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
Matteo — ahem, Professor Hughes did not bother with a dramatic entrance for himself. Instead, he stood at the front of the class welcoming his first batch of students. "Welcome to your first Charms lesson of the year," he began, "I am Professor Hughes. For our first lesson of the year, we will not be learning to cast any spells. Instead, we shall focus on practicing wand movements — with the simple sticks on the table before you. Wand movements are essential to decent spellcasting, any wizard who uses a wand will tell you." He gazed over the classroom, taking in the faces before him with what he hoped was a kindly but stern expression. "You will not need your actual wands for this lesson, in order to prevent...accidents. We will start with a simple swish, like so." He demonstrated a simple left-to-right swish with his own wand.
For the second night in a row, Margaret had woken up early and hastily managed to stuff her sodden bed sheets underneath her bed before she thought any of the other hufflepuffs had woken up. Where they went during the day, she had no idea, but the cleaners had no reason to tell anyone. She walked quietly to class, past the tall man who greeted them, wondering what horrors awaited her beyond this. To her suprise the room looked very much like a normal classroom. It still smelled funny, like everything else in this place, but the old worn desks were just familiar enough to allow her to ease in to the lesson and find a free seat without too much distress.
A stick? Just a stick, she could handle that, no way anyone could get hurt, it was also a relief as she had realised she had left her wand in her room, forgetting to bring it up from the basement in some kind of unconscious effort to pretend she wasn't a witch. She lifted the stick up and began to swish it around in front of her, she mimicked some of the garden wizards from irvingly, but she had no idea what she was doing. "Do you think this is right?" she nervously asked the person who had either chosen or been left with the seat next to her at the back of the classroom.
Culpurnia was not ready for class. In fact, she did not think she would ever be ready for class.
Her only saving grace was that the stress of the previous day had sent her into an early slumber, and she'd woken up for breakfast before any of her dorm-mates had woken. She was well-fed, well-rested, and had somehow managed to make it to class on-time.
But that's where her luck ended. Fortunately being seated next to another girl—Miss Wallace, she thought?—provided the perfect opportunity to direct her stress onto someone else.
"No, you're doing it wrong," she insisted, reaching out and repositioning the girl's hand without her consent. "Be more delicate with it."
“Simple sticks?” Rorie heard herself say as she rose her wand and wiggled it in the air. It emitted a few sparks. “Hardly seems simple to me.” She muttered to her desk-mate. But then she saw her error - that the sticks he was referring to were actually plain sticks. Embarrassed at her blunder, she quickly put her wand down and picked up the stick.
Then, did her best to copy Professor Hughes’ movements with his wand.
Margaret tensed as the other girl grabbed her arm, making her movements even more jagged, but tried to force herself to relax, she was just helping. swish, flick. "Thank you," she replied nervously, she didn't know if she was doing it better, or worse after the guidance. The sparks from the other table made her jump a little, the other girl hadn't realised they were to use real wands.
She furrowed her brow a little "Charms make people do things they don't want to dont they, they won't do that to us will they?" she asked her desk mate as she watched her own stick movements. Her understanding of magic came almost entirely from fairy tales and she definitely didn't want some witch putting a charm on her. She hoped the anti-magic trinket she had bought would keep her safe.
Culpurnia mindlessly fluffed out her deskmate's sleeve before returning to her own stick, which she'd hardly touched. She picked up and grasped it the same way Professor Hughes held it. It wasn't her hand, so it felt a little off.
"Charms do plenty of things," she answered matter-of-factly, even though she had yet to discover what exactly these plenty of things were. "I'm not sure about making people do things they don't want to do, though. Why would they teach that to us?"
Since Sunday night, she had seen at least three boys get yelled at by prefects for trying to scale the castle walls or hop one of the statues. Giving them the power to control other people didn't seem wise.
Kaatjie was seated next to one of the Hufflepuffs — Miss Rorie Meadows, she thought. She grinned at the girl's wand sparks and picked up her own stick. She swished it, mimicking Professor Hughes. Although honestly, she was half-eavesdropping on Miss Cress and Miss Wallace.
"Forcing people to do things is a crime," Kaatjie offered, feeling knowledgable — (although she was mostly guessing.)
She wondered "I don't know, but all the stories, erm" she blushed, it was hard to put into words for the little girl. And she focused again on the stick in her hand, waving it gently, she suddenly imagined her in front of her easel in her cousins with a paint brush, she missed her already.
The girl nearby pointed out that forcing them to do something would be illegal "But grown ups force us to do things all the time?" her parents, the man from the ministry, now their teachers. She certainly wouldn't mind seeing them arrested and taken away.
Kaatjie rolled her eyes at Miss Wallace's response. "With magic is a crime," she said, as if it were obvious. She glanced at Lilibet Meadows to see her reaction — were all muggleborns silly, or was it just Miss Wallace?
Georgie was most thrilled about today's class. She was learning so many things she couldn't believe mother didn't think to tell her before school. How was she meant to learn all there was to know with so few hours in the day? And when was she supposed to study when Desmond kept reminding her to eat at lunch? There was chaos to this whole endeavor that excited Gia. She couldn't wait to sort it all out.
Gia took her place with great excitement, only to have the stern-looking wizard burst her bubble. Sticks? Gia had played wands with sticks for eleven years. She had a real wand and was intent on learning to use it. "But some of us have already been practicing." She huffed to her brother. She reluctantly sheathed her new, beloved wand in her robes and picked the least pathetic of the sticks before her. Unable to avoid overhearing the girls behind her and thinking the conversation was taking a rather dark turn, Gia turned in her seat to contribute, "Having wands and not getting to use them should be a crime. I want to learn how to make the colored sparks my mother showed me. It's like fireworks."
That much, Desmond was very sure of. The castle was huge and ancient, possibly more than the teachers were, too. He could feel the magic here, it was almost like smelling lunch before it was ready. Other classes could be boring, like History and Theory class, just not this one.
In Charms, this boy was ready to make real magic and that require a wand, not a stick. Next to him, Gia had already chosen a stick from the pile, leaving him with one that looked very much not like a wand. He just couldn't pretend as well his other classmates. Besides, what could the worst thing be if he used his real wand, the professor wasn't even looking this way.
He was just swishing it, he wasn't casting spells.
"There's so much you can do with wands!" Des added in, excited about the idea. All they were doing was swishing right now, he wanted something more from it. Like making the sparks his sister was talking about. The question came almost immediately after that, and he didn't bother raising his hand for it. "Can we learn to make something talk? Like rocks, there's no crime in forcing rocks to do something."
Des was pretty sure about that, so much it might as well be true.
Grownups were rather annoying, Culpurnia thought, but she didn't dare voice it. Miss Wallace's response made her seem very childish, which made sense given that she was a Hufflepuff (Culpurnia had heard one of the Slytherin boys say that Hufflepuffs were a bunch of ninnies; she was not sure she agreed until now).
"What would a rock even say?" she asked, a hint of annoynced in her voice as she peered over her shoulder at the Gryffindor boy. "And besides, the Charms textbook says nothing of making objects talk. It says a lot about making things move and change colors, though." It sort of made sense—even with her rudimentary knowledge of magical theory, it only made sense that making an object talk would require more skill than any of them had. Yet.
"Sorry..." she said apologetically to the Kaatjie Spaans for misunderstanding what she meant.
What would a rock say? Would it mind being thrown in the lake? Her mind went back to her afternoon of skimming stones with one of the other new children. It had been fun, but Phineas Black II hadn't spoken to her since and she didn't even know why. She smiled to herself lightly as she vacantly wiggled the wand, she knew how to skip stones now, that was better than being forced to learn magic. "Being a rock doesn't seem so bad" she muttered almost silently to herself as the solitary leaf on her stick curled, blacked and began to smoke.
A second year now Morgan had spent the summer doing intensive studying, in an attempt to make up for her inadequacies when it came to Charms.... she hoped it showed however with Professors announcement that they wouldn't be using their wands she let out a sigh of relief. She knew that she ought to be an example now especially now that she was the older student in the class however.... as much as she studied and thought she was spot on with her movements - she would've sworn the movements were identical and that everything was the same right up until whatever she was attempting to spell suddenly burst into fire just to prove that no... she had gotten something wrong. Again.
She had been going to ignore the first years chattering amongst themselves, afterall she doubted any good would come of it - and it wasn't as if she was the best person to talk to when it came to Charms form however as the conversation turned she eventually decided that she was done eavesdropping, and felt rather sorry for the little Hufflepuff who most certainly was a Muggleborn and hadn't had the benefit of being raised in a magical house. She opened her mouth and let her tutor pour out the lecture that she had been forced to sit through numerous times.
"It's all about starting with the basics and fundamentals. You'll find Charms is all about changing what something does, just like transfiguration changes what something is. It's like when you start off with anything you've got to start with the small stuff and build otherwise... well, otherwise things could go wrong. That's why practising the basics is important.... if you don't... well things can explode." She said trying to be helpful and steer the conversation back on track. She'd started strong but, knew she ended awkwardly as she came to her own issues with magic.
Of course Miss Cress was in the midst of being insufferable. At least it wasn't him she was focusing on this time. He had not quite forgiven her for nitpicking his every action at the Doll Tea Party she had hosted and he'd had the misfortune to attend. At least most of his relations and friends had been there like Stella, Ramona and Regina.
He picked a stick and swished it, finding this a very boring activity.
As he glanced over to catch his twin's eyes, Desmond was baffled by how different this was from lessons with their governess. Not all of his fellow students seemed very bright, or very imaginative. He remembered being encouraged to think up all kinds of different ideas for solutions, and not all of them had to be right all the time either. About the only similarity was being next to Gia doing the most boring lesson he could think of.
"That's a rock," Des pointed out, using his hand for the job. The stones that made up the classroom walls weren't that different from the rocks that made up the ornamental walls around their London home. "We could ask it how it got to be so strong!"
His eyes gazed up for a moment, to the top of the stony chamber and then beyond to the unseen levels above them. The whole castle was held up by rocks and stones, so what else would it talk about? Des didn't quite realize he was being less mindful to his swishing, and let his wand flick here and there, crossing against the sticks of his neighbors. He grinned when he felt the contact of his wand and Gia's stick, aiming to make it happen again, harder, on the next pass.
"En garde! " Des whispered to Gia, answering it with a short chuckle. He wanted to see sparks fly just as much as his sister, but right now he was only bored enough to play with his wand as if it were a sword.
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