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.
Play a character aged 35 or older for one month. Non-humans do not count. Show this by submitting two completed threads started one month (or more) apart. Threads must have at least ten posts, and at least three must be your own.
Did You Know?
It’s quite unusual for a caster's patronus to be their favourite animal, but very possible that it will take the shape of a creature they’ve never before seen or heard of. — Amy
He was sketching pamphlet designs to hand out at the debate. When Kieran was not too grouchy to enter the Augurey, he was doing whatever artistic project felt most important to the campaign while he drank at his usual table. Today, the cafe was nearly-empty — something about Mondays meant that the pub wasn't busy in the middle of the afternoon.
He passed the design, a red-and-black sketch with "WRIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOMS" written on it, over to the candidate."I think you need to spend time with some debutantes," Kieran muttered. He'd been sitting on the thought for a few days now, and it felt bitter coming out of his mouth — but it seemed like it would help.
Jude smiled his thanks as Kieran passed it over, his eyes on the pamphlet sketch and his mind on other things – so he startled slightly at that remark, then stilled abruptly in his seat.
“Debutantes,” Jude echoed, mystified. Women generally, he might have understood, to help prove his pro-suffragist credentials. Debutantes felt different; Jude had never had occasion to mix much with debutantes. He probably ought to have done, if he had followed the expected path – but by the time he would have been suitably eligible in society to supposedly care, he had already been... well... here.
He swallowed, earnestly wishing he could just brush off that suggestion as a joke. But this was a campaign, and Kieran sounded serious. Jude shot him a searching look. “Why?” he asked carefully, without too much expression in it. “What have people been saying now?”
Some things people said to a candidate’s face, and other things surfaced behind their backs, so – Kieran was usually more up-to-date on what people really thought.
Kieran was glad that Jude took him seriously; their relationship hadn't always been this way. It made him feel important. He wasn't, really — at least not when it came to the campaign, because anybody could have sketched out the posters. But he was important to Jude. There was nigh-constant evidence of that.
Kieran shifted in his seat, and took an uncomfortable sip of his beer. "You need to talk to respectable women," he said, with a roll of his eyes. "And — apparently Picardy and Prewett don't." He didn't want to have to explain this to Jude, as it was too close to explaining the truth of himself, but. He suspected he would have to.
Respectable women. (So – not working women like Meredith or bartending, unmarried-but-cohabiting women like Eileen.) Society women. Debutantes. Jude consciously refrained from grinding his teeth.
He was somewhat surprised, though, by the mention of the other candidates. What did Prewett and Picardy have to do with this? Neither of them seemed likely to be pro-voting reform, to begin with. And weren’t they a middle-aged bachelor and widower respectively? Long since set in their ways, Jude supposed, enamoured of their own company, and unlikely to have seen their campaigns as the way to a belated marriage. He felt as though he were missing Kieran’s point.
“And?” He raised his eyebrows, expectant. So what?
Kieran had an impulse to grit his teeth; instead, he took another sip of his drink. Sometimes it was difficult to believe that Jude had grown up in the same world as he had — different class, different family, but same world. Explaining this was going to be like pulling teeth.
"And this may be the rare situation where you can seem more normal than your competitors," Kieran got out. Normal, whatever that meant — Kieran doubted that Prewett or Picardy were confirmed bachelors, if only because he did not want to have a single thing in common with Picardy.
Oh. It was the word normal that did it. Of course being unmarried was abnormal. Being a politely-termed confirmed bachelor would just be another nail in the coffin. And if people were already saying things about Prewett and Picardy, it was inevitable that sooner or later they would be muttering the same things about him.
And Jude was used to muttered remarks, and used to Kieran’s criticisms, so he had thought himself impervious to them both... but there was something about this and how close to home it hit (and having to hear it from the last person he wanted this advice from) that made his shoulders tense and his heart beat that much faster.
“Right.” Seem more normal than his competitors. Great chance of that. “You mean as long as I make an effort to prove there’s no sodomy in my schedule?” Jude said with a raised eyebrow, as if to make quite sure he understood things plainly. (His tone was low, even if the place was empty, and he wouldn’t have aired it so flippantly to just anyone – he didn’t want to be counter-productive to the campaign.)
There wasn’t, in fact, any sodomising going on in his life, though that was more a lack of prioritisation than the lack of inclination. Jude supposed perhaps that was fortunate, after all.
Kieran flushed. He'd hoped that Jude wouldn't quite put everything together — but that had been too optimistic, hadn't it? They'd talked about sex before, and they were in the particular sort of social groups where people knew people who were queer. Still — talking about this in caged terms with Jude had been uncomfortable enough, and now Jude had gone ahead and brought out the word sodomy.
"I didn't say I have a problem with sodomy," Kieran muttered, looking more embarrassed than anything. If he was talking to anyone but Jude, he may have been tempted to express that he was an avid fan when the opportunity arose. "But it's — two pixies, one stone. Not a confirmed bachelor, can talk to reputable people." There was only so much that could be done, given everyone around Jude.
That had made Kieran turn sheepish (and Jude mentally noted the exact wording and cadence of his response, for future reference), but he persisted with the advice.
Jude sighed quietly. He knew Kieran had a point. He knew that the campaign would just be the start, if he did somehow win the election, because if he became Minister his private life would never be safe again. He only wished that perhaps he had taken stock of this sooner, and – well, it didn’t matter. He was in the middle of a campaign now, and he’d known that meant making certain sacrifices and concessions. Talking to reputable women was fine, that was easily done – but avoiding the label of confirmed bachelor if he stayed in the public eye would be a harder task if he was one.
“I see what you’re saying,” Jude acknowledged carefully, in spite of the pit of reluctance in his gut. “And I can talk to reputable people. But I’m not... I’m never going to marry just for public opinion’s sake, even if I were Minister,” Jude warned; and maybe it was selfish if he was putting himself above the cause, but he didn’t like the thought of marrying all the same. It would be unfair to his wife – because marriage was unfair to women as an institution, and also because he was already in love with someone else.
But if rumours would be dredged up one day, he could at least stave them off for now by trying, just a little. Jude looked a little embarrassed now as he added, “And I can’t – flirt.”
"Anyone can flirt," Kieran said, "You just have to ask a lot of questions." Most of Kieran's flirting involved intense eye contact and eventually chancing a kiss; he was not very good at it, but he was certainly better than Jude. He glanced down at his beer before looking back up.
"I'm not saying you have to get married," Kieran added. But he noted that Jude said he wouldn't do it — did he want to be in love, or did he want to never marry? Kieran was interested, but he'd already gone too far this evening — he had to give it at least a minute before he inquired further.
“Good, because I’m not going to,” Jude said firmly – with an immediate flash of relief at airing this.
He was less relieved at the prospect of flirting, though. Only flirting, as it may be; and Kieran had certainly made it sound simple, but Jude still felt like he was missing something. Asking questions, being interested in someone, couldn’t be all it was. He eyed Kieran dubiously – he could still manage looking at Kieran in spite of his general embarrassment here, because Kieran seemed almost as embarrassed as him, and kept looking away – and cleared his throat. “What – kind of questions?”
Kieran had been planning on bringing it up, but hadn't been planning on explaining flirting to Jude today. He wished he could have backtracked, because he should have just told Jude to make eye contact and stick to having eyes that looked like that.
But Jude was asking what kind of questions he should ask, and maybe explaining this was his penance for the homophobia he was leaning into. "Stuff that gets them to talk about themselves," he said, after a beat, "You have to seem like you want to get to know them."
“But that’s just a conversation,” Jude protested, with another sigh. He was finding this conversation maddening, for more reasons than one. And perhaps he was just exasperated from campaigning, or from the thought that rumours always had to be spread about the least interesting and least relevant facts about people, but he still didn’t understand the difference between flirting and not-flirting.
Which possibly explained why he never got anywhere talking to Kieran.
But he’d always liked a lost cause, Jude thought wryly, hadn’t he? “Never mind,” he said, shrugging in surrender. He would just have to try with some debutantes.
This was excruciating, and Jude wasn't getting it. Haven't you ever tried to flirt? Kieran held in. Maybe that was why Jude never seemed to notice how in love with him Kieran was; he couldn't understand how people who weren't singularly devoted to the cause talked.
Kieran couldn't just let it lie, although he almost wanted to. "Eye contact," Kieran added helpfully. He almost wanted to see this happen.
Of course just as Jude had given up on getting anything remotely helpful from this conversation and had hoped to shut it down, Kieran wanted the last word.
Eye contact. “Thanks, I’ll try that,” Jude said irritably, glaring at Kieran. Maybe it was his own fault for asking, but this whole conversation was making him tense – because now he was embarrassed and overly defensive, and he didn’t think he would be any better at looking like he was flirting after this, either.
Because if ten years of lingering eye contact and asking questions hadn’t made any progress, Jude didn’t think he would accomplish much with anyone else in an evening or two.
(And Kieran would be the worst audience in the world to it, if he witnessed Jude trying – because he would certainly be making fun of him if not judging, and he already knew a little too much about who Jude really was to believe it.)
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