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.
With the same account, complete eight different threads where your character interacts with eight different usergroups. At least one must be a non-human, and one a student.
Did You Know?
Braces, or suspenders, were almost universally worn due to the high cut of men's trousers. Belts did not become common until the 1920s. — MJ
Not yet, he countered silently. Kieran might not drop dead from drink tomorrow, but – how could he pretend it wasn’t taking its toll? It was a slow, painstaking poisoning, however he wanted to make excuses for it. He might not want to see it, but Jude wasn’t blind.
So what he wanted to do was clench his jaw and brush Kieran off him at the contact and the taunting question. Kieran knew that, and knew what the answer was, and he was continuing to provoke him anyway. Well, two could play at that game.
He changed tack. “How about this?” Jude murmured, low and breathy, and since the street was deserted, snaked his hands around Kieran’s sides. He curled his fingers into the waistband of Kieran’s trousers to pointedly pull him in closer, toying with the top button there as if he meant to undo it. And he probably could have gotten away with kissing him in the shadows of the streetlamps – but the stench of alcohol was already overpowering as he leant in to bring his lips close to Kieran’s ear. “Go home, Kieran,” he said, abruptly dropping his hands and the pretence. If his heart rate was elevated, it was only the frustration. “Sleep it off, and we’ll talk when you’re sober.”
Kieran was all wide-eyed surprise, through Jude coming closer and his hands on his belt loops, and he couldn’t hide the expression when Jude stepped back. He frowned up at the other man, sighed heavily, and shrugged at him. ”Sure,” Kieran said. Maybe he’d be better at getting out of this conversation when he was sober.
They made it the last few steps to Kieran’s building, and he managed to make it up the stairs without collapsing — although once he was in bed, he did only get his pants half off before hitting the mattress.
—
The pounding started at the top of his neck before hitting the back of his head, and by the time it hit the front Kieran had crawled to the wash bowl in the strange closet they used as a bathroom — although they had to go to a public privy for a real toilet or bath — and thrown up in it several times. Yellow bile hit the metal and splashed, which made him throw up again. When he was sure he emptied his stomach, he went to the sink to fill the pitcher with water drawn up from the well, and then drank it straight from the pitcher. From there, to the couch.
When the pounding started to fade, Kieran was starting to consider whiskey, or cannabis, or something else that would sap the feelings from his head and neck and stomach. He didn’t have any cannabis here, but they probably had whiskey. But he was still dehydrated. He sighed and padded over to the kitchen, where he nibbled at a roll Eileen had left.
He had a genius idea, then — one he’d tried a few times, but it made him feel like a degenerate and he didn’t want to do it much. He pulled a mug from the cabinet and poured some of the water from the pitcher into it. Now, to add a dash of whiskey —
When Kieran looked up from pulling the whiskey bottle out from one of the lower cabinets, he found Jude standing in front of the couch, which was unfortunate because Kieran’s wayward washbasin of sick was in front of it.
Hopefully Kieran had slept, and recovered somewhat. Jude didn’t know how much he would remember of the stunted conversation he had tried to have with him last night – but he half-hoped it had somehow been absorbed and perhaps quietly considered, so that he wouldn’t have to repeat it, directly, in the cold light of morning.
The sight that met him quickly stripped him of any hopes he’d had. Jude might’ve schooled his expression better, tried to disguise the tiredness or the frown or the sudden, flinty stare of disbelief, but too late: Kieran had looked up on the precipice of pouring whiskey into a mug, and seen him there. For his part, Kieran looked worse (and the room stank more badly than of alcohol) than he had before he’d slept.
“Ready for another round?” Jude asked, his tone brittle; he was trying to reason out this scene to be any less damning than it was, and failing. “Why not, it’s been all of five hours...” He nudged the washbowl of sick with his foot very slightly away, careful not to upend it. “And your stomach’s obviously empty.”
Kieran let the bottom of the whiskey bottle clink against the countertop, because he was watching Jude react to this. His expression was grave. He knew it hadn't looked good, but he also had not — anticipated being caught. (That he was thinking of this as being caught was also not good; he had been on the back-foot of their interactions for several hours now, and it was not a feeling that Kieran particularly liked.)
"Haven't you heard of a cure being the hair of the dog that bit you?" Kieran asked, raising an eyebrow and putting on a crooked smile that he hoped managed to bely a confidence he didn't feel.
There was a unfamiliar feeling of unease here, pervading the room between them. Not the usual tension of their arguments, but somehow more uncomfortable. Maybe because Kieran was – if not fully sober, then certainly the least drunk he had been in the last twelve hours, and he still seemed to think the scale of the discussion was one he could smooth away with a grin and a flippant remark.
“Not as a cure to the problem you have,” Jude countered sharply. A little hair of the dog was only masking the symptoms, not finding a cure; easing his hangover would change nothing of the larger issue here, except maybe exacerbate it. Pouring more drink on top of a drinking problem.
Whilst he waited for an answer, Jude leaned down to gingerly pick up the washbasin by him, trying not to breathe in the smell any more than necessary as he lifted his wand to vanish the vomit. Evidently Kieran had other priorities.
Jude was being sharp and vanishing vomit, and Kieran's shoulders bristled. He left the whiskey on the counter but picked up the pitcher of water, and stalked back over to the sofa. He set the pitcher down on the small coffee table with a clunk. He was silent in the beats that passed as he moved across the room, trying to get his thoughts together.
"How old were you," Kieran asked, tone sharp, "When you had your first drink?"
Kieran’s tone came back cutting, too – Jude could have expected that. He had not expected the question, though. He chewed on his tongue for a moment, wondering where this was going, and worried he already knew.
But if he was actually going to be serious about this (even just for a moment – and after the disaster of last night, a moment was better than he might have hoped for), he deserved seriousness in turn.
So Jude sank onto the arm of the sofa in concession to this, a crease between his eyebrows. “Sixteen, maybe?” he said eventually, knowing already that their childhoods had been too different to compare, and feeling appropriately chastised. “My parents let me have wine with dinner sometimes.” Special occasions, or as if they could swindle him into being better-behaved by new meaningless privileges. It had been that or smuggled bottles of wine and firewhiskey in his last year of Hogwarts, when everyone had been eager to break school rules. Jude hadn’t had a problem with the wine, but he had mostly steered clear of getting drunk, finding little appeal in the idea of losing control. In the years after that, he had mostly turned to ale, just casual pints in places like the Augurey – to fit in, as much as anything.
Kieran sat down on the bedraggled sofa and leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees, as he considered Jude. A faint smile of fondness appeared on his face at the image of teenaged Jude, drinking wine at dinner, in a dining room that was worth more than anything on Kieran's childhood street. It vanished when he admitted, "I think I was twelve."
He swallowed. "I don't know if it's possible for me to stop."
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. Twelve. Twelve was too young, and Kieran didn’t need to explain that by it he didn’t mean he had had his first drink, just the one. Jude understood that as from then, that that was where it had first begun. Something that had become a steady habit even before adulthood; something that had already been ingrained in him, by... someone else. Perhaps his mother, or whoever had been supposed to be looking after him then. Had they imagined this future as they let it happen, that Kieran would be suffering the effects from that decision for the rest of his life?
Still – “Anything’s possible,” Jude said lightly, but he was not trying to be glib by it. Kieran just seemed... so defeated here already, whether or not he had ever tried. And Jude believed this was – this was not like being a werewolf. This, surely, was something they could fight.
(They, he said – but this was another burden Jude couldn’t just shoulder for him, no matter how much he wanted to.)
He let out a slow breath. “You don’t have to answer this,” he ventured, and I promise I’ll stop asking, “but if you could stop – would you?” (Because if Kieran really had no will to, if he was content to simply submit to the hold drink had over him for the rest of his life, then this was already a lost cause.)
Kieran thought about Jude's question for a long beat. He ran one hand over his face. He wished there was something other than water and a few bites of a roll in his stomach. He wanted to ask if Jude would leave him, if he didn't try to give it up, but it was not the sort of question that could garner an honest answer. Besides — it was not the sort of question with a binding answer. There was no marriage for them; no contract of forever. Kieran didn't want one, either — he wanted Jude to choose him.
Finally he pulled his hand off his face and looked at Jude. "I don't know," Kieran answered. "Less, I'd like — but I don't know about stopping."
Kieran was thinking about it honestly, at least – or he had blanked out into sheer despair. But – less, he said. Less was something. Maybe less was enough, even, Kieran being pragmatic where Jude had leapt straight to too-ambitious ideals. Less was certainly possible.
So Jude shot him a small smile and a slight dip of his chin, trying hard to be hopeful and encouraging and pacified by this.
“I just worry that –” he stopped for a moment, to try and put his fears into words, “that if it doesn’t get better somehow, it’ll only end up getting worse for you.” Jude wasn’t an expert, but he had seen enough in the streets of London, that addictions didn’t just – plateau, become consistent at some eternally manageable level. Enough for Kieran today and tomorrow and next week would simply not be enough for him, another few years down the line.
And maybe it wasn’t killing Kieran yet, this wasn’t him entirely wrecked – but since Jude was hoping to be in his life for the foreseeable, that idea was one future he didn’t want to meet.
Kieran sighed. A defensive instinct rose in his chest, and he batted it down, knowing that defensiveness was what addicts did — knew that he wanted to fight for alcohol not because alcohol was his friend, but because he needed it. He huffed out another breath. Two sighs in a row was tough, but impossible to resist.
"I'll try," Kieran said, "Alright? I don't want to promise, but I'll try."
“I don’t need promises,” Jude said quickly. He didn’t. And he didn’t want to push it any further, not today, not when he was half-surprised the discussion had advanced even this far. He had aired his concerns, and Kieran his reservations – and that was enough, that was progress.
And he was almost certain that if he put too much pressure on this, deadlines or expectations, it would only go awry, be worse for them both. Jude sighed as well, an exhale of relief, and stretched his hand out to touch Kieran’s shoulder. Kieran had said he would try – “That’s all I really want.”
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