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.
With the same account, complete eight different threads where your character interacts with eight different usergroups. At least one must be a non-human, and one a student.
Did You Know?
Braces, or suspenders, were almost universally worn due to the high cut of men's trousers. Belts did not become common until the 1920s. — MJ
Cash wanted to know if there was something in his pocket. He could have meant any pocket — suits had around seven, usually, and then adding coats and cloaks and things there were even more — but he didn't mean any pocket, he meant Ford's breast pocket. Ford was certain of this immediately without being sure why he was certain of it. He reached up to press his hand against the outside of it, to confirm that it was empty — but he'd already know it was empty, because it was lighter than it should have been.
"There was something in my pocket," he said slowly, as though he were trying to work out an arithmetic problem. A second ago he'd thought he'd pulled the stone from his pocket, but that didn't make sense. He wouldn't have put a stone in his pocket, but there had been something there, and though he didn't know what it had been he had somehow instinctively realized its absence. Cash knew it, too. Ford looked at Cash, brow furrowed.
"What were we just talking about?" he asked. "I said we don't have to talk about it, but I don't — I don't know what we were talking about." He glanced at the lake, frowned. "Did something just happen?"
Should he tell Ford again? Cash felt for his watch in the pocket of his trousers, and ran his thumb over the scratch on its backing. His trousers were not wet where he had run into the lake. If he told Ford again, Ford would just be upset — but they'd finally started to make some progress. Ford was starting to remember a bit. Cash wasn't alone.
"Pocketwatches," Cash said, feeling odd — or maybe feeling something like situational power. But if they were going to keep resetting, he didn't have to keep explaining. "We were talking about pocket watches."
Ford frowned. Cash was lying to him. He was sure of it, because it wasn't even a particularly good lie; it didn't even make much sense. Talking about pocket watches, of all things, but then Ford had cut in with we don't have to talk about it? Something weird was happening, and Cash knew what it was, and wasn't telling him. Ford wasn't sure how to feel about that... but thought what he was mostly feeling was annoyed.
"Fine," he said almost petulantly. He tossed the stone down to the ground and fished out his pocket watch from a pocket deep inside his suit. "Pocket watches. This was my dad's, and he passed it down to me when I graduated, and I carry it every-bloody-where but I never use it because —" Ford cut off abruptly, realizing that he was letting himself get carried away and if he went any further he was going to end up revealing two much. There were two reasons he hardly ever used his pocket watch: the first was that he thought it bothered Noble to be reminded of their father; the second was that he thought someday he might have to sell it, and he didn't want anyone remarking on the change of habit if it disappeared.
"— because there are plenty of clocks at the Ministry," he ground out instead. "What's the story with your pocket watch?"
Ford seemed annoyed, and Cash blinked at him, trying to gauge it. Maybe they were close to punching through this strange little loop — Ford was definitely more aware that something was off than he had been previously. Maybe Cash could get them through it without having to explain things at all.
"I have two," he said, "But this one's rusted, and from my cousin." Well, sort of. It had been Eli's first, but Cash didn't want to get into that here, any more than Ford seemed to want to get into his father's watch.
I already said, there's plenty of clocks at the Ministry, Ford considered saying, but he didn't know what good it would do. It had been a lie the first time he'd said it, and Cash knew it, just as Cash had been lying about what they'd been talking about and Ford knew it. He could insist on the lie, but why bother? Cash wasn't going to believe him the second time around any more than he had the first.
"I used to," he said instead, and while this was true it was also not even close to a real answer to Cash's question. Instead of explaining, he deflected back to Cash: "You have two watches, but you carry the rusted one?"
Cash shrugged his shoulders at Ford. "Depends on the day," he said. He ran his thumb back over the watch backing again. Maybe they could make it through this — "What time do you think it is?"
Maybe it would just take him annoying Ford a bit; anything that could break the monotony. He glanced around them, hoping to see someone else who was struggling with this.
Cash was asking him to speculate about what time it was while holding a pocketwatch in his hand, and after Ford had just said he didn't like to use his. This was intentional, he was certain, but he was failing to see what it was meant to achieve. Was Cash trying to get him to pull out his own pocketwatch? And if so, why? What did this have to do with whatever Cash had decided to lie to him about just a second ago, if anything?
"Quarter to four, I guess. What does it matter?" he asked, and then reached to fish his watch out of his pocket as though just to prove to Cash he could do it. He didn't know what Cash had been expecting, if he'd been thinking this would jog something loose in Ford and make him more willing to expound on why he didn't tend to use it, but he was determined to check it just as casually as anyone might. He flicked it open. Five minutes past three. Ford frowned; that seemed wrong.
Cash didn't check the time; he had checked the time enough since this had started to know that it was dreadfully early. But Ford hadn't looked yet, and he watched eagerly to see Ford's reaction to the time. Ford's frown felt like something satisfying.
"We've been here for a long time," Cash prompted, tone knowing; he stared at Ford to see what would happen.
On the surface of it, Cash's comment seemed like a silly thing to say when Ford had just checked the time and could verify that they hadn't been here long at all. On the other hand, the time felt wrong, and Cash's statement felt correct. It felt like they had been here a long time. Ford froze for a second, watching the second hand tick on his father's pocket watch. A moment ago Ford had said we don't have to talk about it and he didn't remember what he'd been referring to. Cash was avoiding his questions and telling casual lies. The time was wrong. They'd been here a long time.
His stomach felt heavy. He snapped the pocket watch shut and moved to put it back in his jacket. "Okay," he said as he looked back up at Cash. "Let's go, then."
It could not be as simple as just going. If it was, Cash would have succeeded when he'd run into the lake. But he sighed, and let some of the tension go out of his shoulders. "Alright," he said, "Let's try that."
At the worst, they'd be back here in a few minutes — about to discuss whatever Cash didn't want to talk about.
Ford put his hands in his pockets as they walked, his eyes on the ground. He was still trying to walk through the implications of what Cash had said... or implied, rather. Cash had said very little. They were talking about pocketwatches; they'd been here a long time. Not much to go on. But Cash seemed to remember having been here a long time, and Ford — didn't, exactly, but he was beginning to feel as though there was something there. Like a vague shadowy shape in the corner of the room when you hadn't looked up in a while. There was something, and he could sort of sense the edges of it. They'd been here a long time.
"How'd we get here?" he asked, still frowning at his feet.
Cash shrugged his shoulders at Ford. "We walked," he said, "And then we got stuck here." He had a feeling that Ford would get alarmed by this — but he could not think of another lie.
This wasn't exactly what Ford had been asking, but he took it as an answer regardless. Cash didn't know how they'd gotten stuck here, then, but he knew that they were stuck, which was more than Ford had been able to deduce on his own. "Is it everyone, or just us?" Ford asked glancing at some of the other people in the park, but then he decided he didn't care about that question as much as he did another: "Why do you feel it more than I do?"
Cash could not tell if it was everyone — maybe other people were having the same weird conversations as they kept having. But he did not know how to ask this of someone else in the park without coming off as deranged. The second question, he knew, would only result in upsetting Ford — so he shrugged again. "I guess I remember," he said.
Cash remembered, while Ford only felt the shadowy edges of something he had forgotten. This was — he didn't like this. He never liked magic that took things out of his control, like this did, but the disparity between how he and Cash were experiencing it made it much more uncomfortable. He felt suddenly vulnerable. A moment ago Cash had been asking him questions about his father's pocket watch, which Ford usually didn't talk to people much about. They had been talking for a while and Ford didn't remember what about. What else might they have discussed? What might Cash have asked and what might Ford have said? It was probably good that it was Cash, because out of everyone he considered a friend Cash was probably the one he could trust most — he probably trusted Cash more than anyone aside from Tycho and Noble — but he still didn't like not knowing. And it was a big ask, to trust someone enough to not worry that you'd lost whole swaths of memories around them. Ford wouldn't have been comfortable being with Noble in this sort of situation, he didn't think. It was just too much.
But it wasn't as though he could just decide his way out of it. He kept forgetting things; they'd been here a while, and Cash remembered. "You'll have to get us out of it, then," he said, looking at the path where they walked because he thought if he looked anywhere else his breathing would start getting irregular. "I trust you," he added, as though trying to convince himself of it. He took a long breath. "I trust you."
Cash exhaled. Ford trusted him. Maybe it didn't always feel like Ford trusted him, but Ford trusted him. "Alright," he said. He couldn't exactly be sure that this would work — after he ran into the lake, they'd just ended up back where they'd been before — but he had to believe that they would not be stuck here forever.
He led them up the path, back to the entrance of the bazaar. Cash swallowed and turned to Ford. "This might be it," he said.
