Welcome to Charming, where swirling petticoats, the language of flowers, and old-fashioned duels are only the beginning of what is lying underneath…
After a magical attempt on her life in 1877, Queen Victoria launched a crusade against magic that, while tidied up by the Ministry of Magic, saw the Wizarding community exiled to Hogsmeade, previously little more than a crossroad near the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the years that have passed since, Hogsmeade has suffered plagues, fires, and Victorian hypocrisy but is still standing firm.
Thethe year is now 1895. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
Complete a thread started and set every month for twelve consecutive months. Each thread must have at least ten posts, and at least three must be your own.
Did You Know?
Did you know? Jewelry of jet was the haute jewelry of the Victorian era. — Fallin
This month had seen them more stretched than perhaps ever before, somehow even worse than the summer of the laughing plague: they were down magic; down some of their staff to the Irvingly expedition; the fog was at fault for all kinds of avoidable injuries; and to top it all off, the recent news of werewolf attacks in London and of vampire attacks in Hogsmeade swirling in the air were feeding ever more into the general feeling of hysteria.
None of the healers here had the time or the luxury of feeling hysterical, however. Ari felt a little like the living dead himself. He could hardly say how many hours he'd been on his feet today, never mind how many hours of the past month and a half he'd spent beyond the hospital. The front doors beyond the waiting room now seemed like the edge of the very world. There was a little amusing irony, Ari supposed, in the fact of how often people had tried to convince him that he hadn't had much of a life before. This was a new level of accomplishment.
Not that he begrudged the state of his days in the slightest, of course! Besides in moments like these, where the most recent admittee to the ward had spent longer than he had treating her trying to induce him to pass on a volley of complaints both to Mr. Keene and to Minister Ross about the whole situation. Needless to say, Ari had not been persuaded, but he had done his best to soothe her distress, and when that failed, offered her his sincerest of sympathies and a potent sleeping draught.
What he wouldn't give for a ten-minute nap, he thought, wondering whether he might manage to barricade himself in the office for that amount of time. The fantasy was scuppered by the abrupt sound of a crash in the hallway, too close to ignore. Ari cast his office door a last longing look before turning on his heel and dashing back round the corner into the hall.
Diligent didn't like working more than he had to but that had been what had happened thanks to this whole fog situation. He and his family now had enough toad and locust ingredients to last them a long while for their own potion needs but that had been almost the only upside of things so far. Definite downside was the extra hours. Plus the no magic thing.
Diligent, generally a jovial man, was now often times a little grumpy. He just wanted to hide out in one of the closets and sleep for a bit but he had been stopped on his way to doing so by someone else in his department that needed his help carrying some filled chamberpots to the room that they were using to empty and clean them out. Magic had never been so missed. Usually the contents would just be vanished and an intern could be tasked with casting a simple cleaning spell on it/
He had been doing so just fine when the chamberpot fell off the first chamberpot he was holding, sending... unmentionables skittering on the floor. He should probably warn someone about that.
“He believed he could
but he was really tired
so he didn't.”
"What's wro-" Ari started, seeing Oswald in the ward corridor before he saw anything else, and ordinarily the first thought to his mind would be, oh, there's already a healer to hand, I suppose the situation's handled, but with Oswald, you never quite knew. He was certainly able at the job, but he was not always... efficient, not the natural healer Ari would think of to find first on the scene.
Although Oswald might have caused the scene here rather than come to save the day, Ari supposed: or would have supposed, if he had had any time to notice the fallen chamberpot or the ones still in the healer's grasp. Or had seen what was now all over the floor.
Too late. He'd gotten through the best of it unknowingly before his foot skidded, and he was wiped right off his feet onto the floor. Now he was really in it; he'd be covered in the stuff, all down the back of his robes - the smell was so strong on the floor that he suspected it might linger for weeks. Ari closed his eyes in utter exasperation, and would have given up and laid his head back against the floor in total defeat if - well.
Fantastic. This was all because he'd been daydreaming about a nap, wasn't it? Served him right.
"I... see." Ari said faintly, pulling himself up to a sitting position and trying not to look his healer in the eye just yet. Better get up before more people saw this.
Diligent instinctively felt the urge to flee at the sound of his head healers voice. The head healer addressing him tended to equal more work coming his way but he couldn't exactly leave this mess here. Maybe. No, he probably shouldn't but Merlin, did he want to. Being head healer meant that Mr. Fisk was good at handling impromptu problems like this. He assumed, anyway.
It was too late now anyway, the head healer had seen him though apparently not the mess. Diligent winced as Mister Fisk went on an impromptu slip and slide through the treasures left for them by one of their patients. "Might want to watch your step," he said lightly and obviously too late for his words to be any sort of use. 0
"Do you need help up?" He hoped not, he'd rather keep his distance.
“He believed he could
but he was really tired
so he didn't.”
Ari gave a faint frown and shut his eyes briefly so that he might pretend that he was in pain from the fall and not from pure exasperation at Oswald's words. Very funny. Of course, he probably meant well... it hadn't been his fault that Ari hadn't been watching his step. There was no sense in being disgruntled about it.
Ari's inclination, sitting in this filth, was disgruntlement all the same, but at least that could be flushed out by total mortification. "Please," he muttered gratefully at the offer of help, not certain that he wasn't going to slip again, now that his shoes were probably sticky with the stuff. Discreetly, he checked that his hand was still clean before reaching up so that Oswald might lend a hand as he pushed himself back to his feet, feeling a grumble of age in his joints as he did. (How was that fair? He wasn't even forty yet!)
"Is it everywhere?" He murmured gloomily to the other healer now, sure that he could feel the back of his work robes slicked with it. Of course this only happened when they were down the ability to cast a thorough cleaning spell and hospital maintenance were nowhere to be found.
Dilly was soundly oblivious to the fact that his boss might be currently exasperated with him. Ugh, Mister Fisk was accepting his help. Now he regretted offering it. The stench was starting to be overwhelming. Even so, Dill reached out to do his best to help the other man to his feet. Which also served to smear a bit more of the exrement on the older man. Oops. Hopefully Mister Fisk wouldn't notice if Dill didn't mention it.
"Just this area thankfully," Diligent supplied. Thankfully it wasn't like it was all over the room like he was assuming he was being asked.
“He believed he could
but he was really tired
so he didn't.”
Just this area - Ari glanced around as he got to his feet, able to tell that well enough from the usual cleanliness of the rest of the corridor, and from the fact one chamberpot could hardly have managed to deface the whole hospital in the blink of an eye. Of course, he could also feel where it was on him well enough; "I meant -" Ari began, but he sighed and shook his head instead, too exasperated to bother.
This would all be a great deal less of an inconvenience if only magic was on hand as usual - a wave of his wand would set them aright, but now - well, it'd be a miracle if no one else stepped in this shit now. "Can I trust you to call -" well, currently not magical, "- maintenance to have this mess cleared up?" Ari said, which, though it was framed as a question, was less that and rather more an instruction from a superior. "As quickly as possible," he added, as he ducked over to set up a makeshift barrier sign to stop any more accidents. It would be far worse if a patient fell in the next minute. "And then," Ari added, clearing his throat, "if you could check the storage cupboards for a spare set of robes for me?"
As usual, Diligent was either ignoring or ignorant of the other mans exasperation with him. Ugh, now he was being given more things to do. He had already done his quota of productive things today. If this had been anyone but Mister Fisk, he would have probably whined a little. Or refused. "Yes, of course," he said, trailing off to do just that.
He rummaged around for some clean robes and took his sweet time about getting back to his superior. "Here you are, sir. Fresh and clean robes." By now, maintenence had begun using what looked like a muggle mop to clean stuff up. It looked slow going.
“He believed he could
but he was really tired
so he didn't.”
Once maintenance had - at last - arrived to clear up the scene, Ari had considered trudging back to hide in the office, but if he did, he was not entirely convinced he'd ever see Mr. Oswald or that clean set of robes again. Mercifully, he finally resurfaced, robes in hand. Small victories.
"Thank you," Ari said, grateful but tired. By this point, the clean set of robes would have to accomplish the work of a nap in refreshing him, but he supposed this - incident - had been a wake up call all of its own. Or so his now-sore spine would continue to prove to him for the rest of his shift, no doubt.
Though he had opened his mouth to dismiss the other healer, and send him back on his way, getting to survey the scene a little more in his absence had led Ari to connect the dots as to just who had created the mess in the first place. He ought to have had a hunch. "Well, you'd better get back to - what were you doing before, Mr. Oswald?"
Diligent did a bit of a soldiers salute when his superior thanked him for the robes. He was aware that it was probably in his best interest to slip off quietly but instead, he curiously watched the magicless cleaning. The fog really was inconvenient and made being gainfully employed more trouble than it was worth, really. "I was being productive," he offered vaguely, feeling slightly shifty. "Which I ought to get back to."
“He believed he could
but he was really tired
so he didn't.”
Productive, he said (had dropping a mountain of chamberpots in the corridor really been productive?) and there was a long lecture on the tip of his tongue to impress to Mr. Oswald that there were plenty of things around to be occupying himself with, but - Ari was just too tired to bother.
"Alright," he just said instead, giving the healer the benefit of the doubt. "Good. Go see a patient, Mr. Oswald." At least - magic or no magic - Oswald could be competent with patients when he wanted to be.
