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.
The rest of the event hadn't been much to speak about one way or another, but Oz was still ruminating over his conversation with Emilia Wright. He traced it over again and again, trying to determine how many people had been listening closely enough to remember what was said and how they might have interpreted it. Unfortunately he knew the answer to the first question was at least one, and since there was no accounting for who people talked to (or how stories might be distorted on every retelling), he had no choice but to assume the worst. By the end of the week, everyone would be familiar with whatever the worst possible version of the tale was.
He found Thomasina in the upstairs parlor that the pair of them had more or less monopolized as their writing room and study since they'd married. He flopped dramatically into one of the armchairs and put his feet up on the nearest end table. "I may have accidentally declared my support for women's suffrage today."
Sina had been interested in haunted books since her interaction with Mrs. Voss earlier that summer, and this had taken up a large segment of her at-home research. She wanted to take the next step towards acquiring some personally, but going to Knockturn Alley seemed a smidge like a recipe for getting kidnapped again. It was a conundrum.
She pushed back from her desk when Oz came in and stood up, coming to sit in the armchair across from him. "Finally," she said, "A policy stance I agree with."
Oz glanced towards her languidly. "I don't believe you disagree with all the other ones," he countered. "But I shall take it as a compliment if you do." A lie, but one in the spirit of their typical back-and-forth antagonism. Honestly, he had not particularly considered his wife's political opinions on most issues, but assumed they mostly lined up with his — or that she was apathetic, which was well within her rights as someone who didn't have the vote. What was the point of having a highly developed and nuanced opinion on economic policy reform if no one ever asked to hear it?
"It's only a matter of time before this is all anyone talks about," he pointed out. So my campaign is more or less over he did not say, because it was self-evident.
Sina smiled. "Being talked about could be good for you," she said, "I wouldn't say yet that things are over." Ozymandias was a good candidate — he was smart, and could be charming, and he was not connected to the Ministry. And it was going to ruin her life if he won.
Oz sighed. He hoped she was right. This was the first moment in his campaign where it occurred to him that he cared about the result of the election. He'd started running just to prove a point, but somewhere along the way he'd started expressing his actual opinions about things rather than just what he thought politicians tended to say, and now he — well, he still didn't think he expected to win, and wasn't even sure if he wanted to win, but he did want some people to vote for him.
"I don't think I committed to it strongly enough to make any of the militant leftists happy," he said wearily. "But it's certainly enough to alienate the right. It's a lose-lose issue, and always has been."
Thomasina huffed out a breath. "You should try standing for something," she said, "Otherwise you'll just bore everyone sooner or later." She would like for her husband to stand for suffrage — but she also understood that most men didn't.
Still, if Oz wasn't running to win — wouldn't it be nice to make some noise?
Oz leaned his head back and let his eyes close with a groan. "Don't you start. Christabel already did the whole pitch. Imagine a world where every citizen had a voice," he said, in a high pitch mockery of his sister's voice. "Where the government listened to all our grievances and mediated all our arguments and dropped by every evening to make a plate of biscuits and tuck us into bed."
He sighed and waved his hand in the air as though he could dismiss the whole thing like a lingering bad smell.
Sina snorted. "I'm not telling you to be Christabel," she said. Christabel would have been nearly as far-left as that Jude Wright, if she ran. "I'm telling you that you're interesting, so you should be interesting." Centrism was boring. Thomasina did not have an abundance of political opinions, but she was convinced of that.
Oz wrinkled his nose. On the one hand, being called interesting was high praise — from Thomasina it was perhaps the highest praise she would willingly voice. On the other hand, he wasn't sure that interesting was enough to get votes. In social circles he liked to be interesting, because the only goal there was to control the narrative. If people were talking about you and you knew what they were saying, you'd won. Here, there was a narrative driving towards a specific point, and he wasn't sure what the best path to that point was. "Was Minister Ross interesting?" he asked, as though he genuinely couldn't recall what he'd thought at the time. Oz hadn't voted for him, but obviously plenty of people had, and Oz could admit that he had been largely content (or at worst nonplussed) with Ross' leadership since the election. "Was Urquart interesting?" he continued. "Before his daughter made headlines."
Sina shrugged — she had never paid either Ross or Urquart much mind, before they were Minister, or while they were campaigning. Outside of going to events that included women and wives, she'd had no reason to have opinions on people who might be Minister. "They worked for the Ministry," she said, "They needed less press."
She had a point there. Ozymandias Dempsey was a name known in society circles, but not for any of the right reasons: he was known to fight with his wife; he was known to have been a rake; he was known to be connected to any number of eccentric poets. None of these were particularly good recommendations for a career in politics. And there were plenty of members of the voting public who were not well-connected to society, and they might not know him at all.
But if he had to be known for something, he still wasn't sure this was the thing to be known for.
"Maybe I'll announce myself in favor of Irish home rule," he said diffidently. "That would at least confuse them." An Irishman, in favor of Irish home rule, running for the office of English Minister of Magic — it could almost have been a limerick, it was so silly. And nevermind that Oz wasn't sure he actually was in favor of Irish home rule; it would be worth it just to hear secondhand debates over which side of the government he planned to stick with if he succeeded in splitting the British Isles in half.
Sina smirked. "Your sister would like that," she said — it sounded like Christabel, at least, although Sina was not entirely sure that she'd ever heard the other woman talk about Home Rule. "Do you think the Irish would be on board for it? The men can vote."
She sighed, and settled back in the armchair. "Do whatever you wish, I suppose," she added, "But you'll need a stance on it now. Suffrage, not Ireland." Ozymandias was going to have to have a platform, if he was taking this seriously — and while she wasn't sure he took it seriously, he was still taking it more seriously than she'd originally expected.
She was going to have problems if she ended up married to the Minister of Magic.
Oz shrugged dramatically. "I'm not sure I'm on board for it. Home Rule sounds like an awful lot of work," he said. Of course, running all of Britain was considerably more work — but he had never thought he had a very good chance of running Britain, and thought he had even less of one now that he'd been pinned down on the suffrage issue.
"I'm for it, then," he said with a sigh. "Suffrage. But then people will want to know what I do think should prevent someone from having the vote, and I'll have to find some — suitably political way to say I'd rather the idiots didn't."
She laughed, airy and bright. "Perhaps a competency test," Sina suggested. Obviously she would be able to pass a competency test at any point, so she had no problems with it. "I don't know, I'm sure someone's come up with something." Thomasina was not a politician, so she did not consider this much of her business — outside of finding some good way to direct her husband.
"Someone has," he agreed. "Or they'll have to. I'm not going to come up with everything myself."
If he were actually Minister, he'd have staff to delegate these things to. On the campaign trail he'd be expected to come up with all of the ideas on his own, and somehow have the right one every time. He didn't imagine his existing staff of footmen and maids would have much to contribute on the subject.
