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
Tuesday, January 10th, 1983 — Daphnel House, Wellingtonshire
Had Victor been thinking this through, he might have expected the visit from Desi Morgan sometime last week, but the truth was he'd entirely forgotten there even was such a thing as the Spirit Division. Certainly he had not taken the time to consider that he might have any business with them. He'd been dead for over a week, but Victor still wasn't used to thinking of himself as a ghost, and he suspected that he wouldn't be for some time. He'd been so focused on his own family and their adjustments to the new situation, and it had not yet occurred to him (with the exception of the funeral) that anyone outside of his home or place of work might care about his new state of being.
"So is there an orientation, or something?" he said, eyebrow raised. It would be nice if they had any advice about how to stop falling through things when he tried to move around the house, but given that Morgan had a body, he could hardly have any first-hand experience.
Desi was more or less used to this aspect of things. It wasn't like there was a guide or something about what to do if you became a ghost. Or well, he supposed that was his Divisions function. Still, perhaps he should look into having one of his staff draft up a manual to inform them of starting steps on the off chance they became a ghost. Not everyone did become one, after all.
He had attended the funeral and he was suitably sad that a friend of his had been robbed of his life so young. An accidental tumble from what he knew. "Not so much an orientation as me documenting things about you and your choice of haunting residence," Desi said, initially suitably solemn. However, most of those in his friendly acquaintance knew Desi did not do solemn or serious quite well. Perhaps not a good combination of traits for the head of the Spirit Division to have considering he dealt with dead people and grieving families all the time.
"You know. When I said in the past that I wished we had the time to hang out more often, I did not mean like this," Desi then couldn't help but snark.
The joke was so in character for him that Victor was almost grateful for it, although it might not have been in the best taste. It made the whole conversation feel a little less... clinical. "I hate to break it to you, but your schedule wasn't actually a consideration in whether I stayed on or not," he returned. His mind flitted over but did not dwell on the issue of whether or not he had made any consideration in whether to stay on or not. He couldn't remember whether he'd been aware of his death before it had happened, or whether he'd chosen, and that was unsettling.
But for his actual question... "My choice of... haunting residence," he echoed. It was a strange way of phrasing it, at least to his ears. It was probably perfectly logical when one examined the facts, but put in the context of his life — or afterlife, as it were — it seemed too impersonal to fit, like clothes that hadn't yet been tailored.
"This is my house. I live here," he pointed out. "Er — lived, I suppose. But — it's not like I chose it. Or like I'm haunting it. I'm just... here." And would be forever, presumably. Victor hadn't done much research into ghosts while he had been alive (and wouldn't be able to do any now that he couldn't turn the pages in books) so he had no idea if ghosts... faded, or something, after a certain point. The prospect of being here in this house forever was a little daunting. After everyone he knew had lived and died, what was he meant to be doing here?
"It would have been both flattering and an immense pressure if it had been," he said in turn. He didn't think he would ever want to have been a ghosts reason for sticking around, all joking aside. As it was, it always felt surreal to be speaking to the ghost of someone he knew in life. Not that it happened to him often.
Desi wrote down the address of the Daphnel residence. "That's fine. If you weren't already aware as most new ghosts aren't - you are free to choose to live elsewhere if you should so desire it. Just try and update as at the Division." There wasn't a whole lot they could do to actually enforce any of the random rules and laws surrounding ghosts but it was still worth stating. "Hogwarts tends to take in many ghosts as well though I don't know if thats strictly due to Black's generous nature." Which, as far as he knew, didn't exist. He suspected most ghosts just took residence and didn't pay the Headmaster much attention at all.
Victor's instinctual reaction to this suggestion was defensiveness. He didn't want to live (unlive? linger?) elsewhere; he wanted to stay in his house, with his family, just as he'd been doing prior to his death. If he were going to go elsewhere, Hogwarts didn't seem particularly appealing. Victor had expected to have children of his own because it was part of what people in his position in live did, not because he felt particularly attached to children. He didn't dislike them, but with only limited exposure to them so far it was hard to imagine he'd be happy only talking to them (and the occasional professor) for the rest of eternity.
Then again, what were the alternatives? Presumably there was a reason the ghosts already at Hogwarts ended up there. After everyone else had lived and died, and his house was in the hands of new owners who didn't know him, or it was falling into disrepair and he was powerless to do anything about it... maybe Hogwarts was preferable to wandering the forest. Children might be more tolerant of conversations with ghosts than the average adult. Victor had certainly never entertained spirits in his life — why should he expect strangers to make time for him?
"How am I meant to let you know? Send a ghost owl?" This was meant as a joke; if ghost owls (and ghost parchment, and ghost quills) existed, he had not yet discovered them.
He chuckled at the question the other had asked. "You can find your way to the office but it would be easier for you to just having a Living send word for you," Desi said. Victor had a close-knit family as far as Desi could remember anyway. So it was likely these were things Victor would not have to worry about. At least not while Desi was in office. And then it would be some other schmucks problem.
That didn't seem like a very viable solution. The only thing Victor could see driving him away from his home was if everyone he knew and loved had passed on and left him alone there, and if that was the case he wouldn't have them to hand to act as his courier. Maybe he could convince someone unfamiliar to go to the Ministry on his behalf if he promised to leave them alone afterwards (presuming that they would want his house, and would want him gone), but who knew? But of course, this was a problem for years and years down the line — probably long after Morgan had retired from the office, Victor guessed, which might be why he was so cavalier about it.
"Sure," Victor said with a shrug, just to dismiss the topic. He hesitated a moment, wanting to ask a question but not sure whether this was the right time or place to ask it. He didn't know that Desiderius Morgan would have an answer, but he was at least more likely to have a reasonable speculation than anyone else Victor regularly talked to.
"Does this just... go on forever?" he asked. He chewed his lower lip. "Does it ever — do they ever fade?" Victor knew that the spirits at Hogwarts were hundreds of years old at least, so their (— lifespan? deathspan? tenancy?) was long, but was it indefinite? Wizards could live a long time, too — suppose that a spirit only lasted as long as a wizard might have, had they been able to avoid their death? Granted, wizards didn't typically live as long as some of the Hogwarts ghosts had, but there were so many things that could kill them: accidents, diseases, organ failures. Perhaps when they were removed from the threat of bodily harm by being removed from their bodies, spirits just carried on however long they might otherwise have done and then expired at some point. It was possible, anyway, wasn't it?
"Not that I know of," Desi said when Victor asked if spirits ever faded. The way Victor had worded things made him wonder if Victor was not yet thinking of himself as a spirit. That did happen with some. "One of the older ghosts I am personally aware of is in his 300's. Another is even older. Ghosts are able to send each other letters though I am not certain on how. Perhaps you could use that method to reach out to your fellow spirits." Hmm, perhaps he ought to look into getting approval on hiring on a spirit to work in the division and receive ghostly letters. It would sure make things easier than just having random spirits wreaking havoc in his office when they were in A Mood.
The idea of striking up correspondence in pursuit of more information appealed to Victor not one bit. He wanted answers, not a ghostly penpal. Three hundred years wasn't definitive, since there were a handful of wizards he knew of (not personally knew, of course) who had outlasted that, but it was still a daunting number compared to the meager thirty he'd had while alive. How long would his mother survive? His siblings? His wife? Surely not three hundred years. At some point, then, he was destined to be alone. Alone and possibly forgotten, depending on how things played out in the intervening years.
"You don't know how," he parroted, because focusing on these inane sort of details was a suitable distraction from the larger and more horrific question at hand. "Seems like that's sort of... in your job description. Knowing how spirits do things."
"My job requires me to hear out spirits, deal with problems relating to them, banish boggarts for people and things along those lines - not knowing every little minute detail about what spirits can do. Not even spirits fully know how they do some of the things that they do. It is just something deeply a part of them and something that will become instinct to you," Desi explained patiently. This wasn't the first time he had heard this sort of complaint nor would it be the last. He also was experienced enough by now to know that the ghost was just looking for something to bitch about to keep their mind busy on things other than their early demise.
This was about the least comforting answer that Morgan could have given him. Victor didn't want these things to become instinct to him — because, when it came right down to it, he didn't want to be dead. That was probably obvious, but it went deeper than the obvious. He hadn't said this to anyone, and probably never would, but a part of him was wondering if he also didn't want to be here. In their vague misplaced condolences people had implied that being a ghost was better than the alternative, if one had to be dead, but — the crux of it was that Victor wasn't yet convinced that it was.
"Alright, fine," he said, tone clipped. It occurred to him that he probably ought to be more polite to Morgan, to stay on good terms with someone who might be in a position to help him in the near future if he needed it — and clearly none of this was Morgan's fault. On the other hand, Victor thought a little manically, what reason did he have to be polite to anyone any more? If Morgan ended up disliking him, what was the harm? Victor was going to outlast him, and get a clean slate whenever his replacement filed in. Victor was going to outlast everyone.
