Gravenmere Court - A Late August Row | Benji

Saturday,
25th of August, 1923.
3:15 pm.

The day was warm, and Ellen felt pleasantly drowsy. It had not been a typical afternoon, still wasn't, really. For one, the Minister for Magic was, at present, occupying a chair on their lawn. Two, she tilted the open parasol back from her shoulder a fraction, and there was Benji Laurence, in front of her, where he had been for some minutes. Three, and it was this fact, precisely, that had made the afternoon atypical. The Laurences had come through the hall Floo at some time half past ten, the Minister first and the rest of his family as the green fire gave them up. They had been greeted by all four Graymeres, her father at the center, set to shake the Minister's hand as though it were any neighbor's.

Benji was her priority, that was clear. She and William had been informed of the hosting on the nineteenth, and neither had said anything against it - not because they had nothing to say on the matter, but because the pair of them were far too sensible to speak about it at length. Their mother was not the hovering sort, exactly; she simply decided things, particularly once she and Father had conferred, and a decision in that quarter was rarely announced so much as discovered. The guest wing had been turned out, Heddy was already provisioning, and none of it had waited on the informing, which said something about when the matter had actually been settled.

William, for his part, had received the news with something nearer interest than resignation. A sitting Minister for Magic - in his lifetime - coming to Gravenmere. They had all seen the man before, naturally; the whole family had stood in the Ministry's atrium with the rest of Britain. But an atrium was one thing. Their table was another, and William had said as much at dinner the night before, twice, quite earnestly, and no one had argued with him.

And Ellen, whatever her own feelings on the arrangement - which were neither here nor there - could not pretend the visit was a small one. It was rather the opposite of small, and she knew it, and had dressed accordingly. A year ago the name Laurence had been a good name on a seating chart. Since January it had been the government. And the government's son was sitting before her. Well, 'son'.. that was an oversimplification, but not one she was disposed to argue with herself about. Benji was Laurence enough for every purpose the visit had.

Luncheon had run two hours, full of delicious things and plenty of conversation. But as the sun went long, William had turned around in his chair and proposed the lake: that the afternoon was being wasted, the water was flat, and he meant to have a turn of it before the light went. And what a lovely idea that was.

Oh, then be a dear and take the young people with you, their mother had said, sweetly. Whether any of that had landed on him as an imposition, Ellen could not tell. Oh, well.

By three they were down at the eastern boathouse, and out on the water before quarter past. William rowed even and unhurried, the oarlocks creaking in their leather at each catch. And the shore went away from them at the speed of a walk. She had looked back once. The lawn had already made the families into figures, with their chairs, tables, parasols, a scatter of color in which no house, no blood, no nation could be told apart at that distance.

Something about that image caused her brows to furrow, just ever so slightly.

And now, she was looking at Benji.

.. she was not sure what to say.

The rowing had slowed. William easing the oars in, letting the boat drift and with the creaking gone, the quiet came and settled. Maybe he had tired.

It was not a problem she was accustomed to having. Ellen generally knew the correct thing to say; the difficulty had simply never come up before, of what to say when nothing had been said to her first. When she thought about it, every conversation she and Benji Laurence had ever held had come attached to some form of.. purpose. Like, a house matter, a shared class, or, say, to react in some manner to whatever scampish thing he had said next. But she had never once simply talked with him, with no object in it. Six years of the same table, same house, and she could not confidently have said what he thought about any of it. Including, now, this.

She took a glance away, for a moment.

The lake was in one of its obliging moods. Flat, carrying the light all the way out from the shore, just enough breeze to keep them cool without being frightful across the skin. Along the north bank the oaks stood in their own reflections, and had done for as long as her family had; it was those which Father had made something of once, when she and William were very small. The tree and the water, one showing the other its true shape. She had not thought of it in years. But did so now, for no reason she could name. The rushes ran thick where the water went shallow, greener than the lawns and a good deal wilder, and the dragonflies were working along the margin. Out east, the herons kept their stations by the boathouse, still as they had been all afternoon, unbothered, as ever.

She didn't know if it would all be the same, come next summer. The way the water slid, the golden light. Two weeks from tonight she would be on the train, and next August there would be no train, and this was the last summer the lake would be hers in this particular way — a schoolgirl's. Free and so lovely. She liked rather that. The word, feeling it. How lovely things were.

Her gaze returned, and she thought she should speak. But there the matter of William. Right there at the oars, besides, taking in whatever she opened with, which rather narrowed the field.

Unless..

"I am sorry, Willie, but would you give us a moment?" she said, as she removed her wand from one of her skirt's deep pockets. She raised the wood, and cast; "Muffliato."

William, to his credit, asked nothing and said nothing as a distinct, but comparatively mild buzzing sound filled his ears. He shipped the oars properly, settled back against the thwart with his hat over his eyes, and became, without a word, scenery. An arrangement she suspected he had been waiting to make since the boathouse. Oh, sweet Willie.

"Benji," Ellen began, softly. "May I ask you a question?"

It was the last few days of summer, and Benji was relishing every single one. In a few short months, he'd be graduated and off into a world he'd have to make his own. For a boy who had spent his young life on the streets, learning how to survive off of his own wit, it wasn't nearly as daunting for him as it may be for others. Certainly, life had changed and Benji had been taken into the world of the wealthy and elite, but it didn't mean adulthood was any less terrifying.

In every way that mattered, Benji was thankful for his beginnings - not for the trauma it put him and his little sister through - but for the resilience it taught him, and how to navigate uncertainty with his chin up. For the silver spoon crowd, perhaps they rested a bit more on their laurels, knowing their families would be there to catch them if they failed. Benji had no such illusions. While the Laurences and Barlowes were good to him, he'd always been independent-minded. He knew if worse came to worse, he could take care of himself and would, if need be.

Ostentatious castles, money, luxury...all of it was nice, and Benji would never turn his nose up at any of it. But he could live without it all.

James had other plans. The Graymeres were a family he'd been eyeing to make alliances with for awhile. Pureblooded. Wealthy. Well-respected. His uncle had mentioned that he hadn't felt outright support from them regarding his administration's agenda and was interested in pinning down where they stood. With their political support, it would be another powerful chess piece on his board; one he could wield in Cornwall when the wizarding world exercised their sovereignty from the muggle government that sought to keep hold on them.

Without their open support, it was still a friendly alliance. One he could source potential future marriages from for the younger generation when the time came, or at the very least maintain as another respectable connection among Britain’s old families. The invitation to stay the weekend was welcomed with interest and accepted readily, though Benji suspected James viewed the entire affair less as a holiday and more as an opportunity to quietly take the measure of their hosts.

Benji had been given no particular assignment, other than to behave himself and act like the gentleman James had taught him to be. His uncle held no illusions that the wild streak had been tamed out of Benji, but he certainly expected the now seventeen-year-old to know when the wield it, and when to keep it tightly locked away.

For Benji's part, he was simply here for a good time.

Ellen had been his housemate for six years now, and in that time they'd never...truly become friends. It seemed an acquaintance of tolerance on both ends. She didn't really get under his skin and he tried not to annoy her. They interacted at times, in classes and meals and the occasional passing in the common room. He thought he remembered playing Wizard's Chess with her once or twice in their younger years, but nothing that truly stood out in his memory fondly.

She was quiet, from what he saw of her. He was loud and boisterous. Should he have made more of an effort to get to know her over the years? Perhaps, but he supposed that's what they were here for now.

Why he was sat on a boat in silence with Ellen and her brother, he didn't quite know but Aunt Amelia had given him a look when the suggestion was made. The polite thing was to go along without complaint and pretend being ferried about on a bit of wood was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

Awkward as it might be.

"I am sorry, Willie, but would you give us a moment?"

Hmm? The boy broke his gaze from the ripples fanning outward with each pull of the oars and looked toward Ellen. A moment? The two of them? What for? Benji's eyebrow raised, looking back and forth between Ellen and her brother, not quite understanding what his housemate suddenly felt the need to discuss that William couldn't be privy to.

"Benji. May I ask you a question?"

"Umm," Benji pursed his lips, his confusion growing by the moment as 'Willie' turned his hat over his eyes and appeared to take a nap. Great. It seemed they weren't leaving this body of water anytime soon. "I guess I don't really have a choice in the matter." His confusion turned to amusement as his gaze flicked back to Ellen, a grin playing at the corner of his mouth. He leaned back a bit, resting his arm on the edge of the boat and gave a slight shrug.

"Sure Ellen, go for it."

"I will." She said, primly.

Once she could find the words, that is. The matter was Ruth, and Ellen had no experience with couples. Not with stepping between one, oh not at all. She had no intention of that - but with asking after one. Addressing an involved party, on the subject of their partner. It was, she was fairly sure, a thing people did. She had simply never once done it.

But there was a problem here, immediately. The grin at the corner of his mouth, it was a problem. It was a grin that expected nothing in particular. Whatever she asked, he would catch it, and either that was the correct environment for asking, or it was precisely the wrong one. If that even made sense to begin with. There was such a frenzy in her heart as she kept attempting to compose what it was she wished to say. And indeed, what was it?

Ruth. Ruth what?

She had kept the girl's words in her mind since the New Year. The threat. Because that's what it was. Ruth Elliot had threatened her. And she, subsequently, resigned from the Hospital Wing. It made perfect sense in her mind, the flow and cause of things, but to say it out loud - to Benji? How would she even begin? Between her and Ruth, it had stayed 'manageable.' Said aloud, it would not be. That was, she thought, some part of the difficulty.

There was also the small matter of what she, herself believed. She had spent the year treating it as fact, but she had only Ruth's word for any of it. The father, the covenants, the claims. And Ruth's word was worth... something. What exactly? She had never actually decided what.

The other matter, perhaps even larger, was if Benji would even believe her. The whole business would sound quite mad. There was no way to say it that did not sound mad. Your — the girl, the one you're — her father considers you spoken for. In. Blood. He would laugh her out of the boat, surely.

... would he, though? She turned it over, once. In six years she had never once seen Benji Laurence laugh at anyone, not cruelly. With them, around them, loudly, across entire tables, certainly. The laughing-out-of-things seemed to be reserved entirely for himself. From what she thought, at least. A person could brace against mockery. There was no bracing against that grin.

Oh, this was so circular!

She needed to stop thinking. She had already dismissed her brother, mid-lake, with a spell. One did not do all that and then ask after the weather; the impropriety was already spent, and it was not refundable. Wasting it now would be the true disorder.

Go for it.

"What is it.. about Ruth? I hear you two are.. involved. Have been, for some time."

"I will."

Uh...okay.

Benji didn't think he'd missed a part of the conversation. He was fairly certain when Ellen had asked if she could ask him a question, he'd said yes, but now that she was sitting quietly, insisting that she would ask the question...was there a piece of the conversation he'd blanked out on? Was he having a fit? A stroke maybe?

Benji flexed his jaw, once. Nope, no drooping on one side or the other that he could detect. Hopefully Ellen wouldn't be too polite to tell him his face was melting on one side if he was, in fact, having a stroke but she seemed the type.

Oh well. He'd enjoyed his young life while it had lasted. What a way to go out though. Benji always thought he'd die in an explosion of magical fuckery, at the end of some idiot's wand he'd crossed too many times. How brilliant an ending, how stunning. To die of a stroke on a rowboat at the age of seventeen felt rather...lackluster and disappointing.

He could imagine his tombstone.

'Here Lies Benji Laurence. Stroked out on a pond.'

The humiliation was enough to make him want to fight through to see another day.

"What is it.. about Ruth? I hear you two are.. involved. Have been, for some time."

.........

....Ruth?

It was the last topic of conversation he supposed he expected from Ellen. To his knowledge, the two girls weren't friends in any meaningful way, or Rae would have mentioned her. He knew they both worked in the Hospital Wing, but outside of that he couldn't figure out anything else they may have had in common.

Benji's eyebrows came together, wrinkling in consternation. What in the world would make Ellen want to ask him about his girlfriend and in a way that she had to force privacy to ask it? Had...something happened? "She's my girlfriend," he said with a slight shrug, his eyes watching Ellen carefully. "We've been together since we were fifteen-ish." Off and on. A couple of break-ups here and there.

"Why?" Already, there was a turning in his stomach, one that told him he wasn't going to like wherever this was going.

Fifteen-ish. Ellen blinked. That was disconcerting. Because fifteen-ish was before the ball. Together since fifth year(?), or thereabouts, and her presentation the August after. Which meant that when her mother had seated him at her side, he had already been Ruth Elliot's for the better part of a year.

Not simply as a deeply attached friend, but as a romantic partner. She had known that Ruth and Benji were a pair, naturally, but she had never cared for the specifics. And no one had accounted for it, because there had been nothing to account. An.. attachment, at fifteen was not a contract. It did not register anywhere. In every sense her mother operated on, it was not a fact.

Which was the disconcerting part, followed to its end. She had no memory of the two of them being demonstrative at school. No particular reason to think they were keeping it private, either. Was it really that she had simply never looked.. ? How? That felt incredibly self-absorbed. But with the way Elliot had defended it in December as though it had borders, perhaps it should have been more obvious to her from the start.

And here he, Benji, was, describing it as fifteen-ish. Vague, companionable, accompanied by a shrug. Quite casual. The girl had said the Laurences did not know of her father's claims. He did not look like a boy who knew of anything of the kind. That was not proof of anything. It was, however, exactly that: Benji truly did not know.

It did not make it any less ugly, whatever it had been about. There was no arrangement of facts, she was fairly sure, under which a schoolgirl - especially a prefect, was owed the right to speak to a peer that way, over a simple dinner seating.

Ruth Elliot had said what she said, with purpose.

Why?

None of it had ever added up, and it had taken her until now to simply say so. A girl did not speak of her boyfriend as an investment unless something in her had gone wrong on the subject of what a boyfriend was. Ruth Elliot had sat before her and described her own relationship in the language of fathers and claims, and had seemed to think nothing of it. That was not temper, no. Temper would have been better. That was not even malice, either. Something there was simply not right, and had probably not been right for some time.

It was the question she had been circling in the wing, back then, before the girl had made the whole subject untouchable: whether the Tower had done this. Whether the person that had been taken up to that tower had come down different. She had never gotten far with it. The timing was the problem. The girl's own father was Roger Burke.

Whatever was wrong, it had not begun in March 1921; the Tower had, at most, finished it.

It made her completely sick to think of this all. About a classmate, of all people.

"Because Elliot told me you were spoken for," she said, and there it was. "Her word was claims. She seemed to suggest her father had.. arrangements in regard to you? Covenants, in blood. That was the word she used. I could not tell you what it meant. Only that she used it."

"Because Elliot told me you were spoken for.”

Right. He was. Benji didn’t understand exactly where this was going, or what Ellen was building up to, if anything. Didn’t everyone at Hogwarts essentially know he and Rae were dating? They’d certainly been explosive ever since their first year and no matter what girl he talked to - aside from Kaitlyn - they always reminded him, whether it was relevant or not, that Rae was his girlfriend. As though he didn’t know and hadn’t asked her himself.

He waited, his expression neutral, for whatever this was. Ellen apparently thought it important enough to discuss out of earshot of everyone.

"Her word was claims. She seemed to suggest her father had.. arrangements in regard to you? Covenants, in blood. That was the word she used. I could not tell you what it meant. Only that she used it."

Rae needed to learn to keep her big mouth shut, is what she needed to do. Benji held his expression, but his eyebrow twitched lower, only a hair. Only enough to notice if one were really looking. “She said that, huh?” Benji wasn’t in the market to sell all his family’s secrets or the way the operated. There were many dark corners within Arundel castle’s walls, and Benji didn’t try to pretend he knew half of them. What he did know was that the Laurences didn’t readily share what happened behind closed doors with the rest of the world; not even their closest allies at times.

What had transpired between the Burkes and the Laurences the night he and Rae were bound wasn’t for outsiders ears.

Rae, apparently, hadn’t received that memo.

“Our families arranged us last summer,” he said easily, shrugging his shoulder a bit. “Big garden party event and all. Plenty of people were there. You really think my family would practice blood magic in front of all their guests?” His grin returned, as he leaned back against the edge of the boat, studying Ellen.

“Julia likes dark magic, Ellen. The rest of them are pretty normal.”

They weren’t. But that was beside the point. “Why where you and Rae talking about this anyway?” Because he was going to have a word with his possessive girlfriend.

Ah. Something within her deflated. It was a anticlimactic end to a building sense of something. Benji knew, very clearly. But she didn't feel relieved. She felt, mostly, foolish, which was worse. Because did it mean she had been wrong?

He confirmed himself. He was arranged. Ruth's claims weren't invented. "Spoken for" is accurate. But in his mouth, it didn't seem to be a threat, not that it should, but it came across as a fact of his life that he was at peace with. So that meant the content was true; only how he experienced it was divorced from how Ellen did.

Which obviously wasn't profound. People experienced the same thing differently; she understood that as well as anyone. It was only that she had never had to apply it to something like this. This situation, and doing so now, all at once, with having much of what she thought completely dismantled.. it was proving rather more of an effort than the principle had ever suggested. Because the fright had still happened to her, whether Benji was a victim or not, and his being at peace did not reach backward and undo it. It only meant that whatever was wrong in it, it was not wrong for him.

And.. and.. well..

Ellen suddenly found that she, very, very much wanted to stop talking about this. What did she think she was doing? The urge to just run her palms over her face was quite strong.

She had gotten the clarification she had wanted, if that was even the case, and again, felt so foolish.

His other words were not as simple as he said them: "You really think my family would practice blood magic in front of all their guests?" denies the venue, not the magic. And "Julia likes dark magic, Ellen. The rest of them are pretty normal." which was not.. reassuring. There were so many implications in what he said, and she just didn't want to think about it right now.

"I.. was on rotation with her in the Hospital Wing. Last December, I mean. You came up." was how she began, tone delicate. "I think she truly loves you. A great deal."

"I.. was on rotation with her in the Hospital Wing. Last December, I mean. You came up. I think she truly loves you. A great deal."

Benji watched what looked like resignation fall over Ellen's face, and he had to admit - he didn't quite understand. His housemate had never been what he would call a 'close friend' and he figured if she was, she would have already known about him and Rae.

But he'd never disliked Ellen or had anything against becoming better friends with her. He figured if things had played out differently, perhaps they'd have had more time to get to know one another, and maybe he wouldn't be so confused by her reaction. He was quiet a moment, mulling over her words, realizing that he probably hadn't just 'come up' as a subject. Rae never treaded delicately with other girls when it came to Benji.

In their earlier years Benji had hated it. They'd had insane fights over the way she tried to claim him when he didn't want to be. He hadn't been an angel either. There were plenty of times Benji had been just as toxic as Rae - a side of him Ellen likely would be horrified to see.

"She does," he said with a bit of resignation in his voice, but he didn't move his gaze from Ellen. "Too much sometimes," he scoffed, and bit the inside of his cheek while his smile grew. "What's bothering you Ellen? Just spit it out. Charades aren't exactly my forte."

And the sooner she got it out, the sooner he'd know what he needed to deal with.

Too much, sometimes. Okay. There it was again, then - another remark of the kind. With a history attached that she had no map of, nor any business with. So, she just didn't engage with it.

Charades, though. That was unfair, and she felt it prick, slightly. She had not been circling the subject; she had asked one question, plainly, and in order, and if the asking had wanted apparatus, the apparatus had been proportionate to what she believed she was carrying. Which was one sentence. Secondhand, from December, and wrong, as it turned out, about the first fact of the matter. The breadth of it all — the arrangement, the parties, the off and on — was news of this afternoon. A person could not ask directly about things they had only just learned existed.

Well. If it was plainness he wanted, that could be arranged.

"You have answered it," she said. "I thought the arrangement might be something you were held in, unwittingly.. I suppose. But you're plainly not. Which rather concludes my interest."

Interest, if it could be called that.

Ellen paused, and then added: "Do forgive the indirection, Benji. It was on my mind for quite some time and I'd rather have asked badly than not at all."