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
The roof of Tycho's house was visible from Jemima's bedroom window — that was the primary reason that Ford had taken the opposite room after they'd been built, when both of them were still anonymous enough to go to either of them. It had been black for months. Now it wasn't. He'd caught sight of it when he'd ducked into Jemima's room to ask her a question about something, and then had tried to keep the nauseated look off his face while he finished out the rest of the interaction, so that she wouldn't ask him about it. He was supposed to be honest with her from here on, so that meant if he wanted to lie to her he had to keep her from asking in the first place.
It had stayed on his mind the next two days, and when the weekend rolled around he told his family he was getting lunch with Cash Lestrange, and then he nearly bolted out the door. Cash wasn't expecting him. He should have written first. Such a stupid oversight; he'd been thinking about it all yesterday and he easily could have written. Cash came down to the parlor anyway. He had shown up unannounced in Ford's fireplace after midnight once, so he didn't get to be picky about unannounced visits, Ford supposed. Ford suggested getting lunch; he pulled a name of a Muggle town out of thin air. Cash got what he was actually trying to say — somewhere we can talk, really talk. Ford didn't even pay much attention to where they were going.
"I need a favor," he announced once they were alone.
Given the circumstances under which Cash had surprise-appeared in the Greengrass fireplace, he supposed he didn't get to be picky about Ford showing up without warning during the day. He was also still busy trying to find hobbies that didn't involve hating himself, and going to lunch with Ford in muggle Oxford wasn't hating himself.
Cash leaned back in his chair at Ford's question. They hadn't ordered anything yet, not even drinks, which meant that Ford really had to be in a bit of a tizzy. "What sort?" he asked.
The phrasing of the question snagged him, as though there were categories of favors and Cash expected him to respond with a concise label. There were categories of favors, of course. There was if the boss comes by tell him I'll be right back and there was hold on to my suicide note and those were things that had nothing in common with each other except that they might have followed from I need a favor. Ford's favor was on the lower order of magnitude, but he didn't know how to convey that. There weren't labels for what sorts of favors.
He also didn't know how to convey the favor itself. It seemed like getting it to make sense would require so much context Ford had never given Cash, and had no desire to start giving him now. He chewed his lip. He should wait to say anything important, he knew. They hadn't even ordered drinks yet.
"It's not difficult, or weird," he hedged. "It's just — not something I can do. Do you, uh — do you know Tycho Dodonus? He's a few years younger than us. He lives in your neighborhood, the house with the garden gnomes." Formerly of the rainbow roof, then the black roof, then the colorful one again. Ford didn't include that. "He's, uh — I don't know how else you'd know him," Ford admitted. "He doesn't work. He writes poetry."
"I think I've met him," Cash said, after considering for a beat. He'd definitely been at the same parties as Dodonus, but mostly he knew who he was because he was another friend of Ford's. The only time they had really spoken had been shortly after Ellory's death, but that conversation swam in Cash's mind without much clarity.
The waitress appeared; Cash ordered gin, neat. He was starting wondering idly about Ford's favor.
Cash had met him, maybe. Good; that meant Ford could stop trying to come up with ways to describe him. If Cash hadn't met him, Ford was sure he could figure it out. He wasn't a hard person to find. Usually, anyway — since Ford's wedding he'd disappeared to Italy for a few weeks, and who knew what he was doing now. Ford hadn't seen him since the night he'd come to the house and Jemima had caught them together. He could have been anywhere, doing anything... but probably no one else was responsible for the color charm on his rooftop.
The waitstaff wanted to know what they wanted to drink. Ford echoed Cash's order of gin without thinking. As he waited for them to retreat from the table he crossed his arms on the tabletop and wrung his sleeves with his fingers.
"Can you see if he's alright?" Ford asked. Cash would have to say yes, wouldn't he? Ford had no fallback plan if he didn't.
Ford was obviously distressed. Part of wondering why Ford was asking for a Dodonus-related favor was wondering who, exactly, Dodonus was to Ford — and the further they got into this conversation, the more Cash was starting to think that he had a good idea of that.
"I can try," Cash said. He added, with a shrug, "I mean, we'll see if he tells me." Cash didn't know Dodonus well, and therefor it may be difficult for him to tell if the man was actually fine — but at the very least, he could get some form of proof of life for Ford.
That was a fair point, and one Ford had already considered. He assumed it would be obvious to Tycho that the question was really from Ford, because there was no logical reason for Cash to ask it and because everyone knew that Ford and Cash were friends. Tycho might refuse to say anything to him, even via proxy. That couldn't be helped... and it wouldn't have stopped him from going himself and asking face to face whether he was alright (because Ford would know better than Cash would, anyway — it wouldn't matter what Tycho said because Ford would be able to read his body language). If the only reason to hang back was because he and Tycho would probably fight, Ford would have been there already.
But he couldn't do that to Jemima. Not given... everything. He felt guilty for even doing this much, honestly. There were so many other things to be worried about, so many larger and more pressing concerns for their future, that it felt like a soft betrayal to be reserving any of his emotional energy for worrying about someone else. He didn't want her knowing that he'd asked, and while he had determined to stop lying to her he clearly wasn't above picking his outings so that he wouldn't have to. She wouldn't ask what he and Cash had talked about, or if she did it would only be to ask whether he'd mentioned...
He probably should mention. Maybe. He wasn't sure. He didn't know that it was fair to make Cash the one to break the news to Tycho — not that he would ask him to explicitly, but if Cash knew then he might volunteer it, if it came up. It also wasn't fair to say nothing and let Tycho hear about it weeks or months from now. Ford ought to have told him himself, but — he couldn't do that.
The waitress came back with their drinks and asked what they were eating. Ford had neglected to consider. He looked startled by the question and then hurriedly picked the first thing his eyes focused on on the menu. When the woman was walking away again, Ford offered a listless shrug. "I don't think I'm hungry, anyway."
Cash, who had not really intended on going out for lunch but might as well eat when he was here, ordered a curry sandwich. He also thought it would maybe be reassuring for Ford to see him eat something at unexpected plans, a form of showing-your-work for Cash trying to be better at being alive. Ford didn't seem fully engaged in the ordering process himself, and his shrug confirmed as much for Cash.
Cash took a sip of his drink before replying, trying to get his thoughts in order. He could ask more about Dodonus, but Cash didn't really know Dodonus. He was going to do Ford's weird errand, but he didn't know what to ask about the poet. He did know Ford.
The answer seemed so obvious that it didn't even occur to him to try and lie about it. "No," he said, sliding his elbows out and sinking his head down towards the table until his chin was below his shoulders. The next question of course would be why not? so Ford supposed he might as well get ahead of that one. "I'm going to be a father," he mumbled. "And Jemima knows too much to ever like me."
Cash blinked. He certainly knew about pre-parenthood — and parenthood — stress, but Ford had always seemed like a person who might be able to handle it better, even under the circumstances of his marriage. He bit the inside of his lip at Ford's next statement. "What does she know?" he asked, quietly — there were a lot of things it could be. Ford's sexuality, which Ford knew Cash knew about; the money, which Ford didn't know Cash knew about.
Ford had been too much in his head to anticipate this question, for all that it was a reasonable follow-on. He couldn't give a straight answer to that. Jemima knew more than Cash did, for one; for another he wasn't sure he wanted to say any of it out loud, even in a Muggle pub miles away from anyone who would recognize either of them.
"Everything," he said miserably. "She knows everything."
Cash frowned. Everything was pretty bad, but he couldn't say that. He had to try to think of something hopeful to say, which was still — hard. What would Ford have said?
"But there's time," he offered, "To patch things up."
Ford was of the mindset that no amount of time was likely to fix anything, but he understood Cash's attempt to be optimistic. He didn't know the scope of the problem, and even if he had he probably assumed it was his job as a friend to say something positive.
"She met Ty," he admitted, shuffling into the corner of the booth so that he could huddle up against the back wall. "In my room. After midnight." Ford hadn't asked him to be there and hadn't been doing anything with him, but that wasn't the point; that didn't matter to Jemima. "And she knows why I lied to Mrs. Dempsey about us."
Cash couldn't help it — he grimaced, and looked down at his drink. That was up there for the worst things he could imagine — except that Jemima Greengrass had not told the papers, and no one, apparently, had died. He looked back up at Ford. "Is she leaving you?" Cash asked, in an undertone. But surely if Ford needed damage control he wouldn't be here — he would be contacting a lawyer, or something. (Could Ford afford a lawyer? Cash mentally re-adjusted — there was still room for Ford to ask him for money for a lawyer.)
