Charming is a Victorian Era Harry Potter roleplay set primarily in the village of Hogsmeade, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the non-canon village of Irvingly. Characters of all classes, both magical and muggle — and even non-human! — are welcome.
With a member driven story line, monthly games and events, and a friendly and drama-free community focused on quality over quantity, the only thing you can be sure of is fun!
"Are you always this forward?" He asked teasingly since it would be a very short thread if he just ignored her entirely. — Tobin Cartwright in Take A Peek
Did you know? Churchgoers and worshippers had to endure a foul stench during prayers due to the amount of bodies often stored within the vaults of churches and chapels.
Tiberius had received her letter while at work, and therefore hadn't bothered to open it up or read it until lunchtime. Antigone's letters weren't much of a priority with him, typically, and given the conversation that they'd had over the past weekend, he had assumed that she had just written to brag that her plan had come off without a hitch. Which was nice, of course, but of it's own accord, being able to execute her revenge would not earn her any more of the healing salve he'd crafted for her. The news could certainly wait until lunch, as he wouldn't be able to see her again until the weekend.
When he had opened it, though, he'd been immediately regretful over not having done so sooner. He'd penned a letter to his butler at once that read simply, "My wife is to be fetched home immediately." Then he'd gone about trying to find that hapless woman who had been given the run of the department to tell her that he was taking the rest of the day off--tell, not ask. The problem of it being lunch time meant that she was almost impossible to find, and after a brief, slightly frantic conversation with Claude where he proposed he just leave and his cousin advised him against it--with the little bit of wisdom that if she'd just discovered she was pregnant, she would hardly be giving birth in the next hour.
So it had taken a while for him to actually get away from work. By the time he left, he imagined that Antigone would already have been home, unless she was too ill to be moved. He had been fretting, ever since her letter, that the poison might result in the loss of the baby; while he couldn't really imagine being that attached to the future infant on a personal level, he did feel rather protective of it, the same way that one might be protective of one's house or one's horses or one's wand. An heir was a valuable thing--it was the only reason he'd bothered to marry at all, which meant it was essentially Antigone's entire purpose in life--and he would not have it endangered by her petty schoolgirl squabbling.
The butler greeted him at the door to take his coat, which Tiberius took to mean the man had already successfully fetched Antigone. "Well, is she home?" he asked immediately. "Is she alright?" Of course that was a bit of a stupid question, he knew very well that she was incredibly ill. Without even waiting for an answer, Tiberius climbed the stairs to her room.
Tig was in miserable spirits, things had not gone to plan. What had meant to happen was she was going to feign illness at breakfast (after sitting herself near Ellory) and then shortly after, when no one was about to catch her, she would drug herself and actually be sick. Then one way or another the girls would believe she'd been poisoned and of course the prime suspect would be Ellory. She'd be disgraced and whatever else followed, and in the meantime she'd recover from the poisoning and reap the rewards.
Except she had actually felt ill at breakfast and then she had fainted. She had thought it very convenient that she felt under the weather, it made her performance more convincing. She had gone through with the poisoning and after that it was all a nightmare. Tig hadn't been prepared for how terrible she felt, but she certainly hadn't been prepared to find out that she was expecting. By some cruel twist of fate, it hadn't been lost to her sickness, not yet anyway.
She had been more upset about that news than the fact that she was revisiting her breakfast so soon after consuming it. The one upside was if everyone thought Ellory had poisoned a pregnant woman they would hate her twice as much. It was a poor consolation while she felt like death warmed over, however.
Tig hadn't wanted to write to Tiberius about the news but she she obviously couldn't hide it forever and he probably wouldn't be pleased if he somehow found out through another source, so she had made the effort to pick up a quill and write to him from her sickbed. She had expected an owl to return some time later, but what she got was a summons home. Had she been fetched unexpectedly at any other time, she would have been pleased as punch, but the thought of travel in any fashion quite literally made her sick.
Somehow she had survived returning home without expiring which, rather dramatically, she had thought a real possibility. The cool embrace of bed was so welcome when she got to it, that she nearly wept. So it was hardly welcome when the someone who barged in turned out to be her husband. "Not you," she groaned, pulling the sheets over her face so only her eyes were peeking over the top of them. She quickly found it made her too warm so she flung them back again. "Why did you make me come home? I was suffering very nicely where I was, thanks." Had he brought her home because she was sick or because his visits to her bedroom had apparently paid off?
Tiberius couldn't help but roll his eyes at her antics as he walked in. It seemed her stint at finishing school had done nothing to combat her childishness. When she finally threw back the blankets, he was struck by the fact that she really didn't look well. She was pale, to the point that her cheeks almost looked green, and she looked... thin. Not as though she'd lost weight, or anything, but just sort of emotionally thin. It was obvious that she'd been ill for a while, and seriously ill, too. He was actually a little impressed that she'd gone to such lengths for her revenge plot--or he would have been, if he wasn't now aware that her scheme might be endangering their child.
"Ungrateful brat," he hissed at her as he entered. She'd been begging to be taken away from the finishing school since before she'd even arrived there, and now that she was gone, she had the nerve to be sarcastic and snarky about the fact that he'd removed her?
She didn't look well at all. Tiberius was only a few steps into the room, but he crossed back to the door and called down loudly towards the butler, "Where in Merlin's name is the healer? Go fetch one, and see that he stays!" Tiberius didn't have the patience to dally around with this; he needed her well, and immediately. He wouldn't recklessly endanger his child, like she had done. Though he couldn't really blame her for this; it wasn't as though she had known about the child before hand.
Or had she? Had her letter this morning to inform him only been an act? Tiberius was aware that his wife hated him; he didn't think she would be capable of planning to abort their child, but she had surprised him before. Still, the entire plan seemed a little too well thought out, too clever, for Antigone. If she had known, and had wanted to get rid of it... no, if this had been a part of her plan, she wouldn't have told him that the poison had been her idea. It would have been better if he'd believed that Ellory had been behind it, as everyone else would have--otherwise, she ran the risk of his holding it against her if something were to happen.
And he was absolutely going to hold it against her if something happened.
Anger radiating from him like heat from a stove, he crossed to her bed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder, roughly bringing her up into a sitting position and forcing her face only a half dozen inches from his. "How long have you known?"
Tig had yet to fall ill in her married life and she came to the conclusion, in the most abrupt of manners, that she hadn't married a man with a great bedside manner. She whined in protest as he sat her up, but she could hardly do anything about it. She felt twice as nauseous sat up than she had seconds ago and consequently jammed her eyes shut to try and counteract it. "Known what?" she finally managed to ask, and irritably too. There were a dozen snarky responses floating around head but she didn't trust herself to deliver them coherently without feeling even more sick to her stomach.
Tig opened her eyes and took a few seconds to compose herself a little and then dared a snarky response. She did hope it would prompt him to let her lay down again though. "Do you always manhandle the sick?" She moved her head a little too much and the room started to move more than it should. She groaned and slumped towards him, if only to make it more still. It then, finally, dawned on her what he'd been referring to. Of course he was referring to the contents of her letter. "A day," she mumbled.
There were certainly better times and places for her to exercise her sarcasm than when he had her at arm's length and was running through the mental gamut of what he could do to her without running any additional risk to the child she was carrying. Tiberius frowned when she finally did answer, but decided that she was probably telling the truth. He half-growled, "I manhandle anyone who might be in the process of killing my children," then let go of her shoulder--but the manner in which he did so was more like a shove than just a letting go. He practically tossed her back down onto the bed, then rose and paced the length of the room, restless.
"Does this thing have an antidote?" he asked, after he'd made a full circuit of the room once. Surely she didn't have the antidote, or she would have consumed it by now (unless she was really that fixated on her vengeance against Ellory), but if an antidote existed, maybe he could acquire it. Or even make it. Even if he knew what had been in the poison she'd consumed, though he doubted that Antigone had gone so far as to verify its contents. His aunt Mariana might have been able to diagnose the symptoms well enough to cook up something... but he didn't want to get her involved. While he certainly didn't care one way or the other about Antigone's little spat with Ellory, he didn't know what Mariana would think of it, or if she would be inclined to tell Olivia. If Olivia heard, she likely wouldn't take kindly to being used as a means of exacting revenge by a school girl, no matter how fond of or indifferent to Ellory she was.
Tiberius didn't want her to die. If she had planned this timing purposefully, then things might be different, and he might have felt differently--though he still wasn't sure if he'd go so far as to get Mariana involved. The woman had never much cared for him, and he wasn't sure he entirely trusted her. Still, she could probably be counted on to save the baby, if it was able to be saved--though it would almost certainly be at the expense of Antigone's life, if he presented it as making no difference to him. Things had not come quite that far, though. It was still early in the pregnancy (he assumed), and early in the illness, so perhaps no permanent damage had been done.
Though relieved to no longer be vertical, Tig made a noise of displeasure and pain as the sudden jerky movement caused an uncomfortable headache to feel even more uncomfortable. Of course he was being inconsiderate because of that. "I don't know," she began slowly, a hand moving to cup her forehead. "It's only meant to last... A couple days. Wouldn't have done anything too bad." What she didn't know was if it was meant to be as bad as if what or if it was only as bad as it was because she also happened to be expecting?
Tig didn't care to know what would happen if, by the time she was well again, she was no longer expecting anything. She had by now come to conclusion that she didn't want to find out. "I wouldn't have taken it if I knew," she confessed, almost reluctantly. She sounded angry but it was only half anger and half because she felt terrible.
Tiberius had continued to pace as she spoke, but at her last sentence, he paused. The emotion in her tone seemed wrong--but then, what did he know about emotion? Tone aside, her words were important and impactful... if they were true. Looking at her incredulously, he thought that they were. He was vague aware, however, that he very badly wanted that to be the case, and wondered if he was being affected by some degree of wistful thinking, seeing what he wanted to see. He hoped not. He had never cared whether she hated him or not, or at least, he'd told himself as much, but if she were actually capable of maliciously trying to dispose of their offspring, that would change things. That would nullify her purpose as a wife, which would make it a very hard argument to keep her around. Tiberius wanted to keep her around, and he was finding fewer and fewer reasons to deny it.
"That's a relief," he admitted with a huff, pacing to her bedside and sitting down on the edge, with his back to her. He let his shoulders slump, as though his entire frame were deflating--as if his wrath had been the only thing holding him together. He could almost feel the knots of tension in his shoulders and back as he forced his muscles to relax. He hadn't realized, until this moment, how tense he'd actually been.
After a moment, he asked, in a much softer tone, "How do you feel? A healer might not be able to cure it but they could probably alleviate some of the symptoms." He paused. "Until I find an antidote, anyway." He still had no intention of leaving his future child in this precarious position any longer than was strictly necessary.
The way he looked at her, she wasn't sure if she was imagining it, but she was sure there was some element of disbelief in it. Had he thought that she'd purposely poisoned herself knowing? She wondered if she would have gone ahead if she had known. It wasn't as though she wanted a child yet but she also wasn't sure if she would have been able to lie so convincingly if she had. Still, she could be vaguely insulted that he had assumed the worst of her.
"I feel wonderful. Exactly how I've always wanted to feel." Sarcasm somehow made her feel the tiniest bit less terrible, possibly because it was better than admitting she felt as though she'd been trampled by a stampede of centaurs. "I didn't think it would be this bad," she murmured a few moments later. Had she underestimated the potion or had her condition complicated the matter? Or was her threshold for suffering lower than she had thought? "If you need the bottle, I'm afraid it's in Ellory Pendergast's room back at the school. Or it was a week ago, anyway."
While her sarcasm wasn't altogether unexpected, it certainly wasn't appreciated. He was trying to help, and she seemed almost peeved at him for it. Of course, that was just like her, the child. That was why she had the marks he'd given her--there was no gentler way to teach someone so stubborn. Well... she'd learn eventually. Tiberius was not a mouse, to tolerate an obstanant wife whom other men would talk about. He didn't want Antigone to become a mouse, either, but she could do with a little... taming.
"You don't think about anything," he said, coldly. There was nothing he could do to help her now, it seemed, unless he got Mariana involved. He was hardly going to go snooping through some child's room at a boarding school, just to gain some clues about what he might be able to concoct as an antidote. He wouldn't breathe a word of this to anyone, though--how could he ever recover from the embarassment of having so foolish a woman for his wife? No, this would stay within his house--even if the poison ended up killing her. Even if it ended up killing his child, or worse, causing it to be born damaged and useless. Tiberius' impotence in this situation was a frustratingly new feeling to him--powerlessness didn't suit him.
"Why on earth would you ingest something if you didn't know what was in the damn thing?" he spat irriably, neither looking at her nor really expecting an answer. The renewed anger in his chest gave him strength to rise, and he got up from the bed and paced over to the dresser. "If you end up sick to death, I'll lay your idiot corpse out in a ditch for your burial. And then I'll give all your fine bridal things to Ellory for a present," he threatened. If the child ended up dead--well, he wouldn't give word to any threats on that front. It would be better for her if she died, too, in that case.
Tig averted her eyes away from him and curled up a little more where she lay, an indignant scowl on her face. She had to admit that he was right. She had been careless and hasty in the respect of the poison itself, she had given such little thought to the consequences if it went horribly wrong. What if it had turned out to be a fatal poison instead? What if something in it had disagreed with her and something that oughtn't to have been fatal was? When the thought had briefly crossed her mind before taking it she had stubbornly reasoned that if she died she would at least no longer have to be married to Tiberius. It had been a childish argument for truly she didn't have such a low regard for her own life, it was simply haste, arrogance, and the desire to see Ellory suffer that had made her act so recklessly.
She made a noise of irritation into her pillow but said nothing, not wanting to verbally admit her foolishness but knowing that it had indeed been just that. After some more scowling into her pillow and some dithering over what to say, she finally spoke. "I'm not going to die." As if to punish her for her flippancy, the nausea intensified as did her overall temperature. Tig muffled a groan into her pillow and didn't dare speak more. Apparently she felt self-conscious about throwing up in front of her husband.
When Antigone spoke again, it soothed his mood a little--as much as it could be, probably, while he was still rather powerless to step in and save the life of either his wife or his child. For the first time since he'd entered the room, she didn't have any smart words for him, no rebuttals. At first this was a relief, and he found as though he'd won the conversation--as if they were things to be won--but not a moment later, his relief turned to suspicion, and he began to wonder if the lack of flippancy were indicative of some much larger problem. He had been a little shocked by how sick she looked; now he was stricken with the idea that she sounded sick, too.
But she'd told him she wasn't going to die. If she was confident of that, that was a good thing. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tiberius had a vague notion that fear was the ultimate cause of death--that no one ever submitted to that long sleep until they had been consumed with the knowledge that death was coming. When Antigone, his stubborn mule of a wife, said that she wouldn't die, it gave him an illogical conviction that she indeed wouldn't, despite how affected she currently was.
Turning back to look at her, Tiberius surveyed her face. He knew what he was looking for, though he wasn't thinking of it consciously. He had seen it often enough in faces of his victims, before he'd killed them. Animals had it, too, once they'd been hurt. The look of an injured thing about to die. The look of someone who had already submitted to death. It wasn't anywhere in his wife's pale face. And Antigone was stubborn--or he supposed he could say strong--so it wasn't likely to show up.
"You'd best not," he growled, "Or now you'll be a liar and a fool, both." He crossed his arms, not sure what to say next. He felt that this was about the end of the conversation, but he couldn't just leave off at that. After a pregnant pause, he said quietly, "I'll have a potions and poisons healer here tomorrow. We'll tell them you may have eaten some off thing. No word about poison at all--if your scheme plays out, then fine, but I'll have no part in facilitating it." He considered a moment. "The healer should be able to do something for you, anyway."
Against her better judgement, for her stomach felt ominous, she murmured a quick, somewhat rushed retort. "I think I'd be too preoccupied by the dying part to care much." She partly regretted her decision as soon as she shut her mouth and desperately willed the nausea to subside. She was, however, pleased to hear about the healer not that she hadn't seen enough of them already. She didn't think she'd seen any specialized in poisons yet, and if they couldn't fix her then they weren't very good at their job, not that that would be a consolation to her if she was still suffering.
Feeling more and more nauseous by the second, she ardently wished he would leave. In an effort to smother the mounting sense that she was going to hurl, she turned so she was face-down on her pillow. She wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or a direct result, but it seemed to make it worse. Tig rolled onto her side and with one hand made a weak but almost frantic attempt at gesturing for him to go.
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