This really is Ball Central, isn't it? (Tag Chaslyn) on Library

Leonidas Bennett

August 25, 2016 10:19 PM

This really is Ball Central, isn't it? (Tag Chaslyn) by Leonidas Bennett

”Do you know what your problem is, Leo?” Leonidas’s oldest sister had once asked him. He had made it clear, in so many words, that he didn’t care about Eliza’s thoughts on the matter, but she had just laughed at him and then told him anyway, as he’d known from the beginning that she would. ”It’s that you don’t really care about anyone but yourself.”

That had been pretty rich coming from Eliza, who could have easily prevented their brother’s marriage and shamed the whole family for a generation if her infidelity to her husband had ever been revealed and who showed no signs of making any effort to help find a decent husband for their sister, but she had, Leo had to admit, a point. All year, Leonidas had been thinking about the things he needed to do: train the Quidditch team, try to train Clark in the ways of leadership on the off chance there was still a team next year, study for his RATS, deal with the massive amounts of correspondence he’d been told were necessary to ingratiate himself with people in places he might go next, after his RATS results were in…All important things, but all things that were really more about promoting his interests than promoting his family’s. There was no way to argue otherwise, anyway, when he thought more about his responsibility to see to it that Clark Dill could carry on the Aladren Quidditch tradition than he did about his responsibility to Paul’s well-connected sister-in-law.

Theodore wasn’t so slow on the uptake, though, so for whatever reason – Leonidas honestly couldn’t remember how Jemima’s Owen was related to Serena, just that he was – Serena was taken care of by the time Paul and Gemma teamed up to write Leonidas an annoyed letter about that situation. A very annoyed letter; Paul had threatened to tell Father that he should marry Leonidas off to Theresa Carey. Leonidas thought he had been joking, since Paul thought Theresa was a complete idiot and had even once said that if it weren’t for Eliza and Arabella, he might have taken Theresa as proof of the old rule that a woman couldn’t be beautiful and smart at the same time, but Leo had still gone through a few minutes of something very close to panic when he’d seen a Carey mark on the sealing wax of the short note Jay Carey had written to sympathize about the Final….

There was still another…relative of Arabella’s who had to have a partner for that one dance at least, though, so Leonidas waited until he saw her in the library one day and approached.

“Good evening,” he said to Chaslyn. “If you have a moment – “ well, Chaslyn was a severe workaholic who, among other things, worked in the library. Leonidas had no idea why she wasn’t in his House – “I was wondering if you would like to attend the Midsummer Ball with me – platonically, of course,” he added.

0 Leonidas Bennett This really is Ball Central, isn't it? (Tag Chaslyn) 269 Leonidas Bennett 1 5

Chaslyn Brockert

August 31, 2016 4:34 AM

Indeed it is. by Chaslyn Brockert

Chaslyn was beyond exhaustion. She'd had about four hours of sleep in two days...and felt rather guilty about even that. Nor had she eaten enough which left her occasionally feeling kind of dizzy. She didn't have time for these things. Not really. She had way too much to do. Chaslyn was taking five advanced level classes, had prefect duties ,was a Head Monitor in the library and in every club except two. She was slightly grateful for the fact that Mother didn't approve of Muggle things and also that Quidditch wasn't completely considered acceptable for girls yet. She knew she shouldn't think that way, because it was important to be involved, to be successful, accomplished but she was just so tired . Not to mention all the other activities she had to keep up with.

Instead she was sustaining herself with potions. Endurance Potion of course, she was guzzling it all day long in what was probably seriously unhealthy quantities. Draught of Peace to keep her anxiety at bay. There was always a constant fear that she was failing somehow. Recently, she had even gotten an E on a Charms essay, which was below her target grade, both the one set by the professor and the one that her basic survival until she married Léon Beausang and moved to Quebec depended on. Then there were basic ones to boost her energy in addition to the Endurance Potion as well as good old coffee. It was absolutly vital that she did everything she had to do.

Of course, she didn't feel particularly well. There were the dizzy spells of course, especially when she tried to practice dance or gymnastics. Chaslyn had fallen a bunch of times and that was not okay at all. Nothing less than perfection in everything was okay. She'd had that drilled into her head from the moment she'd been able to understand and unlike her sister, she cared. Actually that was part of why she cared. Mother thought Amity was a disappointment, even though she'd done exactly what pureblood girls were supposed to do, which was marry well, and the situation led to conflict at family events with Mother taking jabs at the former Aladren that did not go unnoticed by Phillip, leading him to defend his wife. Plus the way Mother treated Amity as well as when Chaslyn didn't do as well as expected led to issues with her parents. She hated the conflict and hated more being the cause of some of it. If she just did what Mother wanted, it wouldn't happen. Besides, she didn't want to be a disappointment too, she wanted her mother to love her.

Then there were the crying jags. Crying cuz she was frustrated, crying cuz she was scared of disappointing Mother, crying for absolutely no reason at all.

Crying because she felt guilty. Not just about her failures, but about Liac. She had to admit to herself that she did feel a bit more than friendship for him even though she wouldn't dare tell anyone else. Thank Merlin the Satori wasn't around now. But her feelings were not acceptable either. Not just because of his background but because she was betrothed. She wanted to love Léon, she wanted what her sister had, not what her parents had. Even though Amity was considered a disappointment by Mother, she was happy with Phillip. Mother and Father weren't happy together at all, which admittedly was partially her fault and partially Amity's. Still she was worried about hurting Liac, who was her one true friend, as well as her future husband who seemed to be a pretty nice guy.

Not to mention that sometimes she felt like she was moving through a dense fog and others she had a terrible brain rush that made her feel as if everything was way sped up in there, a feeling like while it didn't hurt the way a headache did, it felt like her head was going explode and then she couldn't concentrate, which was a very bad thing. Sometimes her chest even hurt a little.

That night was sort of a more mentally foggy one. Chaslyn had experienced the exploding head and slightly painful chest thing earlier today, shortly after the ten minutes she allotted herself for lunch but now she had crashed. She would have to take another dose of Endurance Potion soon. Coffee might help again as well, but since she had to go to her room after her shift in the library because of curfew and a trip to the Hall was out of the question.

When Leonidas Bennett, her cousin Arabella's brother-in-law, approached her that night, it took her a moment to realize what was happening. Caught unaware, she sputtered. "Oh-oh sure. Thank you for asking." Going with him, dancing the prefect dance would be so much more uncomplicated than dancing it with Liac anyway and she really didn't need any more complications right now.

11 Chaslyn Brockert Indeed it is. 281 Chaslyn Brockert 0 5