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
Ford swallowed. Even before Tycho told him to forget it, he interpreted this remark more as wistful thinking than as an actual suggestion. They had planned to run away together, but for Ford that had always been a dream for the distant future. If all the girls married and his cousins went back to Australia and Mama moved in with someone she'd managed to befriend, if he was finally free and clear of all his familial responsibilities, he could have entertained the idea of disappearing with Ty. But that wasn't the situation now, nor would it ever be. Even if the girls managed to marry after this (which seemed like a more tenuous if than it had two weeks ago), Ford would never be free of family obligations if he had a wife.
"I wish we could've," he said. "Or I wish we were born a hundred years from now in Norway." Anything that would have kept them together... but of course there was no point in wishing for things that couldn't be. A thought occurred to him, a line from one of the poems Tycho had written for him once that bubbled up to the top of his mind. He considered saying it but the very idea of quoting romantic poetry at a time like this was almost overwhelmingly depressing, and he worried Tycho might find it the same and it wouldn't do for them both to end up blubbering messes in a pile on the floor.
"I'll love you forever," he said instead. "No matter what happens, I couldn't ever stop."
What uses were wishes anyway? Everything seemed so bleak and unpromising. He had never seen life look so dark and unoptimistic, not even when his father had died. He had no idea how to handle his new reality.
"A lie has never sounded so sweet," slipped out bitterly before he could stop it. Because, for himself, this still felt like a betrayal. He knew Ford had not actually done anything with that young woman. But he had been alone with her in a state of undress and had let things be read in a way that found him now having to marry her.
Ford felt his heart pounding in his throat. He pulled back far enough to look at Tycho, not because he wanted to but because he couldn't resist. His expression was stricken and could not have been more so if Ty had physically pushed him away.
"It's not a lie," he protested before he could think better of it, but there was no point in trying to argue, was there? All he could offer was more insistences, and if Ty had already decided those were too cheap, he had nothing else to give. He had tears in the corners of his eyes again and this time he pulled his own hand up to clear them, rubbing the heel of his hand against his cheek.
(He was going to have to walk home after this, he thought distantly; he'd need the cold air of a February evening to mask how red his eyes would be. The girls could not know he had been crying, when he told them he was going to marry Miss Farley.)
"It's not," he insisted again, but quiet and weak by comparison.
Fords expression was enough to ruin him, especially since he knew it was mirrored in his own face. "How could you do this to us?" Tycho couldn't help but ask plaintively. Though he knew the harsh reality was probably that Ford probably thought about him at all when everything was taking place. He had probably not been able to think of much of anything other than what had been happening right then. After all, any other time, Ford would never do anything to cause harm to himself or his siblings - which this would cause but more so the siblings since he wouldn't even be a factor to anyone but Ford.
He was to be alone in his suffering of this.
An odd grief-stricken sound emanated from his throat that he couldn't quite control. How he wished that he was not the type to feel things so intensely. He'd give anything now to be rid of the heart in his chest, to be numb of it all. "I love you so much, Ford. I've probably loved you since the first moment you busted my muggle seance operation." Had that really only been barely three years ago? It felt like it had been forever.
Ford's eyes were wild and desperate. "I —" he stammered. The question had caught him off guard, and so had the statement that followed it. Not the content, but the timing and the tone. After the first few months of their relationship where Ford had been stubbornly clinging to the idea that Tycho treated everyone the way he treated Ford, he'd eventually come to terms with the reality that Ty had loved him first... but that didn't mean that Ford loved him any less. Paired with this question, said in this moment, what might otherwise have been a declaration of love felt like a targeted barb — like an accusation.
"My family," he said. "I — My family needs me, and they need me not — not dead in a duel, not arrested, not banished from society. I — I didn't have a choice, Ty," he insisted, and while this still wasn't technically true he hoped Tycho would read into it what he was really saying — whatever options technically existed, for him, for Ford, there had be no alternatives.
"And do you plan to be a full husband to her? Consummating your wedding night and all?" Tycho asked, not wanting to know but feeling like he needed to. No matter how he pleaded, he knew Ford would continue to ramble on about how he had no choice, how he had to do this with his siblings. Perhaps the brothers Greengrass ought to have had their names switched.
Ford's stomach flipped. He had not yet thought about that particular indignity — either the wedding night itself or the fact that Tycho might interrogate him on the subject. Ty was probably asking already knowing the answer and looking for more things to be angry about, he decided. It would have been terribly suspicious if he'd married her after allegedly being caught with her, and then refused to touch her afterwards. Suspicious to her, initially, but how long could something like that really continue before she said something to someone? And she might be too innocent or naive to suspect he was carrying on an affair with someone, but other people wouldn't be. And another scandal was the last thing anyone needed.
"I'd be surprised if she was keen on it," he said darkly. "Since she hates me." He didn't actually know that she did, but it seemed a fair enough guess given the circumstances. He had ruined her, after all, and he doubted the newly minted engagement was much of a comfort to her given that they hadn't actually done any of the things they were accused of.
"Who could possibly hate you? At least not for long anyway?" Tycho asked with a rueful smile. Either way, he was losing Ford. He was the sacrifice Ford had chosen, whether the choice was forced or not, whilst Tycho had been ignorantly and obliviously been tinkering away at one of his newest whims. He didn't think Ford could be the type to carry on a secret affair whilst married considering how he had seemed to feel about his past lover trying to do so.
"Stay with me tonight," Tycho requested, his eyes on the others. If they were to have last moments he wanted to make them memorable. To engrave himself even more on Fords soul than he already was. He would not allow himself to be some mournful memory that Ford someday only sometimes thought of. He would be remembered.
This was a touching sentiment from Ty, particularly following on the heels of all the little barbs laden throughout this conversation, but Ford didn't know how true it was. She certainly had enough cause to hate him, and there seemed to be very little chance of that changing between now and the wedding night. At any rate he was, at least at present, determined never to be happy with her. He could try to make her happy, someday down the line, because presumably she had done nothing to deserve a life of misery, but he had.
The offer to stay warmed him. Tycho always offered, any time they were together, and more often than not Ford said no — always running back home to his family, to his house, to his responsibilities. But Noble was the only person who knew where he was right now (and even he only in the vaguest sense). He could lie to them all tomorrow and say he'd come back late and they'd already been in bed. He could even lie and say he'd gone to Miss Farley's house, he thought with a sort of manic mischief. He could tell them her parents had asked him to dinner, to celebrate, and he'd stayed late. And what were they going to do, write Miss Farley to compare notes?
"I will," he said, closing the distance between them again and finding his way back into Tycho's arms. "I'll stay."
