This is a one-hundred percent unadultered story I wrote as an eighth-grader, except that I have edited Harry Potter in as the protagonist.
Here are some of the best bits:
Elizabeth, the red-haired seventeen-year-old Harry Potter had to share a bed with, drew in a deep breath, radiating exhaustion and dreams of a place far away from this Lowell Mill, yet Harry Potter just continued to stare at the ceiling that expressed the shoddy craftsmanship of the boarding-room she had to lay in until it was six-thirty in the morning, time to eat the scanty morning meal and get right back to a mindless task similar to the one she'd had the day before, and she gauged that the awakening time was soon by the length of the sunbeams that lapped at her toes.
Harry Potter released her gaze from the spidery lines on the underside of the roof and slowly rolled over to her side, coming to face with the back of Elizabeth's head. Elizabeth's hair was long and a reddish-brown color; a total contrast to Harry Potter's style, which consisted of cutting her own blond hair off in short and choppy hunks ever since the accident that had destroyed the tresses that were once as beautiful as Elizabeth's.
Elizabeth took another large breath, yet this didn't startle Harry Potter one bit, for she was used to the heavy sleep of the pretty girl she considered such a contrast to her seemingly very ugly self, and just inhaled her own long breath, hers being a sigh directed towards the whole world and how it had treated her, a girl who had once had so many hopes.
And Elizabeth was probably Irish, but Harry Potter was too timid to ask, due to the teachings of her parental figure, and was also a bit afraid of what Elizabeth might do if she, Harry Potter the "Englishwoman," experimented with friendship.
THE ENTIRE TOME:
The cracks on the dirt-speckled white ceiling, bluish in the pale light of dawn that trickled in through the grimy windows, reminded Harry Potter of what the veins of her mother's hands must have looked like, her long, pale fingers weaving in and out on her loom, forming yet another masterpiece that Harry Potter supposed hung on the wall of her long-ago home. Yet Harry Potter hadn't been to her home in two years, not since she, a naive nine-year-old, had been shipped off with her three older sisters, Elisa, Mary, and Katherine, to become a doffer at this filthy, poorly-ventilated mill, where bells were constantly ringing, commanding Harry Potter and her two remaining sisters to do this and that. Even in the night, when the world was swathed in a peaceful silence, Harry Potter still heard the bells, clattering with a shrill sound that never ceased in volume nor consistency.
Elizabeth, the red-haired seventeen-year-old Harry Potter had to share a bed with, drew in a deep breath, radiating exhaustion and dreams of a place far away from this Lowell Mill, yet Harry Potter just continued to stare at the ceiling that expressed the shoddy craftsmanship of the boarding-room she had to lay in until it was six-thirty in the morning, time to eat the scanty morning meal and get right back to a mindless task similar to the one she'd had the day before, and she gauged that the awakening time was soon by the length of the sunbeams that lapped at her toes. Harry Potter wished that she, too, could sleep off the weariness of her day spent guiding strand after strand of thread into the machine that put it onto the spindles she had tottered under when she was younger, but she couldn't, and instead would just spend the hours after eight thirty in her shared bed, her back aching against the thin mattress beneath her, her legs either chilled or hot under thread-bare sheets, and her eyelids heavy and tired, but open, like rusty metal gates that just won't close.
Harry Potter released her gaze from the spidery lines on the underside of the roof and slowly rolled over to her side, coming to face with the back of Elizabeth's head. Elizabeth's hair was long and a reddish-brown color; a total contrast to Harry Potter's style, which consisted of cutting her own blond hair off in short and choppy hunks ever since the accident that had destroyed the tresses that were once as beautiful as Elizabeth's.
When Harry Potter couldn't sleep, she often debated whether or not her accident with the spinning machines was fatal. It had happened when she was still a doffer, collecting spindles of thread as large as herself and replacing them with empty ones, still a small child who didn't understand what her father had done in order to have enough money to raise a new family with his new wife, Cathleen. Harry Potter had been trying to take a full spindle off of its seat, her hair scattered across her face as frustration showed in a deep blush when it just wouldn't come. Yet then those same locks got caught in the gears of the machine she could have very well been working at two years later—at a different task, of course—and slowly ground away the years she'd spent washing her tresses every morning to keep them as shiny and golden as the money that gleamed in her father's eyes, grinding and grinding, the sharp click of cogs and pegs turning perpetually, the clanging of the bell screeching at her that it was time to finish with that job, time to get moving on the next spindle, the next doff. Yet then, she could hear no more, as pain seared through her head, blood showing her anguish as it ran down her face like the cracks in the ceiling yet as red as Elizabeth's hair. It never seemed as though the throbbing ever stopped, even when she was taken to a little room furnished with a few chairs and a Spartan desk, papers stacked higher than her, and was told that yes, she had lost an ear in a mere "accident," and that yes, she could rest the remainder of the work day, but that she must also return to her duty the next day and every day after and never be clumsy enough to get in any little accidents again. She hadn't, and didn't plan to ever go near the spindles again, but she had to, and anyway, she always convinced herself, at least she was better off than Mary, who had died from poor ventilation a few months before in one of the other buildings in the factory. She had been sixteen: in her prime as a Lowell girl.
Elizabeth took another large breath, yet this didn't startle Harry Potter one bit, for she was used to the heavy sleep of the pretty girl she considered such a contrast to her seemingly very ugly self, and just inhaled her own long breath, hers being a sigh directed towards the whole world and how it had treated her, a girl who had once had so many hopes.
Harry Potter realized that her father wouldn't like Elizabeth. He was tall and thin, with long whips of graying blond hair framing his blue eyes, a "true Englishman," as he called, or at least used to call himself. Harry Potter always wondered why her father called himself "English," considering that her country was not a part of Britain, but she supposed that maybe it was because England, filled with its kings and rolling hills and huge castles made of stone, seemed a much better place to declare allegiance to than her nation, sprouting nothing more than a dollop of factories run by girls like herself. Harry Potter often wished, too, that she could go to England, or some other foreign land, yet she hadn't had enough education to know of anywhere besides the States and Britain, the exception being Ireland.
Harry Potter's father hated Ireland. He was disgusted by all the short, stocky, red-headed immigrants that sailed over to "his" country and "stole" the jobs that he could be performing instead of sending off his four motherless daughters to a factory in some distant part of Massachusetts, only to have one of them lose an ear and another her life. And Elizabeth was probably Irish, but Harry Potter was too timid to ask, due to the teachings of her parental figure, and was also a bit afraid of what Elizabeth might do if she, Harry Potter the "Englishwoman," experimented with friendship.
Even though she didn't understand the motives for many things her father did, Harry Potter still trusted and loved him, for she was his last hope. Hours after Harry Potter had been born, her mother had died of some unknown, unwanted cause, and her father had named her "Harry Potter," a boy's name, for he knew that this would be the last child of his first wife, and he so desperately wanted a son. So Harry Potter thought it was her responsibility to live up to her father's assessment of her and be a brave girl who didn't cry when her ear got badly mutilated, or even when her sister passed away, for it was her fault that her mother was gone, and she knew it was true though no one would say it, so it naturally had become her responsibility to keep her family going no matter how weathered they became.
Harry Potter fell upon her back once more, and stared, as she had so many uncountable nights, upon the delicate cracks lacing the pale ceiling, becoming lighter and lighter as more of the sun's rays poured in through soiled windows, bells screaming in her head unstoppably that it was her fault, it was her fault, it was her fault until six thirty when she, Elizabeth, and the other girls would have to rise themselves from their slumbers, and start the same day all over again.
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