June 17, Versailles. Nurcan eats a brioche with Vincent before heading to another session of the Estates-General. I knew the populace was angry, and the Third Estate formed the bulk of the population, but never did I hear about that many starving Muggles in my life until yesterday! She ruminates on the rumors of Muggle famine.

  "Pourquoi y a-t-il autant de Moldus affamés par ici?" (Why are there so many starving Muggles here?) Nurcan asks Vincent as she eats a brioche.

  "Des mauvaises récoltes!" (Poor crops!)

  The cold, hard truth of the harsh winter hits her like a ton of bricks. Memories of the cold in Visigny on the day she first heard about the Estates-General being convened resurface in her mind. However, this makes her think hard of the implications of poor crops on food prices.

  After the brioche ends, Nurcan prepares the ground coffee to brew Turkish coffee for the four of them: Vincent, Didier, his younger half-brother, his house-elf and herself. However, Didier, confronts her about the Estates-General while she instructs the family's house-elf on how to brew Turkish coffee.

  "Je ne pensais jamais entendre parler des états généraux en classe, encore moins que tu te fasses hexer à cause de ?a!" (I would never have thought hearing about the Estates-General at school, much less you getting hexed because of that!) Didier vents to her.

  Nurcan turns to Didier. "Mais pourquoi en avoir parlé à votre demi-frère et pas à moi?" (Why talk about that to your half-brother, and not to me?)

  "Tu me semblais un peu... obsessive! Un peu à la manière des amateurs de Quidditch avec les joueurs! Mon demi-frère, cependant, voyait en ?a un moyen de rapprocher les Moldus des sorciers!" (You seemed a little... obsessive! Kind of like Quidditch fans with the players! My half-brother, on the other hand, saw in it a means to get Muggles closer to wizards!)

  Nurcan turns to Vincent. "Votre Grace, y a-t-il d'autres sorciers aux états généraux?" (Your Grace, are there other wizards at the Estates-General?)

  "Non. Et, comme la noblesse moldue bretonne a refusé d'y participer, j'ai assemblé à la hate tous les sorciers nobles de Bretagne pour tenir une élection de dernière minute!" (No. And, because Muggle Breton nobility refused to participate, I hastily assembled all the noble wizards of Brittany to hold a last-minute election!) Vincent explains to her how he even came to represent the wizarding community at the Estates-General.

  Oh boy. Vincent not only represents the entirety of Breton nobility, but also the entire wizarding world at the Estates-General! But I'm not sure he's the right choice; then again, for what I know, wizarding nobility might not have the same issues as Muggle nobles! Nurcan starts imagining the content of his cahier, while she watches the house-elf brew Turkish coffee. Which they drink.

  "Avant de partir, Nurcan, j'aimerais que tu regardes dans la boule de cristal, s'il te pla?t..." (Before we leave, Nurcan, I'd like you to gaze into the crystal ball, please...) Vincent asks her.

  Nurcan reaches for the crystal ball, while she still hasn't finished drinking the cup of Turkish coffee. As she gazes inside the crystal ball, she sees a few signs that trouble her:

  "Des mesures radicales vont être prises, mais les délégués ne seront pas préparés face à la réaction de la population, ni aux réactions internationales!" (Radical measures will be taken, but the delegates won't be prepared for the population's reaction, nor international reactions!) Nurcan's answer comes.

  Vincent rolls his eyes. "Quelles mesures? Quelles réactions?" (What measures? What reactions?)

  "Les réactions dépendent des mesures prises. Malheureusement, je ne peux pas prédire les mesures elles-mêmes. Seulement, bien des pays vont craindre pour la survie de leurs régimes en place, et tenir la France pour responsable!" (Reactions depend on the measures taken. Unfortunately, I can't predict the measures themselves. Only, a lot of countries will fear for the survival of their regimes in place, and hold France responsible!)

  "Mais pourquoi?" (But why?) Vincent asks her about the unpredictability of measures.

  "Si on s'entend sur les enjeux, il y a trop de positions contradictoires sur les solutions!" (If we agree on the issues, there are too many contradictory positions on solutions!)

  Once they are done drinking their cups of Turkish coffee, Vincent asks the other two to get dressed and then tells them where to go.

  "Aux Menus-Plaisirs!" (To the Menus-Plaisirs!) Vincent leads the trio to the Menus-Plaisirs, where the Third Estate holds sessions.

  Yesterday, Vincent made me stay out of the sessions, and made me gaze into his crystal ball. Today is going to be my first time actually attending an Estates-General session, Nurcan struggles to contain her excitement as she walks from the ducal country home to the H?tel des Menus-Plaisirs, whose upper yard is home to a temporary room built specifically for the event.

  Yet even that room would easily be filled, despite a relatively narrow majority of delegates being from the Third Estate. But just as the Duke is getting to his seat, alongside a handful of nobles who were elected by the Third Estate, and a few of the more "liberal" nobles, Nurcan tries to keep quiet while the session's agenda is made clear. Especially when a few of the clergy delegates who switched to the Third Estate enter the chamber.

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  The session starts with the resumption of the debates on a motion for naming the Third Estate's assembly, which lasted well into the previous night.

  Names being floated around include the following: Assemblée des représentants du peuple fran?ais, Assemblée des représentants connus et vérifiés de la Nation fran?aise, and Assemblée légitime des représentants de la majeure partie de la Nation, agissant en l'absence de la mineure partie. All of these sound like a pompous earful, especially the last one... Didier, dressed in Muggle court finery, starts ruminating right next to Nurcan, wearing Beauxbatons' dress uniform, even when a more succinct name is put forward:

  "Considérant que nous représentons les quatre-vingt-seize centièmes au moins de la nation, je propose le nom d'Assemblée Nationale!" (Considering that we represent at least 96% of the nation, I propose the name of Assemblée Nationale!) Jér?me, a delegate from Berry, a region in central France, makes his proposal under the hurrahs of the crowd.

  Including the one who put forward the original motion, one Abbé Sieyès. And, of course, the 580 delegates present today mostly find this name much more succinct.

  The delegates in this room claim to represent 96% of the French population? So clergy and nobility have almost as many seats at these Estates-General as the Third Estate, and they only represent at most 2% each? Damn... These Estates-General are skewed towards the privileged! Nurcan seems to be deeply troubled by the comment of just how much of the population this Assembly represents. Even as her thoughts shift to wizarding demographics. If the Ottoman wizarding population is any indication, France's is at most a rounding error compared to its total population.

  In Vincent's mind, on the other hand, he feels like this new legislature is a chance to get the Muggle government to cooperate with the wizarding world. Especially when the radicality of the proposal being debated isn't lost on him.

  In that this assembly no longer represents mere orders among the population, but the nation in its entirety. And because of that, they plan to pass reforms that are much wider ranging than just the fiscal reforms requested by the King, Louis XVI, Didier catches a glimpse of the assembly's agenda while the motion is being debated.

  But even as the debate rages on the Menus-Plaisirs' floor, Nurcan is reminded of the whole attempt to get a Geminio'd cahier to Istanbul. And especially the content of the cahier itself, not knowing that the cahier, and especially the Irad-I Cedid blueprint that accompanied it, are circulating behind the Sublime Porte at home.

  When the vote takes place on Sieyès' motion, with the name Assemblée Nationale being finally agreed upon:

  "Par quatre cent quatre-vingt-dix voix contre quatre-vingt-dix, l'assemblée du tiers état sera désormais connue comme l'Assemblée Nationale!" (By 490 votes to 90, the Third Estate's assembly will henceforth be known as the Assemblée Nationale!) Jean Sylvain, the Assemblée's presiding officer, announces the vote's results.

  Oh boy: how the King will deal with the monster that his Estates-General created will shape France's history, for better or for worse, regardless of whether the wizarding world has a seat on the Assemblée Nationale, reserved or not, Vincent is left wondering about the implications of this decision. Nevertheless, the scope of what I can do for the wizarding world is constrained by the limitations of the Statute of Secrecy: the Assemblée clearly deals with Muggle issues.

  The rest of the day is spent dealing with the hot-button topics that were in the masses of cahiers submitted to the King by the third estate.

  Speaking of the King, it seems like this new development is a sign that he loses control over the Estates-General. Especially when some Assemblée's decrees often seem to be in direct defiance of the old order in place until now, and everyone could feel this is just the beginning.

  When the trio return home to the ducal country home, that day, they revisit Nurcan's prediction over the length of the Estates-General, while eating a dinner the house-elf spent a while preparing.

  "Tu avais prédit que les états généraux dureraient au plus deux mois..." (You predicted the Estates-General would last two months at most...) Didier confronts her about the prediction.

  Nurcan struggles not to let memories of Alejandra's hex get to her. "?a a l'air que les états généraux ne vont pas durer très longtemps sous cette forme. Je crois toutefois que l'Assemblée Nationale a enclenché une suite d'événements qui va accomplir ce que les états généraux ne pouvaient pas!" (It seems like the Estates-General won't last very long in that form. I believe, however, that the Assemblée Nationale set a chain of events that will accomplish what the Estates-General could not!)

  "Tu as vu juste, je ne regrette rien de t'avoir ici!" (You got it right, I don't regret anything about having you here!) Vincent exclaims.

  A Lumos charm is cast in Nurcan's mind. My predictions only came to pass because they specified the Estates-General' duration and effectiveness as Estates-General. That, even though they got me hexed at school. But I now know I'm for real as an arithmancer.

  But then, Nurcan seems to have another dream of the de Batiscans:

  Stadium of Washington, the home pitch of the Washington Warlocks, one of the founding teams of the American Quidditch League. Their only home pre-season game, played against the Trabzon Trappers, just ended. While the de Batiscans played against each other for the first time in their careers, as opposed to with each other on the Canadian national team, they once again met with Nurcan, who seemingly apparated around the pitch's main entrance:

  "What are you doing here?" Stanislas asked her, after looking at the apparition.

  "I was just training in apparition. It seems like France is no longer an absolute monarchy; the Assemblée Nationale was just formed to take legislative power away from the King!"

  "It seems like France's Muggle government is headed down the same path as the Thirteen Colonies' in 1774..." Gen commented on the developments at the Estates-General. "I was there for the Country or Kind debate. Even though the Kind faction ultimately won out, I'm afraid you'll get entangled in the French equivalent of such, if any!"

  "I guess, to avoid dragging the Empire into a war it never wanted, I should leave Versailles!"

  "Exactly. Once at home, I strongly urge you to keep quiet about the developments at the Estates-General!" Stanislas warned her.

  "Don't worry about the Estates-General: wizards at home don't seem interested in foreign Muggle affairs! You two seem to be outliers in this respect, as am I! Then again, I'm a Muggle-born!" Nurcan tried to reassure them.

  "We're both Muggle-borns, too..." Gen added, before Nurcan left by disapparating.

  As her oneiric self leaves the Stadium of Washington, Nurcan awakens from this dream, with the words of Stanislas ringing in her mind: Once at home, I strongly urge you to keep quiet about the developments at the Estates-General!