Chapter Text
“Do you have a map? I believe I just got lost in your eyes.”
The raven haired girl with the most vibrant green eyes Jacob had ever seen just stared at him, completely nonplussed.
Jacob’s research indicated that the Potter Heiress was his best chance to marry into a Book of Gold family; with a muggleborn mother she wasn’t likely to be a blood supremacist like the rest of the noble heirs and heiresses he’d met.
There weren’t many halfblood heiresses, and British purebloods rarely married muggleborns, (Lord Potter was very much the exception) so looks couldn’t be at the top of his list of criteria. Her eyes, though, were actually very striking, although she looked less buxom under the rather shapeless clothes she was wearing than his fleeting recollection of her at the Yule Ball.
(Johanna was the jealous type of girlfriend; it was one of the reasons that she’d agreed to be an exchange student at Hogwarts whilst Jacob competed in the tournament, so Jacob hadn’t really had much opportunity to look at any other girls at the Yule Ball.)
“If you tell me where you’re going, I might be able to give you directions,” she replied, her voice a bit uncertain.
“I was actually hoping to take you to your favourite restaurant for dinner tonight,” Jacob replied with a cheeky wink that had never failed to land him a date before.
“Er, sorry,” came the unexpected response, “but I’ve got a potion brewing that I’ve got to get back to. I’ve only got 45 minutes left before I’ve got to start work on stage 3, and I’m unexpectedly out of lavender because Sirius thought it would be a good idea to use my lavender to make lavender pillows to help his snakes relax. So I’m in a bit of a hurry now.”
“Maybe next time?” Jacob said, somewhat weakly. He’d never actually been rebuffed before.
“Mmm,” came the noncommittal reply as she dashed off in a hurry towards the largest apothecary in Diagon Alley.
Jacob wandered slowly back into the Leaky Cauldron, asked for a fire whiskey, handed over some of that quaint British wizard currency (gold, silver and bronze coins - really? It was almost the 21st century!) then settled into an out of the way booth in the back corner.
It was a Friday night, and the Leaky Cauldron was quite busy, both with clientele drinking or dining and a steady stream of people Flooing to and from Diagon via the Leaky.
Most people were in groups; Jacob was one of the few individuals, and he was starting to feel very much on his lonesome.
It was so very different from how he’d been spending his time back in America, where Jacob—with his height and all American good looks of blond hair, blue eyes and perfect teeth—was well liked and popular.
Girls flocked to him; they were flattered to be asked out by him; they didn’t turn him down. He didn’t need to go chasing them; they’d always laughed at his cheesy pick up lines, and no one had ever turned down a dinner with him.
Was “I can’t have dinner with you because I’m in the middle of brewing a potion?” the British way of saying that a girl couldn’t go on a date because she had to wash her hair? A few of Jacob’s less popular friends had been given that as a reason as to why a girl couldn’t go out with them.
Sipping his fire whiskey, Jacob started to think that maybe he’d made the wrong decision in deciding to stay in Britain. Unfortunately, his original post tournament plan (other than winning the tournament and going on Riddle’s all expense paid world tour, which even Jacob accepted was never going to happen once he understood the harsh reality of British pureblood politics) involved going on a world tour with his then girlfriend, wealthy pureblood heiress Johanna.
This plan had collapsed rather spectacularly after the fourth task when Johanna loudly, publicly, embarrassingly, dumped him. If Jacob wanted a world tour he knew that he—or better still, his travelling partner—would have to pay. Post break up, Jacob no longer had a wealthy partner to bankroll his international travel or his future career. He also missed having a girlfriend, although he wasn’t sure how much he missed Johanna.
He’d certainly never been short of female companionship at Ilvermorny. Johanna was the latest, wealthiest, and most serious in a long line of girls that Jacob had dated. Jacob’s looks and his charm, combined with an ability to do well at school, had managed to get him everything, and everyone, he wanted.
Jacob believed that was because of his talents, his achievements, and not because of his parents. Not like the blood status, heritage obsessed Britains. In Britain who your parents were mattered more than anything else, something that annoyed Jacob no end.
Neither of Jacob’s parents had magic, and neither knew anything about their respective parents. Jacob’s father had been fostered as a five year old after the death of his parents, and Jacob’s mother was adopted, having been abandoned in the hospital shortly after her mother gave birth.
Biological family history was thus unknown and unimportant in the Owens household, although Jacob did suspect that he’d at least one magical ancestor in his family tree, given that he was a Parselmouth, and Parseltongue was known to be a rare and inheritable talent that didn’t manifest in every generation.
It was known that the founder of Ilvermorny, Isolt Sayre, had been a Parselmouth. Little was known of the Founder’s daughters, other than that one had been childless, the other a squib, so perhaps Jacob was perhaps a descendant of that squib; what else could explain his Parseltongue?
It wasn’t something that Jacob had cared about, as blood status was not of any particular relevance at Ilvermorny, ancestry potions were unknown and magical family heritage was not considered important.
Jacob’s former girlfriend might have been an American pureblood heiress, but “heiress” and the wealth that accompanied it meant much more to Jacob than her being a pureblood. Jacob had no qualms with being called a muggleborn by the British wizard looking for contestants in the Triwizard Tournament.
That was before Jacob came to Hogwarts, of course.
Jacob had been flattered when he’d been approached about the tournament; it was a prestigious international tournament, and while he was one of the top achievers in the classroom and on the sporting field, he wasn’t number one either academically or athletically.
What Jacob had that no one else had was Parseltongue. It soon became clear to him that this ability was the reason that Jacob was chosen over other Ilvermorny muggleborns. Parselmouth was something that made Jacob different, but until the tournament being a Parselmouth had never made Jacob feel special, although Jacob had never had doubts about his superiority.
Not only was Jacob flattered by this sudden interest and attention, but the Triwizard Tournament offered Jacob opportunities he’d never even dreamt of. Lord Riddle, the instigator of the tournament, was the real power in magical Britain. The power behind the throne, so to speak.
Lord Riddle could help Jacob in a way that no one else—not even his wealthy girlfriend’s family—could, so Jacob dutifully answered all Lord Riddle’s questions, even if some were rather intrusive and interrogatory.
Admittedly, Jacob was somewhat surprised when it was firmly suggested that he keep his Parseltongue hidden. Apparently the British believed that Parseltongue was a pureblood trait, so Jacob being a Parselmouth suggested that he wasn’t a true muggleborn; that he had magical ancestry. Lord Riddle, unexpectedly, had become quite invested in Jacob being a muggleborn champion—and Jacob wanted to compete—so Jacob kept his Parseltongue quiet.
Consequently Jacob was somewhat taken aback when he heard Parseltongue being used indiscriminately by one of the champions in the first task. He soon learnt that the Pureblood favourite, a scrawny fourteen year old boy named Rigel Black, was well known as a Parselmouth.
Rigel was Heir Black, the son of Lord Black of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, one of the rich and influential families in wizarding Britain. This piqued Jacob’s curiosity; what little he knew of Parseltongue was that it was an inherited trait. Perhaps the wealthy Blacks would welcome a long lost family member, and generously share their wealth with him.
Jacob was very fond of the idea of wealth, even if it meant (discreetly, because he was entered in the tournament as a muggleborn) acknowledging a relationship between him and that little pipsqueak, Rigel Black. Jacob didn’t think much of Black; the kid didn’t seem particularly interested in the tournament and was oblivious to all of Jacob’s hints at a secret camaraderie.
(Jacob was not averse to eavesdropping; conversations he’d overheard between Lord Riddle and another of the tournament organisers, Barty Crouch Jr, suggested that he and Black were intended to progress to the finals.)
(Jacob had to admit that it tickled his ego to know he’d gotten one over Black; the kid would never have been so candid with Lord Riddle if he’d thought his secret Parseltongue conversation could be overheard. Not that Jacob managed to glean any information of use from their discussion; he simply didn’t have the context.)
Jacob’s initial research into genealogy, Parseltongue and Parselmouth was disappointing. It confirmed that Parselmouth was definitely an inherited pureblood gift, but known Parselmouth families—Slytherin, Gaunt and Peverell—were not well connected to the Blacks.
There was at least one recorded Parselmouth who’d married into the Black family, which could possibly explain the emergence of Parseltongue in Rigel Black, but the Blacks were much more well known for being metamorphmagi. Jacob didn’t understand much about the ‘pureblood magics’ that some of the older tomes in the Hogwarts library waffled on about, but it appeared that the likelihood of recessive traits emerging was almost infinitesimal.
What was clear, however, was that Jacob was not a long lost Black Heir, waiting to be found and welcomed into the generous bosom of a wealthy family.
The Blacks were plentiful and numerous, their family connections well documented, with links to most British noble families. There was no shortage of relatives to inherit the Black family’s wealth should the main line fail.
The Blacks also had no obvious American connections. Perhaps there were bastards or squibs that had been excluded from the records, but that didn’t help Jacob establish a connection to the Blacks.
More tellingly, Jacob’s family tree, that he’d constructed with the help of an ancestry potion that was apparently compulsory at Hogwarts, didn’t contain the names of any recognisable British families, at least not as far back as he’d been able to brew it.
As Hogwarts didn’t include genealogical records for American wizarding families, Jacob was unable to confirm if any of his forebears were magical.
Jacob did discover a link between Isolt Sayre, founder of Ilvermorny, and the Gaunts and Slytherins. So if, as he’d previously speculated, his Parselmouth was due to his descent from Isolt’s squib daughter—still a possibility given Jacob’s newly reconstructed family tree ended a century before the founding of Ilvermorny—then Jacob was, in fact, a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.
That, at least, provided a nice sop to his ego every time Jacob came across a snooty pureblood at Hogwarts, Hogsmeade or anywhere else in wizarding Britain. And the Slytherins were the worst!
Jacob’s thoughts had brought him through to the end of a second glass of fire whiskey, and he was just about to head up to the bar for a third (no one had ever knocked back the chance of dinner with him before!) when his quarry reappeared.
It had only been about half an hour, so she was still on time to meet her brewing deadline. So she might have been telling the truth about being busy this evening.
Then Jacob realised that Potter Heiress was not alone. He scowled. Was brewing a British euphemism for going on a date? Sometimes he really didn’t understand British high society.
Her male companion wasn’t much older than Jacob, and there was an easy camaraderie between the two of them; Jacob had to grudgingly admit that the young man was objectively attractive, although he wasn’t dressed in a way that suggested any great wealth.
Then again, neither was Harriett.
(Jacob ignored the fact that his clothes weren’t designer wear from the top British tailors).
There were several possibilities as to why she wasn’t wearing the sort of expensive clothing that Jacob had expected from a Book of Gold Heiress. Either her Book of Gold family just had a title but no money (which Jacob doubted, because he’d seen Ministry records referring to the “Potter Estate”, and her father was Head Auror, an executive level position, with presumably, executive level pay), or Harriett actually was in the middle of brewing (as she’d said) and hadn’t wanted to get potions on her nice clothes.
(Jacob was not a fan of potions and his experience had taught him that brewing was messy; that there was a high chance of a potion exploding or splattering. As far as Jacob was concerned, anyone sensible would not brew while wearing expensive clothes.)
There was also the possibility that Harriett didn’t care for expensive clothes, but Jacob had never been around girls who didn’t care for their appearance, so he couldn’t imagine that this was very likely.
The pureblood Book of Gold, Silver and Bronze Heirs and Heiresses at Hogwarts had all been very particular about their clothing. Well, except for Rigel Black, who’d come to the Wand Weighing Ceremony straight from operating on a pig, but then Black had turned out to be an imposter, and imposter Black wasn’t actually a Book of Gold Heir anyway.
Jacob was pleased to see Harriett bid her companion good night with a happy wave, then step into the Floo and disappear in a flash of green flame. Jacob was too far away to hear her destination, but if she was going home, he wouldn’t be able to follow her anyway.
He drank his third glass of fire whiskey feeling a bit happier. It appeared that Harriett hadn’t made up an excuse not to have dinner with him; maybe she was actually busy brewing.
Jacob was sure that next time he asked her, she was sure to say yes. He was going to go through his entire collection of pick up lines to make sure that he used the best one: Harriett Potter was a Book of Gold Heiress and only deserved the best.