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 1895. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
Complete a thread started and set every month for twelve consecutive months. Each thread must have at least ten posts, and at least three must be your own.
Did You Know?
Did you know? Jewelry of jet was the haute jewelry of the Victorian era. — Fallin
CONTENT WARNING - This thread is marked M to encompass likely discussions of depression, trauma, and suicidal ideation.
October 17th, 1894 — Greengrass Household
He was going to have to take the floo; if he walked he would run into someone, and if he apparated he was liable to splinch himself. Most of the staff were starting to disperse to their quarters or home — it was late. Near midnight, maybe.
He’d sent the letters. If there were visitors, the butler could handle it. He knew that he should stay, with people traipsing around his house at night, with Adrienne so ill. He knew he should name the baby. He should certainly do either of those things. But his head was thrumming, his heart was beating, he had been sick again — he could not stay here.
He put his coat on. He pressed the envelope securely into the inside pocket of his coat. He walked down the stairs, said nothing to the butler, and stepped into the floo with a pinch of powder.
Ford was not asleep, but everyone was already in their room for the night and he was no exception. It wasn't late, when one considered the end time of a society function — but it was a Thursday in October, so there was nothing worth staying up for. He was in his pajamas with a book when he heard a noise downstairs. His first thought was that Noble was sneaking out somewhere — okay, fine, let him. Ford didn't really want to know. Then it occurred to him that it might also be Clementine sneaking out somewhere, and he was on his feet in an instant.
It didn't occur to him that someone would have been coming in at this hour until he'd gotten down the stairs (skipping every third step) and let his eyes adjust to the dark. The figure in the parlor wasn't Noble or Clementine, but it didn't take him long to recognize who it was.
“Cash?” he whispered, bewildered. Cash didn't show up to his house, generally; when they saw each other it was usually elsewhere. He certainly didn't show up at night without having written first. “What?”
The parlor was dark; no one was here. Cash felt through his jacket pocket for the solid form of the envelope, with its crisp corners — maybe he should just leave it here. But there were footsteps on the stairs, and he had too much faith in Ford to think it would be anyone else.
”I have something for you,” Cash said — his volume matched Ford’s, more because it felt inappropriate to raise his voice above Ford’s volume in Ford’s house than out of any real social awareness.
Ford frowned. He glanced conspicuously at the clock near the mantle. This whole scene felt surreal; it made about as much sense as three ghosts visiting an old miser on Christmas Eve. (If someone visited him someday in a fugue state to explain everything that was wrong with his life, would that person have been Cash? It seemed weirdly appropriate). It had some of the hallmarks of gothic literature: the hour, the stillness, the ominous feeling in the air. Maybe he'd fallen asleep and was dreaming this. He tried to recall what he'd just been reading (what he might have been reading just before dosing off) — was it Poe? This felt Poe.
Cash reached into the gap in his coat, grasping the envelope. He paused. ”You can’t open it yet,” he said, still holding onto it. ”You’ll know when you can.”
Maybe that’s what he was here on, faith — faith that Ford wouldn’t open the envelope until he was supposed to, faith that he would follow its instructions, faith that maybe neither of them would need it at all.
Ford's brow furrowed. He hadn't seen what it was yet, but if it was something that fit inside Cash's coat pocket and could be opened it was most likely a letter. Maybe a small box, but probably a letter. A letter that he wasn't allowed to open yet. Either this was something conjured up by his subconscious and layered in subliminal meaning he didn't understand… or it was a suicide note.
This had always been a possibility. He'd asked Cash about it right at the start, the night with the dementor.
Cash glanced back at the floo; he should go to the Wellingtonshire house, which may have guests in it. He did not think Adrienne would die tonight, but if she did, he would have to be home to know about it.
He looked back at Ford. ”Alright,” he said, “But not for long.”
Ford held his breath while Cash considered. This might be the last chance Ford had to talk with him, but he knew he couldn't make Cash stay. His answer was a relief. Even if it wasn't long, some time was more than no time.
He crossed the room and took Cash's elbow on the arm that hadn't reached into his jacket. “Quiet on the stairs,” he said. “I don't know who's still awake.” At least the stairs to the third floor, being new, hadn't had time to develop creaks; there was very little chance of their disturbing Jemima. And if anyone else was awake to care about steps on the stairs they would probably have heard him coming down and taking no pains to be quiet. They'd think it was just him going back upstairs again; no reason to suspect company.
The reading light was still lit in Ford's room. He had to take half a second for his eyes to readjust, but then he turned them to Cash — assessing.
He kept his steps light on the stairs — he didn’t want to have to try for conversation with anyone but Ford, particularly not Jemima. Jemima knew Adrienne, and maybe cared for her — if things went wrong (wronger), then it would be horrible if she learned from the paper after seeing Cash in her house.
They woke no one, or no one woke up enough to come out. They were in the light, now — Ford’s eyes on Cash had him aware of how this looked. He’d been wearing these clothes since early morning; there were new creases in them. Ash from the floo was still on his peacoat because he had not bothered to shake it off. He suspected the hollows under his eyes were more pronounced than usual, because he’d been sick for so much of the day.
He felt self-conscious. Cash smoothed his coat with his hands; the paper crinkled inside his coat. He watched Ford watch him.
Ford ought to have something to say. He and Cash stood in the dimly lit bedroom, watching each other, and even the few seconds of silence was conspicuous. He couldn't wait for Cash to start the conversation. He needed something to say. Cash had a letter he was going to give Ford that Ford wasn't allowed to open yet. He'd arrived unannounced at midnight. He looked worse for wear. He'd already said he couldn't stay long. Ford needed to say something to anchor him here, and yet he had nothing to say.
On impulse he moved instead to put his arms around Cash. Ford pulled him close and kept his breath slow and steady, hoping that simply coexisting would be enough until he found the right words.
Cash tucked his head against Ford’s chest; if he focused, he imagined he could hear Ford’s heartbeat, although it might be his own in his ears. He inhaled, exhaled, and felt something like relief for the first time in several hours. His stomach still churned, his hands still shook when he left them unattended, but he wasn’t alone.
”They think she’s dying,” he said, into the quiet of Ford’s bedroom.
Ford was listening to Cash's breathing change. He hadn't expected him to say anything, but it seemed like a positive sign that he had. “Adrienne,” he said; not a question but an assumption. There weren't many other people that Cash could have been talking about; Ford didn't know of many women who were important to him to this degree. And the timeline made sense — she was heavily pregnant. Pregnancy didn't always go smoothly.
It crossed his mind to ask about the baby, but — he didn't want to talk about the child she might be dying for. He doubted Cash did either. It felt like there was still something bigger and more important hanging in the air. Maybe that was wrong, or selfish, for Ford not to care about the baby yet — but the baby was a person he didn't know, didn't care about, didn't love, and Cash was in his bedroom practically in pieces, and they thought his wife was dying.
People kept dying in front of him; Ellory, Valeria, Eli. Ellory’s blood on his shirt, the way he’d taken her body through the streets; Valeria and the halo of blood around her skull; a flash of green light and Eli’s body cooling down next to him. And now — Adrienne, weak and in the bed, the heat radiating off of her body and the sweat on her forehead.
Everyone else’s tethers to the earth felt weaker than his, these accidents that befell people who surely deserved life more than Cash did. It felt dangerous for him to be near people — Angie, Theo, Ford, Adrienne, the baby. It was self-absorbed to think that misery would befall them just for being near him, and he knew that it was. But —
Cash squeezed his eyes shut. ”It feels like it is,” he admitted. It felt like it was his fault, this continued misfortune — as if he was supposed to die that day in 1887, and the moments since that were not ridden with guilt were the mistake.
“I know,” Ford acknowledged. He was all too familiar with feeling responsible for bad things happening. Verity’s hasty marriage under suspect circumstances, Grace’s continued social failures and her eventual exit from the marriage mart. Everything that had happened with Jemima — who still did not know exactly how dire her circumstances were, because he was still trying to shield her from it, but he knew every day and felt guilty every day. The difference was that all of that was his fault, or at least partially his fault. Adrienne being sick was — not Cash’s fault, really. Sometimes people got sick. Sometimes they never got better. Sometimes pregnancies didn’t end right. That could happen to anyone, no matter how much money they had or how healthy they were or how much their husband loved them (or didn’t).
But he understood the impulse, because Ford was also responsible for so many things that went wrong in the lives of everyone around him, and when you did things that hurt people this routinely it was sometimes hard to separate out the things you owned from the things you didn’t. “I know it feels that way,” he continued. “That’s why I’m telling you it’s not.”
He didn’t move from his position, head tucked against Ford’s chest. He was probably getting soot from the floo onto Ford’s clothing and floor; he couldn’t find it in himself to feel more than passingly guilty about it.
”There’s so much I wish I’d told you,” Cash muttered. The Unbreakable Vow, the tinkering in his mind, the way Eli had died — all of it felt insurmountable now. These were the things that had collapsed their friendship when Cash told Ford about Adrienne, and they’d never recovered the same easy emotional intimacy that they’d had beforehand. He should have told him.
It had felt impossible, but not nearly as impossible as this did, and not nearly as impossible as telling him now did.
Tell me now, Ford wanted to say; he could lead Cash over to the bed and they could sit cross-legged on the topsheet and Ford could hold both Cash’s hands in his lap and he could listen for as long as it took. But if he’d guessed correctly about what was in Cash’s letter, the one he needed to receive at midnight but wasn’t allowed to open, maybe there wasn’t time for that. Maybe it was already too late; maybe talking about it now wouldn’t change anything.
He wanted more time, and there was an impulse to tell Cash not to do anything hasty, not to leave — but also somehow the sense that Ford didn’t have the right, because he had never been in that position. Ford had spent a lot of time contemplating it, from a third party perspective — back when he’d thought Noble was taking potions recklessly on purpose, when Cash had the dementor incident, basically his entire friendship with Cash — but he’d never been there, so how could he say something like just hang on a little longer or it’ll get better? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it only got worse, and the last few years had always been a losing game.
He let out a long breath. He waited for words to come. He’d had the sense downstairs, when he told Cash to come up, that if he got him somewhere private and started talking to him, he’d know what to say. He’d be able to fix it. And now — he just didn’t.
“If she does die,” he ventured eventually, “If everyone leaves. I’ll still be here for you. Alright?”
