when you were little you held your mother’s favorite glass figurine in your fingers & you loved it so tightly that you snapped it in your palms & since then you’ve let go of beautiful things before you get around to breaking them
kitty’s smile felt a little caught on her face; like the expression snagged on ariel’s words and couldn’t really get unstuck. she tilted her head down, directing her funny grin to the ground instead of her friend’s face. it was a means of buying time. one of her hands gripped tight to her sweating drink, clutching it like a lifeline. it probably told anyone looking at her, who didn’t know when she was from, that she wasn’t the one they know. she had a feeling either of the other kitty’s would have been capable of holding a drink at a party without feeling ready to fall apart.
“ unless some other girl came out of the woodwork, “ she began, pausing to tug her bottom lip between her teeth. pausing to bite down on her sad tone and try again with lightness she didn’t feel. “ I’d hazard to say I’m that ‘one.’ um … kitty. though. if you were – serious, about being introduced. re-introduced. “
ariel froze, the grip on her red plastic cup loosening as she struggled to keep it steady. kitty abbott. the girl she hardly knew and the girl who knew her well. she’d read the letters the hufflepuff had sent ( sent to a version of ariel that wasn’t here ) and had spent the morning asking questions on the younger girl to try and find out anything she could, but to see her in the flesh with an expression that read HURT was something ariel never could’ve prepared for. hands shaking, ariel turned slowly to face her, pushing what little of a smile she could manage onto her lips.
❛ oh. ❜ it was all she could manage. lost and guilty and confused, not wanting to hurt anyone but finding that in this situation, pain was unavoidable. ❛ kitty... ❜ the name felt foreign on her tongue. and yet distantly familiar. another life. ❛ i... i’m ariel. though... i suppose you knew that. um... i mean, i... i do know you. uh, sort of. i-i’ve seen you around. i’m... sorry i’m not who you thought i was... ❜
how was she supposed to act? or more to the point: how did these people know her? ariel had been burnt out long ago, had learned how to turn her drinking into an outlet rather than a party past time, but was that the same for the ariel that her current schoolmates knew her as? ‘timelines’ were a funny thing --- ‘parallel universes’ as some liked to call it --- and as her fellow teenagers dissolved into the party atmosphere seamlessly, ariel couldn’t help but get caught up in the questions, her lips playing with the rim of her half-finished firewhiskey. she should’ve taken it slow. she didn’t.
noticing a figure out of the corner of her eye, she trained herself to smile, tilting her head to meet their gaze. ❛ should i re-introduce myself? ❜ she joked, chuckling to herself as she turned back to stare at the lake. ❛ for all i know, you used to be my best friend. i already found one of those... ❜
@alcarrows sent: 💕 for a moodboard on my muse’s view on romantic and/or sexual relationships
you learn to trust yourself before anyone else. the world teaches you that the hard way. you shut yourself out, bit by bit, until it becomes nearly impossible to open up. your heart a pacing lion in its cage. you love yourself, but it’s not enough --- you crave to be loved. by someone. anyone. please.
❛ when you were little you held your mother’s favorite glass figurine in your fingers & you loved it so tightly that you snapped it in your palms & since then you’ve let go of beautiful things before you get around to breaking them. ❜
have you been re-introduced to ARIEL MACKAY? last we heard, the HALFBLOOD was most familiar with TIMELINE ONE. I don’t recall if they were always a SLYTHERIN, but I’ve heard the SEVENTH YEAR is still AMBITIOUS, LOYAL, INGENIOUS and CRUDE, RECKLESS, BLUNT, so that’s familiar. at least SHE remembers her way around the castle.
character parallels: rebecca bunch (crazy ex-girlfriend), eleanor shellstrop (the good place), gina linetti (brooklyn nine-nine), shane madej (buzzfeed unsolved), annie landsberg (maniac), maeve wiley (sex education)
aesthetic: bottles of whiskey stashed beneath a mattress, the mess of a home the morning after a party, lacy red lingerie, neon signs lighting up a dark room, boisterous laughter sounding from the bedroom, cherry red lips sucking on a lollipop
links: stats, pinterest
triggers: parental death, substance abuse, bipolar disorder, suicide attempt
ariel mackay never knew her father. in fact, her mother ( isabelle mackay ) isn’t even quite sure who the man is. the late fifties proved to be a tough time for poor old isabelle mackay, and it resulted in excessive alcohol consumption, a string of one night stands, and eventually the birth of her one and only daughter, ariel winter mackay, on april 3rd, 1960, when she was only twenty years of age. if they were to ever investigate, they would indeed find that ari’s father was a famous pureblood wizard, thus making her a half-blood, as issy is a muggle.
ariel’s childhood was fun, but at the same time kind of rocky. i mean, issy didn’t have any family left, she was a single mum in the early sixties working a part-time secretary job and she had no idea how to raise a child. ari and issy spent a lot of time with issy’s friends, who became like aunts to ariel and allowed her to grow up surrounded by strong, independent women.
but ariel had a bit of a troublesome streak. it seemed as though chaos and destruction followed her everywhere she went, and it caused her to jump from school to school until she’d eventually been expelled from eight primary schools by the age of eleven. issy could not understand what was wrong, she couldn’t explain certain things that happened around the little blonde girl because they were seemingly unexplainable, and she was starting to grow seriously worried until a tall woman with a big hat knocked on their door and introduced the mackay family to the world of magic.
ariel was honestly ecstatic to go to hogwarts. she’d always known that she was different to the other kids, that she was special, and this only went on the prove it. and now, surrounded by other kids the same as her, maybe she could finally find a place that she fit in - a place that she could call home.
she was sorted into slytherin after a minute of the hat sitting on her head, and at first she slotted right in with the rest of her housemates. they were all just as fun, ambitious and intelligent as her and she was excited to find a place that she belonged. but slowly she started to notice that still she was being treated differently - there was something about her that had other kids turning their noses and left her unable to befriend many of her housemates for the pure reason that they wouldn’t talk to her. the first time she was called a mudblood, she cried for days - she’d expected hogwarts to be welcoming and instead she was still that weird kid that everyone wanted to avoid.
of course, as she grew up, it became obvious that not everyone hated her. she started to hang out with more of the gryffindors in her year and sought out the people who weren’t disgusted by her ambiguous ( ‘tainted’ ) lineage. moving through her first, her second, her third year, she became quite popular amongst the student body, and her fun-loving, easy-going attitude attracted many boys and girls who wanted to befriend her.
a small hiccup arose in her third year, when a pattern of violent, depressed and manic behaviour began to show in her every day life. at the tender age of fourteen, ariel was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and at age fifteen was prescribed lithium in order to keep it in check. her tendency for manic episodes meant she had to tone down on her usually adventurous nature and had to keep a check on how many people she surrounded herself with - too many and she could be sent over the edge. though she was still widely popular and incredibly fun to be around, she wasn’t known to have many close friends and was sometimes noted to disappear for days without explanation and return as if nothing has happened.
DEATH TW: everything was all pretty smooth sailing for miss mackay until a few months before the end of her fifth year, when she received a letter detailing the horrific death of her mother, isabelle mackay, at the hands of a drunk driver.devastated could hardly begin to describe how ariel felt — it was as if her whole world was crumbling around her. her mother, her one true rock throughout all the pain and misery and heartache of her life was gone and now she had no one.
SUICIDE TW: after the death, ariel fell into a deep depression into which no one could pull her out. for a while she relied on substance abuse to even keep her going, but after coming close to suffering from alcohol poisoning, she moved off it and instead completely isolated herself from everyone around her and allowed herself to fall deeper and deeper into her own depression. over the winter break of her fifth year, during which she had moved to her mum’s friends place in dublin, ariel finally completely broke and attempted suicide. of course, she was not successful, but after spending months in the hospital after this attempt, she finally spoke to a professional and started on the slow and bumpy road to recovery.
alycia ( her mum’s friend and now ariel’s caregiver ) was reluctant to allow ariel to return to hogwarts after the traumatic few months they had endured, but after much begging on ariel’s part, she finally relented. returning to hogwarts for her sixth year, it was clear that ariel was all but a different person. once the life of the party, the sassy and adventurous and fun-loving girl of her year, ariel was now much quieter and a lot less adventerous. she was still ever so dependent on alcohol and still talking to a psychologist within hogwarts ( as was requested by alycia ), and though it was clear that ariel mackay was all but a different person, she was trying her very best to once again be happy.
and then it happened --- and everything was suddenly a thousand times worse. a battle caused by a war that ariel had never been exposed to, her mind torn into a body that had experienced things she’d never even dreamed of. at first, it wasn’t even obvious to her ( alycia was still alycia and ariel was still ariel ) but when she started receiving letters from a girl she’d hardly spoken to in the year below her claiming to be her ‘best friend’, she knew that something was up. and now, she’s terrified; terrified because she knows she has to do something, even when she hardly has a grip on what’s going on. she’s muggleborn and proud ( at least to her knowledge ) and the knowledge that that could get her killed in this universe makes her sick to her stomach. she wants to fight --- to do something. she just doesn’t know what that something is yet...
“No, I’m not ok. But I haven’t been ok since I was 11, maybe 12. I am still here though. I’m still breathing. For me, sometimes, that will have to be enough.”
