March 15th, 1891 - Jewell's

With the trials Saturday and the rush of betting on them, Art had been too focused on being present yesterday to do what he usually did - that is, read Witch Weekly when it arrived in the morning and pretending he didn't have a subscription - until later in the day, after Desdemona had retired to bed. Then he saw that the magazine had Ben on the cover, and was talking about Art's cousin. It was far too late to try to warn Ben now, and Art felt a distinct pang of guilt - he was struggling to balance everything, lately, and this was just another symptom - because now maybe it was too late. But if it wasn't, well - if it wasn't he had to let Ben know.

He took the floo to Jewell's in London that morning because he had absolutely no desire to talk to or see or be near Melody Crouch, and although he'd never been in here before, it wasn't hard to find Ben's office with a combination of charming smiles and pretending like he actually ought to be here, so surely it would be weird if anyone asked about it.

Luckily Ben was there, because Art didn't know where he would have tried looking if Ben was out with a client. He leaned against the front of the desk casually by way of greeting.

"Hey," Art said, like this was a normal place for him to show up, and under normal circumstances, too.

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Reuben Crouch

  

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Ben did not make a habit of reading Witch Weekly, and although his wife did he hadn't even seen her since Saturday, when he'd handed over the sleeping potion he'd bought for her. He was entirely oblivious to the fact that his face was on the cover of the most recent issue, then, despite the fact that the woman at the front desk had given him a look when he'd arrived that morning. Sometimes people just gave him looks, though, and at least half of the time it wasn't even his fault. The downside of being the sort of person people liked to talk about — he rarely knew everything of what they were saying. He'd long since left off trying to keep up; it would sort itself out sooner or later.

Being in the office at all was a holdover from January, when he'd cleared out all of the paperwork from his home office in an effort to remove any papers that Melody would have access to if she decided to go snooping again. He wasn't used to being here all day when he could be working from home just as easily, but it was probably a good habit to get into. They'd have to take the study apart to make room for a nursery soon, anyway.

Since Ben wasn't even particularly used to being in his office himself, he was certainly not used to receiving visitors here, and he was notably surprised when Art showed up at the door. He raised an eyebrow and echoed back, "Hey."

  

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Art shuffled further into the office. He was suddenly unsure how to explain the article to Ben, just that he knew he ought to - he would have wanted to be informed if Witch Weekly wrote something like this about him, (and if he didn't have a subscription, which - well, it wasn't as if they'd ever discussed it.) It was just sort of difficult to manage, because 'some society bitch thinks you want your wife to die' was a lot of sentence to unpack, especially given their weird conversation about Melody at the end of February.

A few years ago Art would have explained this fine, he thought; a few years ago Ben hadn't been married and neither had Art's cousin, though, and things like this had seemed a lot funnier at the time.

"I... figured that you don't necessarily make a habit out of reading Witch Weekly," Art said, because maybe Ben already knew, and then Art didn't have to figure out how to explain it.

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Art showing up at the office Ben only sometimes used was weird enough. Art showing up to talk about Witch Weekly was even weirder. Ben assumed this had something to do with Art, because Art was the more notable of the two of them. Art was a Quidditch Captain, and had come from a family with money, so some people still cared what he was up to. Of course, Ben had had his share of being featured in Witch Weekly, but those days were long behind him now. The last time anyone had cared about anything he'd done was when he and Melody had eloped, and luckily he'd been abroad for the fallout of that.

So he figured it was about Art, and he figured it was probably bad, if Art had shown up here to talk about it. "No, I don't," Ben admitted a little cautiously, wondering how best to brace himself for whatever he was about to hear. It could have been about the gambling, which Ben had been suspecting for a while, but if Witch Weekly knew about the gambling before Ben formally, actually knew, then — well, then things must have been really bad.

  

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There was something about Ben's tone of voice, but Art already felt too awkward about this to investigate it. "You're sort of on the cover," Art said, with a frowning twist of his mouth. He reached into the inside of his coat to bring out his rolled-up copy of the issue, holding it out to Ben though he was a little hesitant to offer it. Reading about yourself in the papers was, in Art's experience, not healthy.

"I figured I should give you a heads up."

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Ben had been trying to brace himself, but he certainly hadn't been bracing himself for that. His eyes widened slightly and he reached for the magazine with a sense of dread. He couldn't imagine what he might have done to be in the magazine at all, much less on the cover. When he saw it, though, it started to come together, because it wasn't just him on the cover — it was him, and Melody, and Bella Scrimgeour, and Ellory Lestrange.

"... shit," he muttered under his breath, thumbing through to try and find the article.

  

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"It seems to be, um, mostly wild speculation," Art said, in an attempt at being supportive. Surely it was better if it was wild speculation than based in fact?

Of course, the issue was that it wasn't exactly not based in some fact - Ellory and Ben had flirted, (at least there wasn't anything there about that photo,) and so had Ben and Bella Scrimgeour, and Melody had of course very publicly wrecked her own life. But he wasn't going to up and say that.

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He found the article just as Art spoke, so rather than respond to the comment verbally he simply nodded and started reading. It wasn't long, but it certainly was loaded. The jibes about his career and his flirtatious history for one thing — not welcome comments, by any means, but the sort of thing that he might have expected from Witch Weekly. They seemed to know that Melody was sick, though, which wasn't common knowledge. They hadn't speculated at the cause of her illness, which was a small mercy, but they did seem to be implying that he wasn't doing everything that he could to take care of her, which wasn't — he was, he was worrying about it all the time and there was only so much he could do when she didn't —

But then they got into all the rest of it. Ben's cheeks flushed angrily as he read over the allegations that he was hedging his bets, as the author had said.

"Who the fuck is Meredith Watchword?" he asked as he reached the end of the article. Under his breath, he added, "And how the hell did she know about Mexico?"

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Arthur loomed awkwardly when Ben read the article, tapped his fingers against the side of his trousers, waited. He was almost relieved when Ben asked about Meredith Watchword, because of this. "She's, um - I really don't know who she is," Art said. It was probably a pseudonym; he wouldn't want to say shit about the Lestranges under his actual name. "Wait - was the Mexico thing real?"

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Ben tossed the magazine down onto his desk and stuck his tongue into the side of his cheek. He probably shouldn't have said that, but — well. It was only Art in the room, and Art was hardly going to go spilling his secrets. Even if he did, who would he tell at this point? The whole world already knew, apparently. Everyone who read Witch Weekly, anyway.

"Yeah," he admitted, with a shrug. Melody was probably going to ask him the same question, so he ought to decide now whether he was going to lie about it. Probably not — he didn't know how this had come out, but if Meredith Watchword had all the details and might be inclined to release any more of them, he didn't want to be caught in a lie. But boy, was she going to be pissed. Maybe she already was. He wished he'd thought to check in on her that morning before he'd come in to work, but at the time he hadn't had any reason to. She was never awake by the time he left for work, these days, so why bother?

He leaned his elbow against the arm of his chair and chewed on the edge of his thumb, looking at one of the shelves against the wall rather than at Art. "Ellory must have told someone," he mused. He certainly hadn't.

  

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Art wanted to ask more about Mexico, but he wasn't sure if that was tactful at this exact moment, so he sat on Ben's desk instead. "Yeah," he said, "Maybe she's friends with Meredith Watchword. For some value of the word friends, I guess."

Of course, if Ellory had told anyone - even a friend - then things could have reproduced and multiplied from there, the truth reaching someone who knew someone who knew Ben had seen Bella Scrimgeour, and maybe that someone was Meredith Watchword. Arthur was well familiar with the way a scandal could develop.

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Ben rolled his eyes at that remark. This certainly didn't seem very friendly to any of them, though of course it was much more incendiary for him than it was for either of the women that had been named in association with him. "And you think she's friends with Bella Scrimgeour, too?" he asked sarcastically. "Because the Pixie and the Rebel have so many friends in common."

It wasn't as much of a mystery as he was making it out to be, though, because really anyone could have seen him with Bella Scrimgeour and taken notice. He'd run into her in a public place, and their history together was also very... public. It had to be someone who knew Ellory, because that bit about Mexico wasn't anything he had ever shared with anyone, Art included.

"So what the hell do I do now?" he asked, which was the real question. It was far more important than the identity of Meredith Watchword, though Ben didn't really expect Art to have any better answer to this than he had for the former question.

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Arthur shrugged his shoulders, because taking potshots at Bella Scrimgeour was exactly what Witch Weekly was supposed to do, so he was not surprised that it had. It was the Ellory thing that was weird, really.

The question of what to do was one he was better equipped to answer.

"I mean, they should leave you alone for a minute now that they've printed this," he said, frowning. "And it's not as if Witch Weekly is the height of accuracy. They once said that Handsome Whitledge fucked my wife, so." Should he be saying fuck in Ben's workplace? He wasn't super concerned about it.

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Ben raised an eyebrow at Art. He might have been right, and he did have a fair amount of experience being covered in Witch Weekly for stupid shit that wasn't true. Ben, however, had a much longer track record of being covered in Witch Weekly for stupid shit that was true, and it had pretty notably fucked his life up, once. When they'd started speculating about him and Bella Scrimgeour, her father had gone crazy, she'd gone missing, and he'd gone and gotten himself arrested. He still had the Unbreakable Vow to show for his troubles, too (had he ever told Art he'd had to swear an Unbreakable Vow to get off of the charges for impersonating Aldous?)

And that was the trouble with this article. Too much of it was true, which was going to give credence to the rest of it. Melody was sick, and he had been with Ellory and Bella, both recently and in the past. So what if people thought that bit in the middle, about him wanting her to — what if people thought that was true, too?

"Melody's going to lose her shit," he said, under his breath.

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Well, Melody is famously sane and reasonable, Arthur thought, but did not say, because it felt a little too flippant for the current moment. "Maybe she hasn't seen," he attempted instead, "Or maybe - she can't really hold Mexico against you, can she? That was ages ago."

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   Reuben Crouch

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"She can hold anything against me," Ben said tensely, but immediately regretted it. He hadn't really meant it the way that it had sounded. He'd meant that Melody had every right to be upset with him, if she wanted to be, because he hadn't exactly been the most upstanding husband for the past year and at times he thought he'd ruined her life, or at least made her momentarily pretty miserable. What it sounded like, though, was a referendum on Melody, and how controlling and domineering and insane she was — which fit right in with what Art already thought, so of course that was how he was going to take it.

Feeling suddenly very tired, Ben leaned his elbow on his desk and rested his forehead against his knuckles. He was staring vaguely at the magazine, though he had no further desire to read it. "I'm going to try and get her to a healer," he announced wearily.

  

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