Post by Lara Archer on Feb 1, 2014 11:53:44 GMT -5
[presto]
FOURTEEN
FEMALE
SLYTHERIN
HALFBLOOD
HETEROSEXUAL
KIERNAN SHIPKA
LARA ROSE ARCHER
 AT FOURTEEN Within days of her fifteenth birthday, Lara Archer is cold and calm. The traditionally excited teenage girl is completely absent - she hasn't spent days planning a party, picking out presents, clamouring for everybody and anybody to know her special day is nearly upon them. Instead Lara is collected and quiet, spending her time wrapped up in her room reading or watching television. Her mother is in the house somewhere, her stepfather out at work. Her brother Will is doing god knows what, probably getting himself into trouble. Lara is trying to tell herself she doesn't care. She's lying. Her half-brother Josh is recently returned from the life he created for himself in the USA. Lara is refusing to talk to him. She hasn't spoken to anybody for several days, actually, bar a few polite words to her mother and stepfather over the dinner table. This is the way she likes it. Her room is quiet and neat which keeps her mind quiet and neat, and this is of the utmost importance to her. The single most important thing she's learned over the course of her short life is to keep everything on the inside. To let anybody understand how you are feeling is to give them a horrible power over you, and Lara will never let that happen. She barely even lets herself comprehend how she is feeling these days. She keeps her internal life frozen and secret and her face is an impassive stone wall. The only person that gets even close to seeing behind it is her equally cool mother, but even Ruth is not privy to Lara's deepest feelings. What Lara herself does not realise is how dangerous her isolation is becoming. She refuses to examine the maelstrom of dark feelings at her core and is thus oblivious to her own loneliness and desperation for human contact (nobody reaches to touch her but for her mother and stepfather and her brother Will, and she never reaches in return). She adores her mother and is adored in return, but cannot trust the same of her brothers. She loved them all her childhood and was repaid with abandonment - she will not so quickly make the mistake of trusting them again. God, she loves them, of course she does. Loves them as obsessively and dangerously as her mother loved her at the beginning of her life. But she can't - won't - let them see that. Not ever. Here's another secret - she's much more frightened than she lets anybody see. AT THIRTEEN Lara has survived three years at Hogwarts, has survived her brother Will leaving, has survived the death of Will's dog, Leggit, the only thing she's ever loved demonstratively. She hasn't cried since the day the dog died - not when Will was unceremoniously chucked out of the house by their stepfather, not in any of the lonely nights since. She is determined to never cry again. She's talking to her mother more this year than she did before, spending quiet evenings chatting on the sofas in this big airy house. She's trying to love her stepfather, but she's finding it hard. In truth she finds it difficult to trust any man at all anymore, since their track record with her is abysmal. But Samuel has proven himself constant in his love for her mother if nothing else, and his generosity towards them both - although not to Will. Lara has been itching to try to love him for some time, and after a long summer spent talking it over with her mother, she's determined to give it a shot. She doesn't know how well she'll succeed. She misses her brother terribly but her pride will not allow her to try to get in touch with him. He must come to her, and then she will simply send him away. He had promised to be there for her always, to keep her company in this great aching house with this fumbling stepfather and empty rooms. And then he left, the way Josh did and the way Bobby did, both brothers and a father gone from her life. Lara has been lied to and abandoned too many times, and she will not allow herself to be betrayed again. Her heart will be ice. AT TWELVE Lara is beginning to fill out, although it's already clear she's never going to be a big girl. She's as slight as a child and dainty as a ballerina, and it came as as much of a surprise to her as to those around her when her breasts started growing and her period began. It's a few days now until her thirteenth birthday and she's going underwear shopping with her mother Ruth. Her stepfather is at work, as usual, and Lara had to endure multiple hair-rufflings this morning due to his usual good humour. Her teeth still grit at the memory. Her logic wars with her internal disquiet - Samuel Hawes has helped her and her mother more than they could ever have dreamed. He has given them a beautiful house and beautiful clothes and financial security for the first time in their lives. And he's willing to love them, to love even Lara, to open up his heart and his home to this bitter little family all because he fell in love with her mother. But Samuel Hawes is too open, too eager to be pleased by the world, and Lara despises him. She was willing to give him a chance, at first, for how happy he made Ruth. But then he sent Will away, and Lara hardened her heart against his warmth. She will not love this man. Father figures have been dismal failures her whole life through, and she will not allow this one to be any different. But she is out of his house and with her mother now, the two of them calm and sure in each other's presences, moving with ease against the flow of the busy London crowd. You'd never have guessed that five years ago they were scraping together coins for decent clothes. They're dressed like noblewomen now, like rich purebloods who can discard outfits after one day. Their composure, though - that's something Lara and Ruth have always had. Lara learnt it at her mother's knee, learnt how to carry herself like the world ought to be moving itself for her. It's as natural to her as breathing - back straight, chin up, hands folded carefully. No typical teenage slouching or fidgeting here. Ice all over. In the lingerie shop Lara does not speak, but her mother converses so charmingly with the woman ready to measure her. Lara stares up with wide eyes, not giving an iota away but for a brief shiver when the woman's fingers brush her skin as she measures her for her first bra. Human contact is something essentially foreign to Lara, outside of her mother's cool caresses. She doesn't realise that she craves it rather than is repulsed by it. In the end she picks out four pretty bras with matching pants and a couple of nightdresses, and they put them on Samuel's account. Lara catalogues the excitement over the new clothing items away for later. She'll spend that evening trying and retrying them on in front of her mirror, twirling backwards and forwards, puzzling out why it feels upsetting that nobody will want to see this underwear; willing herself to work out if she's interested in any boy seeing it. AT ELEVEN Lara was sorted into Slytherin like her brother at the beginning of this yeaar. It came as no great surprise to her mother, who saw the same coldness in Lara that she'd always felt in herself. That natural reserve and conscious quietness helped Lara to slot in to the house. She has no friends, of course, and doesn't want them. She wouldn't know what to do with girls her own age - she has little to say and doesn't see the point in idle chatter, so even if they all are sat up gossiping in the dorm after curfew Lara will close her curtains and curl up with a book. She doesn't know if they think she's strange. She supposes so. Her academics are going better than her social life - she puts a great deal of thought into all her answers and her essays are unusually mature and philosophical for an eleven-year-old. More than one of her professors consider her to hold a great deal of potential, especially where it comes to magical theory. The practical application of magic does not come quite so naturally and she struggles hardest with Charms, but her talent for Defence Against the Dark Arts is noteworthy and she has already demonstrated background knowledge on many of the dangerous creatures they study that is highly advanced for her age, due to the vast amount of reading she has done whilst home alone. She likes learning, too, likes expanding her brain and having lots of little facts to recall. Lara thinks she'll probably be okay at Hogwarts. Having her brother Will around helps - just seeing a beloved face from time to time boosts her more than she'd ever thought it would. AT TEN Lara has been alive for a decade now. Her childhood has been remarkable in many ways, but few of them positive. She's lost both a father and a half-brother - not to death, though. The former was thrown out by the latter, a fact Lara could not have been more thrilled about. Her father was a drunkard and a careless man - careless with his health, with his family, with his money. Lara has never been gladder to watch a person walk out of her life. Her brother Josh, though - Josh left after finishing Hogwarts, disappeared off to America, and Lara still feels the ache in her heart because of it. She'd thought Josh loved her and Mum and Will more than being able to just leave them like that. She has tried to harden her heart against him and mostly succeeded, but she fears if he comes back she'll crumble. And she will not. She will not ever let him see how much she has been hurt. Lara still has her brother Will, though, who she adores despite her mother's attempts to keep him away from her. Ruth - oh, Lara loves her mother. Loves her so much it hurts sometimes. But Ruth never trusted Will much with Lara when they were younger, and that wariness remains. Her brother is boisterous and angry and he wears his heart on his sleeve so loud it hurts Lara to look at sometimes. He is her total opposite in every way - he takes his feelings and thrusts them into your face, while Lara squeezes hers down so even she barely recognises them. She's been learning how to do this since she could talk, wrapped up in her beautiful mother's arms, never let them see whispered into pretty golden hair. These different siblings have a total loyalty to each other and Lara will love Will until she dies. Probably even after. She doesn't know how to show him this, but she hopes he knows. They've got from tiny little flat to luscious mansion, this family, been swept up out of their former lives into one of space and light and health, with grand parties for their mother and huge bedrooms for Will and Lara. It's an alternate reality and Lara has adjusted to it as matter-of-factly as she has adjusted to everything in her short life. Obedient and silent and serious, Lara watches the world going past her like she's tucked herself up into a corner away from it, and so far has demonstrated no sign of coming out of this shell. ALIAS AGE ZONE |
TABLE BY TRINITY @ ADOXOGRAPHY
