full name + nicknames:
Harri.
faces: Elle Fanning, Emily Kinney, Joanna Vanderham Natalie Dormer, Laura Linney
occupation: Astrophysics student, part of a London based Think Tank, Astrophysical engineer.
Harriet was the first child of Margret and Hamish Watson, born in September 1971.
Things were simple. A childhood in a pretty house, a mother that tied her shoelaces too tight from worry she would trip, and a father who told her to stand tall and not to cry at petty things. He was cold, but not spiteful – she was fretful but not loving. Parents that felt like they should be right and still didn’t fit. As a child it was easy to miss her mothers’ small addictive tendencies, especially with her father out outright ignoring them by still drinking and smoking at the same times like clockwork. By the age of ten, Margret was gone and the house became a little colder, more like the barracks Hamish had always considered home after being made to fit the military mould.
Her brother and Harriet weren’t close. John had a way of caring, defending with blind loyalty that Harriet did not. Never meant unkindly, she didn’t think about the consequences of her actions. It was easy, to take off and forget about the few people who had been close to her to start again. This was where she clashed with her father; never caring much of his opinion that she was too loud and too much. Harriet never made her sexuality a secret, and whilst she never had anyone permanent as she lived at the family home, Hamish made it pretty clear that she wasn’t welcome to live life the way she wanted to under his roof.
Initially it was by packing a bag and jumping a train, not bothering to tell her family who or where she was with. Countries, counties, cities and continents, she took them all in as much as she could. A good three years hopping from place to place until it felt like it might be right to try for something new again. The odd postcard made it home to Hamish with an ask for money or to see if John was safe, but never a phone call.
She finally returned to England at twenty to attend university slightly later, studying Astrophysics at Edinburgh. Whilst it had been easy to hide the worst of her addictive behaviour, at the heavy drinking culture of her first year at university it became an issue that even impacted on her studies. She had no control over her substance use, every time she had a drink it would turn into a black out night. Every time it was just one pill it was far worse. It was easy to dodge tutors and bend the rules to get away with more than she should for the first term, and by the start of her second term she had met Clara.
Clara was an English Literature student in the same year, and Harriet fell for her hard. It was another example of how little self control she had - devoting her whole life to the same girl rather than on her work. The first time Clara broke it off with her was the night before her first stint in rehab.
A phone call home from the university dorms as his daughter lay unconscious with a broken wrist, collar bone and cracked ribs was enough for Hamish to act. The only way he could think to handle the problem was so fix it. He didn’t understand the complexities of addiction, along with the complexities of his daughter. Harriet was placed in rehabilitation near the family home and pulled out of university - which she has never forgiven her father for doing without her permission. She had a year break before moving to study in London at UCL till the end of her degree as she tried to learn to live with her addiction.
She reconnected with Clara once they were both graduated, and although the old spark was there, Harriet was still struggling to find healthy boundaries for a relationship. Their relationship is a mess, on one minute and off the next but it’s all Harriet can cling to consistently throughout her life.
- addictive personality
- doesn’t think before acting ever
- pathological liar
+ carefree
+ honest
+ light hearted
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stormborns
jacobvanloon
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