November 3rd, 1894 - Greengrass Residence

How Noah had gotten wrapped up into being the errand boy today he had no idea. Surely his mother would have rather done it? Still, He had dropped something off to Delilah and the children earlier and now he was sitting in Jemima's parlor feeling wholly out of place and fidgety. It felt weird that she lived here with the entirety of the Greengrass family, but he supposed that with two unmarried sisters still, this was where they ought to be. Honestly he wasn't sure how that all worked and he was hoping in a year or so, he would be able to find himself a place to rent instead of being under his mother's constant supervision. It wasn't as bad as he made it out to be, Noah just wanted the room to spread out and tinker to his heart's content, and he felt like he couldn't do that to his satisfaction in his parents' home.

He was thankful when Jemima came in and he stood to greet her. "Mama sent me with a this box." He motioned to the decently-sized box at his feet. Things of hers from the house no doubt, but he hadn't been told explicitly and he hadn't asked as it was none of his business. Noah ran a hand through his curls, not helping their state of constant haphazard disarray. "She also asked me to check in on you, so I suppose I am to report back to her if you've anything to share." He chuckled; they both knew he would likely forget anything that wasn't a major piece of information between here and home.

Sitting back down, he supposed it wouldn't be too bad to stay for a few minutes, even if he had a host of things he would like to be working on back home.

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Jemima Greengrass

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   Jemima Greengrass

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“Oooh,” Jemima said eagerly, showing more obvious keenness about the box at his feet than her brother’s presence. She didn’t want Noah to think she had missed him in the slightest, because that would only give him leave to be a thorn in her side about it. “It’ll be my winter things, I expect.” She pulled the box towards her own seat and made a fuss of opening it, though the winter clothes and gloves and scarfs she had inadvertently forgotten about when packing away her life in a (miserable) frenzy to move to Bartonburg hardly made the most exciting of parcels.

“If I had anything of consequence to share you can be sure I would tell Mama directly, rather than entrust it to you, Noah,” Jemima remarked, in an easy bickering tone; she managed to refrain from rolling her eyes, but of course her brother would only remember anything she said weeks or months later, and only pipe up with it when it was grossly irrelevant. Unless it was about some strange muggle artifact she had lately encountered. Then he would be listening intently. Well, as intently as Noah ever could.

“But you can report to her that I was an excellent hostess, if you like,” she carried on, only comfortable being quite this childish because her husband and in-laws were not in the room to witness it. (She would obviously have been on her best behaviour then.) Never mind that Jemima had not offered him anything to eat or drink, or even asked how he was yet – she was currently too busy pulling out an old pair of her earmuffs from the box.

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   Noah Farley

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"Fair enough," Noah conceded about his mother and sister communicating on anything of importance. It was still a little weird, seeing Jemima as the hostess in her own house (sort of, from what he understood anyway). Expected, in the long run, but she wasn't that much older than him and he hardly felt old enough for any of that nonsense. Even with the discrepancies between the expectations placed on men and women, Noah felt hardly capable of being graduated from Hogwarts most of the time, let alone an adult with a full-time job and responsibilities. He was glad his time to settle down was a long, long way off. If ever, really.

Noah tutted with a slight smirk, "Asking me to lie to mother is quite the stretch, not even tea, hmm?" The absence of refreshment had not gone unnoticed, though Noah was hardly one to fuss over. He wasn't even sure how long he would stay. Probably long enough to be a nuisance. It was more fun that way. Plus it would be nice to ascertain for himself how she was doing. "Will your wardrobe hold it all?" He teased. The box wasn't that big nor cumbersome to carry, but he knew it had been lightened and expanded on the inside to accommodate the sheer amount of winter clothing items in there.

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“You’d better hope so, or else I’ll be getting you to ferry all my summer things back,” Jemima teased, light-heartedly. If it were anyone else she might have taken it as a coded remark, something about the Greengrasses’ house – her house; she was a Greengrass too, after all, no matter that she still needed to remind herself of it more frequently than she probably should by now – being smaller than their own.

She pulled out a handmade winter scarf with far worse knitting than she remembered, and wrinkled her nose. Maybe she would leave that one. There were still some nice cloaks and winter boots in here, which was fortunate. Jemima had not recovered a great deal of confidence going shopping alone, so she would make do with old things until she saw something she really loved from the window and perhaps managed to hint to her husband that she would like something just like it. One day she would have the confidence for that, she thought.

She peered at Noah appraisingly, and then softened towards him. “You can have tea, I suppose, if you promise not to spill it,” she said, in mock-warning (although Noah would); and then he would not need to lie to mother. “How are you, anyway?”

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Noah grimaced appropriately at the thought of being a pack animal for his mother and sister. He had far better things to be doing. "I can make it fit." He was good with charms after all. A little extension charm on her closet and all would be well. At least he was getting tea out of it.

"Well enough," his chat with Mrs. Darrow seemed to have been necessary and he was trying, but Noah had never been a particularly organized person. "Busy," that was truer, perhaps. "Tinkering, work, things of that nature." Nothing out of the ordinary for him. For as extraordinary as he was, at any rate. "I've been working on a magical metal detector of sorts." He was quite enthused about it, but knew his sister would not be.

"And you must give me something else to report back to Mama, or she'll just send me again." Anything, just a snippet, a token of information. Anything.

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She grinned idly at his horror – getting him to sort out her wardrobe would be more fun for her than for him, and in spite of her joking she didn’t quite trust him not to get everything out, forget what he was doing and start tinkering with something else and just leave a great mess.

“Is it a detector for magical things, or metal things?” Jemima asked, confused, but shook her head hurriedly as if to say no, don’t tell me. He probably would tell her, regardless – Jemima didn’t think he really wanted to know the sort of information Mama was looking for.

She had already saved up and spent her queries and advice for Delilah, because her sister was less intense than her mother, and could be trusted to keep Jemima’s crises to herself; for Noah and Mama, it would be the highlights only. “Fine,” she said, with a put-upon sigh – but her face lit up with a smile anyway, as she thought about what she could say. “Tell her I’m very well, then,” she said, shifting forwards in her seat to finally pour him some tea as she had promised, and biting her bottom lip as she did. “And that Ford is a very attentive husband. He can always cheer me up, and he still buys me flowers all the time.” And Jemima knew very well that her family and society had the rest of the circumstances weighing against their opinions of the marriage, but these little gestures had won her over, all the same.

She pushed his teacup towards him and sat back, fiddling absently with the folds of her dress. “Would you like more from me?” Because Jemima was certainly not going to talk about the other benefits to married life with her little brother, unless perhaps she wanted to scar him for life. “Or do you want to tell me what it’s like at home without me?” Delilah had said she missed her.

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Noah had opened his mouth to give more information, but abruptly shut it at the shake of her head. She had asked out of politeness, not out of genuine curiosity and he was used to it, so he just shrugged. It was for both, but he was hoping to hone it down to detect magically altered objects. Unfortunately there were a lot of things that ended up cursed or otherwise enchanted to dispel magic upon touch and he'd like to know what he was walking into sometimes. If he could detect some sort of magical aura to the object, it would help.

"Nope, got it, happy, flowers, blah, blah, blah." Just as she didn't want to hear about his latest project, he did not overmuch care about her domestic bliss (as long as she was happy and seemed it, Noah liked to think he'd be able to tell somehow if she was putting up a front). "It's quiet." He grinned. Without her constant gossip and chatter or the hope that suitors would stop by, Noah was relishing in the solitude. "Mama misses you though, I suppose I do too." He knew that being the youngest meant he would be there the longest and Jemima had wanted to go out and get married, so it was good she'd gotten what she'd wanted, despite the scandal associated with it.

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“Quiet?” Jemima scoffed. She did not like the implication that she had been loud, or messy, or annoying, or living in a whirlwind of melodrama every day of her life. (She had been all of these things.) “Mm, I suppose left to your own devices, you and Zippy barely leave your bedrooms?”

With Delilah seemingly content to work in her widowhood, and her siblings with their personal projects and passions, Jemima’s search for a suitor had really been the thing to drag them all about society. It hadn’t happened the way she had intended, and she did not have the unblemished reputation to be any shining light in society just yet, so she would have to find ways to coax her siblings into society for their own sakes and hers.

But she softened at Noah’s surrender that perhaps he missed her, just a little. She liked Ford’s siblings more than she had expected to, but that didn’t mean she didn’t miss her own. “Well, I expect you’ll be the next one to leave home to marry,” she said, mostly teasing. (She did not harbour much hope for Zipporah marrying soon, so Noah really might be next.)

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Noah nearly snorted into his tea. She seemed to catch on after a moment. Honestly, it was nice his still had Zippy at home with him otherwise it might have actually been lonely; he still firmly believed she would marry before him. He was barely twenty, he had actual years before that even became a concern. Thank Merlin.

"Highly doubt that," he shook his head after sipping at his tea. There was no way. Just none. "You sound like Mama, I don't think I can have two of you spouting that nonsense at me." He was content with his work, even trying to get himself organized in the office so that he didn't get fired. After his little chat with Mrs. Darrow, he wasn't sure he wanted to repeat that, so was making an effort. "Let me get my professional life settled first." As he should anyway, like the rational, responsible adult he was not.

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