#glamor
![[[previously: one, two]] Newly crafted headband? Check. Kajol and rouge? Check. Skinshade? Check. Tr](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7e0f00aa5d27ee3eadb86a092ae071a2/tumblr_n0numaIt1R1qgdlmfo1_1280.jpg "[[previously: one, two]] Newly crafted headband? Check. Kajol and rouge? Check. Skinshade? Check. Tr")
Newly crafted headband? Check.
Kajol and rouge? Check.
Skinshade? Check.
Trixie dabbed on a splash of her lucky scent, a mix of vertiver and mint with thin slices of dirigible plum. It had become especially popular in these summer months for its cooling properties and she spent quite a bit of time brewing up bottles for her growing clientele, most of whom she met or would meet tonight.
Though for their bottles she left out the dirigible plum: that was her own little secret.
She placed a couple of those bottles in her bag, along with assorted sample bottles of some experimental mixes and a few other headbands, popped on a pair of red satin bar shoes, did one last mirror check, and made her way to Gatsby’s.
***
Fern had been exaggerating somewhat about her connections to this semi-regular extravaganza. She didn’t know Jay Gatsby - though to be fair, hardly anyone at the party knew him. Some people claimed to know him, but mostly he was myth and legend, perhaps apocryphal, extant only in the oohs and ahhs of the admiring.
She did have a cousin in New York, Ladon Greengrass, and that cousin really did know how to bring people together. Having moved to New York soon after graduating from Hogwarts to visit Gatsby (an old friend, he claims, though Trixie never figured out if that was true), he became the American point of contact for the British wizarding travellers who, like him and his cousin Fern, were piqued by rumours of a weird and possibly dangerous land where thrill-seekers flouted prohibitions and statutes, where magic flowed as freely as prescriptions for firewhiskey, where the exotic were prized and revered.
It was this love for the exotic, as fleeting and fickle as it could be, that earned Trixie’s keep in New York. The fabled Orient had also captured the dreams of the denizens here and Trixie’s fashion and perfumery were much sought after by those that wanted to be especially hip to the Hindoo jive. Her chachas and fupis could barely keep up with the jamdani orders that Trixie transformed into flapper dresses that made their wearers float as light as the fabric flitting on their skin, made to glow by saffron-gold-laced potions adapted from recipes shared by a friend of her grand-mère’s, the resident mambo of her Brooklyn enclave who adopted her as one of her own.
Family.
The mambo was not at the party tonight, nor were the weavers of the jamdani. The rest of Trixie’s family weren’t here either. Not her blood family - they were either long gone or far away, and she was an only child - but her rag-tag chosen family, Fern and Ailene and Florence and Walter, forged far south, almost a lifetime and another world away.
She did try to invite Walter up here, but he kept blowing her off, telling her that he had some ‘business to do first’. Last she heard from Florence she was planning to move to Virginia to pursue further study, but nothing since. And Ailene, sweet powerful secretly-magical Ailene who’d given her the final boost to her move out here - Trixie couldn’t get a hold of her. Walter had said that Ailene was 'in a spot of trouble, but she’ll be OK I think’ - and then nothing.
Trixie tried to not freak herself out, blame herself for something she doesn’t even know has happened. Maybe she’s just busy. Quiet. Nothing’s wrong. Surely
As for Fern? Fuck Fern. Fern had, just one day and out of nowhere, left. Moved her wanderlust on, perhaps, to some other actual exotic part of the world. Maybe somewhere closer to where the jamdani or the saffron-gold had come from. Trixie didn’t know: the only warning she got was when she bumped into Ladon one evening and he made an offhand comment about seeing Fern the day before she left, expecting Trixie to have known about her departure. Fern didn’t even bother to say goodbye, leave any way to get in touch. As if Trixie didn’t matter worth a damn.
Trixie wished she could forget Fern the way Fern had forgot her. She drowned herself in the parties, the perfumery and couture, the liquor-spiked candies and never-spiced-enough roasts - anything to keep her mind away from the fact that Fern had left her hanging.
She still cared.. Cared, even if they’ll never meet again. Parties and potions do not stifle a caring heart, no matter how much she tried.
But anyway. Enough reminiscing. Trixie has work to do.
***
The swarms around Trixie made it hard for her to even get a sip of her lavender champagne, but that wasn’t too much of a problem.
Her new headband had a panel that changed colours according to the current fancies of the wearer. She observed the colours of the people trying on her samples: lots of metallics and golds and silvers - not surprising given the moneyed crowd that tended to frequent Gatsby’s parties. Splashes of reds and pinks, the passionate and lascivious ones, joining the perpetually smiling yellows and oranges in chatting up other headband-wearers and making connections. The occasional purples and jewel tones, many whom Trixie recognised as being similarly gifted in magic as she was, others who spoke of poetry and spirit and learning. The rare rainbows and colour-shifters, ones who loved all the world had to offer, never content with just one path, a constant explorer.
Walter? Strong silver. Florence? A light yellow, or pale orange. Ailene would be a deep amethyst or ruby. Fern, fucking Fern, she would have definitely been a rainbow.
Trixie’s headband shifted colours, currently floating the same shade as her drink. She was collecting names and numbers for preorders - a cool couple of hundreds dollars’s worth, not a bad haul for one night - when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Ladon. Oh. Hey.”
“Greetings, dear Trixie. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Trixie had not really spoken to Ladon since hearing the news of Fern’s depature, asdes from the occasional pleasantries when crossing paths at Gatsby’s. She could have asked Ladon more about Fern, where she’d gone and how she’s been, but it’s hard enough to get someone who chat for longer than a few minutes at these parties, let alone the rest of New York. Besides, if Ladon wanted to talk to her he could have made more of an effort to do so.
Trixie took down the last name, closed her notebook, and turned to face Ladon and his companion: a striking, strapping figure, his face hardened with scars and stubble, sporting one of the headbands that Ladon had borrowed from another party-goer. Teal.
“Looks…interesting on you,” said Trixie, stifling a laugh. “You much of an outdoors person?”
The companion’s eyebrows perked with cautious curiosity. "In a sense, yes,“ replied the companion. "How could you tell?”
Trixie explained the magical science of the headband to him: how they were based on the divinatory art of scrying, the panels made out of squares of black mirror coated with a specially brewed solvent giving it its colour-changing properties. Her adoptive mambo had used scrying mirrors often in her witching work to get the lay-of-the-land of the situation at hand, and aura-reading had just caught on as the latest spiritualist craze. Trixie saw an opportunity to combine her skills and cash in - everyone wanted every part of themselves to be pretty and glitzy, why not the soul?
“Ah, the old magic - I haven’t seen this since I helped tracked the African jungle manticore over in Tanzania,” mused the companion. “Indeed, the colours in your ornament remind me of the streelers I occasionally ran into - though perhaps their changes in colour were less metaphysical, more physiological.”
Trixie wasn’t sure what to make of this strange man’s answer. He knew about magic - but that wasn’t necessarily so unusual in New York, even if many didn’t take it all that seriously. Yet he spoke of this magic as though it was a foreign, ancient, long-dead relic, the domain of the yet-to-be-civilized. Something to be studied by the ones more educated.
And what was all this about manticores and streelers?
Ladon stepped in: “I should introduce you two. Trixie, this is Newt Scamander, an old friend visiting from England, he’s a magizoologist. Newt, this is Trixie Shafiq, she’s a close friend of my cousin Fern, you may have been at Hogwarts at the same time. She’s an artisan, mostly with clothing and perfumery and accessories…like that headband you’re fiddling with.”
Hogwarts. That fancy British magic school Fern talked about. So he too was magical.
“Hello Newt, fancy meeting you,” said Trixie. “What’s a magizoologist do?”
“I study animals - magical ones.”
“Ah, explains your manticore business. Fitting name, by the by, Newt. Mind if I call you Figsy?”
“Figsy?”
“Y'know, like Fig Newtons. Damn good treats. You ever had one?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Let me see if I can get some for you,” said Ladon, waving down a waiter. Soon after the waiter returned with a tray of thick rectangular cookies; as Newt bit into one the cookie crust crumbled, revealing a tart dark paste.
“Hm, not bad,” said Newt after finishing the cookie. Trixie smiled and helped herself to a few off the tray.
“Good. Figsy it is, then.”
“While we’re on the topic of names - yours. Shafiq. Don’t think I’ve heard that before, though it seems a little familiar. But anyway. Very unusual. Exotic.”
Trixie had the very odd sensation of being examined, like one of Florence’s teenage science experiments.
“Fancy yourself a little Oriental, I take it?” continued Newt. “It’s such the rage, even in old Blighty town…”
Trixie winced. Yes, her 'exoticness’ is what allowed her to be successful, but for heaven’s sake, you don’t call people Oriental, that’s for rugs and knick-knacks.
“My name is mine,” said Trixie, biting her inner lip to stop her from yelling. “'Trixie’ was given to me by friends, but Shafiq was from my father - who was from the Subcontinent.”
Newt, oblivious to Trixie’s measured reaction, picked up another Fig Newton and tore off a bite to eat as he prattled on. “Ah, you’re Hindoo? You don’t look at all -”
Trixie yanked Newt’s wrist, the cookie collapsing on the shiny tiled floor. Her skin shifted shades the same way as her headbands, moving from near-alabaster to dark chocolate. Her face rounded a little, her eyebrows fuller, her eyes so wide open they startled Newt and Ladon with their intensity.
“Don’t tell me where you think I am from,” snarled Trixie, gaze locked on Newt. “Everybody does, and they are always wrong.”
Ladon was dumbstruck by Trixie’s attitude, but Newt didn’t seem to be particularly frazzled. Instead, he beamed, like a kid discovering a new toy.
“You’re a Metamorphmagus!”
Trixie’s grip returned and tightened on Newt’s wrist. “A whatnow? Figsy, are you calling me some sort of animal?”
Newt pulled his hands away from Trixie and shook his wrists out. “Oh no, no no no. They’re most definitely people, just a rare sort. Shapeshifters. They can change the way they look. Though the ones I know of tend to opt for less…subtle changes. Purple hair and duck faces, that sort of thing. Just a little fun, y'know.”
“I don’t know about fun, Figsy - I know about survival.” Trixie could have shapeshifted into dynamite based on mood alone. “My parents taught me this to make sure no one could hurt me for thinking I was an alien. Things weren’t so good for our kind. Still aren’t.”
“I don’t understand. Surely shapeshifting in public would get you even more persecution from the Muggles?”
Muggles? The word seemed familiar, and yet…
“He means people without magic, Trixie,” said Ladon. “You know, people not like us. Like the people who bought your headbands thinking it was just some silly fun.”
Trixie’s loud cackle held a hint of bitterness. “Honey. It’s not your so-called Muggles I have to worry about. You go to New Orleans - hell, you leave this party and go to the real New York, and you’ll see magic out in the open. Everyone knows and nobody cares. Where do you think this spiritualism jive all came from? No, you know who I’m more worried about? White folk.”
Trixie’s features shifted again, now more closely resembling one of the other flapper girls at this party - bright skin, cropped blonde hair, a dash of freckles. “My people are getting locked up for being the wrong color. My father’s people - they didn’t know whatwe are, White or Colored or Turkish or Malayan or Italian or what. One time the big lawmakers said we were White, which means we should be OK.”
“But then people realised, people like my father - we’re not exactly light-skinned. So we started getting in trouble.” Trixie’s features shifted back to the version that surprised Newt and Ladon: her usual, non-Magic-created self. “My mother’s people, they would never be OK. They were Colored, the bad kind of Colored. Means you could get hauled up just for existing sometimes. They used to call themselves Hindoo to try and protect themselves, but then the White folk started hating Hindoos and now we’re all in trouble.”
Trixie suddenly had a flash of Fern: she wasn’t exactly White either. But she was British, from a land where the magical ones lived apart from these Muggles. Do they treat their Colored folk the same way there? Was that why she disappeared? Walter, Ailene, Florence…? Is that why…?
“You could be arrested just for being not White?” said Newt in disbelief. “What a barbaric lot these Muggles are!”
“Oh don’t be too sure that it was all Muggle, Figsy boy. As I said, everyone knows about magic. Some of those White people causing trouble for us were also magical. Catch you in a corner, chant some words - boom! Off a tree you hang, upside down, don’t even need a rope.”
“Hang off…wait, how did you survive?"
"We use glamour. This Metamorph thing you said it was. Both my parents knew what to do. They taught me glamour magic, taught me how to transform just enough so that I could blend in just enough to get by. Or stick out a little if the place was right. Like here - being a little unusual helps my business. But not too unusual or else they think I’m one of the waitstaff - or worse, that I cheated my way in. Look around, boys - you see anyone darker than these cookies round here?”
Ladon and Newt saw mostly people that looked just like them: White, European, not likely to have their ethnicity questioned by the authorities. They wondered if some of them were like Trixie, shifting themselves to safety.
But what if you weren’t born a Metamorphmagus - well, as they know it, Metamorphmagi are bornnotmade - but Trixie seemed to imply that this 'glamour’ business could be taught - there didn’t seem to be that many magical Colored people that they knew - were they all -
“You see, boys, when you have to walk through multiple worlds all the time, when you’re never one nor the other, when what other people think you are is more important than what you think you are - you don’t have to be some Metamorphwatsit. Or even magical like us.”
Trixie looked out at the crowd in front of them, a mess of magic and glitz and illusions. Everyone dolled and suited up to present as fine society. Everyone, in their own way, using glamour magic.
“If you want to survive? You knew how to shapeshift.”
[[source: Heather Romney
some ideas from other blogs have been linked where relevant.
SO VERY SORRY for the long delay. I’ve been busy with a show, and then MH370 has been sucking so much of my energy. I’m not entirely content with how it ends, mostly because there’s one last small thing I want to make happen but don’t know how. But I’ve been working on this for ages and wanted to get it out there.
According to Bengali Harlem the South Asian immigrants were designated White for a while, and there had been many other POC that assumed themselves as “Hindoo” to gain the same racial protections, but it didn’t last very long.]]
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