FLYNN, SAOIRSE MAIREAD
Mar 4, 2014 15:02:00 GMT -5
Maddy Ashcroft, Reese Fletcher, and 1 more like this
Post by Saoirse Flynn on Mar 4, 2014 15:02:00 GMT -5
[presto]
TWENTY-TWO
FEMALE
LANDLADY OF THE THREE BROOMSTICKS
MUGGLEBORN
HETEROSEXUAL
GEMMA ARTERTON
SAOIRSE MAIREAD FLYNN
 My name's Saoirse Flynn, and I'm the greatest barmaid you'll ever meet. I'm joking, but no, seriously. I'm really, really crap at talking about myself, so you'll have to excuse me if I go a bit rambly and trip over my words a bit: just be grateful I'm not tripping over my feet, for a change! So, I'm twenty-two (my birthday's the 21st February, if you fancy getting me a present), which I still don't always feel grown-up enough to be. Average-ish height, brown eyes, brown hair: all pretty boring, if I'm honest. I've got what Aunt Bridget always called 'Irish skin' (ie. ridiculously pale, stay-away-from-sun skin), which I suppose is fitting, because I'm originally from Ireland. Aunt Bridget is my family. Mum died when I was six. Car crash - she was a muggle - then a lung infection whilst she was in hospital. I can remember it still, the hospital, Mum dying. Everything was white and sterile and people kept talking in hushed voices because they thought if they lowered their tone just a little I'd magically stop hearing and wouldn't realise that my mother was dying. I adored my mum, I mean, who doesn't at the age of six, I guess? But it was only ever me and Mum. Dad abandoned us when Mum was pregnant with me. I never knew him, so I've never missed him. Him and Mum were engaged, so it seems strange that he'd just up and leave. Aunt Bridget says their whole relationship was really fast though, so I think maybe that's why, but she also thought they were madly in love. I guess I'll never know why, or what really happened now. We were fine without him, though. We were happy. When I said Auntie Bridget is my family, I mean it. She's all I have. Obviously, I've no idea what's on my father's side, and I've no idea where I'd go about tracking them down even if I wanted to. My grandma had died the year before, and my grandfather was an alcoholic, so not really the best person to place a six-year old with. Mum was an only child: Auntie Bridget is actually my great-aunt, my grandma's big sister. She's been amazing, honestly. Despite having very, very little money to speak of - hand-me-down clothes and charity donations in times of especial hardship were a greater part of my upbringing than I care to bring attention to - I've never really felt hugely like I'm missing out on anything, and that's all because of her. Auntie Bee gets even more outstandingly brilliant when you consider that she thought that the little girl that she was taking in out of the kindness of her (staunchly Catholic) heart was completely and utterly 'normal', aside from being effectively orphaned. In fairness, so did the little girl. I didn't show any signs of magic until I was seven, almost eight. When I did, boy was it worth the wait! I was at church with Auntie Bridget - bored to tears, I'm afraid to admit! - and I somehow managed to turn all the hymn books into a variety of birds, which then flapped around the church for a good while. Of course, no-one believed me when I said that it was my fault - understandably, I got very panicked. I reckon there's still people back home that reckon that it was a miracle, some kind of divine sign. Anyway, after that odd things started happening a little more often, some easier to explain than others, until my eleventh birthday, when a very strange woman bearing a letter with even stranger contents appeared on Auntie Bee's doorstep. From then on, I wasn't just a little girl any more, I was a witch. For me, it was almost bizarrely relieving to have an explanation for everything. My great-aunt found it a little harder to comprehend - I suppose she'd had a lot longer to disbelieve in magic than I. She came round though, and even looking back now, I couldn't have asked anyone to be more supportive. She did a lot of research, and a lot of reassuring me (in a typically brisk and no-nonsense way) that I was going to be fine and no, it wouldn't cost too much for me to go and yes, she would cope just fine without me (after all, Saoirse, I've managed the rest of my life!). And so September came and I began my time at Hogwarts. I'm pretty sure every muggle-born ever has probably said this, but it was brilliant. Beyond brilliant. The best thing ever. Even now, more than ten years or so on, I've still not figured out how to put it into words precisely - that's never really been my thing though. Just take a minute to imagine it though: little, dark-haired me, stumbling over her own feet (a habit I've not yet managed to shake) as she gazes up at the castle she finds herself in when barely a day ago she was in a ramshackle old cottage on the coast of Ireland. From muggle to magical and poorer to richer all in one go; it was mental. There were more people than I'd ever seen in my life, as well, and they all seemed to have more of a handle on what the hell was going on than I imagined I'd ever have. And not just the castle itself, everything inside the castle: light and warmth and ghosts and suits of armour and food and that famous ceiling and everything. I'm sure you know how it all goes: the Sorting, the feast etc. etc. I obediently tripped (quite literally, actually) my way up to that little stool once my name was called, and after a relatively brief deliberation on the Hat's part, shuffled off to the Hufflepuff table. And that's - more or less - where I stayed for the next seven years, and I was (for the most part, give or take a rare little bit of teenage angst) very happy there. I did all the normal things, really. I don't think I particularly stuck out in any way. I did well in my lessons, but wasn't completely outstanding in any way. Not that I can recall, at least. I made friends, I discovered boys - sometimes I combined the two, and made friends with boys. My best friend, in fact, Caspian Fleming. I had a lot of boyfriends actually, none of them really serious. I got high enough grades at the end of my NEWTs to apply for the auror training programme. It was then that my not-very-planned future life went completely off whatever plans I'd made though. Great-Auntie Bridget - my lovely, strong, independent guardian - had a stroke. Not a major, hugely disabling one or anything, but enough to knock her confidence and throw her off her stride, to say the least. She didn't want to go into a care home - she couldn't bear the thought of leaving the cottage she'd spent her entire life in - but she didn't want me to move home to be with her either. Nevertheless, I did a lot of thinking (believe me, a lot), and realised that, realistically, should I take up my place on the training programme, it's intensity would mean that - for the foreseeable future at least - I wouldn't be able to drop everything immediately if anything else happened to Auntie Bee. Nowadays, she's getting a bit frail, but she's still hanging on and I still wouldn't pick a fight with her. She has a social life that I swear is fuller than mine, although it does include things like prayer meetings and knitting circles and indoor boules. Anyway, after the stroke I did the only reasonable thing, and declined my place. I told Auntie Bridget that I'd just changed my mind - she'd have been heartbroken had she known for sure that I was only doing it because of her. Instead, I got a job at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, having first explained my situation to Jon, the landlord at the time. It wasn't what I'd expected to find myself doing, but I surprised myself by a) being bloody good at it, and b) really enjoying it. In fact, looking back, it was a flipping good job everything worked out the way it did. Had it not, I'd never have met Jethro. It was the most innocuous way to start a relationship, ever. His mate was a bit of a regular (and a complete prat, although Jethro assures me that deep down he is genuinely an actual, functioning human being), and one day Jethro came in with him. His friend was busy hitting on some poor girl, so I got chatting to Jethro. And things just went from there, really. He started coming in even without his friend, and then he asked me out and I dithered a bit and said yes and it's honestly one of the best decisions I've ever made. We took things ridiculously slowly - I think we fell in love way before either of us knew what the hell we were doing. I mean, it's not all been sunshine-and-roses. We didn't really say we loved each other or anything like that for ages: it took us months to say yes, we're going out, for Merlin's sake! There's quite a big age difference as well, considering: when we started going out I was just nineteen, and he was twenty-four. And then there was the (not so) small issue of his family. That's been our main sticking point, over the years. That and our complete inability to have a serious conversation sometimes when we need to; although, to be fair, serious conversations are generally necessitated by his family, and we are working on the whole communication thing. Anyway. Jethro's family. Aside from his mother (I hope!), they completely detest me. Jethro's family situation is a little... tricky, to say the least. His dad died when he was twelve, and - to put it horribly bluntly - it kind of pretty much wrecked Jethro's entire teenage-hood. Well, most of it at least. He's kind of got a surrogate family, which is good and they love him and vice versa. It's just, unfortunately, like Jethro's actual family, they're blood purists from a very old, esteemed pureblood lineage. And I'm definitely not. I'm too poor, too young and too muggle for Jethro, in their opinion. So they hate me, and I think they're dicks (not that I'd ever put it in quite that fashion to Jethro) but in an I'm-actually-a-bit-scared kind of way, if that makes sense? We (by which I really mean I) managed to avoid them for ages, at least a year. I'm not even sure if they were even aware that Jethro had a serious girlfriend, let alone who she was. But eventually Jethro got a bit stubborn and we went and had dinner with them and it was a complete and utter disaster, to say the least. I'm glad it happened though, in a way, because now everything's out in the open. And like I said, Imogen likes me, and she's the only one that really, really matters. Or she matters most, at least. Sorry, I've strayed out of order again. In between meeting Jethro and meeting Jethro's family, I - under very complicated circumstances involving Jon's ex-girlfriend, his best friend and a werewolf that attacked him - became landlady of the Three Broomsticks. Crazy, huh? Aged twenty, I suddenly had my own business to run. I think it was only then that I realised that I would never ever become an auror, but that I was actually kind of okay with it. Anyway, two years on and my pub's still going strong and it's not been a complete failure and that's basically brilliant. I'm really genuinely proud of the Three Broomsticks - you should definitely pop in sometime! Okay, I do genuinely think that's everything important that's happened in my life, plus a bit of waffle just because I quite like you. I'm in a good place in my life right now - good friends, good job, good family (okay, just Bridget, but still), good boyfriend. I'm just happy in general, and, you know what, I can't imagine that changing. CASSIE NINETEEN GMT |
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