4th April, 1893 — Twillbright Annual Ball

Endymion had mostly adhered to this ball’s theme of ‘Time’ by arriving fashionably late. It had been dark outside, but the ballroom’s sky ceiling at this juncture still suggested a hazy sunset – and after admiring the clouds drifting in the watercolour sky for a while, he had turned his attentions to finding someone he knew.

Well, he’d found Oz already, but lingering too long in his brother’s company when he could be in practically anyone else’s was never Endymion’s plan for the evening. So he had an ear on their half-bored conversation, and his eyes on the busy ballroom.

Until he saw her, and forgot what he’d been searching for. She was dancing – she was dancing with someone else; he felt a savage pang of jealousy, but still couldn’t bring himself to look away. He’d never seen her before, but she was beautiful. Mesmerising. After that New Year gala, he had been wary for a while of unreal feelings, but – he hadn’t even drunk anything yet tonight. And she was... she had Poppy Dashwood’s deep brown eyes, and Thistle Potts’ mass of freckles, and even Undine’s wild red hair, and somehow it was impossible not to be moved by her.

“Oz,” he said, abruptly not caring what else they had been talking about. He tapped his brother’s arm impatiently and nodded his head briefly in her direction. “Who is that?”

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Ozymandias Dempsey/Fortitude Greengrass & Josephine Beauchene/Miriam Hitchens

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   Miriam Hitchens, Ozymandias Dempsey

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Ozymandias had been saying something about the decor (not that he had any real opinions about the decor, but Oz could always be counted upon to create an opinion whenever someone prevailed upon him to have one) and wondering whether it would be gauche to smoke a cigarette when Endymion interrupted him mid-sentence. He had always indulged in tobacco more for the aesthetic than for the nicotine, in the past: cigars in the club or after a dinner party with a scotch in the other hand; snuff before sex if a partner offered it; a cigarette in a theater lobby mostly as a conversational prop. Not an actual habit. Since seeing Sophia, he'd found himself wanting to smoke the way that she did: cigarettes to accentuate the tension of a moment, casting emotions into starker relief — an etching of a moment instead of a pencil sketch — or, in cases like this, as a treatment for restlessness. He was resisting the habit for now, but couldn't entirely ignore the urge. This dreary ball — time, allegedly, but probably the actual theme was time crawls — could certainly be improved by a string of cigarettes.

At least, that was his feeling on the matter until he followed Endymion's nod and spotted the only woman in the ballroom he could possibly have been talking about. Ozy suddenly didn't need a cigarette. He didn't know her — that was, they had never been introduced — but he was sure he must have known of her. Society wasn't large enough that such a woman could have gone unnoticed and unremarked upon very long. It took a second for him to go through his mental catalogue of society and land on the likeliest candidate. There had been talk already, of course. She may not have been in the country long, but one did not emigrate with a veela into the midst of British society and without creating a stirring of rumors, and for all his pretenses Ozymandias did pay a good deal of attention to what society was talking about. "I can guess," he responded wryly, though he thought there was little chance he was wrong.

(The most damning piece of evidence he realized only after speaking: he'd lost track of Thomasina. They hadn't been together since they'd arrived, and typically at social events they were seen in each other's company only a handful of times throughout the night, but Oz always knew where she was. Parties with his wife were like a choreographed dance the whole night through; he didn't lose track of his partner's steps, and never missed his cue to rejoin her to stage a scene. For him to be this wholly distracted, and that at such a seemingly innocuous event, smacked of magical intervention).

Hopefully Endymion didn't plan to make too much of a fool of himself. On the one hand, they were in a ballroom; he could hardly do much. On the other hand, he did have a bit of a history with veela.

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   Endymion Dempsey, Miriam Hitchens

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Outfit

Josephine delighted in dancing. She enjoyed the swish of her skirts, the swell of the music, and yes, even the attention she drew upon herself merely by existing in the room. Normally, she didn't take pleasure in drawing attention to herself in such an ostentatious way, but when she danced, all that went out the window. When she danced, she felt almost as happy as when she walked the woods outside Hogsmeade (not that she'd ever tell her brother or her chaperone that), just this side of blissful.

Her dance partner was attractive, it was true, but he wasn't really interesting, so when the dance concluded, she made polite, curtsied, and stepped away briskly, a sly half-smile on her face as she made her way off the dance floor toward the refreshments. Her throat was quite dry from exertion, and she sought a drink, of course. Unsurprisingly, many eyes in the room were on her.

Her smile faded.

When she stopped dancing, it was no longer quite as fun to have all the attention on her. She swept up a glass and took a sip, not even caring what the glass contained, before glancing across the ballroom again. Two men in particular stood out, staring in her direction, just as everyone else was — they looked alike, unlike her family, but then, she was adopted. Presumably, they were brothers. Josephine knew many of the wizarding community were related, especially in an insular community like Hogsmeade, but she didn't know who they were. She was new here. She had never met most of the community.

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The following 1 user Likes Josephine Beauchene's post:1 user Likes Josephine Beauchene's post
   Endymion Dempsey

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Josephine speaks English with a heavy French accent

Beauty by MJ

“I meant whether you knew her name,” Endymion chided, because I can guess was not in the least helpful to him. Oz was always the worst person to interrogate when one wanted something particular – and he could probably also guess what she was, if he were to try and explain it. (But he wasn’t interested in trying to do anything when the admiration that had just washed over him was so delightfully effortless. He liked this feeling, being in it without a care. It was floating along fate’s stream, unresistingly letting go of all control. What did anything else in the world matter now?)

She wasn’t dancing anymore. He ought not to have asked Oz anything, because in his periphery, he could sense his brother staring too. And they weren’t the only ones: half the ballroom were letting their eyes linger as she ventured across the room to get a drink.

He felt suddenly thirsty, too, but at that moment she had looked at him – or, at least, in this vague direction – and Endymion felt that it was now or never, a chance on the cusp of slipping away. He didn’t bother looking back. “Never mind. I’m going to –” make her acquaintance, he was sure he had been going to say, not about to waste time when the loveliest woman on earth was mere feet away... “marry her,” he may have finished instead, but he shrugged it off without correcting himself because those seemed like much the same thing.

Keen as he was on this outcome, he did consider that making too quick a beeline for her might preemptively ruin his chances, so he slowed his stride – which also gave him the chance to tug his shirt collar straight before he greeted her, almost tentatively, with his most earnest smile... and nothing else, because every single idea of sane things to say had promptly vanished from his head.

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   Josephine Beauchene

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Oz might have given his brother a real answer, except that at that moment the woman (creature) had looked in his direction and he had momentarily lost the ability to form coherent words. His mouth went dry and his tongue was too sluggish. This interaction already felt sour to him, no matter how beautiful she was (and no matter that she was ostensibly innocent in this; it was hardly an act of aggression for her to merely look in their direction, however it felt). He didn't enjoy feeling as though he had been robbed of his charm or wit, the two pillars around which he'd built his public persona for most of his adult life. So he was keen to pull his brother off to the side and find something else to do with their time and attention, but of course Endymion had other plans.

He was going to make a damned fool of himself, sure enough, and it became immediately apparent to Oz that the fact of their being in a crowded ballroom was hardly going to prevent him. "Endymion Keats Dempsey," he hissed under his breath, but the idiot was already smiling across the room at her like a fool and probably hadn't heard him — and certainly wasn't going to be so easily dissuaded from foolishness, if he had. It would only be harder to pry him away if he actually made it across the room and started talking to her (and who knew what she might do or say that would make everything worse), so to prevent that, Ozymandias stuck his foot out into his brother's path, hoping to trip him. Maybe the floor could knock some sense into him, although admittedly the chances of that weren't high — but in any case, a fall might succeed in making him look graceless enough to be dismissed by the young veela.

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   Endymion Dempsey, Josephine Beauchene

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Oz was right about that – Endymion wasn’t listening. His brother’s voice was dimmed to nothing, all his own thoughts scattered, and the entire pivot around which the world was fixed only about seven paces away from him at this present moment.

Endymion had been about to make it six paces, but he wasn’t looking at his feet. Naturally. Somehow, his shoe found an obstacle on its way to the floor and sent him stumbling. He half-tumbled; half-recovered himself in a less-than-graceful way, hoping she hadn’t seen; and at this point, Endymion might have readily given up his cause for lost and turned on his heel for now... but the ballroom floor was so slippery that there was no opportunity to change direction. He skidded another pace towards her and – with nothing to catch himself on – ended up sprawled right at her feet.

Curses. That, he supposed mournfully, said it all before he’d even opened his mouth.

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She knew why they were staring. Why most of the ballroom couldn't stop staring at her — some out of disgust, the rest out of desire. Lust, even. It was her nature that captured their attentions, and while she disliked it, part of her relished in the attention. These two, these brothers...well. One of them began making his way over to her, only to stumble, and tumble, to the floor, finding himself at her feet.

She couldn't help but let out a giggle. "Monsieur, are you well?" she inquired politely, though she did not bend forward to offer assistance to him. He could find his own way to his feet, far as she was concerned. Josephine Beauchene could not find a clumsy fool attractive, no indeed. Pierre was somewhere, Josephine wasn't entirely sure where, but he would certainly not approve.

She rather pointedly did not offer him her name.

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Josephine speaks English with a heavy French accent

Beauty by MJ

She was talking to Endymion; that was bound to go poorly. Oz might have pressed a hand to his forehead in exasperation for the situation, except that would have meant pulling his eyes away from her. At the very least it didn't seem to be going well, so that was something. She'd laughed, and it seemed more as though she was laughing at him rather than with him. Maybe the interaction would end without any further intervention necessary on his part. One could hope.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

She had a beautiful laugh. She could laugh at him all day, if she liked; Endymion wouldn’t mind at all.

Was he well? That was a very good question. “Never better,” he breathed – Shakespeare had said it well enough: the course of true love never did run smooth, and Endymion would take his bruised pride and knees utterly willingly. “Would you –” he said, shifting onto his knees to halfway right himself – and his mind might not be in his own thrall for the moment, but it was working well enough to finish his sentence in French instead, for she was evidently French. (Of course she was French.) Perhaps that would soften la belle dame.

“May I have a hand, mademoiselle?” A hand, her hand. To help him up; for the next dance; in marriage. Any would do.

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   Philomena Sprout

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Josephine tried not to giggle again, as the man kneeling at her feet slipped into French — she knew it was fashionable for the wealthy to speak the tongue she'd grown up with — and asked her, her, to help him to his feet! Or perhaps something else, Josephine was used to sudden, unnecessary, and quite rude proposals of marriage. Such things had been stalking her for years. She took a step back from him, raising a delicate, gloved hand as if to say No way, and said, in perfect French, "Is that not quite rude?"

Then, without preamble, she turned to find her adoptive brother, Pierre, behind her — when he'd arrived, she couldn't say, but gratefully he offered her his arm, murmuring that it was time they left. And so she began to walk away.

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Ozymandias Dempsey | Endymion Dempsey
If Endymion wants to try and follow her, he is welcome. :D

  

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Josephine speaks English with a heavy French accent

Beauty by MJ

If Ozy had not already been annoyed with the veela (for the inconvenience of having turned Endymion into a drooling mess; for the distraction of pulling his attention away from the things he actually cared about at the party; for the sheer fact of her existence at all) he might have found her reaction to Endy's gesture a little funny. At least a few people had turned to look when he'd fallen, though, and of course a fair few had already been looking this direction anyway as they followed the unnatural woman with their eyes. By this point his brother was making quite the spectacle of himself, and Oz, cognizant of the attention, thought it best to intervene before Endymion could do anything pointedly stupid, like throw himself at the young woman's feet as she turned to leave.

He stalked over and grabbed Endymion's arm to haul him to his feet. "Come on," he muttered in a clipped tone. "Let's get a drink."

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Someone helped him up, but it wasn’t her. How could she just go like that?

“She thinks I’m rude,” Endymion moaned, still gazing after the redhead even as Oz started picking him up off the floor. “And clumsy, and probably mad,” he lamented, unresisting of his brother’s hold on his arm, but making no move towards getting a drink either. “Can’t you tell her that I’m not?” he pleaded, finally granting Oz a glance, though he hadn’t yet fully turned his head away from her.

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Oz scowled. "I make it a point not to lie to beautiful women," he said (as though this had ever been an actual policy of his). "And you are mad if you think I'm letting you go after her. Have you ever tried interacting with a human woman, hm?" He did not think the frank statement that the redhead was not human would be any sort of revelation; he had pieced together who (and what) she was within a second or so, and Endymion wasn't entirely stupid.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

A little distance from her allowed Endymion to be at least partially distracted from her beauty again, although it still took a beat to comprehend Oz’s comment about human women. “I know lots of human...” he began, in protest, just as the meaning sank in. “She’s a veela,” he echoed instead. “Why is she here?” Here, in the middle of a ballroom, an enclosed space, drawing everyone’s eye. (The veela he’d known hadn’t been in society.)

Endymion found his gaze lingering on her still, and shook his head a little as if he could shake himself out of it. He did manage to, for a moment, and he offered his brother a frown instead. “And how can you just –” he gestured at his apparent state of general composure to mean resist her?

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Maybe Endymion was entirely stupid, after all. How had it not been immediately obvious to him that the woman had an unnatural pull? Did Endymion often feel so compelled to make a fool of himself at the first sight of a pretty girl, or did he have a complete and total lack of introspection, to have not even considered that it was odd that such things were suddenly occurring to him out of nowhere? But nevermind; at least he had put it together now, and the woman was walking away, so presumably he'd only recover more of his wits from here on out. Oz already felt less pressure in his chest, though he still couldn't resist another glance in her direction as she moved through the ballroom, with the crowd parting around her like so much water.

He knew exactly what Dymion meant by his unfinished question, and in response he reached over and tweaked his brother's ear. "Because I've got some god-damn dignity," he said with a scowl (and nevermind that he had just resorted to the same antagonizing gesture he would have used on his brother when he was ten). Though honestly, Endymion being here and being stupid may have helped with that, somewhat — he couldn't sabotage his brother's efforts to make a fool of himself and fantasize about whisking the girl out of the ballroom for a private tete-a-tete at the same time, so he'd had to prioritize. And anyway, Sina would have been properly annoyed if he'd gone tripping over his own tongue trying to get a dance with her. Not because she would have cared that he flirted with another woman, nor that she would have blamed him for being drawn to the veela — but rather because the whole ordeal would have been so embarrassing to anyone except him, and she would have resented having had to be embarrassed for his sake.

"I'm sure someone will do worse, before the night's through," he continued by way of some slight consolation. "They shouldn't have brought her here. It's playing with fire."

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MJ is the light of my life <3