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.
Elmer thought that he had picked a great place for him and his younger friend Merl to spend the ladââ¬â¢s Hogsmeade weekend. What was better than to use your one day of freedom in a shop full of dead, embalmed animals? Elmer had wanted to visit the shop for quite some time now, but Merl was the only friend he had that would truly appreciate the mysterious art of embalming dead animals and he was still at school.
His brother was also not murdered, but that was another story. Still, other than his condolences, Elmer wasnââ¬â¢t quite so sure what to say to his friend Bennet. While he had lost two brothers, Elmer was far too young to remember either of the deaths.
ââ¬ÅI am quite charmed by those hedgehogs.ââ¬Â Elmer commented as he and his friend looked around the shop. ââ¬ÅTheyââ¬â¢d look quite good in my library. Maybe a lemur too?ââ¬Â
He would rather spend his Hogsmeade weekend with Elmer than anyone else, but this store was a tad on the odd side.
Merl felt like the glassy eyes of the animals were following him as he walked around the room. It was not a comfortable feeling, but he was going to have to get used to it - especially if Elmer was going to buy some for his library.
"The lemur would look very good on your bookshelf," Merl said with a nod, "Perhaps the falcon, also?"
He really did not like their eyes. But Elmer was certainly very wise where interior decorating was concerned, so Merl was going to try his hardest to ignore his sense of being unsettled.
“Nah” he then said. “Birds always scared me. They always look as if they’re ready to claw your eyes off. When I was younger I thought that there was a conspiracy where people train all the birds in the world to do that. I was so glad when Edward’s owl died the same year.”
Because of him. Usually, Elmer felt bad when he accidentally killed his brothers’ pets, but not that time. Birds were creepy and they had secrets.
"That's true," Merlin said, "Did I tell you that I was attacked by an unkindness of ravens* this October? It was almost poetic." Mostly it was just awful, though. Merl was not nearly as fond as ravens anymore. They were much less annoying when they were entirely metaphorical.
"The ferret, perhaps?" he added, giving the taxidermied creature a cursory glance. It actually looked less creepy than regular ferrets.
*I SWEAR TO GOD THIS IS THE ACTUAL NAME FOR A GROUP OF RAVENS LOLING
“An unkindness of ravens?” Elmer commented with a thoughtful nod. That was indeed quite poetic. No such things really happened to Elmer. Perhaps if he didn’t spend so much time at the Ministry he would be attacked by ravens as well but nope.
“I used to want a pet ferret.” Elmer commented. “Or a snake. I would wrap it around my neck and go everywhere with it. That is after I was bitten by one, of course. An idiot in my sixth year thought it would be nice to conjure one and it bit me. Thank Merlin it was not poisonous, for I would have been six feet underground now.”
He stared at the ferret with tortured eyes before saying. “Have you ever wondered why it’s six feet? And not seven? Seven is the most magical number, after all.”
"You could get a pet raven," Merl suggested, "Or an eagle. That would be symbolic." Merl was very big on symbolism - what was the point in living if one did not contemplate the poetic weight of one's life, after all?
"Maybe it would be easier to bring corpses back as inferi," Merl said, "If they were seven feet under." Of course, there was also the possibility that six feet was just the shallowest a grave could be without wild dogs digging it up... But Merl didn't think it could be that simple.
An eagle would make a nice, symbolic pet. Firstly, it would symbolize his Hogwarts house. He had once been told that his eyes were like an eagle’s eyes when he had shot the most game birds during a hunt his father had held about three years ago. And eagles were surely not that easy to kill, so the bird probably wouldn’t die due to his apparent natural deadly clumsiness around animals.
“Maybe” Elmer said thoughtfully. “Can you imagine it? A world, full of inferi. An inferi attack. Mothers hiding their children. Husbands hiding their wives. People hiding in their attics and basements. Death. Fire. No hope. A small, barefoot child, collecting dead mice for its dinner on the filthy, burnt streets, while the inferi are not around. That child, becoming an inferi in the night that follows. The scream of its mother when she’s informed of her child’s tragic fate the next morning…”
Elmer deeply inhaled like they were in the woods, not bothered by the shop’s rather odd smell and closed his eyes. He could almost feel the breeze of the pine forests running through his hair.
Merl watched Elmer as though his friend was making a legendary speech; eyes wide, a thin smile on his face. He felt impassioned by Elmer's passion - the alternate universe Elmer painted was brutal and poetic and just so poignant.
"It sounds beautiful," Merl said grimly, "Oh, dark of course, a sort of hell unlike any most people could even imagine - but beautiful nonetheless." If only the majority of the population was as well-informed as they were where things like this were concerned; Elmer was just so wise, and Merl felt bad for anyone who could not understand him.
Merl watched Elmer as though his friend was making a legendary speech; eyes wide, a thin smile on his face. He felt impassioned by Elmer's passion - the alternate universe Elmer painted was brutal and poetic and just so poignant.
"It sounds beautiful," Merl said grimly, "Oh, dark of course, a sort of hell unlike any most people could even imagine - but beautiful nonetheless." If only the majority of the population was as well-informed as they were where things like this were concerned; Elmer was just so wise, and Merl felt bad for anyone who could not understand him.
Elmer inhaled deeply, with his eyes still closed. “Mhh beautiful indeed,” Elmer murmured. “Isn’t there always beauty in death?”
At that, he opened his eyes and rather poetically - in his opinion, at least - stretched a hand towards one of the animals. “There’s ever so much beauty in something that can freeze time. I suppose that’s why our world is such a beautiful place. They do say that hell is here and not some fiery pit full of small, fork-tailed demons.”
"'Hell is empty, all the devils are here,'" Merl said. Usually Shakespeare felt a little bit too mainstream to be quoted, but he would grant an exception in this case, when that line was just so accurate to Elmer's entire point.
"If this is all there is," Merl said, "I think that you should definitely get the lemur."
Elmer closed his eyes and nodded. The lemur would make a quite good addition to his library. Whenever he felt lost, or whenever he didn’t understand what a writer was trying to say, he’d look into the big, judging eyes of the lemur and know that he’d have to push himself harder to understand. To feel.
“Do you ever wonder if you should have been born something else entirely?” Elmer asked a bit out of the blue. “Why should this lemur have been born a lemur, while I had the privilege to be a man? Why must the wave die the first time it hits the rock, while I live decades and decades?”
Merl nodded solemnly. "Some religions believe in reincarnation," he said, "Maybe in your next life you'll be the lemur, or a wave, or even a person again."
"I don't know if I agree with them," he said, "Maybe the universe or - whatever decides these things - simply looks at a soul and thinks, 'this would look good in a person.'"
"That would be very interesting," Merl said with a nod. He rather liked the idea of having golden skin, or green hair - or better yet, rainbow hair. That would be very enlightened.
He considered for a moment: "You should write a book about it."
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