⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Date: 08/21/25 | Time: Nighttime | CC:#FFFDD0

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The evening had been phenomenal and after much activity between the Grandian Derby, and wandering around the Carnival- Geneviève had departed from the rest of her tent companions citing the exhaustion. Alphonse and Siobhan had been whispering about something that she desired to take no part in as it was quite crass, but when all was said and done she found herself in bed alone within the confines of the entire tent.

Her sleep started as it always did when Geneviève found herself tucked under her covers within the safety of her bed. Cream colored hair billowing out around her, her natural pout slightly open as she breathed in and out, one arm over her abdomen and the other curled into a soft grabbing stance as her mind and body transitioned from a light sleep into a deeper REM.

However, like it had for the last two months or so, her dreams did not reflect the peaceful way that she lay within the Unicorn cove of the Summer Tent. The gentle brightness of the embedded "stars" in her area's ceiling, suddenly morphed into red, orange and yellow monstrosities as they chased her down a garden path, roaring as the flamed forked tongue licked at her heels.

It taunted her, deeply laughing in its macabre way as she ran for her life, her ballhown gathered in her hands desperarely seeking the safety and comfort of-

Well anyone. But specifically Alphonse.

Within the hazy nightmare world, she could hear his voice but the garbled way that her own voice came out stopped her from crying despite the overwhelming urge to scream in her chest. It bubbled up within her ribcage, echoed through her lungs and strangled itself in her throat as the fire continued to rise and fast approach her.

Her mind shook and her body trembled. Outwardly, she tossed and turned lightly as the need to escape began to fire rapidly through her neurons, nerves, muscles, tendons and limbs. As the flames in her dreams descended downwards, hellbent on devouring her, she awoke with a shrill scream equivalent to that of a banshee. The howl in her own throat had ruptured through her vocal cords and richocheted across the tent walls and reverbarated back in her bones.

She curled up in her bed, knees to her chest with one hand entangled in her own hair, the other holding her mouth as her eyes became pinpoints and her body shook. The fire in her mind hadn't fully disappeared and she could hear its defiant laughter still flowing through her body. Despite how small she had made herself as she sat up, she felt as though all the attention would be on her when her roommates for the summer descended upon her room. She finally let out the smallest of hiccups and a gentle cry as she buried her head in her arms and knees. This was the most embarrassed she had felt in a very long time.

The nightmares had been potent to say the least. Whatever had happened at the Garden of Eden during the Spring Ball at Hogwarts had left a very deep and cutting effect on her soul. The fire was evil and she had been abandoned by Alphonse when the smoke had started to swirl around their feet as the Toussaint boy had heard his mother's cry. His mother was pregnant however, it was only natural that Alphonse had felt the call to protect his mother but even so- a very very miniscule yet extremely selfish and jealous part of her hated that he had picked his family over her.

He had left her to the mercy of the flames and had it not been for her persistent dash towards the Greenhouse, she worried that perhaps she would have been englufed by the flames herself and succumbed to a very painful passing.

The monster fire however, had not left her since then. And most nights she found herself back there- smouldering skirt and the terrible stench of burn and ash running through her senses as the fire tracked her like a predator cornering its prey. Some nights she was able to make it to base. Other's she found herself waking up in an almost catatonic state, her face contorted in fear as her body had to unwind every individual nerve from itself so that she could relax and find her center.

It was exhausting.

Of course, she didn't let it affect her appearance in the light. She outwardly refused to tell people that her mind and heart were so unfavorable towards others that she would ask her boyfriend to abandon his mother in preference to her.

Boyfriend?

She shook that thought away from her head. She didn't deserve to call him her boyfriend when she harbored this ugly and appalling secret wish in her body. He would most certainly remove himself from her life if she was to grip him by his shirt, stare into his dark oak eyes and shake him as she screamed at him for leaving her to the flame demons over and over and over and over again.

Geneviève softly cried into the palm of her hand as she rolled onto her side away from the curtains that led into her room. The embarrasment and shame converging into one and the hot fiery tears mocking her as they slipped down her face in their own silent ways.

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| 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉: @ | 𝑴𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈: @@Alphonse Toussaint|
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

♕- Night of Aug. 21st, 2025 | Tent, London Quidditch Stadium - ♕

His long-awaited kickback with Siobhan had lasted far longer than intended.

Owing to the conversations, choice of vice, and subsequent hunt to quell the munchies, his mind was hazy and the concept of time was an enigma. Between the waning excitement of the Granian Derby and a full stomach after raiding select vendors with the Gryffindor girl, the Toussaint boy was too exhausted to move on with the afternoon. In his mother's tent, Alphonse took his own nap for a few hours. But not without some residual guilt for leaving Geneviève alone that evening.

By the time Alphonse finally awoke, the sky above the London Quidditch Stadium was already growing darker, but the neon lights casted a spectrum of color across the sky and vacant stadium seats. His glassy and bloodshot eyes had to squint to adjust. With a groan, Alphonse rubbed his eyes and felt the lingering effects of a hazy, mellowed consciousness. As he stretched and began his path towards his own tent, it didn't take much for Alphonse to notice a certain strong aroma attached to him. No shocker there, yet inconvenient all the same.

"Mierda fuck.." He murmured, hightailing it back to his mom's tent to stuff his shower caddy into his backpack. In one of the vacant shower tents, he scrubbed and scrubbed until his skin was raw but scented with different fragrant products.

Satisfied and dressed in fresh linens, Alphonse sauntered to his tent. His shower did little to ease the lingering euphoria fluttering in his mind, but there wasn't a fix for that.

Only sheer willpower. And snacks—which were stashed near his phoenix-themed bed.

Nearly about to pull back the curtain to his Menagerie-themed tent, Alphonse was greeted with a shrill scream. A vocal cord-tearing howl, like a wounded animal under razor-blade incisors. A grip tightened on the strap of the boy’s backpack and his feet halted in place—rooted by fear outside the tent until a hiccup and gentle cry followed. His ears recognized that adorable hiccup. It was none other than Geneviève, but why? Without hesitation, his long legs carried him towards the bed adorned with pastel flowers where she wept.

At the sight, his heart ached a thousand times over.

"Genie, hey.." Alphonse whispered soothingly, slowly nearing her and letting his backpack slip from his shoulderblade . The last thing the Toussaint boy desired was to invade her space callously; "Hey.. What's wrong?"

——mentions. @Geneviève Caussade
——abilities. charmer
——godmod. Alphonse and Geneviève have a standing permission

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Date: 08/21/25 | Time: Nighttime | CC:#FFFDD0

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Geneviève broke from the sorry state she was in when she heard a familiar voice ring out through the darkness and she found herself turning deeper into her covers and blankets to hide from the Toussaint boy who was so clearly seeking her out, no doubt due to the pained wail she had emitted merely seconds ago. She dabbed at her tears with the sheets and tried to feign sleep. No, Alphonse had not heard her scream in terror and there was no possible way such a shrill and spooked cry had actually emitted from her. No sir- that was not-

Oh who was she kidding? Merde...

Her lip wobbled as she covered her mouth and silenced herself for just a moment as she tried to compose the jumbling words within her head and prevent her from putting something into existence before she was ready to speak. The silence could not continue too long or Alphonse would think something was genuinely wrong with her and press her further into explaining.

Eventually, she let out the breath she was holding and she answered his question.

"There's something the matter but I can't tell you..." she whimpers as she feels him kneel beside where she's laying in bed. She turns to him, bundled up in the blankets and in a shy state of expression as she tried to think about where the conversation could go as she kept the secret behind her lips, afraid of the consequences.

A few warm tears slipped from her eyes as she stared at him, waiting for his inevitable "Tell me" question. It wasn't going to be much longer until everything she had buried inside would come to the surface in a tearful, shaky mess. Her heart felt heavy and she wanted him to go away so that she could wallow in peace without him. Though even though this crumbling wall of hers was falling faster with every breath, she couldn't help the selfish thought of wanting him to fuss over her.

She wanted the cuddling, and the caring nature that Alphonse had demonstrated so often. She wanted to tell him everything that she felt without the fear that something she had to say could be used against her. But it was simply wishful thinking. Geneviève looked him deep in his eyes, as she had been doing so often lately and sighed softly...

"Alphonse I need to tell you something... But you mustn't take this as me asking you to make a choice. I want you to know it's only because I feel so deeply." she whispered as she took his hand in her own two delicate ones. Her cobalt eyes looked at his with as much sincerity and request for trust as she could. The tears had stopped and she was fully focused on the words that were written along her heart.

"I screamed because there was a fire chasing me... The fire that we did not face together at your Ball. I needed you and you left me. I know your mother comes first but- She quelled the whispered words coming from her mouth. "I needed you too..."

She sat up and rested her head in her arms with her knees pulled to her chest. Her royally buttermilk curls fell across her face, and down her back as she curled her toes and tried to relax. The anxiety in her stomach was reaching a staggering point to which it might turn into genuine nausea.

There wasn't much to say left until Alphonse spoke.

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| 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉: @ | 𝑴𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈: @@Alphonse Toussaint|
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

♕- Night of Aug. 21st, 2025 | Tent, London Quidditch Stadium - ♕
TW: PTSD from Pyre/mentions of death

For a hair of a second, Alphonse had begun to question whether the weeping and shrill-like sounds in the night were merely a figment of his imagination.

Her petite form cocooned in bundles of blankets offered only radio silence to his soothing words, and the Toussaint boy hesitated in response. It wasn't until Geneviève had finally released a shaky exhale that confirmed his suspicions all along. Slowly approaching her bedside once more, Alphonse planted himself in a kneeling position to give the Beaubaxtons' girl space in the circumstances that she shooed him away. A part of the former-Wampus would heed her request should she, and yet another had longed that Geneviève would entrust him with her woes.

But the girl didn't—the somber words from her angelic yet cracked voice affirmed such. Alphonse said not a word in protest, but the pleading in his oak-brown gaze spoke otherwise. His heart ached a thousand times as the Toussaint boy observed fresh tears gliding from her cobalt-blue eyes, and with a feather-light touch, slowly reached his hand outwards to gingerly caress the side of her head. Alphonse's thumb carefully glided over her delicate cheekbones and brushed the tears away before finally retracting his hand.

A dull ache began to stew in his long legs from kneeling, causing Alphonse to rise to his feet to bestow Geneviève with the space she seemingly wanted.

With a whisper and gentle hold of his hand, the painful silence was quite suddenly breached. The boy remained silent as her saddened words entered tension-filled air, and he planted himself on a far corner of her bed as Alphonse heeded every word. Initially, his gaze focused on her but as guilt began to consume him, he diverted and glanced downwards.

The ball. The first broken promise.

Memories resurfaced; Alphonse had invited Geneviève to come to Hogwarts for the first time, to share the evening with him, but the night had ended in hellfire—literally. His then-pregnant mother had been the only Professor nearby to quell the inferno engulfing her gardens, and he had recklessly followed Sarai into the blaze after instructing Geneviève to regroup in greenhouses. A romantic evening—ruined—that Alphonse blamed himself for.

He nodded gingerly in understanding.

“I was wrong to invite you to the ball," Alphonse finally mustered after heaving a heavyweight sigh, "It was selfishness on my part, knowing the risks, and I'm sorry. Really. I just...” he really wanted to see her again, is what the boy would have said.

"I don't know what it is about Hogwarts—if it's a curse or something, but-" he paused as a heaviness settled over him, "-It's not the first time something like that has happened, and I should have known it would happen again. The last time it did, last October, I almost lost my mom. And it was my fault..."

A tremble in his hands began upon the thought of the day. Those traumatic, fiery flashbacks of last October had long been repressed, yet now was rearing its ugly head to the forefront of his psyche. His shaking hands morphed into tightly clenched fists as Alphonse tried to rapidly blink through the haze that shrouded his memory. Perhaps this unaddressed trauma was how he came to be—why Alphonse behaved the way he did. Plowing through life so boisterously and recklessly because his murdered friends could not, or to conceal the guilt the Toussaint boy carried inside.

In the deepest and darkest recesses of his mind, Alphonse swore he could smell the putrid stench of burning buildings and charred flesh again. And the taste the fallen ashes that rained over Hogsmeade like a greyed veil returned on his tongue. His little brother’s freighted sobs and mother's labored, gargled breathing echoed in his mind. And the sight of discovering her bloodied and mangled body along with his Castelobruxo Headmistress and friends’ scorched corpses among the explosion's wreckage replayed in his mind—until shaking his head as if to repel the memories that rattled his core.

"My mom wouldn't have been caught in that explosion if it weren’t for me. She wouldn’t have gone back to the carriages if I hadn't accidentally left my backpack behind," Alphonse softly murmured as if confessing to a crime. The Toussaint boy exhaled before continuing, "And maybe my wanting to transfer to Hogwarts is a subconscious part of me wanting to protect her or my sisters, I don't know. But Célienne and Dèlia are like a new chapter of healing for all of us after that incident. If anything happened to them—if I didn't try to risk everything to save them, I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

After diverting his glassy gaze for so long, Alphonse's eyes finally sought Geneviève's: "But that doesn't mean I didn't think or consider your safety that night either. Genie, if you got hurt following me into the flames..." he started with an anguished breath, then shook his head to dismiss the painful thought, "I just wanted you to go someplace safe.”

——mentions. @Geneviève Caussade
——abilities. charmer
——godmod. Alphonse and Geneviève have a standing permission

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Date: 08/21/25 | Time: Nighttime | CC:#FFFDD0

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Geneviève's eyes watered with stinging, painful tears. She had turned on her back and was looking up at the drapery above her as it tried to calm her. How she didn't believe any of it's attempts as she gazed into the deep and hazy midnight color. Alphonse held her hand as he spoke about curses, and Hogwarts having it's own. About his mother and his new baby sisters... About her and him only wanting to protect her.

Alphonse had protected her. He had directed her to safety and while she had found it, it had been by herself. The other students of the schools all had someone to hold and worry about as she had sat alone on some bench waiting for Alphonse to come and find her. She had waited until the dusk turned to a true night before making her way back to the Beauxbatons rooms with a sobbing wake.

Family dinner the next night had been quaint, but lightly awkward as Geneviève felt an infernal hurt in her heart but had smothered it with manners and grace, even going so far as to assuring that she could give her Host and her family a beautiful bouquet of flowers that expressed her good well. From then but a few well written letters and one attack via her brothers later, and she had thought maybe they could move past what it is that had happened. But every passing moment between the two now seemed far more destructive than the last. Nothing about that night or the subsequent nightmares that plagued her in the darkest corners of her mind were ever brought to his attention until now because she just couldn't stand the thought of being too emotional to him. Others? It didn't matter, she could use her emotions to get what she wanted then. But with Alphonse? She wanted honest true emotion from herself that wasn't simply selfishness on her part.

Geneviève let out a low whimper as she rolled on her side away from Alphonse the longer that his explanation went on. he had few words in her heart anymore. Just an inherent need for comfort. At this point it mattered not where it came from or who. Any would do at this point.

"You deserve better. Better than someone who doesn't understand why it is that things happen here. I'm so sorry." Geneviève shuddered as she covered her mouth with her hand to stifle anything that followed afterwards. It was true. Alphonse deserved to focus on his family and feel as though he wasn't burdened by a needy girl he'd only just met. Someone who had her own support system and didn't need to be coddled, protected, and fawned over. It was beautiful- but it was fleeting.

She heard the gasp in Alphonse's own voice as he lamented about the possibility of her being hurt. How even separated, his mind dwelled on her somewhat. It brought a flicker of hope to her chest and she took a deep breath, looking to calm herself before she spoke again.

"Your family is so lucky to have you... Your sisters and your mother... You take such good care of the women in your life and I admire that about you. I just- I thought- Oh never mind. Just promise me you'll continue to care for them the way that you do now. Please-" Geneviève whispered as she spoke mostly into the pillow and not directly towards him.

She hoped that Alphonse could hear her sincerity nonetheless. Above all, she knew that a mother and siblings were important components to any phase of a family's life. Her own mother, while not present in her life nearly as much anymore, still meant a great deal to her. She loved her mother and knew that Alphonse loved his mother just as much. Her brothers acted the same way that the Toussaint boy acted for his own siblings and she knew it was imperative that he continued to foster the relationship, even if the girls were newly born.

Geneviève sniffled softly and reached for her handkerchief to dab at her eyes, sweeping the color buttermilk over her shoulder to comfort herself.

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| 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉: @ | 𝑴𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈: @Alphonse Toussaint|
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

♕- Night of Aug. 21st, 2025 | Tent, London Quidditch Stadium - ♕

"You deserve better." Her somber, softspoken words almost sounded like a goodbye—were they?

Upon observing her back towards him and the subsequent trembling from tears, Alphonse couldn't help but exhale a heave a sigh from his lips. The sadness etched across her face reflected the weight of her own emotions, and the Haitian boy didn't want Geneviève to be sorry—not for something that wasn't her wrongdoing. He had hoped his heartfelt explanation of that horrible evening would be enough to close the deepening chasm between them, but as the silence-filled minutes ticked by, such hope had begun to wane.

His trembling hand slowly reached out to pull the unicorn-themed bedcovers deeper over her tremoring body, unsure what to do as the words were lost on Alphonse's tongue. After smoothing out the creases in the blanket and ensuring Geneviève was tucked in, his hand lingered on the girl's shoulder with the lightest of his touches. Where Alphonse's words failed, surely his actions would not; the last thing the Toussaint progeny needed was for Geneviève to believe for a moment that Alphonse didn't care—he did, tenfold. Yet, at the moment, it appeared that the girl least desired was the boy's explanations.

Subtly leaning back against the headboard of Geneviève's bed, his oak-brown eyes fixed somewhere beyond. His tumultuous mind speculating different words to say—something to turn the tide in all of this—Alphonse too fell silent and refused to coerce Geneviève in any way.

There was one thing that the Haitian teen did intend to give her, although Alphonse initially expected the offering to the bestowed in more jubilous of times, now was better than never. His long legs stood finally following a sigh and casual brushing invisible dust from his pants, before reaching into his doffed bag on the ground. Clutched gently in his hand was an enchanted teddy bear with the ability to hug its owner a hug every 3 hours, or some enchanted mechanism of the sort.

Alphonse may or may not have strongarmed some poor student into allowing him to purchase the bear after winning it from a booth, but neither here nor there—it belonged to Geneviève now. Placing the bear in front of her, the boy muttered a quiet, saddened-filled "goodnight Genie" before exiting her side and the tent. He needed to smoke again.

——mentions. @Geneviève Caussade
——godmod. Alphonse and Geneviève have a standing permission