Asking November for advice wasn't like asking Aldous for advice. Aldous was decisive, and typically (except in the case of managing the fallout of Ben and Melody's elopement) projected confidence that what he was suggesting was the proper course of action, or perhaps even the only viable course of action. He hadn't gone to Aldous with this question because he had expected that his sister's insight would be more valuable when it came to matters of a woman's reputation, which was at stake for both Melody and Nora. As he listened to her nuanced answer, it occurred to him that this was another reason November was better suited for this question than his older brother: like every other issue that had arisen in Ben's marriage so far, this didn't have a singular, clear-cut solution, and he might need someone to argue both sides of the matter if he was going to make the best choice.

That said, a part of him did miss Aldous' decisiveness. If someone could just tell him you must divorce her, there's nothing else for it then he wouldn't have to wrestle with the more difficult question of whether or not he could keep their marriage alive. If you believe it to be a matter of when rather than if... Ben considered. Was divorce inevitable? Could he live with her after this? Could he even try to be happy, after she'd done something like this? What would he say when other people made snide remarks about it, or when Witch Weekly ran a piece on it? November spoke as though the news coming out was uncertain, but in Ben's mind it had been a foregone conclusion from the moment that Melody hadn't been able to definitively say whether or not she'd been seen leaving with him. They had rumors circulated about them that weren't even true; it seemed unreasonable to suspect that now that one of them had transgressed, it would go unnoticed.

"I don't know if repentant is the word," he muttered, with a vein of irritation undercutting his tone. "She claimed she was drugged. That she didn't have any real interactions with him and she didn't care about him at all. Which — it's almost worse, if it's true. Because that means that it could have been anybody, and — and next time it could be anybody," he managed. And there it was, an anxiety he had not yet been able to voice: he had heard there was strange magic at play at this party and it made me do something I never would have done otherwise before, when she'd drugged him. This was a recurring theme for her, and if it had happened twice, what would prevent it from happening again? Maybe there had been something in her drink, or maybe she'd only been a little drunk and supposed there was. Maybe she'd concocted the idea that she'd been slipped a love potion after the fact, when she was struggling to find a way to justify what had happened. She might even believe it — but Ben wasn't sure that he could.

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