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
Kaatjie was going to get in so much trouble for this. She had spent days agonizing over the location for her meeting with her father, only to settle on The Three Broomsticks because it was public and inside and felt less fancy than the teashop. She snuck out of the house when Cousin Adriana was having a tantrum, and was significantly early to the meeting time. She ordered an English Breakfast tea. If the bartender thought it was odd for a reasonably-well-off child to be sitting alone at The Three Broomsticks, she didn't say anything.
In the most recent letter, she told her father that you'll know me when you see me. Kaat had to hope that was true — her whole life, she'd looked like a slightly paler shadow of her mother, so much so that sometimes she thought it haunted her uncle. She had to rely on that, for her father to believe who she was — but she would certainly know him when he came in.
She watched the front door, sipped her tea, crossed her legs at the ankles. She was nearly shaking with excitement. But what if he didn't like her?
Don Juan was blowing smoke from his cigarette out of a quarter-inch opening in a tall window when someone asked if he was hungry yet. He switched the cigarette to his other hand with a guilty look — he wasn't supposed to be smoking inside in this house, the host had asked him not to, but it was too cold to go out to the garden, particularly when he was only half-dressed — but it wasn't the host who had asked, so he resumed his lounging pose and tapped the cigarette against the windowsill. "Not hungry," he said, without considering whether it was true. Then, a beat later: "Wait, what time is it?"
He was supposed to meet a mysterious stranger at the Broomsticks in ten minutes. He swore, stubbed the cigarette out, and flicked the rest of it into the garden below the window. The epistolary inquisitor had been silent long enough that he had in all honesty forgotten about them, until they had abruptly started writing again to make arrangements to meet up. He'd had to go looking for the earlier correspondence to recall what they'd been asking him about. Nothing especially interesting, which had been the most curious bit of it. If someone was writing him anonymously and asking for salacious details of scandals untold, at least he would have understood the motivation. At any rate, he was curious enough to have agreed — and lucid enough not to miss the appointment, hopefully.
"Can I borrow this shirt?" he asked the room at large. The host still wasn't back; the person who had asked if he was hungry shrugged; the other two occupants of the room didn't seem to have heard. There was really no telling whose shirt this had been yesterday, but it was his now. Fortunately his jacket was still in the hallway closet, and he hadn't misplaced his shoes. He was almost presentable by the time he reached the floo.
The Broomsticks wasn't overly crowded. He glanced at the clock before he bothered looking around the room; three minutes late. Not terrible. He went to the bar and ordered a whiskey. While the bartender poured, he leaned against the bar, one hip cocked, and finally surveyed the rest of the patrons. The letter-writer had said he would recognize her, but no one stood out immediately. He waited for his drink with a vaguely bemused expression.
Kaat had seen her father before, in public places — but every other time, she was trying to hide from him, ducking behind relatives or other children to avoid notice. This time, she watched more openly; he was ordering a drink at the bar, standing as if he was important. He never looked as put together as her uncle did, but neither had Mama. Maybe that was something her parents had in common.
Kaat looked, brought her tea to her lips. Surely he'd spot her. This lost some of the appeal of it, some of the mystique, if she had to go up to him.
He'd been expecting someone to try and catch his eye, at least, to indicate where he ought to be going, but so far no one had. He was almost entirely sure the writer of the letters was female. The handwriting was only a slight indicator; men could have nice handwriting, too (though Don Juan did not). The most impactful clue was that she hadn't been able to meet for months; no man he knew had anything approaching that sort of restriction on his freedom of movement. So he was scanning the Broomsticks for a young woman, sitting alone — not a terribly common sight, which was probably why she'd written that he'd know her when he saw her.
Most people were here with someone. There was a head of strawberry blond hair near the very back that he thought might be promising, but when Don Juan shifted slightly to get a better look he realized it was in fact a boy, probably barely graduated from Hogwarts, with longish hair pulled back on his neck. The bartender delivered his whiskey. There was one young women sitting alone, by the far window, but she had a lot of things — something felt off about it. Just as he'd made up his mind to approach her, her friend returned from the washroom and took the other seat, accounting for half of the too-many-things. Hm. Not her.
He glanced around the room again. The only other person sitting alone was a child. Don Juan had already looked past her three times, mentally erasing her from the scene as unimportant, but now it struck him that it was probably unusual for a child to take themselves to the Broomsticks. He quirked an eyebrow at her from his position at the bar.
The anticipation was almost too much; her leg was bouncing furiously up and down under the table. Maybe she should have worn a particularly garish color, and written it into her letter. But she had always been so convinced that her father would just know her, when he finally saw her — surely if she looked at him long enough, he would.
Finally, there he was, looking at her! He'd even raised his eyebrow at her. What did she do? Kaatjie wished she had the eyebrow control to raise them and look cool; she had been practicing, but it didn't look impressive enough yet. So in the absence of raising her eyebrows at him, she nodded.
The girl was looking at him specifically, he realized. Eyes meeting for a moment might have been a passing glance, but she was holding contact. She nodded. Why the hell was she nodding at him? She was trying to communicate something to him. Was it possible she was supposed to meet him here and give him some information for where to meet the actual letter writer? It was far-fetched and melodramatic. A young girl sitting in the pub would attract just as much attention as a woman sitting alone, and far more than if she'd chosen to meet him at a party. Unless it was someone outright notorious. Elfrieda Yaxley—? but there was no reason for her to have written now, no reason to ask him any of the questions she had, no reason to conceal her name.
He walked to the table and took the seat across from her, decisively.
"This isn't worth the trouble you'll get in for doing it," he pronounced.
Kaat’s leg bounced up and down under the table, and she could not get it to stop before her father — her father! — was across from her. She had never gotten so far as imagining what he would say to her first, but that certainly wasn’t it — a flash of embarrassment appeared on Kaatjie’s face.
”I think it’ll be worth it,” she said, trying for bravado — her jaw was set, because she was trying to project confidence. Her traitorous leg continued to jitter up and down under the table.
He seemed to have made her nervous. Probably for the best; this was a pretty dumb thing to do. Someone had kicked her a coin to serve as the go-between, but she probably hadn't considered the potential consequences on her life. He was notorious; maybe whoever was on the other side of this was, too. If people talked about seeing her with either of them she'd have to deal with it. She probably had no concept of reputation as a form of currency; didn't know when she was spending it. But she was just a kid, so maybe no one would bother to talk.
"If you say so," he said with a shrug. He glanced down at his whiskey rather than at her. He could at least help her out by making this brief. "So what's next, then?"
He asked her what was next, and Kaatjie watched her father look at his grown-up drink. Maybe he didn’t recognize her — maybe she did not look quite as much like Adriana as her mother had always said. She frowned. It was hard not to be disappointed. ”Do you remember me?” she asked, plaintive.
Don Juan looked up, surprised by the question. He didn't interact with children generally. None of his siblings had any, and none of his friends considered it a good idea to have him around theirs. The sorts of places he tended to spend his time certainly didn't tend to cater towards children. He especially didn't deal with young children, and if she was asking if he remembered her like they'd met sometime before, she would have had to have been quite young at the time.
"What?" he asked, which was to say no. Where would he have spoken to a girl her age before? Maybe some kind of event. Public affair, something in Padmore Park before it had collapsed in on itself? The Sanditon? She certainly hadn't made a lasting impression on him, that was sure. Depending on where and when they'd interacted, he might not even have been sober at the time — maybe he hadn't remembered her ten minutes later.
Younger. Don Juan had never had interactions with young children, but she clearly thought otherwise, and she was getting upset about it.
"You've mistaken me for someone else," he said, firmly. He didn't know if that was true, but he couldn't think what else to say. Sorry for not remembering her? How old had she been when they supposedly met, six? (How old was she now? He had no experience guessing the ages of children, and it had been a good long while since he'd been one).
Kaatjie's nose wrinkled. He didn't remember her, said she must have him mistaken with someone else — it became abundantly, suddenly clear how much less her father thought about her than she thought about him. She thought about Don Juan Dempsey nearly every day — did he even care where she'd been?
She stood up from the table, sharp, and grabbed the collar of her coat. "Fine," she snapped.
This was the best outcome, given the circumstances. He still had a hard time believing a child had been behind the mysterious letters he'd been intrigued by for months, but that appeared to be the case. No good could come of him interacting with a young girl, in public or otherwise. There was a reason he hadn't protested when Ana's relatives said they were going to look after the girl, when Ana died.
And then suddenly it hit him.
"Wait," he said. He was frozen in place: hadn't moved from his cavalier posture in the chair or even set down his glass, but tension transformed it. "What's your name?"
Kaatjie was tugging one of the sleeves of her coat on with emphasis, and some misplaced aggression, when he asked her name. She looked back up at him. Her chin jutted out again, defiant — (or it would be, if there was not a wobble in it. She was going to cry when she was no longer angry, she knew.)
Her name would out her; if he didn't know it, he at least knew her mother had been Dutch. Still, with one arm in her coat and the other still free, she folded her arms over her chest. "Kaatjie," she said, a little quiet — and trying to ignore that the pitch of her voice was higher than it had been when he first sat down.
In his sprawling attempts at writing a memoir, Don Juan had never called the girl by name, but he knew it well enough. Ana had never told him; Ana had never wanted him involved at all. But the letter after her death had laid out a lot of details he had never been privy to, and he'd read it multiple times. Her name was sprinkled through it; he couldn't forget. And how many girls in England were named Kaatjie? Of those, how many had any reason at all to be interested in him? Writing him secretive letters, asking if he remembered her —
He set his glass down on the table and pushed himself to his feet. "Floo," he ordered.
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