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.
It was odd to be at Cecily Gallivan's birthday party. It made Cash feel like he should be playing Quidditch still — there was a divide between him and the rest of the Cannons now. They had inside jokes he didn't understand; he had a strange sense that they didn't trust him, too, now that he was involved in the regulations of Magical Games & Sports.
When the soiree began, Cash realized he should have expected that he would feel like the odd man out. He also desperately didn't want to dance — he could do it, but they might ask him about the election, or about when Adrienne was having children, or about single relatives. And he really didn't want that.
He also realized he should have expected that Theo would have been the other odd man out. "Card game?" he asked, taking an anxious sip of his champagne. Why had he even come here?
He hadn’t made any effort to gravitate towards Cash this evening – or at least, he hadn’t meant to – but he supposed it had probably been inevitable. Even if the house hadn’t been magically expanded for the evening, there was only so much space at the periphery of the party, and of course they were both here.
Theo gave him a raised-eyebrow look at that, as if to say really? (and had it really come to this? Awkward card games at a crowded party?), but finally he shrugged, conceding. “Alright then,” he said. He drew up a chair and, still half unconvinced by the idea, dropped into it and reached for the deck. It was fine. Half torture, and half reprieve. “German whist or écarte?” This was his idea – Theo didn’t care.
Cash dropped into the chair across from Theo. Maybe he should not have come to this — but he liked Miss Gallivan, and he missed his teammates. Besides — even if he was anxious, there was something natural about sitting across from Theo Gallivan at an event they were both uncomfortable at.
"Let's play écarte," Cash said; he was better at it. "Is — do you think your sister's having fun?"
Theo tapped the deck once with his wand to remove the excess cards from it, and then started dealing them out meditatively.
“‘Course she is,” Theo said, shooting Cash a wry look to say, well, more than I am. It was bad, he thought, how fast and how easily he had relaxed in his company still – all his pretences had been discarded by the time he turned up the suit for trumps. Hearts. “She hasn’t found a husband yet,” – and maybe he oughtn’t have been flippant about this, because she seemed to be floundering more about it year on year – “but she hasn’t lost an ear tonight either, so.” (Win some, lose some. The party was going about as well as could be expected.)
He was surprised that Cecily had not found a husband — she was charming and enthusiastic, even if she was far too into Quidditch for most people. Surely someone wanted access to her dowry? Or, since that was bleak, surely someone wanted a wife who could talk with them about the sport. And yet — Cecily, unmarried, and now twenty-three. (But only twenty-three — she may be alright.)
Cash did not have much to say about marriage-arrangements that did not involve betrothals, so was almost relieved to have Theo offer the anecdote of The Ear. He grinned at Theo, feeling warm and wry at the memory for all it had been gruesome in the moment. "Well," he said, "I suppose you didn't want to hazard a surprise party for her?"
It wasn’t fair when Cash grinned at him like that, Theo thought unhappily – because he liked it too much, making Cash smile; because there was an inadvertent blossoming urge to grin back at him; because then it felt like there was still some shared understanding between them, and there couldn’t be, now.
“Nah,” Theo joked nonetheless, although he was trying to be brisk rather than indulge the feeling too much. “Thought we’d play it safe, and try and get through one party without an Incident.”
He glanced down at his hand of cards, and then back at Cash. “Are you having fun?” he asked in return, a little pointedly.
It was nice, to joke with Theo — something had tightened in his chest through this conversation, but not unpleasantly.
Cash huffed an amused breath out at Theo's question. "This is better than the club," he said, "So — I think so." He had a hard time telling when he was having fun, when he wasn't on a broomstick. He played a card.
“High praise,” Theo said dryly, tempted to roll his eyes – but not quite managing it. Because it was all well and good trying to be light and sarcastic about it, but the forced divide in their lives nowadays didn’t help that undercurrent of worry about him that Theo still had.
But the club was part of Cash’s pureblood society life, and all of that felt like some grand, looming extension of his family – it wasn’t far enough from the Lestranges for Theo’s own peace of mind. (There was no peace of mind to have, there hadn’t been since Cash had told him about the Vow he was under.)
At least the people here were not; they were mostly from quidditch if not Cee’s friends (and her friends were not particularly stuffy or intimidating, either), so this was perhaps some respite for him.
Theo glanced at his cards, scrutinising them to decide how best to win the trick before returning his scrutiny to Cash. “And how’s the Ministry?”
Cash made a generically neutral sound with his mouth. The Ministry was boring, is what it was — but he should try not to complain about it too much, because the Ministry was his life now. (His life needed — something more, and Cash knew it, but did not know where to find that. And it would be unfair to ask Theo.)
"Well, there's the election," he said after a beat, "So everyone's rather frantic about that." Cash wasn't; his father would eventually tell him who the acceptable candidates were, and he would not dare to think about it intensively before then.
There was always more to what Cash didn’t say than what he did, so bringing up the election felt like a dodge of the question more than anything. “I didn’t know you cared about politics,” Theo commented, and maybe there was a touch of passive aggressiveness in his tone or in the way he set down his next card.
And so what? Cash could be interested in politics now. He could have always been. After all, there was plenty he hadn’t mentioned even then, wasn’t there? Plenty of things Theo hadn’t known about him.
(Maybe he was annoyed at Cash for it; or for being here and making him play cards. Or he was just annoyed at still missing him.)
Cash frowned. "I don't," he replied, honest — and sounding flustered, because of the way Theo had pointed it out. "It's just — in the air." It was what people made small talk about at the Ministry, right now — and it was better for Cash than talking about the Quidditch rankings, which made him feel painfully nostalgic.
He missed Theo; he missed being able to actually talk to him. If Theo's last card had been placed passive-aggressively, Cash's next one was placed morosely.
“I bet your father does,” Theo said darkly, care about politics. Of course he would. Theo wouldn’t be surprised if Lucius Lestrange ran the Wizengamot in the same manner he did Cash’s life. How is your father? he almost asked, bitterly. (Still in good health? Still holding your life hostage?)
It was too easy to be angry at Cash for things his father had done, though, so he abruptly felt bad about mentioning his father, bad about – asking about his life at all. Pretending to hate him felt good for a moment, but maybe he was just making things more miserable than they needed to be. And – honestly, he didn’t really want to talk politics, either.
“That’s your trick,” he said instead, pushing the cards they’d put down back Cash’s way, like he could lose the game in apology. He shifted under the table, too, nudging Cash’s leg with his own to try and say I’m sorry.
Cash flushed. He looked down at his cards. He did not want to talk to Theo about his father; anything Theo had to say about Lucius was entirely fair, because Lucius was the reason things were over. He didn't look up again until Theo nudged his leg, and then he tried for a smile. "Yeah," Cash said, "So it is."
He took the trick, put another card down. Cash nudged Theo's leg back, with his own — it's okay or I'm sorry or something else that could bridge the hopeless gap between them.
The nudge back was something – but if they ended up playing cards in silence it would be his fault, Theo thought desperately, looking blankly at his cards.
There were just no good topics of conversation anymore, not like this, in company. They could talk quidditch – Theo always fell back on quidditch – but he didn’t think it would make Cash feel any better than asking about the Ministry, so there went any anecdotes about the Chudley stadium or about the best snitch catches of the season or any comments on his former colleagues. He daren’t ask about Cash’s wife.
But talking about his sister had been fine, so (maybe grasping at straws for an olive branch here) he cleared his throat and asked, almost hopefully: “Did I tell you about Nat’s little protest against the flying ban?”
