January 18th, 1891 — House of Lytton

Poor thing, to celebrate her birthday on a Monday! Camilla entered her friend's office with the gift she had for her behind her back. A quill, because she knew that Jules loved to write. Camilla suspected that she was writing some novel of sorts. Perhaps a romance novel about a witch and a werewolf? That sounded like something Jules would write.

"Happy birthday!" Camilla wished as soon as she entered. Her hands remained behind her back for some moments, for the theatricality of it, before she revealed the box she had been hiding. A small, maroon rectangle with Scrivenshaft's logo on it.

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@'Julianna Binns' Reuben Crouch

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   Juliana Ainsworth

Juliana had been distracted trying to get the appointment book in order for the day, and had in turn been distracted from that with mentally reviewing the latest letter she'd gotten from her frequent penpal A, when Camilla came in. "Oh," Jules said, pleasantly surprised at the declaration. She hadn't expected much of a to-do about it; she was the one who managed the calendars, after all, and Mr. Lytton didn't have much of a head for that sort of thing. Well intentioned as he might have been, he never would have remembered her birthday. Camilla had, though, and Jules was genuinely touched.

"You didn't have to get me anything," Jules protested lightly before the box was revealed. She had been expecting a baked good of some sort — something quick and easy and inexpensive, as far as gifts went — so the decidedly-not-cupcake shaped box and the Scrivenshaft's logo made her start slightly. "Oh, Camilla, really you didn't have to," she insisted, more fervently.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

"Nonsense!" Camilla replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. She loved giving gifts to people. She'd been giving birthday presents to Jules all through their school years. For the years Jules had been at Hogwarts, that is. It wasn't anything for Camilla to buy a gift for a friend. Perhaps she had been taught to display her affection in that way by her mother, who would spoil Camilla with gifts when she was a child.

"I thought that a quill would be the perfect gift for you with all this writing you're doing!" she explained. "It's charmed, so it doesn't need ink for about a year or so. You will need to take it to Scrivenshaft's when the charm fades, but the cost of maintenance is about the same as purchasing ink bottles!" She'd gotten a quill in the colour Camilla remembered to be Jules' favourite from their school years. Chances were that it had changed since, but it wasn't like they were talking about their favourite colours in recent years.

She leaned on Jules' desk and started rocking her body back and forth. "So... You must tell me what your novel is about!"

  

"Oh — it's perfect," Jules said sincerely. She did have a habit of running out of ink at the most inconvenient moments. She just got too caught up in what she was doing and forgot to check the level and then three hours later she'd be just at the most important thrust of a chapter and be left scratching at the parchment with a dry nub. This might not last a full year, with the amount of writing that she did, but it was an incredibly thoughtful gift even so.

"Now if only you could find one that managed to keep wet ink off my sleeves, too," she joked, holding up a wrist quickly to indicate where she'd received her latest stain. The poor laundry woman at the Binns house hated her, between the ink stains on her sleeves and the crumbs in her pockets.

On the subject of her "novel," Juliana flushed slightly. "It's not that kind of writing," she insisted, though she had told Camilla this already. "It's nothing that would excite you at all, I promise."

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Camilla didn't think there were any quills that protected you from that, but it did make her think of the possibility of unstainable fabrics. That would be incredibly useful, especially to those lighter coloured dresses, like debutante gowns. She made a mental note to bring it up to Marcus when she saw him later.

"So no cheap erotic novel," Camilla joked. She was no longer a debutante, so she knew a thing or two about how the world worked. She was also an unmarried woman during a very repressed time for women's sexuality. And an adult virgin.

"You must tell me what it is about!" Camilla whined lightly. "I promise I won't tell. Even if it's about illegal magic. Is it about illegal magic?"

  

"Camilla!" Jules said in a hush, mildly scandalized by the implication that she might write erotica. She understood it existed and therefore someone had to write it, and it did make a certain degree of sense for a spinster with no other outlets to be the culprit. Particularly one who had been expelled for dallying with men at fifteen — all in all, she fit the profile. Still, Camilla knew her, so must have known how ridiculous the idea was. Juliana was hardly a raging cauldron of lust.

"I wouldn't even know where to start, if I tried," she said with a shake of her head. "I write — book reviews, mainly."

A lie, obviously, but she had commented on the work of several other researchers (most notably Picardy), so it wasn't entirely out of the realm of her expertise.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Camilla knew of her friend's virtue. She had never believed the accusations that Jules was a hussy. She knew her friend well, she was no scheming seductress! Then again, she might have had a secret beau. This was something that the two hadn't ever spoken about, seeing that it wasn't the most socially acceptable topic of conversation. Not that Camilla wouldn't tell Jules if she had someone in her life, and she did tell her of interesting flirtations she'd had at balls.

So perhaps Jules was about as sexually experienced as she was. And Camilla could be considered a flirt.

"Ah," Camilla made at her friend's answer. That was indeed dull, but she suspected there was more to that and Jules simply didn't want to tell her. She was going to respect her wishes and not probe any further, though. Not all people were confident about their passions. Take Kafka, for example. Of course, neither Camilla nor Jules would know of Kafka, but whoever reads this probably does and they might be aware of Kafka's friend who published his works after his death. Camilla would probably do that for Jules, too.

Hopefully, they wouldn't have to resort to that, though, because Camilla preferred Jules to be alive than dead but remembered for her famous books.

"For Witch Weekly or the Prophet?" This question wasn't probing, exactly, but merely showing interest! "Ah! I don't suppose you write the horoscopes for Witch Weekly and you're too shy to tell?"

  

"Horoscopes?" she repeated, with a grin. "I don't think even Witch Weekly would publish horoscopes written by a girl who never took a divination OWL." She hadn't taken any OWLs, actually, though not because she was a terrible student; that was just the way the timing of everything had worked out, with her early departure from school.

"No, I just write for whoever will have me," she said with a casual shrug. "I've been in the Prophet once or twice." (Which was true, and she'd even been in the Prophet once under her own name, though it had been years ago now).

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Jules had a point. They'd taken Divination together and while she wasn't obsessed with divination and astrology and these sorts of things, she had some respect for the art not to assume the horoscopes were made up stuff written by an intern.

"Oh, I now feel bad I've never read any of your work, Jules!" Camilla said. "But I confess that I seldom read the Prophet -- it's usually got miserable and dreary stuff." She was an avid reader of Witch Weekly, but that was to be expected, given her profession.

"You must tell me next time they have something written by you so so I can read it!"

  

"It does," Juliana agreed sympathetically. Camilla Lytton was a delicate soul; she could not handle much of the real world, Jules thought. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Camilla could exist on the social scene and rub shoulders with the high and mighty (or those who thought themselves high and mighty, anyway), which Juliana had never had any tolerance for. The more she learned of the intricacies of society life, the less patience she had for it; it all seemed exhausting. So Camilla could have that, and Jules would read the Prophet and investigate the underlying motivations of those society labeled criminals. To each their own.

"Oh, Camilla, you'd find it so boring," Jules protested lightly. "But if you insist, I shall let you know."

(She wouldn't, of course; hopefully Camilla would forget she'd asked in a few months).

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

"Deal, then!" Camilla said with a smile. The truth was that she would forget about it by the next month if Jules didn't mention anything.

"Well, I must leave you now, I have a fitting with Mrs. Lestrange."

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   Juliana Ainsworth

Juliana made a sympathetic, but silent, grimace at that comment. Camilla hadn't specified which Mrs. Lestrange, but neither was particularly pleasant as a customer at the House of Lytton (though for dramatically different reasons).

"Well, good luck with that," she said knowingly. She'd only tempered her comment in case Mrs. Lestrange was arriving at that moment and might overhear — it wouldn't do to offend their customers.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules