Feb 14, 1891 — Courtly Love Charity Event

Juliana had never been particularly interested in Valentine's Day, just as she had never been particularly interested in romance. When she'd been 'out' and her mother hadn't yet given up hope of foisting her off on someone for marriage, it had seemed a little awkward and sad — there was always someone around to make some comment that sounded like pity, as though Juliana cared. Now that she'd moved past all of that, the only distinction Valentine's Day had was that it meant her mother had a reason to drag her out to a party before the season even started. She didn't know why Mrs. Binns bothered — perhaps because she was worried Juliana might become even more eccentric if she weren't forced to regularly interact with the rest of society.

Shortly after arriving, she'd wandered off to see if she could have a closer look at the containers for the boggarts. She was only curious, but the waitstaff member set to watch them had been too leery to let her anywhere near them, so she'd left disappointed. What did he think she was going to do, sabotage them? Boggarts were already manifestations of people's worst fears. How could anything she did, as an only-partially-educated witch, make them any worse?

There was a garden on the grounds and she'd gone for a stroll, ignoring the areas that were meant to contain most of the partygoers and exploring more freely. She wasn't feeling much like company today, for whatever reason. As she was walking, however, she suddenly caught sight of a stain on the front of her dress. When had that gotten there? She hadn't even had anything to eat yet, so how could she have created such a large red mark? Only it wasn't just a stain — it was blood, she realized. Juliana had a large and entirely unexpected wound in the center of her chest, exposing some of her insides to the outside.

"Oh, dear," she said, feeling vaguely lightheaded. Which was logical, she supposed, if she'd somehow lost so much blood already.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Lachlan had never been interested in Valentine's Day, but this year he was especially opposed to its festvities. It had been less than a month since he'd seen Fallon, had one last row with her, and watched her leave his home for what he assumed was the last time. It was terribly depressing and he wasn't coping well—so, apparently, the logical thing for him to do was attend a love-themed party. That's what his friends thought, at least. Unsurprisingly, he'd been useless as far as socializing was concerned, instead choosing to linger around the edges of the crowd and move around in a pattern that allowed him to avoid any human contact.

He stumbled across a game a group of people seemed to be playing where boggarts were released intentionally to provide a monster of sorts for gentleman to save the ladies from, and it seemed silly and ridiculous until he got a little too close to one. He'd left the scene and headed towards the gardens, unsure of what his greatest fear was and fearful that it would be something that would be considered socially damning in front of a crowd of people.

The path to the garden was a quiet one, which was fine until he turned a corner and spotted a woman wearing a plain dress that seemed to be soaked in... blood. His face twisted in horror and he surged forward to help. "Miss...?" he asked, his voice a clear indication of his unease. Upon closer inspection she looked like she'd been torn open, which was confusing; her expression was not one of a woman who had just faced a terrible attack. He panicked, in that moment losing all his medical knowledge and wits.

This was absolutely horrifying. He felt sick.

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   Juliana Ainsworth

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Oh, good, a gentleman was here — perhaps she wasn't about to die. It was strange, how disconnected from it she felt. She couldn't even feel the wound, but she supposed that must have just been from shock? It was certainly very ... present. Undeniable. There was a whole chunk of her rib cage that seemed to be missing, right at the space where the ribbing of her corset started below her bust, and — those were definitely her insides, just exactly the same way as they looked in anatomy books, and wasn't that funny? She'd expected the books to be wrong about some of it.

Anyway, it was a big enough wound that she was almost certainly going to die, but the fact that someone had stumbled upon her at just that moment meant that perhaps she wouldn't. Maybe he was a healer, or something. Maybe not, though — he did look rather pale, like someone not very used to seeing this much blood. Jules wasn't used to it either, of course; she was still feeling light-headed. She reached up with a delayed instinct to press her hand to the wound, but it just went right into her, deeper than it should have.

"Oh," Juliana said, and fainted.

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   Elon Wildsmith, Kieran Abernathy, Lachlan MacFusty

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Had his breathing stopped? He was suddenly very aware of how lightheaded he was becoming and made a point to breathe. It was not that he had never seen blood or gory injuries, but the fact that he had seen too much death, too much misery in the past year. There was the incident at the Quidditch World Cup where he'd literally bashed a woman's head in with the bludger, and then the time Fallon nearly froze to death with him because he'd given her a key that he could have just left at the pub to be someone else's problem. He stared at the girl, and she stared back at him. Then, for some reason, she thought it was a good idea to touch her wounds—he winced at the thought of her hands touching all that—and then fainted on the ground in front of her.

Apparently that triggered something in him. He broke out of frozen posture and was on the ground next to the woman before he could figure out what he was going to do. There were definitely innards pouring out of the hole in her dress. (What had made a hole in her dress to begin with? He couldn't even begin to worry about his own safety; he was still scared shitless by the sight of the presumably dying woman.)

He thought of Tilda and her injuries, how this could have very well been her at the World Cup if the situation had gone a little bit different, and then—Tilda. Medicine. Healing. First aid. He could do that, but—he glanced around—with what? His shirt, maybe. Or at least his coat. He tugged it off and began tearing it into the best bandage he could manage (even if they were well past the point of bandages doing much). He then shifted his body so he was between her legs and looked down at her torso.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. So much blood—but for some reason, he couldn't smell it. Maybe his brain had shut down certain receptors in order to keep him conscious. Yeah, that made sense. His hands hovered above her exposed stomach as he wondered what the best approach would be. He was no healer.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Juliana was conscious of someone touching her — some rough movement against her legs. On the inside of her thighs, in fact, which was — definitely unexpected. Not a place that people usually touched her. Definitely not a place she had anticipated anyone touching her, today or any time soon or actually probably forever, and although she was vaguely aware that she must have fallen she did not really understand why that was necessary. Someone picking her up and moving her to a more natural position, or carrying her to someone that would help, sure — that would have been fine. Someone sitting in between her legs was... weird.

Her head was still spinning and when she tried to open her eyes they only fluttered for a moment before she lost the energy and closed them again. She still didn't feel as though she was injured. That was good, right? If she was going to die she supposed it would be better not to feel it. What an interesting thing to know, that people with grievous injuries had a mechanism to shut out the pain. That knowledge would have been a godsend for some of her subjects, who were wracked with guilt over what they had done or might someday do to an innocent bystander on a full moon — but she supposed she'd probably never get the chance to tell any of them. Pity.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

He'd decided to rip her dress. It was a bold move, and totally improper, but it wasn't as if he was about to send her into the ballroom in nothing but her petticoats. She was either going to die or he was going to keep her alive until someone could finish healing her. There was no room for embarrassment. Still, he winced as the fabric ripped over her ribcage and down to her navel. He was no genius when it came to wounds or wound care, but he didn't think it was a smart idea to try and stuff her insides back into her. He wasn't sure which ones belonged where, and for a brief second he panicked at the thought that maybe an organ had gotten caught up in the sides of her dress when he'd pulled them back. (He pulled back the sides of the dress to check. They hadn't.)

"Can you hear me?" he said, wondering if she was too far gone to be aware of her surroundings. If she was, he might feel less guilty about all of this. He wrapped his hand with one of the ripped pieces of coat, protecting his hands from the grossness of her wounds, and tried to clean the blood around the wound. His heartrate picked up and his breathing became heavy. He had no idea what he was doing.

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   Juliana Ainsworth

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Juliana's eyes fluttered again, and this time remained open. "Yes," she said, a little breathily. She was coming back up from her fainting spell, which was a bit odd, wasn't it? With a wound that size she really should have gone down and stayed down — it wasn't at all logical that she would remain conscious for this bit. She probably should have died by now, but she definitely wasn't dead.

She looked down, and suddenly it wasn't there at all. The blood, her insides, the missing chunk of her rib cage — as though it had never happened. And she could definitely tell her ribs were all back in place, because the man (who was sitting in between her legs) had ripped a piece of her dress off, and her corset too, leaving a section of her bare flesh exposed from just beneath her breast down to her navel. Juliana had no idea what had happened to cause the wound or to repair it, and she looked up at the gentleman in sudden surprise and confusion — only to realize that his shirt was torn, too, and wrapped around his hand, and his coat was who even knew where, and he was — probably less than a foot from her face.

"Dear heaven," she exclaimed, reaching up and grabbing his shoulders to try and push him off of her.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

The party was a success. The boggart displays proved to be great entertainment. She and Mrs. Wildsmith were gossiping about it, who's boggart was silly, who's truly terrifying, that sort of thing. There were certain men whose fears made Marianne think twice on whether she'd want her Dorothy married to them. It was only their large fortunes that salvaged them.

Seeing that Dorothy wasn't out yet, Marianne had taken it upon herself to award roses to the gentlemen she deemed like suitable suitors for her daughters. At some point though, she ran out of flowers, so she headed to the place where they were kept to equip herself with more.

(As one of the hostesses, she was obviously not going to pay the overpriced fee for them!)

It seemed that she wasn't the only person doing 'naughty' things so to speak at that party.

Was sex her biggest fear? Seeing that she'd cringe whenever she saw her husband's manhood, there was high chance it was.

But no, this was no boggart.

"What are you doing!" Marianne hissed at the two young people. With a flick of her wand, she cast a jinx that would make an invisible hand pull at their ears as though they were misbehaving children. "Perverts!"

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   Dionisia Fisk, Juliana Ainsworth, Kieran Abernathy

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this set is by mj and i LOVE it

Bad timing was a running theme in his life at this point. First there was the bludger, then the portkey, then the entire relationship he'd failed to form with Fallon, and now the innards disappeared and the woman woke up just as another woman came upon them. He grunted as he was pulled away from the (now injured and awake?) woman by an unseen force. He glanced back and forth between the two women, trying to rationalize this whole experience while also trying to figure out how he was going to explain it when it made no sense to him.

"No, you don't - this isn't - she was dying," he tried to explain, only afterwards realizing how stupid that sounded. He looked back over at the woman he'd been hovering above just moments ago, his mouth agape and his brows raised, and he made a motion with her heads that clearly said you tell her!

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   Elon Wildsmith

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Juliana felt the hex tug at her ear, but it wasn't as though it could really pull her anywhere when she was already lying on the ground. She reached up and swatted at the invisible hand, trying to get it away from her, at which point the spell flippantly tugged on a bit of her hair.

"Ow!" she said indignantly, swatting at it again as she sat up. Sitting up only made the hole in her dress look bigger and more scandalous, though, as the fabric fell away due to gravity. She reached down to press it back into place, awkwardly splaying her fingers out to cover as much of her bare skin as possible with the scraps of her wardrobe.

"Er, yes," she said, at his look. "I was." Up until a moment ago, anyway, which she still had utterly no explanation for.

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Did they truly think she was such a fool to believe their tale?

"I very much doubt it, young man!" Marianne replied with a condescending tone. There were some people that said that dying felt like climaxing, Marianne thought. Mr. Finch had never gotten her to that point, though. If she had to compare dying to sleeping with him, then she would have to guess that dying was a boring experience.

"Don't you have a house?" Marianne asked then. "You could have at least had the tendency to use one of the bedrooms! Are you no better than animals that you had to do it here, on the grass, where anyone could catch you?"

She pointed her wand at the young man. "Are you enjoying this, young man? Is this some kind of perversion of yours?"

Even though Marianne didn't enjoy sex (with her husband, at least) she knew that there were people with all sorts of weird fetishes. Apparently, there were those who found it thrilling to have sex in public. Couldn't they have shagged at Padmore Park instead of tainting her party?

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   Juliana Ainsworth

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this set is by mj and i LOVE it

They were being accused of trying to have sex in the garden, and it didn't feel real. He looked around the garden, in search of anyone or anything that might help explain how the gaping hole in the woman's stomach had disappeared without a trace, but there was nothing. The only thing they had was their word, and very clearly this woman was too scandalized by her own assumptions to hear them out.

"I was not enjoying anything," he said indignantly, pushing himself to his feet. His brows furrowed in anger and he stepped towards the socialite. "I thought she was dying. There was a hole in her stomach—there was—but then it disappeared. That's why she looks like..." He looked back down at her, flushing as he caught sight of the curve of her breast peeking out from the hole in her dress. He couldn't deny it looked suspect.

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

It was hard for Juliana to even hear what the woman was saying; all of her attention was focused on trying to cover herself with the scraps of her dress, which was not going well. How was she going to get home? She couldn't go find her mother dressed like this (or rather undressed like this).

Her ears were buzzing, perhaps from nerves or perhaps from the jinx that had insisted on tugging on them. Jules tried to force her eyes to focus and her gaze landed on the gentleman's coat. Without really giving it a second thought, she edged over to retrieve it from the ground and wrapped herself up inside it, hugging it tightly to her to cover her bare stomach. It was far too large, but at least she wasn't naked anymore.

"Hope you don't mind," she said a little distantly to him, and then tried to focus on making herself as small as possible in the hopes that she might simply disappear.

The following 1 user Likes Juliana Ainsworth's post:1 user Likes Juliana Ainsworth's post
   Lachlan MacFusty

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

There was a hole somewhere else in her body, but Marianne was too much of a lady to comment on that.

She nearly gasped when the young woman bent over to pick up his coat. At least she covered herself with it. At least she felt properly ashamed for her actions, unlike that indignant young man!

They were lucky that this was her party and she didn't want it ruined by two horny young people! Melody's high libido had already brought enough ruin to the Finches, she didn't need her events to be avoided because people would think they were targeted by perverts!

"You are both going to leave at once!" Marianne snapped at them. "At once! You will take the lady and apparate to your house, or anywhere, but you will not stay at my party any longer!"

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   Alice Dawson, Juliana Ainsworth

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this set is by mj and i LOVE it

Lachlan opened his mouth to complain, but quickly realized he did not have the authority nor the leverage to argue against her demand. Anyways, it wasn't like staying here would do any good. They still had a chance to get out of here before their names were circulated around the whole party. He could figure out why she wasn't dead and what had happened to cause the wounds to disappear once they were safe from the patronizing words of the hostess.

"You're wrong," he said pointedly to the hostess as he moved to help the other woman up off the floor. "But we'll go. Just - go back to your party and we'll go." He shot the younger woman a look. If she tried to argue they would be in no better situation than if they apparated off together.

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   Kieran Abernathy, Marianne Finch

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— way too attractive set by mj <3 —

Juliana watched them both with wide eyes. She still didn't feel as though she had really caught up to what was happening, and had drawn the shoulders of the coat up so that the lapels covered her chin and mouth, as though his jacket might protect her from this.

The gentleman was looking at her again. Jules blinked. "I can't apparate," she said, because it had still not entirely dawned on her that the woman wanted them to leave together.

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   Kieran Abernathy

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules