i finally got the time to watch love is better the second time around and im not at all shocked that im obsessed with the adult second chance at love jbl - have you met me.

but it also needs to be known that shiraishi is my beloved, the actor plays this role so perfectly and i want my bitchy sad gay to find true love

PLEASE talk about your polly backstory 👀

omg ty SO much for asking!!! 🥺 (and sorry for taking far too long to answer!!)

To me, polly shows obvious signs of being an only child with a massive inferiority complex instilled by her parents for not meeting their outrageous expectations, but I think that’s only if you’re specifically looking to understand why she is the way she is and not just writing her off as Pretty Popular Girl Is A Bitch :) This has gotten very long so I'll put it under a read more!

So in my mind, she’s not only an only child, but the only gryffindor in an all slytherin family. Her family were ~almost~ in the sacred 28 (which they pride themselves on) and only missed out due to the ‘unfortunate’ choice of partners a very select few of their ancestors made. They weren’t necessarily on Voldemort’s side, but I wouldn’t say that they were overly opposed either, I imagine they mostly kept themselves to themselves and skirted by by keeping up appearances and being friendly with, but not close enough to end up entangled with, pure blood extremist families. So not great people needless to say, quite cowardly too in all honesty for all their ambitions of being amongst the likes of the Malfoys. While this mostly concerns her grandparents, they raised her parents to have the same values and general outlook on life.

So then we come to Polly’s childhood. Her parents never really loved her unconditionally so much as loved the idea of her being the golden child to restore their name and carry on their legacy. Which was unfortunate when she failed to show any signs of magic for the first 9/10 years of her life. They didn’t have any real time for her being a child and mostly regarded her and expected her to behave like a little adult. She didn’t get to play or actually be a child really, she was usually left to her own devices outside of schooling and piano classes and was in many ways, raised by the family house elf Pipsey. Polly mostly saw her parents at the dinner table, for breakfast and supper and had the rest of the day to herself, mostly shut in her room with her piano (which, although reasonably good at it, she grew very quickly bored of). She had a very vivid imagination and grew bored of study and lessons easily. She wasn’t given any dolls but managed to make her own out of the clothes she grew out of, while they weren’t very pretty she loved them and could create stories out of the most mundane things since that was really all she had at her disposal. This carries on for the first 6/7 years of her life, she would create stories in her room for hours and was much closer with Pipsey than her parents knew, which meant that Pipsey was often involved in her (very limited) play time under Polly’s instruction. This lasted until she started homeschool.

She was expected to study every day from the day she started school as her parents demanded excellence, which is where the disappointment started but no where near where it ended. She was schooled in a group of other pure blood girls, the children of her family’s friends, which was where she first learnt how effective manipulation and humiliation was. Actually, that’s not quite true, the first person she learnt that from was her father, who seemed to find endless things about polly childish, unbecoming and disappointing. Her mother wasn’t much better, and the more time that passed without her showing any signs of magic, the more resigned and borderline hateful they became of her, calling her a squib and a ‘failed endeavour’, and unfortunately, as children often do, she started mimicking this behaviour around the other girls and found out very quickly how to get what she wanted. Whether that be to get a specific girl to be her best friend, another to be ignored by everyone, to get answers for the homework, to get out of the homework, or most importantly: frighten the girls out of ever bringing up the fact that she couldn’t do magic. She probably made threatening comments about being very powerful and not trusting herself to use magic around them to cover up the fact that she was coming up nine and a half and still hadn’t had a single instance of magic.

I don’t think she really understood how horrible her behaviour was then and likely thought this was normal behaviour bc the girls she was schooled with weren’t exactly nice either, and when that’s how people behave in your home and in your class/every aspect of your life you tend to make the assumption that that's just how everyone is. It made her feel good in the moment, having power over others often does have a certain appeal, however dark, but I imagine she spent a lot of time thinking about it at night and feeling awful but not being able to articulate why. I like to picture her having long chats with Pipsey and skirting around the subject, wanting to talk about it but being too afraid to find out what was making her feel this way.

Skip forward and her parents began to talk about replacing Pipsey, she’s old and a lot slower these days and far, far too indulgent with Polly. Polly, struggling to get her parents attention at the best of times, begs and begs them to keep her on, begs them to just get another elf to help alongside Pipsey instead of getting rid of her entirely, and when they refuse to listen and send her off to her room, she throws the tantrum to end all tantrums, screaming, crying, kicking, throwing things, all the behaviour she has been taught against suddenly comes tumbling out of her until they all realise that she's levitating their massive heavy wooden bookshelf up and up in a very menacing way over her parents.

It’s not her conscious intention to hurt them, but on a subconscious level it’s definitely her desire to make them feel the hurt, upset, and fear that they’ve made her feel, and I’d consider this the first time we see just how strongly she cares for the people she loves. It’s the fear of losing Pipsey that drives her to use magic for the first time. Her parents are OVERJOYED at this display of magic as they’d honestly almost completely given up on her and decide to keep Pipsey as a reward for her display. Not a great thing bc it instilled in her the idea that she can get whatever she wants if she throws a big enough tantrum and is threatening enough, but on the other hand it teaches her to always fight for what she feels is right so... plus Pipsey is so grateful to Polly for working so hard to keep her (as if Polly would /ever/ let anything stand between her and what she loves)

The magic doesn’t come easily after this though, it comes rarely and is quite difficult for her since she’s been raised to be so reserved and emotionless, but she’s felt it now and manages to achieve the barest of minimums from here on out. I don’t think magic is exclusively connected to emotional states or a persons openness but being closed off has definitely been to the detriment of Polly’s power. She’s got a renewed sense of self worth from the experience though and begins to feel once again like she might be able to make her parents proud.

She gets her Hogwarts letter and it is the happiest she’s ever been and it’s the closest they’ve ever felt like a real family. Everything is perfect until the moment she meets Yann Fredericks on the train and her world image starts to crumble.

Yann is easily the nicest person she's ever met and it's confusing and INFURIATING and she has no idea how to cope with it, but suddenly (and she doesn't know HOW) she has a friend and the sorting hat is on her head and she's in Gryffindor with this boy she's only known a few hours and her entire world is upside down.

That first night she creeps down into the Gryffindor common room because she's so confused and sick with anxiety that she can't sleep, only to find Yann down there too. He also can't sleep, but his reason is that he misses his mums and his sister Leah, and the combination of that mixed with his excitement for the years ahead means that he probably won't sleep for hours. They end up talking about anything and everything until they can't keep their eyes open, and although she's still more nervous than she's ever been, she's also made her first real friend. They end up having long, quiet chats in that corner almost every night for the rest of their time at Hogwarts.

She gathers the courage to write to her parents the next day and never receives a reply, which is a reply in itself, and she's absolutely devastated. Not to mention she's not managing any better with her magic, and seems to be just about the only one with this issue except for:

Albus Potter.

Her homeschool days come back to her and suddenly she's picking on Albus and pointing out all his flaws and the fact that he can hardly manage any magic it all and now no one even notices that she can't get her feather to levitate or a broom into her hands because they're all noticing that in Albus. It's not nice and it doesn't make her feel good, but it's a relief to not have to worry about herself when she's got everyone laughing at someone else's misfortune. And in doing so she makes another friend: Karl Jenkins! Who seems equally as keen to make jokes at the expense of others, and who introduces her and Yann to his friend Craig Bowker Jr.

I could go on and on but it's already taken me like, a year, to answer this!! and it gets a bit more just 'story' rather than 'backstory' from here so there you have it! I'm sorry for taking an absurd amount of time and for rambling so much and probably only making a small amount of sense but there you have it! I love Polly so much and I'm so excited for her to grow, mature and get the help that she needs to become the person that she's meant to be <3 Thank you thank you thank you for asking!! I am literally always down to talk about Polly, or any other member of the gang, and I will endeavour to do better than a year's turn around in future <3 love youuuuu