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Welcome to Charming, the year is now 1894. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.

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Queen Victoria was known for putting jackets and dresses on her pups, causing clothing for dogs to become so popular that fashion houses for just dog clothes started popping up all over Paris. — Fox
It would be easy to assume that Evangeline came to the Lady Morgana only to pick fights. That wasn't true at all. They also had very good biscuits.
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Dark Side of the Moon
#1
22nd July, 1890 — Whizzhard Books, Local Authors Day
Lupine Lawlessness: Why Lycanthropes Don’t Deserve to Live.

Morwenna scowled as she read the sign once again through the window of Whizzhard Books. She had heard only a few words of Picardy's lecture but it had been more than enough to confirm in her mind that he had not changed a jot since he had worked at the Ministry and his so-called literature was quite as unpleasant when read aloud as it was in writing. Somehow it was so much worse when others were listening, seemingly nonplussed by the bigotry and bile spreading like a cancer through the room.

She had been stalking around the front entrance, probably looking a little unwell to passers-by but for once it was not due to the changes of the moon. He had only been a few steps away from being a zealot at the Ministry and twenty years had passed since then: Morwenna was pleased to say that she would never admit such a man to the werewolf capture unit now that she was in charge but the department had been different then. Would she feel the same had she not been bitten? Probably. She had never liked a bigot.

Movement inside told her that the lecture was over at last and, taking a breath, Morwenna re-entered the shop. She had sat on the fence for too long on this subject, passing along any request from the Prophet for a quote and purposefully keeping her silence after the Urquart girl was bitten, but perhaps the time was right to retaliate? She picked up a copy of the book, approaching Picardy with a polite smile.

"You ought to be careful, Mr Picardy, less the lycanthropes bite back. I'm told it can be quite sharp."



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   Idunn Fraser

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#2
Emerett fought the urge to raise an eyebrow at the next person before him, holding his book. Though he had surveyed the audience closely as he read and through the questions, he had not seen her: either he had missed her, or she had not bothered to attend.

But it was not as if the present head of the Creatures department was not aware of his views, so he was surprised that she would venture over to him now, when as far as he knew, she had never had much to say.

What was this: a pleasant word of advice, or a warning? Emerett did his utmost not to scoff. “I have no doubt of that, Mrs. Skeeter,” Emerett replied, smiling wryly, “but it is a risk some of us must dare take, for education’s sake.” (Indeed, enlightenment would not be too strong a word.)

“Though I daresay it would be within the Ministry’s power to offer some standing protection if they thought me in real danger!” His brief laugh and general lightness of tone might presume he was joking, but as a matter of fact Emerett thought that, until he had some hitwizards tasked with his protection or the last werewolves in Britain had been arrested, the Ministry had been grossly negligent. As if the attack on his own wife had not been proof enough.


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   Idunn Fraser, Juliana Ainsworth

#3
Education indeed! Morwenna had heard quite enough of this man’s idea of education over the years to be quite sure it was little more than fearmongering. The only thing she held in Mr Picardy’s favour was the fact that he himself seemed to genuinely believe what he was peddling and it wasn’t a cynical grab for wealth and attention. He certainly didn’t need a boost to the former and such an incendiary stance was bound to invoke the latter but it didn’t seem to be his end goal.

It was, however, a very small thing to find admirable about a person.

“It would depend how stretched the budget was that month,” Morwenna replied drily, aware that at least one person was watching them with interest. “You must let us know if you receive any threats of course. Serious ones naturally.”

Morwenna only hoped that those who disagreed with Picardy in print, and in person, would be legion.

“Yours being such a certain set of opinions there will always be those that disagree.”



[Image: rjts7m.png]
MJ knows my soul rings to the rune of this iconic hat
#4
“Oh, I pass them all onto the Auror office,” he replied swiftly, not at all joking. He still had an old connection or two from his youth there, and the sort of threats he got - the attempted arson to his Wellingtonshire house only a fortnight ago! - were best dealt with somewhere that wielded more power than the Hogsmeade constabulary and more inclination to be of service than Mrs. Skeeter’s whole department.

He did not think Mrs. Skeeter had the faintest desire to offer him so much as a token apology, never mind protection, and never mind actual change.

“Indeed there will,” Emerett acknowledged - not everyone would see sense, and he could not help that - “but as long my opinions are shared by the right people we may still make some difference here.” What was public adulation worth to him? Little enough. What he required was for the people with the power to impose the necessary changes, the people who mattered, to start listening.

Or for the Ministry to find new people for those positions, of course.



#5
Morwenna fought the sudden urge to inflict a bat bogey hex on the man and instead focussed on keeping her expression neutral. Her entire career had been dogged by the right people – the kind that never truly went away, not matter how hard one worked or how much progress seemed possible, they were always waiting in the shadows, a new batch of clod-headed men who shared a club and all had the same cousins.

The right sort in Mr Picardy’s estimation were of course the kind that would agree with him, but Morwenna felt the deeper meaning perfectly well. No matter how many muggleborn women were elected to the Wizengamot, or how many black men married into Jewish families were elevated to the highest position in the land, there would always be someone like Emerett Picardy waiting to step in and sway the country back to his way of thinking.

Would it be an overreaction to have him assassinated?

“What precisely is it you’re hoping to change? You know yourself we register all werewolves and monitor them at the full moon – surely you wouldn’t advocating executing innocent people for something they had no say in becoming?”


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   Juliana Ainsworth

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#6
Emerett scoffed out a laugh as though the last she had said was quite preposterous. “My dear woman, I am not advocating doing anything at all to innocents,” he returned, brushing off her curtness as though she were the one overreacting. (Naturally the truth of the matter came down to what one designated the ‘innocent people’ in all this: Emerett could not see the slightest innocence in the wolves that hid their claws by day to prowl amongst the sheep.)

He cleared his throat and regarded her with a knowing look at part of what she had just said. All werewolves?” He echoed, arching an eyebrow incredulously. “Now, Mrs. Skeeter, despite the Werewolf Capture Unit’s best efforts - and yours I’m sure -” (he did not believe that for a moment, but he could at least feign being on the same side) “I think we both know the figures there are not reassuring.” Registration, monitoring! As if they did any of that, and did not sit about twiddling their thumbs and hoping werewolves would out themselves in broad daylight. If all the werewolves in Britain were already properly supervised, how on earth were there fatal attacks publicised every year or two? Did they even know which werewolf had turned Urquart’s daughter into one? Emerett doubted it.

“Why, what changes are you striving for?” He supposed she would be frothing at the mouth to leave her own mark on the department in one way or another.


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   Juliana Ainsworth

#7
If he called her ‘dear woman’ again there was a strong possibility that Morwenna was going to smack him one. The supercilious look on his face as he questioned the work of her department - and she knew, by extension, her own competency - was quite enough to get her blood boiling. Perhaps she could claim some form of self-defence? If she cursed him she would certainly be defending her nerves as he was succeeding in getting on every one of them right now and then some.

“Tolerance Mr Picardy. A thing we in the civilised world see as the only step towards the future.”

The worst of it was that he wasn’t entirely wrong about the figures: they weren’t as good as she would have liked but, unfortunately, she knew in her heart they could never be perfect under her tenure without significant changes to the Ministry’s hiring policy. And it wasn’t as though she was going to turn in either of the young men she had met who were in the same state as her, albeit with a significantly less stringent relationship with keeping their clothing in good repair.



[Image: rjts7m.png]
MJ knows my soul rings to the rune of this iconic hat
#8
Of all the answers she might have given, tolerance was perhaps the most maddening: one could not shake their heads at tolerance without seeming unChristian for it. But what it was, as a Ministerial policy on this particular terrain - no doubt that was Minister Ross’ byword in every regard, tolerance - was a damning show of weakness, an admission that she and her department were pleased to capitulate and dress up a defeat of the civilised world as showing clemency. (So had Julius Caesar done in his Bellum Civile, just before he destroyed the Republic.)

“An admirable statement, Mrs. Skeeter,” Emerett said coolly, tiring of feigning excessive cordiality to so tiresome a woman. If he had not been convinced of this already, here was another sign that her policies would help speed the collapse by doing none of the boldness that was needed.

But then, she was a woman. What had he expected? “Though in practice,” he added sagely, as if he had any right to offer ‘friendly’ advice, “you may well find that protecting peace requires something of a firmer hand from the government.” They were in the bookshop; perhaps he could direct her towards Romans 13:4 or some Aquinas or Augustine. Some wars were just and worthy of being waged, and taking the easy way out of an issue by denying it ought to bite her back one day. “A little public justice is undoubtedly overdue.” But if she would rather sacrifice innocent human lives than the freedom of a few murderous werewolves, that was, unfortunately, her prerogative. For the moment.



#9
When Morwenna had been a girl, long before the magical world had reared its head and changed the course of her life forever, she had seen a public hanging in Cork. The city had been overcrowded, tensions high and labour sparse for the inhabitants and inevitably there had been violence, theft and then the very particular kind of violence that the public officials called justice.

Public justice.

Morwenna nearly spat the words back at him but she doubted his supercilious mind and cold heart could begin to comprehend the horror of a public spectacle of that kind. He would probably enjoy it. Certainly she knew there was those that did: at nine she had seen people actually cheer as a man writhed and struggled for the crime of stealing food.

“You’re-” She growled out before hesitating. What good would it do to let him know what she really thought of him? He probably had a shrewd idea anyway and it would do her no good to make a spectacle of herself for his sake. “You’re forgetting that justice belongs to the weak and the fatherless, Mr Picardy. Isn’t that what the bible says? Do you know the bible at all? I’m never sure with wizards you see. It contains this rather old fashioned notion that that we ought to be kinder to one another. And more tolerant,” she added, with a pointed eyebrow.


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   Emerett Picardy

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#10
If he had been in any doubt of her stance on the matter - sorry and weak as it was - the seething start of her response solidified it, even as she reined herself back in. She was almost a little feral, herself. But what an utter waste of the Ministry office, to have given it to her. How much longer would she be in it, preaching tolerance until werewolves (and vampires and hags and all manner of ungodly half-breeds) ran rampant?

And how much longer could he stand to listen to her? Not another moment, as a matter of fact - her bringing up the bible to throw in his face was quite intolerable. “For I am not seeking my own benefit, but the benefit of many, so that they may be saved,” Emerett quoted, in a more caustic tone still than any of his answers yet had been, because how dare she try and lecture him.

“Now, while I would love to hear how precisely you hope to absolve all werewolves of their sins,” he ground out, rather wishing he did not have to turn the other cheek, “I am afraid I don’t have time today for a full lecture. As you can see,” he waved a careless hand at the few other people still milling around from after his talk, “I am extremely busy.”

And Mrs. Skeeter was, evidently, a lost cause.



#11
Morwenna took a calming breath: had she not been a woman who carried herself with dignity (and, more to the point, walked with a cane) then she might have challenged him to a duel on the basis that he was an impudent, smug bastard who deserved to be shown up for the coward he was.

Perhaps she could hit him with her stick instead? It did have a brass head that seemed made for just such a purpose but such brutish behaviour was beneath her, whatever Mr Picardy might have to say about her wolf nature. At least she was only a beast three nights of the month.

“I expect it would be wasted on you anyway,” Morwenna replied with narrowed eyes, opting to save her breath for someone whose mind could be changed. And as unpleasant as the encounter had been at least she had confirmed one thing to herself: there was no way he had created Marlowe Forfang for his own publicity. She doubted he could even manage pretending to be a supporter of werewolf rights.

“Don’t let me keep you from your baying audience.” She added tartly, not deigning to glance at the few and far between folks who were gathered, before she left the shop and forced herself not to stop off at the Three Broomsticks to drink away her fury.


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   Elias Grimstone

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