I broke my number one rule of fanfiction. Don't write when drunk. I'll proof read this tomorrow, and perhaps rewrite some parts. But here is the draft copy.
I awoke the following morning to my phone ringing. I let out a gurgle-like annoyed sound from my throat, waking up my boyfriend, who opened one eye and sent me a smirk.
I rolled over, reaching for my phone. It was in my bag, and I then let out an annoyed noise as I began to reach for my bag. I then shrugged, grabbed my wand from my bedside table, and called for my phone.
"Accio mobile phone!" I called out, and it landed straight in my hands.
"Anyone interesting?" Percy asked me, wrapping his arm around me as I checked the caller ID.
"Just Ellen." I replied, rolling my eyes.
Ellen, although she was my friend her and I have had a weird friendship, with many ups and downs. We've never technically had a real 'fight' and Ellen proudly boasted this, but we've had many passive aggressive moments.
We met at the tender age of eleven on the first day of secondary school. We were both living in the town of Doncaster, in South Yorkshire. I told her I had no friends and we hung out ever since. Her kindness was short lived – I was in a 'punk/emo' phase at the time due to the fact I was a social outcast, chubby, acne ridden and constantly bullied. She had to dig this knife in deeper by laughing about it behind my back, saying I'd never get a boyfriend. Of course my 'friends' told me, we battled it out, cried and made up, and everything was happy until I was sixteen, and her family decided to move to London, not too long after my dad and I did.
Met first boyfriend. Much older than me boyfriend. Possessive, controlling and just a general moron. Being my best friend she saw it a long time before I did. We argued a lot about him, but she stayed by my side. She didn't even say 'I told you so' two years later.
However after then she always got really weird when I dated a guy, almost in a jealous way. She'd always find some flaw, or try to convince me he didn't like me.
That was up until we were twenty. She was completely relaxed now. Up until then she was trying to desperately find love. For many reasons she never landed herself a boyfriend – too high standards, people smelled her desperation a mile away and used her, etcetera etcetera. She gave up when she twenty, deciding to just go with the flow and let love come to her. Good on her, I was proud to hear. However she now slept around a lot, which worried me a little but at the same time it wasn't emotionally destroying her as the time it was when she was actively seeking a boyfriend.
She also happened to be a muggle, which sometimes made life difficult.
"Hey, how are you?" I asked her, answering her call.
"I'm in some guy's house. He won't wake up. He's alive, he's definitely alive. But I try and wake him and he swats me away. What do I do?" She frantically asked me.
"Do you want to get out or something?" I asked her, smirking as Percy shot me a weird look.
"Yes! What do I do?" She asked me.
"Um, let's see. Well, every guy has a different way of trying to get rid of a one-night stand. Some will outright tell you to get out. Some will hint around it, and some will do odd things. This my friend, is his way of doing a weird thing and hopes you will leave of your own accord." I explained to her.
"So, he wants me to go. I should just go, right?" She concluded.
"Exactly. If you want to stay in contact, leave a note or something. If you don't want to, score you just got your get out of jail free card." I said to her.
"Um, I think I'll write a note anyway. I'll tell you why later," Ellen said to me. "Because we're meeting up for lunch today."
"We are?" I asked quickly, afraid we had made previous plans and I had completely forgotten.
"Sure are, I'm just dying to tell you about my latest conquest. I'm heading out now, and I'll need to shower and stuff. So I'll come pick you up from your apartment in say, two hours?" She asked me.
"Mmm, okay. Percy is here, but I should be ready to go by then." I informed her.
"Great! Can't wait to hear all the goss. Bye hun." She said to meet, and I swiftly hung up after I said goodbye myself.
I put my phone down and rolled over to hug Percy. He gave me a look. He was curious about the phone conversation, but didn't want to be rude enough to ask what we spoke about, bless him.
"It was Ellen, my muggle best friend. She um, had an interesting encounter last night and wants to catch up later to discuss it." I explained to him, smiling slightly.
"Oh, okay. Um, I guess I should probably be off then." Percy said to me, moving himself out of our embrace.
"Um, stay for a bit longer. I really enjoy your company. I don't know when I'd get to see you again, not until next weekend at the earliest." I pouted at him.
"You're going over to my parents on Tuesday. Obviously I don't live there anymore, but would you like me to be there too to make it less uncomfortable for you." Percy offered to me.
"I would love you to. But I do understand that you're currently busy with the ministry, and even getting you to take a Saturday off to meet your family was hard. I want you to come to spend more time with you, but if that's not possible I understand, I really do." I explained to Percy.
"Look, how about we play it by ear. I'll send you an owl on Tuesday to confirm whether I'll be there or not." Percy offered to me.
"Well, alright. I'll be in the office so send the owl there. You know baby, you really should take my offer up and get you a mobile phone. It'd be much easier to communicate that way. You could send me a text message, and I'd instantly receive it. Then I could reply and then we would have plans. It takes two minutes, as opposed to two hours sending owls." I stated to Percy.
"Yes, but I believe muggle technology takes away from the traditional values we must uphold, even if it is more efficient. We have a system in place, and it's precedential nature holds comfort." Percy rebutted.
I pouted, but chose not to reply. I couldn't imagine a world where even as a witch I lived parallel to the muggle universe and completely ignored their customs, values and their general way of living. There were more muggles in the world than wizards and witches, and their culture was everywhere. How could witches and wizards be oblivious to it? I wasn't angry of course, just confused.
But then again, I grew up with muggle culture. I didn't even learn I was a witch until I was eleven. That's a story for another time. But after learning I was a witch I couldn't ignore muggle culture. It was a part of me. Even though I learned I was a witch I only adopted their culture as a part time thing, something I could understand and live through, but not full time. That tradition followed me today. It was like being British, and understanding how the French live, and following through with this culture because say, your boyfriend was French. But as soon as you got away from his French parents, you went back to your British parents and your usual lifestyle. I was British, and the wizardry world was French.
"Um, forgive me for being straightforward," I began to ask Percy, mimicking his words from last night "But um, do you maybe want to shower together?"
Percy's eyes lit up, he seemed very interested in my proposal.
"I would absolutely love to. But first, I must ask, do muggles really receive a 'get out of jail free card' to get themselves out of jail? How does it work?" Percy replied.
I sat the café with Ellen, my best friend. I sat patiently and listened to her entire story about her whole one night stand. As she didn't have a boyfriend, one-night stand stories were her form of boyfriend stories. So I treated them as important stories. One day she'd meet the right guy and she'd have boyfriend stories. Then we'd finally get to do what we always wanted to do: double dates.
So I waited patiently until she stopped talking about her night (Which wasn't that interesting: she met the guy in a quirky way, he interacted with her friends, her friends eventually met guys they went home with, she went home with this guy, woke up the next morning, got ready and we came here) before I began to talk about my weekend.
"So I met Percy's parents yesterday, and his entire extended family. I met six out of seven siblings, his eldest brother's wife and his niece." I blatantly stated.
"Oh OUCH! I can't imagine what meeting a boyfriend's family would be like, let alone a huge family like that. How'd the night end up?" Ellen curiously asked me, taking a big sip out of her iced latte.
"Um, it went well. Percy and I went back to mine, and we made out a bit and fooled around on the bed, but nothing below the belt." I proudly stated.
"WHAT! You and Percy have been going out for a few months, and you haven't had sex? You used to put out on the first date. What happened there?" Ellen demanded, nearly spitting out her iced latte in the process of asking.
"Nice American terminology. But this guy is sensible, he doesn't believe in those kinds of things. We were going to last night, but I wasn't ready. Me, not ready? The world is topsy turvy I know!" I giggled, earning a giggle from Ellen who grabbed my arm as she giggled too.
"He sounds nice. You guys fooled around and he didn't press on? That's amazing. What have you guys done, then?" Ellen asked, smirking at my statements.
"I err, well, we've kissed…and we showered together this morning! So nothing really yet, but we've now seen each other naked. That's an ice breaker, right?" I asked Ellen, my cheeks flushing red, as I now felt embarrassed about what we've done.
"So, you guys got naked, showered together, and didn't have sex in the shower?" Ellen asked, her jaw dropping to the ground.
"No, we didn't. I didn't even give him head, or a hand job, and he didn't finger me or anything." I replied, my cheeks going even redder. I should have just kept my mouth shut. I was proud that Percy and I had a relationship where sexual needs weren't the most important thing, but the way Ellen was reacting made me feel like I was fifteen again.
"Carly, I'm so happy for you. I think this is the first guy you've been with who is actually a decent guy. I'd love to meet him someday, wait, does he have any friends?" Ellen asked me, and I could almost see the stars in her eyes.
I actually snorted at this. You know, I wasn't even sure if Percy had friends. He never spoke about them, but he mentioned a lot of people in the ministry. Since work was so important, I was guessing the ministry people he mentioned were his friends. But they seemed like the people who would never have time for a blind date, so unfortunately there was no going down the path of setting up Ellen with one of his friends.
"No, but he has a lot of brothers. Some of them are taken, but I'm sure we can organise something one day?" I offered.