Unspeakables; Rule One

Chapter One: Lost Time is Never Found Again

Celeste Auclair didn't remember the last time she had actually sat and soaked up the sun. Possibly because of the painfully long hours she put in at the Department, or maybe because London only experienced true unadulterated sunlight, 75 days a year. Either way, she found herself only enjoying her little spot on the edge of the fountain in Trafalgar Square for a mere five minutes before she became endlessly bored.

Watching the tourists take photos wasn't exactly the most exciting thing to do, especially when you've witnessed it off and on for 10 years.

It was different to come back to England permanently. It had honestly never really felt like home and why would it? As a child, London was the place to come and visit her maternal grandparents before they had passed away, but the French countryside was where Celeste was born and where everything she knew and loved was from. She was 7 years old when her grandfather's life drifted away, leaving grandmama too sick to live by herself. So the small Auclair family uprooted themselves and stuck down in London. Celeste didn't adjust well to change, but she took solace in knowing her parents planned to go back to France. She didn't explore much of muggle London with her mother or father and often spent too much time cooped up in her grandmother's lovely townhouse on Wilton Street reading a book or scowling at the people strolling the streets below her window. The white bricks were covered in thick ivy, and she dreamed of climbing out that very window to travel down it; running away in the middle of the night.

Celeste had a flare for the dramatics.

Suffice it to say, London was contributing to her lack of vitamin D and it made her severely jaded for a child. It also hadn't softened her heart or deconstructed the budding French nationalism that was forming in her young mind. She couldn't let it matter, none of it was permanent as she would be going back home. So she counted down the days until she would return to the Southern most part of France and start school at Beuxbaton.

Then her grandmama had passed, leaving the lovely townhouse on Wilton Street to her mother. Returning home to France was no longer in the cards for her parents. It didn't change her plans to attend the French school for witchcraft and wizardry; even if Celeste deeply wished her mother and father wouldn't be so far from her. She settled in and waited and just when she had started to tolerate the English weather, her parents informed her that she was going to Ilvermorny in the States.

It should not have shocked her as much as it did. The Auclairs were not known to stay in one place for long, it seemed she would merely be continuing the tradition.

She had taken her time at Ilvermorny for granted by spending the first year miserable and angry. She would spend most nights crying herself to sleep because nothing was enjoyable, even being highly praised (her favorite type of praise if she was going to be praised) didn't spark something in her. Not when she was sorted into her school house, when the Horned Serpent's crystal light shined the brightest for her over any of her other housemates. Not when she was led into the Hall of Wands to be chosen by her own and noticed how outrageously gorgeous they were compared to what she had seen from Ollivanders. Not when she was paired with her deeply stained willow and dragon heartstring wand that braided into a fine pointed tip and finished off at the handle with an amethyst. Not even when her professors called her "the Truest Witch", or said "Nothing no-majj about Celeste", and her favorite "Everyone will want to be her rival". All of these experiences felt hollow, every moment that was supposed to be beautiful she held onto an aggressive rage that rattled her.

Her first summer that she had spent back in London with her parents she chose not to speak to them which gave her plenty of time to learn a special ability of hers. She was a Metamorphagus, someone able to change their appearance at will, and it was certainly an uncommon gift. She would practice transforming every feature until she no longer recognized herself, reading over the anatomy of animals. At first her ability could only form a few simple traits of what she researched, but with time Celeste started to take fuller shape of what she studied. She liked to take seeds out to the back garden and wait for an assortment of birds to gather before feeding them all. One of them was particularly fond of her, a blue swallow that would rest on her arm and pick from her palm.