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The sky is an effusive array of pinks and oranges on the morning that Lady Harriet Potter turns twenty years old. It is a truly stunning beginning to a day that turns hideous before the clock strikes eleven.
“Mistress,” Lotsy, her personal house-elf, says, “Lord Theodred Nott is being here to see you.”
Harriet stabs a sausage with her fork, the tines piercing right through it and screeching across the plate, furious that the wizard in question has dared to invade Potter Manor before receiving hours. She wants to be left alone. She wants nothing to do with the absurd “most romantic courting gesture since Merlin proved worthy of Morgana” regardless of how the other pureblood witches feel.
Harriet will bond for love or not at all. She certainly will not bond for something as insipid as politics.
“I don’t wish to see him.”
“I’m afraid I must insist, Lady Potter,” Theodred says as he enters the conservatory.
An emerald green velvet jewelry box rests on his palm. The lid is raised, revealing the infamous ring that once belonged to High Heir Cadmus Peverell before his death. The Resurrection Stone chills her to the bone.
For just a moment, Harriet wants to reach out and grab it, to rub the stone and whisper the names of those now lost to her. She hates herself for it.
“I’m not trying it on.”
She doesn’t care that High Lord Tom Slytherin has vowed to bond with whomever the ring chooses. Harriet doesn’t want a spouse—chosen by a finicky piece of heirloom jewelry—who will accept her sight unseen, personality unknown, as long as she is a pureblood maiden.
“If Your Grace would—”
“My Grace will not,” Harriet interrupts before Theodred can finish the sentence.
She might have inherited the Ladyship of the Honorable and Most Ancient House of Potter at the painfully young age of fifteen when both her beloved parents and grandparents died of a virulent case of Dragon Pox while she was at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—dropping the entirety of the family magic and all its expectations on her in the middle of a Quidditch match, which nearly cost her her life—leaving her in charge of the duchy and all her various branch family members, but that does not mean she has forgotten the examples they set for her in life.
Potters bond for love or they do not bond at all.
Harriet will not participate in this political farce of a bonding hunt. Not even if the prize is High Lord Tom Slytherin’s hand in bonding. Not even if it would launch her into the sphere of the Oligarchy. Not even to be the most socially and politically powerful pureblood witch in all of Avalon.
What does any of that matter in the face of a soul-deep love? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Something sparks in Theodred’s eyes, sharp and cunning. “His Esteemed Grace would be most grateful if—”
“His Esteemed Grace should be just enough to accept a lady’s refusal,” Harriet snaps, at the end of her patience. It is, perhaps, somewhat cruel to call an Oligarchy Lord’s Attribute into question, but if he refuses to live up to it, to embody everything that the Just and Most Olde House of Slytherin is meant to stand for, then he doesn’t deserve his magic.
A dark, pleased smile curls Theodred’s lips.
“Go away, Lord Nott, before you spoil my birthday even further,” Harriet orders, enraged and tired and heartsore all at once.
If she had tried it on, she could have touched the Resurrection Stone and summoned her parents and grandparents. If she had tried it on, she would have been able to see them and speak with them, even if only as shades. If she had tried it on, they would have been so disappointed in her.
“As you wish, Your Grace.” He pivots on his heel and departs.
Her birthday breakfast sits in her stomach like a ton of marble.
The next day, Harriet is in the middle of the final stages of brewing a delicate potion when the door to her personal laboratory at Premier Potions opens, nearly causing her to miss a crucial clockwise quarter-stir.
“Miss Thornbill, I left explicit instructions that I was not to be interrupted unless His Royal Majesty High King Arthur bloody Pendragon asked to see me. If that’s the case, give him whatever he wants from the shop free of charge. If that’s not the case, which I highly doubt it is, get out or I’ll terminate your apprenticeship.”
High-level potions are dangerous. Even to Potters, who excel at Potions more than any other magical discipline, and built their fortune on the creation, brewing, and selling of potions. Everything must be exactly precise—ingredient preparation and amounts, brewing times, stirring, heat levels, etc. Even a minor error can have disastrous consequences with potentially excruciating or fatal results.
Stunned silence greets her.
“I’ve spent four and a half months on this potion, Miss Thornbill, and if you ruin it now through your careless disregard for my time and instructions, I will—”
“My apologies, Lady Potter,” a self-assured, masculine voice states, not sounding apologetic in the least. “I was quite insistent. Your shopkeeper—Miss Thornbill, was it?—informed me you were occupied, but I—”
“And are you, sir, His Royal Majesty High King Arthur Pendragon?” she interrupts, utterly uncaring that doing so is very rude.
Harriet’s mother asked her to promise to always treat others fairly. If the unknown wizard insists on being extremely discourteous, it is only fair for Harriet to react in kind.
Neither her mother nor grandmother were ever impressed with that piece of logic while they still lived. Now that they are gone, she cannot find it within herself to change it. Not when it inevitably led to countless scoldings from mouths that twitched with amusement.
“I confess, I am not,” he replies, sounding downright fascinated and shocked simultaneously.
Harriet scoops two crushed Shrivelfigs into the platinum cauldron and stirs the potion in an infinity loop. She does not have the time to glance over her shoulder to see which pureblood wizard has been audacious enough to ignore one of her apprentices and intrude upon her personal laboratory. She does not think even Master Draco Malfoy would be conceited enough to do so. So, whomever this is … well, the wizard’s ego is clearly beyond the pale.
“Then get out,” Harriet replies, “and seek the attention of an etiquette tutor since it seems you’re unable to understand that it’s inappropriate to enter a private space uninvited, against direct instructions to not do so. If you’re unable to afford said tutor, submit an application to my duchy and I’ll pay the fee so no one else has to suffer for your boorish manners.”
Deep, delighted laughter fills the room.
“I’ll see you soon, My Lady.”
Harriet wandlessly and wordlessy adjusts the flames beneath the cauldron, ignoring the quick inhale from behind her as she does so, and says, “I highly doubt that.”
She continues brewing the potion until it is complete, long past the time that she felt the weight of a set of eyes boring into her finally averting.
“Mistress, Lotsy be having the post!” Lotsy says as she skips into the garden, her ears flapping like a bird’s wings, her wide green eyes almost as bright as the grass in the afternoon sunlight.
Harriet glances at the single letter on the silver tray. How odd. It is unusual for her to receive less than five pieces of post each day; a significant amount of correspondence is to be expected for a Duchess, of course. It is no small amount of work to properly manage all of the assets associated with her family’s estate.
The parchment is especially fine, as is the penmanship of her name on the front. She flips it over and groans at the emerald green wax on the back, imprinted with the family seal of the Just and Most Olde House of Slytherin.
“Kill me now,” she grumbles before flopping back against the grass.
“Mistress isn’t being allowed biscuits with high tea today,” Lotsy admonishes. “Mistress knows the punishment for being as melodramatic as a Malfoy on the Potter Estate.”
Harriet drags a hand down her face. It is a rule that her grandmother Lady Dorea Potter née Black instituted when Harriet’s father, Heir James Potter, was six years old. Now that Harriet is the Lady of the family, she has the authority to change it. She has no intention of doing so. Because every time she inadvertently—or intentionally, on occasion—breaks it, she is reminded of the time her father whined about losing a chess match against Heir Bartemius Crouch Jr. at The Golden Fleece and was not allowed sweets for a week.
She was eight when it happened. Her father was twenty-eight.
His punishment would have only lasted a day, but he whined about it so theatrically that Grandmother Dorea kept extending it until he stopped.
It is a cherished memory.
Harriet never wants to stop being reminded of it—of the time when they were all alive together. She still has Uncle Edmund and Aunt Charlotte and several first cousins and many, many, many distant relations.
But it is not the same. And it never will be again.
“Fine, no biscuits,” Harriet says.
There is, of course, a letter opener on the tray. Lotsy is an excellent house-elf and performs her duties impeccably, but Harriet tucks her fingernail under the folded parchment and rips it messily. It is likely an official complaint for how she essentially threw his First Vassal out of her manor on her birthday. She is not looking forward to reading it.
Salutations to Her Grace Harriet Potter, Duchess of the Eternal Eyrie,
It is with sincere regret that I must needs apologize for my First Vassal’s intrusion on the morning of Your Grace’s twentieth birthday. As per established custom, Lord Theodred Nott offers those magicals who are available for courtship and bonding the blessed opportunity to don the ring of my esteemed ancestor, High Heir Cadmus Peverell, in an attempt to prove compatibility and worthiness.
“Blah, blah, blah. Formal political speech. Blah, blah,” Harriet mutters as she scans the unnecessarily-long missive.
It is my sincere hope that you will allow me to call upon you, Your Grace, at which time I will offer you the blessed opportunity to don said ring myself.
With anticipation for our coming fortuitous meeting,
Tom Marvolo Slytherin
Archduke of The Void
Harriet huffs her frustration. It seems that High Lord Slytherin has somehow come to the conclusion that she was personally offended that he sent his First Vassal with the stupid ring instead of coming himself. And now he intends to bestow the honor of his personal presence upon her.
Absolutely not.
She would not accept a political bonding even if it were to the High King of Avalon, if Mother Magic should ever choose to appoint another. There has not been one since Mordred the Betrayer murdered His Royal Majesty High King Arthur Pendragon.
Love is the only thing that will ever entice her to twine her soul and magic with another’s.
Harriet picks up the quill that Lotsy thoughtfully brought with her, dips it in the inkwell filled with Potter-Crimson ink, and scrawls a single word in enormous letters across the vast majority of the parchment.
NO.
“Please see that High Lord Slytherin receives this as promptly as possible,” Harriet tells Lotsy before sinking back down into the lush grass.
It is chilly, even with the warming charms in the ballroom of Shafiq Manor. The weather has been nothing but rainy for the past week and it does not seem like that will change any time soon. The windows are open, weather-wards keeping the rain outside of the manor itself, preventing the guests from slipping and injuring themselves on wet flooring.
Harriet should have stayed home. Her godbrother, Heir Neville Longbottom, is out of the country and close to finishing his Herbology Mastery. Her best friend, Lady Luna Lovegood, is in … Norway? Sweden? Something like that, looking for evidence of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
“Lady Potter, may I have the honor of the next dance?”
Sighing softly to herself, Harriet pastes a polite society smile on her face and turns away from watching the rain fall. The smile falters when her gaze locks on burning emerald eyes set in an unfairly handsome face.
High Lord Tom Slytherin.
Harriet sinks into a curtsy so deep that her knees almost brush the floor. It does not matter that she is irritated with his absurd use of the Peverell ring. Honor—the very blood in her veins—demands that she show the proper amount of respect for the duty he bears as an Oligarchy Lord. He is the sole surviving member of any of the Oligarchy Houses in Avalon.
He stands as a Sentinel between them and the rest of the world, both Muggle and foreign magical powers.
High Lord Slytherin defeated the Dark Lord Gellert Grindelwald, keeping the magical war as far from Avalon’s shores as he possibly could before his twentieth birthday. That alone deserves respect, regardless of what Harriet thinks of the man’s approach to procuring a lady-wife for himself.
Some people seek wealth, power, or political advantages over love.
Such is their right, even if everything about such a transaction feels wrong to Harriet down to her bone marrow.
Harriet has, however, never been formally introduced to High Lord Slytherin. Speaking to him without that introduction is an immense breach of Oligarchy etiquette. A fact which he should be well aware of himself.
So … either he is attempting to lure her into answering his question without the introduction as some form of petty revenge for her refusal to allow him to call on her and offer up the blasted Peverell ring, or he honestly does not remember that they have never been formally introduced.
“A dance, Your Grace?” Tom asks, his hand held out to her. The candlelight reflects oddly in his emerald eyes, anticipation and hunger vibrant in their depths as he stares at her.
Harriet rises from her curtsy, tells herself that something has not shriveled inside her chest as the two possible reasons for his offer battle for dominance in her mind, and then pastes the fakest attempt at a smile on her face and walks away without saying anything.
The spark in his eyes as she walks silently past him cannot be hurt. Surely, it is anger at her refusal and nothing more.
The day after the gala, Lotsy brings Harriet a bouquet of hyacinth flowers, tied with an emerald green ribbon. She traces her fingers across the delicate purple petals as the meaning of the message resounds in her mind in her mother’s voice.
“Hyacinths mean sorrow, dearest. It’s a message of sadness.”
“Then I’ll never pick you one, Mama, because I always want you to be smiling and happy!” Six-year-old Harriet once declared as her mother tucked honeysuckles in Harriet’s ebony tresses.
Harriet leans her forehead against the back of her hand, nose pressed to the silky soft petals, and feels conflicted and worn down. Does this mean that it was hurt that she glimpsed in High Lord Slytherin’s eyes last night when she did not speak to him or dance with him? Or is this a ploy to guilt her into trying on the Peverell ring?
She tries her hardest not to succumb to the Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry and stereotypical assumptions and insults. She really does.
And yet … and yet.
“Mistress?” Lotsy inquires, sounding worried.
“Send High Lord Slytherin an orange anemone and a green bay leaf.”
Withered hopes. I change.
Harriet has just relaxed in her seat at a hewn stone table in Leaf No Scone Unturned in Leisure Lane of Hogsmeade when the door opens again.
“Thank you very much,” she tells Wix Daruka Anand as a pot of tea and a slice of cheesecake are delivered to her.
“You’re welcome, Your Grace,” Anand replies before leaving.
She trails her gaze up the tea plants that sprout from the walls—floor-to-ceiling—which remind her of the elaborate hedge mazes some purebloods have on their estates. The atmosphere is peaceful and relaxing and— A shadow falls over her table.
“Lady Potter,” Theodred says with an edge of sharp amusement, “I do not believe you have had the pleasure of being formally introduced to High Lord Slytherin.”
Harriet sets down her teacup and says, “With no disrespect meant to His Esteemed Grace, Potters bond for love, not politics. I’ve no intention of ever trying on the ring.”
Her intention is not to be cruel. However, she cannot, will not choose less for herself than her parents and grandparents enjoyed. They would never forgive her if she bonded for any reason other than love. She will not betray them like that. She will not betray herself like that.
Harriet knows herself, knows her heart, and a political bonding would snuff her personality like a candle wick between two fingers.
“Yes, we know.” Theodred smirks. “You’ve been quite clear on that point. Congratulations, Your Grace, you pass.”
“What?” Her fingernails dig into the meat of her palms even through the layers of her satin gloves.
“High Lord Tom Slytherin, may I present to you Her Grace, The Duchess of the Eternal Eyrie, Harriet Potter. Lady Potter, this is His Esteemed Grace, The Archduke of The Void, Tom Marvolo Slytherin,” Theodred says with smug delight and a flourish of his wrist.
“Your Esteemed Grace,” Harriet greets by rote, offering him her hand as the wheels in her mind spin at ever-increasing speeds.
All this time … all someone had to do was refuse the ring to catch his interest? Refuse it, and, in so doing, refuse power and wealth and unequaled social standing? Refuse every earthly comfort and assurance of monetary and physical security? For love?
“Lady Potter,” Tom says, his eyes full of fascinated hunger as he kisses the air above her knuckles.
“Slytherin,” Harriet says, halfway between an accusation and grudgingly impressed at the sheer slyness of the scheme that has lasted almost twice as many years as she has lived.
“To the core,” Tom replies with a smile that he must have spent hours practicing in front of a mirror for how unbearably and shamelessly charming it is.
How ironic that by refusing a political bonding and seeking a love match, Harriet revealed her heart to someone seeking a love match, all while masking the endeavor as a political bonding.
“May I join you?” Tom requests, gesturing at the log stool across from her, engraved with griffins, something not quite desperate—but, oh, so close—in his eyes and voice.
Harriet has the sudden impression that if she gives her customary answer, “No,” something inside of Tom will shatter, splinter into fragments as her heart did when Dragon Pox stole her treasured parents and grandparents away from her five years ago.
Now that she has seen through the ruse, she has no need to deny him. If High Lord Slytherin is genuinely serious about considering her as a candidate for a soul-bond based on love, Harriet will allow him the opportunity to earn her affection.
“Yes,” she says and vows to herself that she will not tease him for losing control of his magic as it slithers across his visible skin like emerald serpents.
His relief is palpable as he joins her for her afternoon repast.
And when Tom asks her if she would be willing to see him again after they have finished, Harriet offers the same answer. “Yes.”
“Do you like him?” Luna asks, having returned from her latest adventure.
It shames Harriet to admit that they did not become close friends until after Harriet’s parents and grandparents died. It shames her to admit that she had paid the entirety of Ravenclaw House barely any attention at all, that she had not realized several pureblood witches were shamelessly bullying Luna until three weeks after Luna brought a ray of light back into her life.
Back then, Luna never once asked questions or said things that were so thoughtless they felt offensive. Of course, Harriet missed her parents and grandparents! How dare anyone say the only upside was that she got to inherit the entire Potter Estate and become the Duchess of the Eternal Eyrie at age fifteen when other pureblood witches their age would not become duchesses for decades—if ever!?
It should not have astounded Harriet how casually cruel teenagers can be. Somehow, it had anyway.
Instead, a fortnight after they passed, after they were stolen from her, after her four closest familial bonds shattered one after the next in the span of a few minutes, Luna walked up to her and offered a silver bracelet saying, “I crafted it from the shards of a Pensieve so that you never lose your precious memories of them.”
Harriet smiles at her best friend, who knows what it is to lose a mother, and answers, “Yes, I do.”
Luna hugs her tightly and states, “Then don’t waste a moment, so there is nothing for you to regret.”
Harriet wakes up from her nap covered in white clovers with an emerald green calling card lying on the sofa beside her. Tom Slytherin, Archduke of The Void.
“Now, dearest, do you remember what you learned last week? What do white clovers mean?” her mother asks in her memories before playfully tapping the end of her nose.
Six-year-old Harriet finishes weaving a sloppy, crooked white clover crown and stands on her tip-toes to place it on her mother’s head while crowing, “Thinking of you!”
Her mother applauds. “That’s right!”
“He sent so many,” Harriet rasps, overcome with emotion. “There must be a thousand!”
In any other wizard, it might feel disingenuous. It might be an overdramatic attempt to prove something true that is, in actuality, false. In this wizard, though, Harriet knows otherwise. This is Tom’s way of saying, without words, “I have thought of you a thousand times since we attended the Avalon Ascot yesterday.”
Harriet’s heart feels warmer than it has since her family was ripped apart by Dragon Pox.
“Lotsy!”
“How can Lotsy be helping Mistress?” Lotsy bounces in place after appearing at her side.
Harriet gathers her courage, which is not as difficult as she feared it might be, and says, “Please send High Lord Slytherin seven forget-me-nots.”
Seven is the most magical number. Tom is intelligent. He will understand her message.
Harriet can tell that Tom dislikes Quidditch as soon as they arrive at the stadium. There is a subtle sneer of distaste on his face. This makes her appreciate his offering to escort her to a Quidditch match between Puddlemere United and the Appleby Arrows even more.
Her mother always used to accompany her father to Quidditch games if he asked, even though she was uninterested because she knew it made him happy. It was the exact same reason that her father patiently sat through countless operas, which her mother adored, even though her father once whispered to Harriet, “We’re off to suffer through two hours of caterwauling. Pray I survive the torture!”
“Would you like to stop at the Honeydukes stand?” Tom asks, his gaze occasionally flicking down to where she settled her hand in the crook of his elbow, the most intimate form of escort that is allowed before bonding.
After they are bonded, if they bond—and Harriet is truly beginning to believe that they will—she and Tom will be allowed to wrap an arm around each other’s waist without scandalizing anyone in pureblood society.
“A Quidditch match isn’t a Quidditch match without sweets from Honeydukes!”
Tom raises an eyebrow and smirks down at her. “Is that so?”
“It is!”
“Interesting. My education led me to believe that a Quidditch match wasn’t a Quidditch match without Quidditch players, a Quidditch pitch, and Quidditch equipment.”
It reminds her so much of how her Grandmother Dorea, a Slytherin when she attended Hogwarts, would twist words around to playfully tease her Grandfather Charlus. Harriet only allows the melancholy to touch her for a moment before she locks it away behind her Occlumency.
Today is not for sad reminiscences. Today is for making new, happy memories.
“I’m afraid to say, High Lord Slytherin, that I must grade your knowledge of Quidditch matches a Troll. You have completely and utterly failed to grasp the subject matter.” She laughs gaily as his lips twist in a moue of dissatisfaction.
“I have never, in my entire life, achieved anything less than an Outstanding!”
“Well,” Harriet says as she tugs him toward the distinctive Honeydukes sign, already mentally compiling a list of all the sweets she intends to purchase, “there’s a first time for everything!”
Tom obligingly holds the signature Bottomless Bag that bears the Honeydukes logo which Harriet hands him as she starts dumping Chocolate Frogs, Peppermint Toads, Sugar Quills, and more into it. Lips curling in a smirk, he asks, “Should I inquire if I might purchase their entire inventory, Your Grace?”
Harriet pauses, an entire pack of Liquorice Wands dangling halfway into the bag, and asks, voice unusually serious, “And if I asked you to purchase me their entire inventory?”
This is not at all the same as the political implications of the Peverell ring. This is not about money. Not really. This is about whether or not he would be willing to do something extravagant and absurd simply because she asks. Potters are always absurdly extravagant when it comes to making those who matter to them happy.
Her father once bought the entire bolt of fabric woven from willingly given Unicorn hair at Elara and Evelyn—which takes three years to weave and is, even by Potter standards, ludicrously expensive—because her mother mentioned in passing that it would make a lovely nightgown.
The ladies of pureblood society were in an enraged tizzy for months afterward, being denied access to the fabric for another three years.
“Then I would buy you all of it,” Tom answers with an almost overbearing amount of sincerity. “Even the ones you’ve told me are gross.”
She can see in his eyes that he means it. He really would, would probably Summon all the sweets that are in other customers’ baskets and bags to keep his word of buying the rest of the inventory, no matter how much it would irritate the other customers or the employees.
Harriet lets the Liquorice Wands fall into the bag, leans her head against his shoulder, and says, “Thank you, Your Esteemed Grace, but I’m quite content with what I have right here.”
Harriet is in the middle of taking down her hair when Lotsy appears at her side with a wide, toothy grin, a silver tray in her hands. “Mistress, High Lord Slytherin be sending you flowers again!”
There’s an entire bouquet of white apple blossoms and bluebells.
“White apple blossoms mean preference, dearest. It’s when you like something a lot,” her mother whispers in her memories. “And bluebells are for?”
“Constantly!” Six-year-old Harriet replies confidently.
Her mother laughs, bright and carefree, as Harriet will never get to hear again, and gently corrects, “Constancy. It means something that will last.”
Tears prickle at her eyes. Her breath catches in her throat.
It is bittersweet how every bouquet resurrects memories of her beloved mother. She knows that all it would take is a single word from her and he would never send flowers again. He would switch to a different type of gift without complaint, without probing at the sore and wounded parts of her heart. Yet, Harriet cannot bring herself to ask. Because as much as the memories hurt when they remind her of her losses, it almost feels like Tom is having a conversation with her mother as well.
And Harriet has always wanted her mother to know any pureblood wizard who courts her.
“Sprinkle them in my bathwater, please,” Harriet orders.
Lotsy bobs her head, sending her large ears flapping, and obeys.
Harriet continues unwinding the intricate plaits she wore her hair in that day. When she finishes, she removes her dressing gown and sinks into the petal-laden bathwater. It is as warm and encompassing as a hug.
The petals stick to her skin like whisper-soft kisses when she gets out an hour later.
Tom gently trails his fingers down her glove-clad arm until he reaches her hand and tangles their fingers together before resting them on his thigh.
“Why, High Lord Slytherin, you’ll cause a scandal,” Harriet teases.
Her heart thumps wildly in her chest. Heat flares in her cheeks. She only hopes the blush does not clash horrifically with her new Potter-Crimson couture gown which she commissioned solely for tonight, the opening night of the Avalon Ballet Company’s newest ballet: Veela Feathers ‘Neath an Autumnal Moon.
“Sometimes, society could do with a scandal,” Tom teases in reply, his thumb brushing soothingly against the back of her hand.
The Just and Most Olde House of Slytherin’s personal box at the Avalon Theatre is … well, sumptuous and ornate somehow feels inadequate. She is having difficulty dragging the correct adjectives out of her vocabulary.
The seats are thrones, for lack of a better word. The upholstery, stuffed with some sort of magical creature feathers, is encased in emerald velvet. The frames are silverwood and carved in such a way that they resemble the coils of a Basilisk.
“How many people are staring at us with Omnioculars?” Harriet queries.
Tom’s smirk is so self-satisfied that it should not surprise her when his answer is, “All of them, of course.”
She will not glance away first. Tom’s gaze meanders its way down to her lips. She will not. He rubs his thumb against her wrist. She will—
“Well, if you’re in the mood for a scandal anyway,” Harriet says as the mischief she inherited from her father flares into an inferno inside of her.
Harriet only has a moment to see the slight hint of caution that appears in his eyes before she leans over and kisses him on the cheek, wandlessly and wordlessly canceling the spell that keeps her crimson lipstick from smearing or spreading just long enough to leave an exact replica of her lips in a crimson kiss against his fair skin.
Tom’s eyes are darker than she has ever seen them before when she pulls back and settles herself nonchalantly in her seat as if her heart is not about to pound out of her chest and land in her lap.
“Temptress,” Tom accuses, one part playful and three parts rapacious.
She ignores the heat in her cheeks and turns to face the curtain, which is finally rising as the overture begins.
“Oh? Do I tempt you, Your Esteemed Grace?” Harriet asks, never afraid of playing with fire.
His hand grips hers so tightly that it almost hurts. His shoulders shake with the force of his next several breaths. When Tom finally speaks, his voice is a wealth of protectiveness and desire so knotted together that she doubts a severing charm could separate the two.
“Every second of every day since Theodred Apparated into Slytherin Castle and informed me you refused the ring.”
Harriet glances back at Tom, for just a moment, and sees in his eyes as he looks at her the same marked devotion that was always in her Grandfather Charlus’s eyes as he gazed at her Grandmother Dorea, the same unwavering faithfulness and love that was always in her father’s eyes when he stared at her mother.
She wishes they were here to see Tom watch her in this way—the manner of which they would require of a suitor before offering their approval.
Three days later, Harriet wakes up as Her Esteemed Grace Harriet Slytherin, Archduchess of The Void. She is sore and tender and the newly-formed soul-bond linking her to her lord-husband is almost enough to fill the emptiness left behind by her lost parents and grandparents.
Nestled between her breasts is an arbutus blossom. It is the flower her mother and grandmother received every single day from her father and grandfather. When she whispered that truth to Tom last night, she had silently hoped he would continue the tradition.
Harriet touches the soft petals, eyes wet with tears, and hears her grandfather tell her grandmother, her father tell her mother, her lord-husband tell her, “Thee only do I love.”