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
Three year old Elijah Urquart was every nanny’s worst nightmare. With a hair trigger and lungs that could scream the house down, vexing the toddler was a real and ever-present danger, and so the two women tasked with minding him and his more cooperative infant brother picked their battles carefully, giving Elijah as much free rein as could be allowed without risking their jobs.
Presently, this saw the tiny terror in the library, jumping on one of the couches and giggling like a madman in the process.
— Elijah has heterochromia. His right eye is green and his left is blue. —
— MJ is a graphics goddess ❤ —
Aubrey paused at the door of the library, in the midst of doing the fireplace rounds, in sudden trepidation.
He could hear a child's giggling. Given the house had only two children, he didn't much need to think to guess at who it was - only he listened a moment longer anyway, hoping and praying that the boy had his nanny with him in there. He sounded in a good mood, at least, Aubrey considered, although the optimism of that wore off the moment he pictured the toddler gleefully ripping a wealth of books off their shelves and pages happily from their spines. (It was far too much to hope that he was only looking quietly at the pages of a picture book, as myth had it that well-behaved children enjoyed doing.)
Best check, then. Besides, the library fire would need stoking the same as any, so he had no excuse to not. Pushing the door open, he plastered a smile to his face and made to cross the room with the basket of coal to the fireplace. Naturally, he didn't get very far, and instead bundled the basket down hastily against the wall to turn to the young boy with a frown. "Oh, no, Master Urquart," he chided, watching Master Urquart mess up the maid's morning work upon the couches with great gusto. The boy may not care about mess, but he certainly hadn't been taught to jump on the couches, so Aubrey didn't mind saying so straight. "You mustn't jump on the furniture."
Elijah stopped his jumping, but still stood upon the couch, a small king in the highest tower of his castle and looking down upon his subjects—not caring for what he saw.
“You’re a servant,” he reminded the footman imperiously. “You don’t tell me what to do, I tell you what to do!”
Honestly, the nerve! While Elijah was entirely aware that he should not be jumping on the furnishings (or in the library at all, to be frank), only Mummy or Papa or Nanny could boss him about—and even they were likely to receive a tantrum from the wee tyrant!
— Elijah has heterochromia. His right eye is green and his left is blue. —
— MJ is a graphics goddess ❤ —
He was going to get a real telling off for this. Aubrey, that was. If the boy said a word to his parents or his nanny, Aubrey supposed he'd be treading water for a while on probation, for being impertinent or whatnot. Not knowing his place.
'Course, if he did nothing - or went to fetch the nanny and then something happened in the meantime - and Master Elijah cracked his head on the library floor or accidentally propelled himself through the window glass... well, he wasn't sure how sad anyone would be, in truth. But Aubrey'd get done for it, in any case - he'd be strung up like a roast ham.
"Quite right," Aubrey assured him long-sufferingly, as though agreeing with the toddler would soften him up to the next warning. "But if you don't stop - if you don't get down - you're going to hurt yourself." He took a step closer, just in case the boy did fall. "And you won't much like that."
Though loath to acknowledge that the servant might possibly have a point, Elijah hesitated for a moment. It was true, he would not like being hurt. At the same time, a darker, more childish corner of his mind reasoned that only stupid people could be hurt. He was not stupid and thus, Elijah Urquart was all but immortal.
Defiantly, he gave another bounce.
— Elijah has heterochromia. His right eye is green and his left is blue. —
— MJ is a graphics goddess ❤ —
It didn't happen often - he knew his place, knew how to control himself - but Aubrey's eyes rolled almost into the back of his head when the little tyrant ignored him, and bounced again. Damn both his nannies. Damn it all.
Aubrey wiped his hands discreetly on his trousers to get off a measure of coal-dust - and maybe in trepidation, just a touch - and then lurched towards the couch. "Sorry, Master Urquart," he said, Not Sorry in the least, "but that's enough." As abruptly and as firmly as he could manage, expecting an inhuman degree of writhing from the boy, and possibly yelling to boot, Aubrey gripped the boy with both hands and tried to prise him off the furniture.
“NO!” the boy exclaimed as a wave of emotion tore through him. He was appalled at being spoken down to—and manhandled by!—the help. Elijah ripped his arm from the footman’s hands and fell backwards over the back of the couch, knocking the wind from him as he landed with a loud thud upon the wooden floorboards. For a long moment, the only sound the boy could hear was a loud ringing in his ears.
— Elijah has heterochromia. His right eye is green and his left is blue. —
— MJ is a graphics goddess ❤ —
For half a moment, everything happened just as Aubrey expected it to. The boy let out a cry, tried to get away... but then he did get away, losing his balance right over the back of the couch (if he split open his skull Aubrey was going to be so so so dead).
Aubrey tried his best to lurch after him, to throw out an arm to save him from falling, but either he was falling backwards or his arms were shrinking suddenly, because Master Urquart - and the couch, and everything in view - was getting further away, distorted, everything swimming in his vision. Had a three-year-old somehow managed to knock him out? Was he about to faint?
Aubrey heard the thud against the floor, because it had vibrated towards him through the floorboards and shaken his whole body like an earthquake. Where was he? Had he fallen asleep? Was he dreaming? He felt - out of body. He must be.
Aubrey opened his eyes, felt the floor firm under him, the bright light of day. A landscape he had never seen before: floor as boundless as the ocean, bookcases rising in the distance like a faraway city. In front of him - he craned his neck upwards - a couch. The couch. The couch, suddenly the size of a mountain.
It was several long moments before the breath returned to him enough for Elijah to sit up, ears still ringing and head still pounding. The footman, so far as the boy could tell, was gone. Good riddance.
With some difficulty, he rose to his feet, leaning on the back of the couch for support. It was then that he saw the critter, and his eyes widened in delight, a triumphant grin on his face now as he peered down at what he knew had been Davis the footman. All pain and wooziness forgotten, Elijah scurried around the couch to scoop up the unhappy hedgehog, bringing it up to eye level.
He felt stuck, somehow, like he had been stuffed into a small amount of space, his spine oddly constricted, his body forced into being on all fours -
He was on all fours. He had meant to look down, to take in his own hands - to make sure they were still there - when Master Urquart rounded the couch, as giant as everything else. Aubrey was too much in shock to move from the incoming hand, and found himself stranded in the boy's grasp, half a league above the ground, looking at one green eye and one blue in unending disbelief. Had the boy done this?
He squirmed, looked down at his... paws. At his... snout. He could feel a - prickling, against Master Urquart's hands.
