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.
23 September, 1893 — the restaurant on the first floor of the Destiny Hotel, London
The question about how his campaign had been going was almost certainly offered in the same way that people commented on the weather or asked perfunctory questions like how have you been — probably intended to lighten the mood after they had finished the obligatory sombre discussion of the dragon attack and the subsequent fallout that was still being managed — but Oz recharged his glass of red wine before he answered it. "I didn't expect that it would be easy," he said, (though of course he had, and that was the whole point of his announcing his candidacy in the first place — but if he was trying to curry favor with the current Minister that sentiment was unlikely to endear him). Complaining about campaigning was also, broadly speaking, probably not the way to win an endorsement, but he almost couldn't help himself. To anyone else, saying a bad word about the campaign process would have seemed like a sign of failure — that he didn't have what it took to actually be Minister. And maybe he didn't, (and maybe in the past two weeks it had become more abundantly clear in which areas he was lacking), but he thought if anyone was going to be sympathetic to these sorts of troubles it was likely to be Minister Ross, who had campaigned well and won.
"But I didn't expect it to be so repetitive. It seems as though I've spent two months answering the same five questions every time I leave the house," he continued. "It's amazing that gossip travels so quickly third or fourth-hand, but when it comes to policy it seems every voter needs to verify your position personally before they believe it. And perhaps not even then."
Meeting with all of the candidates was interesting, but Ross was not entirely sure it had solidified his position. There were individuals he could never see himself endorsing — Picardy — and then there were candidates he did not entirely agree with. And then there were the candidates who did not have an abundance of — or any — Ministry experience, and whose policy positions were opaque. He did not expect to endorse them. But he still ought to meet with them.
His calendar remained busy, after the dragons; now more than ever, Ross cared who took over from him.
"People who care about policy always want to hear it from the source," Ross agreed mildly. He took a sip of his fortified wine. "I remember that from when I ran."
"And some people that just want to be seen to care about policy," Oz agreed. How many conversations had he had with people who asked him questions about issues, but then let their eyes glaze over when he actually answered them? Or worse, turned around and pressed him for a real answer when they had asked him a question that was complex enough that to give a definitive yes or no would have been to showcase a stunning lack of awareness of the nuances of the situation.
"At any rate, my wife will certainly be pleased when it's over, whatever the outcome," he said with a shrug. "At least it's a sprint, as it were, and not a marathon. That bloke that was elected across the pond last year — on the Muggle side — did you know he was the president five years ago, and lost re-election, and then ran again last year and won? That's more or less a six year long campaign, with a defeat a third of the way through. I can't imagine," Oz said, shaking his head. Obviously he didn't think the man had been actively holding campaign rallies the entire time, but he had learned that when one was trying to secure votes, every action mattered, not just the ones that were ostensibly for the election. Oz couldn't imagine himself in that Muggle's position. He might have been stubborn enough to try and win back something that he thought he'd unfairly lost, but Thomasina would have killed him long before he'd seen it through.
"Do you have particular plans after you retire?" he asked, which could have been a change of subject if he hadn't just brought up the Muggle who had left the presidency behind and then returned to it. "Urquart went back to the Department of Mysteries."
Ross grimaced at the mention of the American president. "His wife will never forgive him," he said. Roslyn would lose her mind if Ross did that to her — (which was, privately, part of why he was leaving.) As to Dempsey's second question — he shrugged. (Dempsey gained points in Ross' mind for asking a question about him, though, even if it was only small talk.)
"I haven't decided yet," Ross admitted, "I could go back to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement — but it feels odd to go back to a department I ran." He had some ideas in mind, but none of them had become his favorite yet, and all involved remaining in politics in some capacity.
"Mmhm," Oz said, with an earnest nod. He could understand (or maybe not understand, since he'd never had a traditional job himself, but he could imagine) the difficulty of working beneath someone that one had once worked above, but obviously there could be no expectation that Ross' former position at the head of the department would be made available for him again, when it was currently occupied by someone who was (arguably, anyway) doing a fine job. It would have been in particularly poor taste to oust any of the existing staff to make room for himself after he'd passed the new regulations to protect the Ministry against nepotism.
The first thing that it occurred to him to say was well, probably better there than the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, but it would have been in poor taste to make a joke about the preponderance of catastrophes that struck the magical community when Ross was still dealing with the fallout of the last one. And anyway, it wasn't as though Law Enforcement was smooth sailing either; there were mysterious murders that remained unsolved and a mass kidnapping that had lasted a month and a slew of other problems that Oz certainly wouldn't have signed on to be held responsible for, if he'd had his pick.
"What drew you to law enforcement in the first place?" Oz asked with genuine curiosity.
Ross hummed thoughtfully. "I have always been very good at reading other people," he said, after a beat passed. "There was an expectation that I go into the Ministry, but Law Enforcement is the department that uses that skill the most." He liked it, process and interviews and figuring others out — and eventually, he'd discovered that he was also good at managing people, and that was that. "And I stayed in law enforcement once I discovered I had a talent for crisis management. I suppose that's come in handy, over the years." His tone bordered on rueful — he had not wanted things to end like this, with dragons on the Thames, but there was no avoiding it.
Oz considered making a joke — good at reading people, should I be nervous? — but the fact was that he was nervous, so he avoided it. Instead he returned the wry look Ross had ended on and shook his head. "I suppose it has," he admitted — not that Ross got much credit for it. That was probably the way these things always went, Oz imagined; no one wanted to hear that the catastrophe had been handled well. They wanted for there to have not been a crisis in the first place... but when there was no crisis in the first place, they were not aware they had been saved from anything. No gratitude either way it played out — only responsibilities.
"It was the only career that could hold my attention," he admitted with a self-deprecating half-smirk. "I admit in my youth I was rather inconstant — and my situation in life allowed me to be." Middle class men generally did not have the freedom to go luffing about the continent for years before they put any serious thought into what they would make of themselves, and given their difference in background it seemed insensitive not to at least acknowledge this disparity in passing. "It's interesting work. In my opinion it's the truest way to really understand the world, to be able to break things down to their components and see how those interact with each other — and I could never see the way things worked without wanting to change them," he joked.
Ross found himself surprised: he actually liked Dempsey. He was not entirely sure that the man should be Minister, but he did like him — the way he talked about his class, and himself, was charismatic rather than off-putting. He straightened in his seat, and leaned forward, engaged and listening.
"How do you think that would impact your approach to the Ministry?" Ross asked, with a wry smile. "I'm curious — I've spent a great deal trying to change things in the building myself."
Oz could sense the conversation was — at the very least not languishing — and this energized him somewhat. He mirrored Ross' lean in towards the table and set one edge of his wine glass down on the tablecloth, so that he could still use it to gesture vaguely while he talked.
"It's always seemed to me — and this is no disrespect, by the way; it's a commentary on the whole system, not just your government — that a lot of change is stifled precisely because it doesn't start from that component level," he explained. "A bill comes under review; the Minister wants it, the Wizengamot doesn't. It stagnates. But the Wizengamot is nothing but a collection of individuals, all of whom want something and all of whom are interacting with each other every day. Understanding what they want and how they're interacting — and knowing which ones to — massage, as it were — in order to get the outcome we want," (he had said we without really thinking about it, but on reflection the collective pronoun felt appropriately bold for this sort of conversation). "I think a lot more could get done. And with a few exceptions, mostly what people want isn't unreasonable," he posited. "They mostly want what's best for Britain, and they have different ideas of what that means. So one of them wants assurances that all the consequences of a bill have been thought through, and another wants to know exactly what it might cost, and another worries how people might react — but at that level none of them are unreasonable. So that's the level the change has to start, in order for it to really work."
Ross smiled at Dempsey. "An astute assessment," he said. "One can also — create some semblance of a voting block, via appointments. I may not always agree with my appointments —" although Umbridge, Skeeter, and Prewett tended to align with Ross politically on most things "— but we've collaborated on nearly all my policies. And I did the same for Minister Urquart." Ross was somber, for a second — he would miss Urquart. He did miss Urquart.
"And that last policy package required a great deal of work on the individual level," Ross added with a wry smile, hoping to change the subject. "Everyone agrees that certain things would better Britain — a better Ministry, a stronger education system — but not everyone thought that nepotism and lack of scholarships are the problem."
Oz enjoyed being called astute by Minister Ross; he did not know if he was persuading the Minister of anything in this conversation but if nothing else it had been an enjoyable one, and Oz considered that a win given their total lack of social history. "If you agreed with them on everything they wouldn't be appointments, they'd be cronies," Oz pointed out with a good-natured chuckle. He had always valued debate — as was probably obvious to anyone who had even superficial knowledge of his marriage.
The conversation turned into an area Oz was a little less comfortable with. He didn't tend to involve himself much with conversations about education; he had no children and never planned to have any, and his siblings were all well clear of Hogwarts politics by this stage. He also did not tend, generally, to be in favor of handing out money for programs intended to promote social mobility, though he did not talk about this suite of opinions as frequently. Making things better for the poor was one thing, and he was in favor of those sorts of programs — and he dutifully made donations at any charity social event he was invited to — but he had no interest in pretending that class differences didn't exist, or in actually being asked to interact with the working class as peers. So a scholarship fund would not have been his idea, if asked to strengthen education, but he could recognize that he was ill-informed enough that he couldn't argue against it, either.
"No one ever thinks of themselves as part of the problem," he said, about the nepotism piece — there at least he could confidently agree with Ross' stance. "Education is a difficult issue," he admitted. "I suspect part of the reason we have such differing opinions on how to achieve a stronger education system may be that we don't all agree on the underlying premise — that is, the purpose of educating in the first place."
Ross chuckled. "I suppose you're right," he said. People disagreed about the purpose of education all the time — especially when it came to the working class. But Ross had still made some progress, and he felt good about the bones of the law — in theory, an ambitious Minister with a good political environment would late be able to expand it. In theory.
"I don't believe you had the chance to answer the Wizengamot question at the last debate," Ross stated, raising an eyebrow at Mr. Dempsey. Most of the candidates had danced around it, with the exemption of Maxime — whose answer had been incredibly confident to the Minister's ears.
"Ah," Oz said, and paused to take a sip of his wine. He ought to have been expecting the question to come up again, either from the Minister or in another debate or from the press. That didn't mean he was looking forward to answering it. Obviously he was not glad that his response had been interrupted by the onslaught of dragons, but truth be told he hadn't lost any sleep over having skipped the question. It was one that showed his relative lack of political experience moreso than others, he thought. He had plenty of opinions on the issues, but he was not as well versed in the actual makeup of the Wizengamot as someone like Crouch or Lupin or Maxime. That said, he didn't want to hide behind a non-answer like Crouch or Prewett had during the debate. Crouch had put it elegantly enough during the debate, and maybe a handful of people believed him when he said he disagreed with the premise of the question... but it was hardly as though Oz could use the same excuse about not wanting to be seen seeking favors when it was just a conversation between the two of them.
"No, I didn't get the chance," he acknowledged as he set down his glass. What he actually thought the Wizengamot needed most was someone like Thomasina — someone who was not afraid to argue with anyone, and call out stupid ideas for what they were any time she saw them — but obviously he would not nominate his wife (nor would she have accepted the role even if he'd somehow managed to get it confirmed).
"I don't have any specific plans," he hedged. "I haven't talked to anyone or made any promises. Obviously," he said with a shrug. Why make promises if he couldn't be sure of keeping them? "But I think the Wizengamot could benefit from a few members with a more interdisciplinary bent. Viridian, for example," he said. Vindictus Viridian had already served as Hogwarts Headmaster and had authored multiple academic texts, in multiple subjects — and hopefully Minister Ross wasn't the sort who would be too judgemental about the fact that one of those subjects was hexes.
* ask me how long I spent trying to find a suitable name for him to drop NO ACTUALLY DON'T
Ross smiled. It was a difficult question to answer, but one where he was willing to accept multiple answers. Viridian wasn't related to Dempsey, and was not his personal friend — and while a verbal conversation allowed for lies, it at least meant that Dempsey wasn't openly committed to nepotism.
"You've surprised me," Ross admitted, "Pleasantly." He had not expected Dempsey to be smart, or thoughtful — he'd anticipated another rich person. But Dempsey wasn't a pureblood — and maybe that was enough to offset the other aspects of his demography.
Had this been a conversation between friends at a gentleman's club, after a handful of drinks, Oz might have protested that this remark implied a lack of confidence initially. In a conversation with the sitting Minister of Magic, the initial lack of confidence seemed rather a given. He'd heard it from too many quarters by now to be surprised that someone thought him inexperienced or unqualified, so he was willing to look right past that and take the remark as he assumed it had been intended: as a compliment. He smiled at the Minister and sat back in his chair. "I do so enjoy surprising people," he said, with the tone of an inside joke — though one that Ross probably didn't know him well enough to understand.
But pleasantly surprised was about as good of an indication that this conversation was going well as he could hope for — and after the dragons, he had not necessarily expected it to. (He hadn't known what to expect, after the dragons). Maybe staying in the race had been the right call after all. Maybe Thomasina had seen something in him that he was still having a hard time seeing in himself — and maybe Minister Ross had caught a glimpse of it tonight, too.
