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
Cash, escorting his wife, had made a surprisingly-brief appearance at the Public Ball that evening. His cuff links, which had been a gift from Valeria when she was still living, were magically enchanted — and one of the drinks had caused them to rapidly change color from black and white, flashing like a bright gas light. Cash excused himself from Adrienne and her friends and headed home to amend the issue — although once he'd discarded the cuff links he was in no particular rush to head back.
He was lounging on one of the chaises in the living room, reading the paper and drinking a gin sling, when the floo lit up green. Cash, expecting his wife, stood up with his glass in hand, letting the paper fall to the side. He couldn't hide the surprise on his face when the individual stepping out of the floo was Ford, and not Adrienne.
They were — friendly, again, although it wasn't what it was. So Cash had not thought they were drop-in friends. And there was something scattered about Ford's appearance.
The Public Ball had turned out not to be public enough to serve as a suitable distraction. Ford had known that they'd been skating on rather thin ice with this one, but there weren't many better opportunities. It seemed like half of the events of the season had been replaced by politics politics politics, and political events didn't get the women out of the house as reliably as balls did. Well, as reliably as most balls did. The spinster aunt at the house Ford had just left had skipped the one tonight.
He had not expected (insofar as he had even thought about this at all, as he'd been sprinting to the floo) that Cash would actually be home. He'd hoped he would pop into the parlor, be greeted a moment later by a baffled servant, claim he'd been hoping to borrow something from Mr. Lestrange for tonight, but of course if he wasn't at home it wasn't much of a bother, no need to let him know — and then he'd be off back home where he could lock himself in his room with his ill-gotten goods and wait for Noble to come back with the girls. Noble and the girls were apparently the only ones at this damn ball.
Cash was standing half a room away from him though, and his thin pretense of a cover story evaporated. He was out of breath and weighed down by the satchel over his shoulder and still had his invisibility cloak hastily tossed over the top of the bag, one edge dragging on Cash's carpet.
"Oh, uh," he said, trying and failing to think of any appropriate response to the observation that he looked harried. "I, ah — should have written before coming over, sorry. Just, ah —" He had still not come up with any good reason for being in Cash's partner, other than the truth, which was obviously off the table. "— well, ah —"
Ford did look harried. Some fabric was dragging on Cash's carpet. He was out of breath, and his satchel was heavy. And Fortitude could not come up with an answer to the question. He was harried; Cash just didn't know what to do now.
"Are you alright?" Cash asked. Ford didn't seem alright — but Cash wasn't sure that it was his business to notice that, anymore.
Ford swallowed. "Yeah," he said, because it wasn't as though he could say anything else. Nevermind that it sounded unconvincing, with him still half out of breath. He really hadn't expected Cash to be right here. Coming here had been a bad idea. He'd nearly said the floo address for the Ministry atrium instead, but in the split second he'd had to make the decision he'd worried it might be recognized and he might be followed.
That was the silver lining: the fire behind him was still small and orange. If someone was following him, they would have come through by now, right?
He shifted his weight and tugged on the strap of the satchel to rotate it around, in the hopes that it would look less awkward if it were partly behind him. He noticed the cloak on the ground and reached to pull it up and tuck it over the top of the satchel again. "Am I, uhm, interrupting?" he asked, with a quick nod towards the drink. Please say yes, he begged internally. If Cash said he was interrupting, it would give Ford a good excuse to leave.
Cash shook his head. "It's a quiet night over here," he said. He probably ought to head back to the public ball, but if Ford was here, that gave him an excuse not to — and he'd already decided that he didn't want to. Besides that, he didn't understand why Ford looked like this — out of breath and coming without warning.
"I'm glad the floo was on," Cash said, "We usually lock it this late."
A locked floo was something he hadn't even considered, but that was something to be grateful for, he supposed. What would have happened if he'd said Cash's address and the floo was offline? Would the floo network have shoved him into the next nearest open fireplace or would it have just sputtered weakly around his feet while the servant chasing him down closed in? At least he was here, and this was relatively safe, even if he had no excuse for being here and now that Cash had confirmed he wasn't interrupting anything he had no very good excuse to beat a hasty retreat. But the floo hadn't lit up and he wasn't being followed, and as long as that was the case he thought he could weather an awkward conversation with Cash. If he could escape a burglary in the middle of the night, he could make it through an awkward conversation to keep his cover intact.
"Lucky for me," he said, and was relieved to hear that his breathing had leveled out enough by now that it didn't affect the way his words sounded. Now he just had to think up a good reason for being here. Something that would merit an unannounced late-night drop in via floo. What kind of emergency could clear that bar, other than the truth, he really didn't know. Ford could not picture himself actually coming to Cash's house, where Cash lived with his wife, under anything like normal circumstances.
He took a small step further into the room, and the bag shifted awkwardly against his side again. If he didn't set it down it was going to dig a mark into his shoulder where the strap was, but if he did set it down it was going to be even more obvious how full and heavy it was, and Ford really did not want to have to field any questions about what was in the bag. He ought to look into a lightening charm before he did this again. It was perhaps a rather depressing sign that he was literally not five minutes out from having nearly had his life ruined by this and was already thinking about the next time, but — well, it wasn't really like he could stop, was it? He'd just have to be more careful next time. A bigger party. There would probably only be one really good chance between now and the end of the year, he reckoned. Someone would throw a big blow-out for the end of the social season, and then there wouldn't be anything getting people out of the house for months, and he'd be left trying to figure out how to manage Christmas presents without giving anything about their finances away to the girls.
"Can I have a drink?" he asked abruptly. "If I'm really not interrupting anything."
This was weird. Cash felt like it would be weirder to point out how weird it was, but he was very aware of it being weird. When he was uncomfortable in social situations he usually ran his responses off of a mental playbook, but he didn't have one for this — so instead he was paying a great deal of attention to Ford's expressions, and body language. (Ford's bag looked awkward, but it was weird to point that out, too.)
"You can have a drink!" Cash said — relief at knowing what to say made him more enthusiastic than he strictly wanted to be. "We have — most liquors, and I think I have an after-dinner wine. Um — you can help yourself to the drinks cart."
Cash pulled out his wand, and waved it lazily at the back of the room, causing the drinks cart to roll towards them.
He shouldn't have asked for a drink. It hadn't occurred to him that he would have to mix or pour one himself, though on reflection he didn't know what he'd expected. Cash wasn't a bartender, and it would have been presumptuous to think he would mix Ford a drink in his own parlor. But how was Ford going to manage this with the bag? He'd have to set it down. He shouldn't have asked for a drink. Was it too late to find a sudden excuse to leave?
The drinks cart had rolled out into the room, but it was closer to Cash than it was to Ford. Ford took a moment to glance helplessly around the room. He identified the arm chair farthest away from where Cash was sitting and crossed to it, then carefully took the satchel off his shoulder and set it on the far edge of the chair, where most of it would be hidden from view unless Cash got up and moved. It made an audible chink when he set it down, and Ford could hardly keep from flinching. He hadn't looked at Cash yet, and kept his eyes down as he made a beeline for the drinks cart, hoping Cash hadn't noticed the noise the bag had made or how gingerly Ford had set it down — or if he had, that they could move past it without comment.
He still had to figure out a good reason for having come here in the first place. He winced at the drink cart and started making a gin and tonic.
Cash watched; he felt like an observer in his own home. There was something off about the bag Ford had. Cash shifted in his seat; he kept looking between Ford and the bag. "Have you been here before?" he asked, trying to take a stab at something he felt justified asking about. He would figure this out, he was sure — he just needed to find a way to ask the right questions.
"Um," Ford said, as though he had to think about it before coming up with an answer, though of course he didn't. "No." It felt like a proper admission, as much as admitting to a crime would have, because it further handicapped any chance he had at making his visit tonight seem like something normal — but it would have been stupid to lie about something that Lestrange could so quickly and easily verify. It wasn't as though Ford would have dropped by sometime to have tea with his wife and neither of them would have mentioned it to him (and if they had, that would also have been weirdly incriminating — best not to go getting himself in strange fanciful trouble while trying to avoid getting himself into real trouble).
At least he'd managed to make the gin and tonic. Ford retreated to the chair and took a seat, then brushed the heel of his foot against the edge of the bag as if to reassure himself that it was still there after his venture to the drink cart.
"You're wife's not here?" he asked. She could have been, he supposed, but the house seemed awfully quiet beyond this room.
Cash shook his head. "She's still at a party," he said. Ford was being weird, and Cash knew he was being weird, but he still didn't know which way to look at this to have the puzzle unravel itself. He tried: "Did you need anything?" It didn't make sense, Ford just appearing, and acting like this once he had — acting like he had something to hide. Cash took a sip of his drink.
"From your wife?" Ford asked, with one eyebrow raised. "No." A deflection — obviously he knew what Cash was actually asking, and he needed to get his act together and come up with a lie before Cash asked a second time (or a fourth, really: everything Cash had said so far tonight was some slightly more polite way of asking why are you here). But he was still trying to get over the close call at the house he'd just left, and trying to act normal, and between the two tasks he hardly had any mental energy left to try and think up lies. Maybe he could tell Cash a tenth of the truth, and say he had done something illegal and had been running away — something ludicrously small but technically illegal, something that Cash would laugh off and never mention to anyone, something cute. That was what he needed: some way to turn this whole interlude into a weird anecdote about Ford's anxious personality, which Cash would never share with anyone because no one else would care enough to listen to stories of Ford's particular quirks.
Not that anything in that category was coming to mind, obviously. Ford took a drink.
Cash smirked at the response, as if he did not know that Ford was trying to deflect. He wished that Ford would just be honest with him. It felt like Ford had not told Cash the truth in ages, and yet he'd been so irritated at Cash for not doing the same — as if a betrothal was the be-all-end-all of Cash's existence. He bundled this irritation in his chest, because he did not want to make it clear that he was feeling it, and took a sip of his drink. "Not from my wife," Cash said, making his tone a good-natured one despite this. "In my house, I mean. Or from me."
The way Cash phrased the question sent a stab of panic through him, because for a second it seemed as though Cash knew. Did you need anything in my house, meaning did you come here to steal from me, too, then?
Of course that wasn't true. Ford was anxious because of what had just happened, and it was still on his mind, and that's why he'd misinterpreted Cash's prodding. Cash didn't know because no one knew except Noble, and Cash wouldn't have figured it out. Tycho didn't even know, and Ford hadn't gotten caught or left evidence behind, any of the other times. Cash didn't know.
Ford laughed weakly and tried to shake it off. He needed to think of an excuse. A tenth of a truth — come on, think. It had to be a story he could pass off without Cash asking about or trying to look in the bag, too, because all these things would certainly be reported missing tomorrow morning, if they weren't being reported missing at that very moment. If Cash knew Ford had them he might be able to connect the dots. So: a story that Cash wouldn't be inclined to ask questions about, something silly and maybe a little embarrassing, something that explained why he was here tonight. Something Cash would believe — what would Cash believe?
"Uh," he said, and brushed the bag with his heel again as if he could borrow courage from it. "I, uh. I just needed somewhere to be," he admitted — the sliver of honesty that would help him sell this. "I don't know why your address came to mind, actually."
Sometimes Ford reminded Cash of a nesting doll; secrets inside secrets inside secrets, and Cash would never be able to pry him all the way open.
The answer, though, made sense — there was some ring of truth to it, even if Cash did not believe that it was the whole truth. Cash smiled at Ford, and lifted his glass at him in a sort-of-salute. "Well," he said, "You're welcome here whenever you like." The house felt more like Adrienne's than it was Cash's, but it was also safer than his father's house had ever been — and he liked it, on the rare occasions that his friends were here.
Ford blinked at Cash's response, unable to believe his luck. He'd been expecting that to be the lead-in to a bigger thing, where he'd have to lie about why he needed somewhere to be, but Cash hadn't asked — hadn't even offered one of those prodding statements that held an implied Well? He wasn't sure he really thought it could be that easy, but if Cash was willing to drop it for the moment Ford didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Was this part of what it meant to be close friends? It was alright to tell friends things, but maybe sometimes it was alright to not tell them things, too — maybe this was the courtesy that Cash was extending to Ford right now, knowing there was more to be said and not forcing Ford to say it. This was foreign to Ford — he had never encountered a hint of a secret from Cash without trying to pry it out of him and scrutinize it.
"Thanks," he said with a nervous smile, and took another drink. "I, uh — thanks."
