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 1895. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
Complete a thread started and set every month for twelve consecutive months. Each thread must have at least ten posts, and at least three must be your own.
Did You Know?
Did you know? Jewelry of jet was the haute jewelry of the Victorian era. — Fallin
Before a few years ago, Kaatjie was unused to this tone in adults — she had a tendency to follow her mother like a duckling or a small shadow, and her grandfather was not the ordering type. Her governess didn't use the tone because she knew her instructions were as likely to be overruled by one of Mama's whims as not. Her uncle and aunt, though, did run a house that was ordered and tell her what to do in it, so she tugged on her other sleeve and walked to the floo. She folded her arms back over her chest.
"Now this'll really get me in trouble," Kaatjie said, daring to back-talk as she rarely did at home, because it was not as if her father could make her write lines as a punishment.
It hadn't occurred to him until after he said it that she might not listen, but there was an obstinate expression about her that made him consider it. He had no backup plan for if she simply waltzed out of the door, but maybe that wouldn't have been the worst thing. He had no actual plan at all, in any case, so if she derailed it things probably couldn't go much worse.
"You're already in trouble," he retorted, though that maybe wasn't true. Not in the acute sense, anyway; she had sort of be born into a certain degree of trouble, having the parents she did. But this was a troublesome situation — someone was in trouble. Maybe it was him.
"Dempsey estate," he snapped at the floo as he tossed the powder in — he had started keeping pinches of floo powder in interior pockets some time ago, for situations where he ended up adrift in strange places and in need of a quick escape and didn't want to spend time looking for any. He took the girl by the arm and pulled her through with him, then kept hold of her arm while he marched her through the parlor and into the room across the hall — slightly less likely to be interrupted than staying in the parlor. He let go of her in the vicinity of an armchair and continued on past her, stopping at the sideboard and making himself a stiff drink to replace the one he'd left at the bar.
"You're not supposed to be here," he said as he fumbled with the glassware. "You're Dutch."
Dempsey estate, and wasn’t that exciting, a whole estate! The glimpses she got of the parlor and the hallway before her father yanked her into the side room were certainly grander than the house she lived in, which was certainly grander than Mama’s cottage, and her expression turned from stubbornness to awe in those brief moments.
Then, she put it back on her face, folded her arms over her chest. ”And half British,” Kaat pointed out, for accuracy. ”We live in North Bartonburg.” (The north part was important, her aunt always emphasized it.)
North Bartonburg! Hogsmeade. How long had she been living there? Surely he would have known if Ana had lived there, so it couldn't have been terribly long — but on the other hand, perhaps that might explain how Ana had tracked him down in Spain, after so many years and with no apparent warning, if she had been surreptitiously monitoring him all along. But no, he couldn't believe that. If Ana had been lying in wait for her chance to ambush and ruin him, she would have had ample opportunity before he'd gone to Spain. She could have been the one to catch him with Elfrieda Yaxley; he was no doubt she had the observational skills required. Hell, Dean Hudson lived in North Bartonburg — she could have done far worse than just derailed a particular relationship. So he had to believe that this was an arrangement that had come about after Ana's death — which meant the girl's new guardians had been remiss in not mentioning it.
"Well, no one bloody told me that," he snapped. The letter hadn't had much about the future care of the girl on any front, actually; it had been mostly a recap of details from the years preceding Ana's death. Perhaps they had assumed that whatever arrangements they were making to provide for her were temporary; perhaps they had imagined he would write back and make arrangements to collect her. In that case it mightn't have mattered so much where she lived in the intervening months.
"And you're half Irish, you obstinate thing." He finished pouring his drink and turned around to regard her warily. "Was this your idea, or did someone put you up to it?"
He was saying bloody, and correcting her that she was Irish — (vaguely exciting) — and Kaatjie was not sure that she was doing well at making her father like her. But to be fair, she was not sure she liked him, either.
(There were parts that made sense. Ana had been moody, not with Kaatjie but with everyone else. Kaat could imagine her mother with Don Juan Dempsey, in love with him, leaving him.)
She wrinkled her nose at him again. "On my own," Kaatjie said, as if it were obvious. "Uncle Klaas will kill me if he finds out I came here."
Don Juan rather thought Uncle Klaas deserved the shock, withholding information as he had, but was not going to say so. Instead he offered the girl a tight and mercenary smile. "Well then we shall ensure that he does not." Don Juan had never met anyone in Ana's family while she had been alive; he didn't relish the idea of doing so now, after she had been telling who-only-knew what kind of stories about him for a decade. But no one knew Kaatjie was here; that was good. That meant they could pretend it had never happened, once he managed to get her sent off back through the floo. Provided —
"What name do you use?" he asked, preparing to take a long drink. "Dempsey or Spaans?"
Legally it should have been Dempsey, but he was hardly going to complain when this outcome suited him so much better. He gave a sharp nod, still mid-gulp, then set his glass down. "Good," he said curtly. "Good. Then no one needs to know you were here. We'll just pretend this never happened."
She lived in Hogsmeade; unexpected. She'd sought him out; even worse. But her guardians hadn't written him in years since her mother had died, and she was using a name that no one would know to connect to him, and no one knew she was here or that she'd even tried to contact him in the first place. This was salvageable.
Heat rose in her face; her mouth opened in a little 'o' of surprise. "You just want to pretend I don't exist!" Kaatjie protested, feeling a pang in her chest — she had never known him, so she ought not to feel so betrayed by this, but she was feeling deeply betrayed.
No, I want to pretend I'm not your father, he might have said, to correct her, but he doubted she would see much of a difference between the two. He picked his glass back up, feeling he needed something in his hand to prevent himself from gesticulating with it too much. "And what did you want?" he asked, raising his eyebrows skeptically. "You want to move in here, change your name? You want to tag along when I go drinking, gambling? Next time someone challenges me to a duel? Do you even know anything about me?" he continued. Clearly not; if she knew even one thing about him, she might have deduced that he would be a terrible father.
Kaatjie had managed to stave off the earlier tears by their coming all the way here; this time, they spilled over, coursing down her cheeks. She wiped at her eyes with one hand, but it did nothing to prevent them — they were still coming, and her chin was wobbling, and she would be embarrassed if she wasn't so mad.
"I want to go home!" she said, tone rising sharply, because it felt too embarrassing to admit that she'd wanted a father.
Ah, fuck's sake. Don Juan had never expected to be good with children, but he also never thought he'd be in a position to have bullied one to the point of tears. He shifted uncomfortably, not sure whether he ought to try and do anything to comfort her or if it would be better to just nod and let her go. What did it matter if she hated him, anyway? He was nothing to her. He would continue to be nothing to her.
Uncle Klaas never would have driven her to tears, unless he was imparting an important lesson and therefor grounding her, and when Mama was alive she would have pulled Kaatjie into a hug if Kaat was so upset. She looked at her father, disbelieving, and already starting to hiccup from her tears.
Kaat turned on her heels, slammed the door behind her, and went to the Dempsey's floo to head home.
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