Post by cassie on Feb 23, 2014 21:24:07 GMT -5
[presto]
TWENTY-SIX
FEMALE
CHEF
PUREBLOOD
LESBIAN
ASHLEY GRAHAM
LOLA MAE MALONE
 Lola Malone has got it all, has she not? Influential husband, inherited money, a gorgeous house? Except that she doesn't love the husband, the money effectively traps her and the house has never ever been a home to her. Born on the 17th January 1998, Lola was the only daughter and third child of Odessa (nee Fawley) and Solomon Travers. She has two older brothers, Elijah and Damien; and one younger, Reuben. Her early childhood memories are astoundingly unremarkable. Her parents were never particularly warm towards their children, but they were fed and looked after and she supposes that they love them in their own way. Lola was sorted into Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, but was not a particularly noticeable person at school. She hit puberty early, and filled out her uniform rather quickly. In adolescence, she was painfully, achingly conscious of her hips and her boobs and the way that she carried weight across her stomach and thighs. Some ten or so years later, she rather wonderfully loves her fuller figure; soft wobbly bits and all. The only time she really gained the attention of the rumour mill at Hogwarts was sixth year when she was discovered, school skirt hiked up round her waist and shirt buttons undone, pushed up against the wall of a deserted corridor being kissed half-senseless by a rather assertive Slytherin seventh year girl. As it was a Slytherin fifth year who found them, Lola was spared much of the gossip, although she was rather gleefully informed that it was all round the Slytherin common room for weeks. Eventually, however, it faded into obscurity, and she doesn't think that many people actually think it happened. That was the first time that Lola realised that she really, really fancied girls. She'd kind of half-toyed with the notion that her sexuality might not be all that her parents would expect for a year or so, but the very idea of homosexuality was so definitely not talked about in the Travers household that she shocked even herself a little. She never told a soul: not her friends, not her brothers, and most definitely not her mother and father. The Travers family were rich - Lola grew up in a large and rather imposing manor house - but did not have the huge influence that Solomon Travers craved. Rather than attempt to forge his own political career, he thus decided to marry daughter off to a rising star in the Ministry. At the age of seventeen, Lola sat dutifully and listened as her fate was decreed to her, knowing it was futile to protest even as the name of her fiancé was revealed to be a one Augustus Malone. They were married, at Augustus' request, less than a year after Lola left school. It was earlier than even her parents had expected, but they agreed readily, seeing the match as advantageous to Lola as well as themselves. It was a beautiful wedding, and at first Lola felt that (despite the fact that he was thirty-nine to her nineteen) it might be okay, that even if she never loved her husband or even found him slightly attractive, at least she could become fond of him over time, and maybe they could develop some kind of happy companionship. It rapidly became apparent that this was not to be the case. Augustus was cold to his new wife; and although the couple shared a bed and a life, there was no emotional intimacy in their relationship at all. It was only a few months into their marriage that Lola realised that Augustus was sleeping with other women. He would come home later and later, smelling strongly of cheap, cloying perfume. The first time that it happened, Lola cried herself silently to sleep - not out of any anguish, she had no illusions about the state of their marriage, but out of the sheer humiliation that he could prefer some cheap whore to her. Their sex life was never often or good - hardly surprising giving that Lola was picturing women the whole time, and Augustus literally didn't give a fuck about her - but at the age of twenty-one (when all her school-friends were just beginning to settle into their exciting jobs and careers), Lola gave birth to a son: Tobias Augustus Malone. Augustus was never hugely interested in baby Toby - Lola suspects he just wanted an heir for the estate, especially as his attempts at having sex with her dwindled even further after his arrival - but he was, and still is, the light of Lola's life. Even on days when she just wants to sob at the prospect of a whole life lived with Augustus, Toby makes it worthwhile. When Toby was three, Lola arranged childcare and started looking around for a job again. She'd spent the years between leaving school and getting pregnant working as a chef (it was her very quiet rebellion against her status as 'trophy wife'), and although she'd given it up to take care of her son, she had been very, very talented at it, and missed the modicum of independence that it gave her very, very much. She found a job quite quickly, and took it, despite the renewed protests of her husband that she was sullying the family name by not being a full-time mother. The restaurant was a cosy, family-run restaurant, just off of Diagon Alley, and Lola loved it immediately. It was fancy enough to be a nice night out, and for her to create food accordingly; but was beautifully unpretentious and not snobbish in the slightest. Shortly after this, Lola and Augustus took separate rooms. It saddens Lola that her son will grow up thinking that it's normal for mummy and daddy to do that (although she'll try her very best to make sure he won't do that same when it's older), but otherwise the arrangement suits them both better. Augustus hasn't yet brought a mistress home, and Lola is thankful that he doesn't appear to quite have the brazen audacity that would need. In public, they still appear to be very much the perfect political power couple: she's glamourous and beautiful and demure, he's powerful and influential; and people almost believe that they might actually be in love. Toby is now five and has just started at school (Augustus wanted a private tutor, but Lola put her foot down), and the intervening years have been lonely for Lola. She's still working at the little restaurant - which has gone from strength to strength - but she'd be the first to admit (to herself, no-one else) that her personal life is a complete and utter mess. Almost cathartically - as an acceptance that her marriage would only ever be a cruel and hollow sham - Lola began mirroring her husbands behaviour (albeit it more discreetly) and having her own illicit trysts. Her young son means they aren't frequent by an stretch of the imagination, but on the occasions when one of Augustus' 'business trips' (some of them might even be legitimate) coincide with Toby sleeping over at a friend's or his grandparents' house and Lola's feeling particularly lonely, she'll head out the kind of bar she can be sure she won't meet anyone she knows in, and see where the evening takes her. It doesn't always leave her feeling proud the next day, but it fills a little more of the hole in her heart, albeit temporarily. She keeps her wedding ring on throughout; these women know what they're getting in to, although she's never seen any of them twice. Lola's twenty-six now, and is largely resigned to spending her life as a gilded canary, singing prettily but in a cage. If it weren't for her job and her son, she knows she'd be insane. As it is, as miserable as she's been, she knows that had she followed any other path in life, she wouldn't have Toby, and that thought makes everything else just about tolerable. CASSIE NINETEEN GMT |
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