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.
Don Juan had become frenetically obsessed with sailing for about two months during the summer of 1890, and though most of his skills had atrophied by this point from both disuse and disinterest he had still managed to find himself press-ganged onto the crew of a friend for the regatta. He might have preferred the race that was setting off today, with the self-sailing yachts; it seemed like more of a pleasure cruise than a sport. But he didn't mind the idea of trying out sailing again in the Maelstrom Medal, and in the meantime the friend who owned the boat had put him up in the suite at the Sanditon for the whole week. The balmy sunshine and steady breeze was a nice change of pace from a Galway spring, so he could hardly complain. (His friend might, when he settled up at the end of the week; Don Juan had already ordered three bottles of wine on room service and had no intention of handling the cost before he headed back home).
This was ostensibly a picnic but Don Juan hadn't bothered with food, personally; he expected sooner or later someone would bring him something. In the meantime he had set aside his shoes and socks, rolled his trousers up to the knee, and wiggled his toes down into the sand. He had the third wine bottle half-buried in the sand next to him, and was working on rolling his shirt sleeves up when a shadow fell over him from someone standing nearby.
"Keeping me from a sunburn?" he asked, with a glance up. "You'll have to stay just there all day. I don't plan on going anywhere for a while."
The regatta, Sera thought, would be interesting — she would have signed up Hettie and herself if Harriet was a year or two older, or if Sera had another season to regain her skills in sailing. But she was happy to attend the events attached to the regatta, including the picnic — it was a good opportunity to scope out the competition for the following year.
Henry was skipping, so it was just Sera and the children today — she had lost most of them to the boardwalk. Now there was people watching, and she had just stopped in front of Mr. Dempsey and his wine when he noticed her shadow.
She should have tracked her movements; she had not expected to be observed back. "You have an interesting countenance," Sera said — by interesting she mostly meant uncaring, or perhaps drunk.
She could have meant anything at all by interesting countenance. As was his habit when someone presented him with an ambiguous remark, Don Juan took it as a compliment. He preened.
"In the deserts they bury things in sand to keep them cool," he said with a gesture towards the wine bottle. He was not actually sure if this was true, but he'd heard it somewhere and felt that knowing things about the customs in exotic desert locales made him seem very worldly. Even if it was true, it wasn't especially required in this case — he was drinking red wine that hadn't even started the day chilled. "Did you want a glass?"
Sera wanted to sit down in the sand, but could not decide whether or not that was dignified — she stayed on her feet, and wavered. "I'll take a glass," she said, after the wavering had her still stuck on her feet.
He was surprised that she'd agreed. She didn't have the accent or the countenance of someone who was new to Britain, but he didn't recognize her, especially. Coupled with the clothes she wore that put her, probably, in the English society, but boring category; someone who would know him better than he knew them. People in that category weren't really meant to turn into drinking companions. They were supposed to avoid him. This was interesting, then.
He didn't have glasses out, but he'd brought them — drinking wine from the bottle had seemed a bit too brazen for a daytime picnic with families and whatnot invited, so he'd been planning to bring a glass out before he opened the wine. He'd brought a pair because he never liked to drink alone if he could help it; if she hadn't shown up he would have waved over someone or other eventually. He finished rolling up his cuff and pulled the glasses out of one of his pockets — shrunk for the journey and wrapped in a handkerchief. He returned them to their proper size and dug the bases into the sand to hold them up while he worked the cork off the wine bottle.
"I don't think it's especially good wine," he admitted. "Whatever they had on hand. What do you like to drink, usually?"
He had glasses. If he had glasses, this was not as unhinged as drinking out of the bottle would be. Sera glanced around, mostly looking for her children. When she did not see them, she smoothed out her skirts and sat down on the sand next to him. "White wine and gin," Sera answered easily. It had taken her a bit to figure both of those out, but now she could be certain that it was her own taste. "Not together, obviously."
Don Juan quirked a smile at her. "Have you ever tried them together?" he asked. He didn't imagine it would be very tasty, but cocktails had been made from stranger combinations before. With a few other ingredients thrown into the mix he might be proven wrong.
The cork was difficult to manage without a corkscrew (which he had not thought to bring alongside the glasses), so it took more of his attention for a moment. Once he wrestled it out, he poured both of them very healthy portions and passed her one of the glasses, then half-buried the bottle in the sand again. "I'm afraid I don't have either. If a handsomer fellow with a bottle of white wine on ice sits down over there," he said with a gesture at an open sandy spot. "And you abandon me in favor of him I won't be offended in the slightest. Well, I won't be offended much," he continued cheekily. "Do you think anyone will crash a boat today?"
"Never together," she said, almost rueful. It didn't sound like a fantastic combination, but she'd gotten into cocktails since Waking. Sera accepted the glass of wine; she noted that the Minister's brother had a very generous hand while pouring. Well, as long as she wasn't too in her cups to help the governess corral her children later, it wouldn't matter.
She grinned at his cheekiness. "If I do abandon you you'll simply have to remember to bring a white-on-ice next time," she said, "And I am certain someone will crash a boat — honestly, it would have been me if I'd remembered to sign up sooner."
"White on ice wouldn't make me any more handsome, though," he pointed out cheerfully. "I might still lose out to a well-equipped gentleman with a stronger chin." He swirled the wine around in his glass, a bit too wide for the motion to be considered graceful — the liquid swirled nearly to the rim before sloshing back down.
"I might crash a boat," he put in. For the joviality of his tone he might have just as easily been saying I might pick a plum to eat. "But not until tomorrow. It's only the yacht race today. Were you going to sign up for the yacht race?" he asked, with a curious look. He hadn't expected many women to be going. Well, normal women, anyway — his sisters and their friends were a different variety.
Maybe she would give him up for someone with a stronger chin, but he was still handsomer than Sera's husband — and he'd bothered to come today, which meant that he was more fun.
He grinned at his suggestion of boat crashing. "I probably would have done the Ladies' Cup — my husband wouldn't have cared for me to compete with men," she said, with a light laugh as if the matter were very funny to her. "But I would have liked the yacht race, I think."
Did husbands really care whether their wives competed against men? He had supposed it unusual because most women wouldn't have been interested, not because he thought the men in their lives would object. And if they did object, surely it was on the grounds of the activity itself being graceless or unattractive, not the mere idea that men would be doing it also? Was the concern that she might win against the men, or that the men would be cruel to her when she lost? He didn't understand it, either way, but he wasn't inclined to put much more thought into puzzling it out. Instead he frowned at the sea and proclaimed, "I don't understand marriage," before taking a sip of wine.
(He made a lot of these statements with sweeping generalities when it came to marriage, always leaning on the idea of his ignorance or unsuitability for the institution. When he was younger it had been something of a defense mechanism, since he was technically married and eager to avoid the subject. Now it was mostly habit).
Sera smiled thinly at his comment; she took a sip of her wine before replying, so that she could gather her thoughts before replying. "I'm not sure anyone actually does," she said. This would not have been what she would say when she was Under, but she was no longer interested in engaging in such forced pleasantries. Luckily, it seemed, neither was he.
"Mm. Perhaps not," he agreed. He did not ask her why she married, if she didn't understand marriage; women had to be vocally opinionated against marriage to avoid it, and at the age most women married they lacked conviction to be vocally opinionated about anything. At least not with any degree of persistence.
He dug his toes a little deeper in the sand. "No crabs on this beach," he observed lazily. "Too manicured for that. Wouldn't want a debutante on holiday getting pinched."
She ran her hand over the sand and affirmed; no crabs. "I wonder if they're in the ocean," she said, "To make it feel real." The Sanditon was lovely, but — it was nothing like a normal British beach. Much warmer, certainly.
She leaned back on her elbows. "What brought you here, if not sailing?"
"I am sailing tomorrow," he said, taking a sip of the wine. "But what brought me here today, you mean? Holiday, I suppose. It's a hard life I lead, doing nothing all day," he teased. "I have to take a day off every now and then."
He was being facetious, but only a little. What had brought him here today was a friend and the promise of alcohol and company, which was basically what a holiday was. Of course, it was also what his day to day life was.
"What brought you out?" he asked. "You're not yachting and your husband doesn't like competitions."
A holiday. They were, to an extent, living the same life — except that the Dempsey brother was projecting a sense of ease that Sera had not felt since she was Awake.
"I have children," Sera said, simply, "I thought this would be fun for them."
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