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 1894. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
Play a character aged 35 or older for one month. Non-humans do not count. Show this by submitting two completed threads started one month (or more) apart. Threads must have at least ten posts, and at least three must be your own.
Did You Know?
It’s quite unusual for a caster's patronus to be their favourite animal, but very possible that it will take the shape of a creature they’ve never before seen or heard of. — Amy
January 1st, 1893 — Upstairs at the Flint Estate — Wellingtonshire
Victor was standing at the foot of his own body, which felt very ominous. He wasn't looking at the body, but he was perpetually aware of its position. Perhaps there was some connection between body and soul after all, but more likely it was a function of the dread he still felt at remembering that his body and himself were now separate entities. He was only standing because he hadn't had the time to learn how to sit down — he'd tried once and started sinking through the armchair about twenty seconds in, and had given it up for the day. He kept glancing at the balcony, wanting to peer over the side and see how the party was progressing below, but knew it would have been disastrous if anyone saw him while Jasper was still downstairs somewhere pretending to be the living version of him.
So he didn't want to look at the body, couldn't look at the party. He looked instead at his pocket watch, still tucked into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. It was a good thing that he'd died still properly dressed, or they never would have been able to pull this off.
"Huh. It still keeps time," he remarked, in an isn't that interesting? sort of tone. He doubted Oscar would find it terribly interesting.
Oscar didn't want to look at the body, but sooner or later he would have to. He couldn't push the body over the balcony without looking at it again. In the scheme of things, Jasper had a more gruesome job — Jasper had to pretend to be Victor. Oscar got to be himself.
He was being pretty morose. He knew it. As long as he didn't express it out loud, he didn't have to feel bad about it.
Oscar turned to his brother with a baffled expression; eyebrows knotted together in a who cares? gesture. "Ghost watch," he offered, more flat than usual. He couldn't be rude about ghost watch, because Victor was dead. But he wasn't happy, and didn't find ghost watch interesting.
"I wonder if it'll keep working," Victor mused. Oscar had made it fairly clear from his tone that he didn't want to talk about Victor's watch, but if the alternative was talking about Victor's dead body or how Jasper was faring in the party below them pretending to be Victor, this was clearly the lesser of all evils. "I guess there's no reason why not. I can still wind it. And it's not as though the parts would deteriorate," he continued. At least, he didn't think they would. To be honest, he knew very little about how spirit objects worked. Victor considered himself an intellectual and an academic, but he only focused his energy on things he found interesting and relevant. Up until today, spirits had been neither. He still wasn't sure he found it particularly interesting, but now no one could deny it was relevant.
"Ghost things don't decay, do they?" he asked with a thoughtful frown. Because if a ghost watch cog could rust, then — that also meant that ghost skin could rot, didn't it? And that was a gruesome thought.
"Not that I've heard of," Oscar replied. He understood why Victor was being morbid, but he didn't love it, even if he was trying to stave off the impulse himself. "But I don't know that many ghosts." Could Jasper hurry this up? The sooner they threw Victor over the ledge, the sooner he could go home and worry less about being arrested. Damn it, Bea.
"Me, either," Victor said, before he'd had a chance to think about it. Of course that was probably going to change now. Not as though he planned on seeking any out to socialize, but he imagined they'd take more notice of him now than they had before, which meant he'd have to talk to at least a handful of ghosts who loitered around Hogsmeade. And then there was the other side of things — as time wore on, eventually he'd end up having more in common with the spirits than he did with the living people he still knew, and then eventually there wouldn't be any living people he still knew, and that thought was so sobering that it momentarily robbed him of his ability to speak at all.
Oscar sighed. It was much worse that Victor didn't know any ghosts. He didn't know what to say to that. Hopefully there were people who would make this easier, but they wouldn't be able to talk to them until Victor was publicly dead. "How long could Jasper take?" Oscar said, exasperated.
Victor was pulled from his thoughts by Oscar's words. He stood up a little straighter, because this at least was a familiar role to slip into: the manager of his siblings, the voice of reason, the one who had to think about the practicalities of everything. Death hadn't changed that. The whole reason they were here in the first place was that he was managing his sister out of the mess she had created.
"He should take whatever time it takes to make it seem convincing," Victor said. "We only get one shot at this."
Oscar's outburst shocked Victor into looking at it again, and he immediately wished he hadn't. He felt queasy (but did he really, or did he only feel as though he should? He no longer had a stomach — this was almost certainly psychosomatic. The knowledge of this fact did not reduce the feeling).
Victor looked away, took a breath. "It's alright," he said, although it wasn't, particularly. After a beat, he admitted softly, "I wish it wasn't here."
Oscar was wishing that Bea had to suffer through some of this. She'd been the one to kill Victor, after all — why did her brothers have to clean up the whole mess? He knew far better than to verbalize that thought, given he'd already been wildly insensitive — if Bea was here she would surely find some way to give herself away — so instead he nodded thoughtfully at Victor's statement.
"You won't have to see it again," Oscar said, trying for sympathy, "After tonight."
That was some minor comfort, he supposed, if it was true. There would still be a funeral to manage. Victor hadn't even begun to think through funeral logistics, concerned as he had been with re-staging the death itself.
"Close the casket at the funeral," he said quietly.
Oscar had not even thought about the casket. It seemed impossible that Victor was actually dead; it seemed that this moment had to be an odd play, and that tomorrow Victor would spring back to vibrant life. But Victor was actually dead, because Bea had actually killed him.
She was lucky, Oscar thought, that Victor was merciful enough not to simply go to the aurors. If Oscar were dead, he could not say that he would have done the same.
"I'll make sure it's closed," Oscar said, more serious than he usually managed.
He didn't have anything to say next, so they lapsed into silence for a moment. He considered asking if Oscar wanted to run over the plan again, but stopped himself. They'd run over it all a dozen times already, and there was nothing new to discuss. It would have just been talk for the sake of talk. Eventually there was a noise in the hallway outside the room, and Victor sprang towards the door (clumsily: one foot ended up three inches inside of the floorboards, and he didn't know why or how exactly to get it out). "I think that's Jasper," he said, and tried to ignore the way his stomach curdled at the idea that he was soon going to be face to face with yet another version of himself when his polyjuiced brother came in.
Of course, it could also be Flint himself or one of the other guests, in which case they were all fucked.
Thank Merlin, Oscar thought but did not say. If Jasper was here, that meant that this nightmare was almost over — and sure, Victor was going to stay dead, (Oscar still did not believe it), but they would have successfully faked his death.
