It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman sharing a flat with a friend must be completely insane.
I share a flat with Haley Potter. Now, she’s my cousin and my best friend in the entire world, but I still regret this decision every day of my life, particularly when it’s five A.M, and Haley is skipping around belting show tunes. She’s a morning person, to the extent that I don’t believe she actually sleeps, where I’m nocturnal to the extent that if it wasn’t for Haley’s incredibly loud soprano, I don’t believe I’d ever actually wake up.
Haley can’t cook to save her life, is disorganized beyond belief, can’t be trusted to buy groceries because she always comes home with bags of clothes instead of food, and often tap-dances after midnight. To “Singin’ In The Rain.” She’s an aspiring actress, which means she’s a waitress at Madame Puddifoot’s, and generously allows me to do the cooking, cleaning, shopping and taking care of the cat. (His name is The Rum Tum Tugger. This most emphatically was not my idea.)
You see, despite the fact that Haley barely makes any money, she is the sole breadwinner in our household. Good God, I’m a housewife. Or more accurately, I’m an Auror trainee whose family does not send me nearly enough huge bundles of cash. In fact, my dad Ron Weasley, is my supervisor and mentor through Auror training, and I would recommend that whoever had that idea should be shot if it wasn’t my Uncle Harry, Head Auror, saviour of the wizarding world, all around nice guy, and Haley’s dad. Don’t blame him for that last one, though”three out of four isn’t bad.
In any case, as part of my humiliating training, I have to keep track of my Auror-y activities, and because that’s almost as much fun as sticking forks in my eyes, I’ve decided to start up an out-and-out diary. Haley has one, too, so it should be a bonding experience. Hers is slightly different from this one, though, because it writes back. I’d explain how this works, except I have no clue.
I should probably introduce myself. Actually, I probably should’ve introduced myself earlier, but this is my first diary, so cut me some slack.
I am Emma Elizabeth Weasley, twenty-three years old, single white female, enjoys long walks on the beach, scintillating conversation, and bashing dark wizards’ brains out. I viciously support the Holyhead Harpies and basically viciously do stuff in general, according to my so-called friends.
To describe how I look, I think I should compare and contrast myself with Haley. Well, we’re both girls and tend to dress accordingly, and we both have freckles, but the similarities stop there. Haley is tiny, as in regularly-caught-in-mousetraps tiny or often-mistaken-for-an-ant tiny. Maybe not that small, but she’s only five feet, one-and-a-third inch tall (she’s very proud of that one-third inch…) and about one-and-a-third inches around as well. Okay, I’m exaggerating again,but she has the body of a thirteen-year-old boy… in a GOOD way, I hasten to add, because she’s probably reading this right now.
Haley is probably the girliest person in the world. She has three kinds of clothes”pink clothes, sequined clothes, and pink clothes with sequins”and a large majority of her wardrobe consists of what she likes to call ‘pockety jackets.’ These are denim jackets that she’s decorated herself with all kinds of sparkly and flouncy things, and they have many pockets that she’s stuffed full of sugar quills. She is addicted to the things, I swear.
Her hair is black and shiny and flips up at the ends around shoulder length, and she has big green eyes like a lemur. As for the rest of her face, it’s hard to see it clearly because she’s always jumping around in a hyperactive fervor. Haley is actually very smart, extremely brave, and endlessly resourceful, but I think she tries her best not to act it.
Now, me. Let’s say off the bat that I dwarf Haley, though so does the average, say, chicken. For starters, I’m five-foot-seven in flats, and while I’m of average weight, let’s just say that a lot of said weight is concentrated in… a certain area. In short, I’m very, very, very decidedly female, which I think is supposed to be a good thing, but that’s always annoyed me. Like most best friends do, I’ve always envied Haley and she’s always envied me.
I have long wavy reddish-brownish hair, probably a little more reddish than brownish, and brownish eyes that very rarely turn reddish unless I’m in a REALLY bad mood. (This is a joke, guys.) While I love clothes and makeup just as much as Haley (okay, no one loves clothes and makeup as much as Haley, but you know what I mean), I prefer to wear less pink than the average cotton candy stand and I don’t go around looking like Hannah Montana. I have nice teeth and strange eyebrows that I am constantly tending to. They’re not bushy, per se, but they have the strangest way of forming little clumps, never in the same place twice.
Aside from Haley, there are three other central members of our little group, but I’ll get into them later because they’re not as interesting or important as me. Haley’s adopted sister, Ivy, and our lovely friend, Ted Lupin, are married, the little rascals, and live in Hogsmeade like us”though in a far nicer house. And Haley’s twin brother, Jordan, lives way off in London by himself because he’s an antisocial twit, and is high up in some crazy job that I am not at liberty to discuss at this moment, mainly because I don’t understand it. Jordan is actually a delightful person in a pedantic, obsessive-compulsive, vaguely terrifying sort of way, but don’t tell him I said that. He doesn’t respond well to compliments.
You’ve probably noticed by now that I’m in kind of a bad mood. Don’t worry, I’m usually a lot like this, and I assure you I’m just as unpleasant when I’m in a good mood. (HALEY WROTE THAT.) But seriously, heads-up, I swear a lot, but I’m using an enchanted quill that automatically replaces naughty words with a creative substitute in big boldface letters. For example, “Patrick Wormwood is a son of a billiard cue.” I’d never agree to use such a horrific device if Haley didn’t regularly burn my normal, non-censoring quills.
But in any case, the real reason why I’m so ticked off today, more than usual, is something that happened at Auror training. Between the baby pictures of me on my dads’ walls, his perpetual shouts of ‘CONSTANT VIGILANCE!’, his insistence to make me look as ridiculous as possible in front of everyone else in the effort to show impartiality, and his tendency to laugh at his own bad jokes, there’s usually a lot to complain about. But today really took the cake.
See, ever since Uncle Harry defeated Lord Voldemort like a million years ago, Auror-in has turned into a very, very popular career path. The Aurors don’t accept many new recruits, though”they get about ten applicants a year, and they usually accept at most one a year. I got kicked out of training my first time through the process”more on that in a minute-- so I had to go through the whole three-year training again, on the slim chance that I might be accepted into the business at all.
But the very last step of my training is my final exam, which consists of a hundred-question written test, several practical exams, and a “real-world application.” “Real-world application” means doing jobs with no real relation to Auror-ing for no pay, ostensibly to see how we’d behave in the workplace and to get dirty work done for cheapskates. Last time around, I had to work at an obscenely expensive robe shop as a guard making sure no one stole anything.
You’re probably dying to know why I was disqualified from Auror training, and I guess I’d better tell you why: I hit an elderly man in the head with a stiletto-heeled shoe because he kept calling me ‘darlin’ and regularly stared at my chest in what I’m sure he thought was a very subtle and circumspect manner.
This year’s ‘real-world application’ is worse. I’ve been teamed up with two other trainees whose last names also start with ‘W,’ neither of whom people I particularly like. We’ve been assigned to work as a combination of security guards and bodyguards for the Chudley Cannons Quidditch team, alternatively dealing with sweaty-swelled-headed athletes and crazed fans. This was my dad’s idea, and as a huge Cannons fan, he’s really excited. (Have I mentioned that I support the Harpies?)
Dad’s especially enthusiastic because the Cannons have been playing unusually well lately, and they’ve picked up a large fanbase, mostly girls. This has a lot to do with the apparently unrealistically gorgeous and inhumanly talented new Beater, Tyrone Thomas, and people who’d never even heard of the Cannons are rushing out to buy Tyrone Thomas t-shirts with his big shiny smug grin plastered across them.
Have I mentioned that Tyrone Thomas is my ex-boyfriend?
Pride and Pre-Juiced Plums: A Potter's Pentagon Love Story by Schmerg_The_Impaler
Chapter Notes: This is just the intro... if you've read any Potter's Pentagon at all, you probably don't need this because it's just an introduction to the characters. I don't own Harry Potter or the musicals mentioned in this chapter (Singin' In The Rain and Cats), though I wish I did.
For those of you who want to know how Tyrone and Emma are exes when they haven't even gone out at all in the Potter's Pentagon stories so far... I'll get into that later. Fear not. _________________