Magical Hogwarts

May 2005

This school year was quite different from the years before. The move to Manoir Vertneuf had reminded them all how luxurious their life at Beauxbatons usually really was. With the use of magic, Manoir Vertneuf was big enough to shelter the students and staff members but it lacked comfort and was overall quite a dirty place.

Célestin didn’t mind it all too much. He could share his dormitory with more students than before. He didn’t like the dirt and darkness of the place but he could endure it well enough. What he struggled with, though, was the lack of freedom that they had ever since Mathilde had disappeared.

Now, however, things were bound to get better. Everything had happened rather quickly, first professeur Arsène Dutour had been put on probation and just about an hour ago Célestin had witnessed how aurors had arrested him. He had tried to get some more details but he’d only got snippets of information. Enough to make his imagination run wild, but not enough that he could claim to know the facts.

He went back to the dormitory, wanting some time to process what he had just found out. As he entered the room he noticed that he wasn’t the only one retreating to the room. “Hey mate,” he greeted Brais as he walked in and let himself fall onto his bed. He was actually glad not to be entirely alone. Maybe talking with his housemate would help to connect the dots and form a full picture.

“You won’t believe what I just saw!” He said. And then, as an afterthought, he added, “or did you see it as well?”

@Brais Estévez

Brais looked up as Célestin walked in to the otherwise empty dormitory, crowded as it was with several too many beds but otherwise quiet for the moment. "Ah, hey," he said, his voice emerging from underneath the strips of parchment levitating above him at which he was prodding comfortably with his wand, switching the shades of navy-gold-maroon subtly in a convenient Transfiguration-painting combo exercise. His attention easily captured by his friend after the last half an hour of solitude, the teenager grabbed them out of the air and then rolled onto his side towards Célestin's bed, propping his head up on a hand.

"What? No, I've been in here for the last hour or so, haven't seen anyone since Karl," this was accompanied by a slight roll of the eyes at the Bellefeuille boy, a German third year who had never succeeded in exhibiting a single interesting trait by Brais's standards, "left. Wait, don''t tell me there's some new monster." His mind went straight to last month's incident with Desrosiers, and to how @Estreilla Abravanel had seemed upset enough about saving him last fall that he probably couldn't count on her to do it again. He wished he could say that he had put some effort into picking up more Defense on his own, but it was hard to make it a priority.

“Karl kept you company?” Célestin said, smirking at his friend. “Sorry to hear that.” He was amused, but this amusement didn’t last for too long. There were more interesting things than the Bellefeuille now (and actually always). Karl was one of the few people they shared the dormitory with that neither of them liked a lot. Célestin didn’t like to be alone for too long, however, being with Karl was usually worse than hours of solitude with nothing to do.

“Nope,” he said in response to Brais asking whether there was a new monster. He took some time to just look at his friend with a knowing grin. It wasn’t like he wasn’t dying to share what he had seen, but the opportunity was just too good.

“Dutour,” he finally began, “has just been arrested. Aurors took him. Looks like we’re living in the house of a criminal.” He paused briefly before adding, “I knew all along that there was something wrong with that guy.” That wasn’t exactly true. Most of Célestin’s criticism concerning Arsène Dutour had been that he was too old to connect to them and that he smelled worse than teenagers who had worked out and not showered in a few days.

"Unfortunate, right?" Brais said easily, helicoptering one of his parchment strips around with his left hand, the deep maroon wrapping itself messily around his fingers like a bloodied bandage. "He was going on about his aunt's Horklump infestation for a while. Doubled my lifetime amount of thinking about Horklumps," he said with disdain.

Célestin denied the monsters but left him hanging, and Brais tilted his head up more by pushing it up from his palm to his fingertips, raising his eyebrows. After a second he furnished some guesses: "What else then, Florian and Danielle finally holding hands somewhere? That Vauque-whatever ghost Cinda and Lola have been going on about gave a first year a heart attack? I knew he was creepy."

His head firmly in the realm of realism, in his view, Brais was, indeed, not prepared for Célestin's news. He dropped his hands to the bed and pushed himself upright. "Arrested?" he yelped, leaning forward on his hands and grinning. Now this was interesting, and even more so for being something that Célestin had not had the chance to tell very many people about, yet. 

He dropped back down to one elbow for comfort. "Arrested for what, though? Was that thing that bit Desrosiers his pet? Or did he hypnotize Madame Maxime into sticking us in this place? I've really been wondering how we ended up here."

“Merlin, is that really the best he can think of to tell people?” Célestin asked, his eyebrows shooting upwards. “I swear he told me the very same thing a couple of days ago!” Had there been no more important things to talk about, Célestin would have teased Brais and looked for grey hair on his friend’s head, but as it was, the consequences of Karl’s conté about Horklumps would go unexamined.

Célestin enjoyed it immensely when Brais voiced his other suspicions about what could have happened. “Florian and Danielle? Is that still a thing?” he asked, blushing slightly as he thought of the kisses he had exchanged with Danielle not too long ago. He didn’t have feelings for Dani, they were just friends, and he thought that Flo and her definitely made a nice couple.

“Yup,” he said, nodding gravely. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Arrested. They brought him away in magical handcuffs.”

Brais unsurprisingly had several questions and Célestin had to admit that he didn’t really have the answers to them. He had suspicions, of course, he had overheard bits of conversations, but he didn’t have a whole bunch of facts to offer.

“I think they found more dangerous species in the basement, one of them being the creature that bit Séverin. However,” Célestin tried to make sense of the things he had heard, “I think they also found spiders like the ones that drove us away from Beauxbatons. I wasn’t close enough to overhear everything. Just got some bits and pieces.” He sighed dramatically. It really was a shame that he hadn’t been able to get any closer to the scene. “I just hope that they’ll see sense now and let us return to Beauxbatons.”