Well, it was over, and they'd survived, for what it was worth. The evening had certainly been rocky at points, but they'd survived. That really ought to be enough, given the circumstances — given what a big ask it was to even expect his family to come to dinner and be civil for an entire evening in the first place. Still, Ben had been hoping against hope that things might go well, and they certainly hadn't. The possibility that Nova and Melody might find some common ground had been shot out of the sky early in the evening. He'd had this notion in his head that they might even become friends — perhaps, someday, that Melody could think of her as a sister, since she'd lost her own sisters when she'd decided to marry him. In hindsight, that seemed utterly ridiculous — as much so as his childish hope that Nova would end up sorted into Gryffindor with him.

His brothers, too, had been... less than warm. Aldous was quite clearly still uncomfortable with Melody's existence, much less her role as his new sister-in-law, and Ben thought it was probably obvious enough that Melody had been able to pick up on it too, even without knowing him as well as Ben did. Roman had done the best of the three of them at being civil and polite through dinner, but that was just Roman — too political to reveal his true feelings. No one was happy that Melody was here, and she'd had that fact hammered in at every possible moment tonight, which wasn't fair to her. Despite everything that she'd done in the past two months, she didn't deserve to be miserable forever — and she didn't deserve to be stuck in a family that didn't want her. Ben still felt like maybe there could be a light somewhere farther down the tunnel — that this was just too soon to ask anything more than pretended civility of his family — but even so, he felt like he owed Melody an apology for putting her through all of that tonight.

Having made up his mind on the subject immediately after dinner, it still took Ben quite a while to work up the courage to go up to her room. This wasn't a thing that they did, visiting each other's bedrooms — intruding on each other's privacy — talking — any of it. Yet here he was, knocking softly and then hesitantly making his way into the room.

He'd waited too long; she was already undressed. He blushed, though not for modesty — he'd obviously seen her far more indisposed, both on their wedding night and in Paris. Rather, he was embarrassed to have forced himself into this conversation when she was clearly ready to drop the subject and go to bed. It was too late to back out now, though; he was here and he had no excuse for being here, other than the truth.

"Hey, uh, about tonight," he said, shuffling his feet a little as he made his way farther into the room. "I'm sorry."