23 February 1894 — Farley Residence, Tutshill
Two Weeks Before the Wedding

Approaching the house in Tutshill that afternoon felt like he was walking into the Great Hall on NEWT examination day, trying to hold all of the things he'd studied in his head long enough to survive the test. Of course, the real test had been the interactions with everyone else prior to this moment, everyone who had made small talk or offered congratulations or tried to pry for more gossip between the day it had been announced in the paper and now. They were the ones he was trying to fool; it wasn't as though he was going to trick her into thinking the pair of them were in love. But he was nervous all the same, because he hadn't actually talked to her even once since the night they'd been caught together in the cloakroom, and in two weeks she was supposed to be Mrs. Fortitude Greengrass.

(He needed to tell her he preferred to be called Ford. He made a mental note. It would be quite mortifying if they married and she referred to him as Fortitude in front of company. There were lots of things he should tell her, probably, but there wasn't a limitless amount of time, so it was important to prioritize. Ford, not Fortitude made the short list).

He hadn't ever been to the Farley home before, but he thought that would probably have been suspicious to admit, so he had looked up the address in a directory rather than asking someone to point him in the right direction. He'd wandered through Tutshill peering at street signs and feeling rather conspicuous with the small bouquet of flowers in his hands, and had eventually arrived at a home he was fairly (but not entirely) certain was the correct one. He glanced at the windows as he approached, hoping for a glimpse of someone he might have recognized to confirm the address, but he didn't see anyone... and he might not have recognized them, anyway. He'd been talking with Mr. Farley regularly since the arrangement had been made, giving him regular updates on the status of the house expansion and showing as much of an avid interest in the wedding preparations as he could muster, but that had all happened through letter; he hadn't actually had an in-person conversation with him except for that afternoon he'd come to the parlor and laid out his expectations. Ford was reasonably sure he would have recognized Miss Jemima, but even there he couldn't be positive — he'd misplaced her name for most of their interaction on Valentine's day, after all.

Merlin. In two weeks he was going to be married to her, and he had been suggesting to everyone who asked for the past week that he was entirely enamored with her despite the inauspicious circumstances, and yet he was only reasonably sure that he would recognize her in a window.

He knocked on the door.

---

She hadn’t been much allowed to mope, given the flurry of activity a sudden wedding had made for everyone in the household. There was her dress – and, well, her father was making arrangements for her dowry, and she supposed practically everything else about her future, because she had had very little involvement in that – but there were things she could help with: the dresses required for her sisters, and flowers and guests and invitations and tidying out all the clutter in her childhood room, since she would not be living in it for very much longer.

She was just padding down the stairs with an old pair of slippers when someone knocked at the door. She paused, caught there as their housekeeper opened it and – she could see him from here; her stomach had done a strange, discomfiting flip of too many mingled emotions to place; it was him. The housekeeper ushered him in and looked at her, expectant... so Jemima, naturally, had no choice but to put down the slippers and go greet him.

“Hello,” she said faintly, trying to seem pleased but too aware of the housekeeper’s gaze on her to process much about Mr. Greengrass yet. She mumbled something about the parlour, and led the way there in a daze, and – felt awkward and self-conscious from the moment she stepped into the room after him, because even if there was cold, unforgiving February sunlight streaming through the window and the parlour door was open and she was fully dressed, she felt as though she had been dropped right back in the cloakroom at the ball.

She stood there facing him, anyway, trying to settle her nerves by studying him from this distance – concentrating on his shoulders, the flowers in his hand, the polish of his shoes. She should probably invite him to sit – perhaps she should sit too, but instead she was still poised near the door. “Did you want to see my father?” Jemima inquired. The housekeeper would have gone on to tell her parents Mr. Greengrass was here, she was sure, so she had no real excuse to duck out of the room and leave him here – but she was listening for footsteps in the hall, half-waiting for someone to come and save her. Maybe in vain. (They were engaged, she remembered. By now, an engaged couple would be entitled to be alone.)

---

He had not expected her to be so near the door when he knocked; he had expected he would be shown into a parlor and have a moment to compose himself before being faced with her. He had never been here before, so maybe there was something he could learn from looking at the home these people lived in — some more nebulous knowledge he could arm himself with in the vain hopes that it would make conversation with her any less fraught. But no such luck; he was barely even inside before she was saying hello, and then he was left hovering a few feet from her wondering if he was supposed to hand her the flowers or not. She had to have assumed they were for her, because he would hardly be bringing anyone else in her home flowers, but she hadn't moved to take them. He could hand them to her, but — there was so much inertia involved in trying to close the space between them. He felt like an intruder already, coming into her house and into her life; he didn't need to go invading her personal space unasked, also.

So he held on to the flowers as she led the way into the parlor, and then he took up hovering on the opposite edge of the doorframe from where she was standing. She hadn't indicated where to sit, and didn't seem to be heading in herself, so he was directionless. Her question surprised him, and it showed in the quick arch of his eyebrows. "No," he replied, then had a quick panicked thought and added, "Unless he'd like to see me about something?" He didn't want to give the impression that he was avoiding her father, certainly. He thought they were on — not good terms, probably very far away indeed from that, but at least more genial ones than they had been on the Friday that the engagement had been confirmed. Ford had been trying, anyway, to be as respectful and engaged and deferential as he supposed a son-in-law ought to be, when they exchanged letters... but there was a lot that could get lost in written exchanges, and he didn't really know what Mr. Farley had been saying about him outside of their correspondence. Had he just unknowingly walked into the lion's den?

---

Oh, Jemima thought, when he said no. Oh. She had had so little part in all the arrangements that she had just assumed. Once her parents had spoken to her, after that night, it had all been – taken right out of her hands. She had learned as much from listening anxiously at the door to her parents’ whispers as she had when they had sat her down directly to share the arrangement. Everything had been decided. Her father had been to see Mr. Greengrass, she had learned, and he had agreed to marry her.

She wasn’t certain how far agreed was the fitting word, because she had no idea how her father had phrased it or how many protests Mr. Greengrass had made – but in no fractured daydream of that conversation could she imagine he had walked into it with any enthusiasm at all. He had been dragged into it, coerced or persuaded or forced by duty to – but there was still the question of what had propelled him to say what he had said to Mrs. Dempsey in the first place, when they hadn’t done anything at all.

“Oh,” Jemima said aloud, because she had put together the pieces well enough now to realise he had come to see her, then. Perhaps her parents had arranged this. Whatever the reason, she was probably expected to see her husband-to-be at some point again before they met at the altar. “No, I don’t think so. He didn’t mention anything,” Jemima admitted with a small, chagrined shake of her head. She drifted further into the room, away from the door; she supposed she should take the opportunity to speak to him now while they had one. Alone. While they were not – on show.

She exhaled. He was holding flowers. It had taken Jemima until now to suppose they might be for her, and she – didn’t know what to do with that. She wasn’t going to step over and confiscate them. “How... is everything?” she tried, but lifted her gaze to him to try and silently express what she really meant, which was I’m so sorry for everything. Because, however bewildered she was about what he had done to seal their fate, the anger at that had not been enough to dampen the abject guilt she felt about the situation. It was at least half her fault: if she hadn’t been there in the first place for him to stumble upon her, nothing would have happened.

---

For half a second after she said oh she had glanced at the bouquet and Ford had been hopeful she would take it, but no such luck. Ford was beginning to wonder if there was something the matter with these flowers particularly; he knew little about the meanings behind flowers except that they existed and some people cared greatly about them. He'd trusted Miss Potts to make up something appropriate when he'd stopped to buy them and had given her no direction; hopefully she hadn't steered him wrong? The way to go wrong, he thought, would have been to make a bouquet that was too sentimental; he imagined she would find that off-putting, given that neither of them wanted to be doing this.

But there was nothing to be done about the flowers now if they were wrong, so he continued clutching them between both hands (bruising the stems from the tightness of his grip, not that he noticed) while he turned his attention to her question. "Uh, good, yeah," he said, electing to stay on the superficial rather than try to respond to that look of immense sadness she'd given him as she asked. Then, without pausing to consider whether she actually wanted to know, he launched into a hasty explanation of 'everything': the permit for the building expansion had been approved and the contractors had visited the house and finalized the new floor plan, and though the upcoming cold would likely prevent them from starting immediately they still intended for work to be complete before the wedding and certainly before the pair of them returned from the honeymoon; the food for the reception had been confirmed; the room for the honeymoon reserved; the flowers arranged; invitations seemed to have been delivered correctly; everything progressing according to schedule. It was the same content he would have told her father — the same things he had already told her father, in fact, as there were no new developments since his last letter. What he did not include in 'everything': any of the conversations he found himself thrown into the middle of at work; the rumors still circling; the unresolved argument with his sister; how he was faring with any of it, personally. Partly he suspected she wouldn't like the answers, and could probably guess them for herself anyway; partly he didn't know that she really cared to know at all. She didn't know him — they didn't know each other. Why would he tell her how difficult things were?

"— anyway," he said when he at last realized that he had been prattling on for several minutes without pausing for questions or reactions. He shifted his weight to the other foot, wrung the flowers slightly in his hands, and looked sheepish. "How, uh, how are you?"

---

By everything, she had not actually meant everything. Really, she was trying to discern how he felt about it all, but instead Mr. Greengrass (– probably she ought not to keep thinking of him as formally as Mr. Greengrass now, but –) had taken her at her word and explained, well, everything.

It was a lot. Blinking at the onslaught of it, the wedding and reception and honeymoon and changes to the Greengrass house all bundled up in one seeming breath, Jemima was overwhelmed enough that she sank back on the sofa, as if sitting would make any of it sink in. It all sounded very... businesslike, that everything was going smoothly, that he was possibly even nonchalant about it all; but Jemima was too familiar with anxious tics to miss his whitened knuckles around the bouquet or the uneasy shifting from foot to foot. So he was no more comfortable with this than she was. That didn’t make her feel any better, of course, but Jemima was a little bit desperate to at least understand where they stood (before they were both standing at the altar in a fortnight’s time). She swallowed. “Well, that’s – good,” she said lightly, as if by trying to alter her tone she could trick herself into general hopefulness for this fast-approaching future.

Only he had asked how she was, now, and Jemima felt the pressure she presumed he had when faced with the equally terrible prospects of lying through her teeth or telling him anything true. Jack asked me to elope, and I told him no but I can’t stop thinking about it; it sounds like you’re as miserable as I am; I’m going to be your wife, and I don’t know anything about you. What was a silver lining here?

“I’m fine,” Jemima said because she had decided to be brave about it to his face, even if she had cried most days this week. Maybe he hadn’t been getting the same stares from the rumour and scandal of it as she had. (He had apparently been more willing to endure them, anyway.) “I had an appointment for my wedding dress yesterday,” she supplied, managing a smile for politeness’ sake. “With your – cousin. Greer.” That was how Miss Owens had introduced herself, and she had been kind; surely that was something. Jemima picked absently at the embroidery on the day dress she was currently wearing as she considered his talk about the house, imagined what she might be thrust into in a few weeks’ time. “How did, um, the rest of your family take the news?”

---

How had his family taken the news? Verity had sworn off all nonessential communication with him on the basis of what she assumed had happened in the coatroom; she had made no secret of the fact that she was ashamed to be his sister. Grace supposed them in love, probably because the alternative was too horrible to her romantic sensibilities to contemplate. Clementine spoke of the subject as though Ford had planned this all out specifically to inconvenience her personality. He didn't know which of those sentiments would be least depressing to convey to Miss Farley. Noble was the only one who understood; he had hugged Ford tight and said I'm sorry. But he could not tell her that, either.

But he understood, or thought he did, what the question behind her question was. She was going to be living there shortly; she wanted to know how much of a lion's den she was walking into. Ford tried to offer her a convincing smile to assuage her concerns, but wasn't whether he managed it. "It's an adjustment, but — mostly I think they're eager to meet you."

This was probably an exaggeration, but they were certainly eager to know anything about her, and Ford had been so far unable to prove much in the way of answers. Clementine would have been eager to meet her even if Ford had been able to speak to her qualities, so that she could preform her own interrogation. Oh, Ford realized — he probably ought to warn her about them.

"Do you, um, already know any of my sisters?" he asked. She had taken a seat by now, so he supposed he ought to also, even though she hadn't really invited him to. He perched tentatively on the edge of a chair, demeanor suggesting he half expected to be told off for choosing the wrong one.

---

Jemima bit the inside of her cheek to try and stop her eyebrows lifting in – either disbelief or apprehension, she wasn’t sure. Eager to meet her? She had always liked the thought of being bosom friends with any sisters her fantasy-suitors might have had, had always wished her friends had better brothers for prospects, but she couldn’t help but think it was a rather far-fetched idea now, things being what they were. There would be – work to do, if she had any hope of undoing a bad first impression.

So, in her braver moments of accepting her fate – submitting to it as a necessity, to spare her reputation if nothing else – she had begun to do her homework. (She had never been Hogwarts’ sort of homework, but she had been in society for enough seasons to pay mind to things that were said, and in clearing out her room she had found countless old copies of Witch Weekly to peruse, so...)

“Not very well,” Jemima answered, as he finally sat, trying not to feel as though she were being tested (she probably would be, later, but this Mr. Greengrass could not expect any expertise from her yet). “Of them, mostly,” she explained, because she certainly knew more about the Greengrass girls than she did about their brother sitting here. “I remember Miss Verity was – Head Girl,” but a few years older; and charming and pretty in the way that she had always looked up to from a safe distance. Of course, Jemima had heard a few things about her since then – about her coming out, oddly, at the same time as her sister, and her going missing, and then her own swift marriage – but none of those things were particularly complimentary to point out, and she hardly wanted Mr. Greengrass to think she thought herself in any place to judge. (She absolutely did not.)

“And Miss Grace,” had always seemed friendly to her, though they hadn’t ever gotten to know each other; but the latter two sisters were not yet married, so they did see each other on the society scene, “and Miss Clementine. She was a year below me.” A Hufflepuff too, friends with Miss Bonaccord, and a little too clever for Jemima to have been particularly at ease in her company. She certainly didn’t know her any better nowadays than she had then.

So it wasn’t a fount of knowledge to impress anyone, Jemima thought mournfully, but at least she knew their names. “And you have a brother, too...?” She couldn’t recall his name, but they looked alike enough for her to be sure of it – both brown eyed and brown haired and tall. The other brother was perhaps a little more rugged or confident, she thought. Or something. (What insight she thought any of this could possibly give her about how much or how little they might hate her as a sister-in-law, she wasn’t sure. But maybe it was useful to have something to focus on, for now. Little coping mechanisms for life.)

---

"Noble," he supplied eagerly. Noble was a good place to start the conversation, because he would not have to warn her about Noble. Noble was hardly thrilled with the turn of events, but he at least knew that Miss Farley had done nothing wrong and would be kind to her, Ford was sure. (Or — if she had done anything wrong, Ford had not yet devised any means of proving it, and hadn't shared any of his half-formed suspicions with Noble yet). "He's a potioneer. He has a workshop across the garden from the house." And therefore, it occurred to him only now, she would probably interact with him more frequently than she did with Ford once she moved in; he would be gone most of the day, while Noble and Grace and Clementine would be constants. And Mama, of course. The notion panicked him slightly; he had imagined that he would be there in most instances to serve as a buffer if necessary between his family and Miss Farley, and actually that would hardly ever be true. So he really did need to ensure she was adequately prepared.

"Grace is very kind," he began; Grace seemed the easiest entryway to discussing his sisters. "And very curious and intelligent, in her own way, but she's frightfully shy, so you mustn't be discouraged if she doesn't speak to you much at first. Verity lives with her husband now, but she visits often." And perhaps that was all he ought to say on the subject of Verity. He had hesitated for a moment, trying to find something to add that would be reassuring, but had come up empty. Verity could be a hard personality even at the best of times, with her exacting standards for everything and her seriousness, and she was frightfully angry with him at present. He was sure she would be polite to Miss Farley, but could not be sure of much else — and if he said she was polite, the main message she would take away was that he could find no more enticing adjectives for her. "Clementine — well, you probably know; she's not much changed from how she was in school — but she's very clever, and confident, and she..." he drifted off for a second, considering how to best to phrase the next part. The words that really sprung to mind to describe Clementine were obstinate and antagonistic but those were hardly appropriate here.

"...enjoys teasing me," he eventually settled on; this felt suitably close to what might be considered sibling fondness that it did not sound too harsh a criticism. "I'm not sure whether she'll do the same to you, but if she says something you find off-putting you mustn't take it personally. That's just the way she is. And — ah, cousin Greer can be a touch — indelicate," he continued, which was a delicate way of saying she openly swore, which Ford had always disapproved of. He privately considered her a bad influence on Clementine. He had no particular warnings to impart about cousin Lorelei, but she was the final member of the household left without comment, so he felt obliged to add, "And cousin Lorelei is sweet."

While this was less actual words than his last rambling speech, he still felt as though he had probably overwhelmed her with information. He twisted the stem of one of the flowers between his fingers and bit the inside of his lower lip. "If you'd like to meet them all before the wedding we could arrange that. I mean, if you'd like to," he added, cautious of coming across as though he was issuing a directive. He thought he would rather prefer she didn't; it was one more thing to be accomplished, and one more thing that might creating problems during the engagement period — but it seemed like the sort of thing he ought to offer.

---

Noble. Noble, Grace, Verity, Clementine; Greer and Lorelei. (And he was – Fortitude.) Jemima nodded along, and filed away the little details she could, because perhaps they would help – though it would take time to get to know them, and how well she knew them would hardly change the outcome of anything now. She was marrying him either way. So –

“If you think it would do any good,” Jemima said uncertainly, weighing up the options of being candid or polite, and choosing the former while she still could. She could insist that she was very eager to meet them and delighted to be joining the family, but he knew that wasn’t true. And truthfully Jemima would rather take her last few days for herself in mourning, before she met them all and had – well, all the time in the world to be teased or ignored or judged by the Greengrasses.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad as that; maybe she would get along with them all perfectly well. “Do they all think that we... ?” She flushed at having to ask the question, and alluded to her meaning as she trailed off with an awkward little wave between them to mean – whatever the rest of society now thought had happened. She had told her parents the truth about that evening – though she was not sure how far they believed her, for they had decided that marriage would be her best hope all the same. (She had also told Mrs. Dempsey the truth, for all the good it had done.)

So perhaps he had been honest with his family, too, behind closed doors? Or maybe he hadn’t; maybe he had done the same with them as he had with the Minister’s wife, if the lie was somehow better for him. (She still had to wonder where he had been before he’d come through the Floo, what else he had possibly been doing or whom he had been thinking of, when he had given them up. She was certain that giving himself in marriage could not have been his desired outcome – but he had taken the risk of it, and had shouldered the scandal all the same.)

---

Ford had to work hard not to visibly grimace. This was the question he had sidestepped earlier because he didn't think she would appreciate any of the answers, but now that she'd asked (or half-asked) it more directly he didn't think that he could do so again. Failing to answer a question was answering it, after all; just answering it with whatever worst-case scenario the asker had in mind rather than being able to massage things in one's response.

"Well, no one's asked, specifically," he said. The girls hadn't asked because they probably didn't want a single new detail about Ford's sex life beyond what they had already been forced by rumors to imagine. Noble hadn't asked because he already knew what had really happened. Ford didn't think Miss Farley would find it at all comforting to hear that a man she presumably had never met before already knew all the details, so he decided for the sake of this conversation to just lump Noble in with the rest of them. "But they've heard what Mrs. Dempsey was saying, obviously. I've been — er, I suppose — implying to people that we're fond of each other." This felt like an embarrassing and invasive thing to be admitting to, since they hadn't codified this story in any way previously, but surely she had been doing the same? It was the only way to salvage any of her reputation, to pretend there had been an attachment, codified or otherwise, prior to the coatroom incident. "And I think some of them believe that, and some think I'm — we're, I suppose — trying to make the best of a bad situation."

---

Pretending to be fond of her. Jemima smiled helplessly. (Like she could trick her mind by the motion of it, and feign that she would rather laugh at that statement than cry.) She nodded; she supposed that made sense. She had tried to make it all sound more intentional with her friends, too. But wasn’t her life more miserable and pathetic than ever, if that was what the future looked like?

It had been bad enough to ask it even briefly, the way she had of Mr. Carmichael – one small gesture to smooth things over, a little harmless pretence. But she hadn’t actually been poised to marry Mr. Carmichael and make that pretence the rest of her life. She had always thought marriage was better than spinsterhood, being poor and neglected and alone forever – but she had only ever pictured a marriage of mutual affection, if it could not be love.

It had never crossed her mind that she would be marrying someone who didn’t actually want her. But she had already told Jack no, she had made her bed here; and really the Greengrasses didn’t sound so bad at all. And Mr. Greengrass seemed – nice enough, didn’t he? He had bothered to come here, after all. Perhaps she should count that as trying.

She swallowed and tucked her arms around herself, although the room was already warm. “I am sorry,” she said finally, with a rueful twist of her mouth. “I know this isn’t...” Ideal was an understatement. What either of us wanted. And she might have a reason to be angry with him, but really Jemima wasn’t any good at that sort of competitive grudge-holding – at least not when she was already more worried that he would resent her for the rest of their lives. That he might well hate her already. “But I – hope – we can?” she said, earnestly. “Make the best of it.”

---

Ford was grateful for her smile, even though he didn't know how to interpret it. She wasn't surprised or offended that he'd been ad-libbing to anyone who asked about their supposed affection, then; she did not look inclined to be angry. The smile might only have meant and can't we both agree that it's ridiculous? and Ford would still have been grateful for it — they could both agree that it was ridiculous, after all, if they allowed themselves to have a conversation so frank as that. They wouldn't, he had gathered. The most on-the-nose thing she had managed so far was I know this isn't, with no adjective to follow, and Ford had not done much better.

"I'm sorry, too," he offered earnestly. He was. At the heart of this situation, Miss Farley was a woman in a bad situation, and every bit of involvement he had in that situation had only made matters worse. He had briefly wondered if he was more the victim than he realized, when he heard she had been 'engaged' in January and reconsidered how she might have come to be half undressed in the coatroom. But even the worst light his imagination could paint her in did not change that she had not been expecting him to come in through the floo, and had been trying to maintain her innocence to Mrs. Dempsey when he had ruined all chances of it. She might not be faultless, but the present situation was still primarily his fault, he had determined.

And anyway, it was hard to imagine she could have been behind any sort of devious plot while he was watching her sit on the sofa with her arms wrapped around herself. He set the flowers down on the side table. "But — yes," he agreed, leaning his elbows against the top of his knees (perhaps subconsciously mirroring her curved-in posture a bit). "Yes, we'll — I mean that I'd like to. Make the best of it. I don't imagine it will be easy, but — I shouldn't like to ruin your life entirely," he said with a wry twist of his mouth.

---

She hadn’t even realised quite how far on edge she was until she was waiting, tensed, to see how he took that; but his answer came as a profound relief. It meant that at least they were... well, she would not go so far as to say on the same page yet, with the next to nothing she knew about him, but certainly reading from the same book. Or, at least, hovering in the same library aisle or thereabouts. Mr. Greengrass was sorry, and wanted to make the best of it too.

“Alright.” She smiled again, feeling a knot in her chest – one of the many – loosening ever so slightly as she exhaled. She wanted to be optimistic about this, but... as he had said: it hadn’t been easy to find that line yet, not when she had been feeling defeated all week. But perhaps a little of the pressure of this had been cast aside when he had put down the flowers; maybe a little air had come into the room at the wry face he pulled.

Jemima was very aware that he might well have ruined her life entirely, if he had refused her parents’ urging to marry her. He had forced her hand in the first place, by not maintaining their innocence, but – he wouldn’t have been ruined forever, to be thought a rake. So he had saved her as much as he had condemned her, and she could try to be grateful for that.

(Jack would have saved her too, entirely selflessly on his part. But if Jemima had let him, she would have condemned him to be muttered about, to have his name sullied by mere association, and that – that was not a fair trade at all. She couldn’t have borne the guilt of it.)

So the best of a bad situation it was. “Well, I have always wanted to live in Hogsmeade, so,” Jemima said brightly, in a very tentative attempt to be amusing, “you would not have ruined it entirely.” (Not that the Farley family home was not very nice, in its rambling country cottage kind of way, with a pretty garden and the quaint view of fields behind them... but most of her friends lived in Hogsmeade, and there was not much of interest in the village of Tutshill beyond the local muggles and the quidditch team, and Jemima did not want to live in her parents’ house forever, besides.)

---

She was trying to be at least a little humorous, he recognized, and probably he should have just taken it at face value there and appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood in the same spirit that he had offered he wouldn't like to ruin her life entirely. But she had chosen a subject that he had very strongly held (if very seldom discussed) feelings about, and so he could not help the flicker of trepidation when she said she had always wanted to live in Hogsmeade. Ford had grown up in the countryside, and would have been quite content to have stayed there his whole life had their financial situation been different after his father's death. He missed his childhood home every day — or at least every time he let himself think about it. Hogsmeade was dreadful by comparison: the neighborhoods too crowded; the architecture too uniform; the weather too monotonous; the nights too quiet; the days too loud. When he'd sold the Greengrass house in the country and moved to Noble's rented home in Bartonburg he had told everyone it would be a great benefit to be so much closer to society, but he had never believed it and had always regretted it.

He had sometimes fantasized about being able to buy it back at some future date, when he wasn't busy fantasizing about faking his own death and fleeing the country. The latter had taken primacy as the years went on as it seemed the more realistic of the two daydreams. Both were quite firmly out of reach now.

So if she was looking forward to living in Hogsmeade it meant one of two things: either the pair of them had hardly anything in common, because she wanted all the things from a residence that he didn't care about and disregarded all of the things he valued — or she was about to be monstrously disappointed when she came to Hogsmeade and reality settled in.

"Do you have friends there?" he asked. The proximity to people he liked was the only thing that had made it tolerable for him — though he suspected this would feel more like a burden than a benefit after the wedding, since Tycho would still only be a few streets away.

---

She had said it carelessly, only because she had always found Tutshill so very out of the way and she hated to feel left out or alone – but perhaps Jemima ought to have considered her changed circumstances before she said it. Because wanting to be more around wizarding society was not going to be quite the same now, now that everyone and their mother had heard about the coatroom incident, had all manner of opinions about her, and would be watching her – them – intently, to see what came of the marriage-in-haste.

(She swallowed, and had to work hard not to let her face fall abruptly at that realisation. But – one day soon, she told herself, it would all be forgotten, and then Hogsmeade would be just as fun as it was meant to be.)

“Yes, I do,” she said, nodding keenly to make up for the doubts in her mind. “Mostly in Wellingtonshire,” she admitted, because – well, most of her closest friends were from older and more well-off families; so she had always started off on the back foot when it came to feeling left out or trailing behind – and she did not expect the Greengrass’ house to be right next door to any of them, on those particular streets, “but it will be nice to be nearby.”

---