Now that it's only one chapter from the end, I'm dumping some background info here for Sits the wind in that quarter that is not making it into the fic!
The first ideas for this fic were pure regency AU. I ended up adding omegaverse because I love it when queer regency AUs let their characters have a happy ever after, but – if it’s not a quiet, unsanctioned-by-marriage relationship – I need at least a vague reason as to why these two people are allowed to get together. If you’re telling me two men can get married in this setting, I really like the why of it to be in there too. Like: omegaverse. And Harry then had to be a beta, because it would have been too scandalous for him as an omega to do half the things he does in the fic. Which you can work around, but if you want these characters to not be fighting against social constraints the whole time (which was not the main vibe of this fic), it made it much easier for Harry to be a beta.
So here is the rest of this omegaverse regency world:
Titles and estates pass through the alpha line. A beta can inherit, but can only then hold the estate and title in trust for their own alpha child. If there is no alpha child in the second generation, the title and estates pass to the closest alpha relative. Tom’s parents were both betas, so if he wasn’t an alpha, he couldn’t inherit.
I realised halfway through that really Harry should have been Harry Evans, since my internal logic was that a beta or omega partner takes the alpha’s name (in this case, Lily). But it was James’ family who had the small estate up north, which Lily married into; she had of course grown up in a shabby-genteel family near Little Hangleton. She and Petunia both ‘married up’ and out; Snape stayed.
This never became relevant in the fic in any way, but I wanted Snape to be an unexpressed alpha, which presents in almost all ways like a beta. He thought Riddle was one too, which is what originally won his loyalty. He hoped, immediately after Lily’s marriage, that he too would be able to flip the switch and – if he could not have her – at least move up in the world as she had using an alpha’s privileges.
In general society you can sniff out someone’s secondary gender pretty quickly. In high society, there are codified ways for alphas, omegas and betas to dress so you can tell by sight instead of having to impolitely sniff at them. (Did I put any thought into these unspoken dress codes? No I did not. But just know that not to follow them is even more impolite than wearing morning dress for an evening event.) The more dandified set ostentatiously take snuff to show they’re not smelling anything else.
I wasted a good amount of time trying to come up a correct Latin phrase along the lines of Dominus Eternam, so Tom’s select group could have the initials DE and be about eternal life. I didn’t manage to find one, and decided it probably wasn’t make-or-break for the fic anyway.
And finally, the title is obviously from Georgette Heyer, as everything in this fic is. It's a moment in Frederica when a bystander realises there might just be something going on between the main couple:
“Then Frederica went towards him, holding out her hand, and he raised his eyes from Felix’s eager countenance, and smiled at her, causing Mr. Moreton to suffer a shock. It was not at all the sort of smile with which his lordship beguiled his flirts, but something warmer and more intimate. Good God! mentally ejaculated Mr. Moreton. Sits the wind in that quarter?”
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