Post by Caitlin Marsdon on Mar 24, 2014 19:44:18 GMT -5
[presto]
TWENTY-NINE
FEMALE
FARMER
HALFBLOOD
STRAIGHT
ALYSON HANNIGAN
CAITLIN LOUISE MARSDON
 Caitlin Marsdon looks a lot like your typical farmer's wife. These days, she mostly is. Except for the wife part, which is possibly quite a crucial element. The oldest daughter of Tanya and Gregory Marsdon, Caitlin has always been a motherly little creature. As a child, she was a very peaceable baby, always smiling and gurgling away quite happily, whatever the circumstances. Given that 'the circumstances' were the Second Wizarding War, this was remarkably fortuitous. Tanya and Gregory moved in with Gregory's (muggle) mother for the duration of the war, and thus Caitlin's first, vaguest memories are of the muggle world, rather than the magical. Caitlin was three when the war ended with the Battle of Hogwarts, and although it was now safe for Tanya to resume her place and employment in the magical world, she instead chose to be a full-time mother. The next year, Caitlin's little sister Emily arrived. Caitlin, at the age of four, was quite frankly thrilled. A baby was better than any doll or pet she ever could have imagined, and she loved Emily unconditionally from the moment she set eyes on her. As soon as Emily was old enough to walk and talk, the two girls became fast friends as well as sisters. Caitlin adored having a playmate, and when another baby arrived three years later, as far as she was concerned, the more the merrier. Unfortunately, Emily didn't quite view the appearance of Olivia in quite the same fashion, and so Caitlin assumed the role of peacemaker that she was to maintain for the rest of her life. Aged seven when Olivia was born, Caitlin felt quite grown up, and absolutely sure that she could look after Olivia. She never minded Olivia tagging along after her friends and her, even as a toddler, and instinctively made very sure never ever to pick one sister over another where she could help it. All three of the Mardson girls attended the local primary school, which Caitlin loved. It soon became apparent that her knack for getting along with people was something that was indiscriminate, and not just relating to her family members. Caitlin's mother is very fond of relating the story of her first day at the school, when Caitlin appeared at the finish of school arm-in-arm with a group of girls and holding a duckling, the origin of which both the teacher (honestly_ and Caitlin (possibly less honestly) both swore they had no idea of the origins of. Being a witch herself, of course, Tanya had more than a fair idea of what had happened, and resolved to keep an eye on her daughter. Life continued on fairly peacefully - minus almost continual squabbling between her two young sisters - until Caitlin departed for Hogwarts at the age of eleven. She'd never been far from her family or the little area of North London in which they and her grandparents resided, and now she was being sent off to a school far away in the middle of nowhere, without even a friend to take with her. It seemed like the cruellest punishment imaginable for little Caitlin, and even today she can remember precisely how much she dreaded leaving home. She was Sorted into Hufflepuff, and although she made friends and enjoyed her lessons, she initially found it very hard to settle in. She missed Emily and Olivia and her parents something awful, and cried herself to sleep more than once in those early days. As a first year, it wasn't so uncommon, however, and after a couple of months she'd returned to her usual happy soul. Caitlin worked diligently at school, and did well across all of her subjects. Better behaved than Emily, although lacking some of her flair, she was universally liked, and especially in her latter years at the school could rarely be found of an evening without an upset Hufflepuff first year sobbing onto her sleeve. She played Quidditch for the house team, and - surprisingly - made a very good Beater (she liked to think that she had a lot of pent-up aggression). Emily's arrival at Hogwarts was something that Caitlin had been looking forward to, but when it arrived she was suddenly worried - for the first time ever - if what people thought of Emily would affect what they thought of Caitlin. She tried to tell herself that it didn't matter if they did, but it was a very real fear that she'd never experienced before. As it happened, Emily was quite generally awful, but people seemed to feel for sympathy for Caitlin than disapproval. Caitlin herself tried her hardest never to appear judgemental to her sister. She loved Emily with all her heart, and knew she had a better chance of steering her if she avoided confrontation. The approach must have worked a little, because occasionally Emily did take her advice and work for a while. The difference in their houses - Emily was Gryffindor (no surprise their to Caitlin) to Caitlin's Hufflepuff - meant that they didn't actually see each other a great deal, but Caitlin found that it was nice to know that Emily was there, just in case. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Caitlin was made a Prefect in her fifth year, and much to her dismay this had precisely no effect whatsoever on Emily's behaviour. In her seventh year, Olivia arrived at the school. Olivia had always seemed to feel herself a bit more precious than either of her sisters, but she'd a good heart underneath, and it baffled Caitlin as to why Olivia and Emily had never got on. Olivia seemed to settle in okay, and Caitlin left Hogwarts reassured that both of her sisters would be happy, if not particularly well-behaved. Being relatively pretty (although she never really feels it in comparison to her frankly gorgeous sisters), Caitlin had never really been short of male attention throughout her latter years at Hogwarts, and this didn't change upon her graduation. A romantic at heart, she'd dreamed of a marriage and kids and everything that went with that for as long as she could remember. Although she had a lot of flirtations and went on a lot of dates, there was a part of her quite content to wait until 'The One'. 'The One' came around when she was twenty-one, and his name was Niall Gordon. He'd been the year above her at school, and although they'd had friends in common, they'd never really even spoken in their time there. He was tall, rugged and handsome, with a Scottish brogue that had the ability to melt the insides of many a woman. He was doing 'something in Finance' in Wizarding London when Caitlin met him, and she was working in a junior public relations job at the Ministry. The attraction was instantaneous on both sides, and flirting in a bar with friends soon led to a dinner date soon led to... marriage? Niall proposed after four months, and Caitlin had never been so sure of anything when she said yes. Now she wonders had she talked it over with someone, would she still have done the same? At the time, it didn't feel like there was anyone she could confide in. Her friends were all involved in their own lives and growing up, Emily was having a huge romantic crisis with Digger (whom Caitlin always privately maintained was definitely the love of Emily's life, whatever Emily thought) and running away across the world, and Olivia was a bit too young. Partially for cost, partially to avoid awkward conversations and partially just to avoid fuss, the pair eloped (something which has kept Emily entertained to this day). She left a note for her parents and Olivia, but only wrote to Emily after the deed was done (if she remembers correctly, Emily was in Russia at the time, but that might not be right). Niall's family were highland farmers, and before they were married he'd often stated his intention to go back home and leave London behind in order to get back to his roots and run a completely self-sufficient farm. Caitlin, a city girl to her toes, was unsure about the move away from the city and her family, but saw in this the opportunity to raise the wholesome family she intrinsically saw as part of her future, and so agreed to give it a go at least. Niall and Caitlin handed in their notices and accordingly moved the several hundred miles northwards to a small, rickety homestead. It was cold and hard and run-down, but it was their home together, and Caitlin loved it simply because of that. To her complete surprise, she fitted into a farming lifestyle as if she'd been born to do it, and when she fell pregnant the next year at the age of twenty-three, it seemed confirmation of the fact that this was where she was supposed to be. In reality, it was all just starting to go wrong. It turned out that Niall's good looks and wonderful accent had turned the head of more than one woman in the course of their short marriage, and this only increased during Caitlin's pregnancy, although she was genuinely unaware of it and blissfully happy at the time. Daisy was born two weeks after Caitlin turned twenty-four, and Niall told Caitlin he was leaving two months after that, just after Emily had visited from some far-flung and exotic destination. Caitlin's world crashed around her shoulders. She'd gone from having the perfect family she'd always dreamt of to being a single mother of a tiny baby in the middle of nowhere. Niall had left her for another woman and a job back in London (apparently he hadn't loathed it as much as he'd thought at the time, and being self-sufficient and a farmer and a husband and a dad 'wasn't his thing' after all), and told her in no uncertain terms that he wanted nothing more to do with Caitlin or Daisy. A betrayal of Caitlin was something that Caitlin could understand and forgive, a betrayal of Daisy was not. She knew that the sensible thing to do would be to sell the farm and move back down to London to be with her parents. And yet the fact that everything had just fallen to pieces had only reminded Caitlin that she loved her farm and the community she lived in and her new life; and a streak of stubborn pride surfaced that would not let her let Niall ruin all of that. So she dug her heels in, re-mortgaged the place to the hilt and set about making it work. She was exhausted and busy and permanently sleep-deprived for about the first three years of Daisy's life, but she did it and the farm now turns a regular profit. It also meant that she had no time to mourn her broken marriage and heart, and for that she will be forever grateful. Emily returned home just as Caitlin was beginning to come to terms with Niall's abandonment, and Caitlin relished the chance to have her sister close again. Thankfully, Emily had fallen promptly in love with Daisy when she'd visited just after her birth, and little seemed to have changed on that regard in the interim. She began to hear little snippets from Emily about Digger, and so when Emily announced that they were back together, it was of little surprise to her big sister, and her engagement wasn't entirely unexpected either. Despite everything, Caitlin's not yet given up on the idea of love, and she's immensely happy that her sister will be married to her childhood sweetheart. Daisy's existence means that Caitlin will never regret her ill-fated marriage to Niall (although sometimes even now she tortures herself by wondering what would have happened if they'd have done anything differently). The complete apple of her eye, Daisy's just started at the local muggle primary school, and Caitlin would do anything for her bright, funny, sparky daughter. Sometime Caitlin gets a little lonely on her isolated farm of a night time - although she's still excellent at making friends with anyone or everyone, and her sisters visit quite a lot, especially Emily - but she's not really in a position to date around, so if anything were to come her way, she'd have to be sure it could at least potentially be true love. Aside from a new tractor and a jumper without holes in, there's honestly not a lot that Caitlin feels she needs in her life nowadays: she has her family, her friends and her health. CASSIEE NINETEEN GMT |
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