Post by Adé Lamoureux on Jan 26, 2014 1:09:52 GMT -5
[presto]
NINETEEN
FEMALE
TRAINEE HEALER
UNKNOWN
HETEROSEXUAL
PHOEBE TONKIN
ADÉLAÏDE JULIANNE LAMOUREUX
 Well, I am glad I only have to write about myself. I've always liked writing, and anyway, it's definitely preferable to speaking about myself to someone. So here goes. My name is Adélaïde Julianne Lamoureux. Quite a mouthful, right? That's why I go by Adé. It's easier and less likely to be forgotten by people. I'm nineteen, and a trainee Healer. I've been working at St. Mungo's for about a year now. Well, now that all that is out of the way, let's get down to the start of my story. Even though, in my opinion, it isn't really much of a story. My parents are perfectly wonderful people, and they love each other to pieces. Unfortunately, they were unable to have children, so they adopted me and my two siblings when we were very little. My big sister, came first, then me, then my little brother. We've never really sensed a lack of anything in our upbringing, though. It's always felt just like we were actual siblings. The three of us can't be more different though - it's a little crazy how little we have in common. Still, we're all really close and have been since childhood. I'd say my sister and I are closer to each other than we are to our brother, though. As he grew older, he spent less time with us, probably because he wanted to show his independence. Who knows? Anyway, I didn't have much drama in my life for the first ten years. I was always the good girl of the family, and I acted like the eldest and tried to boss my siblings around, especially when they created mischief. Neither of them took it too well, of course, but it didn't stop me from doing it, and it earned me the nickname of 'bonne-maman' from my brother (that's French for Grandma, in case you didn't know). Of course it annoyed me. But then, a lot of things annoyed me then, and honestly still do. I'm a really easy person to tick off, and despite me seeming quiet and frigid at first, if you do something to annoy me, I will go off like a time bomb. So when I was almost eleven, I was sent off to Beauxbatons. I was excited for sure, but more than that, I was very, very nervous. So nervous, in fact, that I didn't want to leave my parents when they dropped off my sister and me. I did have her with me, though, so it would be slightly better, I thought. On the journey, I didn't really talk to anyone - not even my sister. I'd brought a book with me, and I buried myself inside it, too nervous to face anyone. I finished it about halfway through the journey, and I spent the latter part of it deep in thought and worrying my head off. When I finally got to the school, it turned out that it wasn't nearly as scary as I'd thought it was, and I can't express how much of a relief that was to me. Classes started and I found all the work incredibly fascinating. I really, honestly enjoy learning new things, and the various branches of magic intrigued me like anything. I especially loved Potions class, because it had a fixed set of values and a fixed outcome. All the other classes had some sort of unpredictability, some result you couldn't always be sure of, and I didn't like that. I don't much like unpredictable things - it takes me time to get used to anything, and constantly changing things are both confusing and scary to me. Nevertheless, I worked really hard in class, and managed to score top marks at the end of my first year. My parents and my sister were incredibly proud of me, and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I resolved, then, that I would continue to try to make them proud as far as I could, and over the next five years, I was almost constantly either at or near the top of my class. I was reasonably civil to most people in my year, although I didn't talk a lot. I usually focused on my studies or a book. This was mostly because I was rather scared of interacting with new people when school first began, so I pushed almost everyone out when they tried to be nice to me. Later, when I'd grown used to my new environment, I tried to reconnect with people, but I'd already gained a reputation as a frigid, haughty bitch, and I couldn't do anything about it. I tried my utmost best to at least make the girls in my dorm warm up to me, and to an extent, I definitely succeeded. One of them grew quite close to me. I wouldn't say we were ever best friends - my sister was always my best friend and still is - but we are still in touch to this day, albeit infrequently. The first time I fancied a boy was midway through second year. He was three years older than me, and a notorious 'bad boy' who many people talked about; almost like a celebrity at school. And to be honest, the crush started out as something like a celebrity crush too. But one day, after he helped me out when I tripped over in the corridor, I became convinced that it could be something more. I started pursuing him around the school, trying to talk to him, or at least get him to talk to me. Finally, when he couldn't bear it any longer, he asked me who I was and why I was stalking him. The fact that he didn't even remember me really hurt me, and even though the memory of that crush seems foolish now, I was rather heartbroken after it. As the years passed, and the girls in my dorm kept getting into relationships and went through repeated heartbreaks, I became convinced that boys just weren't worth it, and resolved that I wouldn't have any more silly crushes, at least not while I was in school. So whenever I began to develop even a passing attraction to someone, I would drive it out of my head, and make sure that I didn't pay attention to that person at all. I didn't think it would work very well, but it did and I'm grateful for that. Three years after I did, my darling brother was ready to join Beauxbatons too. He wasn't nervous at all, not like I had been, which I was happy about. Maman told me to help him and show him around like my sister had done with me, but almost as soon as we reached school, he practically stopped talking to me. I wondered why for a while, then one day, I caught him when he was alone (he'd already made many friends in school, so it was really hard to get him alone). He told me to leave him alone and that he could handle himself perfectly fine without me babysitting him. His words hit me hard - I couldn't handle the fact that he didn't need me anymore. It was doubly hard because he seemed to have fit in much better than I had, and that made me upset and more than a little jealous of him. Through our school years, then, we grew more and more distant. At home, we were still close, but at school we barely acknowledged each other. Three more years passed without much drama in my life. Then, midway through my sixth year, my parents sent me an owl. Apparently my sister had got into some kind of trouble with them again, and this time, they'd decided it was the last straw. They wanted her to have a proper career, and so had sent her to Hogwarts to work as an assistant in the school library. They also told me that both my brother and I had to transfer to Hogwarts the next year, so we could be close to her. At first, I couldn't quite come to terms with this news - I would have to handle a lot of change in a very short time once again. I wrote to her constantly, asking her what Hogwarts was like. She didn't like it very much there, telling me that it was cold, draughty and often lonely. Meanwhile, I was preparing hard for my OWL-equivalent exams, which I was due to give at the end of that year. After my sixth-year exams were done, I left Beauxbatons for good. I knew I might not be missed much, but I would still miss it - it was a constant in my life and it would definitely be different at Hogwarts. I spent the beginning of my vacation in France, trying not to worry about the upcoming changes; however, someone I met during that period changed almost everything. His name was Neil, and he was my worst nightmare. Looking back on our first encounter, I will admit that I was being a little stuck-up and prying in his business, but god, did he annoy me. I first met him on a beach in France, the day before I was due to leave for London. I still remember that day all too well; we took a dislike to each other almost instantly. He was just the kind of person I hated; he was full of himself, a shameless flirt and just generally obnoxious. We argued for who knew how long, and I found out that he attended Hogwarts, and was in my year. There, one more thing not to look forward to about Hogwarts. The rest of the vacation passed in something of a haze, honestly. I visited Diagon Alley and met some of my future classmates; all of them seemed pretty nice. That decreased my apprehension about the school a little, I won't deny that. I was still nervous as hell, though. Not so much my brother; he found some new friends on our trip and, as usual, fit right in. We stayed at the Leaky for the rest of the summer, and I didn't do much besides people-watch and study some of my new school books. Finally, the time came for me to go to Hogwarts. This time, on the train, I tried to be slightly more social than I had been the first time around. I tried to strike up a conversation with some fellow seventh years, and was generally polite to all of them; but the gossip and the jokes they shared seemed alien to me, and it felt a little strange and intrusive to try to become close to people who had spent six years together already. They tried to make me feel welcome, but I still didn't quite think I would fit in. Finally, I got to Hogwarts, and my nerves only got worse. The Sorting was the worst of all; it meant having to come up in front of the entire school to get Sorted, and that too with first years. Having read up on the houses beforehand, I had no doubt that I would get Sorted into either Ravenclaw or Slytherin. And sure enough, I was Sorted into Ravenclaw. It cheered me up at least a little to think that there would be people like me around me. My brother got Sorted into Gryffindor, and once again, just went off on his own. I tried my best to keep track of what he was doing in school, though, and he seemed to be doing great for himself, for which I was glad. At Hogwarts, I had a generally better reputation than I had had at Beauxbatons. Even though I was having some trouble adjusting to the new environment, I made sure to be polite and civil to everyone, and not shut someone out if they tried to talk to me. I didn't make many close friends, though. However, a girl in my dormitory did become my best friend at Hogwarts, since we were really similar and I related to her on a lot of levels. I also began to work harder than ever at school, since the curriculum was slightly different and I had to keep up to the best of my ability. While all this was happening, my rivalry with Neil increased to a great extent. I honestly despised the guy, and I wouldn't hesitate to prove every single thing he said wrong whenever we were talking. Our fights got so frequent that they almost became routine; I felt strangely lonely when we didn't argue. Slowly, the arguments changed to banter, and he began to convince me not to take life as seriously as I did. We agreed to be friends, and somehow, that made me feel glad. Our arguments didn't cease one bit, though; if anything, they got more intense. Gradually, I began to have a strange sort of respect for the guy; maybe even care about him to some extent. I tried my best to push that feeling away, because I hated it. I didn't want him to know how much he'd begun to matter to me, and how much of a routine our arguments had become for me. However, this time, pushing my feelings away didn't work. They only grew, until I couldn't bear to deal with them anymore. That honestly really scared me; I didn't know how to handle them, and I didn't want them coming in the way of my studies. That was when I took to drinking. I don't drink any more, not as much as I did then, anyway. At the time, it was just a way to dull my senses and help me forget all my worries and insecurities for a while. I would have a glass or so of Firewhiskey every now and then, but the first time I got really, truly smashed was.. well.. let's just say it was quite an occasion. It led to Neil and I sleeping together, and a whole mess of confused feelings to come with that. We'd ended that night on terrible terms, mostly because of the fact that I was too scared of getting hurt to jump into anything with him. Two months passed by - they felt like the longest two months of my life. With preparation for NEWTs on top of the Neil situation to deal with, I was completely stressed and very, very confused and upset. Before then, I had prided myself on hardly ever crying, but I had more than one full-blown crying fit within those two months. When questioned about it, I said it was due to exams stressing me out - in a way it was true, anyway. Towards the beginning of the second month, I decided to get my priorities in order, and tried my level best to stop thinking about it and concentrate on my work. As the year drew to a close and the NEWTs were all done, I decided to clear things out with Neil. I made my feelings clearly known to him, and to my surprise, he seemed to reciprocate them. We started dating then, and we have been for a year and a half now. With all the things going down at the end of the year, I didn't do quite as well as I had expected in my NEWTs, but luckily, I passed all of them and earned high enough grades to go into Healing. It had been my dream job since I was a child and I was ecstatic that I had gotten to work there. I started work at St. Mungo's by the beginning of August 2023, and almost immediately it turned out to be a lot harder than I had expected. The senior Healers were incredibly tough taskmasters and I was pretty intimidated by them. Still, I was quite liking the job. One of my worst memories of work is the first time a patient died under my care. My senior had told me that he was going to die anyway and we couldn't save him, but we just had to make sure he suffered as little as possible while he was dying. I did the best I could do, and somewhere deep down, I was hoping that he wouldn't die. I've always had a fear of death as a concept and I'd never seen anyone die until that day. Even though he passed away peacefully, it was quite a disturbing sight to me. As I've seen more and more patients die, the shock has worn off to quite an extent, but I still have an irrational fear of myself or anyone close to me dying. I'm now in my second year of training, and I like to think I've improved a lot from when I first joined the hospital. I'm a lot less squeamish, anyway. Initially, I used to get disgusted by even the smallest things, and finally, my senior yelled at me, saying if I didn't want to see such people in such conditions, maybe I shouldn't have become a Healer. I took her words to heart, and since then I've tried my level best not to get grossed out, whatever condition my patients are in. As for my living arrangements, I stayed at the Leaky Cauldron for two months before I decided to get a place of my own. With my sister's help, I rented a small flat in London. Paying her off for the last time, so that the flat was truly mine, was one of my best memories in a long time. For the first time, I felt like I didn't need to rely on anyone. My brother is going into his seventh year this September, and I really want him to move in with me after he graduates - I do have a spare bedroom, after all. But who knows if he will? He's never seemed to need me, after all. Meanwhile, Neil and I have stayed together through everything. We've never really been the typical couple - we probably have more arguments than we exchange 'I love you's - but in a way, we keep each other sane. Our arguments help us blow off steam, and since our jobs keep us apart for the most part of the week, seeing each other every weekend is made better. Since we got together, we've grown closer, and I like to think we've changed each other for the better. KITTY FIFTEEN GMT+4 |
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