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 1894. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
11th June, 1891 — Offices of The Doctors Pomfrey, Diagon Alley Wystan Pomfrey
One nosebleed and a Witch Weekly comment later, and Jemima was utterly convinced she was going to die.
She hadn’t thought she was diseased, or anything, but since the rather damning remark about dragon pox, Jemima had been paying far better attention to her symptoms, which, since the Coming Out Ball had included: restless sleep, especially the night before a ball; spells of faintness and dizziness, which had nothing to do with it being summer, she was sure; a pimple on her forehead, which might well be the first sign of pox; heart palpitations whenever she talked to strangers; and, well, her anxiety was through the roof.
And she had made Jacob give her a once-over but he didn’t seem to think she was consumptive at all, but he only specialised in Spell Damage and might have missed something, so she had convinced her mother to take her to the Pomfrey doctors’ offices to be thoroughly checked out.
(And if she was getting to do a little bit of checking out of her own, that was nothing at all to do with the fact that this doctor was much prettier a sight than the nurse had been. Nothing at all.)
Jemima did frown slightly at the apparent outcome, though, of Dr. Pomfrey’s brief examinations. “Are you quite sure there’s - nothing wrong with me?” she echoed, chewing a little on her bottom lip. She just - did not want to prove the magazine right and drop dead of some disorder she hadn’t even noticed she possessed, before her first season was even halfway through!
The Offices of the Doctors Pomfrey saw all sorts of patients (that could afford their services), but perhaps the most common was the valetudinarian. Such a patient was most often drawn out in the winter months, but Wystan in particular saw no shortage of them during the Season, with anxious mothers eager to ensure their daughters were in tip-top shape before launching them upon society like a warship (or, more likely, a dinghy). The debutantes themselves seldom shared their mothers' anxieties, making Miss Jemima Farley a bit unique—though certainly not in the matter of her health.
"Quite sure, Miss Farley," Stan answered with a reassuring smile, having given her a once- and twice-over. "Nerves would account for your sleeping troubles—particularly if you are prone to worries regarding your health—and, indeed, most symptoms likely to trouble you."
His smile was rather nice, so Jemima might have been reassured by it; at least, if she had not been quite busy being disappointed. Not that she wanted to be pronounced terminal with consumption or to have to face up to some ungainly affliction like spattergroit, ugh, but – nerves? Nerves?
Jemima wished her mother had not wrangled the nurse into an enthusiastic conversation about muggle medical equipment just beyond the door, because she could use something clever to say right about now, like actually I think there must be something both more serious and more straightforwardly solvable than that, sir.
Or, no, of course she is not prone to worries regarding her health, she is a perfectly normal young lady, sir. And very marriageable, in case you have not noticed.
“But – if that is so,” Jemima began hesitantly, “what am I to do about the – the nerves?” She had thought the nerves a mere symptom, not the root cause! How was she expected to banish them, just like that? Surely there had to be a cure.
He paused for a moment, a sympathetic smile upon his lips. There were some who simply believed nerves stemmed from the female reproductive system—a peril of femininity—but Wystan Pomfrey was an educated man and a wizard, who put a bit more faith in the female of the species than that. Psychology was a relatively new fad, one in which the doctor was not even remotely trained. Still, he would do his best.
"Well, I must wonder what a young lady such as yourself has to be nervous about," Stan offered kindly. "You seem to have had very good fortune in life—but it is clear that something is prompting such a reaction within you."
Jemima’s eyes widened. Could he really mean that? Did he simply not understand her plight, or did he know perfectly well, and was just saying that to be kind?
Well, everything, she could have answered. I am nervous that I will amount to nothing in life, and end up a poor, humiliated, unloved spinster; I am afraid I will be doomed to watch all my friends excel in society and go on to live full, fulfilling, picture-perfect lives and I will be left behind – or will be dragged along to witness their successes, no better than a piece of mud on their shoes. I am afraid I am good at nothing and good-for-nothing – and perhaps I should save myself the struggle and pray for a deathly illness after all, because at least I won’t have to be this anxious all the time when I’m dead.
But then she might find a way to embarrass herself at her own funeral. Fall out of her coffin, or something; that would be like her, wouldn’t it? Maybe she should just burst into tears in this office right now so Dr. Pomfrey didn’t mistake her for a competent human being.
“It is all... a very large adjustment,” Jemima filled in instead, her voice small. She offered a tiny shrug of her shoulders as if to express it was being propelled from the safety of Hogwarts into society at fault, as if all she’d spent those seven years of school doing wasn’t waiting for this very moment. “Is there something – anything I can take?” Some prescription for the nerves: but preferably something that wasn’t shipping her off to the asylum yet.
"Tea," he answered, peak English. "Mint during the day, and chamomile at night and in the evening—both have properties to calm the mind and body, both.
It was not the ~magical tonic solution~ Wystan expected Miss Farley had hoped for, but in the physician's opinion, it was a far more sustainable solution. Nerves were not unusual in young ladies, and while she did seem a bit short on her tether, Miss Farley was not giving any indication she was truly in dire straights.
“Tea,” Jemima echoed, face falling slightly. It was a – disappointing answer, possibly. But if an everyday solution made some difference to her, surely that was good? Or perhaps the mundane prescription was only proof that Dr. Pomfrey thought her ridiculous, and was about ready to be rid of her.
She pursed her lips a little, trying not to let her emotions get the better of her. Maybe if she snivelled all over him he would take her concerns more gravely – but that might injure her dignity beyond repair, because Dr. Pomfrey was far too handsome to cry on; someone in front of whom she would rather not appear blotchy and red-eyed. Confidentiality only went so far, after all, and he was a bachelor to boot.
So maybe he was a genius and her saviour; or maybe he didn’t have the faintest idea what living with these nerves felt like, and she oughtn’t bother with a thing he said. “Have you –” she began tentatively, presuming his answer to this would be just as disheartening to her, “I suppose you’ve never really suffered from nerves, yourself?”
"Not in the way that you have, Miss Farley," Stan allowed kindly, "but nerves are an entirely ordinary affliction—why, I credit my own with getting me through medical school, for I surely would not have felt enough urgency without them."
Not in the way that you have made it sound to Jemima that she was the sufferer of some disgusting, disfiguring affliction and he had breezed through the same ailment merely needing to blow his nose once or twice, but she supposed she should never have expected a physician to heal her with words alone. But he had felt nerves before, of a kind, nerves which had helped him in the end.
Jemima rather felt the urgency she was feeling in her case was all but crippling, but she still didn’t want to start shaking and sobbing in front of Dr. Pomfrey, so she forced herself to attempt a little lightheartedness in response. “Well, I suppose if my nerves happen to help me make a good match someday,” (– somehow –) “I shall have to be grateful for them,” she said, with a weak chuckle. (But unless someone took pity on her and married her, her nerves wouldn’t be of any use, and one day she would probably be a poor old spinster still drinking her chamomile tea.)
It was an area in which Wystan himself was deficient, but it was not a goal that consumed him as it did young ladies. Even Ani, who he regarded as a sensible and wonderful girl, saw matrimony as the only outcome, and while he would support his dear sister in any endeavour, he had rather hoped for more for her. To hear the words come so frankly, though, was nonetheless a surprise, and the physician felt momentarily on the back foot.
"Just remember to breathe, Miss Farley," Stan offered a little choppily, "and I am sure you shall be fine. The tea, I expect, will help, as will focusing upon only the things you can control."
He seemed almost surprised by that, and Jemima could scarcely work out why she should be. Was she being too honest? Were the insides of men’s brains really so different? A question she could ask of a physician, perhaps – but at the moment Jemima felt a wave of disappointment that Dr. Pomfrey had not taken it upon himself to remedy such a simple situation by offering to marry her himself.
But that was maybe asking a bit much of him.
(For a first appointment, anyway.)
So Jemima straightened up, sitting a little more primly in her chair, and offered him her best mollifying smile. “Of course,” she said, nodding as if she believed the tea or breathing would make any difference at all, as if she could choose what her thoughts focused on when they went whirling around her mind in a sort of general chaos. (Maybe picturing Dr. Pomfrey looking disapproving when it happened would do some good to this end? Picturing Dr. Pomfrey from time to time certainly wouldn’t do any harm.) “I’ll try the tea, then. Thank you for all your help.”
Maybe the real lesson here was that she should give up all hopes of getting married and just do something easy instead, like putting herself through medical school.
"You are most welcome, Miss Farley," Stan returned quietly. "I hope that you shall find yourself much restored, and that I should only see you socially from now on."
Jemima nodded with more assurance than she fancied she possessed, utterly determined to manifest that outcome into existence whether the tea settled her nerves or not. It might take a miracle, but he was going to see her, one day soon in the future, socially, and Jemima would be more than restored: she would be flourishing.
The light of the social scene – the apple of everyone’s eye – the peak of good-natured loveliness – and then Dr. Pomfrey, and everyone else, would fall in love with her on sight and fight one another for the prize of her hand.
