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
Noble floated back from her, a foot, with half a mind to just go home and contemplate the baffling side affect he'd just experienced. And then Daff offered her helpful feedback. Nerves frayed from having touched her, Noble pressed his ghostly lips together and could not stop himself from snapping: "You need to realize you can't tell me what to do anymore."
He was nothing to her, technically — technically he had never been anything to her, because they had always been so unofficial. She couldn't just offer feedback.
"I am very well aware." Daff snapped back, too off-kilter to try and contain her emotions, some of the fire creeping back onto her tongue. "You made that abundantly clear, but it doesn't mean I don't still care." She shouldn't. Daff knew she shouldn't. Not anymore. She had tried to fix it, had begged and pleaded, admitted she was wrong and none of it was enough.
But it also wasn't in her nature to just stop either. No matter how much he wanted to bicker and ignore it. No matter the fact that they'd fallen apart and she had managed to pick up her pieces and move on. Daff couldn't completely let go.
"Well maybe you should stop," he replied. He knew that she couldn't stop any more than he could, but that did not make her feedback on his extracurriculars any more welcome than it had been at any point since she'd left him in 1891.
It was thrilling, though — to hear her temper, when he was like this.
"Maybe you should stay out of my garden." It wasn't hers, not so much anymore, but she spent more of her life here than anywhere else. This was her home. Her safe haven. This was where she met Elias.
Noble didn't get to ruin that and act like an asshole about it.
Daff felt the heat rise to get cheeks again, angry and frustrated. He should know she couldn't just stop, no matter how angry she was, no matter how reckless she thought he was being, so utterly irresponsible. The thought bubbled up to the tip of her tongue before she could stop it, "But I can love him and still want the best for you, you absolute idiot " It came out in a harsh whisper hanging in the air between them like the cloud of the breath she used to loose the words.
She had a point — he damn well should have stayed out of her garden. He knew better, but the confidence-boosting parts of spiritus sancti had Noble giving into his worst impulses. She was blushing now, and he knew he shouldn't like seeing her angry this much, but he was sure she was about to say something out-of-pocket — and then she did.
Daff hadn't meant to say it. The frustration had bubbled over and she just needed him to understand what this was doing to her.
She didn't regret saying it either. He probably ought to know and she should have been the one to tell him. Daff did her best to look him in the eye, but it was so hard. "I did exactly what you told me to," that day in her shop before it had all come together, when she wasn't sure what her relationship looked like with Noble nor Elias. She had finally learned what the real problem was — and that no matter what she did, it wasn't enough.
The journey to here hadn't been easy, she'd messed it up in far too many ways since that August afternoon, but Daff knew she what she wanted and she wasn't about to jeopardize it again. "I have my flower shop, I love Elias and I want to marry him, and I want to be happy." She blew out a steady breath. "And I want for you to be happy, too." She really did, more than alright, honestly happy.
He listened. He didn't love her anymore — he really, honestly, was sure that he did not love her anymore — but that didn't mean that Noble would stop listening to her. (Taking her advice, sure, he'd stopped that — but when he was willing to hear what she had to say, he would always listen to her.)
"So you're not happy," Noble said, after a beat. "Not yet, at least." He wasn't happy, obviously — happy people did not dabble in making new ill-advised potions because they needed something new to do, happy people did not help their brother plan burglaries, happy people did not accidentally commit murder. He wasn't happy.
Not happy? Of all the things he chose to focus on, the one thing that could be considered doubt. Daff didn't have any doubts; she and Elias had been through enough for her to know without a shadow of any doubt that they were going to be fine, happy. Happier than she'd ever been.
Things that did not come easy were not to be taken for granted and she was not about to lose her second chance at happy ever after.
"That's the thing, I am happy, incandescently so." She'd almost ruined it... Twice, but that didn't need mentioning now. Things had settled into a nice routine, and besides the times she has messed up, falling in love with Elias had been so very easy, startlingly natural. The effort was there, on both sides and it took work, but she didn't mind.
"It's real and it's worth it, just like you." Noble had been worth it too, but she hadn't been able to make him see that.
Incandescently happy, but she had said she wanted to be happy. Did happy people think about how much they wanted to be happy? Noble understood that she was trying to encourage him to have some sort of self-worth, but he ignored that — glossed right over it in his brain, actually. She could say that he was worth it all she wanted, but he would not believe her — he had killed people, whether he meant to or not, and nothing he had done since had made up for that.
(He had never really believed himself worth her before the Sanditon Hurricane — but Noble had never really looked that thought in the eye, either.)
"You said you want to be happy," he pointed out. "Not that you are. And you're — out here, at night, again."
Typical, picking and choosing only the pieces he wanted to focus on, refusing to see the big picture. Daff sighed softly, almost in defeat; it was like talking to a brick wall these days. They used to have such deep, meaningful conversations, now it was almost like they were complete strangers with no idea how to read the other person anymore.
"You're picking at semantics. I said what I meant to, I want to be happy and I am. Nothing is guaranteed so I'm making it happen." Of course it was so easy with Elias, always had been. It had been so startlingly easy to fall in love with him, Daff still had to wonder if she wasn't imagining the whole thing, like she was living in a fever dream. She had never believed she'd ever be that lucky again. That meant she couldn't get complacent and just take it for granted. Daff wasn't going to make the same mistake again.
"Because this," she motioned between them with one hand. "Is hard, and sort of miserable and I know it's my fault, but I don't know what to do about it anymore." Every interaction left her out of if sorts and off-kilter.
This time she was going to willfully ignore part of his comment; her insomnia was nothing new and he ought to know that, even if it had been better. It had nothing to do with the conversation.
Noble looked at her, and would have sighed, but he wasn't exactly breathing at the moment. The sound came out as a weird echo-sigh instead. He felt like they kept having this conversation; really, he ought to just leave her alone, but it felt impossible that they had lost all of the connections that they had to each other. He missed her — not being in love with her, (although sometimes he did miss that), but being her friend. He did not know how to articulate that.
"Things don't have to be your fault to be hard," Noble said, a gentle push-back that felt like an echo of something he would have said when they were still planning to be married. "I'm glad you're happy." And — he would be, he thought. Not right now, but eventually.
Daff collected things that people said weren't her fault, but she was guilty anyway. She tucked them away, tried not to think about them too often, but it didn't change the reality of the fact. She had torn their romance apart first; falling in love with Elias had cost him a dear friendship. Nobody blamed her, but she still blamed herself and always would. Daff internalized these things and tried to grow from them, but there was nothing she could do about the past and the hurt they had caused.
Something released in her chest a little bit though, when he said he was happy for her. For the first time since she'd come outside, she smiled slowly at him. It mattered. Of course it did. She hated that they always seemed to be at odds, even though she knew things couldn't go back to how they had once been, even friends. They could be friendly, sure, but anything more was unlikely. Letting go of that was the hardest part; they had been friends first, grown so close that she still felt like something was missing sometimes.
"Yes, sort of." They hadn't discussed specifics, but Elias knew that Noble had existed, just not who he was. Just the same that she knew he had been in love in the past too, but didn't know the woman's name. "He knows I was in love before, but not that it was you." They would talk about it, she had been meaning to find a way to bring it up, but since the uproar in June, she hadn't wanted to rock the boat again.
Daff was smiling at him, and he was just a footnote in the history she told her new partner. Noble swallowed; if he was corporeal at the moment, he was sure that his mouth would have felt dry.
"Oh," he said, "That makes sense." He was forcing his voice to sound more upbeat than it actually was; he believed that Daff would probably see through him, but he was hoping if he tried enough, she would not call him out on it.
"If you ever tell him it was me — will you let me know?" Noble added.
"Sure," Daff agreed easily, even if she hadn't any idea why he would want to know. Maybe she would have to do it sooner rather than later then. She still didn't quite know how to bring it up, but perhaps she would just have to rip off the bandage and do it. There shouldn't be any secrets between her and Elias if they were going to get married one day, even if the discussion would be uncomfortable. It wouldn't change anything, not after everything they had already been through, just information they should both have.
Asking the same of Noble seemed ridiculous, as he had made it clear he wasn't getting married any time soon, but also, she didn't want to be a painful memory for him anymore. Young, reckless and in love didn't always work out and that was what had happened to them. In time everything would get easier, she had to believe in that. "I should probably go back inside." The warming spell on her blanket was starting to wear off and she wanted him to go home and reconnect with whatever part of him he'd left behind. "Take care, yeah?" As much she wanted to tell him not to do this again, she knew she didn't have the right and he didn't want to hear it, so that was all she had.
At least Noble would get a heads up if Grimstone was ever on the way to punch him.
She was right, though — she should go inside, and he needed to find somewhere to forget her until he floated back into his body. "Take care," Noble echoed — and went back through the fence the same way he had come.
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