April 15. Nurcan goes to Ilvermorny’s owlery after Charms class to receive a letter addressed to her. Which, apparently, is the only letter coming in from France that day.

  When she looks at the sender, she freezes in place before opening the envelope addressed to her.

  I didn’t think she would attempt to keep in touch with me after I left Beauxbatons… Nurcan thinks, while referring to Christine. I really wonder why, though: she’s perhaps the one at Beauxbatons who knows best about the dangers I incur because of my policy positions. And maybe even knows about how it drove the Bab-I Humayun to order my transfer to Ilvermorny for six months. That and maybe Alejandra, but, while she might understand the Revolutionary issues, she has no real interest in them.

  She then returns to Horned Serpent’s common room to read the letter in more detail, while it feels a little heavier than usual.

  Upon opening the envelope, she realizes that attached to the letter are two Geminio’d issues of the Cri de la Gargouille, from April 7.

  “Look at this, Anne!” Nurcan tells her about the two issues of the Cri de la Gargouille.

  “Le duc de Trèfle-Picques fait le mort pour éviter la guillotine!” (The Duke of Trefle-Picques plays dead to avoid the guillotine!) Anne reads the headline from the March 30 issue.

  Ishkode points out something Nurcan didn’t yet know about. “It seems that you’re a little too close to No-Majs… if you’re careless, you might be arrested by the No-Maj Fraternisation Sub-Division!”

  “This is just a foreign wizarding newspaper, it seems like other countries’ wizarding newspapers tend to cover No-Maj news more. Like Canada’s Yorker or, if you can read French, the Gazette du Sorcier for Canada, or the Cri de la Gargouille for France!” Nurcan explains to him the differences in Muggle news coverage in wizarding media across countries.

  Ishkode now has a better idea of what other countries tend to cover in their media, and then leaves the two girls to their own devices.

  The second issue of the Cri de la Gargouille Christine sent Nurcan’s way somehow covers the creation of the Comité de Salut Public by the Convention, allegedly under the guise of restoring order to Muggle France.

  Like I knew that Revolutionary France had a lot of enemies, and its main allies are the Ottoman Empire and Poland-Lithuania, in that order. That, even though Poland-Lithuania is perceived as a Revolutionary ally mostly because France is an “enemy of their enemies” to them, and only supported Revolutionary France indirectly, Nurcan is reminded of the whole situation France landed itself in.

  Then and only then Nurcan reads the actual letter from Christine. About how the past few months have made things worse for Revolutionary France, especially since Great Britain and Spain are both at war (but only on the Muggle theater for the time being) against France. At the same time, her family finally decided to seek refuge in Austria, more specifically somewhere in Moravia.

  “Everything I foresaw about the French Revolution came true!” Nurcan shouts.

  “What do you mean?” Anne asks her.

  “First, Louis XVI was guillotined. Yet, for some reason, the Yorker and the Gazette des Sorciers both kept quiet when it happened. And then come the radicalization of the Revolution!”

  Jace comes to Nurcan after hearing about Muggle French Revolutionaries’ radicalization. “Radicalization?” Jace gasps. “I knew you were a Revolutionary, but what’s radicalization?”

  “Could you give us an example of that?” Vaidilute asks her as she closes in on her.

  “In the context of the Revolution, it could mean going from simply calling for abolition of the monarchy to wanting to kill people who support the restoration of monarchy, even under a constitutional form, such as what Feuillants advocated for during their existence!”

  “Yet, when you began learning about capnomancy, you foretold that Louis XVI getting guillotined will carry its load of consequences. What are those consequences?” Anne asks Nurcan, puzzled about these.

  “First, the flames of war are spreading across Europe, and the main theaters are, obviously, Rhineland, the Low Countries and now Spain. But because of Revolutionary radicalization, there’s also the risk of uprisings, within France, and, in other countries, there could be some who feel that, if France could overthrow its king, their own governments could be threatened!”

  Ouch. If Durmstrang already banned The Rise of Miss Irad-I Cedid, maybe the administration feels like the ideas of foreign Muggle-borns can be dangerous, maybe even more so than dark magic. I feel like that place is intellectually inbred. Even Hogwarts didn’t feel as inbred… Vaidi reflects on her plans of potentially leaving Durmstrang at year-end. But maybe Karakalem or Beauxbatons might fit me!

  “What else do you see in your crystal ball?” Jace asks Nurcan.

  “Speaking of crystal ball, it’s clear that you’re both beginners in divination…” Anne explains to the two Triwizard Tournament survivors.

  “I’m not entirely new to divination, but I’m best at astrology…” Vaidi retorts.

  Anne is in my Potions class, Vaidi muses, while both Jace and Vaidi are lectured on the best practices in crystal ball usage. Cleaning a crystal ball is essentially imperative before making a reading on one, and, of course, finding a quiet area, along with a dark cloth to put the ball on. But even the best external environment with properly placed candles or lighting would be of no use if one’s mind isn’t cleared beforehand.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Once your mind is cleared, you might want to put your hands close to the ball, but not touch it directly, as it’s how your magic is channeled into the ball to get the visions!” Nurcan adds, while whipping out her ball.

  “It will be a little difficult at first to get visions through a crystal ball, but that’s often how No-Maj picture fortune-tellers, despite No-Maj diviners using dream interpretation, tea leaves, palmistry and especially tarot more often!” Anne comments on divination methods Muggles commonly use.

  Emmanuelle looks at the foursome, while looking at Jace and Vaidi learning the basics of crystal ball gazing. “Remember the fundamentals that carry over across methods: ask a specific question and a lot can be left to interpretation, depending on the area of the question covered by the reading!”

  Mektaq approaches the gang. “Just focus on a point close to the ball’s center, but let your eyes relax some!”

  The two methods I hate most are tea leaves and tarot: the former requires specific types of tea for it to work, that is, loose-leaf tea, and is usually considered unsuitable for long-term predictions, while the latter leaves too much to chance! Nurcan muses, while triggered by Anne’s mentions of tea leaves and tarot as being in common Muggle use. Should I become one of these Imperial diviners, I’ll be called upon to make long-term predictions!

  When Jace starts making his first reading of the crystal ball, he only seems to see fog in his visions initially, but a few minutes in, he sees himself bound in red chains with a girl, whom he couldn’t identify with any clarity. What could I possibly be tied in chains to someone over? It seems like I leaned on Nurcan some to get History of Magic stuff done, much as I did Alejandra when she was at Hogwarts, but that’s the only thing I see for the time being, other than perhaps getting married to someone I might not love all that much.

  “I foresee that I’m headed towards an unhappy love life, but that I might be forced into it to avoid something worse!” Jace summarizes his reading, while handing off the ball to Vaidi. “Your turn, Vaidi!”

  Vaidi, having had some experience of other methods of divination, seems to get to the visions faster than Jace does.

  “The divination department at Durmstrang will face one more year of troubles, and one of us will finally bring it back into compliance with international standards!” Vaidilute makes her prediction.

  “Not me because I’m No-Maj-born!” Nurcan retorts, before commenting on who it could be. “But personally, I’d say it’s either Anne, Mektaq or Vaidi unless Emmanuelle’s pro Quidditch career proves short-lived…”

  “Of course not. Durmstrang wouldn’t hire someone who wrote a book it banned…”

  “Huh?” Mektaq gasps. “Why would they ban a book about wanting to improve relations with the No-Maj world?”

  “They feel such desires are typical of No-Maj-born thinkers, and hence deeming them dangerous, but you might never have known about how Durmstrang don’t want No-Maj-borns to attend or to work there…” Vaidilute explains to the Micmac wizard.

  “Really?” Mektaq gasps, upon hearing Vaidi talk about blood status. “I guess, I’m lucky that Ilvermorny doesn’t value blood status…”

  Now I have a better idea of why The Rise of Miss Irad-I Cedid was banned there, and a similar fate could befall A Revolutionary at the Triwizard Tournament if it hasn’t already. And, of course, even operating a Muggle Studies department would be anathema to them… but I initially thought it was either my blood status or tax reforms as advocated by the Irad-I Cedid! Wanting to improve relations with the Muggle world is one thing, but they find that dangerous? No wonder the Imperial Diviners are dominated by Karakalem and Uagadou graduates; they are called upon to deal with Muggle issues Durmstrang grads often can’t cope with.

  And a job as an Ottoman Imperial Diviner is probably one of the few jobs outside of academia where divination grades actually count for something.

  The basic requirements are: five FYBSs, of which Arithmancy, Divination and History of Magic are required, with no grade below B, or their equivalent, and As in Arithmancy, Divination and History of Magic are strongly preferred.

  And then, after both Jace and Nurcan had a practice run of using a crystal ball for divination, Nurcan recovers hers before returning to her coursework in Charms.

  Once the Charms assignment is completed, which takes an entire afternoon, she whips out her crystal ball from her horse pocket to do another crystal ball reading of her own.

  However, this time around, she focuses her reading on the future of the Revolution, and how the War of the First Coalition will turn out for all parties involved: France, their allies and their enemies.

  She also prepares a sheet of paper to write down, in English, the main points of her reading and what it implies for the Revolution, should the associated prediction come true: The sheer number of enemies Revolutionary France have makes any cooperation between them difficult, and divergence in their aims will cause the First Coalition’s defeat. However, defeating the First Coalition will come at a terrible price: Poland-Lithuania will be defeated, but the destruction of Poland-Lithuania, combined to France making separate peace deals with each of the Coalition members, along with the Coalition’s own issues that arose as a result of fighting France, will save the Revolution. And yet, the residents of France will live under a climate of fear so long as the Comité de Salut Public continues to enact extraordinary measures such as those that led to the flight of the Duke of Trefle-Picques to Prussia! Said measures will also sow the seeds of discontent domestically, including uprisings.

  As much as Nurcan would have wanted to go into more detail for each prediction, it seems like the time is short for her, and she also needs to translate the list of predictions to French, sign both versions and write a letter to Christine about how she feels about her time at Ilvermorny.

  Which is about how extracurriculars have greater presence, but, at the same time, the student body’s interest in Muggle affairs is so low that she feels isolated, so much that she feels forced to passing her interests off as divinatory predictions to keep engaging with these, especially the Revolution. Even when blood status doesn’t count for anything there.

  And, of course, how she grew closer to her fellow Triwizard Tournament survivors than to even Anne, who’s still her closest friend among the “natives”. How even her role in Horned Serpent’s successes in Arithmancy Achievement Accolade meets didn’t seem to make her more liked by the student body.

  By the same token, she writes about how little value is given to Arithmancy at Ilvermorny, but it doesn’t stand out in the magical education world on that count.

  Once that letter to Christine is written, she points her finger at the French version of the overview of the predictions:

  “Geminio!” Nurcan wandlessly shouts in the direction of the French-language prediction.

  Which yields 2 French-language copies of the document, while she keeps the “original”.

  When she’s done assembling her documents for sending, she counts her dragots, while also being mindful that she must leave her wand at the castle’s main gate.

  At the same time, she goes to Adam’s USOM office to buy 3 envelopes and then writes down their recipients.

  The first 2 are the Yorker in York (Upper Canada) for the English-language version, the Gazette du Sorcier in Montreal for the French-language one, almost due west and north from Ilvermorny respectively. And the final one, which has 2 pages rather than 1, is for Christine at Beauxbatons. These run her 49 sprinks total.