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.
See your character from sorting through graduation by completing at least one thread each year (10+ posts, 3+ yours) and participating in the initial sorting ceremony.
Did You Know?
Did you know? Before the 1920's, it was believed that the Milky Way Galaxy was the only galaxy in the universe. — Steph
“I’m sorry!” Jemima exclaimed, as she ducked in through the workshop door at the bottom of the garden – because she hadn’t meant to spring her presence on Ford’s brother in the middle of the day whilst he was working, not at all. (She had never meant to spring her presence on any of his family to begin with, but – that was hard to avoid entirely, being left in a house with them every day of the week.) Jemima lowered her voice a little, uncertain. “There’s just a ghost in the garden, and I –” she trailed off anxiously.
She hadn’t wanted him to see her in the garden in case it meant she ended up roped into an awkward conversation with him, was the truth. This one had been at the wedding, so he must know Ford. But she was not even altogether at ease with Ford’s family yet, let alone his... ghost friends. So. Hiding was not very mature, but it seemed like the slightly less painful option. In an honest plea, she added: “Do you mind if I stay here for a minute?”
Jemima hadn’t seen the interior of the workshop where Ford’s brother – Noble – worked for more than a brief look in, anyway. So he didn’t even have to talk to her, really; she could just loiter quietly in the corner and look around and cross her fingers that the ghost drifted away out of the Greengrass garden again. She wouldn’t be a nuisance.
Noble was brewing an illegal abortion potion; he startled at the intrusion of Ford's wife, and blinked at her. He had an instinct to kick her out. But that would only be weirder, and might beg more questions, and despite his territorial instinct — he could emphasize with staying away from one of Ford's pet ghosts.
"Barnaby Wye?" Noble asked, with a sympathetic grimace. He dropped a sprig into the potion and gave it two counter-clockwise stirs. "You're welcome to stay in here, he's — the way that he is." If he was going to let Jemima Farley be in here, he ought to keep up a conversation going with her — he could distract her until Wye was gone so that she wouldn't notice anything odd about the potion he was finishing.
Jemima nodded furiously, though in truth she wasn’t sure – she had not considered Ford’s ghost friends a particular priority in the uphill battle of getting-to-know-her-husband, and she was now possibly deciding this a mistake. Still, getting to know his brother had to be a more comfortable task, so – she smiled gratefully, and glanced around the workshop, moving to hover somewhere she thought most out of his way without seeming like she was lurking in a corner.
“Thank you,” she added, squinting at some of his ingredient stores and then over at his cauldron. She had only taken Potions until OWLs, so she didn’t have much of a head for actual potion-making, but genuine curiosity was easy enough to muster. “What are you working on today?”
"It's a beauty potion for a debutante client of mine," Noble said, with a crooked smile. The lie came easily — no one in his family knew potions, and he expected Jemima Farley to be largely similar. (Maybe he should ask, though? She'd asked him a question. They should get to know each other.) "Do you have interest in potions?"
The answer surprised Jemima enough to forget that she was intruding, getting underfoot like a child in the midst of people doing more important things – but a beauty potion! For a debutante! The question on the tip of her tongue was to ask whom it was for, because that would be doubly interesting, but – potioneers were probably entirely confidential about things like that, and she would seem like a petty gossip.
(Her reputation was low enough already without her new in-laws thinking even less of her.)
“What kind of beauty potion – what does it do?” she asked instead, feigning a more academic curiosity (although maybe she could guess who was buying it that way). “I don’t have any talent at making them,” Jemima admitted, with a sorry smile; she would not trust herself to get it right, “but I’m interested, still.”
Noble's first instinct was to make an arch joke — it encourages thinness or some such nonsense. But he didn't want word that he was selling those potions going around, especially because they usually resulted in serious illness if people used them longterm.
"It encourages eyelash thickness and growth," Noble said, with a light laugh. "She's been taking small doses for two seasons now." (This was the second abortion potion he'd made for this woman in two years — Noble was starting to consider suggesting that her husband finish somewhere else.)
Eyelash thickness! She had imagined him making terribly dull and generally unsexy potions, like cures for boils or anti-rash salves, the sort of thing one got at the apothecary or at the hospital. But this was rather more interesting to her. She tried to guess the identity of the debutante – perhaps one of the Malfoy girls, with their pale hair and complexions, needed the help? Or it was someone who had particularly luscious eyelashes now. Jemima wracked her brain, trying to think whom she might have envied before. Perhaps Anandhita Pomfrey, or Willa Kensington. They both had excellent eyelashes, potion or not.
“Oh! I shouldn’t mind trying that myself,” she said, with a smile that was only half joking, “if you ever accidentally make an excess. What else do people ask you to brew?”
She seemed to have bought it. Maybe when he did brew that potion, Noble would make her some. "Things to clean up their complexions," he said, "Salves for any lines or wrinkles or scars — enhanced powders and roges for the girls who dabble." None of them were supposed to be heavily made up, but Noble had started suspecting years ago that all girls had something on their faces.
"Lip dyes," he said, "And — mild love potions." Not amortentia, that could get one in trouble — and Noble liked love potions less than he liked abortion potions, but he still brewed them.
Jemima nodded along, though she gave a nervous laugh at love potions. Mild or not, those still seemed eminently dangerous to her, something she never would have done – and yet she half-suspected society would have happily decided that she had used one to secure her marriage, if only either she or Ford had been better at acting smitten. Would that have been more or less forgivable in people’s minds than the coatroom affair?
She realised she was biting her bottom lip, and possibly staring. “You must know everyone’s secrets, then.”
Noble grinned at her. She'd figured out part of the appeal of being a potioneer, while many people — his family, for some — had never seemed to actually notice this about him. Maybe there were more layers to the new Mrs. Greengrass than Noble had originally given her credit for.
"You've got me," he said, "Just try not to tell anyone."
He was grinning at her, as if he was impressed! That was a good sign. (Maybe she had been nervous for nothing about getting along with Ford’s family.)
So Jemima smiled back. “I assure you I have very little fondness left for gossip,” she said, trying to project bright-eyed defiance (rather than dejection) through it as best she could. Then, thinking of secrets and without quite being able to stop herself, she added suddenly – “Did Ford tell you anything about – that night, at the party?”
Hm. Noble had not anticipated that question; he looked down at the potion and gave it a stir, as if to busy himself. Mostly it was to give him an excuse to take an extra beat to reply. "I know it was an accident," Noble said, still looking at the potion, "And not a real scandal."
Did Jemima know that the love story had been Noble's idea?
In the time it took Ford’s brother to reply, Jemima found her hands twisting into each other and the folds of her dress. She didn’t know what would be the better answer, here: either Ford was lying to his family and they all thought her a hussy, or they knew she was innocent and she knew Ford was lying to her. (Was it lying to her, really, if she hadn’t actively asked where he had been? But there was something there, no matter whether or not she was afraid to know.)
But Noble Greengrass knew that it hadn’t been a real scandal. “Oh,” Jemima let out a heavy breath, trying to take that fact alone, nodding quickly and trying to let herself be relieved. Then Ford’s brother knew she hadn’t done anything bad. She didn’t know if it was the same for his sisters. Based on the conversations she had had with them, and the way they had looking at her at the wedding, Jemima thought – no.
“Do you –” she said haltingly, know where Ford was that night instead?“Did...” But she couldn’t bring herself to let on how little she knew, and she had no more reason to trust Ford’s brother than anyone, and at any rate it was much too late to be asking questions now, because she was here, supposedly attempting to make the best of it. “So you know he’s – a good person, then,” she said instead – or asked, maybe, because she was worrying her bottom lip again even as she tried to be sure of it. “Isn’t he?”
Noble looked up, abruptly, at her question. "He's a good person," Noble said, after another beat, "Or he tries to be." Were those the same thing? Ford was a burglar, and had some unusual sexual predilections, and sometimes Noble found him so frustrating that he wanted to hit him. But he was also sure that Ford was trying to be a good person.
She didn’t know whether she was hoping for too much, asking for a good person – she did not even know if she qualified as a good person, really. She tried to be, of course, but she had made a wealth of mistakes and she had thought and said and done some unkind things to people in her life, and she had felt no end of jealousy, and she had spent many a party secretly kissing Jack Humphrey-Mavis, and she had hurt him in this, and she had let Ford be forced into marrying her, because she was really rather a mess, still.
So anyone trying to be a good person was plenty to receive in return. And she had to imagine his family knew him best, and so she could take comfort in that assessment. (She scarcely trusted her own judgement of people anymore, so any validation was most helpful. And she daren’t ask her family or even her own friends, who didn’t know Ford, and didn’t think much of – their match.)
“Good, that’s good – I thought so,” Jemima agreed in a shy, mumbled rush, feeling a little flushed, and lacking in ideas how to move on from the subject of Ford back to potions. Perhaps she should let Noble get on with his work? She cracked open the door, glancing out to see whether there was any pearly white still lingering. Still – she was buoyed enough by the conversation that she thought she might be able to stumble her way through a conversation with a ghost, if it came to it. She could do it.
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