Post by Kieran Bass on Feb 8, 2014 2:44:49 GMT -5
[presto]
TWENTY
MALE
TRAINEE CURSE BREAKER
PUREBLOOD
HETEROSEXUAL
DANIEL SHARMAN
KIERAN NICHOLAS BASS
 "kieran bass? yeah, i know him. that hot ravenclaw, right?" "yeah, and isn't the bass family pureblood?" "oh, aggy's cousin. mmm, he was gorgeous. i mean, have you seen that jawline? phwoar." "i haven't seen him for a while, though." "that's because he graduated, you tit. he was the same age as grace longbottom, remember? the innocent blondie. he's got to be, what, twenty, twenty-one now? i'd still tap that, though." "i wonder what he's doing now?" "i saw him around london the other day - in diagon alley. still smokin' hot, and still looking as slightly wildly handsome as he did three years ago... which i am taking as a signal that he is still unattached, thank god." -:- kieran n. bass: ex-ravenclaw pureblood, now training to be a curse breaker. and still, as several lovely lasses will be happy to discover, very definitely single. not only do we wonder what this particularly captivating pureblood was doing - or rather, who, because come on, that bone structure speaks for itself - in the last three years since hogwarts, but we're also wondering if now's the time we'll hear about the first seventeen years of his life too. while the illustrious bass family has never been as infamous as the malfoys, nor as much of a household name as the potters and the weasleys, it cannot be denied that the bass family is influential, and as we all know, power and wealth can do funny things to families and lead to the downfall of the young. let's take a peek, shall we? -:- written account of one kieran nicholas bass begins below: my name's kieran. that's how i'd introduce myself during the hogwarts years. still do, sometimes. i used to drop off the bass part. not that i don't love my family - i fucking love karina, and i'm pretty similar to my mum at times. dad's a full-blown bass, but he's not as hardcore as some so we get along all right too. i love ags to bits - she's straight up the sanest person in that part of the family. her mother is not someone i particularly care for, though, and i don't know jenny and aurora that well. jenny's four years younger than me, and aurora's even younger. i always had aggy and karina at their house, so it wasn't like i was particularly motivated to interact with them. mum's name, pre-marriage, was calista devere - yes, as in part of the devere family - and her family's pretty... cold. her parents, nikolai and lavinia are amongst the most reserved people i have ever met, and lily bass is my aunt. i reckon that's why mum's never really gotten along with aunt lily; she is just too concerned with her self-image and reputation, like mum's folks, and despite mum marrying a suitable match in her family's eyes, for as long as i can remember, she's avoided any strong links or comparisons between them and herself. i've got two cousins on that side - caspar and lorelei, kids of her brother jasper and his wife daniela - who i've only ever spoken to a handful of times, all when i was younger. i'm pretty sure they go to beauxbatons, but to be honest, i don't really care. my dad, jack, is the younger brother of charles bass - he's aggy's dad - and the youngest son of the heads of the bass family, theodore and isabella. ever since uncle charles' death, he's been the only one from the family to deal with interactions with aggy's family - mum can't stand aunt lily without charles there to act as somewhat of a buffer. i'm like my mum. we're both fairly sarcastic - she is much more refined and subtle about this, though, only revealing it to her closest of family and friends, whereas i am fairly candid in general - and neither of us deal well with aunt lily. other than at home, though, she is essentially a very poised person. my parents are way more relaxed than aggy's, but even so, i'm still a bass and i still had to go through all the quintessential bass childhood shit. did you know that i can play the piano, violin, flute and sing? i don't seem like the type, right? the first second my grandmother ever heard me sing and worked out that i could remotely hold a note, i was carted off to a voice tutor to develop my voice further, and the other instrumental lessons followed. if you're a bass with a skill, you can bet you're arse it'll be capitalised on if possible. i was a beater for ravenclaw in the last four years of school, much to my family's chagrin. they were somewhat concerned that i'd smash my face, and wouldn't that just be such a waste of a perfectly formed pureblood face with the classic bass features? i didn't damage my face, obviously, but it was so nice to realise i was valued for my depth and intelligence. not that i'd ever doubted the superficiality of the bass family, nor been allowed to consider my intelligence useless. even pre-hogwarts, i was the lucky recipient of a personal tutor a few hours a day - i've studied french and latin since i was seven years old. karina was a ridiculously hyper child, and i'm pretty sure she wasn't subjected to the same stuff as me. not that i was some studious little twat from age six or anything; i was just as mischevious, but i just wasn't so loud about it. i was more sardonic, already showcasing a sarcastic and quick wit that my family desperately tried to turn into a swottiness, and utterly failed. so i arrived at school on september first, knowing the handful of other purebloods arriving with me, and probably the most well-educated eleven year old waiting to be sorted that night. i was sorted into ravenclaw, alongside a few others, including one jake gullane, a muggleborn from somewhere near manchester. we became quick friends - now, we live with two of our other best friends, david and rupert, but jake's always been the first friend i ever had that wasn't forced on me at some pureblood function, and for that, he's my best friend and i'll always have his back. even when he was a total fucker and had a kid he didn't introduce to us until she was three years old. but you know, i kinda get it. we were all living in flats - by which i mean, david, rupe and i all flatted opposite our mate brigid, rosa was there half the time (having sex with jake in david's bed, if you'll hear david tell it) and when she wasn't there, grace may have been, or else it was just us three and jake slumming it out on the couch and generally being lazy twats - and being nineteen years old, and hey, jake has a three year old. how do you even bring that up in casual conversation? first, he's in jail when skye's growing up the fastest, and then even when he was out, he took a long time to work up the nerve to come back to us, and of course we welcomed him with open arms, but those open arms were expecting a round of drinks and casual shags and a nineteen year old chilled out bloke, not a father. and you know, i reckon that if any of us had sat him down for hours and instructed him to tell us about his entire life since he'd dropped out, either he'd have told us or we'd have worked out pretty quick that he was hiding something (maybe not david or grace, actually; david's oblivious to most things except for his cats' intestinal issues and gracie's never been one to automatically consider someone's lying - it's how that fucking christian fiasco came about, but more on that later) but the thing is, we didn't. we were just so relieved to have him back and i don't know, i guess we just wanted our jake back desperately. maybe we were scared about what prison was like, what it did for him, because we've sure as shit never been through anything like that before. i mean, i doubt he'd have appreciated us asking because who the fuck wants to talk about a year in azkaban? but at the same time, we sort of all jumped into life like it was the same one he'd been part of all those years ago, instead of acknowledging that there had been huge change. just because our lives had grown together and been pretty much the same since he'd last seen us didn't mean it was the same vice versa, and while we were never going to guess he had a kid, it wouldn't have done us any harm to maybe ask if there were any developments he wanted to tell us about, instead of assuming prison was the only one and skirting around it like mice. but whatever; what's done is done, and hey, at least now we all know skye. she's so wonderful, though, like, i know i'm pretty biased but she is the cutest fucking four year old in the entire world. not even kidding. i love all my friends to absolute death, but honestly, skye is easily the best thing that's ever come out of any of our lives, and she's really good for jake. he's always been chilled and taken things as they've come, but since he's come back, there's been a maturity and slightly more developed sense of responsibility that wasn't there before, and while i'd pegged it as due to his time away from us, in the world and in azkaban, now i'm pretty sure it's due to skye. anyway, yeah, eleven years old, in ravenclaw, and just generally coming into my own. it was a process, growing into the person i am now, and its been going on my whole life, but the first time i can track that, the first time my choices and growth were conscious? that first year of school. i got to know a bunch of kids; i was quite a pretty eleven year old, which isn't exactly delightful for a boy, but yeah, my features were finer and more delicate, so i was quite literally a 'pretty boy'. by third year, i'd grown into it and developed this fantastic bone structure i have, and all of a sudden i was still beautiful, but not pretty; instead, the words selected were more like smouldering. anyway, in first year, i had a distinctive face and people could pick me out from a crowd, which made befriending people easier. the following year - after receiving the expected brilliant marks, telling an eager aggy and an enraptured karina about it, and spending time in the summer with a few friends, but not many - i was right back into my own little haven, except this time, distraction, sweetness and friendship came in the form of a young hufflepuff, grace longbottom. she's honestly the kindest person i've ever met; she's one of those people you want to just hug on sight, you know? anyway, grace has always struggled with school and that year, i befriended her and started helping her out in her classes. she was such a ray of sunshine, though, and even then, it always broke my heart that her parents thought this was so important and that she struggled with it so much, because if i could, i would have given her some of my intelligence in a heartbeat. sometimes, she'd get so frustrated - in the least aggressive way you can imagine, because this is grace - and all i'd want to do is literally give her some of my smarts, but i couldn't, and that took some serious getting used to. growing up a bass, we'd always been taught that we were inheriting the world and that we could do anything if we wanted, but i guess they'd never considered selfless actions when they taught us that. you can't throw money or piano lessons or the french language or purity of blood at everything and expect it to work in your favour. life doesn't work that way. and even though i grew up especially spending time with my mother and thus had always had a few doubts with the bass way, this was the first time that lesson really hit home for me and it's stuck with me ever since. even learning that didn't help much, at first; i was so bitter about it because grace was such an innately brilliant person and she was beating herself up about her marks, but guess what? i had brilliant marks and the first time i'd ever really desperately anted to do something that would help someone else was when i was fucking twelve years old. so honestly, yeah, i was proud of my marks because they were the only things i really had going for me that weren't directly bought by or inherited from the bass family, but grace? she never needed marks to justify herself or anything, because she was an honestly good person and that's something way more important than a grade on an essay, and it genuinely frustrated me so much that her parents - and to an extent, grace herself - didn't seem to see that. in case you can't tell, grace longbottom has made a huge impression on my life. which is why it shouldn't be surprising that in third year, i developed my first crush ever on none other than grace elizabeth longbottom. obviously, i didn't do anything about it. like i had already realised, she was way too good for me. i was lucky enough to be her friend, you know? there was a point when she was acting a little odd around me, so i figured maybe she'd worked out something was up with me and was feeling uncomfortable, so i distanced myself for a little bit for her sake, but then we were back to hanging out fairly regularly pretty soon. i was also obviously hanging out with jake, but there was rupert hewer, david fell and rosa rodriguez too. rosa was actually my first kiss. she's an awesome friend and a genuinely badass girl - she's not afraid t tell it to you straight and she's very comfortable with her own sexuality and in her own body. i lost my virginity to her, too, which some people might find weird because i know i'm definitely not my only friend who's slept with her - there have been times when both jake and i were sleeping with her, all of us knew about it and were totally okay with it - but i think it's great. i mean, sex can be fucking awkward and seriously, who wants to do it for the first time in a bathroom with some awkward teenager they can never look in the eyes again? i mean, fuck, what a terrible story that'd make. at least i can say that i'm still great mates with the first girl i ever had sex with, and that it wasn't awkward and the repercussions didn't suck because like rosa would ever let me be awkward after sex with her. the woman is a force of nature, let me tell you. anyway, rosa's always fun, whether you're fooling around or winding up david. i'm lucky to know her. word of advice, though: do not get on her bad side, because she is fierce. seriously, do not underestimate her, because she will take you down and she'll wear killer heels while doing it. the rest of school passed in a bit of a blur, i guess - i was gorgeous, so i got laid a lot; despite parties and rendezvous with molly weasley, i still knuckled down, so i got the same brilliant marks as ever; i was generally pretty willing to do whatever, so i always had mates - it was just a genuinely good time. i guess a major point is when jake left. he got fantastic owls like me, solid outstandings, but he still left. i guess i've always figured he was never going to end up doing something that would require newts and all, but i don't know, i suppose i'd never properly considered that he'd actually leave early until he did? hogwarts was a seven year deal with your best mates. that was the guarantee... until suddenly, it wasn't. so yeah, i missed him. you can't go from five years of sleeping next to your best friend to him not being anywhere near you at all without experiencing some emotional lurch. i didn't descend into some inner darkness or some shit, though; i mean, please. i missed the guy, not pined for him! it was more that sometimes rupert and i would be winding up david and we'd look at each other like, oh, jake's not here. missing moments and all. but it wasn't like he'd died and completely dropped off the face off the earth - at least not then. there was a period where we didn't hear a thing and got concerned, but soon enough he was back in our lives and that was ace. but back then, in sixth and seventh year, it was just the little things that reminded us we missed him. other than that, it was great. we all had more shenanigans, and being me, i took everything newt level - i wanted to either work with dragons or curses, and so i kept all my subjects - and found myself partnered up with one cara finnigan for newt level potions. cara and i made friends really quickly, bonding over our marks and our genuine fascinations with the things we were learning about. no offence to gryffindors - rosa and rupert are amongst my closer friends, and my little sister is a gryffindor - but getting to know her more made me see a lot of ravenclaw traits in her. i mean, you can't really rely on stereotypes within the houses, and she was loyal, like you'd expect a gryffindor to be, i guess, but sometimes i wondered if she'd have had a better time in ravenclaw. i could have been her friend a lot quicker - which more speaks to my social circle and her approach to interaction with her year mates (read: not the most outgoing) - but i do reckon she'd have excelled in ravenclaw; not that she was limiting herself in gryffindor! the wondering was only reinforced after leaving school and somehow ending up in a flat opposite her sister brigid, who is a true gryffidnor through and through, and one of my great friends. i reckon it's brilliant how i'd already gotten friendly with brigid before i worked out she was cara's sister, and how from then on, she just became closer friends with all of our flat. she and david have this special cat lady bond, it's equally weird and lame and hilarious. cara's one of my best friends, and it's funny hen she comes by the apartment building because a lot of the time, nobody's sure who she's here to see, brig or me. i'm very sarcastic and brigid's quite argumentative - she revels in debate and bickering, i reckon - so a lot of the time, cara will come up to find us ribbing each other about who she's coming for and unless there is something very important to be discussed with just one of us, everyone will converge - especially if they come into my flat, because then there's the other three blokes and potentially others too. our flat's kind of like a hub for our friends. i think grace is the only one who still knocks politely and everything, in contrast to say, rosa, who just barges in. anyway, sixth year, made the great life choice to be friends with cara finnigan. seventh year was less fantastic. the classes were still interesting, even if the stress level ante had been upped, but the real concern lay with gracie. now what, you ask, could sweet little grace longbottom do to cause trouble? well, the answer's simple. she fell in love. and no, before you even suggest it, this wasn't an issue because i was still carrying a torch from third year or anything like that, okay? it was an issue because she started dating christian fucking connelly, who is the ultimate twat, in case my choice of a middle name for him didn't make that clear. straight from the get go, we were all a bit concerned - like, even before they started dating, when he started sitting next to her in charms class and trying to befriend her, yeah, we were shifting uncomfortably. because the thing about connelly is that he uses people. he's a fucking tool. gracie didn't listen, of course; or maybe she did, but she didn't heed our advice - she's always been convinced that everyone deserves a chance and that you can't judge a book by its cover and that he wasn't as bad as we were all making out and normally, her stubborn sweetness is endearing and gives us hope, but this time, it was incredibly frustrating because there was no way he deserved her. they dated for eighteen months, and he was her first kiss, and you know what? that's a big fucking deal for grace. she was seventeen and he was her first kiss and connelly is a twat but worse than that, for a girl like grace, he's experienced and he's used to girls just falling over his feet to let him fuck them. grace was innocent and naive and timid and sweet and not that kind of girl. at all. so yeah, we were concerned. and maybe it abated for a little, when they were still together and we'd graduated. maybe i let my guard down about him, maybe i started to believe that grace could change him, affect him like she'd affected me when i was twelve. but maybe it didn't. i don't even fucking know. i just know that one day, it was the thing i worried about the most, and then the next, i was worried about this curse we were training with just the slightest bit more. of course, he had to go fuck it up. of course he wasn't changed like i was. because i was twelve years old and had grown up to a life of privilege, but he was eighteen years old and only seemed to know how to use people. i was just looking for her at her place, going to ask her if she wanted to go out for breakfast, my shout, when i found her crying. i remember going to her, and wrapping my arms around her in a hug. i remember saying things into her hair, like "what's wrong, gracie?" and "please calm down, gracie" and in a quieter, harder voice, "was it connelly? what did he do?" and all of a second i fucking knew that i was right, that we'd all been right, and that the fucker had done this to her and i wanted nothing more in that second than to find him and break his stupid pretty face into pieces but i had a crying friend in my arms who needed me more than my rage needed an outlet. eventually, through some guess work from me, and affirmations and small stints of storytelling from grace, the truth came out. i couldn't believe him. or rather, i could, and that was the worst part. because we'd all guessed that he'd hurt her, he'd use her, he'd fuck her up, and we didn't try hard enough and we couldn't stop him from hurting her, and that's something i think i will always regret. i don't like my aunt. i do not get along with either sets of my grandparents particularly. i think aurora and jenny are probably carbon copies of their mother. but i have never despised anyone quite as much as i despise christian connelly. if he ever tries anything with grace again, i'm going to break his face and i know i won't be the only one. we were all livid and distraught by the news; i think jake may have been the only one who managed to find connelly and hurt him, though i wouldn't be surprised if rosa managed something either. but gracie's had enough pain from him for a lifetime, and i'll be damned if he gets the chance to hurt her further. i just can't believe he would do that to her. she wanted to be in love - she fucking thought they'd be together forever - when she finally gave up her virginity. it should have been to make her feel good, to give her comfort, to show her love and trust, not to fucking spend 18 months stinging her along and using her, before buggering off a week after he got his damned shag. and if i ever find out that it was some bet, that there was some competition for getting to shag grace longbottom, well, christian connelly had best pray to whatever he believes in that someone holds us back because we would all be coming for him. i'm still angry that he used grace, but most of all, i'm devastated that he broke her heart. she's still a sweetheart, but her confidence has been shattered further and sometimes it's honestly heart-wrenching to see. other than that, i guess it's all good. my best mate now has a fantastic four year old, i'm living with three of my best friends, the others drop by our flat a lot, and my training to be a curse breaker is going wickedly. soon enough, i'll be sitting the final exams - practical and theoretical - so become a fully fledged curse breaker and receive my first assignments, which is exciting, but until then, i'm just hanging in the flat, working, catching up with the friends and checking in on my little sister. life is pretty good. JANE SEVENTEEN GMT+12 |
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