She awoke to the sound of soft snoring and the feeling of a warm body draped across her own. Daylight was streaming mercilessly through the ornate window. James was snuggled close to her, nearly slipping off the couch either way.
"Oh dear Merlin." she muttered, trying to roll away from him. There was no where to roll. She pulled herself into a crouch, leaping over the edge of the couch. Her foot got caught on the decorative trim, causing her to face plant onto the hardwood floor. The ache reverberated through her cheek bone.
"Everything alright in there?" Ginny's voice called from the area Poppi recognized as the kitchen.
"Fine!" she called back, hoping to not be subjected to any more humiliation.
"Breakfast is almost ready, would you mind waking James?" Ginny called to her again.
Poppi momentarily considered making a run for it, but she prodded the sleepy troll awake instead, expertly dodging his swats.
"Go 'way." he murmured, rolling deeper into the cushions.
"James Waldorf Potter, you've put me in the second weirdest situation of my entire life. You're going to get me out of it." she hissed flicking his ear. He woke with a growl and a scowl "Sirius. Not Waldorf."
"Like I care."
One more eye roll and resentful glare later, he groggily shuffled to the kitchen, Poppi unfortunately very awake behind him. Ginny had three different milks on the table with varying degrees of fat content, a jar of sugar, a bear of honey, a jug of cream, and chocolate syrup. Poppi plopped into a chair and Ginny immediately poured her a steaming cup of coffee.
"I didn't know how you liked your coffee so I provided all the options we have." She gestured at the assortment in front of her.
"Oh, black is perfectly fine. Thank you though." Poppi took a huge gulp.
"I don't trust people that don't put cream in their coffee." James narrowed his eyes at her, mixing so much cream into his coffee that it matched the color of fresh parchment.
"I don't trust people that claim to like coffee but change it so drastically that it no longer resembles coffee." she retaliated. "It says a lot about what kind of person they are."
"So what are we planning on doing today?" Harry said, spreading the Daily Prophet open. Poppi caught a glimpse of her own face on the front page.
"Oh my god!" she screeched in horror at the befuddled look on her face. Harry closed the Prophet to the front page and just frowned.
"It's okay, it'll fade in a few weeks," Harry said dismissively, opening the Prophet back to the sports section.
James grabbed the section of the paper with the front page so he could read it, ignoring a very disgruntled Harry Potter.
James Potter spotted with homewrecker Poppi Pennington.
Poppi, a plain but ambitious girl, seems to have upgraded from her usual selection of dragon dung scoopers to our favorite quidditch player-James Potter.
"ONE DRAGON DUNG SCOOPER!" she cried indignantly. They make it sound like she was a serial dung scooper dater.
Sources close to James say that he'd been having an illicit affair with the bartender when Eva Whitworth found out and confronted them both at The Crooked Wand pub late last night.
James crumpled the paper in his fist.
"They seriously can't leave me alone for five minutes! Five bloody minutes!" he groaned. His mother swooped beside him to pat his shoulder gently.
"Twenty galleons that Eva girl was the actual source." Harry grumbled.
Ginny filled plates on the table with sausages, eggs, and beans before sitting down at the table herself.
After Ginny guilted Poppi into a hearty helping, she asked Ginny for her clothes. She finally handed over the carefully folded clothes, albeit a bit begrudgingly. She began to worry she was considering holding Poppi hostage. She yanked her jeans on with only minor flailing about, and traveled by floo network into her own tiny flat.
She only barely breathed a sigh of relief at being home and stashed her wand and keys in the entry basket before she felt overwhelmingly disoriented. Something was very wrong. The apartment window was sprung open in the miniscule kitchen, curtain waving with the breeze. Her old French cookbooks with weak bindings directly under the window were all knocked over, sprawled across the countertop and floor. The desk in the corner of the room was in utter disarray. Someone had been in her home. Panic flooded her veins, nausea swept through her belly. Her mind spun as if she'd just apparated.
At that moment, a twisted form climbed through the cracked window. It was a lanky man, with a dark expression muttering to himself. Poppi frantically patted her jeans for her wand, but she couldn't remember where exactly she had placed it. She literally just had it! He hadn't noticed her yet, as he was pulling something in behind him. She backed up toward the fireplace, desperately grabbing at the frigid stone behind her for a weapon of some sort. She couldn't be left vulnerable while some-some man attacked her. Her hand landed in a pile of gritty ash that gave her an idea. She dashed some floo powder into the grate and screamed for help until her lungs stung and her throat ached.
In a pop, James, Harry, and Ginny were climbing out her fireplace, wands at the ready. She was still frantically searching for her wand and still screaming. James leapt in front of her, wand still pointed fiercely at the man in my window.
"Uh." the man said, toppling out the window and onto the kitchen floor. He slowly raised his hands in surrender. "This isn't what it looks like."
"It's exactly what it's like! The beast broke into my flat to murder me! He probably wanted to collect my teeth to make a necklace or something equally horrifying!"
"What? No! I don't even wear necklaces!" he gasped.
"Exactly the sort of thing someone like that would say!" Poppi accused dangerously, stepping forward for a fight.
"Poppi. You've got to calm down." James whispered, dark eyes softening.
"You're coming with me." Harry grabbed the wrist of the man on the floor and popped out of the room. She hoped the man got splinched.
"Are you okay dear?" Ginny pulled her into a tight hug, the way only a mother could. She felt a pang of longing for her own mother.
"I'm okay." Poppi murmured into her shoulder as she stroked her hair softly. She was okay. Shaken up slightly, but overall okay. No tears were falling yet. Not until she was alone at least. Ginny turned around suddenly and walked to the fireplace without a word. She floo'd out, leaving James and Poppi alone. Poppi sighed and began picking up her disheveled cookbooks. James bent over to help.
"I'm sorry about all of this, y'know." he apologized genuinely.
"I can't even imagine what your life must be like."
"What do you mean?" James asked, turning toward her.
"I've been a very insignificant part of your life for less than twelve hours and someone is already climbing through my window and printing mean things about me. What must you go through every single day?" she asked, now facing him.
"You get used to it." he answered jadedly. He reminded her momentarily of Ramona.
"I don't think you should have to. Everyone deserves at least a little bit of privacy. I feel so-so violated right now." she lamented gesturing to the mess that was now her apartment.
"They tend to snoop around a bit if they can't find anything good enough. I've had a few break-ins myself. Like I said, I'm sorry I dragged you into all of this." One of them or maybe both of them had stepped closer to each other.
"It's alright." They were now nose to nose. She meant it. It was hardly his fault that people with cameras lost a sense of decency.
Ginny popped back through the fireplace holding a bright blue vial, causing both of them to jump.
"What's that?" James voiced her own question.
"Sleeping potion. I know you've got training at the ministry tonight and we hijacked you last night," Ginny said.
"I don't really think I can sleep right now."
"That's exactly what the potion is for." Ginny answered with a slightly mocking laugh.
"I've written to my nephew, Louis. He's a trained auror and he promised he'd keep watch outside your flat all day." she continued.
As if on cue, three loud knocks on the door spurned Ginny to open it.
"Just wanted to let you know I'm here. You must be Poppi!" The fair haired man extended a hand for her to shake.
"The very one!" She shook his hand with a firm grip. Her father always said that women with limp wrists also had a limp backbone.
"Get some rest. This will all blow over soon enough." Louis grinned. That's what they all kept saying. It made her curious how often this happened to the family. She rubbed her eyes, not quite tired but overwhelmingly exhausted. "Good night!" she called back to Ginny and James, swallowing the potion in one gulp.
The darkness consumed her mind before she had the chance to shed even a single tear. It was relieving to enter a dreamless sleep.
The ministry was swarmed by reporters. Business suits and flashing cameras and microphones and notepads littered the path to work. It was like an apocalyptic battle to the death but with less weapons and more cameras. Poppi was not sure why the ministry didn't remove them. Surely there was some kind of rule against the media harassing ministry workers in their own building.
"What do you have to say about Eva Whitworth's comments on your weight in Witch Weekly this morning?" A witch in a sharp suit shoved a microphone in her groggy face.
"I like it when you call me Big Poppi." She shot a wink at the sensibly dressed witch. She laughed and for a moment Poppi forgot that she was the enemy. She didn't read Witch Weekly so she wasn't sure exactly what was said about her, but it was probably rude. She tried not to let the idea of it eat at her.
Another reporter hopped into her path, this time assaulting her with flashes from the camera.
"Can you shed some light onto the breakup?" a greasy looking man asked.
Well, there's her chance. If the Eva girl wanted to be catty, Poppi would be a lion.
"Oh, yeah, completely. James is a gentle kind of man. Like a flower you just can't pick. And his ex was really pressuring him to do something he wasn't comfortable with." Poppi whispered conspiratorially.
"Like what?"
She pulled her best torn face, as if she wasn't sure she should divulge her next bit of information.
"Off the record, she's a huge fan of the yeti. She kept trying to get him to dress up as one for...well...It's her thing though and people shouldn't be shamed for their things," she said sternly.
"What's your thing?" He asked scribbling furiously.
"Me? I prefer yodeling men."
"What?" He asked genuinely shocked.
Poppi shot him a dazzling smile before turning down the restricted corridor to the Department of Mysteries. At least she'd be safe there. Even if they were allowed down the corridor, which they most certainly weren't, it's highly unlikely any of them would venture into the unknown.
"Oh, Poppi. Thank Merlin you're alright! I couldn't get the vultures to leave!" Branwell embraced her as she entered the department.
"They had to wait for the delicious, rotting carcass known as Poppi Pennington. So I suppose you've read all about it then?" she asked Branwell.
"It's hard not to! Harry told me more about what happened though. Someone was in your flat? I'm surprised Skeeter hasn't gotten to you yet!" Branwell gave her a sympathetic look before stacking a pile of paperwork on her desk.
"What's all this?" she whined. She was well beyond the stage of fetching coffee and filing paperwork.
"Lit review! You've been assigned a project!" Branwell's eyes lit up excitedly.
"A PROJECT!" she nearly screamed. She might have screamed. She definitely screamed.
"Jameson decided you were ready for it. If you complete it, you know what that means!" Branwell squealed in excitement. He was the best supervisor of all time!
"The position will be mine!" she gushed, grinning ear to ear.
"Get to work!" Branwell patted her towering pile of books.
She sat down at her messy desk, unsure where to start. She dug through the papers until she found the project proposal. Time Room. She thought for sure she'd be stuck in the Hall of Prophecy or something mundane, but she got the Time Room! Easily one of the most coveted in the department! Examine the post-translational modifications of the circadian clock of magical mammals. Post-translational modifications. That'd be like phosphorylation, histone acetylation, methylation, and ubiquitination. That's not too terrible. She glanced once more at the pile of literature on her desk and decided to sort it into piles based on major topics covered. The day would never end.
A/N: "I like it when you call me Big Poppi" is a direct reference to "Big Poppa" by Notorious B.I.G. So I hope it's stuck in your head now. Please review you lovely beings!