BETTY

one. june 25th

[ chapter one. june 25th ]

Betty Blake was an average girl - average by the standards of anyone who knew about Hogwarts, that is. Meaning, Betty - whose full name was Bethany Rose - was a Muggle. There wasn't a single drop of magical blood in her body. She didn't know anything about the Wizarding World and she probably never would. Not that she cared because well, she didn't know magic existed in the first place.

James Potter was. . . a bit above average - only because he was, quite literally, a wizard. James Potter knew quite a bit about the Wizarding World and close to nothing about the Muggle world. He, on the other hand, was pure magic. Or at least, that's what he was supposed to be but considering it was impossible to keep a bloodline 'pure' for this many centuries, James wasn't quite sure and he didn't like to dwell on it because frankly, he didn't care.

The year was 1977. The month was June.

This was when Betty met James - the year that he returned from his sixth and penultimate year and the year that she moved in next door.

Betty Blake was 17-years-old when she moved for the first time. Oliver Blake, Betty's father, had made the conscious decision to move himself and his teenage daughter into a brand new house for absolutely no valid reason.

Now, Betty wouldn't consider her father a bad parent, it's just that since Betty was 'so young,' Oliver assumed that she knew nothing. Not even just about moving, just about life in general. Betty didn't even know what that was even supposed to mean, but her dad used her age as an excuse for almost everything.

If it were up to Betty, she never would've moved. She would've stayed in the same house for the rest of her life and then she'd leave the house to her children (assuming that she got married) and they could stay there for the rest of their lives too.

Betty loved that house because it reminded her of Dorothea.

Dorothy is what Betty called her because she hadn't been able to pronounce 'Dorothea.' She was Betty's sister. . . she had been, at least.

Betty liked to think that she would make a wonderful main character in a romance novel because she certainly had the backstory for it.

Dorothea had been 11 years older than Betty but the age gap didn't matter because Dorothy had basically been her mother.

Elizabeth, Betty's actual mother, had been a drinker. She drank before marrying Betty's father and she started to drink again after. Elizabeth and Oliver's relationship had been based on hopeless dreams and 'what could've been.' They never would've worked.

Elizabeth had been an author - she locked herself in her bedroom with any kind of alcohol they had available and didn't reappear until she smelled the dinner that Dorothea had cooked. Oliver was an optician - he spent most of his time at the office as far away from his family as he possibly could.

Hence why Dorothy took care of Betty. There weren't any parents to take care of her themselves.

When Dorothy was 16, she got a boyfriend. Betty had been 5 at the time and didn't quite understand what the concept of a 'boyfriend' was (she only understood that sometimes people really loved each other and then they had kids together and then they didn't love each other anymore), but Dorothea had been excited so Betty was too.