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 hardly know how to break the news, and I should have liked to explain it in person – but I dearly wanted to tell you before the announcement is made public in the morning. You may have already heard rumour of it, although I promise you that the truth is not what it might sound.
But I am now engaged. I had not intended to be, but my parents will hear of no alternative – though I had always hoped to be asked by circumstances being what they are. I beg you to forgive me, and not to believe the worst of the gossip or the worst of my character, for I swear it isn’t true. I have not had the slightest affection for anybody else since meeting you. Indeed, I am
Captain & First String Keeper for the Chudley Cannons
26 year old Halfblood
5 ft. 8 in.
❤ Unattached
Played by Kit
105 Posts
23 Likes
May 8th, 1893
Jemima,
What do you mean you are engaged? If you had not intended to be and you are being given no alternative, am I to believe you have desire for this? What is being said about you that would require your parents to take such drastic measures? Indeed, who is this lout that finds himself engaged to you?
I am afraid you will see it in the Prophet today. He is Mr. Greengrass, the eldest Mr. Greengrass. Something occurred at the Valentine’s Day ball in Hogsmeade I had so hoped I might get to see you! I wish it had been you and it is all a very great misunderstanding, but there was a situation in the cloakroom that was somewhat compromising, and it has painted me in too low a position to repeat.
I just hope you will try not to listen to what might be said about me in the coming weeks. There is nothing to be done for it now but to bear it. On the other hand, I understand if you do not wish to speak or be seen with me again. You have always been too generous to me.
Captain & First String Keeper for the Chudley Cannons
26 year old Halfblood
5 ft. 8 in.
❤ Unattached
Played by Kit
105 Posts
23 Likes
sent
February 17th, 1894
Jemima,
There is something we could do: you could elope with me instead. I could get a portkey made and away we go. I am surely far wealthier than even the eldest Greengrass. I turn twenty six this July and was due to start being expected to find a match so it would merely be months ahead of schedule.
She had sat on her bed for hours now, arms curled around her legs and chin propped on her knees, just staring at the letter’s contents. She couldn’t show it to anyone else, of course, but she felt sure she wasn’t reading it right. But there were five sentences, and she had as good as memorised them all. It was the last one she kept getting stuck on, mostly; that was the one that wouldn’t sink in. It would have been you. If he had begun looking for a match, someone to marry, it might – would, he said – have been her.
She didn’t even much care that he was wealthier, or a quidditch player, or from a family of muggle nobility – it was only that he was somebody (somebody who had once asked a girl to dance whom she’d mistakenly hoped was her), somebody she had honestly truly liked and hoped for and wanted desperately to want her in the same way and here he was admitting that it might actually have been possible one day, only it had – come too late.
She thought she could have gone through it all (the marriage to a man who was being all but coerced into it; the social reprobation; her own family’s misery) bravely enough, if not for this. And she had cried countless times already in the last few days, had thought she had as good as flung her heart out already, but the sobs that came from her now broke another dam inside her entirely.
She couldn’t do that to him, even if he really did mean it in more than kindness. She was ruining enough people’s lives already without dragging his name into the mud with her too – he would never be free of that stain again if he eloped with her, if she let rumours rise about her and yet another man. He was blameless, and his family would always hate her; and her parents would not forgive her either for that new disobedience, after all they had done to secure some semblance of a reputable future for her. It might be the last straw for them. And she cared for Jack too much to make him, of everyone in the world, pay for her mistakes.
