January, 2024
The Weasley-Potter family are kind of a big deal. Pretty much everyone in the world who isn't a muggle has heard of them. I would say there isn't a witch or wizard alive who doesn't know about Harry Potter and his extended family. Especially considering every single newspaper in the wizarding world believes it necessary to chronicle the life and times of the 'Wotters' in great detail. They feature in the Daily Prophet, which I, personally, read religiously, at least once a week. If you preference towards slightly trashier publications, such as Witch Weekly, a Wotter will grace the front pages on average three times a week. Do they detest the publicity? Who knows. Some of them, particularly the younger generation, certainly don't. The 'second generation' of Weasley-Potters- the tabloid name for the offspring of Harry Potter and his wife Ginny Weasley, and their innumerable collection of cousins- have had a presiding influence in the halls of Hogwarts for the past fifteen years, ever since young Teddy Lupin- Potter's godson and an honorary Wotter in his own right- began attending the school. They still plague it now. The majority of the student population worship them, they make up practically half the population of Gryffindor house- and dominate the Quidditch team. They like to think of themselves as a force to be reckoned with, think they're all that just because they've got the saviour of the entire Wizarding world and the Minister of Magic amongst their relatives.
But the Wotters aren't the only genetically orientated gang at Hogwarts these days. They may be the public favourite, but down in the dungeons, or the badger's den (as the Hufflepuff common room is so fondly nicknamed), the extended members of the Fitzgerald family dominate. I'm a Fitzgerald, in case that wasn't obvious enough. My family have frequented the starkly different houses of Hufflepuff and Slytherin for years, and our strong familial bonds have helped to unite the houses (simply because there's so many of us these days, and we visit each other's common rooms so often, Hufflepuffs and Slytherins just can't afford to hate each other anymore). We captain the Quidditch teams, earn the majority of the house points, and always have at least one prefect representative in each house, usually more. We are what the Wotters are to Gryffindor, and if one of them ever happened to be sorted into one of our houses- separated from the pack- they would find themselves horrifically outnumbered and suddenly incredibly unimportant. Like a Fitzgerald in Gryffindor.
Rivalry between the houses? A thing of the past. Forget Gryffindor vs Slytherin; it's Fitzgerald vs Wotter in the halls of Hogwarts these days. We're like the Montagues and the Capulets, only we can do magic, and we live in the twenty-first century. And we don't kill each other. Just slay each other at inter-house Quidditch.
January 1st 2024
Annual Fitzgerald New Year's Day Gathering
Fitz Cottage, Budock Water, nr. Falmouth, England
Wow. It's actually 2024. I'm going to turn nineteen at the end of this year. I'm going to graduate Hogwarts this year. I'm old.
As is Fitzgerald family tradition, the entire family have gathered to spend the first day of the year all together, on a lengthly coastal walk around where my grandparents live in Cornwall. Every single member of my extended family is here, even Georgiana, who apparated over from the States for the occasion. Which may actually turn out to be more of a curse than a blessing- there is a lot of glaring between her and Uncle Jem which has already put a damper on the whole affair, and we're less than a mile deep in the walk.
The general structure of the day is, we go for a long walk, then head back to the cottage, where the adults all work together to produce a huge feast while my cousins and I play an intense Quidditch tournament. Around 90% of us play Quidditch (and trust me, that is a lot of cousins) so it's usually really good fun. My grandpa Fitzgerald, who is American, moved to England straight out of school to pursue a job at the ministry, where he met my grandma- a sweet, beautiful ex-Hufflepuff. They got married, had five kids, and the rest is history. Each of those kids had their own sets of kids- as tends to be the way with procreation- and now there are seventeen grandchildren in total, a collection of Fitzgeralds, Peraltas, and Ashworths. We range in age from twenty-four (Georgiana, a Slytherin SuperBitch) to mere thirteen (Cecilia, Hufflepuff, lives a life defined by Quidditch). Every single one of us is either at or has graduated from Hogwarts, and always from either Hufflepuff or Slytherin. It's in the genetic code.
And each and every one of us is gathered here today, along with our respective parents, and, of course, our beloved overlords, the grandparents. That's a lot of people in total. Pretty intense at times. But it's also really, really fun, because, at the end of the day- even with Noah's brutal five a.m Quidditch practices, and breaking up loud and heated arguments between Rory and Laurie, and my dad bitching about my uncle Jem and my grandma nearly having about five heart attacks every single time we come here just because we're all so overwhelming- I love my family. Like, a lot.
After the walk, which was ridiculously long as usual, I was pretty much ready to collapse in the grass and nap for the rest of eternity (or, at least until the food was ready). And that was even with Noah piggybacking me the final quarter of the way. I despair to think what it must have been like for everyone else.
But there was no time to rest, because there was Quidditch to be played, and teams to organise, and I absolutely live for organisation. It just makes me happy in some kind of ambitious-Slytherin way. I have four weekly planners which I keep meticulously separate and use simultaneously- one for Quidditch, one for personal things, one for family, and one for school.
To mix things up a little, we usually switch around the teams a bit for family Quidditch games. Hufflepuffs play on the same teams as Slytherins they usually would play against, people who aren't captains at school get to captain, some of the adults join in, and any person with flexible Quidditch skills can try their hands out at new roles. Some of us who don't play at all at school- such as my brother Sunny- get to play for a change. Overall, we make three teams of seven, and then play a mini-tournament. Aunt Sophie is the referee, necessary because it's incredibly competitive and could get ugly if not under constant supervision. Anything in our family is competitive- most of us are capable of getting life-and-soul invested in a mere game of exploding snap. When we all join arms to pull the crackers in a long chain at Christmas, the termination of the pulling stage is marked by the immediate uproar of about eight separate arguments regarding the rightful winner of the larger side of the cracker and, thus, the goods inside. Once, my cousin Chris got in an eight-day argument with his equally competitive mother, my aunt Kitty, about who won a game of wizard's chess.
All of my cousins made the effort to play besides Max, who had to leave the family shindig early due to an emergency call for his Hit Wizard abilities. This prompted a long, swear-filled rant from his younger brother Rory about what a stuck-up, no-fun workaholic his older brother has become. Max is a Hufflepuff with a heart that is probably literally the colour gold, while Rory is a Slytherin whose heart is steely with cynicism and rebellion. They don't exactly get on great. Max's absence made sixteen of us, but for three teams we needed twenty-one, meaning five adults got to play. Most of my blood aunts and uncles are insane at Quidditch, so it's awesome to play with them as well. I got my organisation head on and designated three adults as captains, letting them pick their teams (within reason. Sophie was on hand to ensure teams were at least somewhat fairly matched).
The first team had my dad, Damien Fitzgerald, as the captain. Dad is my grandparents' second son, with Uncle Jem (Sophie's husband), being the oldest. Jem was inside helping out, of course, because he's a Hufflepuff and he likes to please my grandma. Dad, on the other hand, is his Slytherin antiparticle. He plays chaser, and chose the rest of his team as follows:
Chaser 2- Isaac Fitzgerald. My older brother and Dad and Mum's oldest child. Isaac is twenty and was an overachieving Slytherin at school, Head Boy, Quidditch captain, and arrogant and self-absorbed as a consequence. These are pretty standard traits in my family, though, so it's not like anyone hates him for it. He's tall and looks almost exactly like Mum, olive-skinned, thick blonde hair, with only my dad's hazel eyes and height from the Fitzgerald side. He works as an Auror and wants to teach DADA at Hogwarts one day.
Chaser 3- Alicia Peralta née Fitzgerald. My aunt. She has a twin brother, Alec, and they are two years younger than my dad. Both were Hufflepuffs at school, though dad says Aunt Alicia was more of a Slytherin at heart than gentle-souled uncle Alec. She knows more swear words than anyone I know, a wealth of knowledge she's passed on to her mildly evil son Rory, and both use them frequently and mercilessly. She's really athletic so insane at Quidditch, and she's worked as an Auror for nearly thirty years now. Pretty certain dad chose her knowing the three would work well together- Alicia's his sister, so they know each other's game, and same goes with Isaac being his son. Plus, Alicia and Isaac work together, so they make a good pair too. It all goes full circle.
Seeker- Ronan Fitzgerald. Jem and Sophie's youngest child and only boy, Ronan is eighteen, my age, and Slytherin like me. He's a fourth of our little Slytherin quartet- the rest made up by me, my twin brother Sunny, and our other cousin Noah. Ronan is tall and lean, with Aunt Sophie's thin, elegant bone structure and her green eyes. The dark curls and freckles come from uncle Jem. Ronan is great fun but somewhat annoying as he is naturally smart and gets perfect grades pretty much without studying at all. He is probably the most quiet out of all of us, and people who don't know him assume he's an arrogant prick. He smokes roll up clove cigarettes so pretty much always stinks of cloves.
Keeper- Hailie Ashworth. Hailie's mum, Katherine, is the youngest Fitzgerald child, four years younger than Alicia and Alec. (She was an accident). She married Lee Ashworth and they had four kids, and Hailie is the third. She's fifteen and a Hufflepuff, fifth year. A pretty poor choice for the team, because she literally takes nothing seriously, and is always seen around school playing jokes with Finn. Still, I can vouch for her keeper skills, seeing as I practically trained her. Hailie has a boyfriend, something her older brothers don't know about, so I'm hanging that over her head this holiday season like a true Slytherin would. She's pretty much all Ashworth in appearance, curly blonde hair, tanned skin, and brown eyes.
Beater- Laurence 'Laurie' Peralta. One of Auntie Alicia's children, Laurie and his twin sister Frankie were born third, following older brothers Max and Rory. They are sixteen, Sixth years. They grew up with a close bond that meant they were absolutely killer as a Beater pair. Then when they got to Hogwarts they were split up- Laurie Hufflepuff, Frankie Slytherin. It has impacted their relationship quite a bit- especially considering Laurie has become a sweet-hearted younger version of Max, while Frankie has more of the sly ambition of a Slytherin within her- but they still click amazingly as Beaters for family matches, despite five years of playing against each other with different partners at school. Laurie is relatively short compared to some of my (stupidly) tall male cousins, with dark skin from his father's side, dark hair, and my grandpa's blue eyes.
Beater- Frances 'Frankie' Peralta. As mentioned above, Laurie's younger twin sister and Slytherin counterpart. Frankie is very similar to Laurie in appearance- small and slimly built, with dark skin, dark hair, and blue eyes. Frankie is a close friend of mine, being only a year below me at school and in the same house. It's also because we share a number of traits- we both are passionate about both Quidditch and school, and are super competitive in both areas. Frankie can slay absolutely anyone in the family at Wizard's chess- she is the undisputed champion- and likes the old muggle music that her dad listens to.
Team two was captained by my Uncle Alec, who stood up to the challenge and agreed to play Beater alongside his son Noah. Alec is Alicia's younger twin brother and they were both Hufflepuffs at school. While Auntie Al was more outspoken and preferred athleticism to academics, leading to her Auror career, Alec was always more studious and calm. He has worked in the Department of Mysteries since he graduated, and was fully dedicated to his work until his siblings started reproducing. Alec realised that he wanted kids, but (while he doesn't specifically say he's asexual) had never had a boy/girlfriend and didn't want one. So he decided to adopt, and has one son, my cousin Noah.
Beater 2- Noah Fitzgerald. Alec's adopted son, aged eighteen and a Slytherin, like me. Noah used to worry that we didn't consider him a proper member of the family, because he was adopted, and looks completely different to the rest of us- tall but broad, pale skin, ice-blue eyes and white-blonde hair- but the moment we found out about his secret fears we put them to rest. Noah is actually a favourite with most of the family because he's so patient and friendly to everyone. Probably because he doesn't have any siblings living with him to clash with. Noah is a sports and healthy eating nut, and takes Quidditch incredibly seriously, playing as a Beater with Frankie at school, and captaining the team.
Chaser 1- Cecilia Ashworth. The baby of the family, Cecilia is thirteen, a third year Hufflepuff and the youngest of the Ashworth clan. A lot of the Ashworths seem to be Hufflepuffs; perhaps that is the natural outcome of the marriage between a Slytherin and a Gryffindor. Only Chrissy is a Slytherin. Cecilia is the total opposite of her sister Hailie in that, while Hailie likes to make jokes and only bothers with Quidditch to burn off some energy, Cecilia is obsessed with it. It pretty much rules her life. She reads Quidditch Weekly you guessed it, weekly, and can usually be found carrying her portable wizarding wireless around with her so she can tune in to the league scores. She's a die-hard Falmouth Falcons fan, because Falmouth's where we come from, and Aunt Sophie used to play for the Falcons. Celia is, naturally, Aunt Sophie's biggest fan girl and occasional stalker, and she has researched the entirety of her professional history. Celia is ridiculously beautiful, for a thirteen year old, and has many Fitzgerald traits- tall and slim, blue eyes, pale skin- and has light brown, curly hair.
Chaser 2- Olivia Fitzgerald. Jem and Sophie's third child and final daughter, Olivia is twenty and was a Slytherin at school. She's a good player, but doesn't care much about Quidditch, much to the horror of her siblings and mother. Olivia is pretty quiet, because she's quite shy around people she doesn't know well, but because of her near-perfect grades and resting bitch face, most people mistake her for being stuck-up and arrogant. She's been dating her dorm-mate Selena since fifth year, with Selena being the loud, outgoing version of my cousin. Olivia's tall and lanky with blonde curly hair and blue eyes, accompanied by the Fitzgerald freckles. At school, she was very good friends with my brother, Isaac, but they've somewhat drifted apart recently.
Chaser 3- Katherine 'Kitty' Ashworth née Fitzgerald. Aunt Kitty may have been four years younger than her siblings and the baby of her family, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let them treat her like a pushover. She's a hyper-competitive, crazy-ambitious Slytherin with a burning desire to always be the winner that she's passed down to her equally insane second son Chris. She's crazy stubborn and gets so riled up at exploding snap that her siblings have refused to play with her since the Christmas eve incident of 2001. She works at the ministry and wants to one day have a respected, high-up position like my grandpa, who has been Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot for nearly twenty years. She looks just like my grandpa- dark hair, blue eyes, tall and slim with an intimidatingly beautiful face. She's got granny's freckles, though.
Seeker- Casey Fitzgerald. Jem and Sophie's second child, Casey is twenty-one, a light-hearted and quirky Hufflepuff. She is a tomboy and best friends with our cousin Max Peralta, the eldest Peralta at twenty-two, a Hufflepuff also, and not included in the tournament due to his previously described career commitments. Casey is small in stature, with mousy hair which she has cropped short, and green eyes. Because she's so small she's agile, and makes an amazing seeker. She's quick-witted and always making jokes, her talent for words making her perfect at her job- Quidditch reporter at the Prophet. She also writes me letters at school at least once a week which always make me crack up. We also get on well because she hates Georgiana just as much as I do.
Keeper- Esther Fitzgerald. The narrator, eighteen years of age, a proud member of Slytherin house and the Fitzgerald family. I am the only daughter of Damien Fitzgerald and his wife Elena, the twin sister of Sunny Fitzgerald, and the younger sister of Isaac Fitzgerald. My family come in two extremes- the ambitious and school/Quidditch-obsessed, and the lazier ones who prefer joking around and relaxing to the extremes of hyper-organisation. While I have no problem with the type B's, I firmly and proudly identify myself amongst the type A's (you heard me talking about my four planners). I look a lot like Sunny- we're as close to identical as opposite-gendered twins can get- with dark hair, blue eyes, and a boyishly lanky figure. I love Quidditch, but usually put my school commitments first, and up until last September, had always dreamed of being made head girl. Well, my nemesis, Rose Weasley, got that coveted position. Total favouritism on McGonagall's part. Not going to stop me from becoming the next Minister of Magic, though.
Finally, heading up team 3 was my Uncle Lee Ashworth, Aunt Kitty's husband. Due to his Gryffindor history, Aunt Kitty was worried that her kids would be the first Fitzgeralds to break the Hufflepuff/Slytherin tradition, but they've all secured positions in our usual houses. Lee is a good guy and a great chaser, instilling a love for the sport and the position in his daughter Cecilia (who, as we have learnt, took it a little too far). Uncle Lee throws up if he consumes anything other than water or coffee before twelve noon, an amusing trait that all four of his children have inherited.
Chaser 2- Christopher Ashworth. A natural choice, being Lee's son and a talented chaser in his own right. My cousin Christopher is seventeen, and a sixth-year Slytherin. He is the brutal, stubborn, competition-obsessed male version of his mother, probably another reason he was his dad's first choice. At school, he plays chaser on our house team with Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy- both enemies who for some reason deemed it necessary to infiltrate Fitzgerald barracks back in first year and stay there. He's the same year and house as Frankie, but because they're both so competitive, they clash quite a bit. Chris is very studious, getting a kick out of besting his far lazier older brother, and wants to do big things with his life. He's tanned, like Uncle Lee, with Fitzgerald blue eyes and dark hair. He's also a compulsive liar, usually because he's trying to charm people.
Chaser 3- Harrison 'Sunny' Fitzgerald. My twin brother, a Slytherin like me, has never been called Harrison in his life. Our older brother Isaac dubbed him 'Sunny' a day or so after my parents decided on his full name, and it just stuck. Even the headmistress uses it without a second thought these days. Sunny is my best friend, and, I'm not ashamed to say, my better half. He's much more thoughtful and rational than I am, a generally kinder person, but can get brutal in a verbal argument because he's so good with words, thanks to all the reading he does. Unfortunately, my twin seems to prefer books to Quidditch, but these things just can't be helped sometimes. The only other annoying thing about my brother is that he's so naturally smart, he can get the same grades as me if not better with half the work. He's usually spotted at the back of the classroom with Ronan, mucking around or reading a book totally unrelated to the lesson. He looks exactly like me, but in male form, and is left handed, probably because we're twins and I got the right handed gene.
Beater 1- Holden Ashworth. At nineteen and a former Hufflepuff, Holden is Aunt Kitty and Uncle Lee's eldest child. He's tall, with Fitzgerald eyes and freckles, but his tanned skin and golden-blonde hair (which seems to curl in an effortless way that could never come out of our gene pool) is all Ashworth. Because he's pretty attractive (feels weird to say that about a family member), Holden had a reputation as a womaniser at Hogwarts, and the rest of my male cousins joke about him being the 'whore' of the group. He's one of the lazy ones at school, just like his best friend, Rory, and the two of them currently live in Muggle London with a mutual friend, picking up odd shifts in sleazy bars. Holden's best quality is that he managed to sneak a glance at the Marauder's Map while James Potter had it out in their potions class, and saw the location of the one-eyed witch passageway to Honeydukes. In later years, he used it to smuggle in firewhiskey and cigarettes to sell for profit. He told all of us about the passageway, of course. We're family. And we're not stupid enough to buy Holden's goods at ridiculously inflated prices, either.
Beater 2- Rory Peralta. The second Peralta son, nineteen-year-old Rory is completely different to his Hufflepuff older brother, Max. He was a Slytherin at school, best friends with Holden, and both of them had a very lax attitude to education all through school. Neither of them played Quidditch, they just agree to play Beater together at family games because they work well together in any situation and because they pretty much have to. Because he's so arrogant, aloof, and lazy, he clashes all the time with both of his brothers- Max and Laurie- who are good-hearted, motivated little Hufflepuffs, and they have legendary arguments. Rory can destroy anyone with a swear-riddled insult, and won't hesitate to do so, such is his apathetic, cynical, straight-talking nature. He's tall and slim with dark hair and eyes, with slightly lighter skin than the rest of his siblings, but still with some of his dad's Spanish colouring about him. He smokes roll up cigarettes, and unlike Ronan, who smells of cloves, simply stinks of stale smoke all the time.
Keeper- Georgiana Fitzgerald. Twenty-four years of age, former Slytherin, the bitchiest of all the bitchy. Jem and Sophie's eldest child, and the oldest out of all of us. She's ambitious and will do almost anything to get what she wants. She was the cruelest Head Girl I ever experienced, and as a first year and her damn cousin you'd have thought she'd have gone easy on me. She's tall, skinny, blonde and basically got all the bimbo traits besides the bimbo- she's actually really smart and a great Quidditch player, thanks to Auntie Sophie's teaching. She's basically the reason the whole Wotter rivalry began, because she got made Head Girl over Victoire Weasley, the Wotter version of Georgie. I exaggerate a little here- Georgie's alright- but it's not like I miss her now that she's over in the states training to be a Healer. She's definitely my least favourite cousin. She's not really close to any of us- old enough to justify having a closer relationship with the adults than her cousins- though Hailie and Cecilia seem to idolise her a little, poor things. She used to be friends with Max when they were younger, but he grew up into a Hufflepuff puppy and she a Slytherin bitch-queen, so they kind of drifted apart.
Seeker- Finlay 'Finn' Peralta. The youngest Peralta at fifteen, Finn is a Hufflepuff and best friends with cousin and housemate Hailie. He was trained as a seeker by Aunt Sophie and Casey, and is crazy good at it. Unfortunately, like Hailie, he likes playing jokes and they are always messing around at practice with their other friends, twins Jake and Bea Peretti, who are also both on the team. This irritates their siblings, Cecilia and Laurie, also on the team, because they like to take the game seriously. Finn has blue eyes, but dark hair and skin, and he loves exploding snap and swearing. He's the favourite sibling in the family- all of them love him, even Rory, and he is usually the one breaking up the fights as opposed to causing them.
So that's the majority of my family, sorted into three Quidditch teams and briefly described for reference. I realise it's crazy confusing, but that's Fitzgerald life. The tournament works as follows- teams are drawn from a hat to decide playing order. Three games are played- so every team will play the other two teams. Then, the results usually come out that one team won twice, one team won once, and one team not at all. In the unlikely event that all three teams win a game- a 1-1-1 tie- the tiebreakers are bought in to play. This is terrifying, and everyone suddenly becomes all serious and even more competitive than before at the realisation that a few simple tiebreakers could change the game completely. Usually it's just some kind of tense penalty shootout, but we've done crazy things in the past, including human Quidditch- the first team to successfully have a chaser jump through a hoop and be caught by their keeper the other side is the winner. This was soon discarded as it ended in both Hailie and my dad almost having to be hospitalised as my young cousin was bombarded with the full weight of dad launching himself through the hoop. Luckily, Aunt Sophie intervened in time, and the tiebreaker activity was banned before Isaac could hurtle himself after them.
Besides Max, that's all of my cousins and a few of my aunts and uncles in a nutshell. My grandparents deserve a chapter all to themselves, they're so wonderful, and I haven't dwelt on the delights of my darling mother yet, either. But that's another matter, because this is about me and my cousins, the second generation of Fitzgeralds, and our ongoing war with the Weasley-Potter family.
A/N: Please leave a review if you enjoyed it! I tried to introduce the whole family as well as I could here, because they're quite the ensemble and it's pretty confusing (but fun), but I also have a list of all the characters and their ages/houses/parents etc that I could post if it would be easier. Let me know!
Disclaimer: Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare. Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.