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.
Gogo had been to the black lake plenty of times on the Hogsemeade side, but there was something that was still rather special about visiting it on the Hogwarts side. It may have technically been the same body of water, but it seemed so different, in part, due to the fact that people here told so many more stories about it: the Giant squid, the mermaids, he had never seen any of them in Hogsmeade or on the boat over, but he's made it his mission to see at least one or the other before the year was out. Of course, that meant spending a great deal of time by the lake, which wasn't easy considering the sort of weather they had some days now that summer was over, but it was nice enough out today that Gogo had decided to fit in some exploration time there.
It was still too chilly to actually go in and swim, besides he wasn't sure if that was even allowed, but he did roll up his pantlegs and wade in a bit. He wasn't sure what he expected from it. He knew, of course, that Mermaids didn't tend to just swim up to people and tug at their ankles while they were wading, but whatever he was thinking was going to happen, it didn't. He found a few good skipping stones, but after awhile, he started to get bored. Then, suddenly, he spotted a boy that he recognized at least by sight as being from his year, Spritely or Spryly or something around the edge of the lake as well and a plan popped into his head to make things more interesting for at least a moment. He filled his hands with water, his behind a tree at the waters edge and, when the Gryffindor was close enough, jumped out and squeezed his hands together squirting the other boy with the water. As he did so, he called out "Hey!" with the intent of getting his attention and, perhaps, giving him a direct shot in the face.
Hogwarts was very different from anything Spryly was used to. Crowded buildings and dirt and the thick London smog, those comprised the scenery he was used to, but at Hogwarts everything was big and spacious and airy. There was actual proper grass, nice grass in fact, and a lake! Spryly had never seen such a huge body of water in all his life! The dark unfathomable depths actually unnerved the young Gryffindor, but it equally fascinated him. As such, he had stolen away to get a closer look at the lake. He hadn't really seen it since the boat ride but then it had been dark and he'd been trying to hide the fact that he was scared stiff of falling in.
He was looking about on the floor for a rock or a stone to throw at the water, when something very cold and wet hit him in the face. He let out a holler of surprise, stumbling backwards away from the source of the dampness. "What you go and do that for?!" he exclaimed, wiping his face on his sleeves. When he felt reasonably sure that his face was dry-ish, he finally took a look at the other boy. "I know you!" As soon as he blurted it out, he realized it was a silly thing to say because he didn't really know him and of course he would have seen the boy around, they were the same age and thus had classes together. "You've got that funny to say name, ain't you? Strawberry or something." Lots of people actually had 'funny' names at Hogwarts in his opinion, he assumed all the peculiar ones were the rich students.
Gogo laughed and dried of his hands on his pantlegs. "Not Strawberry, Striebel." he corrected jovially as he strode closer to the other boy. " It's German. That's why it's funny to say. But you can call me Gogo. Everyone does back home. Honest, everyone. Even our priest." He was fully aware that Gogo was, to most, an even odder name than Striebel, but it didn't bother him. Odd was just another word for unique and, besides, most people at Hogwarts weren't in the position to speak about the oddness of names. Even Spryly or Spritely or whoever was standing in front of him, didn't have the most common name that ever was. He didn't see the point in bringing that up, though. Some people were rather more bothered than him by the oddness of their names and he certainly wasn't out to ruin anyone's day. Even if he had just sprayed a relative stranger with cold lake water.
"You should spray me back too!" he announced suddenly with a mischievously eager grin spreading across his face."We can have a water fight! It's not really that cold yet." It was, but that didn't make him any less interested in a water fight. If he could, he would swim and have water fights until there was snow to stand in as a substitute. They were wizards after all. It wasn't as if they couldn't just dry themselves magically right after. Of course, he didn't know that spell yet, but he was sure it was in a book somewhere and the castle wasn't really that far away.
Placed as part of the COMC niffler coin hunt.
Please do not remove!
Spryly scrunched up his nose and grinned crookedly in amusement at the boy's name. "Alright then, Gogo." It wasn't that he didn't like his first name, but he had so scarcely been called by it that it didn't catch his attention straight away when addressed thus. "You can call me Spryly." He couldn't really judge anyone else for their names when his was abnormal too, not that it seemed abnormal in the slightest to him when he'd lived with it all his life.
Turning his attention to the lake, he felt a tug of apprehension in his gut as he thought of all the stories he'd heard about people drowning in lakes and rivers, but then he reminded himself that he was a wizard and he might very well be able to breathe underwater magically for all he knew. Crouching down, he cupped some water in his hands and turn back towards the other boy. "Like this then?" And then he flung the water at Gogo's face.
Gogo laughed and recoiled as drops of the icy water hit his face and, well, pretty much the entire front of him. That was the problem with just throwing water. It wasn't targeted enough. It was obvious that Spryly wasn't a very experienced water fighter, but, luckily, water fighting wasn't about skill, it was about fun, so technique didn't really matter. Besides, he could always learn. they were at a school, after all. Following in that spirit, he decide to show his water fight opponent a thing or two.
"That's a good start." he explained with an impish grin and knelt down to fill his hands with water again, "But, this is better!" Hands filled, he leaped up and squirted out another stream of water at the other boy. "You've just got to clasp your hands together with a little bit of space in between, fill them up, then squeeze them together, leaving a small gap open for the water to escape, preferably pointing at your opponent, but I suppose it would be good for me if you pointed it somewhere else." To be sportsmanlike, he refrained from getting more water and resuming the water fight before Spryly at least had a chance to try the trick out.
Of course, that didn't mean he couldn't make conversation in the meanwhile. After all, it could take people awhile to get a hang of water-squirting on their first try. "You aren't from anywhere near the shore, are you?" he asked in a matter of fact tone. He didn't mean to be critical or anything like that. It wasn't Spryly's fault. Some people just didn't have water around, but there was no way that any kid from Ipswich wouldn't be able to squirt water like that, or at least not any he knew.
He cried out when hit by the water again but it quickly turned to laughter. It was a strange game but it was sort of like gobstones really and he liked gobtstones. Spryly followed Gogo's lead and - cautiously - knelt down at the water's edge. The water was still making him uneasy, all it would take was one slip and he'd be in the lake, but he was from the house of the brave! It also helped the other boy seemed unfazed by the proximity to deep water.
He mimicked the other boy's cupping motion, struggling at first to make the right shape with his hands. "I ain't never seen the sea before, if that's what you mean. First time leaving London was coming here." London had a big river in it but Spryly hadn't really spent a lot of time near it. "I keep losing all the water!" he complained after a few tries and failures. He scooped at the water again and this time succeeded. "Ha!" he cried in triumph as he flung water at his companion.
As he suspected, it took awhile for Spryly to get acquainted with the perhaps less than fine art of water-squirting. He was taking to long to shut his hands properly and all the water kept flowing out. It was a rookie mistake, which he promptly complained about, which was good. Recognizing what was going wrong was the first step in correcting it, after all. That was what Mutti always said. "Close your hands tighter faster. It won't get out then." he advised nonchalantly before going on to comment on the other boy's hometown "London, eh? That's pretty neat. there's always lots to do there at least." Personally, he wouldn't trade it for being near water (water that wasn't as dirty and cholera-filled as the Thames, anyhow), but he wasn't about to tell Spryly that. People could get very touchy about their home towns and he would rather they end up friends than enemies.
Of course, that didn't meant that he couldn't brag about his own water-proximity, particularly in the context. I'm from Ipswich." he explained cheerfully, watching as one of his new friend's attempts at pre-water-squirting water-holding very nearly came to fruition. "We've got plenty of water there. We're right near the River Orwell and the shore's not too far away either. I was even on a boat across the channel once when I was four. That's when we came here. We lived in Germany before that."
He didn't have much time to wait around for any sort of response to his small talk, though, as soon afterwards, Spryly finally got a hang of the water-scooping and managed to splash him again, bringing their water war back into action. He was still doing more flinging than spraying, but Gogo wasn't one to nitpick. It was effective enough this time. the whole right shoulder of his cloak was wet before he had a chance to fully turn away.
Figuring he was already wet enough that it didn't matter, he splashed over into the lake calf deep, whooping with laughter along the way. "Not bad, but take that!" he called out and splashed a small wave of water out of the lake in Spryly's direction. The lake really was pretty cold and he was shivering by then, but he was having too much fun to care.
Spryly didn't know what Ipswich was or where it was or what it was like. He figured it was in the same country based on the context of what the other boy was saying though. He did know that Germany was a long way away, but his concept of distance was rather limited to what he could walk with his own two feet. The journey from King's Cross to Hogwarts had blown his mind as it was.
He squealed as the cold water hit him. He had been so horrified by the boy wading into the lake that he hadn't even tried to move out of the way. A part of him wanted to follow suit, but he had enough reservations about drowning that he remained on solid ground. "That's cheating!" he called out with a chuckle. He was now quite cold indeed, but he wasn't going to let that stop him from making a new friend. Gogo was obviously brave for getting into the lake, but also a lot of fun which couldn't be said for everyone. Spryly was always up for fun.
He squatted down at the edge of the water and tried to throw more water at the Hufflepuff, but not to great effect. "This reminds me of Gobstones a bit. D'you play?" Spryly had joined the club a couple weeks earlier and found he really liked it. He also wasn't terrible at it either.
Direct hit! Gogo cheered and hopped about, kicking up much more water in the process. The lighthearted accusations of cheating didn't dampen his mood one bit. "There is no cheating!" he called back with another hop and subsequent splash. "There aren't any rules!" Spryly made an ineffective attempt to splash him back, but, from the bank of the river, he didn't even get close. Thinking it a little unfair for him to be so far away when his new friend clearly wasn't going to come into the water. He waded back to level the playing field a bit.
The cold air hitting his wet arms and legs just made him shiver harder and, in the short time it took him to walk back to the water's edge, his lips had already turned very noticeable shade of blue. It didn't stop him from splashing some water at Spryly again before answering his question but it was a bit half-hearted.
Gobstones sounded a little bit familiar. He had seen some of the supplies for it in toy stores before and he'd heard classmates mention it before, but he'd never played it. Honestly, he had no idea how it was played, but if it was like a water fight, it must have been much more fun than he thought. "Well, I've heard of it," he replied, not wanting to sound too out of the loop "but Poldi -he's my big brother- he never played it, so I didn't either." He supposed he could have bought what he needed for a game on his own, but he couldn't have learned it all that well without anyone to teach him. If Spryly knew about it, his parents were probably wizards too, but to muggleborns, even ones like him with siblings who were wizards, things like Gobstones were as much of mystery as cricket would be to wizards. That's why things like water fights were so grand. Everyone could understand them, even if they did get a bit chilly in fall.
Spryly was pleased to see the other boy came closer to bank and thus in range of splashing. He really didn't want to have to get in the lake itself just to get a good splash in. He was splashed again and after wiping his face with his sleeve, he attempted to retaliate.
"You should come to the Gobstones club then, I joined the other week! You have these little marble-like stones and when you lose points, they squirt you with this horrible stuff! It's great fun!" He hadn't even heard of the game until someone told him about the first club meeting of the year.
Finally, he noticed the unhealthy pallor of his new friend. "Your lips 'ave gone all blue like a corpse!" he exclaimed, extending an arm to point at his face rather pointlessly seeing as he surely knew where his lips were located.
Still shivering and rubbing his arms a bit in an ineffective attempt to warm up, Gogo easily dodged Spryly's next splash. It wasn't that he could have gotten that much wetter from it anyhow, but he just wasn't one to give less than his best in a water fight. That said, he didn’t splash back this time.
Gobstones just kept sounding better and Spryly’s enthusiasm for it was so infectious that he couldn’t help but grin through chattering teeth. Any game that squirted people with horrible stuff without anyone getting in trouble for it was alright in his book. He would have agreed to going to the next club meeting straightaway, but, before he could open his mouth to speak, the other boy cut him off by raising a horrified finger to point at his face and declared that his lips had turned blue.
He wasn’t too worried, really. It had happened to him quite a lot when he went swimming in water that it was too cold and didn’t want to be the first one to wimp out and leave. Nothing really bad had ever come from it and it always went away as soon as he as warm again. "Oh, it's okay.” he explained with a shrug and a chuckle at the look of shock on his new friend’s face ”The water's just cold." He took a few squishing steps towards the tree and leaned against it as he took of his right shoe and dumped out some of the water that had collected in it while he was wading around in the lake. "Gobstones sounds great, though.” He continued, slipping the right shoe back on before moving on to the left shoe. In retrospect, he probably should have taken his shoes off before the water fight, but he didn’t dwell on it too much. ”Do you have a set? Maybe you could teach me. We could start right now, even." It would be neat to learn gobstones, but it would be even better to get inside and get dry without having to be the stick in the mud to put an end to their fun.
Spryly watched with mingled fascination and admiration as the soggy Hufflepuff made his way out of the water. He had half expected the other boy to drown or something, although seeing him survive didn't make him feel any more inclined to get in the water himself any time soon.
"No, but I know someone who does!" He desperately wanted one of his own but he couldn't afford a set, nor had he had any opportunity to leave the castle and get one since arriving. He did know where to find one they could use though and he looked forward to teaching Gogo how to play. He'd certainly have an advantage over him since he knew how to play! "Race you back to the castle then!?" It sounded like a question but Spryly had turned and started to sprint before the Hufflepuff had a chance to verbally respond.
Gogo didn't have time to be pleased at Spryly's acquiescence to his suggestion of playing gobstones inside before the other boy took off running towards the castle. "Hey! No fair!" he laughed, leaning down to tie his shoes as quickly as possible before dashing off in hot pursuit of his new friend. He wasn't going to win the race at this point. He was too far behind, but he would be damned if he wasn't going to be as close to tying with him as possible.
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