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
The more she wandered Hogsmeade, the more she was enjoying it. Auntie had given her a little bit of a hard time after she’d gotten a little lost on her first venture out, but today she had one of the housemaids who was far more familiar with town than her own lady’s maid that had accompanied her from Cheshire.
The afternoon was chilly, but the afternoon sun was warm on her cheeks. Much better than yesterday when she had wandered through the park, near the edges of the dark lake that gave her just a hint of a shiver. Sadie wasn’t sure what it was, she didn’t even know if she could swim, but it certainly didn’t look inviting. That likely had more to do with the season than anything else.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling so had gone the other way in town today and found herself wandering into what she discovered was a little cemetery.
A mellow sort of quiet encompassed her as she walked through, enjoying the solitude for a moment. Well, as alone as anyone with a chaperone could truly be anyway. There had been so much socializing in the last few days that she was a little drained. Her days at home were often filled with her studies and not much else. To be socializing this much was harder than she had anticipated! She was enjoying it though; had been looking forward to it for so long after hardly participating in the season after her fall. She longed for a little adventure and this was as close as she was going to get for a while, she suspected.
Sadie’s steps slowed as she neared a pair of matching headstones, twins it looked like, though separated by over sixteen years of one living without the other. How tragic that was, their poor family. Sadie wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there until she heard approaching footsteps. Blushing furiously, she passed the stranger a smile. ”I’m terribly sorry, was just lost in my thoughts. I’ll get out of your way.”
Lester didn't visit Sloane's grave often. It made him despair too much; everything since her death had felt essentially pointless. But sometimes he felt obligated, like he was drawn to her grave and nothing else would do, and today was one of those days.
It was chilled, but not raining. Lester hunched his shoulders in his coat and walked to Asphodel from Bartonburg; but when he got there, he wasn't the only one at Sloane's grave. He slowed his steps until the girl turned, blushing and aware of his presence. Lester flushed back at her.
She looked familiar. But surely it was just the presence of the grave; she could not be who he wanted her to be. Lester stared at her. "What thoughts?" he asked; he hoped she did not mind his rudeness.
Sadie had aimed to make herself scarce; she wasn't sure if this was the gentleman's desired spot or not, but regardless she didn't have any business loitering around the headstones of somebody she never knew. It was strange that this one had caught her eye, a girl close in age to her, and that it just might be the one this man was visiting, but Sadie couldn't explain the pull.
"Oh," Sadie was surprised that he asked her a question instead of waiting for her to leave. Idly she played with the charm bracelet just above her glove. "Just how sad it is," she gestured to the graves. "Both tragically young, but still separated by so long. Did you know her?" It was a terribly personal question, but he had started it, she supposed. Sadie smiled uncertainly at him anyway.
Tragically young. Lester did not like when the word tragically was applied to Sloane, for all that it was tragic. It made her seem like a story, and not like a person. He kicked the toe of his shoe against the frozen ground of the cemetery.
"Yeah," he said, still looking quizzically at the girl who looked so much like Sloane. He tried for a smile because he did not want her to leave yet and it came out like a grimace. "Since we were babies, actually. She lived next door."
Well, she had really gone and stuck her foot in her mouth hadn't she? Sadie's smile softened as she looked between the headstone and the gentleman. "I'm very sorry for your loss," it was weird, the pull she felt to the moment. She should have felt like an outsider, but somehow fell into it easily.
"I'm sure she appreciates your visits, I know I would." If she had any idea what the afterlife actually looked like, she supposed. Gently she reached out, ignoring the hiss of warning from her lady's maid, to pat his arm. Childhood friends, that had to be a devastating blow. Sadie had to wonder just what kind of life the young woman had lived, to have such devoted friends.
She said something soft, like Sloane may have, and patted his arm, like Sloane would have. Lester looked at her with wide eyes, willing an answer — but surely it was impossible?
"If you believe in that sort of thing," he said, with a soft almost-smile. "Are you visiting anyone today?" he asked. She had the ladies' maid with her, and — that had to mean that she was a real person, not a ghost come to haunt him in the graveyard.
Sadie could only shrug. Ostensibly, she knew that there likely wasn't any life beyond death, unless one became a ghost, but she couldn't quite rule it out either. Something about coming back for another life had always appealed to her. That idea of reincarnation, to try again in a different way.
"No," she looked around, eyes lingering on the headstones that had caught her attention so completely. "I'm not from around here, just visiting family for the holidays." It was a lovely little burg though. "I've never been to an all-magical town like this before, I don't think." Maybe she had been here in her youth? Certainly it would make sense, but she simply couldn't remember. "Did you grow up here?" What an experience that would have been. Of course Sadie would have given anything just to remember her childhood, no matter where it took place.
"You've never been to Hogsmeade?" Lester said, disbelieving. (He didn't think the girl's ladies' maid liked him very much — that was fine. She was a mystery, and she was increasingly interesting to him.)
"Didn't you go to Hogwarts?" he asked. He recognized her as looking like Sloane, not as whoever she was now — but if she'd gone to Hogwarts, that would successfully rule out that option. Besides — people did not come back from the dead.
Sadie noticed he didn't answer her question, but instead turned a couple around on her. She supposed that was fair, she was the outlier here. "No," she shook her head slowly, frowning. She hadn't been allowed to go, or so she was told. Sadie didn't remember much of her childhood or her early teenage years, unfortunately. She was told had too many instances of accidental magic that it wasn't safe for her to have one. At least that was what her uncle had said when she had last asked.
"I've been, um, ill, for most of my life, so it's not something I could do." The headaches, the dizziness, the balance problems; all of it was a lot to handle even now as an adult. As a child it must have made things very difficult. "I would have liked too, though." She assumed he had, considering he was from Hogsmeade and the school wasn't very far away. Just a glimpse and Sadie would fall in love, she just knew it. There had been dreams of a large castle every now and then, of a lake, wide and dark, all these little nooks and crannies to hide or escape to. It was just her imagination running away with her, but they were enticing.
Lester frowned at her. It was hard to believe people existed who had never been to Hogsmeade, but were British; it was somehow even stranger that she'd been too sick to go to Hogwarts. This, and her looks, made her odd — he knew he was being strange and off-putting, but he somehow couldn't stop at her. His eyebrows drew together, quizzically. The maid was staring at him.
"Who are you?" Lester asked. This, he knew, was a bridge too far — his mother would have hit him upside the head. His cheeks flushed pink. "I'm Lester Hatchitt."
He watched, carefully — would she know his name? Would he know hers?
Sadie tilted her head to the side curiously. This whole exchange was part amusing, part confusing. Perhaps she'd just caught him on a bad day. "Sadie Sinclair, it's nice to meet you Mr. Hatchitt." It was, despite the awkward edge to the conversation. Sadie was no stranger to that though. She had been told her entire life (so much that she could remember anyway) that she was awkward to talk to sometimes. It was hard for her to tell, she didn't have too much experience with people her own age.
"I know it must be weird to not have attended Hogwarts," she thought anyway. Didn't most children in Britain the other nearby countries all go? She had heard such delightful tales about it that she had started to daydream about what it would have been like. "I really would have liked to, it just wasn't possible." Sadie flushed a little, looking down at her hems. Why she was spilling all of this out on him was beyond her, but for some reason she felt like she could.
Sadie Sinclair. Lester had hoped that he would recognize the name, but he didn't — it was hard to convince himself that she was a real person, and not some odd ghost, when he did not recognize her surname. He looked down at her shoes. Sinclair could not be a ghost; her feet were denting the grass in front of Sloane's grave.
"I'm sorry you couldn't go," Lester said, finally looking back up at her — she was looking down at her dress. "How long are you in Hogsmeade for?" he asked.
Hogwarts seemed almost like a sad subject for Mr. Hatchitt so Sadie let it fall by the wayside. Belatedly she realized she was still intruding on his visit to his friend's grave and she should probably leave him to it.
"Just until the new year, I believe," Sadie was already so charmed by the town that she whished it was longer, but they were just here to visit her grandparents and some extended family, so it was just for the month. She was going to get the chance to attend a few society gatherings, a soft sort of debut. It would be a good introduction, even though it was informal. Her debut had been set for last summer, but her riding accident had put everything on hold and now she was just trying to play catchup.
"I've taken up enough of your time, Mr. Hatchitt, I'll take my leave," Sadie didn't want to be a nuisance; there was plenty of other places to wander in town where she couldn't be a pest.
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