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.
She had disrupted his reading, and she was using a Tone now, which made Oz sit up and take notice (figuratively; he was already sitting). "Oh," he said, because truthfully out of the three promises she'd asked him to make that was the one he spent the least amount of time thinking about, and maybe it had slipped his mind a bit. It had never seemed like it was any of his business, honestly — she decided what to do with her own time, and if she didn't start throwing parties he was hardly going to make her. He could see how the campaign did apply a bit of strain on that particular clause, though, even if he hadn't considered it before now.
"Well, no one's expecting anything of you during the campaign," he said. "Or if they're expecting anything, it's that you'll go campaign for one of the competitors." Sina's reputation as a wife was not precisely that she was the ideal supportive homemaker, after all.
Sina scoffed. At least now he was listening to her; she ought to bring out this tone more frequently. "They'll be expecting me to talk about Politics," she protested, "And you'll fill up our social calendar. And what if you win?"
It was mildly flattering that Sina thought he stood a decent chance of winning, but since she was irritated he tried not to look too smug about it.
"No one expects women to talk about politics," he countered. There were some politics that could safely be called "women's issues" — things that pertained to children, education, charity, that sort of thing — but it wasn't as though women universally cared about or had strong opinions on them. And she wasn't the one running for office. If anything, he expected she would have more conversations angled her way about her ability to plan and host the annual Minister's Ball than anything serious. Not that this would be much of a silver lining for Sina, who would probably rather have debated tariff policy than masquerade decor.
"Look, if you want we can make some of the events your events," he offered as an olive branch. "A hospital fundraiser, or something."
Sina wrinkled her nose at him. "I want a drinks party in a country home," she said, after a beat, "And — something pointless where we rent out a function hall. And a hospital fundraiser." If she was going to have to do this, then she was going to have some fun with it.
Besides — country home parties always reminded her of when they'd met. If Oz was running for Minister then Sina insisted on getting some good sex out of it.
She seemed less irritated now, so Oz felt he could negotiate. "A hospital fundraiser or a pointless event in a function hall," he offered. He was going to spend enough time on empty pageantry without adding something to the calendar that Sina had gone out of her way to make ostentatiously purposeless. "Whose country house?" he asked. Technically they lived in a country house, and every time they invited someone to dinner was a country party with drinks, but the way she'd phrased it made it seem as though she wanted a different country house. That meant leaning on a friend to host one for him — not out of the realm of possibility, but it was a bit annoying that he'd been on the campaign trail for less than twelve hours and he was already having to call in favors.
"A function hall hospital fundraiser," Thomasina countered. Hospital fundraisers usually had little to do with the hospital, so she did not feel too much guilt combining them. "And I don't care whose. One with horses. And falconry." If she was going to do this, then she wanted to spend time with a bird of prey about it.
Oz rolled his eyes and ruffled the newspaper to try and free it from beneath her hand. "As if you even know the first thing about falconry." Of course the falconry itself wasn't the point, and he understood that; she wanted spectacle. It wasn't impossible to find, but since Oz wasn't much of a hunter himself the list of close friends he knew who possessed both a stable and a rookery and were amenable to making them available for guest use was rather short. He might have to actually ask someone to host this, rather than just dropping hints and waiting for etiquette to do the rest. How galling.
"I pick the guest list for the country party," he countered.
Sina tilted her head. "Fine," she said, and countered — "Except for three friends of my choosing, and their husbands." She was starting to have fun with this. She removed her hand from the newspaper and flopped backwards onto the bed in her robes, lying sideways, with her legs off the side.
Three friends and their husbands was more than doable; he'd mostly stipulated that he got to choose the guest list because then he could curate it to be someone the actual host of the country party liked. Asking someone to host a country party for friends, but technically in Oz's honor, was a much easier ask than asking them to host a houseful of people they couldn't stand as a special favor.
"I get veto rights on the friends," he said, and nudged Sina with his foot through the blanket. "Not some — mediwitch intern, or something." What he mostly meant was that she had to invite people who belonged at a country party, not anyone from the poor, unwashed masses she interacted with on a daily basis — but if he made a specific rule, he thought she might try and find a way to abide by the letter of the law while flouting its spirit, just to irk him. Keeping a veto in his pocket was the safer route.
Sina rolled over onto her stomach and smiled, almost conspiratorial, at her husband. "You have a deal," she said. She still wasn't thrilled — not in the slightest — but if it was in the paper, then it was real, and at least she had gotten some capitulations out of the whole thing. (Oh, when this was over, he was going to owe her.)
