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
It was already dark by the time Ford finished work, which normally would have meant he spent the rest of the night indoors, but today had been sort of a day at the office and so he'd needed a breath of fresh air. Some of his coworkers (the wealthier ones) had taken time off over the past two weeks to better enjoy their holidays, which always meant more work accumulating for the rest of them. Daphnel dying on New Year's Day had also taken up some of their resources unexpectedly, and Ford had ended up with a full case load today that was a series of aggravating encounters where nothing much productive was accomplished. So a walk was in order before dinner, he decided. He'd told Noble and his sisters where he was going and decidedly hadn't offered to take any of them along. Admittedly, they hadn't seemed inclined to press, given the temperature outside. Ford bundled up as best he could and headed to the Black Lake.
One of the light orbs was harassing him as he walked, and Ford was making a game of inventing creative, light-hearted insults to mutter to it every time he had to push it out of his way. With the light so near, he saw the silhouette of another person at the water's edge long before he could make out any details or features. He left off the insults to the light, so that whoever it was wouldn't think he was crazy, but he was almost within arm's reach before he realized it was Tycho.
"Hey, fancy that," he said, with a wide grin. Ty was sitting on the ground (which would have been unusual for anyone else, but not to Tycho) and Ford nudged Ty's knee with his foot, in case his approach and the light that was still lingering at his elbow hadn't already gotten the other man's attention. "I was going to walk around the edge of the lake, down to the station and back. D'you want to join me?"
Tycho did not often get irked or upset. It happened, of course, he was human. But these things tended to blow over for him like dandelions in the wind most days. This time, it had not. Instead the negative emotions that had taken root when Williams had relayed what he had witnessed (and of course, having missed the part of the ball where the hosts had realized Amortentia had made its way into their guests). It had been laughable at first. Ford mooning over a young lady? His Ford? Unlikely. But Williams story had only been corroborated by the debutante ghost that Williams was always flirting with.
He wasn't sure what to do about this. If Ford decided to marry... well, that would be Ford's right though Tycho would be horribly upset. But even if Ford was seeking a bride, he would have thought that Ford would at least not be so obviously besotted as Williams and his lady had described without first having spoken to Tycho about it.
The longer he thought about it, the more upset about it he became. That evening, he had decided that he needed to clear his head. So he had taken himself down by the lake to meditate. The cold snow on the ground was helping keep him grounded and he had cast a spell to make sure his clothing did not get wet.
Honestly, he was mostly in danger of falling asleep when he felt his knee being nudged. He peeked one eye open and saw that it was Ford. "Wouldn't you rather go with your lady than with me?" Tycho said waspishly, edging a little away from the other mans foot and resolutely ignoring him as he closed his eyes again.
Ford blinked. This question was entirely unexpected, and it took him a moment to parse it. For half a second he thought maybe Tycho was talking about one of his sisters, but that didn't explain the vitriol in his tone. They hadn't seen each other in a while and Ty could have been annoyed about it — he would have been very well within his rights to be annoyed about it, in Ford's opinion — but that was all Noble's fault, and had nothing to do with his sisters. Tycho had to be talking about something else, but there wasn't anything else that sprang to mind that he might have been irritated about, especially not anything that involved a lady.
He frowned at Tycho's shoulder for a second. "You're annoyed," he surmised, which did not take much deduction work at all. What he still hadn't puzzled out was why. Hopefully this didn't have anything to do with a vision — Ford didn't know how he could muster up a sincere apology for something he hadn't even done yet.
"Cannot possibly fathom why you might think so," Tycho said as he continued his show of meditating though his mind was nothing but calm. "After all, I only just had to hear all about how you were positively smitten with your lady." Not that his mood would have been much better if Ford had told him something about it. But at least it would have shown some thought for him.
The word smitten made it click, because there were not many ladies that Ford was smitten with. Well, there actually weren't any ladies he was smitten with, but there was really only one for whom someone might have believed it possible, if they'd been paying attention or had misconstrued. Technically it was possible that a rumor could have been started about anyone — once upon a time Witch Weekly had supposed him on the verge of marrying Begonia Belby, for some reason — but Ty seemed to be taking this more seriously than a passing murmur, which meant he must have been talking about Miss Chang.
Ford didn't know what to say about it. He hadn't expected to need to defend himself, first because nothing had actually happened and second because Tycho hadn't been there to see it even if something had happened. He'd apparently heard all about it from somewhere, though, and Ford wondered now if that wasn't worse than his having seen it in person. Who knew what, exactly, he had heard?
He sighed and nudged Tycho's knee with his foot again. "Come on, get up. Walk with me." Ford didn't know what he was going to say about it, but he clearly wasn't going to walk off and leave Tycho in this state, and he didn't much fancy sitting in the snow for the conversation either. He exhaled and saw his breath rise in a cloud — his clothes may have looked to be in fine condition, but the truth was they were too old and too thin for a winter walk, and if he didn't get moving again soon the cold was going to start creeping in at all the seams. "Ty-y."
He mildly grunted as Ford nudged his knee again. He didn't want to walk with Ford so he stubbornly pretended like he hadn't heard. At least not until Ford began to get whiney. Ugh, curse his inability to not associate the thought of Ford whining with when he was tormenting Ford sensually in bed. Plus, in general, he did not like making Ford whine though he personally thought Ford might deserve it.
"Fine," he said, clearly still disgruntled as he stood up and brushed the snow off of himself. He still didn't quite meet Fords eyes.
Getting Tycho up out of the snow was enough of a victory to be worth the mild indignity of having whined his name a moment ago. Ford had to bite back a smile both at that and at a thought that occurred to him when Ty started brushing himself off. Missed a spot, he could claim, and use it as an excuse to get his hand on Ty's butt. They weren't in private but it was dark enough that a brief touch would have been safe enough. Tycho clearly wasn't in the mood yet, though, so Ford put his hands in his pockets and said nothing until they'd fallen into step with each other.
"So what did you hear?" he asked. He expected this to be settled quickly, as long as Tycho cooperated. Ty would repeat whatever rumor society had spun up, Ford would reply well, that didn't happen, and they'd move right along.
Tycho wasn't sure where to start from as Ford asked what he had heard. "You were seen in the company of a young lady for far longer than is proper, even left the main event area with her," Tycho said. Not that he personally ever cared about such things as being Proper like most of society but he knew Ford to usually be more mindful of such things. "You were gazing at her in abject adoration, I am told. So did you really go off and go mad with her?" His tone was off, shaky, he could hear it but he couldn't seem to control it. He had never really felt the way he was feeling right now before, he belatedly realized. He wasn't at all fond of the feeling nor would he know how to describe it, if pressed to.
Well, there was the first wrinkle in how Ford expected things to go: he couldn't flatly deny whatever Tycho had heard, because it turned out that what Tycho had heard was true — or at least near enough to the realm of possibility that Ford couldn't deny it in good faith. But Ty's tone implied that he was assuming more than he'd said. He was using go mad as a euphemism, maybe; he certainly thought that something had happened beyond just Ford making eyes at Miss Chang at the party. The tremor in his voice said as much, because Tycho wouldn't have been this upset if he'd thought it was confined to feelings, Ford imagined. He could easily have been angry about Ford sleeping with someone else, or even kissing someone else, but he was not (Ford had decided) invested enough to care if Ford was only flirting.
"I didn't do anything, mad or otherwise," he promised. "But I'll need to know who's paying enough attention to my gazes to decide one is abject adoration." A slight attempt to lighten the mood; he assumed that the choice of phrase was Tycho's own (slightly melodramatic) embellishment.
Tycho finally actually looked at Ford as he promised that he had not done anything. "But you are not denying any of the rest," he pointed out. Not that he had a problem with Ford socializing with a woman or even flirting with them (though admittedly, Tycho found it a little hard to picture despite - or perhaps because of - the fact he was often on the receiving end of Fords flirtations). Ford had his own life, his own friends, just as Tycho did.
But to go off alone, looking at them in certain ways? "Someone who knows how you usually look at me when we don't need to be worried," he couldn't help but crack, likely giving Williams away. The ghost was also prone to melodrama so he supposed perhaps he might have been rash. The rationalization didn't make the hurt feelings go away.
That did narrow things down considerably. Ford hadn't noticed Williams at the party, and it was unusual of him not to take note of ghostly guests. More evidence of how distracted he'd been on the night in question, if Williams had been close enough to take note of his expression and Ford still hadn't spotted him. This was a good answer in general though, as it meant that rumors (probably) weren't spreading like wildfire about him and Miss Chang.
"Do you want me to deny it all?" he asked. He couldn't do so without lying, but that hardly seemed like the point. Ty wasn't hung up on propriety or appearances, so it wasn't the fact of his having talked to someone for a long time or slipping out of the ballroom to the patio that was the real issue here. "You can't honestly be jealous," he contended. "If there was anything to it, you'd know."
"I want you to say there is no way you would be looking at anyone else that way. But you're not," Tycho said, stopping to look at the other. "Think of it this way. What if you were to see me at a party, looking at someone else like I see galaxies in their eyes? Or heard about it from someone else?" He supposed that answered Fords question for him. He flexed his fingers against the cold before sighing. Deep down, logically, he knew there had to be some sort of explanation. As Ford had said, he had always been sure that if there was actually something that could be going on in general, Ford would come to him about it. Probably after spiraling about it.
At the phrase galaxies in their eyes Ford's heart thrummed. He loved Tycho desperately, and he wanted badly to be on the other side of this conversation, but recognized he was doing a poor job of pulling them through it. Tycho wanted reassurances, and Ford supposed he understood that. If the places were reversed, he would have been mad with jealousy (though his would have had more basis; Tycho could actually follow through on an infatuation if he'd wanted to). The problem was that even understanding what it was Ty wanted to hear, Ford couldn't deliver it. Tycho would have seen through him immediately if he'd tried to lie, and the problem was that a phrase like seeing galaxies in their eyes was exactly the way he'd been feeling at the party. He could still remember getting lost looking at her, or the swell of affection when she tilted her head to the side to think.
"A week ago I would have told you that," he began. "And then — I don't know. I don't know, alright?" His tone had turned snappish, but he was not so much irritated at Tycho or his questions as he was exasperated by the situation. "So I can't explain it to you or promise you it would never happen again because I don't know. I don't know her that well," he continued, not sure if this was a defense or if it only made the situation more damning. "Something just happened. It wasn't like when I'm with you. I was — caught. When she was looking at me or talking to me it felt —" He realized any adjective he could use to finish the sentence would not help his case and merely shrugged helplessly instead. "But it wasn't like when I'm with you. It was — I felt like I adored her but it was all hollow. Like I'd opened a book up to the last chapter and all the words were there but none of it really made sense. There was no foundation for any of it and when I tried to think about it too hard my mind would just slip off and I'd get caught up in her again."
All of these fumbling descriptions were making it sound like a wholly unpleasant experience, as if Ida Chang were a malicious hag who had pinned him down against his will, and he wondered if that was too unfair to her. Ford sighed and balled his hands in the pockets of his coat. "She's actually a very interesting conversation partner. I think you'd like her," he offered. After a beat, he conceded, "Well, maybe not now."
A hurt expression immediately crossed on Tychos and settled in at Fords words and deepened even more at Fords tone turning snappish. Ford was not making any sense. His words, though. Tycho gazed at Ford in some thought. Had the young woman in question had veela blood in her? That would explain the whole feeling caught when she was looking at Ford and paying attention to him bit. Or some sort of Potion.
"I'll take your word for it," Tycho said snidely when Ford spoke of how the young woman was such an interesting conversational partner. At the moment, he would not have cared if she were the Queen of England. "You make her sound like she was some sort of Veela or Veela descendant. Or like you got Amortentia into your system somehow." It still hurt to hear Ford talk about how he had adored her even if it had been an artificially induced emotion.
Tycho's snide remark had Ford wanting to defend her, though he knew that wouldn't go over well if he tried. He wished they could just leave Miss Chang out of it, though, because it really wasn't her fault. He'd wondered during the party if she could have had anything to do with it, but after her confession about being in love with a woman he was quite certain she had no schemes that involved his catching feelings for her.
"She's not a veela," he said, tone sulky and mildly resentful. He would have preferred not to have this conversation at all, for Tycho to have just taken him at his word when he said there was nothing to it, and was inclined to blame the fact that they were still talking about it on his lover. "We danced together at a party last month and it wasn't... like that. So it's not her."
As for amortentia — the thought had crossed his mind, but Ford wasn't letting himself consider it. Ford only knew one person with both the skill to brew amortentia and some motivation, however far-fetched, to use it on him. If that was what had happened, he didn't want to know. It was a possibility he couldn't wrestle with if he still wanted to be a functional member of the family.
It was something else then if the woman was truly innocent in all of this. "Are you sure then that you didn't ingest anything odd? You know how some of these party hosts like to use such things to liven up their events," Tycho said, genuine concern now interlaced with his irritation. It struck him randomly that for once he didn't really want to be in the others presence. He wanted to sulk and be on his own.
"Whatever it was doesn't change the fact that I am rather upset. And I feel like you don't even care about that so perhaps we should give each other some space. I imagine I will get over it in due course because I do not relish feeling this way. Besides, I feel like it is what you expect from me."
