17 August, 1892 — Atlantis, Wellingtonshire, Hogsmeade

Victor wasn't used to spending much time in the club. He visited on average once a week, and when he had been a member of Excalibur he had often alternated which club he would visit. During the Season it was often less, since his social calendar became more full while his work didn't ease up. Fortunately he was in a position to write his own schedule, so he could usually attend anything he particularly wanted to, but the overall amount of hours worked didn't change for someone with the position of Assistant Head, so he had less time for leisure and lingering at the club. This week he'd made a point to be there more frequently, though; any time he could squeeze an hour in between work and other obligations, he would. He was on the prowl for Ozymandias Dempsey. Of course, if he'd been really serious about things he could have written to him to arrange a time to meet, or visited the Dempsey household, or even bypassed the older brother entirely and gone straight to Miss Dempsey's father. Any of these options would likely have made their way back to Miss Dempsey in some form or other, though; she would hear about the letter or see him coming or going and get Ideas about it, and he wasn't sure he was committed enough to this course of action to give anyone Ideas.

So instead he was staking out the club and hoping to run into Ozymandias Dempsey 'by chance.' Unfortunately, tonight's venture seemed no more successful in that regard than any previous attempt, but he did spy Endymion Dempsey across the club, and that was at least half as good. Maybe even better, depending on how things went. Endymion knew him better, so the fact of their conversing itself might be less remarkable (and less likely to make its way back to Miss Dempsey as a result). On the other hand, perhaps he'd be more capable of picking up on the subtext of the conversation. It was worth the risk, Victor decided; he'd told Miss Dempsey he planned to see her at the floo powder party on Friday, and he only had two days between then and now to gather information.

"Dempsey!" he greeted, waving him over. He exchanged some pointless banter while he allowed the other man to settle in and ensured he had a drink, then launched in to what he actually wanted to discuss. "I met your sister recently at a party."

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Endymion Dempsey Elias Grimstone

  

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Fabulous set by Lady!

“Daphnel,” Endymion had returned easily, taking the wave for an invitation to join him, and by the time he was a few sips into his drink, he had made himself quite comfortable there.

At least until Daphnel mentioned meeting a member of his family. Oh dear. Victor Daphnel was fun, see; easy enough to get on with; and fairly normal, too, which meant that he really didn’t deserve to have to meet any other Dempseys. (Why else would Endymion spend so much of his time at the club?)

“Oh no, which one?” Endymion asked, blowing out a breath in anticipation and hoping for everyone’s sake that it had been Lycoris, since she tended to be the most cordial of the bunch. At any rate, hopefully the interaction had been something to laugh off or just slightly eyebrow-raising and not a complete disaster. He grinned, although there was a touch of trepidation in it. “I’m afraid the complaints office is closed today.” (He was joking. Mostly joking.)

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The following 2 users Like Endymion Dempsey's post:2 users Like Endymion Dempsey's post
   Natsuko Foxwood, Victor Daphnel

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Victor gave a half-hearted chuckle in response, but behind it he felt mildly defensive on behalf of Christabel. It was hard to tell from one comment whether this was a genuine sentiment or only light-hearted sibling ribbing, but on the off-chance that he was serious it was hardly a kind thing for him to say of his sister in general, and particularly to someone outside of the family. But he'd asked which one, and when Victor recalled how the other sister had carried herself through Hogwarts when she had been a year below him, he was more understanding of Endymion's attitude. If Porphyria Dempsey was as strange now as she had been then, presumably her brother did hear his fair share of complaints about her behavior at parties.

"Miss Christabel," he clarified. "And I didn't intend to lodge a complaint — though the hostess might've, if she knew it was Miss Dempsey who lit her rose bush on fire," he allowed, thinking back to their first encounter at the house party. "I'm surprised I hadn't made her acquaintance earlier." Of course, there wasn't much particularly surprising about this; while he'd been in society his entire adult life, he had hardly paid attention to anyone outside his circle of friends until his sister's debut, and even then he'd only considered debutantes insomuch as they provided competition his sister emphatically did not need. He'd only started looking at eligible ladies for his own sake in the past few months. He supposed what he really meant by the comment was that he was surprised Miss Dempsey was still a Miss at this point. From his interactions with her she didn't seem the sort to blend in to the wallpaper at a social function, so how had she attracted no one's notice before this?

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Fabulous set by Lady!

“Oh, Bel!” Endymion exclaimed, visibly relaxing. Christabel could be a firecracker when she wanted to be, but she was usually polite-until-insulted, so he wasn’t worried anymore – at least not until Daphnel mentioned lighting rose bushes on fire. Dymion’s brows quirked up, surprised but not probably not as shocked as one might be by that admission. (After all, one had to expect a certain level of eccentricity from a Dempsey.)

Fortunately, Daphnel didn’t sound particularly put out about it, which Endymion would take as a success. “I’m surprised you haven’t either, if that’s the sort of thing she’s been up to at parties,” he commented with a wry look, but shook his head with more fond amusement than disapproval of his sister – he didn’t have any room to disapprove, given that he had rarely paid much attention to chaperoning his sisters about at parties. No, indeed, that was their mother’s remit. (And that probably, Endymion considered, explained their mother’s short tether to a state of utter exasperation.)

He tilted his head inquisitively at Daphnel, trying to glean why he had turned the conversation this way. All he added for now, though, was – in a cheerful, sincerely curious tone – about the fire-lighting. “Accidentally, or on purpose?”

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Belle, that was pretty. No one who called him by his first name had ever tried to shorten it, so he hadn't expected that she would have a nickname, either, but he liked this one. What level of acquaintance would he have to reach before he could use it? Engaged, he suspected; that was jumping the gun a little. He'd only had a handful of conversations with her (two, in fact) and one of them he only remembered in broad strokes. Best disregard the nickname for the moment.

"Er, a bit of both, I suppose," he answered with a half-smile and a shrug. "I did put her up to it, loosely — we were talking about what might happen if one mixed and matched the wand movements and verbal cues for different spells and I theorized that she would probably light something on fire, which she did." He was still rather proud of himself for correctly determining the outcome in that case; theoretical spellwork was a fascinating field of study, but he seldom had any chances to apply it; he was more often working backwards at the hospital, trying to reverse-engineer whatever the patients had gotten themselves into by seeing the results. "Singed her skirt, too. It was quite a spectacular display of sparks, actually, but that might have something to do with her wand's makeup, or — ah, well, I won't bore you," he finished, animated tone trailing into an apologetic wince. This wasn't everyone's cup of tea, he had to remember, and while Miss Christabel had seemed interested when they'd talked about it, it was decidedly not the point of having tracked down her brother.

"It came up because she was plotting how she might trick a bunch of Muggles who meet up to try out magic," he explained. "Which did seem to be a rather unusual hobby for a debutante." Here he was fishing a bit; he wondered if Dempsey would be inclined to correct his use of the word debutante, if her priorities or interests lay outside of society and the pursuit of marriage.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Oh, so he had put her up to it, then; they were co-conspirators in some silly studious experimental game. Daphnel maybe sounded a little too pleased about having singed her skirt, however. (This detail gave Endymion a flash of sincere hope that all they had been up to in the gardens was discussing magical theory. Though he doubted Daphnel would have ever brought the topic up if he’d been untoward with her: so clearly – thankfully – their only real offences from that evening were being intellectual oddities and damaging people’s gardens together.)

With a patient smile, anyway, he let Daphnel ramble on, since the fellow seemed to be rather enjoying the recounting of it. Dymion fancied he might have to ask Christabel about her experience of that party, just to see whether she told the story with the same animation – but now Victor had called her hobby unusual, and Endymion’s expression faltered ever so slightly. Unusual could be a compliment or utterly damning an observation, depending from whom it came – and it might be a fair one, for Christabel was unusual, but he certainly wasn’t about to belittle his siblings to anyone else.

“Well, she’s very fond of puzzles,” he protested, still genial enough in tone, though he took a sip of his drink defensively. “Mysteries and the like. And she would be bored to death, I should think, if she didn’t have anything else to do but attend balls. You can hardly blame her for that.” Daphnel had started attending balls more in earnest recently, hadn’t he? So he understood how stultifying they could become, even when one wanted to be there. And every young lady was more interesting for having hobbies. Bel’s was just – a little bit weirder.

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Puzzles and mysteries. Victor approved. (This was confirmation bias in the extreme, because if their first conversation had started with her stating her interests in so many words, he would have been entirely dismissive. By mysteries he would have assumed she meant mystery novels, which had more in common with penny dreadfuls than with actual literature. Puzzles were slightly better, but she might have only meant the ones occasionally published in the paper that involved trite society jokes as the solutions. He could have put both under the umbrella of playing at intelligence, believing academic pursuits were something young women put on and took off when it suited them like a cloak. But she had lit someone's roses on fire and he had already decided she was interesting, so he was predisposed to view these more charitably now).

"I certainly can't blame her for tiring of balls," he agreed. "Especially with such a wealth of experience with them. They lack the originality to remain interesting throughout a single season, much less..." He didn't remember exactly how many seasons Miss Christabel had, and thought he probably ought not to know the exact number anyway; it would give away that he'd done his research. He waved a hand as if to say well, it's of no consequence though the fact that he'd mentioned it at all suggested otherwise. Endymion hadn't responded to his attempts to fish so far, but Victor was sure if anything was going to lure him into saying more it would be this almost-insult; any good brother would make a defense of her, and how he chose to do so might be telling. If he chose not to do so, it would be even more telling.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Endymion was usually fairly guileless as far as small talk went, happy to skim along on the surface of it and trust in the meaning of what was said. Perhaps Daphnel hadn’t meant to – Endymion assumed he hadn’t meant to – but he frowned slightly at the mention of her experience, all the same. It was rather ill-mannered, he thought, to acknowledge how many seasons a young lady had been out, whether or not the woman was here.

Even a young lady like his sister, who had been out so many seasons she was about to follow Porphyria into spinsterhood and was thus, perhaps, no longer young at all. “A few?” he finished lightly for Daphnel, thinking it better not to put an exact number on it – he had already had to diminish it from saying several or many – because there was simply no convincing positive spin to put on nine seasons, is it now?

“And I suppose she might say her suitors thus far have lacked originality, too,” he countered, because at least, unlike Phyri, Christabel had had some interest. “She’s not one to settle.” (This was... possibly a lie, or a little shade of self-projection onto Christabel; because as far as Endymion knew, any suitors she’d previously entertained had drifted from her and not the other way around. But, clearly, she would never forgive him if he started implying that to friends at the club.)

And, besides, Daphnel had insisted he wasn’t here to lodge a complaint, so Endymion’s smile faded slightly at this turn of events. Perhaps he ought to try a little harder to parry these blows; so he raised an eyebrow in a little returned curiosity. “But it sounds as though the two of you were getting along?”

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Victor wondered whether Endymion Dempsey had guessed his purpose tonight and was being intentionally opaque in everything he said or whether he was somehow oblivious to the subtext. Victor didn't think he was being especially subtle, at least not at the last remark, but the response of a few gave him nothing at all to work with. On the one hand, this was grounds for suspicion. Victor had a sister with a hopeless character flaw; he knew how these sorts of conversations went from the other side. Was the impenetrable wall of deflection here covering up something serious? Or was Victor only seeing monsters in shadows precisely because of his experience trying to convince people to overlook Beatrice's lack of social graces?

The mention of suitors distracted him entirely. It was reasonable and expected that a woman with (as he'd phrased it) experience in the marriage market would have had suitors, but this was the first reference to them he'd heard. Miss Dempsey had talked of men, but in the abstract; he had not determined from her conversation that she had received or rebuffed any offers (or even had gone very far towards one with any particular gentleman), and yet this line from her brother seemed to imply that was the case after all. He felt — defensive? Yes, that was the feeling, odd as it was. Without knowing a thing about any of these previous men (and without having taken any concrete steps to actually join their ranks with the title of suitor yet) he felt that someone, somewhere must have been comparing him with them, and Victor was anxious about being found lacking. The way Endymion had framed it may have been a contributing factor — she's not one to settle was almost a challenge. If none of the previous suitors were good enough, it seemed to say, what would make Victor any different?

He was not without qualities to recommend him, he had to remind himself. He was going to inherit someday, and even without that he had a stable income owing to his position at the hospital. His family may not have been the Pendergasts or the Prewetts but neither were they unknowns. He was intelligent, and they had gotten along in their prior interactions. He hadn't imagined the mirth in her voice or the sparkle in her eyes when he'd suggested the mischief on the patio.

"We were," he agreed. "And I have every expectation that we'll continue to get on well. I may not know her well, but it seems our personalities are complementary. Which is not something I say of many young women," he allowed. It was not something he had said (or even thought) of any young women, to his recollection, but he couldn't admit to that; he may as well just come straight out and tell Endymion he'd go ring shopping tomorrow, at that point.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

To be perfectly honest, Endymion wasn’t sure what was happening here. Daphnel had brought up Christabel, and had seemed to be amused by her and then seemed to be almost critical, but it was certainly beginning to feel that he was assessing her, or making some statement of his own. Endymion rather wished he would be a little more forward with it, if that was the case. He hadn’t known Daphnel, in recent years at least, to have taken a great deal of interest in debutantes at all.

Had something changed there? Had Christabel made him stop and take notice? Endymion was – surprised, or intrigued, and maybe a little impressed. It sounded simply dreadful to say he’d given up hope for Christabel – when she was younger than him, for one, even if in society’s eyes at large women’s prospects were rather less perennial than a bachelor’s – but regardless, she, like Daphnel, had never seemed particularly urgent about it before.

And oh, that was as much a statement as anything, wasn’t it? I have every expectation that we'll continue to get on well. He meant to continue seeing her, getting to know her – was this the scent of courtship in the air? (Endymion had rakish brothers, so he was fairly certain rakes didn’t go about hinting at their intentions to a debutante’s brothers, unless they were stupid and looking for a duel.)

“Well, I’m delighted to hear that,” Endymion said loosely, brimming with good cheer and a genuine smile and not a great deal of judgement. He ought to interrogate Daphnel a little more, probably, to see quite how serious his intentions were, but he had known him long enough to deem him a fairly good fellow without doing further research. “She’s great fun.” And so was Daphnel, and if the setting fires thing had been any indication, they were both the same kind of intellectual oddity – although, if Daphnel did come to call, they really ought not try anything in Lowri Dempsey’s gardens, because their mother would not take kindly to him then. (Try any experimental magic, that was, not the hammock sort of ‘anything’, although – as Dymion recalled with painful awareness – Lowri Dempsey did not take very kindly to that either.)

Still, for the moment Endymion took another sip of his drink, smiled into his glass, and decided he could be afforded a little taste of mischief. “And would you like me to ask her for her impression of you?” he inquired, raising his eyebrows jokingly. (He might have to do that anyway now, he thought, just out of curiosity.)

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"Oh, no," Victor said, hopefully not too quickly. As appealing as it sounded to get some insight into what, exactly, Christabel was thinking or feeling, Endymion Dempsey bringing up this conversation to anyone else in his family was the last thing Victor wanted. Maybe it would have been different if they had been close friends and he knew exactly how Endymion would have handled the conversation — and could be sure of a honest report coming back to him — but that wasn't the case; they were passingly friendly at best. Endymion was certainly more on Christabel's side than his, at any rate, so if there was anything that arose from a conversation like that which might have changed Victor's outlook, he was almost sure not to hear it. And if the only thing he would hear back from Endymion was a high-level positive feeling — well, he had that already. He wouldn't have been thinking about this so seriously if he was not of the opinion that Christabel would accept him, were he to make an offer.

"I'm sure on that subject your sister is perfectly capable of speaking her mind directly," Victor pointed out with some levity. "And she'll have the opportunity soon enough; I believe we've both accepted invitations to the Wildsmith party this weekend."

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Fabulous set by Lady!

“Oh, I’m sure,” he agreed, with a broad smile. He might still have to ask Bel for her side of the story, out of sheer curiosity – but then nothing was much of a secret in their house, so it would probably come out sooner rather than later.

Especially if they were implicitly arranging to see each other at parties. “Well, try not to encourage her to light anything else on fire this time, if you can,” Endymion joked. And don’t you dare hurt her, he almost wished he could add – but this conversation was too casual, and Daphnel’s interest only yet stated delicately; and really, well, that went without saying, didn’t it? If Daphnel did end up coming calling, the whole Dempsey family could certainly agree on that.

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