Machecoul, Loire-Inférieure, April 15, 1793. Luc Millefeuille, accompanied by Thierry’s parents, are tasked with standing guard over the Revolutionary prisoners of war in the town. In early morning, before Thierry’s parents awaken to go on patrol, armed with Charleville 1777s, Luc feels like his days are numbered given that war has broken out in nearby Vendée, and spilled over to neighboring regions, such as Loire-Inférieure (Lower Loire), since the first levée en masse was decreed on February 24 by the Convention Nationale.

  “C’est possible qu’on va tous mourir dans les prochains jours. Je vais vous confier un secret, mais promettez-moi que vous ne raconterez rien, pas même aux Révolutionnaires si vous êtes capturés! ” (It’s possible that we will all die in the coming days. I’ll let you in on a secret, but promise me that you won’t tell anything, not even to the Revolutionary if you’re captured!)

  “Tu sais comment les Révolutionnaires moldus sont: si le secret est de nature magique, le secret va être en sécurité!” (You know how Muggle Revolutionaries are: if the secret is magical in nature, the secret will be safe!) Thierry’s father comments about how the Revolutionaries act around magical secrets.

  Speaking of magical secrets, the only way to poison Muggle prisoners of war without breaching the Statute involves using Muggle poisons, and that every care must be exercised not to Geminio the poison while they are looking, Luc muses about what he plans to do to these Revolutionary prisoners of war he’s tasked with feeding. I don’t want a repeat of Dorcus, that would spell trouble for France. I’m just a patissier in the Catholic Army’s base camp.

  “Oui, le secret est magique. J’ai empoisonné le cocatris au Tournoi des Trois Sorciers avec un poison indétectable!” (Yes, the secret is magical. I poisoned the cockatrice at the Triwizard Tournament with an undetectable poison!)

  “Tu as fait QUOI?” (What did you do?) Thierry’s mother screams upon hearing about Luc having poisoned the cockatrice in use during the Triwizard Tournament’s ill-fated first and only task.

  “Je voulais empêcher la première tache d’avoir lieu! C’était trop dangereux!” (I wanted to prevent the first task from happening! It was too dangerous!) Luc retorts.

  “Je peux pas croire que la Convention puisse avoir cautionné l’usage de bêtes aussi dangereuses, même si le Tournoi des Trois Sorciers avait eu lieu hors de France!” (I can’t believe the Convention could have cautioned the use of such dangerous beasts, even if the Triwizard Tournament was held outside France!) Thierry’s mother then prepares to leave the town’s castle to go on her patrol, alongside her husband.

  “Et pourtant, la Convention, en décrétant la levée de trois cent mille hommes, jette notre jeunesse aux loups à une bien plus grande échelle que le Tournoi des Trois Sorciers!” (And yet, the Convention, by decreeing a levy of 300,000 men, throws our youth to the wolves on a much greater scale than the Triwizard Tournament!) Luc tries to respond to Thierry’s mother.

  “à bas le Comité de Salut Public! à bas la Convention!” (Down with the Committee of Public Safety! Down with the Convention!) Thierry’s father shouts.

  “Pas de milice!” (No enlistments!) Thierry’s mother shouts after her husband did, as the couple leaves the castle.

  Once Thierry’s parents are out patrolling, Luc starts with the roll call of the Revolutionary prisoners, which he herds in the courtyard, with the aid of the Muggle Royalist guards of the castle, none of whom know he’s a wizard.

  After the roll call, he gets to work preparing the millefeuilles he plans to serve once they are ready. Also, he must be mindful of ensuring that he’s preparing just the right number of servings.

  He starts preparing the pate feuilletée, knowing that’s the longest part of baking the millefeuilles he’s about to prepare.

  But, considering that Muggles use crushed aconite leaves as a poison, and he doesn’t have enough of these on hand to poison everyone the way he wants, he goes to the outhouse, right after the pate feuilletée is put in the oven.

  No one would think of disturbing anyone while in the outhouse, he thinks as he goes there with a little bit of aconite leaves in a mortar.

  Once in the outhouse, he whips out his wand and aims it at the aconite inside the mortar. After all, poison isn’t covered by the principal exceptions to Gamp’s Law, but food is one of them:

  “Geminio!”

  Now that the mortar has enough crushed aconite leaves to poison all the prisoners using his signature dish, the millefeuille, he gets out of the outhouse to return to the castle’s kitchen. Which seems to remind him of Hogwarts’ more than it does Beauxbatons’.

  So he starts with the glaze, which he feels takes longer to reach the consistency he feels is fit for consumption, than the cream, of which there is way more in a millefeuille than there is glazing.

  But he also knows that, because of the Geminio’d aconite leaves, time is short for Luc to prepare the crème patissière layers to put in the millefeuilles. Doesn’t matter in which layer to put the poison in, only that the cream is where the crushed aconite leaves are going to be, he muses as he puts the crushed aconite in the cream before stirring it.

  Once the three layers of pate feuilletée are out of the oven, he waits for them to cool for a bit before putting the poisoned cream on these.

  Before the time arrives to even put the poisoned cream on what will become the millefeuilles, he goes out to make another roll call, to ensure that nothing has happened to the prisoners while the millefeuilles were being prepared in the castle’s kitchen.

  Why do they make roll calls that often now? Once the day begins, and another one before breakfast is served? One of the dozens of Muggle Revolutionary prisoners starts to tremble when the second roll call of the day is happening within the prison.

  Now that Luc is assured that all the prisoners who were present before the baking of the millefeuille would get to eat it, and also knowing that they are all Muggles, he finally puts the poisoned cream on the first two layers of pate feuilletée. And then puts the glaze, made of special sugar, right on top of the final layer, which will make it very sweet.

  When the glaze is on the top layer of the millefeuille, he then cuts a piece for every prisoner, putting each of them on a wooden plate. Once that is done, he announces breakfast time to the prisoners:

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “Tuniques bleues, l’heure est venue de manger un mets de Vendée pour le petit-déjeuner: le millefeuille!” (Bluecoats, the time has come to eat a Vendée delicacy for breakfast: the millefeuille!) Luc announces to the Muggle Revolutionary prisoners of war, before herding them to a room where the remaining prisoners can eat them.

  As they start eating the millefeuille, the Revolutionary POWs, many of whom were non-combatants taken for supporting the enemy, start wondering why their Royalist captors, oblivious to the poison in the cream, gave them millefeuilles. That, even though the bluecoats only refer to Revolutionary combatants.

  A lot of my comrades were shot by the previous guards; suddenly the guards change, and they now want to play nice with us? Did the previous guards die of wounds sustained at Pornic weeks earlier? It seems like new recruits were babbling about some event taking place far away from here, one of the prisoners muses while he starts eating the millefeuille. This is ornamentation…

  However, the first signs that something is not well with the prisoners start feeling like their tongues are burning, and, as they eat more of the millefeuilles, tummy aches as well, under the indifference of the other guards. Especially since the prisoners are deemed expendable, given that the Catholic Army spread out the killing of the prisoners over weeks after the two incursions at Pornic, to Machecoul’s northwest.

  These prisoners will be no more, and they will send a message to the Convention: no one messes with the youth without paying the price! The Triwizard Tournament will be avenged! Luc smirks as he watches the prisoners eat the poisoned millefeuilles, many of whom never ate one in their lives. Especially those who come from lower classes, since, to Muggles, it’s considered a high-end delicacy.

  “Qu’est-ce qui se passe ici?” (What’s going on here?) a guard watches as all prisoners seem to be nauseated, and have abdominal cramps.

  “Probablement du sucre avarié qui leur a été saisi!” (Likely sugar gone bad seized from them!) Luc answers, while trying to deflect suspicions from how he’s responsible for having poisoned the prisoners.

  Once they are done eating the millefeuilles, things go from bad to worse for these Revolutionary prisoners. Some of them are victim of chest tightness caused by arrythmias, while others are short of breath.

  Other guards assigned to these prisoners are back to making their rounds across the castle. Meanwhile, Luc watches as these Revolutionary prisoners die from cardiac arrest and other symptoms from the poisoned millefeuilles.

  And, under the complete indifference of the other guards, who previously shot down some of the first 106 prisoners since March 11, Luc, feeling oddly satisfied by their deaths, starts carrying the 40 dead Revolutionary prisoners onto a cart so that he can throw them into the castle’s moat, where the previous 106 bodies were thrown.

  By the end Luc is done throwing the poisoned Muggles into the castle’s moat, Thierry’s parents have returned to the castle.

  “?a fait beaucoup de prisonniers morts!” (That’s a lot of dead prisoners!) Thierry’s mom comments on the newly deceased in the moat.

  “Du sucre avarié en serait responsable!” (Some sugar gone bad is responsible!) Luc repeats what he told other soldiers of the Catholic Army stationed in this town.

  “Ces Royalistes voulaient tuer le plus de prisonniers révolutionnaires le plus rapidement possible!” (These Royalists wanted to kill off as many Revolutionary prisoners as fast as possible!) Thierry’s dad comments about the deaths having occurred.

  “Luc, je ne crois pas qu’il s’agisse de sucre avarié! L’Armée Catholique n’exécute pas les prisonniers révolutionnaires moldus avec du sucre avarié d’habitude!” (Luc, I don’t think it’s sugar gone bad! The Catholic Army doesn’t normally execute Muggle Revolutionary prisoners with sugar gone bad!) Thierry’s mom retorts.

  I’m all for vengeance for our own child and making the Convention pay the price for its irresponsibility. But killing Revolutionaries who had no hand in the organization of the Triwizard Tournament amounts to barking up the wrong tree! Thierry’s mom then starts writing her own article to submit to the Cri de la Gargouille.

  Which is about him having sabotaged the Triwizard Tournament and how, after he could no longer caution the Convention Nationale’s actions in the TT’s wake, he became a Royalist and used his role as such to poison Muggle POWs on the Vendée theater.

  “Je croyais que tu voulais tuer des Révolutionnaires à cause du Tournoi! Alors pourquoi ne pas avoir tué Nurcan?” (I thought you wanted to kill Revolutionaries because of the Tournament! So why didn’t you kill Nurcan?) Thierry’s dad retorts, reminded of Nurcan’s Revolutionary allegiance.

  “Nurcan était dans le même bateau que Thierry, ainsi que les onze autres!” (Nurcan was in the same boat as Thierry, as well as the other eleven!) Luc replies to him.

  At the same time, Thierry’s mom writes another version, for Muggle use, that leaves out any mention of what happened at the TT, of Muggles, or of Luc being a wizard, only of the atrocities Luc committed on the Revolutionary prisoners using poisoned food. And maybe change the TT for the levée en masse, since she feels the same reasoning of throwing French youth to the wolves would still apply to it.

  The other 2, on the other hand, keep arguing about whether the Convention could have done anything to prevent the disaster of the Triwizard Tournament, and it seemingly degenerates. However, when other Muggles are around, they must leave out any mention of wizarding affairs.

  “La Convention cherchait à étendre la guerre au monde sorcier, et seul le Tournoi aurait permis de le faire!” (The Convention sought to extend war to the wizarding world, and only the Tournament would have made it possible!)

  “La Convention avait d’autres chats à fouetter que le Tournoi et les affaires sorcières!” (The Convention had other cats to whip than the Tournament and wizarding affairs!) Thierry’s dad yells at Luc.

  “Lesquels?” (Which ones?)

  “Si tu avais lu le tu-sais-quoi, tu saurais de quoi je parle…” (If you read the you-know-what, you know what I’m talking about…) Thierry’s father refers to A Revolutionary at the Triwizard Tournament.

  The Armoire de Fer, the Muggle war against Austria and Prussia, and the latter causing it to declare la patrie en danger… Thierry’s father keeps arguing as night falls.

  But, when the Revolutionaries attempt to recapture the town, a week later, it turns out that 20 prisoners held at the Sisters of Calvary Abbey are spared the fate of those held at Machecoul Castle, while 9 more are killed early in the morning, when the Revolutionaries are first sighted as marching on the town.

  Thierry’s parents disapparate from the town under the panic the Revolutionary advance causes and Luc also flees the town.

  Luc, in his flight away from Machecoul, is surrounded by Revolutionary bluecoats not unlike those he poisoned last week, by feeding aconite-laden millefeuilles to them. In no position to use magic, Luc has no choice but to surrender.

  After his surrender, the Revolutionaries bring him, gagged and bound, to Nantes, where a brand-new guillotine was installed at the Place du Bouffay about a month ago.

  As with the Duke of Trefle-Picques almost a month prior, the local authorities waste no time putting him on trial, with his accusers being those who captured him back in Machecoul.

  “La Convention a jeté la jeunesse fran?aise aux loups avec la levée en masse!” (The Convention threw French youth to the wolves with the levée en masse!) Luc declares to the court, while omitting the Triwizard Tournament as the starting point of why he feels that way.

  “Quel fou!” (What a madman!) one of the accusers exclaims when Luc claims the Convention threw French youth to the wolves.

  “Les vrais fous siègent sur le Comité de Salut Public à Paris!” (The real madmen sit on the Comité de Salut Public in Paris!)

  The judge and jury feel like his declaration is enough evidence to declare him guilty.

  “Pour votre r?le dans le massacre de Machecoul, ce tribunal vous condamne à la guillotine, avec effet immédiat!” (For your role in the Machecoul Massacre, this tribunal sentences you to the guillotine, with immediate effect!)

  And he’s then carried out of the courtroom, and onto the nearby Place du Bouffay. But this time around, they don’t wait an entire day to guillotine him because of a backlog. Here, they put him on the scaffold painted red, ready to be guillotined.

  And, of course, the executioners are carefully positioning him so that once the blade falls, Luc dies cleanly.

  As the blade falls, his head falls along with it, and the guards show his head around to the crowd, as they do with all those who are guillotined.