by endquestionmark

livesandliesofwizards:

To the Muggles, the area surrounding the palace of Beauxbatons housed only a sprawling monastery and convent. It was nothing of note, a place largely disregarded, though now and then a nobleman wishing to send his Muggle daughter there would be gently rebuffed and pointed elsewhere; this branch of this particular order, it seemed, was very, very exclusive.

And yet, over the years, posing as holy men and women, the students of Beauxbatons made connections all over Muggle France, writing to poets and great thinkers, escaping from the school on weekends to meet in some grand salon near Paris, and disseminating amongst themselves, little by little, principles which belonged not to an old religious order cloistered on a mountainside, but to all who dreamed of a new kind of world. They lived not lives of magical seclusion, but instead embraced the changing country around them, the new ideas, the great philosophies. Many found themselves more or less long-lasting positions in the Muggle world. Many took up arms in conflicts that they could have easily ignored. And, once, long ago, one graduate even became the mistress of a famous royal personage.

She would later invite classmates and younger alums to Versailles. These included, of course, the members of Beauxbatons’s wildest, most uninhibited class: the class of 1683. They delighted in making faces at the Sun King when he wasn’t looking.