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.
I admit I share your skepticism regarding this particular avenue of forming relationships, but with two younger sisters Witch Weekly cannot escape my notice. One of them shared your advertisement with me and I quite enjoyed your tone. I would ask how long you've been out in society, to have become so jaded, but you might interpret that as a roundabout way of asking a lady her age, which of course I wouldn't do. (Should I provide you with mine? I am no older than 35, as your advertisement specified; beyond that are we meant to share details of ourselves or to remain anonymous until we are satisfied that the other is not a utter charlatan?)
I don't know why I addressed the question to you — based on your advertisement I would expect you have no more experience with such matter than I do. Shall we create the rules ourselves, then?
Witch Weekly is pleased to inform you that your recent submission to our Lonely Hearts article has generated a response. Witch Weekly is devoted to providing help to all of our readers, no matter what their social disadvantages, and we are delighted to provide this service to the lovelorn in our magical community. We hope that you will be able to create a happy ending with our help, instead of being doomed to a tragically lonely life.
Please see the enclosed letter and advise us whether you will need your advertisement repeated in further issues of our magazine.
I’m relieved I am not the only one less-than-convinced by Witch Weekly’s powers, but I will concede, all the same, to being glad for your reply. You must be very astute indeed to realise my inexperience with all this – I jest – but I have no objection to simply making up the rules as we go along.
Anonymity may be in the spirit, I don’t know, unless I one day learn enough to solve the mystery of your identity myself; but my first self-made rule shall be that I will endeavour to answer any question you put to me honestly, nonetheless. Not that either of us could tell the difference between a truth and a lie in a letter, probably – how worrying that we may both be charlatans, after all.
In any case, I am twenty-three. And you didn’t ask that, because evidently you are a gentleman – but I think we might do away with some of the usual politeness, or these letters might become just as wearying as the rest of society introductions. (Obviously, as you note, being twenty-three has in fact been plenty of time for me to have grown jaded – though I cannot pretend I was ever especially adept in keeping up with all the formal intricacies of society in the first place, so perhaps I am more to blame than it.)
Was that higher than your expected threshold, or lower? Indeed, are you particularly jaded by anything yet, or am I just more of a cynic than you?
I was surprised to hear from you. After half a week I had suspected my odds of receiving a reply were lowering dramatically by the day. I supposed either you were unwilling to correspond with anyone (which does happen, I have heard, when well-meaning relations over-involve themselves in the social lives of the happily unattached) or unwilling to correspond with me. Whilst I had no particularly high hopes for enduring sentiment from this letter exchange, I'll admit it did bruise my ego a bit to believe you could find me so utterly dismissable after as little as two paragraphs.
I enjoy your framing of this as a mystery to be unraveled — shall we seed our letters with clues, and see which of us proves the better detective? I am twenty-eight — a clue not exactly well-buried, but your directness in answering I believed deserved the same — but not yet entirely jaded, I think. I don't begrudge you your cynicism, though; I think it affects women much earlier than men, as you're required to deal with so much more of society, and so much earlier. No one expects anything at all of a gentleman before twenty-four, I think, and even at that point he can absent himself from society events any time he grows tired of them and it only adds to his reputation. He becomes mysterious and elusive, not an antisocial recluse. My sister, not much older than you, has moods where she seems to be of a very similar disposition (hence her showing me your advertisement; I think you put in print something she feels but would not voice).
On the other hand, my youngest sister is not yet out and occasionally seems to be jaded, too. I tend to put that down to adolescent moodiness, but perhaps it's something else — perhaps contrarianism runs in the family.
What, you would not allow a self-professed cynic their moment of doubt? No, I assure you I had no intentions of dismissing you so swiftly, after all the effort you went to in writing to me – rather, I recently found myself in peculiar circumstances where writing letters of any kind was hardly on my mind. It ought not happen again, though – or at least I should hope it does not. (Does that make me sound quite mysterious, or is it too much of a clue?)
I do not even deal so much in society as some women my age, but I simply do not have the patience for it alone – but of course there is the opposing fear for us, in that no one expects much of worth from a woman after twenty-four or so – twenty-seven, at a stretch – which makes me wonder if I have wasted my most ‘valuable’ years on the wrong things.
I am relieved to hear there is some similarity of feeling amongst your sisters. My own sister – younger than me, and newly out – seems quite delighted by all of society, so I do not like to dampen her feelings; but I am glad I am not entirely alone.
Contrarianism, you say? Tell me more about that. Do you or your relatives possess any other particularly unpopular opinions – or do you often find yourself at odds with them?
