Concepts of Time

Elsie had not been to one of these parties in years.

When she had been young, she had both loved and loathed these parties. On one hand, she hated being told what to do, and pureblood social parties were all about when to enter, how to greet each other, and when to take sips of your drink. On the other hand, Elsie loved meeting people, she loved dancing, she loved sneaking drinks, and she absolutely loved, loved, loved finding herself in the attention of others. She may have been an odd little runt in school, but she had been a favorite at the parties. She was nonthreatening, so no one took her too seriously. She was fun, so everyone sought her out at some point. And she was beautiful, so most people admired her.

The invitation had floated into her life as though she had never stopped attending the parties. She had forsaken the pureblood parties full of classy drinks and classy people for clubs in New York with dirty drinks and even dirtier people. She had enjoyed it, too. There was less judgement in a dark club, and less gossip. Pureblood parties were relentless, because everyone knew everything that happened at them. It was because of the Manhattan parties that Elsie ever managed to grow up and learn the ways of the cool young people she wanted so much to belong too.

That said, she was not going to pass this party up for anything. She knew she was going to be a bit of a surprise to everyone there. Because while she had been well liked at the parties, she had never been taken very seriously. She was certain she would be taken seriously in the little black number she had donned. Her hair had been expertly curled with the supervision of Claire Bishop, who outright refused to join her at the party. Claire was not one for society in general, let alone high society.

She came in to the rented ballroom on her own. She glanced around, a small smile on her pretty face. Her eyebrows quirked as her angular eyes took in the sights. She was no longer one of the teenaged females being passed from partner to partner. She was unmarried and an elder - she was an intrigue. The married women would look at her with suspicion, the younger women would look with curiousity, and the men would look with admiration.

She walked inwards, beginning to mingle with society. She saw looks of recognition, but no one braved an introduction or a greeting yet. It would take one. Just one. A waiter walked by and she hooked a champagne glass with a finger and sipped - wonderful and expensive, she could have guessed it.

Arms encircled him. The sweet scent of vanilla intoxicated his senses and he inhaled deeply, tipping his head back into the soft flesh of his lover’s chest. He felt the soft, warm wax of lips brush out the creases in his forehead as a stray golden curl pooled on his cheekbone. He sighed gently, leaning almost eagerly into the scratch of pointed nails across his chest. He gasped a little as he felt the teasing fingers touch about the silken waistband of his pyjama trousers and his eyes flipped into openness. The dark, testing eyes of Augustus Rookwood grasped at the soft, shapely features of Niamh O’Callaghan. Her large, sensual lips parted and she lowered her face down to his, her mouth teasing his to openness before sliding her tongue inside. With every brush, Augustus met her stroke for stroke, rising from his seat. His calloused fingers grasped at her hips and pulled her to him before pressing her forwards towards the bed. Their lips split for a moment, their eyes reopening to take each other in, a quirk of half-amusement raised her lips upwards and Augustus’ mouth mirrored her. He leaned forward again, capturing her lips in another embrace as he slid his hands across her silhouette. One arm curled around her waist whilst the other lilted down behind her knees and tipped her back onto the bed. Like a rogue beast, Augustus climbed down over her, divesting his body of his clothes as he went. In one move of half tenderness, he nudged his nose with hers before reaching to plunder her mouth once more, one hand curling into her hair while the other trailed south.

An hour later, the door to the room was thrown open as clothes were being retrieved from the floor. A gasp split Niamh’s lips and Augustus turned, his hands stilling around the buttons of his shirt as he caught sight of his brother, stood frozen in the doorway. An open smirk alighted on Augustus’s features, the expression quivering his moustache with barely concealed wry humour. He forewent finishing the buttoning of his shirt and instead buckled his trousers up and lifted his blazer from the back of the vanity chair. He swung it over his shoulder and bowed just for a moment to pluck his shoes from the carpet before smoothly striding past Thaddeus, noting with overt glee that the fury on his brother’s face was unlicensed and devoid of any signs of being stifled. Augustus managed a half smile for the benefit of his brother’s mood and openly wished him a good day. Upon seeing Thaddeus’s fingers curl into his palm, Augustus took his overdue leave, allowing his brother the pleasurable company of his personal assistant who had been curiously absent from the meetings traversing in the lower floor rooms. Only now did Thaddeus quite clearly understand why.

The décor of the ballroom had been attentively laid out in a blatant exhibition of what the Zabini women could do with their time when not plotting the vicious murders of their various husbands. It was sumptuous, decorated in scarlet and ebony. Flowers were everywhere in bright white to cut through the oppressive colouring. One of the Malfoy estates had been opened up and the dust had been blown from it in order for one of the galas to be thrown. It had cost a year’s income, if the whispers of the gossiping women about him were evidence at all. He had grown tired already, before it already even begun. The music had started up but the hubbub of conversation drowned it out and the enthusiastic clinking of glasses. Augustus excused himself, placing a brief kiss on the cheek of the woman he intended on escorting back to her room that evening before he did so. Once free from the lilting laughter, he shook himself and fiddled with his cufflinks for a moment before striding over to where the drinks had been set out – everything from punch to water, unhelpfully placed by the vodka, to Firewhisky to, ah, Absinthe.

Augustus’ fingers curled around the crystal stopper for a moment before pausing and he took a moment thereafter to look about himself. He reached out with his other hand to take up a glass and then, once he was sure no one was watching, he lifted the decanter off of the table and curled it under his arm. The Death Eater then turned and strode across the hall, his shoes clicking rhythmically across the marble. He found himself a seat, a little table off to the back, alive with candles slowly setting fire to the flower arrangement in the middle, and he threw himself down, unloading his pockets and setting down the Absinthe after. Once he had a glass poured, he drained it. Another glass. Drained. Then and only then did Augustus feel himself relaxed. He flung one leg over the other and stifled a half sigh before reaching for his cigarette case. He opened it up and lifted one of them out, tapping the end on the table, he leaned over to pick up his glass again.

The musicians had fallen silent. Augustus’s eyes flicked over to their raised platform just as they burst into life, their sound far louder than it had ever been. He watched as some of the younger entrants to society rushed out and started to dance, albeit awkwardly and jauntily. Augustus smirked and replaced the cigarette back in the case. He had long forgotten a time when he was like them. He chose to remember the balls from when he was in his late teenage years, when he’d gotten it all figured out. These ones had yet to solve their faults. Augustus rose from his chair, taking one last gulp of emerald courage before spreading out through the crowd. He spotted exactly who he wanted, too. The little black dress attached to a glorious pair of legs immediately got Augustus’ attention. He chuckled to himself before sidling up behind her, his hand grazing over her lower back, just before the curve of her behind began. Augustus’s lips found her ear.

“Would you be so delightful as to accompany me for a song or two, m’lady?” He inquired, his hot breath blowing over her earlobe. “Then I’ll get you another drink, hm?”

Elsie could feel the eyes of Arthur Gibbon following her.  It was pretty flattering considering the fact that she was pretty sure he had been falling in love with her when his family had decided as sweet as she was, wealth did not make up for lack of purity and had asked him to spurn her. Elsie had never managed to actually date during her formative years, having her first real relationship after her graduation at Durmstrang, but there had been boys like Arthur. Boys so close to being her boyfriend that had never managed to be brave enough to actually risk the commitment and the relationship part. It had hurt, though she had always returned to the parties and danced and smiled. It had been hard watching Arthur, and the boys like him, get paired off with the girls who did not know how to joke or laugh. The girls who walked like dolls and had smiles that did not quite reach their eyes.

Now, free from the reign of his parents, and with his selected bride surely nearby, Arthur was looking at Elsie openly, looking at her as though he had made the biggest mistake of her life. It was a mistake Elsie was thankful for. Surely, he was a tool – especially if he had been stupid enough to let her go. That said, Elsie had very few regrets in her life. The few regrets that remained in the brunette’s life all started and ended with the name Nash Stewart. And Nash had looked at her even more tenderly than the Gibbon male was now.

He looked like he wanted to approach her, but Elsie was wise enough in the social sphere to know that such a decision was a foolish one. Still, the flirt in her could not help but cast him a lingering look – he had grown up, well, after all – and give the softest of smiles she could muster, one that most definitely reached her eyes. He took in a breath but they were separated by crowd.  She continued her move, almost draining the entire glass of champagne in the time it took to move from one end of the great room to the other, looking for the excuse that would keep her from Arthur.

The excuse found her. She felt a hand warm her lower back, gracefully skidding into the curve of her back. She breathed, her breath filling the space between hand and back and she felt breath in her ear, warming her hear lobe and tripping across her neck, little bumps raising where air caressed her skin. She turned her head and found herself wholly amused and even a bit surprised. Though all the boys from her childhood had aged into men, the man who had always been man was looking very good for his age.

Augustus Rookwood had been at most of the parties – Elsie was not sure she could recall one with his absence. The Rookwoods were the family in fashion, after all, since the Malfoys had lost the coveted title. Augustus had always been handsome, but he had also been the grown up of all grown ups. Now an adult herself, Elsie was not intimidated by his age, though slightly wary of him. Everyone had been slightly scared by him, simply because he was such an impressive figure. She would be a lunatic to not be intimidated by him.

And it was a mark of her slight insanity that she was only barely intimidated.

“I’d love to, Sir Rookwood,” she said, smiling a little as she used the name she recalled calling him once or twice. It had mortified her parents, but her peers had thought her all the more endearing, because she did not say it with any jest in her voice, but with all the sincerity of a person addressing a superior. She wondered if the Rookwood patriarch would remember little, awkward Elsie Norton, or if the black dress had made him forget her.

As though he was a caricature of Jay Gatsby himself, nearly three decades of parties had elapsed without Augustus Rookwood having truly noticed. The Rookwood bastard no longer felt as youthful as he did when he was fifteen having been thrust under the noses of the Pureblood elite by his demanding father, flushed and overheated, quaking in his tuxedo. He’d always remember the talons of Emelia’s hand digging into his shoulder, leading him off to show him to some of the girls entering society for the first time. For Augustus, it was the first time had had to try and endear himself to a woman who was not his mother in true public fashion. She cooed at him, played with his hair, and kept him close like she would have done the rest of her boys but her touch was coarse, her eyes were not warm and her skin was icy cool. She hated him and he loathed her with as much, if not more, fire and brimstone – for she still held his father, even if it was to his mother’s bedchamber that he retreated before submitting himself to the dispassionate bed of his wife. Time had passed. He’d had his own wife and his own string of mistresses. Emelia and Raghnall no longer attended the parties but Augustus was there, a part of the furniture in the back of the room, drinking himself to death and finishing himself off thoroughly by chain-smoking until he could no longer keep himself awake and the ash fell off the end, burning into his waistcoat. He was older now, but certainly, good breeding had set him in excellent stead for preserving his youth – what was left of it, that is.

The woman who Augustus, like the snake he was, had coiled about was a youthful rendition of all of the women he had danced with over the years. She wore a look of innocence whilst her eyes looked out at him with a challenge sparkling behind those lashes. His smooth lips quirked into form as he took her in, his eyes retracing what certainly felt like familiar ground to him – though he couldn’t quite recall why. He lifted one hand and nudged her chin with an index finger, lifting it left and right as though inspecting his purchase before dropping his hand and nodding a little. You’ll do. He’d picked her, of course. His assessment had found what he’d expected. A suitable amount of perfection. The parties had always produced the prettiest of women, he’d found. They had procured a wife for every member of his family, including himself. It had also procured a fair amount of other diversions, also. He looked now for neither though he’d found quite a pretty little thing. He entertained the idea of keeping her occupied for the evening, though something in the back of his mind questioned why on earth she’d want to stay with him. He took a moment to follow where her gaze had been lingering and he caught sight of a man who he recalled as being a boy not too long ago. Augustus inclined his head a little, a smug look appearing briefly on his face (though, to be fair, that was just his neutral expression: smugness), before he swept the woman away into the space allotted for dancing.

“Sir Rookwood,” Augustus repeated finally once he took her into close hold. Easily, the man began to lead as though it was, and indeed it was, second nature to him to do so. “Now, there’s only one person that has ever been so brash as to call me that.”

It was not fully obvious at first just who it was but as Augustus began to take her around to the rise and fall of the music, it occurred to him just who he had in his arms. He could recall the little girl so clearly. She had been a friend of Kendall’s and, by extension, an acquaintance of Athena, too. Yet, despite himself, Augustus couldn’t find it within himself to muster some guilt for considering her the way he had been. In fact, the shared history made her more attractive to him. He tipped his head to the side a little bit, as though he was still trying to figure who she was, but soon enough he allowed his smirk to take forth and he lifted his arms, spinning her gently round before taking her back closer to him.

“Elizabeth, isn’t it?” He queried with a half-smile. He turned over her left hand and arched an eyebrow with a smirk. “No marriage? Your contemporaries are wasting you, my dear.”

She watched him carefully. Though Elsie would never claim to be clever, she had clever eyes. Though things got jumbled once they mulled inside her mind, she had a sharp eye and she had a knack for observation. It did not take long for the young brunette to take a person in wholly, to ingest them and to process them. Augustus Rookwood did not display much beneath his surface, but there was definitely an atmosphere to him that was to be observed. He was nothing short of impressive, full of power and prestige. He could sit in the shadows and still have every eye on him without a single turn of the head. Anyone who valued importance in society could take a leaf out of Augustus Rookwood’s book, but with caution, for there were very few who could suffer through such a prominent role in society and not somehow turn perverse by it.

It was a mark of Elsie’s observation that she could feel all of this. It was a mark of her lack of discretion that she was still eager to remain in his company.

Not that Augustus was bad company, of course, but the pureblood man was dangerous company for someone like Elsie, someone who followed feeling above intuition. So long as she felt important for being the man’s chosen partner, she would remain. She was not the sort to change herself, no. She was not the foolish woman to compromise her own personality for the sake of enjoying an ego boost and the protection of an impressive man on her arm – not anymore, anyway. But she would let the faults within her dig herself into a hole that no one but her dear brother and dear best friend would stick around to help her out of it.

He did not look horribly offended by the name, though she also knew it was not wholly proper to address him as such. She relied, once again, on the natural charm she seemed to have to garner some forgiveness. It had worked, though. He recognized her. She pursed her lips, though the smile remained twinkling in her eyes. “Alas, you do not remember me in full, for I always insisted on being called Elsie. Though you’ve heard so many names at these parties, I’m sure, so I won’t hold it against you.” She smiled, unable to help the slight lilt in her voice that hinted at flirtation. It was the language she spoke best, after all.

He inquired after her marital status and she finished off the last bit of her drink, before setting it on one of the tray’s floating by. She laughed, “Oh goodness, no, they’ve all done me the favor of spurning me before entrapping me in a marriage – though my own efforts have kept me happily safe from such commitment as well. And I’m just back in the country, so I missed the boat on these arranged weddings. Fortune has been good to me.”

Their society had always and would always continue to dictate that a man in possession of a fortune had to be in want of a wife and, conversely to that, a woman in want of a certain manner of living would have to take into her possession a husband. It had always been the way. Alliances had been forged over dinner tables and bottles of wine. Women became women through ascending to the position on the coattails of their husbands. Rare was it for them, even in this day and age, to strike out on their own and make their own way. That was case enough for those trying, still, to make last ditch attempts at securing their lines, the thoroughbred woman no longer cared after so long as her blood was pure and scarlet – even pug-faced Parkinson could have easily remarried in times they now lived in. Somehow, in some manner or another, Elsie had survived that and survived it well.

“What great fortune for me then,” Augustus replied smoothly with a half-smile. “I don’t have to worry about having to accidently hex a husband but perhaps.”

The song came to an early close as Augustus had rather thought it would but he did not release Elsie, rather he swept his hands across her arms and took hold of her hands. Stepping backwards, Augustus liberate Elsie from the crowd and once they free from the warm throng he tucked one of her hands in the crook of his elbow before striding across the ballroom towards his little nook. He could feel odd, prying eyes on the back of his head but he wrote them off, smirking instead to himself as he realised that something he had, or rather someone, made him worth sparing a glare to. That hadn’t happened in a long time and Augustus took a moment to revel in it before pausing and releasing Elsie so as to take a chair out from her.

“Please, sit. I am loathe to bask in the company of the frigid and the dull for the remainder of the night. You, love, are far more interesting than all of these half-wits put together.”

Once Elsie was seated, Augustus took a flute of champagne from the nearest straying waiter and set it down for her before resuming his place in the seat he had settled in earlier. Retrieving a cigarette from its case, Augustus took a moment to pour himself glass of Absinthe before he shook his wand into life and lit the end of the cigarette. Setting the wand down, Augustus removed the cigarette from his lips and blew and absent minded smoke ring into the air above his head before jutting a finger out across the table to pull the ash tray closer.

“You have been abroad, then. Do divulge a snippet of your adventures, won’t you?”

Elsie was well aware that she was the only woman her age that was not married or engaged at the party. There were more women younger than her that were married or pledged to be than were not. The only ones that were unwed were the ones just entering society, and the women who were looking to replace their recently deceased husbands. Pureblood society was cold and lonely, but this loneliness came in pairs. It was almost sweet, this dedication to finding someone to share one's misery with. She wondered if it was the repressed desire in the purebloods to find love that made so few rebel against their strange customs. For goodness' sakes, it was 2027. In the muggle world, this sort of society was nearly unheard of. For all their confidence and snobbery, purebloods had some real worries about finding someone to stick with them.

Unfortunately, Elsie had seen that most of these marriages did not end well, and two lonely people remained lonely, with each other as the reminder of their failure to secure a mate who was more than handsome, rich, and pure. The evidence was in her company. Augustus Rookwood, esteemed pureblood man, still one of the finest specimen of a pureblood male, was choosing her company over that of a wife. Elsie, the halfblood runt with money to make her welcome but not accepted, was better company than the women who could properly fulfill the needs of the pureblood men.

If Elsie could reform one thing about pureblood society, she would make the aim of these parties to secure a friend for each young man and woman, for that always seemed to be the void they all seemed to be attempting to fill. Poor fools.

She smiled at his words but said nothing in reply. The song had ended and she again felt the gaze of the Cuffe boy needling into her. She cleared her throat and let Augustus lead her away from the potential danger of a reunion. They were headed to one of the shadoy confines off the sides of the large room, where Augustus had already clearly set up camp. She smiled at his kind words, saying as she sat in the chair offered, "I try. And apparently, I succeed. My ploy seems to be working. Soon, you shall be bent to my will." She smiled, eyes twinkling. She was feeling more and more comfortable as Augustus Rookwood became less of the authority figure from her past and evolved into a man. And Elsie knew how to interact with men.

The waiter deposited a drink for Elsie as she gave him a quick smile, and she took it, holding it between two long fingers. She took a drink as Augustus prepared himself a cigarette. He asked after her adventures and she laughed. "I'm afraid I'll disappoint. My adventures were rather trivial, I suppose. I went to Manhattan to keep my best friend company and to find some employment for myself. They bounced me around in the Ministry as a secretary, placing me where the need was. My adventures mostly consisted of finding the line between business professional and boring, and trying to forget the workday with parties much less elegant than this one."

Unable to stop himself, at her words Augustus quirked a challenging eyebrow at Elsie. He had never bent to a woman’s will and he had no intention of starting in any great capacity. He had been the epitome of dominance for as long as he had considered women creatures in need of his affection and he them. Naturally, the idea made him balk but he soothed himself internally, part of him assuring the other that the little girl was no offense to his masculinity. At that, he seemed to wilt a little and then he truly became conflicted and bewildered – did he want her to be? No, surely not. He’d just sit here and smoke. That was easier than thinking about the ins and outs of his own problematic nether regions.

“Uh-huh,” he responded finally, flicking some ash into the dish. “I am sure you will succeed.”

Augustus stubbed out his cigarette and washed away the taste with the few fingers of absinthe he had in his glass. He poured out another handsome amount before putting the stopper back in the bottle and taking a moment to adjust his eyes back on Elsie. There was flirtation here, something he imagined must have been a forte of hers if she was going to do it so willingly with a stranger who was comparatively ancient in light of herself. He didn’t know what it was or whether he was merely collapsing mentally, but he found himself slightly reassured by this familiar ground. Needless to say, he’d been swimming in weird waters up until that point in time.

“Well you clearly have been missing out if you have nothing more to tell me,” Augustus chuckled. “These parties are the light of my life and the whole point of this asinine social endeavour and you are implying to me that you have had more debauched fun than can perhaps be mentioned in civilise conversation, hmm? Is that it? We are at the wrong party evidently, my dear.”

There was an odd flicker in the older man's eyes, though he continued on as civil as ever, though there was a noticeable edge of coldness in his almost-sharp words. It was a good reminder to the fairly oblivious woman that she had to tread carefully around these powerful sorts. It had been this sort of abrasive attitude that had gotten her in such trouble with the American Ministry and Death Eaters. She had been careless, tactless, unwilling to censure herself because discretion had always been so horrid to the girl who had always been so free to do however she pleased. Fortunately, she had learned a little through her mistakes.

Only a little though.

She reached for her glass and drank a handsome amount, feeling the eyes of Augustus on her face, carefully regarding her. She did not shy from this as he peered at her, but she calmly set down the glass and leaned back. An elbow rested gently upon the arm of the chair, her chin gently cradled in her hand. She regarded him, a small smile on her face. There was no challenge in her gaze. She simply looked pleased to be in his company. It was much better than being felt out by some poor woman's husband or avoiding Arthur all night.

"I'm more transparent than I hoped," Elsie said. "I indeed had a great deal of fun doing things I have been told I would not have done had I been more wise. My friend and keeper Claire would be very upset if I advertised our silly adventures to everyone. What happens in Manhattan..." She smiled. "I do like coming back to these parties, though. It's a nice reconnection."

(OOC: Sorry this took forever! )

A bright, orange glow lit at the end of the cigarette as Augustus squeezed it betwixt his lips, the sides of which lifted into a half-smirk that tugged at the creases by the corners of his eyes. Calloused fingers slid the cigarette from the small, moustache-topped mouth and from it, silvery smoke was exhaled into the air above the dark head of slicked back hair. Under those same fingertips, the cigarette was snuffed out in the glass dish in the middle of the table. Deep, mahogany eyes lifted and settled on the witch before Augustus Rookwood, a witch who had long shirked childishness – in form, at least – and was now perhaps more tempting than she realised; perhaps for the best.

“Not transparent enough,” Augustus provoked, bringing his glass of absinthe to his lips. He chuckled after swallowing and sat up a little, putting the glass down on the table cloth.

The music changed then, departing from the stiff classic cat calls on awkward instruments to something a little bit more contemporary, though even Augustus granted to himself that it was dated. He sighed a little and turned, watching for a few moments, wondering if he could spot a reflection of himself in the crowd, with Cordelia cradled in his arms, at a time when tenderness was a language he understood. They weren’t there, though. No, of course not. Anyone in their right mind would certainly forfeit political gain over his family. They weren’t all as foolish as himself.

“All of this Manhattan intrigue, then,” Augustus went on, turning his head back to Elsie. “And not a single fiancé to show for it. I would have imagined your parents would have wanted to turn you into a serial bride. I do believe that was the aspiration for you, wasn’t it? A man with all the money in the world who gave up his brains at birth and couldn’t recognise a leech if it bit him and clung on – that was the idea.” Augustus smirked. “I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t blame you, either. I’d say clever girl. Everyone wants to know their daughter is going to be alright in the end, after all. But not one. Not in search of number three. Just here for connection. Forgive me, sweetheart, if I don’t believe you.”