“I do not trust you to do as you say,” she answered frankly. “You have broken that trust utterly.”

Besides that, if Art did leave, they would be in the next Witch Weekly too. Desdemona could already see the headline: PETTIGREWS IN PERIL.

“No, you must put this right.”

  

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Arthur clawed at the wallpaper with his fingernails, unthinking — getting out for a few days had seemed like his only real option, and now she was saying he couldn’t, because she did not trust him.

And why should she? It would have been better, Art thought, if he had just slept with someone else — that would have been less of a betrayal to her and to their marriage.

”I don’t know how,” he admitted.

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   Reuben Crouch

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Nor did she, frankly. Desdemona’s skills lay not in problem-solving or in social situations. They did not lie in being a mother and certainly did not lie in being a wife. They did not lie in whatever this was.

She knew she had made a mistake.

She also knew there was no way for her to rectify it.

What if the same was true of Arthur’s mistake?

“You will ask my parents for assistance,” Desdemona said after a long pause, initiating a loud sniff. If things were as bad as he said, her dowry was likely long gone, and Dezzie could not return to a work that terrified her to her very core.

“You will arrange with them some way by which to make amends for this assistance. And you will find some way, any way, to ensure you never set foot inside the casino again.”

It was a bandage upon a bullet hole—no, a hole left by a cannonball—but it was a start.

  

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The steps she laid out were as logical as they were impossible; Art could not admit to his in-laws what he had done because that would mean they had made a mistake in letting him marry Desdemona at all, because they would never trust him again, because that meant he would have to stop.

”Dez, I can’t,” Art said, and whether he meant stopping the gambling or telling her family or staying in this marriage at all, he wasn’t sure.

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   Reuben Crouch

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“You won’t,” she countered, knowing it to be true. No matter how much he loved her and how much regret he felt, he would not betray his pride.

She was not enough.

“And if that is the case, then I must. Clearly you are not prepared to uphold your duty and see your wife and child provided for.”

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   Melody Crouch, Minty Scrimgeour [Sofia], Reuben Crouch

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There wasn’t enough air in the hallway. There wasn’t enough air in this house. Arthur felt suddenly suffocated and like he needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else — or, like he needed to be throwing a pair of dice and feeling like he was someone else.

”Dez,” Art said, a little helpless — he was not sure if he was asking her to stop talking or what, but it was the only thing he could find to say.

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“What else do you expect me to do, Arthur?!” the witch demanded in exasperation. “I cannot simply just leave things alone and hope for the best—‘the best’ has never been for us!”

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   Minty Scrimgeour [Sofia]

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It was like he was at the boxing match again. His breathing was careful and steady and deliberate and he still felt as if he could not catch all of it, and he kept his fingertips pressed against the wallpaper. He couldn’t provide for her. He couldn’t. He was not going to be the father Gwenog deserved and they were better off without him, and he couldn’t believe that she hadn’t come to the obvious conclusion yet when everyone else had.

”I can’t,” he said, ”I can’t do this. I can’t stop. I can’t — I cannot be what you deserve.”

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“Then you have ruined us,” she said quietly, sinking back until the wall was the only thing keeping her upright.

Financially: ruined.

Her chance at a husband that wouldn’t squander everything: ruined.

Gwenog’s prospects: ruined.

Their reputation: ruined.

Their chance at happiness: ruined.

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He was going to ruin them, ruin her, and it was abundantly clear that she was better off without him. Art slipped his hand into the pocket of his coat which held his wand, and wrapped his hand around the handle. It took him a moment to decide where to go — he could not stay with Ben with Ben married to Melody, Fitz was gone, he could not begin to explain this to Freddie or to Lachlan or to his lesser Quidditch friends. So — he was out of friends and he was out of options, and staying here was just hurting his wife more.

He had to go back to old tricks, then, old places, the escapes he would have sought when he was nineteen. He was a coward, and he knew it, and maybe it was finally time to accept it.

Art disapparated.

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He was gone.

One moment he was there, the next he disapparated, leaving Desdemona as alone in reality as she felt on the inside. She knew, deep down, that she was at least partially at fault, that she had pushed too hard—but he was an unmoored boat in the harbour, always looking for any excuse to drift away.

Desdemona sank to the floor, finally giving in to her sobs.

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   Arthur Pettigrew, Melody Crouch

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