No Çs Before E

Isobel had lived in Paris for four years. One year was spent with her birth parents, one with an orphanage, and two with the Greens. Before that, she had lived in England.

At first, she learned to just enough French to get by, but just by being around the language, she got better. After a few years, she felt like a regular Parisian. But as soon as she got to Beauxbatons, she realized her writing wasn't that great. Nobody seemed to care about spelling, since she could write everything phonetically, but grammar was killing her essay grades.

So she had started to read more often, trying to learn by example. But it mostly ended up frustrating her.

She put her book down. She looked around the nearly empty room. The quiet was beginning to annoy her, now that she was focused on it. She pointed at the first person she saw "Hey, you! How did you learn to write in French?" she asked loudly, without thinking.

Though Rhys preferred to do his studying in the library, he found during midterms a lot of upperclassmen hung around the library in a half attempt to study, which frightened him greatly. No way was he going to study there if there was a good chance he might end up as the spell target for upperclassmen. Instead, he changed his routine to include studying in the student commons. It wasn't as resourceful, but it was quieter.

He was finishing up the concluding paragraph of his essay on the goblins wars when someone's loud voice startled him. His brown eyes widened as a jolt went up his spine. He hadn't even seen when she had taken a seat near him, he had been so distracted with his own work.

"Ummm, same way I learned to speak, I guess," Rhys replied. French wasn't his first language, being that his family lived in Wales, but his sister and him had learned the language when they were little in preparation of their schooling at Beauxbatons. He hardly remembered any of the process, besides that he learned to write in two different languages at about the same time. "I need to finish my essay, but if you wait about ten minutes, I can help you out." Rhys offered. "Just tell me what you want written and I'll write it for you."

"I don't need any help. It was just a question," Isobel responded, bitterly. Why did people always want to help? They were always using too many words, which ended up confusing her. She picked up her book again. The idea of reading was seeming even less appealing than before.

After reading four words, she recognized the boy as the one she had met from her brief visit into Whisper Alley. The memory of him being so scared somehow made her aware of how rude she had just sounded. "I'm sorry for being mean," she said.

She dropped her book into her lap and crossed her arms. She was just going to sit there. It wasn't like there was anything else to do in the castle.

Perhaps it was Rhys' good nature or the fact that he had recognized the girl that made him offer his help nearly instantly, but when it was received so poorly, Rhys cringed and buried his nose in his history text book out of embarrassment. He didn't find Isobel rude so much as he felt that it was his own fault. His actions probably felt so demeaning. He wanted to disappear into the cushion of the chair he was sitting in and for the moment it took for Isobel to speak again, Rhys simply couldn't find the same focus he possessed before when writing.

His lower lip trembled as he fought the urge to cry. Once Isobel apologized, he was reluctant to come out of hiding behind the book for fear she'd see how big of a cry baby he was. "It's...fine," His voice quivered at the words. He let the tears blurring his vision drop and then wiped them off of his cheeks before turning towards Isobel. "What were you trying to do?" he asked, folding his book and resting it on the table. He was at a total loss for the conclusion of his essay now that he felt so awful.

Isobel heard a teary voice. It was a tone that made her both annoyed and made her want to cry herself. To want to cry because someone else was crying was illogical.

She debated on whether to comment on his crying or to just answer his question. She knew that if she were crying, she'd want people to ignore it.

"I'm trying to learn how to write in French. It makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm starting to think that I don't need any of this dumb stuff," Isobel answered, getting louder with each word. "Like what the hell is a cédille anyway? I can answer that: pointless."

"You wouldn't, if you were going to any other wizarding school. But you're at Beauxbatons where most of the Professor's speak French as their first language and most students do too. So yeah, you do really need it here in order to adapt and get the best experience out of this school," Rhys replied. He sounded like his father with most of the things he said, most definitely borrowing a line or two from a lecture his dad had given him when Rhys was still reluctant to attend Beauxbatons academy. "You'll never learn anything with that attitude," He pointed out, though he was hesitant with his words for fear Isobel would snap at him again.

"It's an important device when it comes to pronunciation, actually," Rhys informed. "Without them, you could be reading certain words as an entirely different word and then it would be even more confusing to understand what you are translating."

Isobel rolled her eyes. She'd probably hear this kind of stuff from her mother.

"Let's get one thing straight," she started, lowering her voice. Calling her out on her behavior was the quickest way to get on her bad side. Especially if she had been pissed off about something else already. "I can learn whatever I want with whatever attitude I feel like having, do you understand?"

People always talked about her bad attitude. If they didn't want her to have an attitude all the time, they needed to not piss her off all the time.

"And I know what it does," she defended, her tone lightening. "I'm not stupid. I just don't know when to write one."

And just like that, the fire returned to Isobel's voice. Rhys felt the instinct to coward but held his ground. He couldn't meet her eyes though while she lashed out at him with her words. "You're right. You can learn things with a bad attitude but it's going to take a lot longer if you continuously have hissy fits every five minutes about how hard the material is," Rhys replied, his voice so quiet and taken aback from the fierceness that had come from her.

"Well good luck learning that," Rhys said, turning away from her. He offered his help enough to her and she threw it back in his face. He knew he deserved to be treated better than that, so he'd just sit there in silence and try to refocus so he could finish his paper.