(Author's Notes – Parody? Yup. Mary-Sue and Gary-Stu? Present. Outrageous situations? Humiliating occurrences? Plenty. A long-suffering heroine up against a line of perfect rivals? NorringtonOC? You bet.

With DMC out and Norrington's less than creditable behavior spawning wonderful if a little angsty fanfic, myself the author of one, I felt the need to write something a little more lighthearted. Hence one more parody of the invasion of Mary-Sues, men's reaction to a pretty girl, outrageous plot holes and devices, etc.

The prologue owes a HUGE nod to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey!

As stated, NorringtonOC, takes place directly after CotBP. Definitely not DMC compliant. Starts kind of slow, but I promise it gets much better and funnier quickly!)

Laura Bell and the Commodore's Intended

Laura Bell was not extraordinary. On the day of her birth in Port Royal, the skies were clear, the seas might have been a trifle calmer than usual, but not unnaturally so, and the heat was, as it is there through every summer, unbearable. Her mother did not die in childbirth, but went on to give her husband, Captain Bell (who was, shockingly enough, the father of all of his wife's children), three more daughters and live to the ripe old age of 103. Mrs. Bell was a very matronly woman, perhaps prone to gossiping, but one who took good care of her children; though she might have indulged them a bit too far, you would never tell from their behavior or personalities. Captain Bell, RN, was himself neither brilliant nor bumbling, and a very loving father. Neither parent was abusive, distant, cold or cruel, though Captain Bell's position often took him away for long periods of time, none of the girls thought the less of their father for it. In fact, Laura Bell's ancestry was so thoroughly respectable and bland it was only noticeable because it brought her into both the Naval circles and the good society of Port Royal.

Within her upbringing and schooling she was no different from many young ladies of the time. To be sure, Laura showed a marked propensity for drawing at a very early age, and did continue to become highly accomplished in that field, but it was her only truly distinguishing achievement. Her languages were good, though she could not grasp Dutch too well; she could play her mother's old spinet with a degree of grace but did not care to sing (though when she did, most thought her tolerable); for her social graces society would never reject her; other aspects of her schooling, such as history, geography, and arithmetic, she found dull but learned out of duty. Indeed, on the score of education, Laura was as good as any young lady of breeding in Port Royal.

In the all-important category of looks, might have been slightly above average. She had molasses colored hair which was prone to frizzing if she was not careful, kindly grey eyes that needed spectacles to read, a straight nose, a freckled complexion, lips neither thin nor full, and a pleasing if occasionally adamant jaw. On a good day, she might have been called pretty, but on a normal day when she took no pains about her looks, Laura would not have been noticed. With regards to body, she was as every young lady ought to be, no more and no less. Laura was no beauty but no hag, pleasing but hardly more than that.

Of her good and bad characteristics, she was well endowed. Her principle flaws were those of being entirely too passive and eager to please, but she was, or tried her hardest to be, a kind, caring girl with good sense and morals. Her loyalties were fierce and affections unshakable, if someone should threaten a person close to her heart, they had indeed come up against an implacable foe. Her disposition was inclined towards a gentle optimism, though Laura occasionally suffered from bouts of depression, they never lasted long or left any sort of scar. Neither of her parents found much lacking in her character, and, to her delight, Laura was thought one of the kindest souls in Port Royal.

There was something else about Laura Bell that must be mentioned, for it was introduced into her way of thinking so early that it, in time, became a part of her as unwavering as her loyalties. From the earliest age of cognition, almost only four years of age, Laura had been deeply in attached to a boy five or six years her senior, James Norrington. His mother had been a particular friend of Mrs. Bell's, and the Norrington girls – Ophelia and Charity – became the inseparable playmates of those of the Bells'. But the ties between these families are almost immaterial to this tale compared with Laura's early and undying attachment to James. It began at an age when all romantic connections between the sexes are scorned, and so she had sought to hide it behind her friendship. By the time such an attachment would have been agreeable to both parties, James had turned to a girl closer to his age who was much livelier and more vivacious than Laura, Elinor Browning. While her inability to catch James's heart always was a source of great pain to Laura, his friendship and kindness toward her helped to ease the pain a bit. Of course, she was heartbroken at the early age of six when James and his family left for a holiday in England, on the same ship as the Brownings, certain with a child's knowledge that James and Elinor would fall completely in love during the long voyage, and that they should be married as soon as the ship reached England. To her credit, she was shattered when she learned of the tragedy that befell the ship, how James was the only survivor of a pirate attack that killed all aboard. For an entire year she wore nothing but subdued colors, ate two bites a meal, and never said three words together, perhaps less than one hundred the entire year.

Through all of this her affection for James remained as constant as the Northern Star, across all of ten long years where she had little news of him, correspondence between the two of them being made impossible due to impropriety. Laura heard of his becoming a midshipman in the Royal Navy through a friend six months after the fact; she had no idea of his being made lieutenant for two years until a rare letter to the Bell family arrived from him, having been misdirected in the most awful way imaginable.

So, it came as a complete surprise to Laura and the Bells at large when, one rainy "winter's" evening, a knock on the front door announced the adult Lieutenant James Norrington, aged 23 and about to be given command of the HMS Destiny, of 32 guns and 250 men. Laura, who, during his ten-year absence, had come of age and, more importantly, recently come on the marriage market, was overjoyed to see him again, and the sound of his voice made her as much, if not more in love with him than she had ever been. James was delighted to see his childhood friend and companion, so much that he spent the entire evening in her company, learning what she had done with herself and Laura learned what he had done with himself. At this crucial juncture she held her heart back, certain from years of experience that he would not wish a connection to her on grounds of her scant beauty and accomplishments. In light of James's own feelings, which she was entirely unaware of, this proved to be a major blunder which would cost her a good deal of happiness, for James, at this time, was much taken with his old friend, but would not impose upon her, as he knew he had been entirely absent the past ten years. By the time James left, the moment had passed, and though Laura remained his closest friend and confidant through the nexteight years, she was overcome with a desperate but hidden sadness as she watched him fall in love Elizabeth Swann, the only child and daughter of the widower Governor.

Morgaine and Agatha, the youngest of the Bell girls, became particular friends of Elizabeth, who was, by all accounts, a strange but beautiful girl, whose own close confidant through her childhood and adolescence was William Turner, a boy who could best be described as a foundling, for he was the only survivor of a pirate attack. As Elizabeth grew, she would not outgrow him, despite the fact he became apprentice to a blacksmith in a respectable, if not prosperous part of Port Royal. How Miss Swann grew! She was a quick study who seemed to easily master the most difficult of materials, whose needlework might have been grudgingly done but was beautiful nonetheless, who played the expensive harpsichord shipped directly from London as well as her master and sung like the veriest nightingale. Elizabeth Swann was as graceful in society as her name suggested; the only area in which Laura was the clear-cut and acknowledged superior was sketching, drawing, and painting, which was little comfort, indeed. Laura saw James's admiration for Elizabeth grow daily, and was privy to all his hopes and fears concerning her. As the most distinguished bachelor in Port Royal by the time Elizabeth reached an eligible age, Captain James Norrington had every right to expect her hand. Thus it became Laura's painful duty to advise James on his courtship to the reluctant Elizabeth.

Laura was sixteen when reunited with James, and had been by no means ineligible, but somehow had never found his equal, or even a close second. Despite her good nature, tolerable looks, and decent dowry, she had never been truly courted, and consequently reached her bloom unnoticed. Her best years slipped by in the service of her friends and sisters, who all married well and left – Hannah to a New England whaler's captain; Morgaine to a well-to-do planter whose estate lay a full day's ride from Port Royal; Agatha to a very minor nobleman who made his home in London – and then in the service of her mother, who was left alone when Captain Bell vanished in the Pacific. Thus Laura found herself to be twenty-four, teetering on the edge of permanent spinsterhood, taking care of her widowed mother, in love with the same oblivious man she had been in love with for twenty years.

The reader will have to excuse Laura, then, for being a bit frustrated when the bereaved Commodore James Norrington came to her door after the single most trying day of his existence.