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 five threads of five posts or more where your character experiences bad luck, such as stepping in a chamberpot, losing the rings for a wedding, etc...
Did You Know?
One of the cheapest homeless shelters in Victorian London charged four pennies to sleep in a coffin. Which was... still better than sleeping upright against a rope? — Jordan / Lynn
If he was being completely honest, the situation didn't look good, but Sylvano was not in the habit of being completely honest about anything. No reason to start now.
— Sylvano Capobiancoinyou & me & the war of the endtimes
She still couldn't shake the feeling that some great misunderstanding had happened somewhere in the whirlwind of the last few minutes but when she searched his face she found no mirroring uncertainty.
"To what end?" She protested after a few miserable moments. This was a unique torture made just for her but she'd wanted candor for years and now she had it. "I wouldn't know how to run your house or - or host things. Your society wouldn't have me." She was somehow rambling another unplanned list at him. "Children are... And I work. I won't give up wandmaking." She added defiantly as if the possibility had just occurred to her.
"I don't own a house and I don't host things," Elliot pointed out curtly, because he could not resist. But she had a point, with some of the rest of it — he thought he would rather like to have children, and she would have to get used to Society sooner or later if she was going to be his wife.
"And I don't recall asking you to give up wand making," he added, with a wry smile. "But maybe some of these are details we should discuss when both of us have our faculties."
Her defiant expression shifted to a puzzled frown. There were many things that hadn't made sense and he was really only adding to it. With a squint, she considered the possibility that he was doing it on purpose. She was starting to miss the elated buzz that had emboldened her to take that spontaneous floo trip.
"I sent my elf home." she said, raising an incredulous palm. "Perhaps you have too many faculties."
"No," Shaking her head like that made her whole body feel a bit sloshy in a pleasant way, coaxing a distracted giggle from her. She persisted, pulling her face into an intentionally serious expression. "I meant I sent my elf home because you wanted to discuss things tonight."
What logical faculties she had at the moment were still screaming for time to think over and make sense of all the things that had been said in the last few minutes but she also knew that nothing but horrific shame waited for her tomorrow. When whatever spell she as under now was broken.
"I'm not going to enumerate all the things that would make me a terrible wife for you again, some other time." She paused before muttering to herself, "Better to keep all the indignities together in one night."
They were going in a circle. "Temerita," Elliot said, accessing the — well, the temerity — to use her full name. "You do know that I have things that would make me a bad husband, too? I also have — indignities." This whole conversation was a bit of an indignity for him, but he did not think that she would appreciate it if he pointed that out. As it was, he was certainly sounding — exasperated.
"Elliot..." she murmured to herself. It had started as a sassy knee-jerk reaction to his exasperated use of her name but the novelty of using first names softened the delivery completely.
He wasn't listening. She shouldn't have had to list things off for him at all - marriage was a simple equation after all - but even when she had he didn't seem to get it. Instead of repeating the list for him it echoed over in her mind while his own protests of inadequacy fell on deaf ears: Her station, her age, her social standing, her work, she was terrible with children...
An image came to her of an impossibly small baby with bright blue eyes ... a young child with impossibly soft curly black hair... a home that felt like hers ... theirs. Suddenly she was on her feet without any memory of deciding to stand, a hand reflexively reaching for the locket mirror she kept in her pocket.
She was calling him by his first name, and his chest warmed. He'd started it, technically, but Elliot could not stop the reaction.
And then she was standing, and reaching for the mirror he knew she used to scry. "Temerita?" Elliot said, getting to his feet in turn. He knew better — this had happened to them once before — but he was not thinking straight; too much had happened tonight. So he reached for her wrist and rested his fingers on it, and then he felt himself going under, like the floor was pulled out from under him —
into a house, a bit like this, but smaller, and a black-haired toddler was walking towards a woman's skirts on unsteady steps.
She didn't know - She couldn't tell... The flutter of images, blurred seamlessly with emotions and abstractions, had been sudden and striking. But not unprompted. She was what she was but it would be almost too easy to imagine what their his children would look like after she'd brought the subject up. And that had always been the trouble with her Sight; It was hard to tell where she ended and it began.
She watched him stand but heard her name as if from a distance. The mirror would help, she assured herself. Books liked to say mirrors were a tool for scrying but for her just looking into one could sometimes lift the enigmatic veil that shrouded her Sight. She had come to rely on it to bring clarity when things got muddled or confused but this time the mirror never made it out of her pocket.
She felt the warmth of his touch for just a moment before the clarity found her all at once. Instead of grounding her in the present she fell headlong into an unquestionable vision. It was so clear and so specific. If she could look around she'd be able to count the fibers of the rug on the floor but her eyes were glued to the toddling little thing with the same black hair she'd seen before. There was no cloud of class disparity or shame from short comings. There was only warmth and the occasional lurch in her stomach when the child swayed on their feet.
The dimness of the present room slowly replaced bright daylight as the vision slipped away and she took a shaky breath. She searched his eyes but didn't really need to ask. She'd felt him there just as she had the first time this had happened to them.
Elliot was captivated by the toddler, a girl with dark hair, so much so that he could hardly focus on the room around them. The child was theirs, he knew it without the vision telling them — she had his hair and Temerita's slate blue eyes. She was laughing as she tried to walk.
The vision slipped away too quickly, and Elliot was left with his fingers pressed to her wrist in the evening of his parlor. "Temerita —" he said, and broke off. He ought to apologize for dragging them both into a longer vision, but he didn't want to lie — it was such a relief to see a vision that was not bookended by death.
A vision of them, peaceful.
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August 24, 2025 – 3:43 AM
Last modified: September 3, 2025 – 10:13 PM by Temerita Reid.
The vision slipped away but the sense of clarity had not. Never before had she wanted a vision to continue past its end. Throughout her life her Sight had been something she feared, something that defined her, and eventually something she'd learned to live with but now she could see it for the window it could be. She swallowed heavily, her heart thrumming in her chest.
Elliot met her eyes, feeling firm, and steady. "Will you allow me to court you?" he asked, the bravery and the conviction of their vision swelling in his chest. He did not know what this would mean, should she say yes — but he knew what he wanted.
She was nodding before he even even finished asking but when he did the ending caught her by surprise. She'd been expecting something slightly different but remembered with a soft, sheepish laugh that courting did and should come before marriage. She moved to take his hand, still at her wrist, in hers and held his gaze squarely.
