Speaking of History of Magic, on June 15, on the morning of its final, which is the last final of the year, an owl enters Nurcan's room.

  I never received a mail owl all year, not even a response of some kind about how the Ottoman wizarding community viewed the Irad-I Cedid, or whether Muggle cahiers' contents could resonate with the population. I really hope the Russians didn't intercept anything to this effect... Nurcan starts wondering who could send mail to her. Maybe I gave these materials to the Bab-I Humayun rather than the Ottoman equivalent of the Cri de la Gargouille because I believed these to be sensitive.

  But then, as she opens the letter, she realizes that someone, somewhere, seems to admire her and who isn't Ottoman. Probably family of someone currently in school.

  I invite you to spend the rest of the Estates-General in Versailles and to get a taste of life as a fortune-teller; I found Muggle fortune-tellers to be... charlatans. However, I cannot, at this time, tell you more about the situation at the Estates. Signed, Vincent, Duke of Trefle-Picques, Nurcan tries to summarize Vincent's letter in her own words. Why did Vincent keep quiet about the Estates-General in wizarding media?

  "Est-ce que le Duc de Trèfle-Picques a de la famille ici?" (Does the Duke of Trefle-Picques have family here?) Nurcan asks her roommates.

  "Pas le temps pour ?a!" (No time for this!) Isabella retorts, while going over the History of Magic notes.

  The first part of the History of Magic final proves to be a breeze to Nurcan, especially the questions on the Islamic Golden Age and how medieval Middle Eastern wizards studied alongside Muggle scholars until 1258. Which is Karakalem's founding date, and its founders were refugees from the Siege of Baghdad.

  However, Alejandra couldn't wrap her head around how incredibly incoherent the History of Magic final is, at least in chronology.

  Why did we go from medieval history to post-Statute school zoning rulings without covering the Renaissance? Alejandra has cold shivers down her spine as she reads a question about the Muggle-born Education Treaty of 1693, before going to another set of questions. I won't let a stupid question about the consequences of the Articles of Capitulation of Montréal, in 1760, get in the way of passing this course! I get that New France was zoned to Beauxbatons before the Conquête.

  Under the Muggle-born Education Treaty, Ottoman-born Muggle-borns in European eyalets would be zoned to Karakalem. Questions on it include the role of infighting among Karakalem's trustees at the time in preventing it from servicing the Ottoman Empire in its entirety.

  Other questions are about a wide swath of Western and Central European countries zoning their Muggle-borns to Beauxbatons, and others in Eastern Europe zoned theirs to Koldovstoretz. Which services the entirety of the Russian Tsardom and later, Empire.

  Post-1760, New France fell under British control, but one of the short-answer questions is: why did the ICW rule in Ilvermorny's favor?

  I guess, Hogwarts was deemed too dangerous back then, but wouldn't there be some mechanism allowing students already enrolled at Beauxbatons to finish the year? Alejandra's neighbor starts hyperventilating about that test item, and confuses it with the next one. Which is about the lives of students already enrolled; the New France school zoning ruling was made almost 3 months after the surrender of Montréal.

  The final test item about post-Statute school zoning rulings is about why the New France one took that long: the 1752 Goblin Rebellion, which was still ongoing as of 1760, made the British MoM uninterested in the New France issue.

  I wonder why this exam focused so much on the post-Statute history of school zoning, and comparatively little on the greater context... Emmanuelle starts wondering what her final History of Magic grade could be, as she leaves the testing room.

  But, at the same time, Nurcan feels like the Duke might have other reasons to want her to join him. She then re-reads Vincent's letter for info such as where he's staying in Versailles for the duration of the Estates-General, and then change her clothes to her dress uniform.

  How did the Duke even hear about me? I don't think he knows about the Irad-I Cedid. To most people here, I'm simply a resident genius. A handful might have heard about the whole cahier and Estates-General deal from me, but Emmanuelle doesn't strike me as nobility. Then again, this place feels like a wizarding version of the court at Versailles. So maybe someone in detention with Alejandra, if she told anyone there about these, or someone who watched her hex me over this forecast of the Estates-General's duration, could be somehow connected to him, Nurcan seems to have a lot on her mind. And did he think other wizarding fortune-tellers would not have any interest in Muggle affairs?

  By this point, she begins writing the report to hand in to the Bab-I Humayun, starting with the section she dreaded most going into this year on exchange. How her time here might benefit the Empire in the long run.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  After that, she packs her belongings into her horse pocket, to ensure that nothing is left behind, before checking out. And signing her departure paperwork, at the headmaster's office, which she needs to present at échange Scolaire Officielle once she's ready to return home.

  For months, I obsessed over the Estates-General, even going so far as to learn Geminio specifically so that the Ottoman Ministry of Magic could get their hands on a cahier de doléances, and I feel I wouldn't be fully satisfied with this exchange if I don't go to the Duke for what's left of the Estates-General... she thinks, her head getting heavier, as she collects the exit paperwork. So maybe, just this once, I could be willing to meet with him, but I have questions for him that I need to resolve before I can tell him a definite yes or no.

  Now that the check-out process is complete from the administration's standpoint, she goes to Instrumentum's so that, once again, she can use the fireplace's Floo Network connection. But before she uses the fifth scoop of Floo Powder, she re-reads the letter from the Duke about where to meet him.

  "Quartiers du duc de Trèfle-Picques à Versailles!" (The Duke of Trefle-Picques' quarters in Versailles!) Nurcan shouts, before stepping onto the green flame.

  Upon arrival in Versailles at night, she arrives at a suite not unlike her former room at Beauxbatons; however, she isn't at the Chateau de Versailles proper. Or even at either Trianon. Rather, she's at a country home.

  "Votre Grace?" (Your Grace?) Nurcan asks across the suite, her voice echoing.

  At the same time, Vincent returns to the country home after a rough day at the Estates-General, among the nobility. The Duke's house elf brings his master to Nurcan:

  "Votre Grace, vous êtes s?r qu'elle est votre invitée?" (Your Grace, are you sure she's your guest?) the house elf questions Vincent.

  "Elle a l'air d'être mon invitée, mais j'ai quelques questions pour elle!" (She seems to be my guest, but I have a few questions for her!) Vincent recognizes Beauxbatons' female dress uniform,

  "C'est moi, Nurcan; vous avez envoyé cette lettre à moi, m'invitant à assister au reste des états généraux comme devineresse, Votre Grace!" (It's me, Nurcan; you sent me this letter, inviting me to attend the rest of the Estates-General as a fortune-teller, Your Grace!) Nurcan brandishes the letter she received earlier today.

  "Que fais-tu de mieux en divination?" (What do you do best in divination?)

  Nurcan seems to be a little young to be a fortune-teller. But she seems interested in bridging the gap between Muggles and wizards, Vincent thinks while Nurcan tells him about how Arithmancy is her specialty, and her next best areas are crystal-gazing and dream interp.

  "Avez-vous de la famille à Beauxbatons?" (Do you have family at Beauxbatons?)

  "Oui, mon demi-frère. Il t'a vu te faire hexer à cause de cette prédiction sur la durée des états généraux!" (Yes, my half-brother. He saw you getting hexed because of this prediction on the duration of the Estates-General!)

  "Mais pourquoi avez-vous gardé le silence sur les états généraux?" (But why did you keep quiet about the Estates-General?)

  "C'est pas une bonne idée, jeune demoiselle, de parler de ?a maintenant. Je t'invite à lire des cahiers de doléance par état!" (It's not a good idea, young lass, to speak about it now. I invite you to read cahiers de doléance by Estate!)

  Vincent then whips out cahiers from each Estate in front of Nurcan, the ones he feel are most representative of their estate of origin. The clergy being called the first estate, he hands a clergy one first.

  These priests want to protect their fiscal privileges, as well as Catholic pre-eminence. They also feel lower clergy living conditions must be improved, as is clerical discipline. On top of that, they want to defend the nobility's privileges alongside theirs, and, finally, push for free and mandatory education for all Muggles of both sexes, Nurcan summarizes the reading of what Vincent deemed to be the synthesis of the clergy's cahiers.

  However, when the turn of the nobility's cahiers arrives, Nurcan is given two of them, but with vastly different positions on certain issues.

  One called for administrative and judicial reforms, along with limitations on royal power and, of course, denouncing government waste, indirect taxation and corruption.

  The other was basically, to her eyes, a defense of traditional privileges against what was advocated in Visigny's cahier, and it even opposed the rejection of birth-based inequalities. A Muggle version of pure-blood supremacy, if you will. And yet, even they called for a reform of hunting privileges, and were willing to give up their financial privileges for it.

  Speaking of Visigny's cahier, the one she went through all the trouble to Geminio it nearly three months ago, and from there, send the copy to the Bab-I Humayun, remnants of it are to be found in the third estate one that Vincent had on hand. Which comes from the bailliage Visigny is in.

  At this point, a Lumos charm is cast in her mind. Now I have a better idea of why I predicted a near-complete failure of the Estates-General, at least in their initial form: each Estate advocated for irreconcilable positions! And the bailliage delegates cut all the women-specific grievances from the cahier, keeping only the gender-balanced ones!

  "Les états généraux étaient voués à l'échec dès le début! Il y a trois mois, j'avais trop confiance envers cette assemblée, mais, isolée de tout, je ne voyais que le tiers état!" (The Estates-General were doomed to fail from the very beginning! Three months ago, I was too confident in this assembly, but, isolated from everything, I only saw the Third Estate!) Nurcan starts crying as the cold, hard truth about being right without knowing why hits her hard.

  "Le pire dans tout ?a est que deux questions de procédure ont causé une impasse!"(The worst in all that is that two questions of procedure caused an impasse!) Vincent exclaims as he sees Nurcan cry over the contradictory aims of each Estate.

  First, the vérification des pouvoirs, which the third estate demanded be done all at once, but the nobility refused. In the end, the Third Estate did it independently.

  And, concurrently, the vote by order vs by headcount; Nurcan was familiar only with the Third Estate requesting voting by headcount. So she tries to think why voting procedure was so important.

  But what Nurcan didn't know was that, at past Estates-General, voting was done by order and maintaining that formula would have meant that the privileged orders could block any reforms and make the doubling of third estate representation pointless.

  Now I have no regret over not going here earlier... Nurcan sighs.