I got your face on my mind and
It was fun, runnin' around for awhile
But I can't fall in love tonight

May 22nd, 1890 — Hogsmeade Memorial Ballroom

Roman's suggestion to try and become the supplier of champagne for the Coming Out Ball had been a good one after all, as it turned out. As Ben had suspected, the official Hogwarts Coming Out had already been in the planning stages for several weeks and had all their ducks in a row on that front. While the Hogwarts ball may have been the most widely attended of its kind, however, it was hardly the only Coming Out that season, and Ben had managed to contract with a local family to provide the champagne for their daughter's debut following a year at the Pendergast School for Young Roses, and had earned himself an invitation to the event in so doing. He was used to this sort of thing — he was often invited to parties he had no particular business being at simply because he was an interesting person to talk to, and could save an otherwise dull event with his stories and well-timed jokes — but it was the first such invitation he'd had since he'd gotten married, and it was gratifying to realize that his time socializing wasn't entirely ended.

There was nothing special about this ball, really; presumably the parents were counting on the fact that it took place a week before the Hogwarts debut to set their daughter apart from the swarm of younger girls who would soon be entering society. Ben wasn't sure a week was a sufficient period to do that, but it wasn't really his business — it wasn't like he was on the market, anyway, so who was he to have an opinion on the best way to debut a marriageable daughter?

Ben didn't expect to do much in the way of dancing at this particular event, so when the first number had started he'd headed for the drink table instead of looking for a partner (the idea of finding and dancing with his wife, frankly, did not even occur to him). This gave him the opportunity to observe the first dance, where he saw one unfortunate young lady have to deftly maneuver out of the way of her partner multiple times as he quite obliviously trod on her feet. Ben wasn't sure which party he felt worse for, but when the dance broke it was the young woman who headed in his general direction.

"I hope that wasn't your first dance of the season," he remarked, shaking his head sympathetically. "Your poor feet!"

OOC: Open to any MC/UC woman, age 17-22. Invitation page: Charlotte Beauregard Cecily Gallivan @"Helga Scamander"

  

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MJ made this <3

Cee's ear had been successfully reattached, thankfully. She wouldn't have to think of a creative hairdo to hide the fact that she no longer had an ear. That being said, the healers hadn't been able to fully restore her hearing ability. Sound from her left ear was muffled, as though the ear was clogged. It was all very annoying because Cee constantly felt like it was on the verge of sound being restored. She felt inclined to touch her ear and press on it but her efforts were in vain.

It was particularly frustrating at social events because she couldn't touch her ear all the time. She also couldn't hear people well, if they were position to her left. It was all very frustrating and her dancing partner's poor skills made the event even less enjoyable. Even with her hearing impaired, Cee was better at moving along with the rhythm. The dancing partner, on the other hand, moved his feet a tad too late. Why had he written down his name for a lively dance when he clearly didn't have to skill for it?

After it was all over, Cee headed to the drinks table, where she came across a man.

"It was not, but it could have been my last!" Cee replied. She took a champagne glass and then turned her body so the man would be on her right, so she could hear him better. "And then they say Quidditch can cause you serious harm! I'd rather take a bludger once than an entire night of terrible dancing partners!"

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When he got a better look at her, Ben realized he recognized the girl. He wasn't in the habit of taking particular note of each and every debutante, since he had never really been the type to go wife-hunting (despite the way things had ended up). She was more than just an ordinary debutante, though; she was related to someone who sponsored a Quidditch team (the Cannons, he thought, but could have been mistaken) and he'd therefore seen her at a few Quidditch-themed events that he'd been at in the past. Miss... G-something, he was fairly certain. Gallagher? Gallivant? Something like that. Since he'd left the Quidditch industry himself, Ben didn't pay hardly as much attention to the sponsors as he did to the players.

"Spoken like a girl who's never had to take a bludger," he joked mildly. "Unpleasant as that dance might've been, it probably won't do any lasting damage," he pointed out. "A bludger might break your nose; he'll only bruise your foot. That being said, I hope the rest of your partners are a little more graceful," he added with a good-natured chuckle.

  

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Reuben had said exactly what was needed for Cee to feel the need to prove herself and perhaps start a penis measuring contest as to who had taken the most bludgers. Most of the time, when she talked with men about Quidditch, she really felt the need to show them that she too, had played Quidditch and that she knew a lot about the sport. In a way, she wanted to be accepted in the boys' club.

"I have taken plenty of bludgers!" Cee replied with a cheerful tone, though there was underlying competitiveness. "The worst is to the chest, it blows all the air out of your lungs! I think I broke a rib once, at a match against Hufflepuff."

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   Reuben Crouch

"School bludgers," Ben responded with a teasing smile. They weren't actually any different than the bludgers used in the pro-league, to the best of his knowledge, though they certainly could have been. Ben knew that manufacturers made bludgers that were more or less aggressive, for various levels of training, and he didn't know exactly what the Hogwarts referee outfitted the Quidditch teams with. It had been a long while since he'd been in school and he knew several things had changed since then. Girls hadn't been allowed to play Quidditch at all for a while, and then they'd been able to play but only with parental permission, or something. They could definitely have been using 'weak' bludgers. Even if they weren't, it wasn't like a fourteen year old beater was going to hit it with the same degree of force that a fully grown professional player would, so it was hardly comparable.

"Sorry to hear about your rib, though," he said, though his tone was still one of amusement and not anything approaching sincerity. "Did they fix it, or just switch you to a smaller corset size?"

  

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It was silly how worked up Cee felt by his comments. That being said, she wasn't exactly angry with him per se. She just really wanted to prove to him that she was also a tough person who had been hit by bludgers and swallowed her blood and carried on because she had a goal to score.

"Ha! You're so funny sir!" Cee replied, trying to sound like she was taking this light-heartedly though one could likely tell that she was slightly miffed. "And then they say that Quidditch ruins a woman's figure! Perhaps I could use being hit in the ribs again, don't you think?" Cecily didn't have a very prominent waist naturally and she wasn't one to tight lace. She was also very self aware that, save for her large bosom, she didn't really have the most desirable shape for a woman.

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   Melody Crouch

It seemed like he was getting to her, which made Ben grin a bit. He probably should have been a little nicer, but he was having fun ribbing her and it wasn't as though the stakes were very high for him. He wasn't going to seduce this girl, or even have an ongoing flirtation with her, because he was married now. She was unlikely, too, to be in a position to affect his business in any meaningful way. Eventually she'd get married and throw some society parties, and then maybe he'd have to take care not to offend her in order to get her business for Jewell, but that seemed to be a long way off if she was spending the first dance of the evening with some clumsy buffoon.

"I don't think it's the preferred method to slim down," he pointed out lightly. "If you took the bludger the wrong way, you might end up lopsided — and then you'd be the one stepping on toes at dances, which wouldn't help anything at all."

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   Melody Crouch

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MJ made this <3

"You have a point here," Cecily replied and smiled a bit. Her previous annoyance disappeared. Somewhat. At least he was a fun sort, unlike William Abbott whom Cee couldn't stand.

"So you are a Quidditch player, then?" Cee knew most of the Quidditch players, but she didn't know what all of them looked like. It was hard to make out someone's facial characteristics when you only saw them during Quidditch matches, aka from afar while they flew at a high speed.

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"Not anymore," Ben answered wistfully. It was no secret to anyone who knew him that he would have much preferred to have stayed in his original career as a Quidditch player, and even though he was a decade removed from it now he still viewed his resignation from the team and transition to the Ministry with a good deal of regret. How might his life have been different if he had stayed in Quidditch? A million things could have happened to have altered the course of events... but there was no use thinking about all of that now, when there was no way to change the past.

"My brothers didn't ever think of it as a real career," he explained. "So now I work for Jewell Distillery, promoting their liquors and planning events. I'm not sure if my family thinks that's better, but..." he let the sentence hang and offered a playful shrug. "There are fewer bludgers when you work in business, at any rate."

  

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"I see," Cee said. Truth be told, even though Cee admired Quidditch players, she also didn't think it a profession. It was a hobby that paid you. Career-wise, she was much more interested in the behind of scenes of Quidditch. She was glad that Theo allowed her to help him around so much. Sometimes, she wished that she could sponsor a team all on her own and be as good at it as Thom Pettigrew was.

Cee vaguely recognized the business that the man worked for. They had hosted an event at Padmore Park, where Cee had gotten in an argument with that terrible man, who had accused her of being a drunkard! "That doesn't make it any less risky," Cee mused. "There are many more factors trying to knock you off your broom, if I may speak poetically and sometimes, even if you plan something wonderfully, something unexpected could still happen and you could end up peniless, on the streets." The Chuddley Cannons had been considered one of the star teams of the league, under her father's sponsorship and now both she and Theo were struggling to keep it an A lister team.

  

Ben listened to her commentary with some mild surprise. He didn't disagree with anything she was saying, but the conversation had taken an unexpected turn into the pragmatics of business enterprises. And an unexpectedly gloomy turn, too, since she'd thrown in that comment about being penniless in the streets. Even with the financial stress of moving into a household and having a wife to provide for, Ben thought he was a long way from considering that a real and present danger. She was probably even farther from it, judging by her presence here and her dress and her whole demeanor. She was certainly from a family at least as wealthy as the Crouches, and possibly moreso.

"Speaking poetically is one of those habits that's quite admirable in a woman," he commented mildly. "And more encouraged, I think, then talking of business. You speak as though you have some experience with it — is that so?" he asked with curiosity. It was hardly typical for a young woman to be thinking about things such as business deals when society wanted them to be thinking only of eligible bachelors.

  

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Even though Cee actively helped Theo around with the management of the Cannons and she wanted to be taken seriously in the Quidditch community, she suddenly felt sheepish to tell the man that. Besides, it wouldn't be good for Theo if people found out that his nineteen-year-old sister helped him run the Cannons. People were already talking that he was inexperienced and unsuitable for the post, that he would drive the Cannons to ruin.

"Somewhat," Cee replied. "My father used to sponsor the Chuddley Cannons and now my brother has taken his position, after his death. I have an insight into what it is like to run a business but have no actual experience doing so."

  

"It probably looks more glamorous from the outside," Ben conceded. Throwing parties and promoting was one of the more 'fun' aspects of managing a brand, but that was hardly all that Ben did in his job. Even then, planning parties wasn't half as much fun as just attending them. She seemed like she had a bit of experience seeing 'behind the curtain,' as it were, though, based on her earlier comments about how everyone was always two steps away from languishing in a gutter in abject poverty.

"It might be for the best that you don't have any real experience with it," he joked. "No businessman would want to marry you if you seemed to know more about his work than he did. Men's egos are quite fragile, you know. But maybe I've made too many assumptions," he teased lightly. "Maybe you're aiming higher than a businessman and want one of those husbands who can just stay at home doing nothing all day."

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   Cecily Gallivan

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"That's the impression some people have for my brother," Cecily commented. Sponsoring a Quidditch team sounded glamorous and many had the impression it didn't take any work from their part. That it wasn't a real job, like being a healer or an auror. Sometimes Cee felt that Theo was disappointed for having to quit the auror training program in order to run the family business. If only Cee had been born male, she could have done so herself and Theo could have become an auror like he always wanted.

"People seem to think that running a business is an easy thing simply because we're not shoveling rocks around, or something of that sort." Cee had no doubt that it was difficult to be a labourer, but it didn't demand any mental effort. You simply did the same thing over and over, repeatedly.

  

"Well, for some people, it is," Ben pointed out. "There's a handful of teams whose sponsors don't know their — well," he said, stopping just short of saying something a bit vulgar. "They don't know what they're doing. Some rich folks treat Quidditch teams like something you just buy if you feel like it. Like buying a horse, or a pack of hunting dogs." Those were good analogies, Ben thought, because both of those were also things that might take a good deal of work. He was reasonably good with animals and had done some freelance work on a farm, so he knew what it took to care for and properly train a horse or a dog. That didn't stop people with enough money from just purchasing them on a whim, though, and handing off all of the actual work involved to some servant. Some Quidditch teams were sponsored the same way — the sponsor's name went on the team and then everything else was handed over to a manager or left to the discretion of the coach.

"I don't think those are the best sorts of teams," he added jokingly. It might work out in theory if the coach really knew what they were doing, and had the autonomy to make it happen, but since the sponsors were responsible for choosing and hiring the coach he didn't think it was a frequent occurrence. Usually, those sorts of teams just had a few mediocre years before someone more suited to the sponsor role stepped in.

  

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"You have a point," Cee agreed with a nod. For the Gallivans, the Chudley Cannons were actually a business from which they expected to receive profit on a good year. For someone like the Blackwoods, it was simply a way to spend some money, for the sake of it. "Those people likely won't stay wealthy for long, though. And then they'll fight tooth and nail to appear wealthy."

There had been girls at finishing school who came from much more established families than the Gallivans and yet they weren't as wealthy. Cee had seen how desperate those girls were to make a good marriage.