snoozelolly replied to your post “Did you ever think about a whistling Graves? Or a humming one? Like...”
Mama and PapaGraves needs their own spin off sitcom
Mama and Papa Graves are a gift unto the world and the absolute bane of Graves’ entire existence.
It starts, as these things tend to, in 1853 when Bedivere Graves’ younger brother eloped with the butler and took most of the family’s money with him. The resultant mess brought an end to Bedivere’s loveless marriage with the Lady Margaret and ended up with him selling practically everything he owned, dropping out of politics because he couldn’t afford the bribes, and getting a job in anything that would pay him. He kept the grand old house though, even if half of it was boarded up and most of was lacking furniture, more because the grand old house was so closely tied to the Graves’ blood and magic that it would be impossible to sell than for any other reason. They ended up living in the gatekeeper’s cottage because that was far easier to furnish, even if it was a touch cramped.
Thus, Bedivere Graves began work as a lowly admin assistant, a supposedly great man brought low by a fickle wife who was now enjoying the charms of the Lord Tottingroffahooffa or whatever the idiot’s name was. The Lady Margaret was also greatly enjoying the freedom of not having to care for her two year old son anymore; can you imagine the wrinkles caused by having to get up so often in the middle of the night? Ghastly.
You can see, perhaps, why it was a loveless marriage.
So little Leodegrance Graves grew up mostly in a small and cozy house but occasionally rattling around in a large and empty house with three dogs (Woodman the beagle known as Woody, Blue the not-sure-maybe-collie-mix? and Woody Two the jack russell, because this is what happens when you let a small child name the dogs) and a rather fabulous kneazle (Montague, who Bedivere tried really hard to keep as Montague but who invariably was known as Goo) who spent most of his time perched on the top of the tallest cupboard and occasionally fetching Bedivere when the dogs proved incapable of keeping young Leo on the straight and narrow. Bedivere himself progressed from admin assistant to full admin to primary handler of misfiled paperwork to - actually, he stayed as an admin in theory, but he ended up pretty much running the auror department. Their paperwork side, at least.
And I said earlier that Bedivere was a supposedly great man, because in truth, he hadn’t been. He’d been a proud man, unwilling to bend, all too willing to pigeonhole people into their proper place in life. But as Leo grows from toddler to child to daydreaming teen, Bedivere grows from a man who believed in a man’s rights to a man who believed in a man’s duty and there is a greatness in that. He advances his cooking skills from a range of salads (an admittedly fantastic range, but all still assorted mixed leaves, vegetables, and tins of soup that possibly shouldn’t have gone in the salad but were there all the same) to a range of hot pasta salads and that makes a huge difference. (The spaghetti jelly stage we politely don’t mention.) Leo, meanwhile, experiments with jam and squid ink veloutes and decides they aren’t bad (he’s wrong), so between them it all goes well. Goo and the dogs at least are easy to please.
And now that you know the backstory and the history, let’s open to episode one where Leo wanders down the lane after a rather elderly Woody Two, gets lost, and accidentally trips over the potted plants at the bottom of a ridiculously fancy house and gardens. He manages to roll himself over so that he’s lying on his back and takes a minute to just flop there in the grass because why not? The flowers are pretty. Woody Two won’t have gone far. He’s comfy.
“You know you’ve got mud all over you,” a rather haughty voice declares. Leo tilts his head back and squints at what appears to be far too much lace for any sane person to deal with.
“I’m looking for my dog.” And, because he’s Leo, he waves a hand in a lazy circular motion to illustrate the fact. “Obviously.”
There’s a pause. The lace comes to bend over him, the top part resolving itself into a feminine face with an absolute mountain of hair tied up in a complicated pinned braid. “You’re not doing it very well,” she points out.
“He’s going deaf,” Leo explains. “It’ll take him a while.”
Another pause. She sinks into a lady-like sprawl on the grass next to him, uncaring of the green stains that will mark her ridiculous white dress. “I think you’re an idiot,” she says pleasantly.
“All the best people are,” Leo agrees, and grins when she huffs at him.
It’s the start of a relationship that not just her parents but pretty much her entire extended family will bemoan and bewail, much pointed clinking of tea spoons against fancy tea cups because the Graves boy, Carlotta, darling, must you really what about that nice Tottingroffahooffa boy, isn’t he more to your taste?
No. No, is the answer to that, because Carlotta is busy being infuriated by the damned idiot Graves boy with his far too many dogs and she hasn’t got time to fall in love with anyone else.
Bedivere just despairs and tries at least to push Leo into a decent suit jacket. It doesn’t work very well, but at least he gets to laugh when the Tottingroffahooffa boy falls off his horse trying to impress Carlotta and she declares him an incompetent buffoon and proceeds to ignore him in favour of bribing Goo into sitting on her lap.
