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
Porphyria probably would have been a better choice for this, but it seemed too soon to bother her for something once again; she might start thinking he was interested in spending more time with her and was coming up with excuses to make it happen. Either of his parents might have done, too, but there was something odious about asking his parents for help with his work. He was a grown man and this was his profession — he didn't need mummy swooping in to save the day. He did need help, though; half a day of writer's block over a measly half dozen words had him at the end of his rope.
If the poets of the family were unavailable to him, Oz supposed the Unfettered Romantics would have to do. Christabel was perhaps too old and jaded to fit the bill, he thought, and Shallot had never been one in the first place, so that left Lycoris. With the letter from the Ministry folded in his right hand, he stalked through the estate seeking his youngest sister out. When he found her, he thrust his left wrist out directly below her nose. "What does that smell like to you?"
Lycoris was in one of the rooms that sort of served as her art studio when one of her older brothers found her. She was in the middle of mixing paints on her palette when Oz thrust his wrist under her nose. She automatically wrinkled her nose and inched a bit away from him.
"Get your wrist away from me before I paint it," she said teasingly. "What's it supposed to smell like? I didn't get a whiff of anything." Then again it would be a little hard for anyone to do so after mixing paints when the scent of the oils were currently taking up her sense of smell.
"Don't be a baby. It's cologne. It doesn't smell bad," he protested, pushing his wrist out in her direction once again. He could understand her hesitation if she thought this was some sort of childish prank, but Ozymandias had (mostly) outgrown those six or seven years ago. Generally making fun of his siblings didn't really count; he didn't go out of his way to make them uncomfortable any more.
"I want your help with a project," he explained (though this honestly didn't explain much). "But it's easier to demonstrate than explain." Or, rather: it was more dramatic to demonstrate than to explain, and he tended towards the most dramatic solution at any point. Sitting on the other side of the room and telling her he needed help naming a cologne that changed scent for each person who smelled it just seemed horribly dull. He wanted her to be impressed by the invention, and for that to happen he needed her to experience it.
Lycoris was a lot more keen about why her elder brother was invading her sanctuary when he said he wanted her help. She took another whiff of his wrist but again, didn't really smell anything but her paints... unless. She took another whiff to be sure and realized that there was another scent underlying the paint smell. "Well, all I smell is a light hint of paint and lilacs, my favorite flowers." So basically, the two scents she liked the most, she supposed.
Oz nodded in satisfaction as she recognized some of the scents (not what he would have guessed she would say, but nothing too strange, either). He held his wrist below his own nose for a second with a smirk. "Petrichor," he announced, then raised his eyebrows at his sister as if to say well, are you impressed yet?
"I'm filing a patent and they sent it back because I haven't given it an official name yet," he continued, brandishing the letter in his other hand as though it were a torch and he was warding off approaching monsters. "So, Miss Artiste, what would you name it?"
"Oh! So it changes for you?" Lycoris asked, suitably impressed by the notion. "Kind of like amortentia but hopefully without the mayhem. I assume it also pertains more to favorite scents than scents associated with what one loves?" She eyed the letter being brandished at her but patents and the like were a little beyond her.
"Hmm, a name. What is something that could reflect the changing nature?"
"Of course. I wouldn't have spent weeks perfecting a cologne that smells like paint," he teased. Artistic soul indeed. She must have been serious, though, because he hadn't told her what the cologne was before he'd asked her what she smelled, so she couldn't have known what to lie about. "It's supposed to stick to relatively normal scents. Things people might want to smell like." Getting something that replicated the scent changing of amortentia hadn't been exceptionally difficult. Replicating it without adverse side effects, like his skin developing aggressive rashes or starting to pucker and wrinkle, had been a little trickier. Further refining it so that the scents stayed within the realm of what people might expect from a cologne had been the most complicated part, and apparently something that might still need a little bit of work.
"If I had any good ideas, I wouldn't have asked you for help," he pointed out. "I could rattle off some phrases but I wouldn't be any more useful than a thesaurus, I wager."
"Maybe Iridescent? With an emphasis put on the word scent in advertising and the packaging," Lycoris said thoughtfully as she pondered things. "It's usually a word used for changing colors but why not for scents? It's right in the word itself."
Oz considered. It was actually an excellent choice. He didn't know why this surprised him. He'd come to Lycoris for help, after all, and he'd expected her to be better at this than him. Still, he didn't know that he'd expected her to do this well. It made him feel a little self-conscious. If his baby sister could come up with something within five minutes, why had this task stumped him when he first sent in the paperwork?
He kept considering. At this point he wasn't thinking so much about the merit of the suggestion, but rather what he could contribute so as to feel a little less inadequate. "What's the French? It seems like everyone buys colognes with French names," he mused. He spoke French, but this wasn't exactly a word that came up often in common parlance. "Irrisar? Iriser?" This wasn't going to work — that lost the pun, and it didn't even sound that elegant.
"S'iriser would turn it into become iridescent," Lycoris mused. "It doesn't have quite the same feel though. What do you think?" Like any upper class woman, Lycoris had been taught French but it wasn't a skill she was required to use very much.
"Iridescent it is," he decided. He crossed to the desk at the edge of the room to retrieve a quill. He wrote the word on the blank line with a flourish.
"Thanks for your help," he said without looking back at her. "I'd give you a bottle as a thanks, but you wouldn't have much use for cologne. Get yourself a sweetheart and then ask for some."
"What makes you think I don't have one?" Lycoris asked with a huff. She didn't but something about his wording had the small amount of pride she had bristling. She could have a beau if she wanted one! (Never mind the fact she did want one but had yet to gain one.)
Oz chuckled. "If someone had their eye on my baby sister, I'd know," he said confidently. Not that he was doing anything to particularly keep an eye on society of his siblings' orbits within it; he just assumed he was perceptive enough to catch on to any bubbling feelings long before they concreatized into anything worth noting.
MJ is the light of my life <3
August 15, 2022 – 7:33 AM
Last modified: August 15, 2022 – 7:36 AM by Lycoris Dempsey.
"You wouldn't. You don't know every man I speak to," Lycoris said, still mildly indignant. She resisted the urge to ask if Langston Dashwood had mentioned her before closing up her paints and breezing out of the room. With Ozy, sometimes that was the only way to get the last word in.
