27 October, 1891 — Living & Dead Mixer, Hogsmeade Ballroom

Henrietta hadn't wanted to come to this. She shouldn't come to this, because technically she was still in mourning (at least for the moment — she still hadn't determined whether one was expected to fully mourn someone who had stayed around as a ghost). Her mother was coming, however, and as it was her first event in her new life (her words, not Henri's — Henri thought new life was an inopportune turn of phrase but couldn't think what would suit better) she wanted her family to come out and support her. Henrietta thought Hermione didn't want to be here, either, but she had dutifully answered her mother's call. They'd only been here ten minutes, but already Henrietta was nearing a nervous breakdown. She hadn't spoken to her mother one-on-one since the night she'd died, and she didn't want to. True, a ballroom didn't seem a very likely setting for a confrontation, but she couldn't entirely dismiss the idea. It would be the first opportunity Mama had since the funeral, since she was at home with Holden and Henrietta had been stashed away with her sister (presumably to lessen the inconvenience she represented to Holden).

Every ghost she saw gave her a start, as she kept expecting them to be her mother. She knew she couldn't avoid her all night, but she was hoping that if she did have to interact with her it would be with another sibling present so that she could glue herself to their side, smile, and say nothing. To that end she was planning on staying as close to Hermione's side as she could manage the entire evening — or at least, that was her plan initially. She quite forgot that once she spotted Mr. Greengrass.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed at him. She'd crossed the ballroom to meet him without a second thought, though it had taken longer than she would have liked to move through the room with her mourning crepe billowing out around her like a cloud. "We shouldn't be seen together."

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Noble Greengrass Cassius Lestrange

  

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He'd been nervous lately, for obvious reasons, and this night was making it worse. All the ghosts. What if she was here, and worse, what if she remembered?

It turned out that Noble shouldn't have been worried about Mrs. Cartwright, he should have been worried about Miss Cartwright, because apparently she had crossed the room to tell him they shouldn't be seen together.

(He really could have picked a better accomplice, Noble thought distantly.)

"It's my brother's event," Noble hissed back. Maybe that was an over-simplification, but this felt to him like a Ford Greengrass production. Besides that, they'd been going to almost everything as a unit ever since Verity's kidnapping — Noble wasn't going to be the first person to break that, even though he desperately didn't want to be here. "What are you doing here?"

Wasn't she supposed to be in mourning?

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   Henrietta Cartwright

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set by Bee

What did he mean, his brother's event? She'd never heard that he had a dead brother before. In light of recent events, having a ghost sibling seemed like very relevant information that he might have mentioned earlier. Not that there had been much time to talk about it on the night it had happened (and not as though Henrietta had even realized the relevance of ghosts right away, since her mother's spirit had taken some time to make her presence known to the world), but he might have mentioned it afterwards when she'd written him. She wondered if she ought to express some sort of condolences for his brother, but decided against it. She didn't particularly appreciate people expressing condolences for her mother to her, because it made no sense when her mother wasn't even actually gone. Presumably she might have felt differently if circumstances had been different — if she had liked her mother or if she had not actively participated in the moments of her death. In any case, she decided not to offer condolences.

"It's my mother's first event since — you know," she explained rather miserably. "So we're all meant to be here to support her, mourning or not. I haven't actually seen her yet."

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Right, Mrs. Cartwright's first event since Noble pulled her out of the water. (And, he realized — her first event since they'd pushed her back in.) He swallowed. "Oh," Noble said. He was going to have to avoid her. This had been more doable at the funeral, where Mrs. Cartwright was the only ghost — he was not entirely sure he'd be able to pull it off now.

"We shouldn't be talking," he said. She'd pointed that out, but also she was here, and — what if Mrs. Cartwright saw them together, and it sparked something in her ghostly memory? (He really did need to talk to Ford about how ghost-memories worked. And soon, too, if things like this were going to happen.)

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set by Bee

"I know," Henrietta replied, as though she had not just crossed a ballroom in order to do exactly that. She made no move to depart. Of course she knew that she shouldn't be talking to him... or at least, they shouldn't talk in public, and it was highly unlikely they'd be afforded any other opportunity. They'd never planned to be alone in the first place, although it had happened twice now, and one of those accidental tête-à-têtes had been what got them into this predicament in the first place. Still, she was reluctant to leave without saying something. There was so much that she had been thinking since the incident at the Sanditon, and she couldn't share it with anyone. She was too afraid to even write it in her journal. He was the only person that she could speak to, and they shouldn't be seen speaking. It was poetic justice, she supposed, but it left her feeling as though she might burst.

"She's been trying to get a hat," Henri blurted out. "To cover up that her head is a little misshapen now. But I don't think she's managed it. Apparently it's fretfully difficult to shop as a ghost."

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Rune made this! <3

Miss Cartwright said she knew, but she was also still standing here, not ending their conversation. It could hardly be the most conspicuous thing going on in a ballroom full of dead people, but Noble didn't want to take their chances.

He didn't have the chance to try and extricate himself before Henrietta started talking again. Noble frowned, remembering the shape of Mrs. Cartwright's head. She had been a rather fashionable woman, before they killed her. It had to be frustrating.

"I wonder if the Spirit Division could help her with that," Noble said, "I'm sure she's not the first ghost to want to change their wardrobe. Has she talked to them at all?"

He definitely shouldn't be talking to Miss Cartwright about Mrs. Cartwright, but — he felt bad. For the ghost, and for her daughter.

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set by Bee

Henrietta found a place where the embroidered hem of her sleeve was starting to come undone a bit and picked at it with one fingernail. She was looking at her sleeve rather than at him when she answered. "I don't know. I haven't really spoken to her. She's at home with Holden, and he —" she hesitated slightly, wondering if there was a kind way to phrase this. It had not felt particularly kind to her, when he had announced that she needed to leave the house for an indefinite period of time and would become the burden of Hermione in the meantime, but Mr. Greengrass was Holden's friend and she didn't want to speak poorly of him. Besides, it was probably for the best that she wasn't in the same home as Mama at the moment — and she was a burden, anyway. There was no other term for a debutante in mourning. She was incapable of doing anything useful for anyone, and could not even fulfill her primary purpose of husband-hunting until these black clothes went away.

" — sent me to my sister's," she continued with a melancholy shrug. "So mostly I hear things second-hand. And sometimes she speaks at these events, but that's just — generally speaking," she said with a slight wave of her hand. "Not speaking to me. Sometimes I don't know if she notices I'm there at all," she admitted. Which was for the best, because it wasn't as though Henrietta was eager to be caught in conversation with her, but at the same time it stung just a little bit. Even murdering her hadn't been enough to elevate Henrietta to a position of notice in her mother's eyes.

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Holden wasn't doing well. Noble had known that ever since talking to him at Mrs. Cartwright's funeral, but that still didn't mean his sending Henrietta to her sister's was a course of action Noble could condone. In the face of familial strife, the Greengrass family circled the wagons. Upper Class families had to do no such thing, because they had the secure cushion of money, and could afford to discard one another because of it.

He still did not entirely understand Henrietta's relationship with her mother. Noble had his issues with his own mother, but she had always loved him. It seemed like that wasn't the case for Mrs. Cartwright and her youngest daughter, and he didn't entirely get it. At least, if Mrs. Cartwright was still ignoring Henrietta, that maybe-meant that she didn't remember the incident that led to her death.

"I'm sure she'll speak more when she — gets used to her new life," he tried, although he was not at all sure. It was one of those things that people said. "Do you get along with your sister?"

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set by Bee

His tone was comforting; it implied that Henrietta should want to be speaking to her mother and looking forward to when she settled in and was more herself. Henrietta wasn't sure. She wasn't sure whether Mama would ever want to take more notice of her, now that she had moved out of the house and was no longer a daily reminder of her unfinished business as matron of the family. She wasn't sure whether she wanted Mama to notice her more or talk to her more.

The question about Hermione confused her. There were no nuances to her relationships with any of her siblings. She got along with Hermione because they were sisters; it had never occurred to her that there was another alternative. They had hardly spoken to each other for most of the social season, since Henrietta's debut, but wasn't that just what was expected for grown sisters? Hermione had her own responsibilities, in her own household. Henrietta was not one of her responsibilities. At least, she hadn't been until their mother died.

"I, ah — yes," she decided. She didn't sound particularly sure about it, but she had no reason to say no. "She's been very good to open her home to me."

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   Noble Greengrass

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There was something about her tone, further reiterating for Noble two ideas: 1) rich families were very odd, 2) the Cartwrights were particularly odd for a rich family. Neither of these were new ideas, but they were solidified. And — not for the first time — he felt bad for Henrietta. But she did need to stop talking to him in person — what if Mrs. Cartwright remembered?

And what if she'd already been a ghost when he cast the weather charm?

"I'm sure it'll be good to live with her," Noble said again, trying to be kind. It had to be better than living with Mrs. Cartwright alive had been. (Her treatment of her daughter on the beach had not endeared her to Noble.) "You'll have to let me know."

For better or worse, they were attached to one another now.

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set by Bee

She was being dismissed, she felt. Whether he had intended it or not, that was the message she took away from the phrase you'll have to let me know, and having graduated from the Pendergast School she was not one to miss or ignore social cues dropped into a ballroom conversation. Still, there was something about his dismissal that she liked — there was the implication that they would talk again, and it felt more genuine than just the usual pleasantries. After what they'd been through together she might have expected the opposite; he could have been doing everything possible to keep her at arm's length, not inviting her to share stories about life at her sister's.

"Alright," she agreed with a nod. "I will."

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