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.
Sage was on her way back to the hospital after dealing with a dog bite in Wellingtonshire. Fortunately the wounds hadn't been too deep and she had been able to clean and dress them rather swiftly. Without another urgent summons on its heels, she'd decided to take the long way round, through the park, and get a little bit of fresh air. It felt like she'd been working nonstop lately, which was good. Sage was in a better headspace when she was busy and life really wasn't all that bad these days.
It was a nice, warm afternoon and she thought it would be a lovely walk. Oh, how wrong she would be.
It started with a little rumble beneath her feet stopping her in her tracks. Then there was nothing at all. The ground collapsed from beneath her and she went down with it in a heap of earth. By the time she stopped, her voice was a little hoarse from the scream she emitted on the fall. Dazed and with a blossoming ache in the back of her head, Sage tried to assess the damage from the fall, but realized she couldn't move much of anything and she was definitely not upright.
Thankfully there was enough light coming from the top of the chasm that she could mostly see around her. Unfortunately what she found was that she was half buried beneath a piled of dirt and stones and she couldn't reach her wand, nor her satchel that had come disconnected from her... or perhaps were buried with most of her body. She tried to wiggle free, felt blood trickling down the side of her face and it made the ache in her head worse.
"Help! Is anybody nearby!?" She hollered, instantly regretting the ringing it caused in her ears.
Sometimes Noble came to Padmore Park to look out for ingredients — sometimes he came to Padmore Park to get out of the house. Today was more the latter than the former, and he'd been starting to think about heading home when the earth started caving in. He slid down the edge of the sudden hole in the earth in fits and starts, trying periodically to scramble back up the dirt — and succeeded only in scraping up his hands.
By the time he landed at the bottom, he was bruised and scraped and there was a large rip in the back of his jacket — but he didn't think anything was broken. He spent several minutes blinking, looking back up at the sky — was it worth it to try to climb back out?
It was someone's voice that got his attention. He stood up and exhaled, instantly feeling the bruises and the bleeding in his legs from his attempts to scramble. ''I'm coming,'' Noble called back. ''Keep talking!''
Oh thank Merlin! "I'm half-stuck and I can't get to my wand." She hoped the person could hear her clearly enough and follow her voice. It was hard to get a deep breath with the dirt squeezing her downward. "It's sort of hard for me to breathe." She continued, thinking that she wouldn't be able to keep this up for very long. She was afraid to move too much and cause the dirt above her to let go and then she would be completely buried.
"There's ah, some really big roots to my left," she continued after taking in as much air as she could, hoping the clues to her surroundings would help. "Please hurry!" This time her tone was a little more panicked as she felt some of the dirt beneath her slide some.
Her voice was familiar, but Noble pushed that aside in order to better follow her directions. Big roots. His legs hurt as he walked on them, but he did not think that anything was broken. Big roots, he had to hurry — there they were. Noble stumbled over the roots as the dirt began to slide, and lowered himself to his knees — he grabbed onto both her hands with his own.
"Miss Whitby," Noble said, surprised. "I think we may have to run."
Sage had never been so glad to see another human being in her entire life. "I believe I am most stuck." She said to Mr. Greengrass with a wry grimace. The dirt was up past her waist and though she grabbed onto his offered hands, Sage knew it was going to take a lot of effort to pull her from the compacting dirt. She was mostly on her side though, so at least they had that working for them. "It's getting hard to breathe." She huffed out, feeling the dirt pressing in with each breath she took. Sage knew not to panic, that would only make things worse, but taking the slow deep breaths she had been was increasingly difficult.
Noble started trying to pull, but she didn't budge. "Alright," he said, half to sound confident and half to settle his own nerves. He didn't have enough time to think this through, so he was going to have to follow his instincts. "I'm going to grab around your chest. Can you try to kick?" Noble squatted on the ground and wrapped his arms around Miss Whitby's chest, ignoring that this was intensely awkward-or-intimate.
set by Bee
September 28, 2024 – 1:50 AM
Last modified: September 29, 2024 – 12:59 AM by Sage Whitby.
Sage agreed with a distinct nod of her head, wrapping her arms around Mr. Greengrass' neck, allowing them the leverage they needed to get her free. She kicked as hard as she could, as though she were swimming through something thicker than water, and when she came free, she and Noble tumbled to the ground with a harsh thud. Sage was atop him in a manner that suggested anything other than a good rescue from the dirt, her skirts tangled around her legs and the air rushing through her lungs as they hit the ground.
"I am—" she gasped, "So sorry." She wasn't capable of moving much, though she felt bad for squishing him, she couldn't move from her current position, even as the dirt gave way and cascaded down toward them again. It wasn't as bad as getting stuck in it, and Sage took the first deep breath of the whole ordeal as she tried to regain her senses.
"Thank you," she added after a minute, still unable to coordinate her limbs to move from where they were sprawled on the ground.
Noble was winded when they hit the ground, and spent a beat trying to regain his breath. He couldn't even reflect that her legs were out — (and rather nice) — because he was so relieved that they hadn't just gotten dragged even further into the ground. Out of the affection caused by their dire circumstances, Noble patted Miss Whitby on the shoulder.
"You're welcome," he breathed. "We can — lie here for a minute."
Honestly, he partially said that because he was not sure he had the capacity to try and move right now, especially with her on top of him.
Sage chuckled with the little air that she did have, at the pat on the shoulder. She managed to at least move enough so that most of her weight was not atop him as she rolled off to one side. It had been a hilariously long time since Sage had been quite this close to a man's body and while she did indeed wish the circumstances were different, she wasn't mad about it either.
As she regained her breath, Sage did a little inventory of injuries. The cut on her face was still bleeding, she definitely had at least bruised a rib or two, but her arms and legs, barring some minor scratches, were fine. "Did I hurt you?" She asked finally, after her breathing steadied. Sage tried to disentangle herself from him further, but only wound up aggravating whatever was wrong with her ribcage and paused, hissing out an oath under her breath instead.
"No," Noble answered easily, "Pit probably did, though." Probably. He still didn't think that anything was broken, but he was sure that he was bleeding somewhere-or-other.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows — (which — ow, that was probably one of the bleeding places) — at the sound of her hissing. "What's wrong?" he asked, looking carefully at her.
Speaking from a mediwitch's point of view, Sage knew she shouldn't move much, if her suspicions were correct. The problem was, at the moment, she didn't know for sure and wouldn't be able to tell until she got a look at it. She had to guess it was just a bad bruise; she wasn't having any trouble getting her breath and it only ached when she moved certain ways, but any kind of twisting sent a white-hot jolt of pain right through her.
Gently she laid herself back down on the dirt, closing her eyes and trying to breathe through the pain. "In my professional medical opinion. I have either bruised or broken a rib. Fuck that hurts." Sage sighed and winced at the same time, annoyed by the feeling radiating from the sore spot. She reached for her bag, bringing it up toward her face so she could look in easier. She had something to numb the pain in here, she just needed to find it.
Once she found the pain potion, she uncorked it and deftly threw it back. Hopefully it wouldn't take too long to kick in.
Noble nibbled on his lip, sympathy wrought across his face, when Miss Whitby winced. In the aftermath of the incident Noble and Miss Cartwright caused at the Sanditon, he'd thought often about becoming a healer — but he couldn't afford it, and in the end, he was perhaps too sensitive to other people's injuries.
"Can you find the pain potion in here?" He was a potioneer, he would know what to look for; plus they were all neatly labeled and her bag was well-organized to boot. "It should be somewhere in the bottom left." She hoped anyway. If she could just dull the pain, she could probably get herself upright at the very least. Until then, she was sort of stuck laying on the ground, still sort of half on top of him awkwardly. What a story this would be.
Noble reached to rifle through Miss Whitby's bag, looking carefully at the labels of the vials until he found the pain potion. She was very well-organized, Noble thought — and he was a fastidiously organized person, so the thought brought some additional warmth for her.
"Here it is," Noble said, and uncorked the vial carefully before he offered it to her.
Normally Sage wouldn't let anyone into her bag, but considering she could hardly move for the ache in her ribs, and that Mr. Greengrass was familiar with what she needed, it was something she could allow.
The first potion she'd tried hadn't worked and she was stumped. Normally it would have kicked in by now. Maybe she hadn't grabbed the right one. There were two strengths and she looked at the label the one she was being handed. That was definitely the stronger one, meant for someone larger than her, but she needed something. She shot it as quick as the first and she was already annoyed that she couldn't feel it immediately. Usually it worked quickly, especially at this strength.
She laid back again, trying to breathe through it. "I don't think it's working for some reason." She should have felt some sort of relief by now. She was going to have to just suck it up. After labor, nothing ever felt quite as painful, she could handle it. After another deep breath, Sage managed to sit up with a great deal of difficulty. "Damn that hurts." She grimaced, breathing deep again, even though that sort of hurt as well. This sucked.
![[Image: Sage-Sig94.png]](https://i.ibb.co/gtRGfGX/Sage-Sig94.png)
![[Image: JQOtKDt.png]](https://i.imgur.com/JQOtKDt.png)