detention just so she wouldn't have to hang out with the other girls in her year and feel as if she was on a whole other planet from the rest. One time she hacked up a loogie and spit it out on the ground, smiling as it looked like one of the professors was about to have an aneurism.
She still marked that down as one of her best days.
During Alena's fourth year things got worse, much worse for her. She hated everything about herself, hated looking into the mirror every morning and most nights she would cry herself to sleep. There were days where she just wanted to end it all.
She was tired of fighting, but she wouldn't let Beauxbatons turn her into something that she wasn't. Due to long nights reading, she finally figured out as to why she felt so different from her peers and she was done hiding, she was done pretending to be someone that she wasn't.
On January 22nd, 1990, Alena stood in front of the mirror of her shared bathroom, her upper lip turning up in disgust. Her pretty long blonde hair traveled down her shoulders like a golden waterfall. Her blue eyes matched the flawlessness of her skin, making her look like an angel in disguise. She couldn't even recognize herself anymore. This wasn't the person that she was, the person that she was meant to be. She was forced into looking the part of what others thought she should be and she was done pleasing others.
It was time that she did something for herself; it was time that she stopped hiding.
Alena picked up the scissors from the counter and brought them up to her hair. She positioned the blades between the strands of her hair. She let out a smile as she squeezed the scissors shut, watching her long stands land in the sink below. Alena didn't stop, chopping off chunks of her hair at a time until she was left with an uneven mess. Even so,for the first time in a long time, she was starting to feel somewhat of the person she was meant to be.
That night, when her parents were called for her disobedience, she explained everything to them.
She explained how she felt all of her life, how she didn't fit in at this school, how she hated that she had to be something that she wasn't and how she had been depressed for a long time because of it. Alena was sure she was going to be yelled at or punished.
Perhaps she would be kicked out of Beauxbatons? Not like that would be a punishment for her, but maybe her parents would enroll her in more classes until she got this ridiculous notion out of her head that she was in the wrong body. But there was no yelling, no disappointed glares. Instead, her dad took her in his arms and told her that everything was gonna be alright and that they were gonna figure this out.
Alena had never felt so grateful in her entire life.
Alena was sent to St Mungo's, just until she got her head on straight. However,it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. She was able to talk with a Mind Healer who really helped her figure out what was going on with her. She had gender identity disorder, or in more simple terms, she was transgender.
Alena hadn't heard anything about gender identity disorder, not until her Mind Healer explained it to her. However, she guessed it did make sense the more she and the healer discussed it. The reason she felt as if she was in the wrong body was because she was never meant to be a girl.
The progress was long and hard, having to talk to several different Healers. Alena would never have been able to do it if it wasn't for the support of her parents. She was placed on a couple of potions, one to decrease her estrogen and the second to increase her testosterone.
Alena noticed the changes in her body almost immediately. Her muscle mass and strength increased, she started to get facial and body hair, her voice was deepening, and she finally was starting to feel as if she was in the body that she was supposed to be.
Next year, Alena found herself at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry instead of Beauxbatons and she was no longer a she but a he, and his name was Oliver Wood, and he couldn't be happier.