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Prologue: Three Carriages

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This place would never be home.

She knew it as soon as her grey eyes took in the great white cliffs, the weathered little inns and shops, the rough-hewn men hurrying to and fro in the twilight — her first introduction to this bleak little country, which greeted her with its arms crossed and its features fixed as stone.

Perhaps she'd already known it, before they'd even left. Yes, she must have, before they'd even married. And she'd done it anyway.

L'amour fait les plus grandes douceurs et les plus sensibles infortunes de la vie.

Of course, it wasn't her husband's fault, what that bastard Bonaparte had done. It wasn't his fault that there was nothing left for her in France. And she supposed, grudgingly, that it wasn't his fault how charming he was.

But why couldn't they have stayed on the Continent?

She shivered and drew her shawl around her shoulders more tightly against the chill coming in off the channel. How was it so much colder here, than where they'd crossed only fifty miles away?

"Ma chérie?"

Fleur blinked and drew her chin up, shoulders back as she turned to face her husband, who'd just reemerged from the small but clean inn run by a man who'd addressed her as 'missus.'

"Yes."

"You're tired," he observed sympathetically.

"Yes," she lied.

He took her chilled hand; his was impossibly warm.

"I've hired a post chaise for the morning. We'll have us a good night's rest, and then to London tomorrow. And then, as soon as we can — " he kissed her fingers, his blue eyes warm as he said the next word — "home."

He'd spoken of it often — a farmhouse, from the sound of it, probably no more than five bedrooms, near a village she'd never heard of, two days' journey from London; that was what she'd be mistress of someday.

Comment les forts sont-ils tombés.

William may be her home, but that place, she was certain, never could be.

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Nearly two hundred miles away, the mail coach was fit to burst at the seams at the Warwick stop as a dark-haired young lady peered inside and then back at her ticket in confusion.

"Are you coming along or ain't you?"

Startled at the coachman's indecorous demand, she grasped for her voice momentarily.

"Oh, yes, I — I'm sorry, I thought I had purchased a ticket for inside the coach?"

She knew, in fact, that she had purchased an inside ticket — she knew because it cost twice as much as a ticket to ride outside and she really shouldn't have spent it — but it was two days' journey to Devonshire and she'd burn to a crisp if she didn't freeze first during the night.

"So you did, miss. In you get."

She took a cautious step up into the doorway and tried to work out where exactly they expected her to sit. Even if she'd been a slender girl, it would have been a feat.

A neatly-dressed man in his middle age inside the coach gave her a smile that could have been friendly or dangerous and she really didn't care to find out which.

"Come on, then. We'll squash up." He shifted over, pressing himself against the window, and patted the woefully inadequate space between himself and a rotund older man with a long moustache.

"But your abigail's going to have to sit on my lap," he added cheekily as she manoeuvred herself into the space, causing her to flush brilliantly even in the waning twilight.

"I don't have an abigail," she replied stiffly, and at once she felt the pressure of almost half a dozen pairs of eyes on her — a young woman travelling alone, at night, and a very long distance.

"No?" the friendly man asked in a tone of surprise. "Your… brother, I presume? Your governess?"

She cleared her throat, eyes fixed on the knee of a youth sitting across from her. "I am a governess."

Her attention was drawn by a scoff from the youth; his hair was a ruddy brown and he was sprawled as best he could in his seat, wedged between two people she took to be his parents.

"Don't look like no governess I ever saw."

"Be quiet," snapped the lady on his right, who did indeed appear to be his mother. But he ignored her and crossed his arms with an impertinent, appraising look at the younger lady.

"Wish we had a governess looked like you," he remarked, earning him a slap upside the head from his mother, though he didn't look at all sorry about it.

She was beginning to wish she'd taken an outside seat after all.

Mercifully, her travelling companions were all asleep within the next few hours. Sometime the following day the family sitting across from her got off somewhere in Wiltshire, to be replaced by an older couple; and the portly man got off in Dorset, replaced by a courteous man about her own age — all of whom pondered her with enquiring eyes. She managed to stave off any further attempts at conversation by assuming an imperiously distant look she'd borrowed from her sister.

But the travel was not without other incident, and she arrived at her destination at half past ten at night on the second day, nerve-rattled and delirious with exhaustion, having not slept above a few hours the entire journey. After accepting her portmanteau from the porter (honestly, part of her had been apprehensive she might never see it again), she glanced up and down the quiet, dark thoroughfare of Honiton.

She was utterly alone, more than a hundred miles from home, and several hours late — what if they'd given up waiting for her?

The mail coach, she knew, waited for no one and provided no service aside from getting you from one place to the next; there was no point in asking the coachman or the guard to assist her.

She willed herself not to panic.

"Pardon, miss?"

Startled, she whirled about to see a liveried coachman, whose annoyed expression turned to one of apology.

"I didn't mean to give you a fright. Would you be a Miss Dawlish, by chance?"

She released a great sigh of gratitude.

"Yes, have you been sent by Lord Avery?" Without waiting for the answer she rushed on: "I'm so sorry, I came by mail coach, as you see, and there was some trouble with the horses at one stop and then some problem with the road, it was raining in Wiltshire — or maybe it was Gloucestershire, actually, I — "

"Well, you're here now. Let's get on, shall we?"

Twenty minutes and one significant improvement of a carriage ride later, she found herself and her lonely portmanteau deposited on the steps of Moorpark Manor. She was conducted into the entrance hall by a tired-looking butler, and then into the care of Mrs Robins the housekeeper, whose black hair was streaked with bits of grey.

"Lady Avery has retired for the night," she informed Miss Dawlish, her voice measured and stately. "You will meet her in the morning, and Miss Avery, too, of course."

Mrs Robins cast an appraising eye over Miss Dawlish before turning to lead her upstairs.

"If you'll follow me, please, I'll show you to your room — no, leave that there," she added as Miss Dawlish made to pick up her portmanteau again. "We'll have that brought up."

The great house was dim and quiet at this time of night — even their footsteps were silenced by the carpet as they ascended, and somewhere in the hall behind them she could hear the ticking of a clock — but it seemed not everyone was keeping country hours.

"Yes, sir," came a man's voice nearby as they neared the top of the stairs; he spoke in a low tone due to the lateness of the hour but still smartly. "I'll go to town first thing in the morning. Good night, sir."

Off to the left, a door shut, and over the top of the balustrade a gentleman came briskly into view. He wore no coat, though the rest of him was done up properly, and the lamplight glinted silver off the rim of his spectacles and copper off of his hair.

"Ah, Mrs Robins. I'm afraid I'll — Oh, I beg your pardon." He stopped, noticing the fact of the addition to their company, before resuming: "It's rather late, and I have early business; I'm afraid I'll be staying the night again."

"I suspected as much," responded Mrs Robins. "I've had a fire made up in your usual room."

"Kind of you, thank you." And then, with a brief look of polite indifference at Miss Dawlish, he was gone in the same direction he'd come from.

"That's Lord Avery's secretary, Mr Weasley," Mrs Robins informed her as she directed her in the opposite direction down the corridor. "Practically lives here half the time himself. Now here we are."

They'd reached the end of the corridor and Mrs Robins indicated to the left in a whisper, "That's Miss Avery's room, and your room is just here." She opened the door to a cosy room with a fire burning and wallpapered with a tasteful pattern of twisted vines and flowers.

"Lady Avery will see you in the morning room at half past eight."

Miss Dawlish hesitated and found her voice when Mrs Robins' hand was on the door knob. "I'm sorry to trouble you… the journey from Birmingham was long, and not much opportunity for eating…"

"I'll have something brought up."

Then the housekeeper was gone, and Miss Dawlish occupied herself with assessing her surroundings whilst she waited for her luggage and supper. The room was smaller than she had been used to, but she could take no issue with the appointment: a writing desk, a small wardrobe (thank God she'd only brought the one bag), a thoughtful extra blanket at the foot of the bed. And though it was dark and misty outside, she pulled back the curtain to study the view from her window, which appeared to include the stables, but beyond that she couldn't tell.

It would do nicely.

It could be home.

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The rain in Gloucestershire which Miss Dawlish had spoken of had not let up, and in fact was at that very moment moving into Herefordshire as two fine carriages made their way towards an estate even grander than that of Lord Avery's.

Upon reaching their destination, two gentlemen alighted from the first carriage, their heads ducked against the rain, holding their hats fast to their heads as the elder waved the carriage on to the stables. Both had an air of decided but careless fashion about them — the sort of disinterest in the details of one's appearance that was acceptable only in a gentleman of the first consequence.

The elder, a man of some forty years, with aristocratic cheekbones and apathetic eyes, was dressed impeccably but without regard to trend — no colours, patterns, fobs or seals, and his cravat was tied in an indifferent manner that brought his valet near tears.

The younger, only just come of age, had all the nonchalance of youth about him and — though smartly dressed — a persistent, slightly rumpled appearance. This he owed to an active existence, as well as the fact that, as slight of frame as he was, he often forcibly brought to mind an adolescent trying to dress up as his father.

Upon his thin face were perched a pair of spectacles — an unavoidable, if unfashionable, detail for an energetic young man who rather relied on his eyesight for hunting and riding, but which were also right now inconveniently obscured by raindrops as he ran to the second carriage and began assisting the valets with unloading the luggage.

"My lord, don't put yourself to the trouble!" cried his own valet halfheartedly, though he found himself wondering why he even bothered trying anymore. Once my lord Potter put his mind to some noble behaviour, there was no deterring him.

"Nonsense, Creevey!" shouted the young viscount, hauling his own baggage to the sheltered doorway where his elder stood rapping the head of his cane impatiently against the door.

"Never tell me they've gone to bed already!" scoffed His Grace the Duke of Padford. "Your father told me that if I should ever find him keeping country hours — "

At that moment, the door swung open to reveal an ancient but stately and impossibly tall butler, who — unfazed as he was by Lord Buckston's friends dropping in at all hours — betrayed no emotion upon opening the door to receive visitors in the middle of the night — but when he saw who had arrived, his eyes widened with delight.

"My lord!" he exclaimed, ushering in young Harry Potter. "Welcome home! Oh, and Your Grace! I do apologise!" Overwhelmed as he was to find the heir apparent to Buckston having finally come home from the Continent, Wallace had been momentarily blind to Padford's presence — though, in Wallace's defence, Padford was nearly as much a fixture in this house these twenty years as was the absurdly ugly vase Lady Buckston insisted on keeping in display in the hall (a wedding gift from her sister).

Padford, while often absurd, however, was significantly less ugly.

"No, no, Wallace." Padford favoured him with an ironic smile. "Harry is first in consequence in this house, I harbour no pretensions on that score. Now, if you please, I should like to see my dear Buckston — or, if he is already abed, the devil may have him but I'd like some of his brandy to take this chill off."

"You'll find both, Your Grace, in the parlour. I shall have Creevey and Mitchell conduct your bags to your rooms."

"No, no, that's not — Buckston, my dear boy!" cried Padford.

"Well, well." Lord Buckston — the image of his son aged by twenty years but hardly — had appeared in the hall, a decanter in one hand and a glass in the other, impeccably dressed except that he had dispensed with the trifling matter of his coat and cravat. "Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Or rather — pour out a measure of brandy and he shall appear!"

Setting the glass and decanter demonstratively on a table, he shook hands with Padford before embracing his son.

"I'm very glad to see you, my boy, but your Mama has vowed she will affix my head to the wall like the strangest trophy if I don't send you up to her immediately upon your arrival. Padford, why hasn't your man brought in your things? You'll stay the night here, surely? This rain won't let up for hours, and you must be devilish tired."

"Kind of you, James, but I really should see how Lupin gets on."

"He gets on tolerably," came a mild voice from the parlour, followed shortly by the vision of its owner, smiling and leaning slightly on his cane for assistance as he joined his friends in the hall.

Buckston suppressed a smile at the delighted surprise even Sirius's apathetic features could not hide. "I must deliver Harry to his mama. Wallace, see that His Grace's things are conducted to his usual room."

(His Grace's usual room, when staying at Buckston Hall, was next to Mr Remus Lupin's usual room, maintaining only the thinnest veneer of pretence.)

The servants having been thus dispatched and James and Harry gone up to see her ladyship, the Duke laid aside his gloves and crossed the hall with a quick stride, taking one of Remus's hands in his and guiding him back into the parlour.

"Your leg?"

Remus shrugged. "The rain. How was the continent?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "I'm an abominable escort for a young gentleman. I'm interested in neither art nor women. You at least could have educated him as to one of those subjects."

"I would have slowed you down." Remus gave him a wry smile. "And what were you doing while young Harry was occupying himself with the other subject?"

"Gambling."

Remus snorted. "I should almost have preferred you'd applied yourself to the women."

"Well, would it make a difference to you if I'd won?"

Remus raised his eyebrows. "Did you?"

"No, but what if I had?"

If Remus had any retort, it was silenced when Sirius pressed a tender kiss to his lips, one hand on Remus's neck, the other arm about his waist after closing the parlour door behind them. With one hand still resting lightly on his cane, Remus wound the other in Sirius's overlong hair. He turned his head to press a kiss into Sirius's palm before meeting his mouth once more, and there they stayed until a knock at the door broke them apart and Wallace stepped into the room.

"Your Grace's room is ready."

"Thank you, Wallace. And where's that brandy my bacon-brained friend has — "

"His lordship has already ordered some to Your Grace's room."

"Thank you, Wallace. What service!"

"Thank you, sir."

"I meant James."

Remus snorted, following Sirius out to the staircase, accepting Sirius's proffered hand; and they ascended, Remus still laughing, and leaning more on His Grace than on his cane.

Above stairs, meanwhile, her ladyship ignored her son's protests of, "Do not get up, mama!" and flew towards him when he appeared in her doorway, flinging aside a book she'd been reading. Her embroidered yellow-gold dressing gown and red hair — fading these days to a burnished orange — swirled around her as she embraced her son.

"Are you in one piece?" she asked joyously, taking his face in her hands. "How well you look — and taller, too, I think!"

"Mama — " He fidgeted, both pleased and annoyed — "I haven't even been away the length of the season."

In fact, Harry had been gone far shorter a time than he would have liked; the small detail of a war had prevented him being able to take a two-year Grand Tour to complete his 'education' in places such as France, Switzerland, and Italy. And even though it had been some months since Bonaparte had been defeated and exiled, Lily had felt that allowing her only son to go marauding about a war-torn continent (with Sirius) was not at all the thing.

In the end, Harry had persuaded her to allow him to go under the 'supervision' of his godfather to the Low Countries for a few months, in what Harry had come to think of as his Not-Quite-So-Grand-But-I'm-Sure-I'll-Get-Up-To-Some-Trouble-Or-Another Tour.

"It seems so much longer than that, I assure you," his mother responded, brushing her fingers through his damp hair, sweeping the stubborn fringe out of his eyes. "You must tell me all about it, but I dare say you are tired and we must leave it 'til the morning. Only I wished to see you immediately, and what a lovely surprise it has been, for until we received your letter we had not expected you for nearly another sennight! Oh, lord, you must be hungry! You cannot have eaten for hours!"

"I'm fine, Mama — " But Harry was interrupted by the distinct rumbling of his stomach.

Lily laughed. "I shall have a tray sent to your room presently. Oh, and to Sirius, too, I suppose. My love!" She waved to catch the attention of her husband as he approached the doorway and directed him, "Tell Wallace to prepare a tray for dinner and send it to Harry's room, and one to Sirius! Go quickly."

With that, she waved him off, and the great Earl of Buckston, with a look of amusement on his face, could muster nothing more than a "Yes, my darling" and took himself off to carry out his wife's orders.

"Now, I shall detain you no longer, my dear — oh, only let me look at you a moment longer! This house has been far too quiet without you, you know."

"Far too quiet without Padford, I think," returned Harry wryly.

"Oh, yes." Lily sighed. "But never mind that! I'm happy to have you home, my dear one, but even if you are worldly now I am still your mama, so off to bed with you, for dinner and a good night's sleep! Oh, and you've received quite a few letters while you were away; I've had Wallace put them on the table next to your bed. Off with you, my darling, sweet dreams."

Having left his mother with a kiss on the hand and the assurance that he was, in fact, still alive, Harry retired to his own room, the exhaustion striking him almost the moment he stepped through the door; it was all he could do to allow his valet to disrobe him and assist him into his bedclothes before he dismissed Creevey and flung himself into bed. There, however, he propped himself up on one elbow and reached for the stack of letters on the table nearby, sifting through them until he happened upon one addressed in a familiar, irredeemably untidy hand. He broke the seal eagerly and perused the missive, dated some weeks prior.

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My dear Harry,

Lord, it's so damnably dull around here ever since exams have finished. I'm beginning to think this being of-age business isn't all it's made out to be.

On the subject of which, Prosy Percy has once again descended like a shadow over this house and keeps trying to talk to me about 'my future.' It's just the outside of enough! Would he would have stayed in London, but every time Lord Avery removes to the country Percy comes home. Sees no reason to set up his own house if he isn't married. (Let us find some boring girl to take him off our hands so he shan't cast gloom and doom over my breakfast every morning.) He's in the wrong calling if you ask me, but I suppose the Church don't pay as well as the Tories, does it?

We hope Fred may come home on furlough soon, but we hardly know when. When Charlie may come ashore is anyone's guess. We've just had a letter from Bill saying he means to come home next month with a surprise, and I'm sure none of us knows what he means by it.

George drives my mother to distraction with all his contraptions, and he nearly set the barn on fire last month. My mother persists in thinking Ginny shall marry my cousin Bernard. Ginny would sooner grow feathers and fly!

I wish you will come and visit when you return from the continent! I've already spoken to my father and mother; you need only write and tell me when. (Mama speaks of nothing else now — so you must come!) It's devilish dull here, I warn you, enough to make one wish to be back at school. But we'll contrive something — we always do!

Yours &c,

Ron Weasley

PS — It's really too bad you can't make your way to Italy — because I'd like to tell you that if you were to see old Boney you should plant him a facer from me!

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Harry laughed openly, and tired though he was, he found he could not wait until morning to compose a response to his dearest friend. They'd weathered Harrow together, and then Oxford, and though Harry had been used to going the summer months without seeing his friend, somehow it was different this time, perhaps because there'd be no more school days come autumn. And while school had never been Harry's favourite thing, leaving it had meant leaving a life where he saw his friends nearly every day — and entering a new life as the future Earl of Buckston.

Twenty minutes at his writing desk and a cold supper later, he crawled back into bed. He'd post the letter in the morning and soon enough would be off to Devonshire…

But for now, how good it was to be home!

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Author's note:

I don't intend to write lengthy author notes regularly, but here's some info to start.

I plan to update every Sunday. I already have 7 chapters of this posted to AO3, which I'll be posting here over the course of this week, and Chapter 8 will post on March 13 - then we'll stick to the weekly schedule from there on.

Content warnings: There will be eventual (infrequent, fairly mild) smut, and a couple of scenes involving (non-graphic) domestic violence or non-consent. I'll put notes about these things at the beginning of the relevant chapters. There will also be a major character death.

This is a romance and I believe in HEA's, and every one of the Weasley children will end happily - for most but not all, that means a relationship. But please do keep this in mind when things inevitably happen that will make you want to kick me off a cliff. :D You'll get endgame canon ships with some detours along the way. Plus endgame Fred/Lee Jordan, and Charlie will have a fling but he's aromantic and really just in love with his literal ship. Just want to let you know what you can expect from me!

This is meant to be about 50 chapters long and will burn slowly. Hermione won't even appear until chapter 15 (she'll be a main character, but she's just elsewhere for the first part). If you're here for some Percy/Audrey goodness specifically (I sure am, if you've seen my works page) you may not see Audrey's name in this story for a long while. You're just going to have to trust me! ;)

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L'amour fait les plus grandes douceurs et les plus sensibles infortunes de la vie. - "Love makes life's sweetest pleasures and worst misfortunes." (quote by Madeleine de Scudéry)

Comment les forts sont-ils tombés. - "How are the mighty fallen" (as translated in the Martin Bible, 2 Samuel 1:25)

'abigail' - a term for a lady's maid

Boney - actual nickname (among the English) for Napoleon Bonaparte

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A note on names for characters who are peers: For those who may not be familiar, members of the nobility (dukes, marquesses, earls, etc) usually have names specific to their peerage and are not called by family surname. For example, James Potter the Earl of Buckston would be known as Lord Buckston (or just "Buckston" to his friends) and not Potter. (But if James had a younger brother, he would still go by Potter.)

To make matters more confusing, technically his oldest son and heir gets to use one of James's lesser titles (like viscount) as a courtesy title which would have its own name that isn't even Potter or Buckston, but a third name entirely.

However, that can become a lot to follow, especially since this is fanfic and you already know all these characters by canon surnames.

For the most part in this story, to avoid confusion, I won't be assigning different names to the aristocratic characters. To keep things simple, they'll just be called by their family surname, even if it's technically not accurate. (For example, Lucius Malfoy, a viscount, will just be the Viscount Malfoy.)

However, I made an exception for James and Sirius because it amused me to come up with Marauder-ish names for their peerages. "BUCKston." "PADFOrd." Geddit? :P

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Also note the age of majority back then was 21, so that's how old Harry is here, having just come of age.