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.
25 December, 1894 — Evening — Destiny Hotel Restaurant
Oz had extricated himself from the Dempsey house around midday on the excuse of prior-made plans. He had been having Christmas dinner with friends since he graduated Hogwarts, occasionally by inviting said friends to the Dempsey house or going to theirs but more often by dining out at expensive restaurants. Some years he missed the tradition, but this year he'd kept it — reservations with Lock at the Destiny in London — and given the events of the morning was quite eager to keep it.
"I'd ask how your Christmas morning was, but I'm afraid I don't care in the slightest," Oz pronounced once they were left alone at the table, the waiter dispatched with orders for drinks and a four-course meal to follow. This was at least half true. Ozymandias Dempsey had never been fond of children, and while he sometimes made exceptions for Lock's children, Christmas morning wasn't one of them. Too much energy, too loud; no thank you. "But you'll want to ask about mine."
Growing up, Christmas for Locklyn had always been a tense affair. He'd always far preferred the years as a child he had been permitted to remain at the castle for the holidays or been allowed to tag along with a friend. Otherwise the weeks bleed into a series of lectures and disappointments. And it had only gotten worse as he got older when the the disappointments he committed shifted from detention with Oz to being seen with whores and taking bastards in. It honestly was a miracle the old man James hadn't suffered some stress induced heart attack yet. Or his mother, he supposed.
The Dempsey Christmases on the other hand had always seemed like the warmth, lovely sort of chaos he could only be jealous. The ones you got when those who were around you wanted to be around you and each other. So he didn't mind to much that when he sat down at the restaurant, Oz blaired right past his own holiday - even if he would have been happy to go on about Adelle's attempts to fly her new toy brooms- and moved on to his own.
"You do," Oz affirmed. "It was dramatic." Dramatic by Dempsey standards, even, and Dempseys had rather different metrics for melodrama than the average family. Even the worst of the fights he staged with Sina, the ones that would have stopped a ball room in their tracks while everyone nearby looked on with slack-jawed horror, only garnered a mild reaction from his parents and siblings. Partly, he imagined, they were simply more used to these things happening; with seven Dempsey offspring and all with their own peculiarities it was inevitable that someone was having some sort of scene at any given moment. Partly he suspected it was that none of them quite took anyone else in the family seriously, which meant it was hard to be properly shocked by anything. Even the news of this morning had not been especially shocking, in the end — though his mother's reaction had certainly been a sight to see.
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