A week can feel like an eternity when one is dreading the arrival of the post. For seven days, Jason had enjoyed the lingering satisfaction of his work on the Starfall wards. He had managed his duties, both as Lord and Mayor, with his usual efficiency and contentment. But the owl from Lord Selwyn had eventually arrived, its contents a terse and grudging acceptance of the situation, dripping with veiled insults. Jason had filed it away with a dismissive shrug. That, he could handle. The mountain of correspondence currently occupying his desk at Ashworth Manor, however, was a different beast entirely.
He sat in his ancestral office, a magnificent room panelled in dark, polished mahogany and lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves groaning with magical history and legal tomes. A grand fireplace dominated one wall, dormant in the summer heat, its marble mantle adorned with portraits of his predecessors. Normally, this room was his sanctuary, a place of focus and power. Today, it felt like a prison. And he was its sole, miserable inmate, sentenced to the cruel and unusual punishment of spouse-hunting.
Right then, Jason, let's get on with it. The sooner you start, the sooner you can finish and reward yourself with a glass of firewhisky. Or maybe the whole bottle.
He stared at the teetering stack of folders. It was an assault on the senses. Each one tried to outdo the last in sheer, unadulterated gaudiness. They were presented in ornate bindings of velvet or dragonhide, sealed with family crests in shimmering, colour-changing wax. He imagined a room full of Lords and Ladies fussing over the exact shade of emerald for their seal, the precise texture of the parchment. It was a competition before the courtship had even begun.
With a groan, he forced himself to pick up the first folder from the stack. The Parkinson crest. Deep breath. Just open it. Inside, a magically charmed photograph of a pretty, dark-haired girl smiled up at him. As he watched, she preened, patting her elaborate hairstyle and turning her head from side to side to catch the light. He could practically hear the conversation already. "Oh, Lord Ashworth, your manor is just divine! Will it be featured in this month's 'Witch Weekly'? My new robes would look simply stunning in the ballroom." He shuddered at the thought of a life filled with such mind-numbing vanity. Nope. He didn't need to read the list of her accomplishments in floral arrangement and gossip-mongering. He tossed it onto the rejection pile.
The next one was sealed with the crest of House Selwyn. He stared at it, a dark sort of amusement bubbling in his chest. You cannot be serious. The sheer, unmitigated audacity was almost impressive. Did Lord Selwyn truly believe that after being soundly rebuffed in a land dispute, the next logical step was to offer up his daughter? "A union between our houses would be most… beneficial, Lord Ashworth. Perhaps we could revisit the matter of that charming little plot of land as a wedding gift?" Jason could hear the oily suggestion in his mind as clearly as if Selwyn were in the room. He snorted, adding the folder to the rejection pile with more force than was strictly necessary.
The folder after that bore the Lestrange seal. A genuine chill went down his spine. He didn't even need to imagine the conversation. The Lestranges were… different. They didn't just walk the line of dark magic; they danced on it, laughing. He pictured a dinner date where the topic turned to their family's… hobbies. Not in your wildest dreams. Not in a thousand years. That folder was unceremoniously dropped into the bin beside his desk, which he promptly incinerated with a clean, sharp flick of his wand.
Ugh. This is impossible. His mother would have had an absolute field day with this. Amelia Ashworth, born a Montague, had possessed a boundless enthusiasm for social machinations and matchmaking. She would have navigated this process with the strategic glee of a general planning a campaign, her eyes sparkling with excitement. She would have known which families were on the rise, which had skeletons in their closets, and which daughter had the perfect blend of breeding and temperament. "Now, Jason, darling," he could hear her voice, a fond and painful echo in his memory, "the Travers girl has a frightful laugh, but her mother's family has excellent connections in the Department of Mysteries. We must consider all the angles!"
He missed her terribly, but he was also profoundly grateful she wasn't here to witness this disaster. She wouldn't have understood his hesitation. But it wasn't just about angles and connections for him. It wasn't that he was being purposefully difficult. The truth was far simpler, and far more complicated: he wanted to fall in love. He wanted a partner, a confidante, someone to share the quiet moments with after a long day of council meetings and ward maintenance. He wanted a woman who would stand beside him as his equal, who would help him lead House Ashworth and govern Starfall not because it was her duty, but because it was her passion, too. He wanted a Lady Ashworth who saw Jason, not just the Lord.
The problem was that most of the girls raised in the rarefied air of pure-blood society were groomed for a very specific role, and it wasn't 'equal partner'. They were either vapid and shallow, their minds filled with little more than gossip and fashion, or they were pompous and self-important, viewing marriage as a transaction to elevate their own power and status. He'd seen it happen time and again. He thought of the Black cousins, Cygnus and Orion, both four years his junior at Hogwarts. He hadn't known them well—a Hufflepuff Head Boy rarely had cause to interact with mid-year Slytherins—but the results of their matches were common knowledge. Poor Cygnus, saddled with Druella Rosier. Jason had seen her at Ministry galas, a woman who was undeniably beautiful but possessed an empty, simpering quality, her laughter always a little too loud, her eyes always scanning the room for someone more important to talk to. It was a shallow existence. And Orion's fate was somehow even worse, trapped in a politically expedient but emotionally frigid marriage to his own second cousin, Walburga. Jason had heard her speak once; her voice was a cold, shrill thing that could cut glass, her face a permanent mask of disdain. Poor blokes. What a miserable, loveless existence, all for the sake of keeping the bloodline pure. Jason supposed Lord Arcturus Black, their patriarch, knew what he was doing from a strategic standpoint, but at what personal cost to his sons and nephews?
Jason ran a hand through his snow-white hair, the beginnings of a migraine pulsing at his temples. He needed a wife. An heir was a duty he could not shirk. He started mentally running through the more respectable houses. The Potters? Lord Charlus and his wife, Lady Dorea, were a fine couple, stalwart members of the Light bloc. But they had been married for a respectable number of years and remained childless. It was a private sadness for their house, but for his current purposes, it meant there were certainly no Potter daughters of a suitable age. The Longbottoms? Another great house, but they had no eligible daughters either. Young Francis Longbottom had only recently married the formidable Augusta, and Jason wished them well. The Prewetts? An old and respectable family, but they had a surplus of boys—Gideon and Fabian, who were still just children, and their older cousins—but no daughters of a suitable age. He'd heard that Lucretia Black had recently married Ignatius Prewett, a good match for both of them. Good for her. At least one person was finding a decent partner.
So that's it, then? Is there no one? Why was it so difficult? Why couldn't he find a single woman in their society who didn't seem to prefer her own reflection to actual company, or who wouldn't immediately try to usurp his power as Head of House? The frustration was coiling in his gut. It was his own fault, in a way. He'd never even dated. Not at Hogwarts, not in the years since. There was always something more important demanding his attention: excelling in his studies, earning his dual Masteries, the monumental task of running Starfall after his parents' death, managing the extensive affairs of House Ashworth. Romance had been a luxury he couldn't afford. And now, at twenty-five, it seemed he had waited too long. All the available options were either self-entitled, spoilt brats, or they had a penis.
ARGHHHH.
He threw his hands up in despair. This is a farce. I'm Lord of an Ancient and Most Noble House, a Master of two demanding fields of magic, the Mayor of the most prosperous magical town in Britain, and I'm being defeated by a stack of bloody paperwork. Maybe he could just become a monk. Surely there was a magical equivalent. He could retreat to a remote monastery in the Himalayas, dedicate his life to magical meditation, and leave the continuation of the Ashworth line to some distant, thrice-removed cousin. It was a tempting thought.
He was three minutes deep into this pathetic pity party, picturing himself in saffron robes, when his eyes caught on a folder he'd overlooked. It was slimmer than the others, made of simple, elegant parchment with no gaudy embellishments. The wax seal was a modest badger, the crest of the House of Abbott. He frowned, pulling it from beneath a much larger, garish portfolio from the House of Travers.
He broke the seal. Inside, the photograph was simple. A young woman with warm, kind eyes and a gentle smile. Her brown hair was tied back simply, and she wasn't wearing extravagant robes or dripping with jewels. She looked… real. He read the inscription.
Sara Marina Abbott.
Second daughter of Lord and Lady Abbott.
Born: 12 May 1929.
Twenty-one years old. Four years his junior. The name and face were familiar, stirring a distant memory. He thought back to his time at Hogwarts. When he was in his seventh year, the towering, respected Head Boy, she would have been a quiet little third year. Little Sara Abbott. He remembered her now, a small girl with a bright, friendly face, usually surrounded by a close-knit group of friends. They were in the same House. Hufflepuff.
Jason paused, the file resting in his hands. He had never, of course, seen her in a romantic light back then. She was just a kid, one of the many younger badgers he'd tried to look out for. But the young woman in the photograph was not a kid anymore. She had grown up well. She was genuinely beautiful, not in the sharp, icy way of many pure-blood beauties, but with a soft, approachable warmth that radiated from the picture. He recalled her character, what little he knew of it. She was always sweet, unfailingly kind, a true Hufflepuff who embodied the House values of loyalty, fairness, and hard work.
Could it be this simple?
He sat there for a long time, just looking at her picture. The other profiles had felt like business proposals. This one felt… human. Perhaps this was an option. A real one. The Abbotts were an old and respected pure-blood family, members of the Wizengamot's Progressive Bloc. In terms of pure-blood political standing, they were technically a step below the Ancient and Most Noble House of Ashworth, but Jason couldn't bring himself to care about such trivialities. The only Houses considered his direct peers were the Blacks, Potters, Longbottoms, and Greengrasses, and as he'd already established, none of them were viable options anyway.
A fragile tendril of hope began to unwind in his chest. A Hufflepuff. A kind, decent woman from a good family. Maybe, just maybe, this wouldn't be so bad.
Right. No more procrastinating. It's just a letter. A single letter.
Okay. Fine!
With a newfound sense of resolve, he pushed the other folders away, pulled a fresh sheet of parchment towards him, and dipped his finest quill in ink. He began to write, his formal script flowing across the page. He would write to Lord Abbott. He would formally request permission to call upon his daughter, Sara. A meeting. Just a meeting, to start.
He sealed the letter with his own crest and summoned a family owl from the manor's owlery. As he attached the letter to the bird's leg and sent it off into the afternoon sky, a wave of profound exhaustion washed over him. The brief surge of hope had drained him completely.
Now, all he wanted to do was flop face-first into his bed and not see another courtship proposal for the rest of his natural life. Ever.