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
Cash was nervous. Partially, he was nervous because this would be the longest Ford had been around his wife, or Cash around Ford's. Partially, he was nervous because he had not yet told Ford that Adrienne was pregnant. It seemed inevitable that it would come up tonight, and he was sure it would be awkward — but how could it possibly be more awkward than anything else they were going to discuss tonight?
The butler let in the Greengrasses and took their coats. Cash and Adrienne were in the dining room already; he stood to greet Ford and his wife when they were let in. "Good evening," Cash said, "Welcome to our home — can we get you anything to drink?"
Cash was drinking white wine, and there was an open bottle on the table — but they had a great many options.
Ford had been spending a lot of time scenario planning for this dinner. He had decided that it could only go favorably for Jemima, which was why they were here and he hadn't made excuses to put it off. He was sure Cash's wife would like her, because he didn't think anyone could have a conversation with Jemima and come away not liking her at least a little. And having an ally in Mrs. Lestrange would be an excellent way for her to move past the rumors that had followed her into their marriage... and having a friend in her would be good, too; he worried she was lonely.
On the other hand, he was sure this could only be a disaster for him. Cash already knew some of the truth of the matter, but Ford was still nervous about Cash seeing him alongside his wife for too long; Cash knew him too well and could see through everything. And Ford had a low confidence in his ability to make suitable small talk with Cash's wife, given that he had all but boycotted their marriage for a year.
"Please," he said, to Cash's offer of a drink, and didn't specify. Cash already knew what he drank. He glanced at Jemima, wanting to do something to make her feel more at ease but unsure how to manage it when he was feeling on pins and needles himself.
She wasn’t sure she had seen Ford quite this apprehensive since the wedding – or before the wedding; at the wedding; that whole day and night – but then Jemima had always been too caught up in her own nerves to entirely take note of her husband’s all-encompassing dread if or when it appeared.
But she had decided she couldn’t possibly be too nervous about tonight. She wanted to make a good impression, obviously, but it still felt rather less monumental than being out for all society to see (and comment on, and judge), and if Mr. Lestrange was really Ford’s closest friend then it could hardly be a hostile invitation. And it was, after all, only two people to be worried about; that was much fewer people than usual.
Mrs. Lestrange – the former Miss Adrienne Selwyn – had been a year below her at school, but Jemima had only really known her from a distance. (That said, she had never written anything damning about the Selwyn twins in her diary – after all, they were French, and pretty, and effortlessly composed – so Mrs. Lestrange ought to have no direct reason to hate her.)
Mr. Lestrange she didn’t know at all – personally, at least. He had been Jack’s teammate, of course, and captain for a time; as a consequence of Jack she had followed the Cannons’ progress quite keenly, so she knew rather more about Cassius Lestrange than she had let on. Not that she wanted to make a fool of herself in front of a famous – former – quidditch player.
“Wine would be lovely,” Jemima said, having seen the bottle at the ready and not being inclined to prove a difficult guest. She offered a small token – a box of after-dinner chocolates from Honeyduke’s – to Adrienne Lestrange, and added, more to her than her husband, “Thank you so much for the invitation.”
Adrienne was feeling surprisingly rejuvenated for the evening. It had caught her by surprise seeing as she’d been so sick for the first few weeks, but this evening she felt her strength was good, and in turn her energy high (for her, at least, seeing as she had never been an overly energetic person). She sat by her husband, hands crossed in her lap to welcome their guests. Once the butler had seen to their guests’ coats, she stood with Cash and found herself smiling easily as they came in.
The two of them looked in good health; if she wasn’t mistaken there was an air of awkwardness floating about, but that might have been a number of things that Adrienne couldn’t possibly parse through in the amount of time it took their guests to enter the room. She took the proffered gift with a gracious smile. “It was no trouble at all,” She responded kindly to Mrs. Greengrass. Even with the box of chocolates in her hands, Adrienne felt her stomach turn a notch as the smell hit her nose. Merde. Chocolate, once a decadent treat that she loved (though she frankly preferred the ones from France rather than Honeyduke’s) seemed to have had an odd effect on her in the past few weeks, and she hadn’t had the heart to tell anyone besides Ari about it.
Perhaps this was a sign she should start cluing her husband into more of her symptoms.
Pushing that thought to the back of her mind for later, Adrienne turned to call the butler in and request that it be served after dinner. She would resolve how best to handle rejecting them when the time came. Besides, Mrs. Greengrass looked a tad uneasy, and Adrienne felt sympathy for her regarding how the marriage came about. Of course, she wouldn’t do something so crude as to bring it up in a direct manner, but she didn’t want Mrs. Greengrass to feel as if she judged her harshly for it. “You’ve since settled into your new home, I take it. Have you gotten used to the ins and outs of running the household yet?”
Three seconds in and already off to a terrible start, it seemed. Jemima didn't run the household, but of course the question had been meant innocently. Most women did, once they were married — but handing that off to her would require letting her handle the bills, which would require reading her in on the family's dire financial straights, and of course he'd had no desire to do that. How on earth could Ford ever face her again if he had to admit how quickly he'd spent her dowry? Not to mention that if she looked at the history of their finances and started doing the math, she might notice that at some irregular intervals they had unexplained influxes of cash. No, there was absolutely no way Ford could have let her anywhere near it — and thankfully Jemima hadn't asked about any of it. For all Ford knew, she didn't know there was even a gap there — maybe she thought she ran the household already; maybe she thought all that was meant by the phrase was receiving visitors and responding to invitations.
Best not to say anything, then, if there was still a chance things might just be glossed over and anything he could say would only make it worse. He wanted the drink Cash had offered, but hadn't made yet — he shot his friend a do you mind? look and then helped himself to the wine.
So much for not being worried about a single pair of people – here she was, all set up to rush headlong into the very first hurdle. Jemima waved goodbye to all possibility of making a good first impression. At least she could look forward to drowning her sorrows in the wine.
She felt her cheeks heat up. “Oh, well, we still live with Ford’s mother,” Jemima explained, wishing she was not wincing at it – and Ford’s mother sounded no better at all than Mrs. Greengrass, an address which they had also been mixing up regularly between them in the most awkward of ways. And Jemima wasn’t sure how many of the household duties the widowed Mrs. Greengrass even took on. Ford seemed more involved in organising everything than her. Jemima had been so focused on not making waves in the house to try and disrupt any settled routines too fast, but now even that felt like an oversight or some negligence on her part. Why was she leaving all the responsibilities to her husband?
She didn’t want to glance sidelong at Ford in case his expression said to their hosts can you believe she hasn’t even made herself useful at home?
“Though of course I would like to be of more help, now that – now that we’re settled,” she added hurriedly.
Alcohol, Cash thought, could only help matters — he poured a glass of wine into Mrs. Greengrass' glass before he set about pouring himself and Ford two fingers of gin into smaller glasses. He was thinking, as he did this — Mrs. Greengrass could not run the Greengrass household, because the Greengrasses had no money. In years, he had not told Ford that Ford had told him this, but Cash remembered, and knew that he had to get their conversation changed.
He handed the guests their drinks before plucking up his own. ''Did you two enjoy the Sanditon?" Cash said — hopefully he sounded less abrupt than he felt, or his wife and Mrs. Greengrass would assume he knew so little about running a household that he just changed the subject. "Adrienne and I may spend some time there this summer." He was making this up. Hopefully his wife would not hold it against him — although perhaps the sea air would help her pregnancy symptoms.
She realized her mistake too late. Adrienne felt the slight blush wash across her cheeks. Of course the Greengrass household wouldn’t be run quite like she ran the Lestrange house, seeing as the Greengrasses were solidly middle class. And Adrienne, for all the knowledge she was proud to posess, seemed to have forgotten that crucial detail; and even as Mrs. Greengrass amended her response, Adrienne felt the only way to remedy this situation was to simply ignore the slip up and nod with a smile plastered on her face. As it was, she seemed to have suddenly forgotten how to apologize in English anyhow. Her whole stream of consciousness seemed to have switched to French; even as she opened her mouth to reply - with anything that jumped to her mind within the next half a second.
Cash, thankfully came to her rescue, and she took advantage of his switch of topic to take a hearty sip of her own drink. But what he said surprised her, and she did a double take. “Ah, bon?”Really?
He hadn’t mentioned anything like that to her, had he? Adrienne fished in her memories to try and find any evidence of this but ultimately came up short. Perhaps the pregnancy was taking more of a toll on her mentally than she originally thought. As if the child already hadn’t done enough to her physically. “Euh…that is to say, it certainly would be wonderful to get some air by the sea.” With her slip up behind her, she turned to Mrs. Greengrass again; when an idea suddenly came to her. “Oh! Perhaps you two might like to join us for a bit?” She looked to Mr. Greengrass, then her husband, pleased with her sudden inspiration of hospitality.
Ford hoped he did not look as panicked as he felt. He couldn't afford for them to go to the Sanditon for a week during the summer. The rooms were more expensive during their prime season, for one thing — the same suite they'd had the first week of March would have set them back three times as much, at least, during July or August. Even if the rates didn't change at all, he couldn't afford to take time off of work again — Jemima's dowry was the only thing that had made that possible in the first place. (He still always felt a surge of embarrassment when he thought of the ways he'd spent her dowry, and he felt one now. He had it all down in a separate page in the ledger; he knew where every sickle had gone, and he had the idea — Noble would have called it a crazy, idiotic ideal — that someday he would balance that sheet out, earn it back so that he could spend it as it had been intended, taking care of her. In the meantime, he lived in the hope that she wouldn't make any inquiries about it, so that he wouldn't have to lie to her).
A stay at the Sanditon was out of the question, but on the other hand Cash's wife was looking at him with such obvious delight that he didn't know how to refuse her. She was trying to be welcoming, kind; she was trying to be a friend, and Ford had been so hopeful that she and Jemima becoming friends would be the outcome of tonight. He didn't want to dash any chances of that, and he didn't want to discourage her, but — obviously he couldn't admit to the financial side of the equation.
"I, ah —" Cash had given him a drink and he wanted to have some, but didn't want to look too obviously like he was avoiding the unasked question Mrs. Lestrange had directed at him. "I'm not sure my boss would be thrilled to part with me during the middle of the social season," he bluffed — this was an utterly ridiculous thing to say, but maybe no one here would know enough about what the Spirit Division did to call him on it. "Barnaby Wye has been threatening to crash a fancy dress ball the next time one turns up," he lied; hopefully this would get him out of things, because he knew they had all met Barnaby and could perhaps believe he was enough of a public menace to warrant special attention. "Never know when he might cause a scene."
This was awkward, and to stop herself feeling the burgeoning awkwardness Jemima consoled herself by taking a very large sip of wine. If she was drinking, she could not be embarrassing herself in the conversation. Faultless logic; perhaps she should just studiously drink all evening, and let Ford go on talking to his friends.
Except – she had already smiled at the mention of the Sanditon. Because, all things considered, she had enjoyed herself that week, and she thought going back would only increase her fondness for the place. And – perhaps things were going fine after all, because Mrs. Lestrange had just offered them another invitation. Jemima glanced at her, searching hopefully for some sincerity in it and not just a veneer of obligation. But she looked perfectly delighted.
Only Ford did not sound it in turn. Jemima felt her brow crease at his excuses, because if the Ministry could let off a Magical Games & Sports employee in the summer, surely they could let off someone in the Spirit division too? Neither of those departments were particularly critical, were they? “But that’s so lovely of you to ask,” she chimed in, before Ford’s lack of enthusiasm offended the Lestranges. “And I’m sure it would be no problem really, I mean, half of Hogsmeade might be there anyway –”so Ford can babysit Barnaby Wye there just as well, she did not add, because she did not think any ghost a very good excuse for refusing the very second invitation they had had. “It was scenic there even in the spring.” (Admittedly it had only been on the cusp of winter and spring when they had been there, and very quiet; but Jemima had nevertheless enjoyed it, and it would be nice to be there in the proper season.)
This was all very strange and tense and Cash was realizing that he had pre-gamed it. He was not sure that his Sanditon idea had landed well with Adrienne at all, and while she was clearly making a good effort to befriend Jemima Farley, Ford did not seem enthused about going to the Sanditon. (Was the Sanditon actually expensive to go to? Cash was reminded, not for the first time, that the middle-class-but-little-money crowd had significantly less money than he had.)
"I'm sure someone will decide to throw a fancy dress ball at the Sanditon," Cash offered, something silly that he had conjured in an attempt to suck some of the tension out of the room. "Then you can do both. And we can take bets on what Wye tries to do." He took a large sip of his wine.
During the middle of the social season? Adrienne blinked. But wasn’t that why one went about attending events when one worked? To promote and advocate for their causes, and such. She wasn’t sure that was entirely correct so she didn’t dare say anything aloud; but she made a note to ask Cash about it later. In any case, the mention of the lovely Mr. Wye saw her face light up with delight. Monsieur Wye! Clasping her hands together, Adrienne looked at her husband, then to Mrs. Greengrass as she continued. “Oh but Monsieur Wye would be a most welcome addition to our party I think, no?” She countered. “He always has the most delightful anecdotes, does he not?”
Ford felt distinctly ganged up on. He smiled helplessly and sipped his drink. None of them meant anything by it, he reminded himself — none of them were actually out to get him. Jemima wanted to make a good impression on the Lestranges, Cash wanted this to go smoothly so that he could pretend Ford approved of his marriage, Mrs. Lestrange — well, Ford didn't know her well enough to know what she wanted out of this, but presumably she hadn't gone into tonight plotting his social downfall. But it was clear he was not winning this particular argument, with the three of them aligned against him. He'd have to think of some excuse to get them out of it later in the season, if it actually came up — but hopefully it wouldn't; hopefully Cash knew him well enough to know that he didn't want to go that he would run interference later and prevent the invitation from arriving at all. In the meantime, Ford would just have to cede the point and hope the ladies didn't expend too much energy planning their upcoming holidays.
"You could work in my division," he said — joking, but his tone a little too thin for it. "I don't meet many people outside of it that call him 'delightful.'"
The conversation might nearly have been saved, except she would really rather Wye, the ghost, not be a part of their party at any point, Sanditon or otherwise. She was indeed surprised that Mrs. Lestrange liked him – she had found him mostly disconcerting, but perhaps he only floated unannounced into the Greengrass house, and had better manners elsewhere?
Mrs. Lestrange, Jemima decided, was probably just endeavouring to be polite – to appeal to Ford and his line of work, particularly. Well – that at least, she could do, because she did know something about Adrienne’s husband’s career. “I suppose it is easier for you to take holidays nowadays, Mr. Lestrange, now that Chudley are not dependent on you as Seeker all year?” Jemima piped up, hoping to press the conversation on away from the Spirit Division at any cost. “Do you still attend matches much, as a spectator? I always found the Cannons’ games very exciting.”
Cash was not sure he'd expected to be addressed directly by Mrs. Greengrass tonight — but they'd just about reached the end of things he could say about the Sanditon or Barnaby Wye, so he ought to have seen it coming. He was surprised she knew he'd played for Chudley, not because it was unusual information, but because he hadn't thought that someone who married Ford would have an abundance of interest in Quidditch.
But they hadn't planned on getting married, had they?
"As a spectator when I can," he said, with a half-smile, "And sometimes for the department. The Cannons can be a bit strange for me for all that I still support them — I spend half the time thinking of seeking." (And the other half thinking about how he had never felt as free as he did when he was on a broomstick.)
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