CHAPTER ONE: Faith, Hope, and Love
Love.
She clasps his hand. They sit together on a bench in the garden. She knows they are watching, knows they do not approve. But it is not for them to decide. It is not for any of them to decide.
“Bonjour, mama. Bonjour, papa,” said Josephine de Tuileries as she entered the main house on her family’s estate at Bouc-Bel-Air, just north of Marseille. She kept her head bowed as she walked through the foyer”she was becoming quite familiar with the look on her father’s face, and did not feel like taking another round of questions. Not now. Not when there was so much to be decided, so much unknown.
Marie, one of the servant girls, entered the foyer and curtseyed. “Mademoiselle,” she said to Josephine”she, too, keeping her head down”“Mademoiselle Josephine, your wand has been cleaned and has been placed in your quarters.”
“Merci, Marie,” Josephine whispered, and made to climb the stairs to her room. But she would not be so lucky.
“Josephine,” came her father’s stern voice. Jean-Batiste was not generally a cross man, but he was also not one to cross. His temper was legendary among the servants of Chateau Clerbise, but then again, so was his munificence. But Josephine surmised this would not be a day for munificence.
She retreated down the few stairs she had successfully managed to ascend, and turned to her father, pretending that she had no idea what he was about to say. “Oui, papa?”
“That boy you were walking with in the gardens. He visits often, yet has not introduced himself to me. This is quite strange, non? Who is he?”
Josephine grimaced inwardly. “He is a friend, papa.”
“Does he have a name, mon chou?”
“Oui, papa. He is Pascal. He comes from Cabriès.” She was being deliberately evasive, though she knew this had a tendency to annoy her father.
“Is that so?” he asked, one eyebrow raised as they stood together on the cold marble floor. “And he is a colleague from l’Académie?”
“Non, papa. He does not attend Beauxbatons with me.” She again bowed her head and tucked a loose curl of dark hair behind her ear. Marie would have to re-pin her hair before dinner.
“Is that so?” he repeated. “He is an exchange student, then? Perhaps he attends Hogwarts with our friends the British?” Jean-Batiste had a particular dislike and distrust of the British. Not surprising, given the fact that the British and French were currently at war. Though their war did not disrupt Jean-Batiste’s daily life, and had not for many years, he still regarded the entire British culture with an air of disgust.
“Non, papa,” repeated Josephine.
“Perhaps Wasserschloss, in Germany? It is a new school, but it will be respected soon enough. Or the once-great Durmstrang? Is your Pascal a student there?”
Josephine blushed and could not help the smile that briefly crossed her lips. “He is not my Pascal,” she whispered. “And he does not attend either of those schools.” Her smile soon disappeared, though, as she felt her father’s anger bubble to the surface.
“It is as I thought, then!” he said, his face turning a violent shade of red. “As I suspected, you are putting yourself and your family in danger, because, Josephine, am I correct to assume that he is un Moldu? That he is not a wizard?”
Josephine did not respond. She brushed her pale hands against the dark silk of her skirts and fiddled with the ribbons lacing the front of her corset. It felt too tight; she had the sudden strong urge to untie it. She finally raised her head, but still avoided her father’s glare. Instead, she turned her gaze on her mother.
Josephine took after her father in few ways, but more than made up for it in her resemblance to her mother. She had inherited many things from Eleonore, including her dark brown hair, her round face and pale skin, and her tendency toward a cheerful”and indeed sometimes dangerously foolish”naïveté. How Madame de Tuileries’ sweet and innocent demeanor had held up so many years against Monsieur le Baron’s temper was a constant question for many of the household staff.
The two women locked eyes and Josephine silently pleaded with her mother, begging her to intrude and soften the blow. Eleonore opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it as soon as Jean-Batiste started speaking again. No, not speaking. Yelling.
“Josephine, answer me at once! Is he or is he not a wizard?”
“No, father, he is not,” she said quietly, turning her brown eyes on him and feeling them brim with tears. She knew what was coming next. It was what she had always feared, always expected. She knew that one day she would be caught, and today had to be the day.
Jean-Batiste spoke his next words with a quiet, measured rage. “Why, Josephine, why do you do this? Do you know what kind of danger that puts you in? Are you at all aware of what is going on right now in Paris? Are you?” he demanded.
Josephine nodded. Eleonore moved closer and grasped her daughter’s hand. “Monsieur,” she said to her husband, “Do you not even want to hear about the boy?”
“No, I do not! He is not a wizard. He cannot stay. One hundred years ago, fine. Twenty years ago, fine. Not today,” Jean-Batiste continued. “Why can you not be like your brother? He knows what is safe and what is best for our family.”
Josephine merely nodded again. The comparisons to Remy were frequent and rarely flattering. Remy was everything Josephine was not. He was polite and charming, tall and handsome. Josephine was short, and while she was not especially quiet, she was also not especially charming, much to her family’s chagrin. Remy was smart and funny and possessed all the airs of nobility. Josephine often felt out of place wrapped up in the trappings of her family’s wealth. Remy was already betrothed to a pureblood witch from Aix-en-Provence, and they would marry as soon as he completed his final year at Beauxbatons”where he would no doubt be Triwizard champion. Josephine, like most of the few female students at Beauxbatons, was expected to go keep her head down, learn basic magic, and meet a wizard to marry by the time she graduated.
This suited her, for the most part. She was not an outstanding witch by any means, though she had no trouble with moderately difficult magic. And there were plenty of wizards at Beauxbatons that would make perfectly amiable matches, at least on paper. Yet she was almost seventeen and not engaged, with only two years left at school. Pascal certainly could take some blame for that. But even with all the changes taking place around her, even with the pressure to marry young, even knowing all the dangers and the drawbacks of a relationship with a Muggle, she could not leave him.
Her father was right. Remy would never dream of anything so illicit as this. The thought had probably never crossed his mind. But Remy was perfect. Josephine was not.
As she thought this, the man himself strode into the room, a riding crop in his hand and his riding boots impeccably clean. “Father,” said Remy, placing a hand on his father’s shoulder”the two men were almost equal heights, with Remy perhaps claiming a slight advantage. “Do not be so hard on her. Surely you remember what it is like to be in love?” He winked and leaned down to kiss Josephine on the cheek. He kissed his mother on the forehead and began to climb the stairs, then turned around to face them again. “But Josie, do be careful. There are people who know about you and Pascal, and they are not pleased.”
Josephine drew a sharp breath. Remy’s words shocked her; she thought Pascal had done a good job keeping the relationship secret, and Josephine had certainly not let anyone outside her family even see them together. Well, besides the servants, but they would lose more than their jobs if they betrayed any Tuileries family secrets.
She expected her father to continue his screaming at this revelation, but his words were calm and hushed. He pulled his daughter close and looked her straight in the eyes. “Josie, mon chou,” he said, stroking her cheek lovingly with his thumb, “you know that you can no longer see him. Not now. Perhaps not ever.”
The tears finally started to fall and Josephine could do nothing to prevent them. She nodded silently, falling into her father’s embrace. “But papa,” she half-heartedly protested, her words muffled in the folds of his brocade jacket. “Papa, I love him.”
“Well,” he said, hugging her tightly, “fall out of love.”
***
Faith.
They ride across the field. They disagree. It is silent, unspoken, but acknowledged. They both know it. But it is his place to uphold the family’s honor, no matter the cost. He must decide.
“Bloody peasants. Always up to no good,” said Lord Jonathan Warrington-Hughes as he and his son William rode across their Ruschliffe estate.
“Father,” William said calmly, turning in his saddle to face the elder Lord Warrington-Hughes, “if there were no peasants, who would work the land?”
“But why do they have to be Muggles?” Jonathan exclaimed, taking his wand out of the sleeve of his jacket and shooting a jet of red sparks toward a near haystack, which promptly burst into flames. “Good,” he said, as three nearby women screamed in fright and ran away.
“Father,” William said again, this time with a touch of frustration in his voice, “why do you insist on doing that? You know there is nothing they can do now.” He ran a hand through his light brown hair in frustration.
“Precisely, my boy!” said Jonathan forcefully, yet almost jovially. “Someone needs to put these Muggles in their place, and that someone today is me.”
“You know, that view could soon get you into a bit of hot water, Jonathan,” came a voice from behind. Father and son turned around to see another man trotting up on a chestnut horse. A smile was on his face and he doffed his hat in greeting as he pulled his mount up next to the Warrington-Hughes’.
William, too, broke into a smile. This man was his father’s oldest and closest friend and advisor, and a generally great man. He was Henry Somerset, the Duke of Beaufort, and a right powerful wizard as well, with strong connections to both the Muggle royals and the newly established British Ministry of Magic. William secretly regarded him as a second father of sorts, though he would never tell his own father this. Though Jonathan and Henry were staunch allies, the former often spoke out against the latter’s views on Muggle rights and relations.
“Nonsense, Henry,” Jonathan said with a smile as he clapped his friend on the back. “The statute won’t pass.”
“We shall see soon enough, I suppose,” Henry responded, sending a stream of water out of his own wand to extinguish the haystack fire. Jonathan grunted in mild disapproval, though William was not sure which was more troubling to him: the passing statute or the non-flaming hay.
“Do you really think it will pass, sir?” William asked the duke, his eyes bright.
“Still too early to tell, I think,” he replied. “But I’ll return to Paris in three days and send a report as soon as I arrive and meet with Bonaccord. How does that sound?”
William nodded his thanks, and found himself amazed once again at the duke’s connections. The Bonaccord he mentioned was none other than Pierre Bonaccord, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, perhaps the most influential wizard of the day. William did not know much about the deliberations currently going on in France, but he intended to pester Henry with owls until his curiosity was sated. And if he could even arrange a meeting with Bonaccord… Well, that would get his father off his back, for a short time at least.
“Well, gentlemen, I must be off. I still have many preparations to make before I leave,” said Henry, gently squeezing his horse and trotting ahead of the Warrington-Hughes men. “Will, I doubt I will see you before you return to Hogwarts, but I imagine it won’t be too much longer after that before our paths cross.” He winked at William, nodded a goodbye to Jonathan, and spurred his horse onward.
William knew what he was referring to. The Triwizard Tournament, of course, which was taking place this year at Beauxbatons Academy in France. His father had made no secret of the fact that he expected William to be chosen as the Hogwarts champion and”moreover”to win the whole thing this year. William planned to enter, mainly because his father would never forgive him if he failed to do so, but he had no serious designs on winning. There were many talented wizards in the upper years at Hogwarts.
“Father,” he said, attempting to ward off another inevitable speech, “please. I know what you want to say. And yes, I am going to enter the tournament. And yes, I will try to win it.”
Jonathan closed his mouth and instead gave a big chortle, shaking his rather rotund body. “All right, then. I promise: no more speeches until the tournament begins and you are chosen as Hogwarts champion. But I’ll have no more of this ‘try’ nonsense. You’ll win it, boy.” He nodded and tapped his horse’s flank with his crop, urging his mount forward. William followed suit, trying not to grimace as his father continued his grumbling about the Muggle peasants all the way home.
***
Hope.
It was so long ago, and yet not long ago at all. It is now up to them to restart, renew, reestablish. Up to one of them. Will it be him? No. He knows it will not. They know it will not. There is nothing left to decide.
Being the son of a world-renowned wand-maker should have given way to a decent life. And it had, for a time. When Aleksandr Gregorovitch was growing up, his father often took Aleksandr and his older brother Dragomir on trips all across the region. They hunted for dragon heartstring in their homeland of Russia, flew across the continent searching in vain for certain creatures of the Siberian steppes, and found the best woods from the Kingdom of Hungary. Aleksandr’s memories of watching his father handcraft the wands were some of his fondest.
But the happiness ultimately proved short-lived.
Aleksandr ruminated on the hard times as his cold, dark eyes peered out the dirty window of his father’s run-down shop. He rested a hand on his chiseled jaw and slowly inhaled. Gregorovitch’s had once been the most impressive building on this block, having been handed down from generation to generation of Gregorovitch men, each of whom became more famous than the last. But now the shop was showing signs of ruin. The whole block, the whole section of Moscow was falling into disrepair.
Aleksandr remembered the first night the mobs came. More than ten years ago. Scads of people all carrying flaming torches and pitchforks. Swords, knives, and things he later learned were called “muskets.” Muggles. They came in droves, looking for wizards to burn, to kill. And the wizards in Moscow fell to them, one family after the other.
Nobody knew exactly how the wizards had managed to arouse so much ire and hatred, but most supposed it had something to do with a dragon. Dragons are not easy to hide, after all, and not easily tamed. The most prevalent story was that a Ukrainian Ironbelly had escaped from wizard control somewhere near Kiev, and the repercussions had rippled outward from there.
The wizarding community of Eastern Europe had been shattered. Durmstrang had lost almost half its students in just a decade. Families that managed to escape persecution were rapidly moving westward where anti-wizard violence was not as prevalent. But there were some, like Aleksandr’s father, who refused to leave Moscow. Some prominent Muscovite wizards had banded together and hastily constructed spells and enchantments to enclose and hide the wizarding community. They sent emissaries to the International Confederation of Wizards in Paris, but the deliberations were agonizingly slow and it often seemed that no good was being done, at least not for the wizards east of Germany.
Now many wizards in Moscow, in Kiev, in St. Petersburg, were talking of a bias against the East. For some, hatred of the West was almost as strong as hatred of Muggles. Wizards were concocting new ways to retaliate every day. Sinister ways. It pained Aleksandr to see so many of his friends turning to the Dark Arts, but he knew it pained them more to see their once-great communities falling from grace. And falling fast.
Talk was frequently turning to the Triwizard Tournament, and there was an incredibly powerful desire among the wizards of the East to have a Durmstrang student win this year, no matter what. Some older wizards who had witnessed or even participated in a Tournament themselves were establishing training camps all around the region, inviting promising students to come prepare. Aleksandr, though an immensely powerful wizard himself, had not been invited to any of these camps.
They all remembered what had happened five years prior. What happened with Dragomir during the Tournament at Durmstrang. Dragomir, who was to be victorious for Durmstrang. Dragomir, who was to be the savior of the East.
No one spoke of Dragomir anymore, or of the fateful Tournament of 1687. But they were careful never to mention anyone of the house of Gregorovitch when discussing preparations for this year’s tournament. They all assumed it ran in the family. Aleksandr would not compete. Aleksandr could not restore Durmstrang to glory.
There was no question.
These Three Remain by LuthAn
Chapter Notes: Hello, hello, dear readers! Advance warning: this is going to be an extended author's note. I am attempting to write Historical Fiction, and I do not know how successful I am being. The most important thing for me is to make the story accessible to you, the reader. That being said, please forgive any anachronisms or cumbersome language--I have tried to avoid both! Also, it is safe to imagine each of the wizards from different countries speaking in the accents of their respective lands. However, I have chosen not to "write the accent" (like JKR does with Fleur or Hagrid, for example). Occasionally I will throw in a word from a foreign language, but if you have any questions, just ask. One related note: "moldu" is the word the French translations of the books use for "Muggle." I think it is a silly word. :)
That all being said, I really hope you enjoy the story!