An...attempt at a request (Cassie) on Cascade Hall

Edmond Carey

August 31, 2011 12:04 AM

An...attempt at a request (Cassie) by Edmond Carey

Anything Jethro Smythe can do, I can do. This is a fact. Anything Jethro Smythe can do, I can do.

Edmond repeated that to himself firmly, again and again, as though that might make him believe it. He thought, given the circumstances, it might be working a bit more than usual, but that was saying very little when it usually didn’t work at all.

Still. If Jethro could ask a girl to a dance – Edmond was pointedly avoiding the part where that girl was his sister; contemplating that match had been a great deal easier both before the world went mad and before it had actually seemed particularly possible it could happen – then Edmond certainly could. He had, after all, managed this in second year. Admittedly, things had been different then, a little, but the requirement of having some kind of companion for the dance should have more than outweighed that.

Every time it almost did, though…it wasn’t just being very aware that it was almost an insult to a girl to suggest that she could do no better than someone who looked like him. There was the family in the background, too. They liked to say there had been different sets of troubles, but really, things had been going steadily downhill from the day Lawrence married Cynthia, if not the day Anthony II had first stepped off the boat. He and Robert and Jane were quiet people, but they had somehow gotten pulled in by his other sisters’ existence, and even Morgaine had hardly waited until she was old enough to put her hair up to get mired neck-deep in it all. Gwenhwyfar hadn’t waited that long.

Still, though, it was one dance. Even he wasn’t naïve enough to think that one dance meant getting married and all. It didn’t even necessarily mean anything. He had danced with Jane often enough.

He chose the venue very carefully. The common room was somewhat more private, which was why he’d ultimately decided against it. People reacted less in public, usually, and the Hall had plenty of room for avoiding the place where anything mutually embarrassing happened ever again, whereas the common room might be pure torture to go into next year if this happened there and went very badly. Therefore, it was near the middle of breakfast, since the end would have meant having no time to compose himself before classes however things went, that he decided to approach Cassie, who he had been almost avoiding for two days as he tried to alternatively talk himself into and out of this.

“Cassie. Hello,” he began, and instantly felt things start to go downhill. He tried to focus on the speech he’d prepared. “I was wondering…that is, I mean….I wanted to…to ask you….” Any chance of this seeming casual was, he sensed, vanishing like fog in summer sun. “Er…you…would you..." His voice dropped to an unintelligible mumble for a moment, then picked up, "...the ball…with me?” He sat down across from her, paused for a moment, and then said, perfectly coherently, “I am considering either writing what I was trying to say down so you can comprehend it or else running away in panic.”

0 Edmond Carey An...attempt at a request (Cassie) 143 Edmond Carey 1 5

Cassie Kerrigan

October 11, 2011 9:41 PM

Attempting to understand the question. by Cassie Kerrigan

Being the good Aladren that she was, Cassie had been reading a book when Edmond approached her. In fact, the book in question had been her Potions textbook. While they didn’t have a test or such approaching, she had thought that she would read ahead. While she had a habit of reading her textbooks before school even began, she found it useful to reread the material, because concepts and interpretations could change over the course of the year as she grew and gained further experience. Her sisters never understood why she did this. Veronica was even in Aladren and she didn’t understand. But then, half the time, she was embarrassed to be in the House while Delilah was embarrassed not to be. Her sisters were an odd bunch.

Instead, she gave her full attention to Edmond, as he stumbled through what he was trying to say. Except that he didn’t. Did he? She had heard something about the ball and with me. Was he asking her to the ball? She didn’t really want to assume that he was asking her to the ball though she certainly wouldn’t have minded going with him. Actually, she would have more liked than simply not minded. However, she first had to interpret if he had actually asked her or if he was asking her if she thought someone else would go to the ball with him. If it was the latter, she was certain they would. What was there not to like about Edmond? She had certainly liked him long enough to know there were many things to like.

“The first option sounds better than the second,” Cassie answered with a warm smile. Though, if he was trying to ask her if someone else would be interested in going to the ball with him, the second sounded ideal for her. The ball was one of the biggest things of the year, maybe the last couple of years, and to not have a date when it seemed everyone did would have been humiliating. Of course, she knew that Veronica and Delilah didn’t have dates either, but she assumed Veronica would end up with one somehow or another. As for Delilah, she wondered why her sister didn’t talk about it at all. She seemed nearly to avoid the topic. Maybe she just didn’t like anyone at the school or maybe she did and didn’t want anyone to know. But she didn’t have to worry about that right now. She had other concerns.

0 Cassie Kerrigan Attempting to understand the question. 0 Cassie Kerrigan 0 5

Edmond

October 12, 2011 8:49 PM

Repeating the question by Edmond

“It might very well be,” Edmond agreed when she thought the first option sounded better. “I have very persuasive handwriting, you know.”

He had no idea where that comment had come from. It was in the blood, he supposed, losing all his wits because of a smile and a pretty pair of eyes. His blood grandfather had gone mad after his first wife – not Edmond’s grandmother – died, and his full sister had tossed home and family and security all aside to stay with her husband, apparently for no reason other than affection. He was not that far gone, thank Merlin, and wondered in an equally silly moment if perhaps his complete inability to be articulate around her was some kind of defensive measure against ending up like Gwen and Grandfather.

Then he pulled his head enough back together to make sentences happen. He had, after all, gotten through this once. Now he just had to do it in a way where he could be understood. “What I was trying to say,” he said, finding the will somewhere to return her smile, “is that I was wondering if – “ No, he was not going to panic and excuse himself, he was going to finish this damn sentence no matter what happened or he thought might happen after it – “if you’d come to the, er, ball with me.”

For a brief second, he wasn’t sure he had actually said it, but then the shock wore off. Yes, he’d said it. He had asked her to come to the ball with him, and after his impressive feat of incoherency earlier, he didn’t even know if he could pass it off as casual if he needed to. Though maybe he wouldn’t, for all he knew; what did he know about this kind of thing? Girls and things. It just wasn’t something he had ever expected to have to worry about.

Technically, he supposed, he didn’t have to worry about it. The family would take the whole matter, from balls to marriage, out of his hands if he asked them to – might anyway, really, if they decided he was too much like Grandfather, and his sisters, or any number of other relatives who’d strayed from the approved paths over the years. But…well, he didn’t like the idea of handing so much over to them, really. At least not now. He wanted to be…Normal?

That was a terrible word, but it was the best he could come up with. He wanted to be normal, at least for a little while. He’d like to worry more about his RATS than the possibility of being messily murdered, go to his classes without thinking of how they were going to apply, play Quidditch without thinking of other things while he did. Oversleep sometime, or very nearly not meet an obligation – not actually not meet it, that would be unthinkable, but nearly – and reminisce with his sisters about things that didn’t involve all of them nearly dying. Even, yes, have a pretty girlfriend, if he could find one who’d have him, and it not have something to do or not to do with his family.

None of it could happen, of course. He knew that perfectly well. He was who he was, and things were what they were. But he could want it, and he was at school, which meant he could pretend sometimes that it could happen and there was no harm in it. Next year, he’d leave school, and then he’d be out in the world and it would be more than stupid…but for now, waiting for her answer, he could pretend, and he thought that he’d like to, just for a minute now.

0 Edmond Repeating the question 0 Edmond 0 5