February 28th, 1891 — Greengrass Home, Bartonburg

Ford had never expected to be found reading Witch Weekly, particularly after the issue earlier that month had claimed he had been bewitched by Miss Belby and presumably fathered her illegitimate child. If he was more involved in Verity and Grace's lives, in the controlling sort of way that he supposed sometimes older brothers must have been, he might have tried to get them to stop reading it, too, but even if it was utterly silly he had never been the sort of person to try and force others to adopt his own opinions. Besides, if it was the same sort of stuff that could be found in cheap romance novels for the most part — well, there were worse things that could happen than the girls getting romantic notions in their head, weren't there? It might make them more eager to marry, he supposed. Maybe Clementine ought to be reading it, instead of overpriced ancient runes textbooks.

He didn't know which of his sisters had left their copy in the parlor that morning, but when he'd glanced at the cover the name Cassius Lestrange had caught his eye, and he couldn't resist flipping through to the appropriate section to read it — then to tear it out and send it to him, because unlike Ford, Lestrange didn't have annoying younger sisters sitting around at home to tell him when he was featured in Witch Weekly. That done, Ford had gone to replace the magazine, but the article immediately behind the fact list on Lestrange was headlined A List of Absolute Essentials for a Girl's Coming Out.

Ford considered walking away from it, but — who was he kidding? He had no idea what the hell he was doing, planning Grace's debut in April. He didn't know if Witch Weekly was really the most reliable source, but it would be good to know what sort of expectations Verity and Grace were walking in with, wouldn't it?

He'd poured himself a cup of tea before starting, but shortly after he was wishing it had been gin instead. The door to the parlor opened and Ford looked up abruptly, shoving the magazine a bit farther down onto his lap to hide it before he realized that it was only Noble.

"Oh, hi," he said, settling back into the chair. "Would you think the..." he glanced at the top of the magazine page and read off the small label for the section: "Social Season Standards section of Witch Weekly is trustworthy, or not?" Obviously he had his own reasons for believing that nothing printed in the pages of the magazine could possibly be true, but... well, some of the stuff about Lestrange hadn't sounded so far-fetched. If this was all really an absolute essential, though, they were fucked.

Noble Greengrass / Cassius Lestrange

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble let the door to the parlor swing shut behind him, and squinted at his elder brother's question. "You're reading Witch Weekly?" he asked, a little incredulous. He had mostly just intended on saying hello, but if Ford was reaching Witch Weekly things might be really dire. Also, it was a Sunday, what else was he supposed to do with his afternoon?

He strode over to the chair across from Ford and dropped into it. "I suppose my opinion depends on what the Social Season Standards has to say," he answered, pouring himself a cup of tea from the same kettle Ford had used.

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford frowned; he did not want Noble to think this was something he regularly did, even if Noble wasn't necessarily the type to judge (at least, he wasn't the type to judge Ford). "One of the girls left it out," he explained, then bent the magazine cover back so that the article he'd been skimming was visible in a single sheet on top. The edge of the paper where he'd torn out Lestrange's fact list stuck up in the air at the seam. "A list of absolute essentials for a girl's coming out," he read, handing it out to Noble so that he could take a look for himself. "But Merlin help us if these are consider essential."

One notable item from the list: a feather at least a foot high (why? so that they could catch it on a chandelier? that sounded like the sort of thing that might happen to Grace). Another: a five piece band (Ford did not even know what instruments were meant to be included in a five piece band; how many stringed instruments did he know of?)

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble took the magazine from Ford and skimmed the article, paling visibly at the list. "People can't actually be doing this," he said, because he felt like he would know if people were regularly throwing Coming Out Balls with all this stuff.

Counterpoint: he hadn't really been to any Coming Out Balls outside of the Hogwarts one, at school and when Verity debuted. Noble tapped his finger against the feather item. "Right? They have to be dramatizing a little."

---

  

---

set by Bee

"I hope so," Ford said, but he honestly wasn't sure. Private coming out balls weren't really a thing for families like theirs, generally. They were for girls who went to expensive finishing schools after Hogwarts, or families who thought the standard Hogwarts Coming Out wasn't elaborate enough, so they were sort of gaudy and excessive by their very nature, weren't they? (Ford was, like Noble, speculating rather than speaking from experience — he didn't think he'd ever been to one).

"Maybe it's different when you're only having a private one because someone died," he said. Maybe, at any rate, he could lean on that as an excuse; not wanting to disrespect their father's memory by throwing some elaborate affair with all the bells and whistles. That excuse would only hold up until their mama got involved, though. If Ford knew his mother at all, he thought he knew she wouldn't tolerate skimping on anything in the name of her late husband.

"I wish I knew bachelors," he lamented. It would have been better to skip this, he thought, and just find someone Grace could marry without having to parade her about the social scene for several months first — but, of course, a plan like that required a finance, and probably the most eligible friend Ford had was Lestrange, who was apparently already spoken for (if Witch Weekly could be believed, anyway).

  

---

Set by Lady!

"It has to be different when you're not wealthy wealthy," Noble suggested, because they were trying to appear established middle class wealthy, not like the Cartwrights or the Selwyns or the Humphrey-Mavises. This whole wishlist of Coming Out Ball items aside, they were going to have to find a way to pull off what seemed, at the moment, to be large and impossible: and Noble knew that if it was seeming large and impossible to him, then it was going to be worse for Ford.

"Yeah," Noble agreed, because life would be easier if they could just attach Grace and Verity and Clementine to husbands without going through the motions of a season. Grace would, he thought privately, probably be better off that way - Noble was not entirely convinced that she had a full season in her.

"This whole weird thing - we're going to have to decide on a guest list, I think. As well as wherever we want to have it."

---

  

---

set by Bee

"At least it's Grace, and not Verity," he remarked under his breath. If the girls had been reading this sort of thing they might both have had their sights set on the whole list, but of the two sisters Ford sometimes thought Grace was the slightly more reasonable one. She responded better, anyway, when he tried to reason with her. Maybe it was just that she was younger; she'd still been a student when their father died, so was more willing to trust him on some of these things. Verity, on the other hand, wouldn't trust a chicken with an egg, at least not if her social season depended on it.

The guest list was an impossible task to consider, at the moment — even worse than foot-high feathers and five-piece bands — so he focused on the other half of his brother's comment. "The Hogsmeade ballroom, surely?" he responded; this was perhaps the only facet of planning that he felt confident in. "Unless you've got a rich friend who wants to volunteer their house for the evening. We certainly can't have them all here."

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble nodded. Grace was easier to wrangle than Verity was, certainly - the eldest of his sisters could be a force of nature, and not in a way that Noble was inclined to find charming. "I don't think Holden would be inclined to do it," he said wryly, "So sure, Hogsmeade Ballroom." Noble raised an eyebrow in a way that was meant to convey we should pay a deposit soon, because then they would have it reserved and would not have to worry about the price going up later.

It wasn't that he thought his sisters were eavesdropping, but more that he wanted to plan for all eventualities, and he did not want an eventuality where they figured out exactly what their brothers were so stressed about. Noble and Ford could keep the family floating on a sea of debt and lies and carefully-timed invoices; none of their sisters, Noble thought, would have been able to keep or handle the secret like they were.

"Maybe we should have it a little early?"

---

  

---

set by Bee

"Early is a relative term," Ford pointed out. He didn't really know that there was one set time things were supposed to happen, when it came to private coming out balls. Maybe it depended a little on why they were throwing them — if it was to try and upstage the Hogwarts Coming Out Ball for their recently-graduated daughter, of course it would be held in the summer. The social season started well before the end of May, though, and Ford had already been thinking they ought to have it earlier than that. It was hard enough to find things Grace was allowed to attend now; he didn't want to inflict another month or two months of art shows and garden tours on himself when he could instead have Grace out and going to parties and presumably doing a much more efficient job of meeting marriageable men there than she was presently. So if Noble meant early in the season, they were entirely of the same mind. If he meant prior to the season, however, Ford wasn't sure that was a good idea — it might make it too obvious that they were desperate. Even if no one suspected their finances, they'd think there was something the matter with Grace, that necessitated foisting her on society when she had exactly no competition. Which might not have been far from the truth, but if there was one lesson Ford had taken from his mother, it was that the truth mattered considerably less than how things looked.

"I was thinking April," he suggested. Before the Hogwarts crowd, but not too early that it would seem suspicious.

  

---

Set by Lady!

"I completely agree," Noble said easily. He fidgeted with the magazine's binding, running his thumb over the little rivets where the pages were attached. "That way she'll be able to go to the May events before -" he waved one hand, as if to indicate the Hogwarts floodgates opening to release all the new debutantes. Noble was worried about Grace standing out in comparison to the graduates - or, he was worried about her either being utterly forgettable or utterly unforgettable (in a bad way,) and felt bad about both fears. Still, he didn't feel bad enough to suggest that they delayed her debut into later in the season.

Trust, but verify, et cetera.

---

  

---

set by Bee

"Yeah," he agreed, understanding entirely what Noble meant with the hand wave. Of course, having a ball before the Hogwarts year had ended did mean that Clementine probably wouldn't be able to attend. Not that she would want to, since she was showing so very little enthusiasm towards her whole future in general and particularly as it related to marriage prospects — too busy buying expensive books behind his back to worry about balls, at least for now.

Maybe if Verity convinced someone to propose to her in the next month, they could just pull Clem out of Hogwarts and make it her Coming Out, too. She'd certainly hate that, but — it would help significantly if he didn't have to budget for two balls, or another year of Hogwarts tuition. It would buy the two of them another whole season, probably, if they played their cards right... not that it was actually on the table. Verity didn't have any serious prospects, he didn't think — or if she did, she hadn't disclosed any of them to him.

"Clem's mad at me, by the way," he said with a flippant shrug as he turned his attention to his tea.

  

---

Set by Lady!

"What's she mad at you for?" Noble asked. He folded the magazine back so the cover faced up at them, and placed it on the table between them. Generally Noble read Clem as being the most reasonable of their sisters - generally, with the exception of the Marital Issue - which was not to say much except that she was somewhere in the middle of Verity's insufferable tendencies and Grace's eccentricity. So - he was pretty sure he would take Ford's side.

Still, of all their sisters - it seemed weird that Clem was the one Ford was fighting with. She was at Hogwarts, surely she had less opportunity.

---

  

---

set by Bee

Ford sighed. He wished, again, that he'd thought to make himself a drink instead of just tea. "Well, she asked me to buy her this... ridiculously expensive book, because one of her professors mentioned it offhand one time, I guess," he said, voice moving from weary to slightly hostile as he recounted the story. "And when I made some excuses about it she just had Mama do it instead. So," he glanced at Noble briefly, trying to imagine how he would react to this next bit, because Ford wasn't actually sure whether it had been warranted or not. "— I stopped her spending money until Easter."

  

---

Set by Lady!

Noble frowned as he listened; generally costing less money had been a mark in Clem's favor, but expensive books were like Verity and her cravings for dresses, and he very much hoped it wasn't a pattern. "Good," he said, because stopping her spending money was good, "They need to take you seriously."

Now if Ford would stop their mother's spending money, Noble would be really proud.

---

The following 1 user Likes Noble Greengrass's post:1 user Likes Noble Greengrass's post
   Fortitude Greengrass

---

set by Bee

Ford started. He hadn't really been expecting Noble to have agreed with him, since he'd felt guilty about it almost immediately after sending the owl. And while he'd had reason to be upset, and Noble would understand his reasons, he was aware that Clementine wouldn't. From his perspective, it might just look like he was being spiteful, or like he was... much more attached to this idea of having authority as the head of the household than he actually was. It was just — it seemed like the sort of thing he wouldn't do, under normal circumstances, so he'd worried that having done it might have tipped his hand too much and shown some of his cards. He'd expected Noble to have something to say about it on that front. He wouldn't have stopped him, of course, if Ford had his mind set to it — not because he thought Noble took him seriously but because he would have made a show of solidarity in front of the girls regardless of how he felt — but in private, he'd expected his brother to have some concerns.

"Yeah," Ford said, a little uncomfortable. Maybe he'd been hoping Noble would try to talk him down from it, instead of just expecting. He desperately didn't like this role he felt he'd just been cast in. Overbearing big brother who needed to be taken seriously, he certainly was not.

"Maybe she'll get over it by the time she visits next week," he suggested, without much real hope of that. Clementine's grudge would last at least as long as her spending money was absent, he assumed, and maybe longer.

  

---

Set by Lady!

"Yeah, maybe," Noble agreed, although the thing with Clem was that she was a little stubborn, and so he wasn't sure that would actually happen. He didn't need to contradict that when Ford knew it was true, though. "Or maybe the teapot thing will be so interesting she forgets." Again - probably not. But until Easter wasn't that much time, hardly any at all, and if they ended up with one sister who had second thoughts before encouraging frivolous spending then surely it was worth a little strife along the way.

---

  

---

set by Bee