Much Ado About Nothing [The Wizarding World]

Act 2, Scene 1

The supper had been a great success and now everyone had gone off to prepare for the ball. The musicians had assembled in the brightly lit and elaborately decorated ballroom and everything was ready. The family gathered to welcome their guests and sat down together to wait.

'Wasn't Jamala here at supper?' said Cepheus.

'I didn't see him,' said River.

Astoria pulled a face. 'That gentleman looks so sour,' she said. 'Every time I see him I have heartburn for an hour afterwards.'

Theadora agreed. 'He does seem sad all the time.'

'The perfect man would be one who was halfway between him and Malfoy,' said Astoria. 'The one is too much like a statue and says nothing and the other is too much like a spoilt child, burbling on forever.'

Cepheus laughed. 'With half young Malfoy's tongue in Shafiq's mouth, and half Shafiq's melancholy in Malfoy's face...'

Astoria interrupted him with a delighted laugh: 'Add a shapely leg and a good foot, uncle, and enough money, and a man like that would win any woman in the world, with a little work.'

'I swear, niece,' said Cepheus, 'you'll never get yourself a husband with such a sharp tongue.'

'It's true,' said River. 'She's far too cussed.'

'Too cussed is to be more than cussed,' said Astoria, 'which means I'm harmless. God takes care that the vicious have short horns and lack the power to do harm.'

Cepheus looked puzzled. 'So by being cussed God won't send you any horns?'

River laughed and nudged Theadora, who blushed.

'Exactly,' said Astoria. 'No husband. I hope he won't send me one, and for that favour I go on at him on my knees morning noon and night. For heaven's sake, I couldn't bear to have a husband with a beard: I'd rather lie in a scratchy woollen blanket.'

'You may be lucky, and find one who doesn't have one,' said Cepheus.

'And what would I do with him then? she said. 'Dress him in my clothes and make him my waiting gentlewoman? Those who have beards are too old and those who don't are too young. I don't like older men and young men wouldn't want me. So I will be like the proverbial old maid and take a job with a bear-keeper, leading his apes into hell.'

'Then you'd end up in hell,' said Cepheus.

'No, only at the gate, and the devil would be there to meet me like an old cuckold with horns on his head, and he would say, get yourself to heaven, Astoria, get yourself to heaven: this isn't a place for you old maids. So I would deliver my apes and take myself off to Saint Peter, and he would show me where the bachelors are sitting, and there we would live, as happy as the day is long.'

Theadora smiled at her cousin's picture of eternal bliss. River shook his head. 'Well, niece,' he said to her, 'I hope that you will do as your father tells you.'

'Yes indeed,' said Astoria. 'It's my cousin's duty to curtsy and say yes father, whatever you say, father: but even so, cousin, make sure that he's a handsome fellow, and if not, make another curtsy and say, father, it's whatever I say.

They all laughed. 'Well, niece,' said Cepheus, 'I hope to see you fixed up with a husband one day.'

'Not until God makes men out of something better than earth,' she said. 'Wouldn't it be terrible for a woman to be married to a bit of sand? To be accountable to a clod of worthless, poor, soil? No, uncle, I'll have none of it. In any case, Adam's sons are my brothers, and I firmly believe that it's a sin to mate with a relative.'