good to be home, even for a day.

Home. France was Nadia's home. England, sure, she lived there. But France was where she was born and raised, where her mother was living, very ill, and where she had first found out she was a witch. Yes, being home felt good, she decided as her light hair flickered across her eyes in the wind.

Mother was in a bad state lately. She was letting go; now that Nadia had gone and gotten a job at Hogwarts, she was starting to get worse. Not straight away. It was gradual, but noticeable. The older woman's cheeks weren't full of colour as they used to be, and her eyes were sunken back, and hope that maybe Nadia would always be there to hold her hand was drifting away. Slowly, slowly, slowly...

Oh, what would mother say if- No. She couldn't think of mother any more. She was independent, and herself, and not under any binding any more... But what if she didn't...?

"I'm going to be utterly senile by the end of this trip," she sighed.

Lae could only dream of the days when she was married, young and wise. Now that she was old, a drunkard, and not always sane, she missed them. At the time, she could remember thinking of them as idiotic, forever, endless, numbered. So many things had changed during her time as a singleton she had to constantly remind herself on a day-to-day basis that she had two children that she was responsible for.

For the first time in years, Laetitia O'Malley and Chara Bellamy had argued. There was a long period of time between their meetings. The adoration Chara had once showered the Head of Uchitel was long-gone, and it had now turned into the fierce hatred the former Bellamy had feared.

There was nothing to do. There was nothing she can do.

Apparating back to Durmstrang was the blonde's biggest priority, and as she strolled the Parisian streets, her eyes fell on something... extraordinary. And not in the good 'extraordinary', the category of the supernatural rather than fascination.

"Oi!" called Lae, her French as clear as a cloudy day. She pointed to another blonde in the distance, "You! Over there! Turn around!"

Someone was calling down the street, something that at first, Nadia took no notice of. They wouldn't be calling her. No-one ever did these days. No-one ever wanted to talk to her, and she couldn't understand it. Why wouldn't they? It wasn't hard to realize that she was pretty, and smart, and a fighter. But being a fighter and a survivor were different. Fighting might last you a day in the jungle that is the world, but if you don't know how to survive, what was the point? And Nadia Lamoré was not a survivor.

She'd always relied on other people to pick her up when she was down. Always relied on mother, and her so-called friends whom she hadn't spoken to in years to pick up the pieces. She'd never actually learned to do anything for herself. What was the point? Other people were there to do that for her. Well, until now.

Without her mother, oh, what a mess the French woman would be. She might fall apart. Break into thousands of pieces like a conch shell on a rock. ((OOC: Damn you Lord Of The Flies for sticking in my brain...)) Clenching her fists, she kept walking. As the calling continued, and Nadia noticed that there wasn't actually anyone else that she could be calling for, she turned around with her hands on her hips.

"WHA-?! Wait... WHAT?! How ze hell do you look like me?!" she called back, eyes wide at the woman who was essentially her mirror image, but potentially older than she was. At the distance, it was hard to tell.

Lae blinked, clearing her throat. Indeed... the woman did look exactly like her, if not more youthful. They had the same tumbling blonde hair, the same eyes, even the same stance (or it seemed to be so from where the Head of Uchitel was standing). A pair of vigilant pale blue eyes studied the young woman. At least they weren't wearing the exact same attire, though. Had they were...

Laetitia O'Malley would rather not think about that.

"Who do you think you are, dressing up like me?" snapped the blonde, marching towards her lookalike, "I know that I'm bloody fabulous, but that's no excuse to pose as me!" She then twirled about, observing her 'twin' from all angles. Stepping back a few feet from her, Lae chose to drop her attitude and try and act like she was the older one, just for kicks. That, and this woman might as well be an acquaintance of hers, couldn't she?

Chara had told her she needed more friends. Not Chara, Lae. Apparently, it was unhealthy to drink alone in bars all night and chat up men that were half her age. What would the young girl know, anyway? No one had been through what Lae had been through.

No one she knew, anyway.

The O'Malley decided to step towards the other woman, "Never mind. We are both adults, and we can both agree this is a matter of coincidence. Je suis Laetitia O'Malley." The blonde extended her arm for the other woman to shake. Merlin hope that she wasn't a savage. "Head of Uchitel, and Standard Spellcraft Professor at Durmstrang. And you are..."

(ooc: lord of the flies ftw, though.)

The only thought that was going through the young woman's head at the time was "Zis person looks just like me. 'Ow is zis possible?!" and "What ze 'ell?!" They weren't, admittedly, her more intellectual thought processes. But in the moment, what else was she to think of? Cute fluffy bunnies or something? There was someone stood directly in front of her, who was like a mirror image. Logic had just flown right out the window. The light blue eyes that she saw whenever she looked in the mirror (which was admittedly quite a lot) were staring right back at her, with an expression something like how she imagined her own.

"I uh... Cannot say I understand... I do not deliberately look like you, miss. I'm just as confused as anyone else 'ere!" Nadia stuttered, baffled, looking back at the woman who was examining her. It made her feel uncomfortable, sort of. Awkward.

Then, as an expression of deep thought seemed to flicker across the other woman's face, she stopped. The expression had rarely graced her own features, unless there was a miracle happening and she was actually having a brainwave. That was not often. Maybe a few times every two weeks. If that...

"Eh... Hello, Laetitia. I'm Nadia. Nadia Lamore, ze new dueling professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardly, in ze U.K," she said, her mouth still slightly wide as she shook her lookalike's hand. This was weird. Too weird...

"It's called genetics," Lae replied calmly. A scientific side of her that had never been unearthed before had come to light in this circumstance, "Clearly, we must have had some common ancestor in the past that must have looked similar to us. There is no other rational explanation. After all, I look older than you." She blinked, "However, I cannot ignore the fact that we are both French... or partly, at least." The partly came in Lae's case, for she had a German Muggle passport. Maybe it came for the other woman too.

She added that to her 'Weird Coincidences list' for future reference.

"Hogwarts?" Lae questioned, "I don't think I've been there before... and although I've heard much of it I doubt it's as great as everyone says it is." She shrugged her shoulders.

"Genetics? Once again, I do not understand... How can we be at all related?" Nadia questioned, pacing back and forth in front of the other woman. It didn't make sense. "Or, well, zis could be a total coincidence?" she said, wringing her hands behind her back. French... Well, that seemed true. Nadia herself was in fact French, and the other woman's fluency could only mean that she had a parent that was from the country.

But then again.... Two people from the same place that were almost exactly alike in appearance, but not in age? It just didn't seem to add up...

"Oui, Hogwarts. You probably wouldn't have heard much of it, but on ze contrary, eet is a marvelous school! Durmstrang, you said? Ees eet as good as I've heard?" she asked.

((OOC: if I suddenly slip out of writing in my awful rendition of a French typed accent, sorry. I get slightly fed up writing it xD))