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
Mourning was meant to be a time of greater restriction for social calls, but for Drusilla Rowle mourning her father things had never been more free. Her stepmother didn't care who she entertained — or if she did, she was not so bold as to offer her opinions directly, and Dru never bothered to ask her. Her father would have had opinions. Half her friend group would have been exiled by virtue of being male. Morrigan would be deemed beneath her social station. Even if everyone she cared about had been rich, pureblooded, and female, though, she was sure her father would have found a reason to block them. It was never about the people she spent her time with; it was always about isolation and control.
But now he was dead, and although her clothes were black her eyes had never been so alive. One of her friends had come to call and she had bustled them out of the house, foregoing the traditional tea and parlor-sitting for a long walk through the lawns and gardens — and the privacy of not being overheard so easily. They had been walking and talking some twenty or thirty minutes, and Dru was still rather in wonder at how it felt to say things without fear that somehow they would be reported back to him, and come back to haunt her later. They had just turned the corner of the path, putting them momentarily out of sight of the windows of the distant manor. Dru glanced over her shoulder to ensure there were no sight-lines to anyone working in the yard or garden, then lowered her tone conspiratorially.
"I can still do it," she confessed. She hadn't been sure when she chose the ritual how long the effects would last, or whether it would disappear once she did it once. That was why it had been so important to kill him when she had, not waiting for a more opportune time — the window could have closed. "Do you want to see?"
It was refreshing, to be able to visit Dru on their terms. Before, the summers and winter breaks had been spent exchanging a flurry of letters, and since their debut, they'd mostly seen each other in secret circumstance with the rest of their group, or at parties, where they could not really talk. It was a far cry from the years where they'd been a bed apart, whispering into the night, or when Morrigan had been able to climb into Dru's bed in the morning and say whatever she wanted.
Now she got to visit the Rowle home and take turns through the grounds.
"Of course I do," Morrigan said, raising an eyebrow at Drusilla. She was still trying to find the best ritual for her curse — but God, blood curses were hard to undo — but her fascination with everyone else's was undimmed. Dark magic was vast, and the things she could do with it were vast — and she envied Dru's willingness to do a ritual without knowing the exact outcome.
Of course Drusilla had anticipated the answer. If she'd thought there was any chance that Mor would say no, she wouldn't have asked in the first place. She grinned, then cast a glance around for a suitable subject. She had been paying more attention to the sight lines of the property than anything else, and she hadn't had anything in mind yet when she'd asked. She cast a glance around the surrounding area for something suitable. She probably could have uprooted the nearest tree, but that would have been very noticable to the gardening staff later. They probably wouldn't ask her about it — why would they assume she had anything to do with it? — but it would be hard to find a reasonable explanation for. The wind was hardly going to uproot just one tree and leave everything else untouched. There was a stone bench not far ahead. That might do. Dru held up a hand for Morrigan to stay where she was and then went over to it.
Drawing on this power was like drawing from a well somewhere deep inside of her. She had to feel it out, and then once she'd reached the rim of it she had to dig down and heave up the strength she needed. It felt as though it took longer than it did (she knew it could not actually take long, because when she had killed her father he hadn't noticed the pause in conversation). She closed her eyes while she pulled it up, and when she opened them again there might not have been anything different about her appearance but she felt like an entirely different sort of being. She felt aglow, crackling with potential. She pulled the bench up from its concrete footing like it was nothing.
Drusilla looked like Drusilla, still, but then her friend went ahead and brought a stone bench up without breaking a sweat. Mor's face, usually sporting a near-flat affect, broke into an astonished smile. "Oh, please," she said, wanting desperately to see Drusilla wreak some of the destruction she had earned. It was satisfying to know that when Drusilla's father died, he had probably been astonished, and probably afraid.
Dru grinned eagerly at the encouragement. She closed her fist around the bench and the stone crumbled beneath her fingertips like she was breaking a crust of bread. She tore it into two pieces and tossed one to either side, then turned to look at Morrigan, expression exultant. It lasted a second or two, then her expression flagged and faltered. She felt dizzy; the strength she was no longer using receded all in a rush and left a void in its place. Her arms trembled and she sank heavily to her knees, then sat on the damp ground with one arm braced to either side of herself to keep from falling over entirely.
Mor rushed to her, of course. Dru offered her a weak smile, aiming for reassuring. "I get tired," she explained. "It'll pass. Just... just wait a moment."
The crack of the bench was deeply satisfying, but Mor didn't have time to savor it before Drusilla sank to the ground. She gathered her skirts in her fist to rush over to her friend, and crouched down next to her. She nodded at Dru's words. "I like it," she said, quietly, "The strength in your body finally matches the strength inside you."
Drusilla's lips curved in a smile. She liked to be called strong. She was gratified that the power hadn't left her after the night she'd first used it, even though she didn't anticipate ever having a need for it again like she had the night she'd killed her father. She liked knowing that no one would ever be able to hold her in that position again, for all she had no intention of ever letting someone try.
"It was so quick, when he died," she confessed. She hadn't spoken to Mor about that night yet — in the immediate aftermath of her father's death it had seemed prudent not to speak of it to anyone, just in case there were questions that arose, though obviously her inner circle would know that the story about him slipping on the ice could not have been true. "I didn't want it to be."
Morrigan laid a hand on Dru's arm, as if to transfer some of her own strength to her friend. "He deserved much worse," she agreed, in a quiet voice. "I — was hoping he would suffer, as well."
Mr. Rowle had been a tyrant, and he deserved to get back what he had given tenfold — but even dark magic could not give them everything they wanted.
