November 23, 1792. After eating brioches for lunch, Alejandra goes to see the grades for the History of Magic essay on the MoM’s rejection of the goblins’ peace plan in the 1752 Goblin Rebellion (also known as the New France Plan among goblins), while on her way to the Care of Magical Creatures grounds.

  “Woohoo!” Alejandra jumps for joy, upon seeing her earning an Outstanding on an History of Magic assignment, and then looks for Jace and Nurcan’s grades on it.

  From Nurcan I expected it. But something’s bizarre: how could I have, at Beauxbatons, struggled so much to just stay at the Acceptable level, and here, somehow, I can grab their equivalent to an Optimal? Was I studying with the wrong people the entire time? Or does Hogwarts hold people to a different standard in History of Magic? Alejandra seems a little puzzled by how she managed to get an Outstanding on an assignment about New France.

  But when she gets to the Care of Magical Creatures grounds, which are covered in snow, she realizes, while shivering thanks to her everyday, blue silk robes being inadequate for the cold Scottish weather, that class’ regular instructor isn’t present. The instructor of the day is a face she readily recognizes:

  “I’m Luc Millefeuille. Because your regular instructor was called away to prepare the venue for the first Triwizard Tournament task, held tomorrow, I will be your instructor for today!” Luc tells the class in a heavy Vendée accent.

  Luc then takes the Slytherin and Ravenclaw students taking sixth-year Care of Magical Creatures to the cockatrice’s cage, with the beast in it sleeping.

  “The le?on of today: cockatrices! Sure, they’re dangerous… but how exciting!”

  Of course, the students in that class are curious to look at the beast before they can learn about how to breed one, and, subsequently, how to take care of one.

  Vaidilute then gets next to Alejandra, who’s clearly more tanned than she is, as they both look at a beast’s features, before moving away from the cage so they can let others look at it.

  The creature, a little bigger than an eagle owl, has a rooster’s head and legs, bat wings and a lizard body and tail. With this one sporting green scales on most of its body, and a red crest on its head.

  “Cockatrices are naturally sterile, and, to breed one, you need to have a snake hatch a chicken egg!”

  But, upon hearing about how to breed a cockatrice, Vaidilute raises her hand:

  “Your name, please!” Luc asks the student who raised her hand, not yet knowing anyone in this class other than Alejandra.

  “Vaidilute! Why do we talk about breeding cockatrices when the breeding of cockatrices is illegal?” Vaidi talks with a Lithuanian accent.

  “Is it illegal where you come from?” Vaidi’s fellow Ravenclaw asks her, whose only NEWT-level class is Care of Magical Creatures, clearly picking up her foreign-ness through her heavy Lithuanian accent.

  “Vaidilute, you seem to confuse basilisks and cockatrices!” Luc points out, while wondering about why she’s confused that way.

  Damn! Even I remember that basilisk breeding was banned by the International Warlock Convention of 1289 from second-year History of Magic, and I only managed to get an Acceptable, maybe on the higher side of it for what I know, that year! Alejandra’s memory of possible confusion between cockatrices and basilisks resurfaces. But it seems like Vaidilute hesitates a little.

  “I’m not sure…” Vaidi shakes in her position (albeit not from cold, thanks to her fur robe), not having learned about cockatrice breeding’s legal status in Poland-Lithuania.

  Alejandra raises her hand. “What do they eat?”

  “As dangerous as they might be, they mostly eat berries, nuts, flowers, insects and rats…”

  Another Slytherin student raises his hand to ask Luc. “What makes them so dangerous?”

  “Their breath can be toxic, and their claws as well, potentially lethal! Don’t underestimate their beak either!”

  From this point onward, this lesson on cockatrice care seems to turn more into a DADA class on the same creature. Nevertheless, the DADA portion seems to be more about the precautions to take when taking care of a cockatrice. About what not to do with one, lest one find themselves with a dead, or perhaps, injured cockatrice that they might not be able to nurse back to health.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Understood: no mirrors, no roosters, Alejandra takes a mental note on what should cockatrice owners avoid. And probably a bevy of potions that shouldn’t be administered to these things either.

  But, at the same time, they’re told about the need for claws to be clipped regularly. And precautions to take to ensure that one doesn’t get poisoned by claw clippings.

  “One last thing: because you have so much work in your other courses, there is no assignment for you this week!” Luc announces.

  Just as the students leave the Care of Magical Creatures grounds, Luc brews a potion that should ensure the cockatrice remains healthy (or so he would think, anyway), before he himself goes to the kitchen to cook pastries, as he usually does. But what the competitors don’t suspect is that, more than simply being about hydration, it actually contains a “supplement” whose effect on cockatrices is, as of yet, unknown, but is toxic to humans.

  And yet, the announcement that students don’t get any Care of Magical Creatures homework for the week makes the students feel relief, since some of them feel the pressure, and certainly the likes of Alejandra or Vaidilute.

  That’s true: we need to be there for Thierry tomorrow! Hopefully the first task won’t be too long, nor be too dangerous… Alejandra is kept wondering about exactly why she worked so hard for the first 2 months of the year, only to get spurned by the Goblet of Fire at the very last moment.

  However, even after she does her best to make some progress on her Transfiguration homework, when the time for Alejandra to go to bed, along with fellow Slytherins, it’s Alejandra’s turn to get troubled dreams.

  Alejandra stood where the Stadium of Washington used to stand. Its demolition was ordered at the end of the then-Washington Warlocks’ season by MACUSA in 1791, citing excessive risks of breaching the Statute of Secrecy. And also caused the team to move to Sweetwater, becoming the All-Stars. That, even though what would eventually become the American No-Maj capital was still, at the time, in the early stages of construction.

  Here Geneviève, who retired from pro Quidditch, became a professor at Ilvermorny, on top of remaining MACUSA’s international education coordinator, and herded Alejandra to her old home as a professional Quidditch player. Or what’s left of it, anyhow.

  “It seems like you support French No-Maj Royalists, presumably because your home country supports them…” Gen was about to scold Alejandra.

  “No-Maj?” Alejandra rolled her eyes.

  “People who can’t use magic! Muggles, if you prefer…”

  “Only in secret for now, because our King would officially remain neutral so long as Louis XVI is still alive…”

  “I know what you did to Nurcan!” Gen brandished a copy of The Rise of Miss Irad-I Cedid, albeit in French, bought during her final year as a pro Quidditch player. “You hexed Nurcan over the Estates-General before you even gave her a chance to listen to what her ideas really were!”

  “You think I became a Royalist because I wanted to protect the rest of the student body from ideas they couldn’t handle?” Alejandra raised her voice.

  “You don’t need to be as smart as even you to understand that wizarding education tends to focus more on the vocational and technical aspects to the detriment of the socio-political and cultural aspects!” Gen quipped about what she believed were the biggest flaws of today’s wizarding education.

  “How smart do you think I am anyway?” Alejandra’s face turned red upon hearing Gen implying a certain intellectual level.

  Gen’s implicit estimate stung Alejandra. She seems to be implying that, while I might not function on Nurcan’s level, whom she probably knows is ultra-brilliant, I’m still smart enough to understand the implications of implementing Muggle French Revolutionary reforms? And she somehow feels like my intellect is relatively high. As much as I accepted that I wasn’t the smartest chick in the world, I just didn’t think of myself as a smart girl, especially since I didn’t think of my grades as a reflection of my intellect…

  “You’re still smarter than a lot of kids I teach to at Ilvermorny, and I have no reason to believe Beauxbatons’ or Hogwarts’ student bodies to be any different in intellectual makeup!”

  And Karakalem’s intellectual makeup isn’t significantly different from Ilvermorny’s either. I know this from having gone there on exchange there as a fourth-year student in 1758-1759, and, pursuant to the 1760 New France ICW zoning ruling, I went to Ilvermorny for my final year in 1761-1762, Gen ran down her educational past in her mind.

  “Really?”

  “I told you about where your perception of other students’ inability to handle the No-Maj Revolutionaries’ ideas came from. And I also saw a lot of wizards struggle with No-Maj American politics during the whole Country or Kind crisis fifteen years ago…”

  “Just because I understand why I feel the student body is unable to handle… No-Maj French Revolutionary reforms, doesn’t mean I became a Royalist because of that!”

  “The way History of Magic is taught leaves wizards with little ability to understand public policymaking. You probably know about the caricature about History of Magic being about facts and dates!”

  Damn… this witch makes me feel like I lack sociopolitical refinement! Yet, at the same time, she makes me feel like I became a closeted Royalist only because I feel like Muggles and wizards alike are, collectively speaking, largely unequipped to handle the rigors of democracy as advocated by the Revolutionaries! But it seems like, in the wizarding world, it basically takes just an opinion on a single issue, or a single action, to brand someone politically! Alejandra’s oneiric self seemed to operate at a higher intellectual level than her real self.

  “My peers at either Beauxbatons or Hogwarts not being properly equipped to handle Muggle Revolutionary reforms does not mean that they can’t handle it at all!” Alejandra retorted.

  “You might have imprinted a false image of the dangers of openly revealing a French No-Maj Revolutionary stance in Nurcan without knowing it, or unwillingly!” Gen shot her Parthian shot, causing Alejandra’s real self to awaken.

  Alejandra starts crying upon awakening from this troubled dream. “What did I do to Nurcan? Did I cause her to go around believing that her opinions are too dangerous to reveal among wizards?”