House: Ravenclaw
Year: 3rd Year
Category: Bonus Round 3
Prompt: First experience/First time doing something (theme), Muggle H.S.
W/C: 2,999 (Google), 2,998 (Word)
Notes: Blog format; Muggledom AU for Next Gen. Mild swearing.
Read & Enjoy
I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU NOT
This is a blog dedicated to the retelling of the first major break-up of my life.
Sometimes, you just have to tell your story to an audience you can't see.
#aroseandherthoughts
INTRODUCING: ROSE GRANGER-WEASLEY
June 11, 2021
You don't know me, and I don't know you, but in order to understand the purpose of this blog, you're going to need to know me. So listen up!
Rose Granger-Weasley, that's me, is a super intelligent and super talented athlete. I'm the starting center forward for my football team, I'm the top in my class, and I've got the world's best sense of humor. That comes from my dad. The brains, that's more my mum. Now that you know the important details, let's talk some obscure stuff.
Sometimes, when I'm really inclined, I date people.
Woah, gasp, CRAZY, what?
Yeah, so I date people on rare occasions. I dated this one boy when I was fourteen. I don't think my parents knew, sorry guys, but we held hands at the movies and kissed behind my dad's joke shop. Well, my dad's and uncle's, but that's irrelevant. I hated it. We stopped "dating" the very next day.
I dated another boy last summer, a few months after that, just before I turned fifteen, and it was proper dating. We went to the cinema and ate out together, plus the hand holding and snogging bits. We broke up when I decided that I couldn't be dating someone, though, because this is my last year of high school. My academics come first, right? No way was I going to be distracted by a boyfriend.
That's me, you know? Sports and school first.
At least, that's what it was supposed to be, but something happened that threw a wrench in my plan.
#introductionplease #aroseandherthoughts
JARED LEE CARMICHAEL, BEST BOYFRIEND EXTRAORDINAIRE
June 12, 2021
You know how girls are at my age, right? They're fawning over their "OMG BEST BF EVA" and posting selfies of their "OMG BEST BF EVA" kissing their cheek while they drink a smoothie of some sort. Admittedly, I have a ton of a friends who are exactly like that and I never complain to their faces about it, mostly because I love them and insulting them to their face seems kind of rude.
So I just take pictures of me kissing my football or textbooks instead. Complaining through mockery. My dad says that it's a very tactful approach. My mom, on the other hand, thinks I worry too much about technology and how my peers are using it. I love her, but she married my dad for a reason, and it's because, sometimes, she forgets how to have fun on her own. Those pictures of me kissing the things that matter most to me are the actual definition of fun. My last picture got almost one hundred kudos on it and a few dozen comments about my love affairs with inanimate objects.
My friends think I'm attracted to things instead of people.
Sometimes... I think they might be right.
But that, my friend, is where Jared Lee Carmichael, Best Boyfriend Extraordinaire, comes into play.
What can I say about Jared Lee Carmichael? He is muscular but lean. With his wavy blonde hair and brown eyes, he's as attractive as they come, very model-like appearance. Without a doubt, he's the most talented actor at school, with a real future in theater if he continues on the same path. In addition to all of this, though, he can flatter the common sense out of the smartest person in the room.
I guess that's how he snared me in the end. He made me feel special.
We found ourselves in the same sort of group at lunch one day talking about the difference between how girls and guys play football. Trying to make a point about how often men take fake dives to get penalty kicks, whereas women will play with a bloodied face before acting their way into an unearned goal. So I made a joke about girls having bigger balls than boys, and gestured to my chest. (Sorry, Mum, I know you think that kind of thing is a crude effort to get a laugh). Jared laughed so bloody loud that everyone in the cafeteria was gawking at our table trying to figure out what was so funny.
I'll spare you the details, but Jared explained to the whole of the student body the similarities between breasts and the male genitals. It was mortifying. Well, in hindsight, it was mortifying and I can't believe I made that comparison. But at the time? I felt like a superstar. Everyone laughed at my joke.
Jared Lee Carmichael, popular boy and total babe, laughed at my joke.
Jared bragged about my jokes all day. A rumor started that we were secretly dating. By the end of the day, I got a notification that we were in a relationship online. Absurd? Definitely. But did I go along with it? Well, funny thing about that...
The smart part of my brain said that this was totally ridiculous, that no good could possibly come from a relationship that stemmed from a rumor that stemmed from a joke I never should've made, that stemmed from a place of legitimate rage about the way football is played professionally. My brain knew that this was going to be nothing but trouble.
Unfortunately, I let my teenage hormones get the better of me. I went along with it.
All at once, very suddenly, I was dating the most desirable guy in school.
Within days, I, too, was posting pictures of my boyfriend kissing my cheek while I slurped at a smoothie that was way overpriced. From then on out, it was gifts galore and the high feeling of being a promising athlete with a popular boyfriend, basically putting me at the top of the social order at school.
So, yeah. Jared Lee Carmichael, best boyfriend extraordinaire.
#bestboyfriendextraordinaire #aroseandherthoughts
I LOVE YOU…
June 13, 2021
"I love you."
"I love you more."
"No, I love you more."
"No, I love you more."
"No, I do!"
"No, I do!"
You know the type. New relationships are like that, and I wish it wasn't true about me, but I fell into that trap as well. For all my brains, all my smarts, and all my terrific marks, I became that person.
Jared would bring me perfume at the end of the start of the day. He came across the scent while he was at the mall, where he works, nothing to be suspicious about at all, and he thought of me. So he bought it. As a boyfriend does, sometimes.
Well, in Jared's case, like all the time.
He texted me romantic poems after school, and would serenade me in the cafeteria; we were quite the spectacle. Hand holding, snogging, sitting on each other's laps, and – yes – doing the whole "I love you more" bit as we returned to class.
Just to put that into perspective…
I've never said 'I love you' to anyone else. Not my friends. Not my cousins. Not even my aunts and uncles. Just my mum, my dad, my brother, and my grandparents.
That whole "I love you more" junk was a pretty big deal to me, and not just because it's so stupid; I meant it.
Even now, after everything that has happened, I can say, wholeheartedly, that I meant that shit when I said it to him.
#iloveyouandotherlovethings #aroseandherthoughts
I LOVE YOU NOT…
June 14, 2021
Yeah, I know. "Rose Granger-Weasley, I thought this was a blog dedicated to your first major break-up, why are you talking all about how much you love this guy?" It's a bit of a slow start, but we're there, okay? Are you happy?
Tell me that you're happy because I'm going to need it as I recall the reason that I broke up with Jared Lee Carmichael, best boyfriend extraordinaire.
Or, as I call him now, Jared Lee Carmichael, cheating boyfriend extraordinaire.
It doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
That's what he is though: a cheating boyfriend extraordinaire. I'll give him some credit, I guess, because he cheated on me with two other girls. They were from different high schools, too, which meant that our chances of running into one another were incredibly small in the vastness that is London.
How he kept up with it, though, is amazing. We dated about four months, and he was cheating the entire time! Where did he get the energy and money to fool around with that many different girls? Honestly, if he can at least tell me that, I think I'd consider us even. He broke my heart, sure, but at least I'd have an endless trove of energy to use in my professional football career. That's about as even as it gets, I think.
As you can imagine, good friend, I was pretty devastated. How had a smart girl like me, a tried and true Granger girl, fallen for such a piece of trash like him?
Because he made me feel special.
Why did I need to feel special? Why wasn't my blossoming football career enough? And what about my good grades? I can just about have a pick of any university I'd like. My family is grand and I have dozens upon dozens of genuinely good friends. Why did I need a boyfriend to make me feel special?
Even I can't explain it to myself.
All I know is that when I stumbled across one of his other social media accounts where he was posting pictures of himself with this voluptuous blonde with big blue eyes. They were laying all over each other in every picture, talking about the value of physical expression when in love. As if that wasn't enough, I started poking around online.
Jared tried really hard to keep his three lives separate, but he made the mistake of reusing his email for his social media accounts. I was able to find another page where he was posting pictures of himself with another girl, a foreign exchange student from Japan, who is also gorgeous. They posted videos of themselves acting out their favorite scenes from Shakespeare, and then laughing uncontrollably at each other when they mess up.
I wanted to be mad at the girls, but when I reached out to them on their private accounts, neither of them were even aware he was a high school student. He had told them he was taking a break year before university and that he was gone all day because he was working. They were totally clueless.
When I initially contacted them, I was going to accuse of being accomplices in this whole cheating scandal – that they stole my boyfriend. But that wasn't the case, was it? Jared lied to them. He'd lied to me. They couldn't have possibly known the truth unless they were looking into him online. And unless they looked hard enough, they wouldn't have found anything anyway, so how could I blame them?
And couldn't they blame me too? He was their boyfriend just the same as he was mine.
None of us were in the wrong.
"I love you more."
What was I thinking?
#iloveyouiloveyounot #aroseandherthoughts
DON'T GET MAD
June 15, 2021
I wanted to be really mad at Jared. We shared a lot of firsts. He was my first 'online official' boyfriend. He was my first Valentine. He was the first boyfriend I introduced to my parents. He was my first date to a school event.
There are some other more explicit firsts, if I'm being honest, and I'm sure my parents are going to want to have 'the talk' again after they see this, but I promise that it's not necessary. That's one first we didn't share.
I think the hardest first we shared, though, was that he was my first "I love you."
Nobody wants their first "I love you" to be with a total loser. My mum said it to her first boyfriend, and they stayed in contact for years after their broke up. I was hoping for something more like that – ending on good terms, staying friends for the rest of our lives. I didn't expect it to be a 'forever' sort of deal.
Getting mad felt like the right thing to do, but no matter how hard I tried – I couldn't get mad at him. Jared was the worst. Sure, he showered me in gifts, and he picked me flowers, and sometimes he made public declarations of love, but none of that makes up for the wrong he did to me.
And, that's why I eventually decided to use my energy for something far more effective than getting mad…
#awisewomanswords #aroseandherthoughts
GET EVEN
June 16, 2021
Jared Lee Carmichael needed to pay for what he did to me.
He needed to pay for what he did to his other girlfriends.
He needed to pay for what he did to every girlfriend he's ever had.
Maybe this was petty, but I bribed his friends to tell me every girlfriend they've ever known Jared to have, and how to contact them. I compiled a list of nearly thirty names. Clearly, he'd been busy.
Anyway, I contacted the girls and gathered as much information as I could. I asked for pictures of them with Jared, dates for how long they were together, and anything remarkable about him that I could use for – good? No, I was definitely using the information for evil.
Being the nerdy Granger girl that I am, I used this information to create an infographic. Scorpius Malfoy had to help me out because he's a little bit better with graphic and web design than I am, but the general format was all me. By the end, I was able to prove that Jared Lee Carmichael has always been a cheating boyfriend extraordinaire.
Jared started "dating" when he was twelve years old. I couldn't believe that, by the way, can you? Dating when you're twelve? You know what I was doing at twelve? Having an existential crisis about whether I wanted to get into law, like my mum, or football, like my aunt. I cried for days because I couldn't choose between them.
I chose football, if that hasn't become obvious to you by now.
Jared has never had an honest relationship with anyone. Most of his girlfriends had thought he was a pure-of-heart, genuinely invested boyfriend. As I compiled data about his history, however, I noticed that he's never been with just one girl for very long. His heart starts to fade and his mind starts to wander about two weeks into a relationship, though he once lasted an entire month before he started sneaking around behind his girlfriend's back.
Before you ask, though, it wasn't me.
Scorpius offered to pay for five posters to be printed. We posted them in the five most important locations to Jared's whole scheme.
We hung a poster in the food court at the mall where he works.
We hung a poster in the girls' bathroom near the cafeteria where everyone stops to wash their hands after lunch at our high school.
We snuck into his blonde girlfriend's high school and hung a poster in the girls' bathroom closest to the parking lot.
We snuck into the foreign exchange girlfriend's high school and hung a poster in the girls' dressing room in the theater.
We put a copy of the poster in the subway that he uses most often to get to work and school.
Needless to say, I wanted to make sure that nobody else was fooled into thinking that Jared Lee Carmichael was a serious boyfriend. He's more the kind of boyfriend you date if you just want to test the waters, someone you pick up at a party but leave before morning. Jared is your "for fun" boyfriend.
He is not the kind of guy you should say your first "I love you" to, not by a long shot.
#abadchoiceforabadboy #aroseandherthoughts
THERE'S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING!
June 17, 2021
I never expected there to be so many readers here. I posted the link at the bottom of the posters hopeful that a handful of people would actually visit it. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would have over a thousand people would come read these seven selfish posts about my first heartbreak. That's really neat.
Because, you see, stories like this matter.
Teenagers get swept up in those feelings of love. Everyone wants to have the perfect significant other or be the perfect significant other, even if it's unrealistic. We can't even see when something is too good to be true at our age.
"But, Rose, what about the people who meet their future spouse when they're fifteen?"
It's possible, but that takes so much work. Those situations aren't easy, they aren't blind, and they're not perfect. Being in a long-term relationship that means something requires a whole lot of honesty. And, right now, I don't see very many teenagers being honest in their relationships because I don't see a lot of teenagers being honest with themselves.
We use filters when we post pictures of ourselves online. Hashtags define the value we have in the photo we staged to share with our friends. I see teenagers in pictures of their boyfriends and girlfriends, but those same teenagers go home and put their time into something else. We only share the parts of ourselves that other people want to see.
I'm seeing clearly for the first time now that I'm grounded for "trying to destroy someone's social image, even though he totally deserved it." (Thanks, Mum, for that delightful wording, by the way).
It's weird being grounded. I've never been before…
But there's a first time for everything, isn't there?
#fortheverylasttime #aroseandherthoughts
Acknowledgements:
All of my BETA reading was done over the course of 12 hours, and my editing completed over two hours. Getting from my first little blurb of a concept for this story to this finished product was a long process but totally worth it. This chapter holds such a special part in my heart and I hope that you enjoyed reading it. My BETA buddies were fabulous, and also talented writers themselves: 2DaughtersofAthena and nottheonlyfangirl.