Ok! Here it is, after my little attempt of a P&P oneshot, my first real p&p fanfic. I have to admit, I'm a bit intimidated. After spending years here on ff and reading the amazing stories some people here have written... It's really amazing how talented some people are! I seriously doubt I will be able to compare to that, but I will still try my best.

This is a modern retelling (no connection to LBD, though I love it! ^^).

One last thing: I am not a native English speaker and, though I feel my English is not too bad, I would be very grateful for a beta, who corrects my bigger mistakes. Just PM me. Thank you.

And now, let the show begin:

Edit: I reuploaded the first chapter with grammatical and spelling corrections, curtesy of my new found Beta LMFG. XD

It's a truth universally acknowledged that family is family. They embarrass you, they annoy you, they anger you, they hurt you, but you love them nonetheless.

For Elizabeth Bennet – known as Lizzie since the first day of kindergarten when the other children proved incapable of pronouncing the old fashioned name – that was no different. She loved her family dearly. She truly did! But more often than not, they tried her patience and weekends were prone for chaos.

It was a Saturday morning and all Lizzie wanted was a big cup of coffee and to curl up on the couch with a good book. Instead, she had to listen to the nonsensical chatter of her two youngest sisters, Lydia and Cathy, as they gave a very detailed account of the party the night before.

With a deep sigh and a really bad case of bedhead, Lizzie hid her face in her arms, trying to blank out the increasing volume as the two girls tried to outdo each other. A not so gentle nudge had her raise her head again. Lizzie met her cousin Mari's eyes. The young woman, dressed in her usual black clothes and already wearing her signature make up with thick black eyeliner, sat across from her clearly signaling 'If I have to listen, so do you'.

"Lydia, Cathy, I don't understand you when you talk at the same time." The gentle voice of the fifth woman interrupted the exuberant girls. Jane, the eldest Bennet sister, was a true beauty under the sky. With her long golden waves, the harmonious features, and slender figure, she easily outshone her younger sisters, even now, wearing flower pajamas and the hair up in a messy bun. You might imagine her to have many enemies among her own sex, but the truth was she was of such a sweet and gentle disposition it was utterly impossible to hate her. Every attempt in doing so inevitably had to fail. The most amazing thing about Jane? She was completely unaware of her own beauty and goodness. There was no pretense – Jane was all honesty and kindness.

"Then, I will tell!" Lydia announced.

"No, I will!" Cathy disagreed angrily.

"Oh, come on, Cathy! You will just bore everyone to death!"

"What?! I will not!"

"Of course, you will, everyone knows you're boring!"

Speechless Cathy stared at her sister, tears slowly rising in her eyes. With a smug smile, Lydia turned back to Jane and was about to launch into a detailed description when Cathy suddenly jumped to her feet.

"At least, I'm not a whore like you!"

Groaning Lizzie hid her face in her arms again. It was too early! She was sooo not up for a physical fight. Mari just smirked slightly while Jane, no doubt shocked by her younger sister's vocabulary, just sat there speechless.

Furiously, Lydia rose as well. "Take that back! I'm not!"

"Oh, yeah? And who was it I saw making out with three different guys last night? None of them being her boyfriend?"

Jane stood up and positioned herself between the twins. "Please, I'm sure it was only a misunderstanding! Cathy didn't mean it like that," she pleaded, but the girls didn't listen.

Lydia was just about to launch herself at Cathy when the house door closed with a loud bang. Mrs. Allison Bennet had returned home, and the volume would undoubtedly increase further. The twins ran out of the kitchen to meet their mother.

Lizzie could hear Lydia and Cathy complaining to their mother. Every time it was the same. Lydia and Cathy fought, their mother took Lydia's side, Cathy would run to her room and lock herself in for the rest of the weekend and not talk to anyone, and Lydia would walk around the house with a smug smile on her lips. Jane would try to mediate, Mari would go to the library or avoid the house another way and their father would lock himself in his study.

Sighing Lizzie waited for the screaming and the banging of doors, already bidding her productive weekend goodbye. But instead her mother's loud voice rang. "Thomas! You're never going to believe what happened! Thomas Bennet! Come out at once!"

Surprised Jane, Lizzie, and Mari rose from their chairs and followed the voices until they reached Thomas Bennet's office.

Allison Bennet was almost giddy with excitement, a ridiculously wide grin on her face. Finally, the door opened, and Thomas Bennet stepped outside frowning slightly annoyed.

"Dear god, woman. It is Saturday morning. What can be so important that you have to disturb me?"

Allison Bennet ignored her husband's disapproving words. Nothing could ruin this for her. "You are not going to believe this! Netherfield is finally let! And what is even better, I'm in charge of preparing the house!"

"And you are so happy to have more work?" he mumbled while he made his way to the dining room, his family directly following. Jane looked at Lizzie questioningly but neither understood what was happening. Sure, their mother loved to keep busy, mostly by putting her nose in other people's business, a quality that made her job as a housekeeper a perfect fit for her, but she was unusually excited about this new job.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous!" Mrs. Bennet admonished her husband. "It's not the work, it's the future tenant I'm excited about."

"Is that so?" her husband replied still uninterested.

"Yes! Don't you want to know who they are?"

"I doubt I have any choice in the matter."

"It's Charles Bingley!" she exclaimed excitedly.

"And who is that supposed to be?" Lydia asked disappointed that it wasn't some famous celebrity. Cathy seconded her sister's question. Jane didn't seem to know the name either.

To Lizzie the name felt somehow familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. Where had she heard it before?

"Bingley?" Mari asked. "As in the Bingley Hotel Group?"

"Yes!" Mrs. Bennet exclaimed. "Isn't it exciting?! He is going to spend the next couple of months here, and I will take care of the house. The perfect chance to introduce one of our girls to him!"

Lizzie groaned, and Mari rolled her eyes.

"So, he is rich?" Cathy interrupted, growing excited again.

"Yes! Very rich!" squealed Mrs. Bennet.

Lydia giggled.

"And how old exactly is this Charles Bingley?" Lizzie asked. She remembered very well the time her mother had tried to set Jane up with a rich lawyer twice her age. It was only thanks to her father's eventual intervention that Jane hadn't ended up engaged. She herself had been incapable of convincing her mother or the man in question of her disinterest.

"That is the best of it! He's 27 years old, and the heir to his family's fortune! He's perfect for Jane!"

"Mother, I don't even know him. Maybe he won't like me, or I won't like him."

"Oh, nonsense, Child. You are 25 years old and still living at home. It is high time you find a man to take care of you!"

Lizzie glared at her mother, when she saw her sister wince. It was a sore point for Jane that she still had to rely on her family for support.

"Of course, Mother. As long as he has a full bank account it doesn't matter if he is ugly or an asshole," Lizzie growled.

Her mother completely ignored her. "Jane, as soon as he arrives, you will come with me to work. You will wear that pretty new dress of yours, and he will fall in love with you! I'm sure of it!"

"But, Mother, I have a job, I have to work." Jane tried to calm her mother's excitement.

"Nonsense, Child! What do you have to work if you are married to such a rich man!" her mother disagreed with her shrill voice.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because Jane loves her job?" Lizzie suggested dryly, but her mother completely ignored her, as usual.

But it was true. Jane was a kindergarten teacher and loved her job! Her patience was as endless as her kindness, and the children adored her just as she adored them. Not a day passed without Jane bringing home at least one new picture, bestowed upon her by an adoring preschooler. The only downside to her job was that she didn't earn enough money to afford her own apartment. And since Jane didn't feel comfortable moving in with people she didn't know, she still lived at home. As did Elizabeth herself and their cousin Mari.

"So, we get a new neighbor," Mr. Bennet interrupted Lizzie's musing. "And it was necessary to interrupt my work for this information because?" But his wife wasn't listening anymore. Followed by an excited Lydia and Cathy, she hurried up the stairs.

"Oh, Jane!" Lizzie warned her sister. "Your room!"

Alarmed, the oldest Bennet daughter hurried up the stairs after her mother to stop her from creating a complete chaos in Jane's room.

"Well, at least, Lydia and Cathy don't fight," Mari mumbled. "I'm off!" she called, grabbed her bag, and disappeared out of the house, leaving Lizzie and her father behind.

"And you, my Lizzie?" Mr. Bennet addressed his second eldest. "Are you not going to prepare for meeting the incredible Charles Bingley?"

Lizzie snorted. "I think not! I still have to finish my paper on the origins of ISIS."

"Ah, the joys of dictatorship and terrorism! Not too different from your home life, is it now?!" he chuckled.

"And who are you in this scenario? The dictator or the terrorist leader?" his daughter asked with a grin.

He laughed loud. "That is the question, my dear, isn't it? Now go and safe Jane before your other sisters succeed in stealing half of her wardrobe again." Gently he closed the door behind him.

With a sigh, Lizzie made her way up the stairs to help Jane wrangle her family. The paper would just have to wait another hour … or longer. With a groan, she remembered her appointment later that day. Hopefully, she would manage to write at least something today.

Just so you know, the ending to this story is already finished and so are some scenes in the middle, I just need to fill in the gaps. So I'm pretty sure this story will actually eventually come to an ending. :P