June 14th, 1894 - Minister's Ball

Harper always felt sort of odd at these types of events. Mixing socializing with work always seemed like a recipe for disaster. He was of course, always on his best behavior at parties, but this one felt like a test of sorts to see if he could truly uphold the ministry values and other nonsense.

Still he was here because he headed a department and he rather thought Mrs. Dempsey might personally hunt him down if he refused.

At least the them was fun. Feeling as though he was underwater was a new sensation he sort of enjoyed. Everything was a little kitschy but he sort of liked it. The decorations and the drinks; Emmett could always get behind a good theme. It was a pity that it wasn't a costume ball. Still, he had put on a nice suit in a deep greenish-blue, so it fit at the very least. He'd found himself chatting with colleagues for most of the evening, enjoying a couple of drinks, but nothing in excess. There was little to complain about really and he had relaxed into the evening eventually. It was hard not to when he got to chat with other departments he rarely saw and laughed his way through the fact that they all suffered the same sort of bullshit every day.

Excusing himself to get some fresh air, Emmett wandered toward one of the large doors to the terrace, thinking he could use a cigarette. "Oh sorry, I didn't realize someone else was out here." He chuckled, raising his hands in surrender at the figure already occupying the balcony.

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Open for hurling or bro-ing or anything really, give me chaos!

  

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"Absolutely not! What were you thinking?" the debutante's mother called out in a shrill tone as she surprised them on the terrace. It could not have been Don Juan's mother, because she would not have asked the question; she already knew he was never thinking. He hadn't even been doing anything out here with the young woman — not yet, anyway. All her clothes had still been on. But he understood why her mother would swat him away, and took the abuse in stride; he had a reputation, after all. The young woman was spirited away and Don Juan was left idling on the balcony. He wasn't inclined to spring back into action — he'd already been a little bit drunk when he arrived to this thing, but being the brother of the Minister of Magic no one was about to turn him away, and he was a little more drunk now — so he leaned back on the balcony railing placidly, waiting for inspiration to go and do something else. He wanted a hookah, he decided, but wasn't inclined to do anything to acquire one. He wanted a drink, too, and that was a much easier task, but he also couldn't stir himself up for that just yet.

Then someone joined him. Don Juan was puzzled by this — not someone coming to the balcony, but someone coming out alone. He didn't go anywhere alone at parties. He tried not to go anywhere alone period, though sometimes it was unavoidable.

"Just me," he said with a shrug, and the implication that perhaps he didn't really count as someone for the purposes of the man's observation. "What are you about, then?"

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He'd missed the hubbub, he rather suspected, looking at the other, vaguely familiar, man on the balcony and hearing the echoes of whatever mama he'd passed retreating in the opposite direction. Huh. Regardless, at least he hadn't interrupted anything uncouth. He hoped at any rate. "Cigarette, you?" The reflex to turn the question around was ingrained in his brain, but Em wasn't sure he actually wanted to know.

He pulled the case from the inside of his pocket anyway and offered one to the gent casually. It wasn't the best of habits, he knew, but a vice he wasn't quitting any time soon. After lighting his own and taking a drag, Emmett looked out over the London skyline, wondering if he should, in fact, find another balcony, or finish his cigarette quickly and head back in?

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"Same, if you're offering," Don Juan said agreeably. Obviously he hadn't come out here for a cigarette to begin with, but he was already mentally moving past the disappointment of a debutante snatched away before he'd even had a chance to properly flirt. A cigarette was as good a reason as any to be out of the balcony, and the gentleman had offered him one from the case before he'd even finished the ask. Excellent.

"I didn't come to the last one of these," he volunteered. "People were saying it wouldn't measure up to the Ross ball. What do you think?" The other man looked a little familiar but Don Juan hadn't come up with his name yet. In any case, he looked like he attended Minister's Balls; he looked Ministry. Something about his shoulders or his jawline, maybe.

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Emmett was not the man to ask to compare balls. Both Mrs. Ross and Mrs. Demspey frightened him for very different reasons. He was not so foolish as to think he should say anything about either one of them aloud. "Ah, different tastes I believe." He had known Ross a bit better than he knew Dempsey currently, but having overlapped for a lot longer, Em thought it made sense. Mrs. Ross had always had a tight schedule and refined tastes, from what he could gather, Mrs. Demspey was a bit more flashy and a little more fun, but possibly also a little more chaotic.

None of which he would dare to breath aloud.

"The change between leaders is always takes a bit of time to get used to." Harper had worked at the ministry for long enough now to have been through a couple of ministers, though this was his first switch in a more important role. Truthfully it was really only Prewett he had to worry about. "I suppose that extends to their parties as well." Diplomatic as ever. Em took another long drag of his cigarette and flicked some ashes out into the alley below.

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Well, this was boring. Don Juan had been hoping to lure the man into saying something unkind about his sister-in-law... not because he disliked her, only because he would have found it amusing to see whether the other man squirmed when he eventually realized who he was talking to. Instead, he'd gotten the most mild remark someone could possibly make in response to a question like that. How very Ministry of him. Don Juan considered asking a question about Oz — the fellow had said something about leadership, which left an opening to do so — but he doubted that would churn up anything more interesting. If anything someone who worked for his brother would probably be less inclined to insult him than his wife, at least at a party like this.

"Why does this party even exist?" he asked instead. "Relic from the days we were invaded by Normans, or something?" He had nothing against balls, obviously, but he didn't know of any others that were career-specific. And if any career was going to have it's own annual ball, the government paper-pushers didn't seem like the likeliest crowd.

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Emmett turned around so he was leaning backwards with both elbows onto the terrace railing, cigarette dangling from his left hand idly between drags. "You know, I have no idea." He shrugged. Em loved a good party, especially with a fun theme, but preferably not with his coworkers or those he supervised at any rate. It felt weird, mingling with those whose jobs were tied directly to his.

"Comraderie in merriment? Some of these people would never breathe the fresh air of outside of the office otherwise, I suppose." Some people he worked with took their work far too seriously. The Unspeakables hardly ever saw enough daylight, in his opinion. The Aurors were always training; the Research Committee always had their noses in five books at a time. There were too many positions where people were stuck at desks all day; he had never understood how they did it. At least his current spot had him in and out of the office all day. Sure it was more paperwork than he would like, but it was mostly networking and check stadiums and things like that. He loved the sport too much to work in any other department.

Plus, Emmett thought, there were a lot of those in the lower-middle and working class that might not get to enjoy an event like this otherwise.

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Don Juan hmmmed in response, turning over the man's answer in his mind. "Not the sort of people who are much fun at parties, then," he observed. He raised his eyebrows wryly at the other man as if to say aren't we the fortunate ones for having to suffer under the burden of their company — though at least if this party had more than its fair share of sticks in the mud, there was the mercy of their having brought their family members with them. The girl Don Juan had been blocked from flirting with certainly hadn't been a Ministry paper-pusher.

"Or maybe we could incite them to be ridiculous," he mused. If they were the sort who weren't used to letting loose, did that mean they would let even — er, looser, with the right encouragement? "What do you think would happen if we spiked the lemonade, would it end up more fun or just weepy?"

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Emmett could only laugh. A lot of them were quite quiet or a little bit of a stick in the mud. He had been fortunate, because of his station in life, to have more of a social life, but many of the blokes he worked with did not. He had to admire their drive though. Em always looked for employees who could find balance, in addition to knowledge of the sport. His office was so superfluous that it didn't super matter, but he did have standards.

Grimacing at the thought of spiking the punch, he wasn't so sure that was a good idea. The last thing they needed was for everybody to make an utter fool out of themselves. "I doubt it would be much fun," he laughed. "I don't want to go back to work with everyone suffering from imbibing too much drink." Miserable and cranky seemed to be the default at the ministry half the time, he didn't think they needed to make it worse.

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"They've got two days to sleep it off," Don Juan pointed out. He was only thinking of the hangover that followed excessive drink, not any social impacts that might have followed. It had been much too long since he'd had to care what anyone thought of the things he did while he was drunk for it to be top of mind. Everyone just shrugged him off, by now. That's Don Juan Dempsey; what did you expect?

(Things were better that way. No one to disappoint).

"I think my sister was nervous about this," he remarked casually, taking another drag of the cigarette. "But it's hard to tell with her, sometimes."

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Emmett was going to make his best educated guess that the man before him did not work at the ministry. Two days wouldn't be enough if they rarely drank, and frankly embarrassed people were almost worse to deal with. Em was undoubtedly going to feign ignorance if the gent went through with doing anything to the lemonade; he would also promptly leave. It wasn't that he'd become a wet blanket in more recent years, he just wasn't a dick about it.

"Your sister?" He had hard time following that train of thought and didn't feel weird about asking.

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"Thomasina Dempsey," he answered easily. Then, as if everyone did not already know this and might need it explained, he continued, "It's her party. Well — technically my brother's, I guess, if you go just on the name, but obviously it's hers." Don Juan didn't suppose Ozymandias had any party-planning skills or instinct. Though honestly he wouldn't have said Thomasina did either, and yet here they were. His sister-in-law probably would be more in her element if someone suffered an accident and started bleeding out on the dance floor midway through the party... but wouldn't the gossipers have a field day with that, even if the accident had nothing to do with her or her party planning.

"She probably wants it to be a success," he mused, as though it had only just occurred to him. "She'd be cross if I spiked the punch. At least the first year." There would be four more of these before his brother was up to re-election, unless he was either unseated or murdered first, so there was plenty of time to stir things up later. By the second or third year he wagered Thomasina would be just as bored with an uneventful party as he was.

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At the mention of the Minister being his brother, Emmett straightened up a little as if either Dempsey or his wife had walked in. That the man before him had thought spiking the punch was a good idea was now hitting Em in a different way. "I would imagine so." Emmett coughed out after taking a drag of his nearly-gone cigarette. "She does not strike me as somebody you would want to be cross with you." For all Minister Dempsey seemed to be a little more relaxed, what Emmett had gathered about his wife was that she was, well, not.

"It would certainly make for interesting dinner discussion, I suppose." Emmett was fairly close with his siblings, couldn't imagine trying to sabotage a big night for them in any manner, but he had also gleaned that the Dempseys were not exactly the most normal family one could imagine.

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   Don Juan Dempsey

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"Oh, she's not so bad," Don Juan replied with a shrug. He'd taken the comment about not somebody you would want to be cross with you to be a slightly more polite way of saying she was a harpy without the feathers — in other words, as a wholly negative remark. If Thomasina had a reputation for being a battle-axe he supposed it mostly came from people watching her fight with Ozymandias in public. She was rather polite otherwise, he usually found — but with enough vicious high-profile arguments in public he supposed it didn't matter so much what one was usually like. (Maybe the same was true for him — maybe he had done enough high-profile terrible things by now that he could be as circumspect as a lamb at parties and still keep the same reputation. He wasn't as circumspect as a lamb, and had no intention of becoming so, but it was an interesting thought experiment).

"Oz makes her out to be worse than she is," he continued. "Anyway, I think she'd only pretend to be cross with me. I bet she'd think it was at least a little funny, even if she didn't admit to it." Maybe he was projecting there; he wasn't actually so well acquainted with his sister-in-law that he could guess what she was thinking behind her reactions. He thought Porphyria would find it funny, though, and he thought Porphyria and Thomasina had more in common than most people would have guessed.

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Emmett had only meant that she had an air about her that suggested he should not aid in spiking the punch. He liked his job and he didn't want to lose it for something like this. "I'm not sure I've said two words to the new minister." Emmett admitted with a chuckle. He had only seen the pair together at things like this.

"Probably not the best way to start their tenure." Emmett agreed with a shrug. He sister would skin him alive if he messed with an event of hers, so he felt that sort of respect should be honored.

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"You're not missing anything," Don Juan said flippantly. Some families always made an effort to present a united front, to hold each other high in conversation with anyone else, but Don Juan clearly didn't subscribe to that philosophy. Why should he need to waste his breath bolstering his brother's ego when Ozymandias was perfectly capable of doing that for himself?

He took a long drag to finish off his cigarette and stubbed it out against the underside of the balcony railing. "Thanks for the cigarette," he said, intending to head inside and find another dance partner.

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