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
It couldn't be true. It couldn't. The vampire Kieran bought illegal liquor from seemed rather certain, but the certainty had a certain cast of derangement to it — Kieran could not read most vampires that weren't Ishmael very well. (And honestly he could only really read Ishmael in that he could tell when the vampire was flirting with him.) So truly this was a lie, and Ishmael had just been scarce lately because he was scarce, not because he'd gone and done that.
It took him a few days to find Ishmael. The vampire being in the Jinxed Jackrabbit was actually rather lucky, and Kieran watched carefully until Ishmael was alone at the booth.
"Ran into one of your associates the other day," Kieran said as he slid into the bench seat across from Ishmael. His leg was bouncing under the table as he jittered it up and down; there was an unhappy cast to his mouth.
Kieran Abernathy was not one of his appointments this evening, but it was Kieran Abernathy who had just presented himself here. Ishmael raised an eyebrow. He might have said something about this being a pleasant surprise, but Kieran seemed to have other things on his mind. A rather unceremonious opening, wasn’t it? And it felt like a little while since they had seen each other. Ishmael had half a mind to be put out.
But he would wait, and see what this was about. “Associate?” Ishmael echoed calmly, cocking his head to express he had little idea whom the reporter might mean. “And?” Everyone was an associate to Ishmael, more or less – the other fellows in his little gang; other black market connections; other local vampires; his regular bloodbanks; his friends. To most people, even Monty could be termed his associate, probably.
Kieran seemed unusually bothered, though. Ishmael leaned forwards with a querying look, and as he did, he pressed a hand to Kieran’s knee under the table, as if to still it.
Kieran's knee bobbed twice under Ishmael's cold hand, then stilled. He contemplated kicking him but refrained.
He was frustrated that the vampire didn't immediately understand what he'd meant; it meant that Ishmael was not being accosted about what he'd done nearly as often as he should be. Of course, that was assuming it was true, which Kieran was still trying to convince himself that it could not possibly be so.
"And I asked him where Monty's been," Kieran said.
Ishmael had had far too many years’ practice of controlling his expression, of affecting nonchalance, to fail at it now – but if anything on earth could make that indifference waver, it was a mention of Monty. Only a little. But a brief flicker of feeling flashed in his eyes, an almost-imperceptible twitch in his jaw; he let go of Kieran’s knee and leaned back again, settling back to relaxed by the time he had.
“And what, exactly,” Ishmael asked, carelessly innocent again, as if he couldn’t begin to fathom the answer, “did he tell you?”
And if Abernathy had something to say about these things he had heard, well – Ishmael wasn’t going to make it any easier for him to air his grievances. He was still sitting here, wasn’t he? So Kieran could spit it out himself.
There was a flash of emotion in Ishmael's eyes. Kieran looked down at his drink and took a sip of it before he spoke, meeting Ishmael's eyes again. "That you'd gone and done it," Kieran said, finally — Monty Morales, a vampire. If it was true, Jude was going to go absolutely mad — but maybe Kieran was, too.
Gone and done it. Kieran wasn’t going to say the word, then, was he? But there was no sense pretending he didn’t know what it was. It had hardly been an accident, after all.
“There’s no need to make it sound so cheap,” Ishmael commented, posture growing increasingly laidback, perhaps with a bite of defiance at the depressing approach Kieran had taken. It boded badly; he had expected better from Abernathy. (Why did he even care? Why was this any business of his? Monty was friends with his lot, he was aware – but personally, he tried to stay as far away as possible from that group. Do-gooders might amuse Monty, but Ishmael had never the patience for sanctimony.) “Are you going to tell me you disapprove?” There was an edge of mockery in his tone. “That I’ve corrupted some poor innocent soul?”
"Oh, far from innocent," Kieran scoffed, not having an issue with it. Ishmael had done it, then. Merlin help London, or Hogsmeade — or wherever Monty was staying. From everything Kieran had heard about newborn vampires — well. Monty was certainly going to be a newborn vampire."Just that you ought to keep him on a tight leash. He's always liked shiny things just as much as he likes being practical."
It was Ishmael’s turn to scoff now. “Oh, I’m sure you know all about being on a leash,” he said pointedly, unable to help his smirk at that – but it faded as he weighed up the insinuation that Kieran must be deluded enough to think he knew Monty better than he did. (Shiny things! As if Ishmael wasn’t well aware. As if Monty’s biggest weakness hadn’t always been Ishmael.) So what was Kieran saying here, that Monty was going to be too much for him to handle now?
“But I’m not sure why you’re giving me advice?” he queried. “He’s hardly the first person I’ve turned.” (For all his confidence in saying this – he had been out of his depths with it before. Look how well Azazel had turned out, for example. But he had fled soon after turning her; he was committed to Monty.)
Kieran had an impulse to kick Ishmael under the table, but some habits died hard — his actions around the vampire were still governed by an assumption that Ishmael's fangs would be in his throat sooner rather than later, and by the assumption that he shouldn't piss Ishmael off beforehand. So he didn't kick, but did wrinkle his nose at Ishmael.
"But have you ever turned someone like him?" Kieran asked.
Ishmael didn’t like the way this was going. “Someone like him,” Ishmael echoed, taut and defensive. “I think I might know Monty better than you do.” Monty and Kieran went back, he knew, but Kieran was talking like Ishmael didn’t know perfectly well what he was like, didn’t care about him, hadn’t thought this through.“I didn’t do this on a whim,” he countered. Monty had made him do this; he had begged him for it. They had argued about it for months before Ishmael had relented. “He knew what he signed up for. So if you’re worried about him – tearing up London, or eating all your friends at the Augurey,” Ishmael added darkly, “you shouldn’t be. He has me.” It had, thus far, proved a thankless job, but – he kept reminding himself that it would get easier. The control would come, and then he and Monty could – be as they had been again, but as equals.
Kieran had half an impulse to point out that he had had intercourse with both Monty and Ishmael (even if separately,) and it had been more than once for each of them, so he really did understand both of them better than Ishmael was giving him credit for. He didn't think that Ishmael would like that if he pointed it out, though. The vampire was being defensive, using a tone that Kieran was not particularly used to hearing from him.
Kieran smirked down at the tabletop and then looked back up at Ishmael. "You're being sentimental," he said, tone vaguely fond.
Ishmael glared back at him and that little smirk of his, like Kieran knew something he didn’t. This conversation was suddenly making his toes curl, and not in a good way.
“Is that what you’re after?” Ishmael accused him in a low, hissed tone, as if all Kieran’s habits of journalistic digging were presently being deployed to make Ishmael admit to something incredibly mortifying. “You want me to say that I’ve gone – soft in my old age, that I love him or think he’s my soulmate and that’s why –” he waved his hand aggressively, I turned him and I believe that everything will work out, happily ever after?
“That’s not what this is,” he protested hotly. (He did think Monty was as good his soulmate as anyone was ever going to be, but –)
Kieran grinned, visibly amused by Ishmael's protests. It didn't compare to the high of provoking Jude, but this was still good. It still went against his instincts to really provoke the vampire, but he was also having a lot of fun.
"You sound like a blushing teenager," he said, "'I've never liked anyone in my whole life,' et cetera. Un-life."
He had figured it out, the strange dynamic of this conversation: Kieran was making fun of him.
“I will still suck you dry, no matter how you taste,” he threatened darkly. It would not come to that, probably, since the truth was he liked Kieran too much to want to kill him. And he did taste terrible. (Which was not to say Ishmael would not do it, if he had to for some reason – he had no moral qualms about murder, when it was wholly necessary – but he wouldn’t be thrilled about this one.)
Oh fuck. He was being sentimental.
“Is that it?” Ishmael rallied, leaning forward to cast him a deliberately indecent look. “Are you jealous?”
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