Summer 1880 — Applegate House, Cotswolds
"Hurry up in the bathroom, I need to shave," Ezra called through the door as he passed it, then dropped into the chair closest to the door in the dining room. He didn't, actually — his facial hair existed, but to his frustration it was still slow-growing and patchy, and if he failed to shave before heading off to his Ministry internship that day positively no one he worked with would notice. But the act of shaving made him feel grown-up, so he was insisting on the ritual as a rite of passage; there wasn't much else happening at the moment that marked any real transition from school to adult life, so he had to cling to the things he had. The girls in his year had all gone down the staircase in the Great Hall and entered society, and they were busy this summer being women, going to dinner parties and balls in the evening and in the morning taking callers or going out to shop for a myriad of things they apparently newly needed each day; it was all very grown-up. Ezra, meanwhile, was still in the same house he'd grown up in, surrounded by the same people he'd grown up with, and while he technically had a job it wasn't much of one. It was just killing time until his NEWT scores came back, and everyone knew it, including his coworkers. Maybe in the autumn things would start to feel different, but for the moment Ezra felt for all intents and purposes as though he were just another kid on summer break, while the rest of his year had gone and started doing things, so — shaving each morning was his small act of self-assertion, his proof to himself that this was really happening.
The shaving itself was something of an ordeal. His father had never taught him — by the time Ezra was old enough to have anything to shave, he wasn't sure if his old man was even allowed to hold sharp objects anymore. (Not that he had ever been dangerous, to Ezra's knowledge, but there was a sort of progressive infantilization that had been happening for years now; he didn't get to pick out his own clothes most days, either). Ezra was the oldest son in the house, so he didn't have brothers to lean on here. He might have asked a servant, but most of them were women and the man they had in twice a week to do landscaping was intimidating and unapproachable. So Ezra had taught himself, through trial and error, and it still took him probably twice as long as it should to get through it each morning. Still.
He picked an orange out of the fruit bowl at the center of the table and eyed the newspaper dubiously. That was another of those habits Ezra had been trying to pick up, as a symbol of his budding adulthood, but he found most of the news boring. He wondered: did anyone read the whole paper? Was he expected to?
He was saved from the looming endeavor by the arrival of his younger brother. Conversation — even with someone six years his junior — was preferable to trying to get through some foreign affairs piece in the politics section of the Prophet. "What are you up to today?" he asked, not expecting any particularly interesting answers. Byron was eleven and in the middle of summer vacation; what was there to do except nothing?
The shaving itself was something of an ordeal. His father had never taught him — by the time Ezra was old enough to have anything to shave, he wasn't sure if his old man was even allowed to hold sharp objects anymore. (Not that he had ever been dangerous, to Ezra's knowledge, but there was a sort of progressive infantilization that had been happening for years now; he didn't get to pick out his own clothes most days, either). Ezra was the oldest son in the house, so he didn't have brothers to lean on here. He might have asked a servant, but most of them were women and the man they had in twice a week to do landscaping was intimidating and unapproachable. So Ezra had taught himself, through trial and error, and it still took him probably twice as long as it should to get through it each morning. Still.
He picked an orange out of the fruit bowl at the center of the table and eyed the newspaper dubiously. That was another of those habits Ezra had been trying to pick up, as a symbol of his budding adulthood, but he found most of the news boring. He wondered: did anyone read the whole paper? Was he expected to?
He was saved from the looming endeavor by the arrival of his younger brother. Conversation — even with someone six years his junior — was preferable to trying to get through some foreign affairs piece in the politics section of the Prophet. "What are you up to today?" he asked, not expecting any particularly interesting answers. Byron was eleven and in the middle of summer vacation; what was there to do except nothing?
![[Image: 5WWaDR1.png]](https://i.imgur.com/5WWaDR1.png)
