#takenom

[veritas-roleplay]

LILY EVANS ♦︎ GRYFFINDOR ALUMNA ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: SOPHIE SKELTON ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

(tw: death of a parent)

Lily sometimes wonders, late at night after everyone around her is asleep or during the day when nothing else holds her attention, if the magic made her a rebel or if being a rebel made her magic. Regardless of the reason, it was clear from a very early stage that Lily was not born to follow convention. She would swing too high, stay out too late, and always ignored her mother’s warnings about bringing wild animals into the house. A particular incident, which was mortifying for all involved other than Lily, was the Easter she was six when she stood up on the pew in the middle of the sermon and informed the preacher, in none too quiet a tone, that he’d better stop talking, because his voice was making a baby in the congregation cry. Most of the town laughed at the story, but the preacher was never quite as friendly to the Evans family after that, and they took to sitting in the back, Lily securely seated between Mr. and Mrs. Evans with each holding her hand.

Lily was never the most well behaved child. Her parents generally agreed that she always meant well, but every now and then she went too far, and no amount of talking-tos or punishments could make her regret her actions. This was a lesson her year 1 teacher learned all too well. Lily tried to go through the proper channels, informing first her teacher, then her parents that the boy who sat behind her was teasing her, but when that yielded no results, she decided she would just have to take care of herself. The next time Lily’s hair was pulled she launched herself across the desk and punched him squarely in the face, breaking his nose and her own thumb in the process. At first, Lily was told she wasn’t allowed to play outside during recess until she apologized. When, after a week, none was forthcoming, the teacher upped the ante, giving her lines to write in after school detention. Not even a trip to the principal’s office and the sharp slap of a ruler across her palms would convince her; Lily refused to apologize, because she refused to accept that she was not in the right.

This is not to say that Lily was a troublemaker, though. The town of Cokeworth at large thought that little Lily Evans was a delight. For every time she took things too far, there were half a dozen times she helped her mother with the shopping, or played sweetly on the playground with her sister, or sat quietly in the back of her father’s classroom with a book. She was quick with a please, and a thank you, and a smile that could light up the darkest of days. She was a good student, clever and helpful, and once her teachers learned to take her seriously when she raised an issue she rarely caused trouble in class. At the age of 9 she began to earn pocket money as a “mother’s helper,” entertaining and keeping an eye on young children as their mother cooked dinner, or did chores, or even took a nap in the next room. In later years, she’d turn this foundation into several successful summer jobs as a babysitter and even in one case a nanny.

When her Hogwarts letter arrived on her 11th birthday, Lily was more prepared that most muggleborn children. She knew all about the magical school and what she would learn there from her best friend, Sev. Once the social worker had calmed her parents down, Lily really only had one question, could Petunia come with her? The social worker did his best to explain that, no, as a muggle Petunia could not accompany Lily. For her part, Lily was disappointed by this answer, but it  did little to dampen her enthusiasm. She carried her letter with her everywhere, taking it out to reread when she was alone and sleeping with it under her pillow. She made sure to coordinate her trip to Diagon Alley with Sev’s so he could show her around and they could get their wands together. On the morning of september 1st, platform 9¾ saw a teary goodbye between Lily and her family, but she boarded the train with a smile on her face, excited to discover what Hogwarts had in store for her.

It turned out that what Hogwarts had in store for her was a bit of a mixed bag. She’d naively assumed that she and Sev would be sorted into the same house, not realizing that even at such a young age they were already set on very different paths. Lily didn’t mind being in Gryffindor, in fact she rather liked it. There she found people who were as quick to stand up to bullies as she was, people who could match her, stubbornly held opinion for stubbornly held opinion. In Gryffindor she found people who could be just as self-righteous as she, and were more willing to forgive such moods than those who didn’t understand. But she worried about Sev all alone in Slytherin. It didn’t seem like a terribly warm and friendly house, and from what little Lily knew of Sev’s home life she was sure that’s what he needed. So she did her best to include him in her house. Even though she couldn’t bring him into the Gryffindor common room, she invited him to sit with her new friends in class and study with them in the library, doing her best to wrap Sev in all the love and acceptance he deserved.

It didn’t take long for Lily to realize that not everyone at Hogwarts thought she belonged in the wizarding world. There were sniffs of derision when she didn’t know something that was apparently common knowledge and whispers of, filthy mudblood when she passed in the hall. When she was praised for tying with Sev for the highest score on their very first potions exam, someone commented just loud enough for her to hear that she needed to, learn her place. It was a slap in the face for a little girl who, until this point, had been very nearly universally adored and welcomed. There was a steep learning curve in her first year as she discovered that she couldn’t make everyone she met love her. So she dealt with the bullies the same way she’d dealt with the boy in first year who pulled her braids, and slowly, she built an identity that was based not on how other people treated her, but on how she treated other people.

Of course, Hogwarts was not all bad. In fact, it was mostly good, with the unpleasant bits all but lost amidst days and nights full of wonder, excitement, and novelty. Each new day, each new lesson was an adventure into the unknown, and Lily loved it. As much as she learned, she was always eager for more, staying after class to ask questions of professors, begging stories from classmates who’d grown up with magic, spending time in the library researching subjects that had no bearing on any of her classes, but were still fascinating. Her professors at Hogwarts quickly came to appreciate her inquisitive and helpful spirit just as much as her teachers back in Cokeworth had. Gryffindor house fit Lily like a glove, and she built friendships in other houses, as well. Flying was everything she’d ever dreamed and more, and the only thing that kept her from trying out for the house quidditch team was her abysmal hand eye coordination. By the end of her first year, Lily was set to take the wizarding world by storm, blood prejudice or no.

Lily’s success at Hogwarts was a welcome distraction from what was going on at home. The rift between the Evans sisters, which had first torn when little Lily tried to share her magic with Petunia and Petunia had called her a freak, grew wider with every day that Lily was gone, and every time she mentioned Hogwarts while at home. Before long, Petunia proved herself to be just as sharp-tongued as the worst of the bullies at school, and Lily proved herself more than capable of giving as good as she got. There is, after all, no one for knowing just how to cut you to the core like a sister. Through it all, Lily’s rock was her father. Mr. Evans had a knack for helping Lily see through the red mist of her anger to the error of her ways without making Lily feel as if she were being told off, and he had a talent for making her laugh when she was so hurt she thought, in the overly dramatic way most teenagers have, she would never smile again.

Lily grew slowly, shaped gradually by the events of her life, both magical and muggle, good and bad, into a young woman. The new friendships she’d found at Hogwarts deepened even as those oldest and most precious to her frayed. She watched Severus drift away from her, unwilling to admit it and helpless to stop it, until the bond finally snapped. She’d thought herself immune to the sting of the word, mudblood until she heard it falling from her former best friend’s lips. Pointed bickering with needle sharp words between Lily and Petunia became the new normal of the Evans household until Lily finally snapped. When Petunia tried to pretend to her new boyfriend that she didn’t even have a sister, Lily introduced herself anyway, interrupting their dinner and making sure Petunia enjoyed none of it. Lily told herself Petunia started it, but Lily knew that she had been the one to deal the final blow that severed the sisters’ relationship for good.

In the face of this Lily found comfort in likely and unlikely places. Mr. Evans continued to be her rock, even in the face of a cancer diagnosis that scared Lily to death. Throwing out all of her quills and parchment and replacing it with ballpoint pens and spiral bound notebooks before she returned to Hogwarts for her sixth year made Lily feel better. If you’d asked 13 year old Lily if she’d ever be friends with the marauders she would have laughed in your face, but 16 year old Lily wasn’t so sure. Remus Lupin seemed to understand that friends could do unforgivable things and you would still want to find a way to forgive them, and Sirius Black knew that you could hate the choices your sibling made but still love them with all your heart. So Lily fumbled along, clinging to her optimism and the newfound understanding that sometimes things changed in ways you neither expected nor wanted and you just have to do the best you can.

Lily was already holding her world together with tape and glue when the foundation was washed out from under her. When she finished her last exam of her sixth year, Professor McGonnagal pulled her aside to tell her that her father had passed away. When she arrived home, still shell shocked and not entirely sure how she got there, she learned that he’d been deteriorating since Christmas, but he hadn’t wanted to worry her, so no one had told her. The family she found on her return was not the family she’d left. Her mother was a ghost, not speaking, barely eating, staying in bed except when Petunia ordered her up to wash or change into clean clothes. Her sister had turned into a machine, fueled by grief, bitterness, and rage, Petunia handled everything, their mother, funeral arrangements, well wishers. Lily was left to drift, hollow and moorless. She might not even have made it back to Hogwarts for her seventh year if not for her friends, who���d rallied to take her to Diagon Alley for back to school shopping, make sure her trunk was packed, and ferry her to King’s Cross to catch the train.

Back at Hogwarts, Lily went through the motions. She attended classes, completed homework, performed her new duties as Head Girl, but the spark was gone. Lily had lost her Lily-ness, and she wasn’t sure how to get it back. She didn’t start to come alive again until one late night in October. It was the kind of night when it’s so late that you forget heavy things like your father has died and you no longer care about trivial things like hating someone on principle so when James said something fun Lily laughed out loud. She stopped for a moment as everything came rushing back and she waited to feel the guilt she’d felt over the summer any time she’d forgotten about her father, but it never came. So she threw her head back and laughed, and laughed, until she had a stitch in her side and tears of mirth in her eyes. The night was only the first step down a very long road, but it was a turning point nonetheless. Slowly, she found her Lily-ness, again, and she even found love along the way.

The Lily who graduated from Hogwarts was very different from the Lily who first entered it, but she was also very much the same. Facing seven years of bullying that never really went away had made her stronger, and more confident. Her growing friendship with each of the marauders, and her budding relationship with James, made her less likely to trust a first impression implicitly. The losses she’d faced, both of her father and of Severus and Petunia, had changed her the most, in ways she’s still discovering years later. But she’s still Lily, still whip smart, still convinced she’s always right, still willing to give the shirt off her back to help another person. She’s still in love with James and still looking after Peter. She never would have expected to be engaged and pregnant at only nineteen, but she’s always known she’d marry the love of her life, and she’s always wanted children. And if there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that you have to take the good things while you have them, because you can never be sure how long they’ll last.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Lily Evans ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : muggleborn

☛ AGE : 19

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Gryffindor

☛ TRAITS :

         Positives : protective / compassionate / altruistic

         Negatives : stubborn / presumptuous / petty

☛ OCCUPATION : children’s tutor / potioneer’s assistant

C O N N E C T I O N S :

JAMES POTTER : fiancé, makes her laugh

REMUS LUPIN, MARLENE MCKINNON, MARY MACDONALD, PETER PETTIGREW : close friends

SIRIUS BLACK, MARGARET MCKINNON, GIDEON PREWETT : competitive with

BELLATRIX LESTRANGE, JOHN DAWLISH, BARTY CROUCH JR. : distrusts

SEVERUS SNAPE : former best friend, estranged

ALANA MULCIBER, WILLIAM AVERY : despises, picks fights with

[orderfromchaos-roleplay]

VIOLA SHAFIQ-ROWLE / SLYTHERIN ALUMNA / FC: PRIYANKA CHOPRA / TAKEN

AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

BLOOD STATUS : Pureblood

BIOGRAPHY :

Viola Shafiq was born one of two, twin girls to pureblood parents desperately wishing for a male heir. If one daughter was bad luck, the Shafiq girls were seen as twice the misfortune; twins already made things hard on pureblood families seeking an heir, especially as the eldest children, but twin girls were twice the trouble. Their mother wrote their father to tell him of the news, and his response was a simple “we’ll try again,” and two more weeks away before he finally came home to meet his daughters.

Viola was two and a half minutes older than her sister Rayna, but despite being the eldest, she always lived in her sister’s shadow. She was quiet where Rayna was loud, faltered where Rayna was bold, paled when Rayna was vibrant. It was easy for Viola to be overlooked; not much ever seemed to be happening with the older twin-- she always seemed still, stoic, some could even say frigid, while Rayna captured attention like a firecracker being set off. She was impossible to ignore, difficult to dislike, and quick to befriend. Viola didn’t mind growing up the afterthought, but she was the eldest. And for the sisters, that meant being Rayna’s shadow, being there to pull her out of fights and there to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid.

The Shafiq family relocated to England when the girls were nine, when their father became a liaison between English and Indian ministries. Viola wasn’t thrilled about the move, but as usual, kept her mouth shut. When they got their Hogwarts letters, it was near certain to the Shafiqs that their eldest would be a Ravenclaw, while Rayna would be sorted into Hufflepuff house. It could be worse, they told themselves. And Viola wasn’t sure how; she didn’t want to go Hogwarts. Her family was Sacred Twenty-Eight, the elitist of the elite by blood, but they were foreign to them as well. They weren’t part of English society yet, they hadn’t grown up with the other children. They didn’t fit in yet. But still, Viola got on the train and begged that somehow, she would find a way to fit in.

And in a certain sense, she got her wish. Viola was never considered ambitious, so it was a shock when she ended up in Slytherin house, and her loudmouthed sister ended up in Gryffindor. Their sorting was polarizing to the sisters, as Rayna became inducted into the circles of blood traitors and muggleborns, and Viola into the house of dark wizards and witches. Publicly, the sisters were at odds, but in private, they were a team. Viola fit in with her fellow housemates, and eventually, she was accepted among them. But while they were all laughing and enjoying themselves at galas and parties, in the common room of the Slytherin dormitory, Viola was listening. Listening, cataloguing, sorting through all the information she could gather into her fingers. Knowledge was power, after all, and Viola intended to use that strength. She was reserved in school, made a  few close friends but many connections as she made her way through Hogwarts-- people she could use, people she could rely on for various things, people she could like. But no one she could trust. She was still an outsider in her own mind, and she couldn’t rely on anyone’s acceptance but her own.

The war started while Viola was still in school, and the rising tensions from it began to shake her fragile world. Viola was comfortable in the world she had been raised in; she had no interest in fighting a war, no interest in pitting herself against the people she had grown up with during her time at school for the sake of a few muggles and muggleborns. What were they to her, after all? But where Rayna went, Viola was certain to follow; Rayna joined the Order of the Phoenix straight out of graduation, and a few months later, Viola did the same. She wouldn’t fight, but she would keep her sister safe, and to stop her from getting herself in too deep. That was the agreement between the two-- if one got in too deep, the other would be there to bail them out. And so Viola started collecting information wherever she could get it, passing it on to Rayna in the Order. Rayna became an Auror in the meantime-- a full blood traitor, the two ended up only talking in private, only being the sisters they truly were in the safety of covert meeting places. It wasn’t easy, but they did their best to manage it. Viola didn’t mind. Rayna’s first reaches towards independence, and her eventual departure from the Shafiq family, gave Viola a chance to breathe, to keep the war at arm’s length as much as she could. Rayna was the fighter, Viola was the spy; Rayna became skilled in defensive magic and dueling while Viola listened in on private conversations.

But death strikes without warning. September 22nd, 1976, Rayna Shafiq was killed by Death Eaters in a raid on an Order safe house. Viola received the news from a fellow Order member while she was at work, and suddenly, her whole world crashed to a halt. Who was she without her sister, after all? How was a shadow supposed to survive when it had no one to mirror? She was nothing without her sister, without her twin, without that piece of her that had always been second to Rayna. There was no question for Viola; she left the Order, left the fragile life she’d started to build alongside her sister, and took Rayna’s body home to be buried in India. She was done with this, done with the war, done with it costing her the things she cared about. She wouldn’t do it anymore. She was finished.

And yet, her sister had been a pureblood, she was a pureblood. And not just any pureblood; she had been Sacred Twenty-Eight. All the preaching about maintaining the pure bloodlines in the world didn’t matter when Death Eaters started killing other purebloods. Killing muggleborns was one thing, as was killing muggles, or halfbreeds, but purebloods were different. Killing purebloods brought the problem straight to her doorstep, made the war personal to Viola. And so she waited, waited until the period of grieving was over, and she went back.

Training to take Rayna’s place was hard. Dumbledore had told her that she didn’t have to, that she could keep getting information as she’d been doing for them before, but Viola refused. She’d gotten information because Rayna had asked her to; she wouldn’t do it for the Order. She’d joined to keep her sister safe, and she’d failed. She would do better, she would learn to fight, she would make up for the warrior they had lost. And so she started training with a determination she’d never had before in her life.

It quickly became clear to everyone that Viola was not her sister; she had Rayna’s face, but she had nothing of her skill, her heart, her talent in the field and her natural instincts. But Viola’s first instinct was to survive. She kept training, kept pushing herself, kept working until she returned home every night bruised and exhausted, only to attend teas and galas before doing it all over again the next night. At first, she hated it, and hated that she had to do it. She put her life at risk every time she went out there, not just by death in a duel or accident, but by showing her face at all. So she disguised her appearance, concealed her identity, and kept fighting. Kept working. Finally, for the first time in her life, Viola Shafiq found herself truly challenged. Finally, her anger and her frustration and her violence had an outlet she could unleash without shame or reservation or hesitation. And she loved it. She loved it with a ferocity that seemed to burn through her. She worked, she trained, and slowly, she got better.

But plans had never been something she had been good at having. Viola’s parents called her to the manor for tea in the summer of 1978, and Viola found herself face-to-face with her old flame, Atticus Rowle. He had been someone she’d loved once, someone that had been her future for a brief window before graduation, before she’d severed ties out of fear of being on opposing sides in the war. And yet here he was, standing in front of her. They were both changed, they were both no longer the young teens they’d been when she’d first fallen in love with him. It was an arranged marriage, one that had to be solidly planned out by their parents over the next few months. They were both heirs to their families, after all, and they needed to be sure that both families were getting the best deal out of all of it. Viola and Atticus slowly let themselves get to know each other again. Both resisted at first, Viola threw herself into reckless and short-lived affairs in the hope of finding something genuine, but in the end, it was Atticus. This was right, they told themselves and each other, they could make this something that was theirs instead of something their parents had set for them. They eloped in December of 1978, days before Christmas, and returned home man and wife.

Their parents were furious, and it was Viola and Atticus that carried the brunt of their anger at having been deprived the lavish ceremony and excess that was a pureblood wedding. The two did their best to remain firm against the onslaught of severity from their parents, did their best to stand together. But the pressure threatened to crack them, and the strain on their relationship made Viola pull back from her husband. They both had secrets, both from each other and in their relationship, that neither wished to voice.

The secrets only became worse with the end of 1978, and the rising of a new year. Atticus’ parents, pushing their daughter Lavinia into an arranged marriage, finally snapped as their youngest searched for the freedom that her brother had achieved to make his marriage his own. Viola, upon hearing the harsh treatment of her sister-in-law, rose to defend her. She couldn’t let down another sister, couldn’t let Lavinia be hurt in the same way that Rayna had, couldn’t let her be lost as Rayna had. She confronted Rowle Senior at the manor house, and he laughed at her. Lavinia wasn’t her sister, Viola wasn’t his daughter. She had no right to speak to him in such a way, had no place telling him how to treat his own family. Had no business playing the hero when she’d failed her own sister. Lavinia wasn’t Rayna, and like Rayna, Viola could do nothing. Viola snapped. The duel was a brief one, a taunting one, and Rowle Senior’s words only incensed Viola further. He kept laughing, and mocking, and jeering. And then, suddenly, he was silent.

Viola walked out of the house and did her best to not look back. She was quickly distracted by horrifying knowledge-- she was going to be a mother. Viola had never wanted children, had never planned on having them, but fate had a plan for her already that she wasn’t totally prepared for. The next nine months were some of the hardest of her life, as she struggled with the war, with all that she’d done, all that she’d lost, and all, still, that she needed to do. Being a mother was hard to prepare for, but she did. And on September 14th, 1979, Thorfinn Rowle was born.

Being a mother wasn’t easy for Viola, and she didn’t latch onto it like she’d been promised she would. She felt lost, she floundered, but she tried. She had a job to do-- she was no longer just a shadow of her sister, she was a wife too, a mother, a sister, a person. After years of following in the footsteps of others, she’s finally stepping out and becoming her own person. She’s finally trying to understand which side she belongs on, what that means, where she should be. But she has her family, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect that.

DETAILS :

AGE : 25

TRAITS :

+ : Clever, diplomatic, observant

– : Rash, self-serving, anxious

CANON INFORMATION : [x]

OCCUPATION : Mediwitch

SUGGESTED CONNECTIONS :

Bianca Fawley, Adamma Zabini, Bronte Macnair : best friends

Emmeline Vance : train together

Charity Burbage, Margot Abbott : school friends, exchange books

Atticus Rowle : former flame, husband, father of her son

Kingsley Shacklebolt : admires, intrigued by

[veritas-roleplay]

CLARA MACMILLAN ♦︎ SLYTHERIN ALUMNA ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: BENEDETTA GARGARI ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

Clara was born on warm June day to two very busy parents. Ealair MacMillan was a high ranking Ministry official and spent his week living in London to be close to the office, only coming home to Scotland on the weekends. Adelaide was a philanthropist and outspoken activist, often hosting fundraisers or traveling to London with her husband. So Clara was left to be raised by the house elves, and her two older siblings. This is not to say that Ealair and Adelaide were completely absent from the lives of their children, both made a point of being home on the weekends, and Sundays have always been strict family days for the MacMillans. Still, Beatriu and August were more mother and father to Clara than Adelaide and Ealair. Later when Diana and then Enric were born, Clara continued the tradition of older siblings raising the younger. The result of this is five siblings who, despite being various different ages, are incredibly close. Clara and Diana, in particular, have always been incredibly close, and Clara has always considered Diana her best friend. Growing up, essentially, without parents, especially when one has younger siblings to raise, is a recipe for a lost childhood, and Clara was no exception. She matured rapidly, quickly learning how to care for and entertain herself and, later, her younger siblings as well. As a result, Clara arrived at Hogwarts as quite a precocious 11 year old.

Clara left for Hogwarts sure what her house would be, and not terribly happy about it. MacMillans were Hufflepuffs. It was, if not a universal truth on par with Blacks being Slytherin, at the very least a strong trend. There was occasionally an outlier, Ealair had an uncle who’d ended up in Gryffindor, but only ever one in a generation. Clara had, secretly, hoped to be that outlier, but then Beatriu was sorted into Ravenclaw and, the way Clara saw it, her own fate was set for Hufflepuff and there was nothing she could do about it. Imagine her surprise, then, when the sorting hat was set on her head and said, “no, no, not Hufflepuff. True, you could fit in there, but to become all you can be, you’ll need a different house altogether.” Without further discussion the hat pronounced her a Slytherin and Clara obeyed, shocked, but also elated. She very much liked the idea of becoming all she could be, and it turned out that Slytherin house fit her like a glove. Among her housemates Clara found friends who were just as used to the finer things in life as her and, more importantly, friends who wanted to do more and be more just as much as she did. As a Slytherin, Clara learned to balance her love for and pride in her family with her love for and pride in herself. She also learned the fine art of trimming and tailoring her responses to meet other people’s expectations and how to get what she wanted without even having to ask for it.

Clara grew up with an example of a very successful arranged marriage. Ealair and Adelaide may have been brought together by their parents, but they were nonetheless two souls that matched nicely. Over the course of their marriage, they developed a strong partnership built on mutual respect, trust, and, if not love, a deep appreciation of each other. So, unlike her older sister who completely bucked the system and declared that she never wanted to marry at all, Clara was never opposed to an arranged marriage and was, in fact, excited when her parents began looking for a suitable match for her. Rabastan had seemed perfect on paper, from a good family and a little bit older, and for a while he had been. Clara loved his wit and how he seemed so worldly. She was never so naive as to expect love in an arranged marriage, but she knew herself well enough to admit, at least to herself, that she was a little starry eyed. The truth was more extensive than that. Through the minimal interactions Clara had with Rabastan in the years before she left Hogwarts, chaperoned dates on Hogsmeade weekends, letters sent back and forth, sitting next to each other and pureblood functions, Clara built an idea of who Rabastan was that was very much real to her, if not realistic.

Trouble didn’t come until after Clara graduated and began spending more time with her future in-laws as the wedding planning started up in earnest. It started with the newly minted Mrs. Rodolphus Lestrange. Despite being more closely related than most pureblood families, Clara’s parents had always kept the MacMillans well away from the Blacks and their ideas of blood purity that Ealair found distasteful and Adelaide outright opposed. Bellatrix made Clara nervous, but she didn’t take her marriage to Rodolphus as the sign of the Lestranges’ true leanings that she should have. Instead, she did what she thought any good future wife would do and tried to steer Rabastan away from Rodolphus and his wife, encouraging Rabastan to spend more time with Beatriu and even August with the excuse that he should get to know her family as well as she his. When that seemed to be going well, she began attempts to drive a wedge between the two twins, building Rabastan up and, occasionally, carefully, subtly criticizing Rodolphus, always making it more about how Rabastan deserved better. It might have worked, too, but not as quickly as Clara wanted it to.

Worse still, the more time Clara spent with Rabastan, the more she began to get to know him as a person. And the more she got to know him as a person, the more she began to realize he wasn’t who she thought he was. At first she tried to ignore it, and then she tried to downplay it. When she finally had to admit that the version of him she’d imagined while at school didn’t match the real thing, she tried to change it, to shape him into what she was sure was the best version of himself. She was unwilling to just give up on what she’d spent years building, but she had to admit defeat when she learned just how deep Rabastan’s blood purist leanings ran. To those on the outside, it may seem like the eldest MacMillan daughter, bold and rebellious Beatriu, is Adelaide’s truest heir, but the family knows that it’s Clara who holds her mother’s beliefs closest to heart. It’s not something she talks about openly, after all it was a somewhat dangerous opinion to have in Slytherin and certainly an unpopular one in pureblood circles, but Clara believes in equality of blood just as much as her outspoken mother. When Clara realized that Rabastan was a blood purist, there was only one path for her to take. She gave back the ring and ended the engagement as quietly as she could.

When Clara joined the Order, her only condition was that her family couldn’t know. It’s not that she’s afraid her family wouldn’t support her decision; she’s sure they would, though she’s also sure August would worry. It’s just that she knows in times like these, ignorance can be not only bliss, but safety. She received the standard order training and excelled at it, but it quickly became clear that she wasn’t cut out for being part of the cavalry. Clara’s not one for following directions when she thinks she has a better idea, and has no problem arguing with authority figures when she feels it’s necessary. While these traits can be valuable in the right time and place, in the middle of a battle is neither. It was quickly decided that her greatest chance for contribution would be as a spy, utilizing her status as a pure blood princess in her own right. It’s lonely, sometimes, surrounding herself with people whose beliefs are so decidedly opposite to her own and always playing a part and wearing a mask, but she made a commitment to the order, and more importantly to herself, so she’s not about to back down.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ member of the Macmillan family ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 22

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Slytherin

☛ TRAITS :

     Positives : dedicated / detail-oriented / diplomatic

      Negatives : picky / materialistic / close-minded

☛ OCCUPATION : freelance arithmancer / socialite

C O N N E C T I O N S :

SIRIUS BLACK, GIDEON PREWETT, FABIAN PREWETT, MOLLY WEASLEY : distant cousins, friendly

FRANK LONGBOTTOM, ALICE BARNETT : co-mentors, idolizes

JAMES POTTER, LILY EVANS, STURGIS PODMORE : train together, friends

TIMORA STUMP, MERWYN FINWICK, CORNELIUS FUDGE : dismissive towards, thinks they’re idiots

DAVEY GUDGEON, GWENOG JONES, GLADYS GUDGEON : intrigued by

RABASTAN LESTRANGE : former betrothed, misses

[veritas-roleplay]

SIRIUS BLACK ♦︎ GRYFFINDOR ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: LUKE PASQUALINO ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

The Ancient and Noble House of Black held weeklong celebrations to honor the birth of their first son and heir, Sirius Orion Black. Born on November 3rd, 1959, Orion and Walburga’s first son was meant to continue the firm legacy and tradition the Black family is known for.  The family tree was to be kept pure, free of muggleborns, half-breeds, or halfbloods. Always Pure, a model to be upheld. As a child, Sirius never would have thought of breaking it. A burned out face on a family tree was a threat to be thoroughly feared.

Sirius did not grow up alone. He grew up with a brother: the calm and collected to Sirius’ fiery passion, the steady to Sirius’ rock the boat. No matter what would come of their later years – betrayal on both sides, and a disappearance to boot – Sirius loved Regulus. And when Sirius loves, he does not do it quietly, or simply. He has always loved with all of himself, and nothing less, no matter what he shows the world of his heart.

Sirius grew up learning the same information that would indoctrinate Death Eaters, hateful rhetoric that he would grow to believe until he learned better. At the time, he knew only what his parents had taught him, and he grew up the same as many other children of the Twenty-Eight. Though Sirius grew up fearing his parents, he also grew up loving and respecting them. Their cold shoulders and anger were rarely turned on him before he turned eleven, and when they did, it was always for something he quickly apologized for.

It was not until Hogwarts that Sirius learned differently. The Sorting Hat had a lot to do with it, but not all. It saw something different in Sirius than it saw in the rest of his traditionally Slytherin sorted family. The Hat saw that Sirius would learn far more from Gryffindor than Slytherin, and being a wise hat, that was where he was placed. Of course it was more than that. Deep down, Sirius did not want to be like his mother or father, did not want to be placed in Slytherin, even if this was not something he realized right away.  

In Gryffindor, Sirius would meet and befriend three people who became the most important people in his life: James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew. His placement in Gryffindor caused a rift in his home that would quickly fall into disrepair.  They got on like a house on fire – or maybe like Gryffindor house on fire. Mayhem and pranks and laughter filled the halls of Hogwarts for most of their seven years.

Sirius’ friendship with James was steadfast, a type of brotherhood he thought he’d never have after being sorted into Gryffindor. James saw Sirius for Sirius, not for the blood status that some envied and others hated,

During their second year, the three friends discovered the true cause of Remus’ monthly disappearences. Instead of abandoning him, they turned to research and during the next three years, worked tirelessly to become Animagi in order to help their friend. Becoming Animagi, of course, wasn’t the only endeavor the Marauders worked on.

He and James spent much of their time at Hogwarts bullying Snape and his cronies. Hexes flew in both directions whenever either group was around. And it was bullying, even if it did go both ways for Snape. There were others, such as Bertram, that it did not go both ways for. Though he would learn and regret this type of bullying later on, at the time he did not see it as bullying at all – just playful pranks that the other person didn’t like. Sirius thought that the group was unstoppable.

By the time Sirius was in the summer after his fifth year, tensions at home had grown insurmountable. Sirius and his family’s ideologies were wildly different at this point, and the way they treated him had started to reach a breaking point. Already tense due to the previous school year’s events (a prank gone terribly wrong that nearly broke the friendship in half), Sirius snapped. His mother burned him off the family tapestry immediately, casting him out of the family and disowning him permanently. His younger brother Regulus did not follow in his footsteps, despite an earlier plea.

When Sirius ran, he went the only place he could think of going: the Potters. He showed up on his doorstep unannounced, asking to only stay there for a couple of nights, and received a home. Everything he’d learned in his years at Hogwarts taught him that real family were the boys he’d found at school, and that a real family acted like James’ did. He lived with the Potters during breaks until his Uncle Alphard died when he was seventeen. At that time, Sirius bought an apartment and supported himself, though he often went to the Potters during Christmas and New Years. He was happy for the money not because he was no longer poor, but because he no longer had to rely on the Potters. He hated feeling anything close to a burden.

Graduation was not attended by any of the family he was born with other than Andromeda and her husband. Instead, his graduation was celebrated and attended by his found family. Far from the weeklong celebration of his birth, Sirius cherished this one over everything else. An invitation to join the Order of the Phoenix post graduation meant the world to him. An outspoken blood traitor and a skilled fighter, Sirius was a boy willing to dedicate himself to the cause: and he did.

The sudden disappearance of his brother has shaken him to his core. Though he’d suspected for some time that his brother was a Death Eater, this seemed like confirmation. And before he could change anything: he’s gone. Sirius doesn’t want to believe he’s dead, but at his core, he’s not sure what to believe at all.

His worst fear is worse than his brother being dead.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Sirius Black ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 19

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Gryffindor

☛ TRAITS :

     Positives : loyal / self-assured / brave

     Negatives : arrogant / quick-tempered / oversensitive

☛ OCCUPATION : Healer-in-training / Three Broomsticks employee

C O N N E C T I O N S :

JAMES POTTER, PETER PETTIGREW, REMUS LUPIN : best friends, would do anything for

EDGAR BONES, TED TONKS, MOLLY WEASLEY, ANDROMEDA TONKS : parent figures, admires

BELLATRIX LESTRANGE, NARCISSA BLACK : cousins, tense

LILY EVANS, MARLENE MCKINNON, TILDEN TOOTS : close friends

ALANA MULCIBER, WALDEN MACNAIR, ANTONIN DOLOHOV : despises, thinks they’re horrible

PANDORA CROSS, DIRK CRESSWELL, DAMOCLES BELBY, PHOEBUS PENROSE : intrigued by

[veritas-roleplay]

AMELIA BONES ♦︎ RAVENCLAW ALUMNA ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: ALYCIA DEBNAM-CAREY ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y

Born on a stormy day in late March of 1959, Amelia Bones was the loudest of her siblings from the start. She knew what she wanted even as an infant, and she would do what was needed to make it happen. She adored the attention of each of her older brothers, when she began taking her first tentative steps it was often to whatever char Edgar or Charles were sitting in. As they grew up Amelia was always a few steps behind one of her older brothers, she idolized each of them and was ready to get into whatever messes they were making. Amelia was in perfect health until she was eight. At eight she had her first seizure and was diagnosed with epilepsy by a muggle doctor.

This caused her bonds with her parents to grow even stronger, it took a year of testing and the doctors were able to prescribe medication to control the seizures. So she doesn’t often experience Grand Mal Seizures, but the effects that her occasional partial seizures have and will always have on her memory have caused her to have immaculate organizational skills.

With both of her brothers already away at school there was some concern if Amelia would be admitted into Hogwarts, despite her displaying a magical aptitude at a young age. As her parents prepared options for this possibility, Amelia was in constant correspondence with her older brother Charles, soaking up as much information as she could about Hogwarts and what life at the castle would be like before she turned eleven.

Her letter did arrive on her eleventh birthday, and in 1970 for the first time she spent the trip to Diagon Alley picking out robes and cauldrons and school supplies along-side her brothers. And on 1 September 1970 she was on Kings Cross Station when the Death Eaters launched their first attack. When she got to Hogwarts things were different than how she had thought they would be from Charles descriptions, but she was quickly accepted into his group of friends at the Ravenclaw table. The whole school was shaken from the attack, but everyone had been told it was a one-off attack and wanted to believe it.

Amelia quickly found a place with her peers, mastering difficult wandwork and thriving in the dueling club all though her Hogwarts career. She found friends in all of the houses, and was often thought to be too trusting, but those that were closest to her knew that she held her cards close to her chest, and didn’t let many people in. She strove to be the top of each of her classes and when preparing for her OWLs Amelia thought she wanted to be an Auror — as most 15 year-olds did in 1974 — she wanted to make the world a more just place and joining the Aurors was the best way to do that right?

That summer she went home and pressed her parents, Edgar, and Charles for more answers about the origins of this war, begging for them to not protect her and give the same answers everyone had in 1970, this was the world she would be entering in three years. They explained the hatred and prejudices against wizards based on their blood type their world, and this started Amelia on a summer-long research dive into the deep history of blood prejudices in the wizarding community that led to this war. Out of curiosity, she started looking into muggle history to see if there was anything similar, she started to read about the civil rights-movement in America and the anti-war movement in the 1960s, much of which had happened right next door in muggle London. She wondered if these rights to protest, which seemed to be ingrained in much of muggle society could be integrated to the Wizarding World? She began looking into the legal ramifications of these movements and knew that her path forward had changed.

From that summer on her goal was clear, some day she would lead the Wizengamot at make them do what she could to make the wizarding society a more just place, like those muggle protesters, and nothing was going to get in her way. She finished her NEWTs with top scores, keeping any potential distractions at bay.

After Hogwarts she got a cheap flat in muggle London, just across the street to the guest entrance of the ministry, as much as she would like to apparate in because of her epilepsy she has been unable to get that license, and isn’t a high enough ministry official to get direct access to the Floo Network, yet, and has been working as one of the head court secretaries. She is eyeing a position as an assistant to one of the High Wizengamot Judges though.

She knows that this war isn’t going to be won in the ministry, too many lives have been lost and too many lives are in immediate danger for her not to be doing something. Upon her graduation, Dumbledore approached her about joining the Order of the Phoenix to protect people and make change in ways that she wouldn’t be able to in the Wizengamot. Because of her position within the ministry and her goals she has been unable to take on many forward facing missions but she helps out when she can.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Amelia Bones ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : halfblood

☛ AGE : 21

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Ravenclaw

☛ TRAITS :

     Positives : resilient / organized / patient

    Negatives : resentful / secretive / cynical

☛ OCCUPATION : Wizengamot court Head Secretary

C O N N E C T I O N S :

MAFALDA HOPKIRK, ELLA DIGGORY, CLARA MACMILLAN : best friends

EDGAR BONES, CHARLES BONES : older brothers, extremely close

SARAH BONES, ABIGAIL NORTON, MOLLY WEASLEY : considers family, admires

XENOPHILIUS LOVEGOOD, MERWYN FINWICK, CICERO BELBY : intrigued by, thinks they’re strange

EUROPA FAWLEY, DIRK CRESSWELL, MARGARET MCKINNON : competitive with

MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER, BARTY CROUCH JR.,, RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE : despises

[veritas-roleplay]

DORCAS MEADOWES ♦︎ HUFFLEPUFF ALUMNA ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: KATE SIEGEL ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

(tw: death, tw: abuse, tw: violence) Dorcas typically never recanted tales from her childhood to anyone. She faintly remembers the large house she grew up in, but recalls it always being empty. The walls were bare of art and there was minimal furniture. Her parents’ voices would echo throughout the concrete fixture–their arguments only increasing as she grew older and, in turn, became harder for them to control. It started out like the most basic of arguments between a husband and wife: first finances were tight, then the family business began to fail, but one day it shifted suddenly to that of a much darker nature. Cyril Grey was convinced there was something wrong with his daughter. He was a devout man of faith who strongly believed the forces of good and evil were man’s ultimate moral compass. Witnessing his daughter’s “gifts,” as his wife Sophelia referenced them as, he was convinced Dorcas was anything but gifted. She was cursed, if not a curse bestowed upon him for years of living in sin.

Sophelia Meadowes-Grey disagreed with her entire heart. After all, the only thing she ever wanted was a child of her own. The couple had tried for years and years without success. After suffering through numerous losses, Cyril became convinced a child wasn’t part of their designated plan. A few more years passed until his wife became pregnant with their daughter. At this point, they were older than the average parents; Sophie was 45 when she gave birth to Dorcas, but at the time both her and Cyril considered her to be the greatest blessing.

The happiness was very short-lived. Before Dorcas could even walk, she was constantly being berated by her father. It first began in the most nonchalant of ways, like a door becoming locked that shouldn’t have been or important paperwork disappearing–never to be seen again. Sophie couldn’t understand why her husband was so convinced these harmless acts were the work of a baby, but Cyril was hell-bent on his ideologies. He shied away from giving Dorcas any affection. The older she grew, the more certain he was; she was an abomination. The moment he spoke his true feelings about their daughter to his wife, their marriage was over. At least emotionally because divorce was certainly not an option for a man of his beliefs; he essentially held Sophie hostage in their marriage for the rest of her life.

As Dorcas grew older, she was practically barred from leaving the house. Cyril’s desire to hide Dorcas away from the rest of the world outweighed his desire for anything else and he knew that his wife would never dare leave without her. That’s when Dorcas learned at an early age that walls and regulations weren’t enough to keep her confined to any one place. Her parents fighting increased the older she became and eventually she resorted to doing the only thing she could think of to find solitude: running away. Cyril always ended up finding her before she slipped too far though and her disobedience was met with closefisted rage. His message was conveyed in a variety of different ways. Sometimes it would be delivered across her face in the form of a piercing slap or an abrupt jerk to her shoulder blades and, though the emotion of regret often varied in his face afterwards, he always stood behind his word that she was well-deserving of it.

When Dorcas’ Hogwarts letter finally arrived, she was beside herself. Finally things were becoming clearer, though her father didn’t share in her enthusiasm. It felt like the final nail in the coffin–the confirmation he had been waiting for since she was a child. He didn’t dare call her a witch (he insisted it was a dirty word coined by the devil) nor did he acknowledge her magical abilities. If he had, he felt he might as well be condemning himself further.

Dorcas eventually started her first year at Hogwarts. Prior to that, she made the decision to shed her family name and adopt her mother’s maiden name Meadowes instead. Sophelia ended up passing later that year and Dorcas made the difficult decision not to return home. Those initial years on her own were the most difficult to digest as she attempted to maneuver living a life on her own in a world she couldn’t quite comprehend. Working random summer jobs to make ends meet was not sustainable and quickly she realized she was going to have to shift her focus elsewhere. That’s when her interest in the outside world began to expand–she took up a keen interest in politics and criminology pertaining to the Wizarding World. It was as if she had been instilled with a sense of justice and a craving for revenge overnight. She often wondered if that was the result of growing up with a fanatic for a father. She had a strange fascination for the workings of the world and the psychosis of each individual around her, but it wasn’t until she was nearing the end of her sixth year at Hogwarts that the witch was provided with some redirection her life was desperately in need of. A destructive rampage landed the now sixteen year old with an entire month’s worth of detention, but rather than just seeing her as a problem child like so many before him had, one of her professors witnessed something else entirely.

As Dorcas continued growing, she continued to keep putting walls up. She didn’t know if it was because she was ashamed of who she was or where she came from, but she knew those factors played a significant role. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why occlumency came so natural for the brazen young witch. She always expressed an interest in the subject, however, it wasn’t until she was working under an instructor’s guidance during her remaining years of school that she truly began to excel. Her final years at Hogwarts were fleeting; she passed the time with lots of quidditch. As a seeker she was able to greatly nurture her flying skills, which eventually allowed her to lead into a career as a Hit Witch. Dorcas was then introduced to a handful of people who became more than simple best friends ever could. They became her family–the only one she would ever truly know, which would not be complete until after she was recruited to join the Order of the Phoenix shortly after graduating. Though a strong-hold for the Order, she walks a dangerous line between both sides misguided by her own skewed moral compass. In an attempt not to succumb to her own power-hungry demons, she hurls herself headfirst into the arms of war as she claims no one but she is the great decider of her fate.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Dorcas Meadowes ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : muggleborn

☛ AGE : 23

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Hufflepuff

☛ TRAITS :

   Positives : clever / passionate / altruistic

   Negatives : reckless / overzealous / obstinate 

☛ OCCUPATION : hit witch

C O N N E C T I O N S :

FABIAN PREWETT, MARGARET MCKINNON, GRETA CATCHLOVE : close friends

MARLENE MCKINNON : former flame, thinks she doesn’t take the war seriously enough

EDGAR BONES : mentor

BEATRICE PUDDIFOOT, EUROPA FAWLEY, ARTHUR WEASLEY : admires

GIDEON PREWETT, ABIGAIL NORTON, FLORA BORGIN, MIRAPHORA MINA : competitive with

BREVIS BIRCH, PROTEUS TRAVERS : intrigued by, cautious about

[veritas-roleplay]

CORDELLA FIGG ♦︎ SLYTHERIN ALUMNA ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: ADRIA ARJONA ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

(tw: child abuse)

Cordella Figg’s childhood was idyllic. True, the Figgs lived in the smallest house in their neighborhood, and money was always tight, but what they lacked in finances, they made up for in love. Nowhere was this more evident than in the relationship between the two daughters, Arabella and Cordella. On the surface they looked like complete opposites. Arabella was girly, always in a clean dress and a prim bow. Cordella was a tomboy, more likely to be wearing grass-stained jeans than anything else. Arabella was fierce and opinionated. Cordella was quiet and shy. Despite this, the two girls were as close as sisters could be, and they took care of each other. Arabella stuck up for Cordella when she wouldn’t do so herself. When a boy stole Arabella’s hair ribbons, Cordella snuck into the classroom during recess to steal them back. Arabella helped Cordella with her homework, and Cordella helped Arabella take care of the stray cats she was always rescuing.  

If anything was missing from Cordella’s life, it was friendship. True, she and Bella were as close as can be, but they were still sisters, and three years apart to boot. Sometimes they got on each other’s nerves, and sometimes Bella didn’t want her little sister tagging along. So Cordie did on occasion find herself a little lonely. This changed when the McKinnons next door adopted their first child. Hercules was the exact same age as Cordella, and she decided from the moment he arrived that he would be hers, not Bella’s. Her responsibility to welcome to the neighborhood. Her best friend who she could do fun things with when Bella was hanging out with the big kids. Luckily, Hercules was just as eager for a friend as Cordie. Together, they learned Morse Code so they could communicate via flashlight after bedtime. When they got older, Herc would drag Cordie up to the roof to look at the stars and talk about life. Yes, Cordella Figg’s childhood was idyllic, until it wasn’t.

Life is not fair. It was Cordella’s earliest and hardest lesson. As a little girl Cordella idolized her older sister; to young Cordie there was nothing Arabella could not do. It was some time before Cordella realized just how wrong she was. She was the last person in the family to give up on Bella, believing she would receive a Hogwarts letter all the way through her 11th birthday. It didn’t matter to Cordie that Bella had never shown a lick of magical ability, she had faith in the universe that things would work out right in the end, and she knew that things wouldn’t be right if the Figg sisters didn’t attend Hogwarts together. When Arabella’s birthday came and went without an owl, Cordella was by far the most upset. The rest of the Figgs had lowered their expectations; even Arabella was quietly resigned to her fate. The Figgs were the quintessential British family, taking everything with a stiff upper lip. It was a trait Cordie hadn’t learned yet; she raged. She screamed at the sky, cried into her pillow, put quill to parchment to tell Hogwarts it had made a mistake. In the end it was Arabella who stopped her, who first uttered the words, “life is not fair.”

The phrase twisted around Cordella’s heart and haunted her like an unwelcome ghost. She was reminded of it every day as the Figg family slowly fell apart. It quickly became clear that Mr. and Mrs. Figg didn’t know how to relate to their squib daughter and Arabella began to pull away from her entire family, even her little sister. Three years later when her own Hogwarts letter came right on time, Cordella heard the words echoing in her head. She threw them back at the Sorting Hat when it tried to put her in Hufflepuff, the house of justice and fairness. She used them as an anchor, keeping her expectations low when they tried to creep up, tamping down her natural optimism. She was an unusually, and even to some people alarmingly, serious 11 year old. She had trouble making friends, always fighting to be the best at everything, to prove, even though she didn’t fully realize it, that she deserved this great chance that the far superior Arabella had been denied. It didn’t help that Cordella’s shyness came across as stuck up.

Other classmates assumed Cordella fit right in with her fellow snakes in Slytherin house, but the truth was not quite so simple. She was not ambitious so much as driven, and while the frugality she’d learned from her parents was certainly resourceful, it was the sort of thing many of her housemates sneered at, and even more simply didn’t understand. She quickly learned it was better to keep her head down and that some secrets kept you safe. Emerald and silver ended up being a somewhat awkward fit for Cordella, and she clung to what few friends she had from before Hogwarts, particularly Hercules and Anthea McKinnon. It was by virtue of their friendship that she wasn’t completely alone and that she, eventually, gained some friends of her own. Slowly, over the course of several years, she found her footing at Hogwarts. A small but true group of friends kept her company when she wanted it, and in her fifth year she finally earned a place in her house as, if not Slytherin’s best chaser, at least its hardest working one.

As Cordella’s prospects brightened at school, they darkened at home. Before she’d left for Hogwarts Cordie had held the Figgs together by sheer force of will, but as the years went by her absence in the Figg household was more and more noticeable as the rift between Mr. and Mrs. Figg and their eldest daughter widened into a gaping chasm. The final break came when Arabella turned 18. She was of age by muggle laws, and she planned to leave her parents house and strike out on her own, and she told Cordella this when she was home for Christmas. With time, Cordella would come to understand her sister’s decision, but in the moment it was devastating. She didn’t understand how her sister could abandon her. To cope, she leaned on the group of friends she’d built around her, spending more time at the McKinnons’ house next door than her own home over the holiday. When she returned to Hogwarts, she threw herself even deeper into her studies and spent most of the rest of her time practicing quidditch.

That old phrase that had followed her for so long came back to mind. Life is not fair. Life’s not fair, but this time it was different. This was not the whims of fate gifting one sister but not the other, this was Bella making a choice, and it was a choice that, to Cordie’s thinking, was not fair. It was a turning point in the life of Cordella Figg, when her earliest and hardest learned lesson took on a new facet. Yes, life is not fair—but everyday we make choices that make it more or less so. Slowly, she processed this new truth, turning it over in her mind in a methodical way, letting it chip away at the weight that had covered her innate optimism for so long. When the idea finally settled, it became her raison d’etre. Cordella went in for her 5th year career consultation knowing she wanted to do something that would help her make choices that would make life more fair for everyone, or at least more than just herself. Her end goal was a seat on the Wizengamot, and her head of house told her the best way to get there would be as a lawyer. So, for her last two years at Hogwarts, Cordella tailored her studies to a curriculum that would be appealing to a prestigious law firm, because if she learned one thing being a Slytherin, it was if you’re going to do something you might as well be the best at it.

For a while following her graduation, it seemed like everything was coming up Cordie. After three years of little more than cards for Christmas and Birthdays, Arabella attended Cordella’s graduation party, and even spent a few days at home with her afterwards. During this time, Bella explained that she’d never intended to shut Cordie out of her life forever, but she’d needed some time to learn who she was beyond a squib, and who she could be in a world where no one cared that she didn’t have magic. She also apologized for shutting Cordella out and making her feel abandoned. This was the beginning of healing for the Figg sisters. When Cordella aced her interview with one of the most eminent law firms in wizarding London, Arabella was the first person she told, and the sisters celebrated together. Since then they’ve been steadily rebuilding their relationship. Cordella happily shares in Arabella’s muggle world, but it’s still difficult for Bella to be a part of Cordie’s magical one. Nevertheless, the sisters are now very nearly closer than they have ever been.

While Cordella’s relationship with her sister flourished, her legal career was more of a mixed bag. She quickly proved herself to be a valuable asset to her firm, commanding the courtroom with an imposing presence that was belied by her otherwise soft spoken and unassuming manner, but it wasn’t long before her trouble with authority reared its head. Cordella wanted to be able to choose her own cases, not be handed the scraps that none of the other, more senior attorneys wanted, and she didn’t like the stuck up, often guilty, and always rich clients such a well known and expensive firm attracted. She did her best to stick it out, but it quickly became clear she didn’t have the patience necessary to pay her dues and work her way up the ladder to the senior partnership that would be necessary for her to have the kind of autonomy she wanted. She’d been at the firm less than six months when she was asked to defend a couple charged with negligent abuse of their squib son. Cordella refused, quit, and offered her services to the social worker advocating for the son instead all in the same day.

It would be nice to say that there was an air of kismet about the whole affair. That Cordella and the social worker shared a righteous fury over the boy’s plight that carried them to victory, but such was not the case. The social worker was simply desperate, and low on funds, and Cordie was very nearly the only person willing to take the case, and far and away the cheapest. Cordella put up a compelling argument in the courtroom. She fought tooth and nail for a guilty verdict, but try as she might, and she certainly did, she couldn’t rouse enough sympathy in the jury. The battle was lost, but Cordella’s reputation was made. She became known as the champion of lost causes, the person you go to when you’ve been laughed out of every other office in the city. Immediately following the trial, Cordella was dreading going on the job hunt and having to defend her choice to represent a squib, and her subsequent loss, to potential employers. She was shocked to find that she didn’t have to. Cases found her, even without the support of a firm backing her, and Cordella began to see a way she could practice law on her own terms, and no one else’s. She still loses more cases than she wins, but the odds get better every year. More importantly, she’s made a name for herself as the primary thorn in the side of firms just like the one she used to work for, and she finds that intensely gratifying.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ sister of Arabella Figg ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : halfblood

☛ AGE : 26

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Slytherin

☛ TRAITS :

     Positives : resourceful / brave / diplomatic

     Negatives : jealous / judgmental / secretive

☛ OCCUPATION : barrister 

C O N N E C T I O N S :

ANTHEA MCKINNON, HERCULES MCKINNON, ROSMERTA MALLOY : close friends

FLORENCE FORTESCUE : secret crush, admires

BEATRICE PUDDIFOOT : former tutor, close

LUCIUS MALFOY, CORNELIUS FUDGE, GILBERT GAMP : finds suspicious, curious about

EDGAR BONES, ALICE BARNETT, KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT : finds too intense

MARGARET MCKINNON, MARLENE MCKINNON, DORCAS MEADOWES : family friends, protective of

[veritas-roleplay]

MARGARET MCKINNON ♦ ︎HUFFLEPUFF ALUMNA ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: SEYCHELLE GABRIEL ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

Cecelia Blishwick met Montgomery Nott on a blistery January day in 1958, and started a whirlwind romance. The Blishwicks were concerned with blood purity, but had not achieved Sacred 28 status. No secure chance of an arranged marriage on the horizon, Cecelia was ecstatic to meet a member of the family who had authored the list - and who took an interest in her romantically.

Margaret was born a year and a half later, a small girl with bright eyes and a mess of soft dark hair. For six months, the family lived in her mother’s family home, and little Margaret Nott was happy.

And then all hell broke loose.

A man knocked on the door - a man with a long pureblood nose and high, arched cheekbones.

Gregoriv Nott, he said.

Montgomery was a conman and a liar, a fraud muggleborn man whose only wish had been to elevate his own status. The family Cecelia had met hadn’t been Notts at all, but simply friends of Montgomery, playing the part.

The Blishwicks were devastated. Their daughter had married into nothingness, their heir was a halfblood with a muggleborn, criminal father, and all of this was worthless.

Cecelia had a choice at hand. Continue the marriage of a man she’d grown to love, and raise her daughter with a muggleborn man’s last name, or divorce him and give the girl up for adoption, redeeming herself in the eyes of her family. Rather than give up her family, Cecelia divorced her husband, and brought her seven month old to an orphanage in Wales.

The orphanage was not provided with a birth certificate for Margaret, and the girl grew up with only the spoken word that was passed down from the orphanage workers, and the papers that were filled out. Margaret knows only her mother’s first name, Cecilia, and the rumored reasons for why she was given up, the story of her birth without any names or faces attached.

Margaret was not allowed to keep her last name.

Cecelia left her daughter with the last name Wick, unwilling to keep the girl and lose her family, but unwilling as well to leave her without at least a part of herself. The orphanage workers called her Grace, from her uncanny ability to walk silently, even from the age of two. Margaret bounced from orphanage to foster home and back to orphanage again before, at three and a half, a different family took her in: the McKinnons.  

The McKinnons were wonderful and bright and happy, a group of people who were more a family than she’d ever been a part of. Her first memories of the house were of how warm the stove was, and that she got her own room but she didn’t have to stay in it. By the time she was officially adopted six months later, Margaret found herself with three older siblings: Marlene, Anthea, and Hercules. Mrs. McKinnon taught her to be brave, and loud, and wonderful. Mr. McKinnon taught her how to read, the right way to pet a cat without pulling its tail too hard.

One by one, her siblings were sent to Hogwarts. Hercules went first, then Anthea, then Marlene. Margaret didn’t have to wait too long before it was her turn. Her siblings before her had all been sorted to Gryffindor, and Margaret had read each of their letters home after they were sorted. An optimistic child, she wrote her letter home on the train to Hogwarts - four letters, one to each sibling (Marlene was already on the train, of course), and one to her parents. She wrote about how she’d got into Gryffindor, and how she was going to make a name for herself. How she’d make them proud.

Margaret McKinnon did not get into Gryffindor. When placed on her head, the Sorting Hat saw that brashness in her spirit, that willingness to go a little bit too far that had come from being raised among Gryffindors, and considered it. The Sorting Hat also saw a spirit that wanted everyone to get along, a loyalty to her family, someone who kept getting up after she fell down.

The Sorting Hat placed her in Hufflepuff.

Margaret was not optimistic. She sat among a cheering crowd of black and yellow and tried to find her sister amongst the red and gold. That night, Margaret rewrote the letters she had written on the train to her family. A little less cheerful, a little less eager, but she forged ahead all the same.

Margaret has always thought optimisim was about forging ahead no matter what.

Hogwarts became a whirlwind. Before any time had passed at all, her older two siblings had graduated, and Margaret was left with Marlene. Finding her place among her fellow Hufflepuffs was not a problem, and she soon saw why the hat placed her there. They were kind, and beautiful, and it did not matter whether you were a halfblood, or a muggleborn, or a pureblood. Hufflepuff accepted you all the same no matter where you came from. Of course, Margaret was not forged in softness: she was forged in fire. Other houses were not so kind. Her siblings before her had been purebloods, and Gryffindors - and suddenly, there was a halfblood McKinnon in Hufflepuff. An adopted girl, nevertheless - did she have a story?

Margaret wasn’t telling. If someone really wanted to dig, they could find a newspaper article about her story. No last names, nor first names either - but the dates would match. A gossip piece in a local wizarding paper. Margaret herself has never read it.

Despite the hardships that came from many of the students with purist leanings, Margaret loved Hogwarts. The girl excelled in charms, and dueling. The latter was an outlet for a fire that Mrs. McKinnon had instilled in her. She soaked up history like a muggle sponge, barged through life at Hogwarts all a little gracelessly. She was terrible in muggle studies and transfiguration, but defense against the dark arts was another strong suit, if not as strong as charms and dueling. None of these rivaled her love for care of magical creatures, but with a war going on, it wasn’t a practical field to consider.

War loomed, ever present. Not on the horizon, no: Margeret had been nearly born into it. A war that had raged for eight years now, Margaret was afraid. Even in school years, the thought persisted: what would she do when she got out? Her eldest siblings had not joined the war efforts, and she doubted the McKinnons would be keen on the idea. How could she go against them, when they had given her everything?

On the verge of graduating, the offer came, and Margaret had to make a real choice: join the Order of the Phoenix and make a difference, or hold back and keep her family safe, and sane? In the end, it amounted to the same thing: protecting her family and joining the Order were linked. Though it became a source of tension between her brother and herself, Margaret accepted the offer regardless, Margaret presuming he would forgive her. Her skill in dueling would come in useful, and she knew there were others who were not as fortunate as she was.

And besides, how could she let Marlene join alone?

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ member of the McKinnon Family ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : halfblood

☛ AGE : 19

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Hufflepuff

☛ TRAITS :

    Positives : witty / considerate / optimistic

    Negatives : brash / presumptuous / scatterbrained 

☛ OCCUPATION : Honeyduke’s employee / Flourish and Blott’s employee

C O N N E C T I O N S :

ANTHEA MCKINNON, MARLENE MCKINNON, HERCULES MCKINNON : adopted siblings

STURGIS PODMORE, SELINA SAPWORTHY, FABIAN PREWETT : close friends

CARADOC DEARBORN, DOMHNALL WOOD : train together, admires

CORDELLA FIGG : mentor, respects

WALDEN MACNAIR, ALANA MULCIBER, WILDA GRIFFITHS : avoids, intimidated by

JOHN DAWLISH, BREVIS BIRCH, PHOEBUS PENROSE : curious about, cautious to approach

[veritas-roleplay]

ALASTOR MOODY ♦︎ SLYTHERIN ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: TOBY STEPHENS ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

Alastor was never going to be a unique child. The first and only son of Scottish Aurors Callum and Seren Moody, it was already preordained exactly where Alastor would fall in the family dynasty. His parents were set in their traditions and their careers, and determined to raise their son to be the perfect blend of high society pureblood and renowned Auror. Not to mention that Alastor was the heir to the family fortune and name fell squarely on his shoulders, setting Alastor up for a life that would either make or break him. Alastor grew up in a house where his best was never enough, and there was always room for improvement. The birth of his younger sister Bronagh gave him some competition, and someone to compete against as the expectations of their parents only rose and rose higher. But Alastor complied; he knew how much his family name meant, and he knew that if anyone was going to be the best, it was going to be the son of Callum and Seren Moody. Alastor’s vision of his future was a simple one: he would become his father. He would study hard, graduate from Hogwarts, and join the twelve generations of Moodys that had filled the ranks of the Aurors for centuries. It was a mindset both of his parents were proud of, and one that Alastor shared with Bronagh as well. The two of them thrived on the rivalry between them orchestrated by their parents, eager to compete for their father’s attention and prove they were each worth it more than the other.

It wasn’t until he boarded the Hogwarts Express that Alastor started to have doubts about his future. He knew very little about Hogwarts– neither of his parents were ones to talk about their earlier years; their lives had started the day their parents had arranged their marriage and they’d started Auror training together. Everything before that was irrelevant– but the little he actually did know was all that Alastor had to cling to and set his expectations up against. He wandered into a compartment at random, and rode the whole trip to Hogwarts fretting about his future. But he needn’t have worried. The Sorting Hat barely touched his head before it was calling out “Slytherin!”, and Alastor found his seat among the sea of green and silver, where he was welcomed with open arms.

It was much easier than he’d thought it would be to fit into Slytherin house. Alastor had always been an ambitious person, and he was quick to make friends in his new house. It was easy to fit in there, and having been raised on purist ideals, everyone assumed that Alastor was one of them through and through. For the sake of friends, Alastor was willing to pretend that he was, even if privately, his views were anything but purist. The longer he was in school, too, the purist ideals that he’d been raised on proved to be more and more ridiculous to him, and the flawless image of his father swiftly tarnished as he came to realize just how wrong the older man was when it came to so much. Alastor’s first time debating his father on matters of blood purity and equality was one of the ugliest in the small family, ending in a fight that was one wrong word from turning into an all-out duel. Seren, for the sake of peace in the house and outwards appearances, banned Alastor from talking about his differing opinions. But behind closed doors, his father saw it as fair game, and Alastor was nearly always in conflict with the man when he returned home for holidays. After Seren and Bronagh had to break up a physical fight between the two of them, Alastor and Callum decided it was best if they simply avoided each other as much as possible.

Alastor’s final year and his homecoming from Hogwarts was far from what he expected it to be, however, when it was not just his family there to welcome him home. Greylyn McTavish was from a well-respected family, two years Alastor’s senior and a pureblood through and through. Her parents and Alastor’s were well-acquainted from pureblood social circles, and had been planning a match between their families for some time before they decided to tell Alastor or Greylyn anything about it. It wasn’t the sort of high society, lavish match that bartered money and power for connections; it was an attempt to become part of a higher order of thoroughly working class purebloods. The Moodys were by no means poor, but they would never be welcomed into high society, a fact that they tried to make up for in spotless reputations in every other facet of their lives, including their son’s marriage. By the time Alastor even knew about it, his parents had all but solidified the engagement. Alastor was furious that he’d been left out of such plans, and furious at his parents for making them, but his mother all but outright begged him to follow through on the plans she and Callum had made. Callum had fallen ill during the final months of Alastor’s sixth year, and Seren confided in Alastor that his father would not recover, and it was only a matter of time before he passed. The family legacy was what mattered the most, and with the fall of the former patriarch, Alastor was the one that was expected to fill that void, and solidify a future through an heir. And it was Alastor’s responsibility as the eldest; an heir himself, there was a duty he had to his family and to the long and unbroken line of Moodys that had come before him. Alastor debated the issue for some time, and finally decided that, for the family, he would agree to it. Greylyn was a good woman, as he came to find, and the marriage– though not her idea of a perfect match either– would suit her in her ambitions as well. The marriage was not for them, but for their parents, and Alastor had been raised from a young age to put family before anything else.

That January Greylyn became Greylyn Moody, and Alastor reluctantly postponed his plans to begin Auror training when he graduated so that he and Greylyn could remain in Scotland to grow accustomed to their new marriage. Their parents were desperate to try and make something social of the match, but they quickly discovered after a few preliminary tests, that no one actually cared about either family, except– in the case of the Moodys– if one of their relatives had been arrested by the offending individuals. Alastor and Greylyn were married regardless, however, and they agreed to make the most of the situation. It was a somewhat businesslike and distant match at first, purely for an heir and for their parents, though there was an understanding between the two of them that Alastor couldn’t see as being anything else but love. Passion was not something either of them felt towards each other, but that didn’t matter. Their marriage was a friendship and a partnership that was stronger than Alastor had ever shared with another person.

There was only one real hitch. The idea of becoming a father was one that haunted Alastor, and he couldn’t say there was any aspect of it that he looked forward to or wanted. But they agreed it was something that they needed, and on Greylyn’s part, at least, something that they wanted. Alastor and Greylyn decided to retreat out of the reach of their parents, and bought a house in northern Scotland where they settled for the time being. In September 1962, Kieren Rhiseart Moody was born, and in August 1963, Saoirse Catriona Moody followed.

Alastor’s parents called for the new family to return home to Aberdeen and rejoin the legacy with the two newest Moody children. But Alastor refused. Sorcha and Kieren weren’t a responsibility to own up to or complete for the sake of his family. Sorcha and Kieren were reclaiming part of himself that he’d lost before, buried somewhere in the family obligations that had controlled each part of his life. But Kieren and Sorcha would grow up with a freedom that he never had, and the harsh responsibilities that had fallen upon him and Greylyn with their own families would never touch his children. He returned to Aberdeen briefly, and the fight that he had with Callum was enough for Alastor to promise that they would only return to Aberdeen for Callum’s funeral. Alastor returned to the home in Scotland with Greylyn and the children, and embraced his life there.

Alastor’s life seemed to be settled into one of peaceful mediocrity until the death of Callum Moody just before Alastor’s twentieth birthday. Alastor came back from Callum’s funeral a changed man. He and Greylyn agreed that it was time for them to resume the lives and careers they’d always planned on pursuing. Two days later, Alastor’s bags were packed, and he moved to England while he completed his Auror training, while Greylyn resumed her career as a language analyst in Scotland. Their lives– in the public eye, at least– would end their association there, and Alastor refused to acknowledge Greylyn’s existence to anyone after that point. For all intensive purposes, Greylyn Moody died the same day his father did. He moved his wedding ring to his right finger, and he set out into the world once again.

The England he returned to was not one that Alastor had ever thought would exist. Scotland had been much more subdued about the beginnings of a war, but Alastor entered London and found that the careful peace that had only ever been broken by shouting matches with his father was completely gone now. Suddenly tensions were building, and things like blood purity truly seemed to matter. Alastor’s return into many of his old social circles after his three years of voluntary exile found him just as quickly tossed out again, as he came to terms with the fact that he was a blood traitor, without a single doubt in his mind. It was difficult for Alastor to fathom, that the friends that had welcomed him back with open arms after three years with no word from him would turn their backs on him for something as simple as a clash of beliefs on what should be a simple issue. The opinions of the purists and their opposition to his beliefs did little to deter him from his own, however; Alastor became much more of a loner than he’d been before. But he soon discovered that while the door had closed on his old friendships, a number of new options had arisen. He didn’t have to be a loner, not if he didn’t want to be. And Alastor found, much to his surprise, that he didn’t want to be. Weekends that he didn’t spend back at home with Greylyn, Sorcha, and Kieren were spent tentatively trying to make and solidify his new friendships.

Auror training was a whole new experience for Alastor. An incredibly skilled wizard, it was not hard for Alastor to quickly rise in the ranks of his fellow trainees, easily becoming the top of his class. But it didn’t take him long to realize that the Aurors could only do so much when it came to fighting the dark wizards that had started plaguing England, and the fact that he was limited frustrated him greatly. So when Albus Dumbledore came to him and told him about the Order of the Phoenix, an organization that would work outside the Ministry and the law to try and bring an end to the war, Alastor was one of the first members to join. By the time the war officially began, Alastor was a member of the Order, a position that he held with extreme pride. He returned to his training with new sense of purpose, and was also trained by Albus himself in more advanced defensive magic that he would in turn pass on to the new Order members. Alastor was a quick and natural study, and the time he had outside of Order and Auror training was spent training, and reading up on all types of dark magic to better understand what it was he would be up against.

Alastor was soon after promoted to a Junior Auror, and put under the mentorship of Senior Auror Mitchell Willard. Alastor and Willard had similar personalities, and after some warming up got along with each other rather well. Willard was by no means an exceptional Auror; he was older, worn from dealing with the war at the tail end a thirty year long career, and had no particular interest in what other people thought of him at all. But one good thing that could be said about him was that he genuinely cared for Alastor. Having worked with Alastor’s father Callum when he was still alive, Willard took Alastor under his wing as if he was his own son, and under his somewhat unconventional training, Alastor rose even more quickly through the ranks of Aurors. Willard also filled that space which had been left in the aftermath of Callum Moody’s death, and he and Alastor developed a close father-son bond that Alastor had never felt with his own father. Willard, after all, wasn’t a purist as Callum had been, and was able to connect with Alastor on a level that Callum never could.

Things were fairly calm in Alastor’s life for the following year, and it wasn’t until right before his twenty-second birthday that things were thrown into chaos again. Alastor and Willard were assigned to check out a lead on a potential Death Eater meeting place–nothing difficult, something they’d done a thousand times– and were ambushed. Alastor was seriously injured, and this was the first time that he was hit with an Unforgivable Curse, but Willard was hit with a cutting curse to the throat and died while Alastor desperately tried to get his mentor to hang on until the mediwizards arrived. By the time reinforcements and aid arrived, there were two bodies– the body of Mitchell Willard, and the body of the man who had killed him, shot down by Alastor as he’d tried to flee the scene. The head of the Aurors had offered Alastor his sincerest condolences and urged Alastor to take as much time off as he needed to grieve over the loss of his mentor. But Alastor was there the next morning, same as always, ready to work.

After having lost once again one of the few people in his life that he felt he could truly trust and turn to for advice and guidance, Alastor fell back even further into a reclusive and secretive life. The little progress he had made with a return to normalcy with Willard was destroyed with the loss of his mentor, and once again Alastor turned all of his attention towards work. He became obsessed with solving the riddle of the information that had led Willard and him into an ambush, and less than a month after Willard’s death, Alastor led a raid on a Death Eater safe house, found buried within the information that had led him to the ambush. It was a brutal conflict, and Alastor came through it missing an eye and completely out of sorts. But, three days after the raid, Alastor was named a Senior Auror, and took Willard’s place in the department at the age of twenty-two.

The news of Seren Moody’s death in February of the same year and the painful recovery from his injury brought Alastor back to Scotland. His superiors at the Auror office had been urging him to take some time off following Willard’s death and the completion of the operation related to his death, and Seren’s funeral provided the perfect segue into Alastor taking more time off. Alastor returned to Scotland, and agreed to remain at the insistence of Greylyn and his children. It was almost too easy to fall into the comfort that his little family brought him, but Alastor could never let his guard down. His paranoia had only grown since Willard’s death, and he insisted that none of them went by his last name or acknowledged any relation between them and him anymore. Moody carried the weight of fourteen generations of dark wizard catchers, and Alastor was shaping up to be the worst among them. He couldn’t risk anything happening to them. Greylyn had always been resistant of the idea, but when Alastor asked this time, she agreed without argument.

Alastor remained for several months in Scotland recovering, and the life of husband and father was one that he settled into temporarily as he rested in their Scottish home. Alastor found that he enjoyed the time with his family, but he knew that it couldn’t remain that way. He had work to get back to, and as much as he found he wanted to, he couldn’t stay. It was six months before Alastor returned to London, and finally took up his position as a Senior Auror.

The next few years passed by as a bit of a blur for Alastor, as he worked tirelessly in the war effort and at his job at the Ministry. He developed quite a reputation; a skilled Auror, he was responsible for putting a large number of Death Eaters in Azkaban even at the young age of twenty-three, but everyone knew that he worked alone, and there were a few rumors floating around the department that he was half-mad. Alastor ignored the rumors and the occasional jibes and worked in solitude. His private life and his choices were not up for discussion; no one knew anything about him, and he was content to keep it that way. It was safer that way, not just for him, but for Greylyn, Kieren, and Sorcha if he kept them out of the picture. His life in the eyes of others was rumor and piecing together a haphazard story based on the few things they could tell– he was a widower, and wore his wedding ring on his right hand instead of his left; he’d lost his eye in a duel against Voldemort himself; he’d been hit with the Cruciatus curse so many times that it had driven him insane. The stories got more and more absurd in his opinion, but he let them continue. There was no point in correcting them, and why would he want to? The mystery suited him, and what did it matter what people said?

The beginning of school terrified Alastor, as Sorcha and Kieren left the safety of their Scottish home and attended their mother’s alma mater, Durmstrang. He was deeply paranoid and agitated by the separation, and he and Greylyn relayed any scrap of information that they got from their children to each other. Summers and holidays were spent with Alastor sneaking back to their Scottish home every evening to make sure that his family were alright, safe, and happy. He wanted to be a more present part of his children’s lives than his own parents had been, and more importantly, perhaps, he wanted to be sure that they grew up believing in equality and fairness rather than the preachings of the radical few that would grow to become Death Eaters one day.

In May of 1978, Alastor Moody was named Head of the Auror Department by Minister Minchum. This was a moment of great pride in Alastor’s career, having coveted the position since his father had been named Head Auror towards the end of his career. Finally, he was in a position that would allow him to actually do something of use, and perhaps even help out the Order in their missions now that the Aurors were his. And while he’d never been one for roles of leadership, he had found during his training with the Order that while he didn’t like it, he was good at it, and being Head Auror gave him the freedom he needed to do his work for the Order.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Alastor Moody ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 34

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Slytherin

☛ TRAITS :

        Positives : clever / discerning / observant

        Negatives : paranoid / deceitful / distant

☛ OCCUPATION : Head Auror

C O N N E C T I O N S :

JOHN DAWLISH, KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT, MAHIRA SHAFIQ : close friends

RUFUS SCRIMGEOUR : coworker, can’t stand, agitated by

SIRIUS BLACK, LILY EVANS, EDITH PEASEGOOD : sees potential in, mentors

LUCIUS MALFOY, MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER, KATRINA BRANDMOOR : distrusts

ORPHEUS HAWKWORTH, CORBAN YAXLEY : former school friends, estranged

FRANK LONGBOTTOM, ALICE BARNETT : former trainees, protective of

[veritas-roleplay]

REMUS LUPIN ♦︎ GRYFFINDOR ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: LUKE NEWBERRY ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

If Remus Lupin had been hoping for a normal childhood, he never got one. The son of Lyall Lupin, a pureblood wizard, and Hope Howell, a muggle, Remus was raised in a world tucked between two extremes. Magic was not something that was all that present in his little Welsh home; most of the time it was just him and his mother, and so Remus grew up more familiar with the muggle world than the magical one. Lyall spent most of his time away in London, serving as the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He was a shrewd man, a calculating man, and one that held strong opinions about the work he was doing. He was mostly focused in the Beast Division, the area that he worked in for twenty long years before he climbed his way up to the top. When Remus was three years old, he and his mother moved to London to better accommodate Lyall’s career and the family’s integration into wizarding society. It was important for Remus to understand and become part of the wizarding world; even at such a young age, he was already showing signs of magic.

February 16th, 1965. A full moon rises over their London home. Remus was curled up in his bed, exhausted after a long day of enjoying the winter weather. His parents were still downstairs, and he could hear them talking quietly as he slowly drifted off to sleep. The rattling outside his window meant little to him, and he assumed it was just the tree outside. He wasn’t afraid of monsters. Remus wiggled himself more securely into his bed and tried to make himself sleep. He didn’t get the chance; the sound of his window opening made him turn, and before he knew it, there was a man in his room. He opened his mouth to shout for his father, but he didn’t get the chance, not before he was being slammed backwards and pinned to his mattress. The hand on his mouth shifted, and the man convulsed. Claws dug into Remus’ face, and the scream that had been building in his chest turned into a shriek.

It was sudden and painful. Remus was dragged out of bed by a powerful set of jaws clamping down on his shoulder. He screamed, and his hands scrabbled desperately as he tried to free himself. He was jerked back and forth, the werewolf’s jaws only holding on tighter as he tried to break free. Claws raked his body, teeth tore at his shoulder, and Remus’ cries seemed to rattle the house around him. Lyall sprinted up the stairs, and managed to cast enough curses at the werewolf to make it release Remus, and the beast fled the way the man had entered. Lyall didn’t get a chance to see if it had lived or died jumping out the window; he ran to his son’s side. Lyall and Hope rushed Remus to St. Mungo’s, and the news they’d dreaded was confirmed– their son had been attacked by a werewolf. He was exactly the thing that his parents feared.

Remus spent two weeks in the hospital, but as the next full moon loomed closer and closer, Remus was forced to be discharged from St. Mungo’s. He returned home, roughly patched up and still healing from his attack. The Lupin family didn’t know what to do. The only thing Lyall truly knew and believed about werewolves was that they were monsters that deserved to be put down. But this was his son. And he didn’t know how to reconcile with that. March 17th, 1965 finally arrived, however, and the Lupins decided it would be best to keep Remus away from anyone he could hurt. They secured him in the basement of their home and warded the space. Remus watched the door close behind him, and after that, he remembered nothing.

It became a regular pattern in the Lupin house after that. Each month, they would lock their son up. He tore himself apart every full moon, and in the morning, his mother would patch him up. His father started to research, and Remus had every potential cure shoved in his face by a desperate Lyall Lupin. But there was no cure, and there was nothing that would make things easier for Remus. Eventually, his father gave up, and the family resigned themselves to the horrifying fate they’d been given.

But things were changed by a knock on their door, just after Remus’ eleventh birthday. Albus Dumbledore arrived on the steps of their London home, and offered them a chance Remus never thought he’d get– enroll at Hogwarts. At first, his parents were strongly against it, but Dumbledore promised that Remus would be able to transform at school safely. It was that piece of information that finally made them agree; taking care of Remus after his transformations was too much of a strain on the little family. Not having to deal with him for part of the year would be a blessing, and so, come September, Remus boarded the Hogwarts Express and began the next chapter of his life.

Things were difficult at Hogwarts, but Remus was eager to learn all that he could. On full moons, he would diligently make his way to the Shrieking Shack–thus named for the sounds of his howls of pain each month, an urban legend of his own creation and Dumbledore’s crafty encouragement– before he was escorted back up to the castle to the infirmary. He blamed his injuries on all sorts of things, and his ‘illnesses’ on various fake conditions. Anything but the truth. His close-knit group of friends was his best source of comfort and strength, but telling them wasn’t something he was willing to risk. He knew how people viewed his condition, and he couldn’t stand the thought of telling them and having them turn their backs on him.

But when he was finally forced to tell them during his second year, he found his fears were as far from the truth as they could get. The Marauders accepted him without a second of hesitation, and it solidified the brotherhood he’d become part of among them. The first transformation after he told them, he found them waiting for him by the Whomping Willow, blankets and a thermos of tea in hand. They brought him to the infirmary, and remained there with him until Madame Pomfrey forced them to go to class. It was the best he’d ever felt in his life; leaving each summer was a heartbreak to him, as it meant transforming for a few months without them.

Things fell into a regular pattern until fifth year, when the Marauders were finally successful in their attempts to become animagi. For the first time, Remus wasn’t alone on full moons. His injuries became less and less, as he was finally distracted from his self-mutilation by the presence of the others.

Everything was perfect until one full moon in early November of the same year. Remus wasn’t at all suspicious of Sirius’ spirits the day of the full, and didn’t think anything of going down to the Whomping Willow alone that night. The boys usually snuck down later; they would be there, once they got out of the castle. He heard someone on the steps, but the transformation was beginning. Remus only caught a glimpse of Severus Snape staring at him in horror from the doorway before he was gone. It was only Moony that remained. James told him later that Moony had chased Severus down the stairs and into the passageway leading back towards the Whomping Willow. It was Sirius’ plan, a prank, and when the others had discovered what the other boy had done, James had raced down to the Whomping Willow to stop what had already begun. He forced Severus out of the passageway, and transformed into a stag. He managed to stop Moony before he killed Severus, but it was at a price. The brotherhood of friends was shattered the moment the story had fallen from James’ lips. The rest of the boys came in to make sure that Remus was okay, and entertain Remus while he was still bed-bound, but Remus refused to have Sirius there. He screamed at him until the other boy left, and the others guiltily followed suit.

But the animosity between them couldn’t last forever, and eventually the Marauders joined back together again. Remus lived in constant fear that Severus would expose him, but the boys promised that they had taken care of that. Remus didn’t question it. The rest of his Hogwarts career felt like it had flown by, and before he knew it, Remus was graduating. Everything seemed possible in that moment, and Remus was ready to grab every little bit of what life had to offer him. But reality once again hit when Remus realized that he couldn’t hold a job like the others could with his condition. The fragile sense of freedom and invincibility he’d crafted for himself fell apart in one foul swoop, and Remus was forced to rely on his friends’ generosity to keep himself afloat.

The only thing he really could do was fight. Tensions had been rising for a long time with the war on its way, and Remus didn’t hesitate when Dumbledore offered to let him join the Order of the Phoenix. It was a mixed package, and Remus got the nagging suspicion that being a werewolf was a large factor in why he’d been recruited as Dumbledore sent him on mission after mission to various packs and groups of werewolves, but he didn’t care. He was doing something, and if it was making a difference, he wouldn’t hesitate to take the chance.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Remus Lupin ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : halfblood ( WEREWOLF )

☛ AGE : 19

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Gryffindor

☛ TRAITS :

        Positives : intelligent / loyal / skilled

        Negatives : bitter / self-conscious / vulnerable

☛ OCCUPATION : part-time employee at Madam Puddifoot’s

C O N N E C T I O N S :

JAMES POTTER, PETER PETTIGREW, SIRIUS BLACK : best friends, would do anything for

FENRIR GREYBACK : turned him into a werewolf, complicated

DAMOCLES BELBY, FRANK LONGBOTTOM : admires, intrigued by

LILY EVANS, EMMELINE VANCE, MARY MACDONALD : close friends

SEVERUS SNAPE : dislikes, cautious around

ALANA MULCIBER, BELLATRIX LESTRANGE, WALDEN MACNAIR, EVAN ROSIER : despises, argues with

[veritas-roleplay]

FABIAN PREWETT ♦︎ GRYFFINDOR ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: SAM HEUGHAN ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

When Mrs. Prewett found out she was pregnant for the second time, she, like many mothers, hoped only for a healthy child – whom she received, twice over. She didn’t expect to have twins, but when two baby boys were born in the early days of December, she was nonetheless thrilled. They were both red-haired and long-limbed, fat as lambs with rosy cheeks. She named one Gideon, and the other Fabian. If you asked her, it was apparent which one was which, although most other people would have to fib when they said they could absolutely tell the twins apart. But as the two grew older, their personalities becoming more definite, it was clear within a moment or two which one was Fabian.

Fabian was the one who was never sat still, the one who was climbing an apple tree to see how high he could do or walking along the stone wall that bordered their property, heedless of his mother’s urging to get down. He was the one who walked the other neighborhood kids home from the playground, and helped their elderly neighbors carry their groceries from the market, the first to offer a helping hand to his parents or his siblings or friends, to anyone who needed it. This unique combination of spontaneous and charitable meant Fabian was like a storm of a person, always in motion, difficult to take your eye from. With a striking older sister like Molly, and a twin brother, Fabian needed to stand out, and he certainly had no problem doing so. In fact, the only problem he ever really had with being noticed was simply being in one long place for someone to take notice of him in the first place.

When it came time to attend Hogwarts, no one was surprised when the brash boy was sorted into Gryffindor. Even if it hadn’t been a family trait, a boy with so much fire belonged in the house of red and gold. He wouldn’t call himself popular in retrospect, and certainly not at the time, but he made friends well enough. There were a handful of people who confused him with his brother for the first few months of his first year, but eventually he made a solid group of friends that he would carry with him for the rest of his school career. Of course, the two people he was closest two were undoubtedly his siblings, but he was able to branch out and make friends with students who were older, who were from different houses, and from different walks of life.

As a student, Fabian was surprisingly diligent, given his proclivity for bouncing off the walls. His favorite classes were Care of Magical Creatures and Charms, where there were live animals and things exploding (fortunately not in the same class…usually), but even those classes he loved, he had to put an effort in. Fabian was a diligent student in all his subjects, but the only one he didn’t have to try hard for was Potions. He was just talented in it, as someone who has a naturally beautiful singing voice or an eye for photography. Somehow even the most complex recipes unraveled for him like a skein of yarn. He was always happy to tutor his fellow students, usually for free (or perhaps for a box of Chocolate Frogs), though he had no idea that he would someday be a professional potioneer.

However, what quickly became clear was the tenuous state of their world. The balance between pureblood wizards, and those whose ancestry was mixed or entirely non-magical, was starting to fracture, and Fabian never understood it. He was a pureblood wizard himself, but he didn’t think less of anyone for having one or both parents be muggles. It never even occurred to him to think that way, his parents didn’t raise him that way and none of his friends followed that line of thought. It was so absurd to him that it took him awhile to realize just how serious the matter was. But the moment he did, Fabian knew that he wasn’t going to let this happen. He was going to do whatever it took to fight back, because he knew what was right and what wasn’t – for him, it was black and white. Persecuting others for their blood status, treating them like animals, including the blind killing, was wrong. It was as simple as that, and he wasn’t going to let an injustice like that stand.

His life now is not what he expected for himself. The talent for potions eventually became a career, as he first worked at a shop in Diagon Alley over the summer while still a student – only to find himself owning it when the shopkeep retired. And he certainly didn’t imagine himself as a member of a secret organization aimed at the heart of a deadly conflict. What Fabian wants most in the world is to travel, discovering new potions and how to make them, collecting unique ingredients, while perhaps establishing other shops in London and abroad. But he could never leave his brother, or his sister with his growing family, or the friends and the cause that he holds so dear, not while everything is so dangerous and turbulent. His first thought is to do everything he can to defeat the dark forces that are trying to tear their world, their beautiful patchwork world, apart. And after that? He hopes to be here to tell.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Fabian Prewett ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 25

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Gryffindor

☛ TRAITS :

     Positives : altruistic / dedicated / clever

     Negatives : impulsive / critical / stubborn

☛ OCCUPATION : potioneer 

C O N N E C T I O N S :

GIDEON PREWETT, MOLLY WEASLEY : siblings, close

MAFALDA HOPKIRK, EMMELINE VANCE, ALBERT PICCARY : close friends

DOMHALL WOOD : mentor, playful with

GILBERT GAMP, KALA PATIL, PRANAV SHAFIQ : curious about

TIMORA STUMP, SEVERUS SNAPE, GWENOG JONES : argues with

SIRIUS BLACK, MARGARET MCKINNON, GALEN OLLIVANDER : finds obnoxious

[veritas-roleplay]

BENVOLIO SLUGHORN ♦︎ SLYTHERIN ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: RIZ AHMED ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

I. THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

There’s an old saying that goes “a rich house makes its foolish inhabitants unwise.” Those were words that were always given back to Benvolio when he was young, growing up in Pakistan. A traditional family that wished to be more of a presence in a society where they really couldn’t afford to be one, the Slughorns were split over a line. On one side, Osiris and Yasra Slughorn– lower class, hardworking parents with little to show for their efforts– and on the other, Horace Slughorn– alone but wealthy and well-connected. Benvolio doesn’t care. He’s happy where he is. The streets of Pakistan are his home. He never wants to know another.

II. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

He doesn’t want to go. When talk of an English education comes up, he makes it clear he has no interest in going to school anywhere near his uncle, or the United Kingdom. He refuses. And when his parents insist, he refuses again. He doesn’t want it. He refuses to have it. And yet, when September first comes around at last, he’s loaded onto a train and sent away. Hogwarts is a misery. In the house of serpents, he was a lizard hiding its legs. He has friends on all sides, but it’s difficult to keep neutral in a time when everyone seemed eager to decide where they wanted to be. His uncle was the worst of them all, though not for picking sides. Rather, his lack of picking a side is what made him a model of behavior. Slug Club meetings were spent sulking in the corner, lonely, bored. But he learned. Slowly, silently, he learned to be charming. A fake smile became part of his wardrobe. He learned to shut his mouth and play along, and he learned that a fake laugh could sound real if he put enough of a smile behind it. He could learn from Horace, and he made himself. He graduated, and learned to finally breathe easily.

III. ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

A purpose. Ettiquite. A return to his home. Benvolio wants to go home, he truly does. He has no family left in Pakistan anymore. His country, his home, was in turmoil, and the Slughorns had been forced to relocate to England. He hates it. It’s too cold, too rainy, too foreign. No one speaks his language. No one understands. He makes himself settle, he makes himself blend in. He makes an effort to understand England– his new home, his new Pakistan– but clings to his roots. Undersecretary to a diplomat, his tie to Pakistan. It’s a good job, and he excels at it. He’s happy in it. It’s short-lived, and ends in 1971 when Pakistani-English congress is severed. He’s lost. He looks for purpose, and is given it by an offer he doesn’t feel like he can truly turn down from his parents, and a girl he’d never expected.

IV. TROLIUS AND CRESSIDA

He’d never imagined he’d love her. When he first saw Cressida Abbott, love was not something he’d been expecting, and certainly not marriage. He finds both. They’re happy, for a time. But it doesn’t last. They’re happy, and then they’re not, and then he’s packing up his things and moving back in with his parents. He blames Cressida. It seems like the most logical thing to do, so he blames her, and takes pleasure in it. He needs someone to be angry with. And somehow, it ends up being her.

V. MEASURE FOR MEASURE

The Order calls, and Benvolio responds, even if he’s not suited for it. Learning to fight was hard. Benvolio wasn’t suited for it, and his somewhat delicate and diplomatic nature was shaken as he was expected to learn to fight and defend himself, learn to hex and curse and be someone’s enemy. It scares him. He’s not ready for it. He doesn’t think he’s allowed to quit, though, so he remains. And eventually, it starts to fit. He starts to get good at it, and he starts to enjoy the conflict.

VI. LOVE’S LABOURS LOST

He needs to pass on the family name. That’s what his mother keeps telling him, and Benvolio ignores it for a while. Who cares? Stop making such a big deal out of it is what he tells his mother. Even his father comes out of his haze to tell him to get over himself and do it. So he looks. He tries. He faces it with disinterest. He’s not going to marry for love. Maybe for friendship, or toleration, but not for love. Arranged marriages never end in love, he knows that from experience. Still, he needs to try. It’s a big deal to his parents, so he looks and tries.

VII. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

A job. He needs a job, he needs something to do. He shapes his life. He tries his best. He looks and looks and looks and looks. He swallows his pride and asks his uncle. A smug smile and a helping hand are what he receives, and he ends up exactly where he should be. Not where he wants to be, but he’s got his job and his life and his debt to his uncle. It’ll have to do. He makes it work. Somehow– though he’s not sure on the how– he’ll make it through. He’ll endure. He’ll survive. He always has, and he’s certain that somehow, he always will.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ member of the Slughorn family ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 27

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Slytherin

☛ TRAITS :

           Positives : quick-thinking / charismatic / diplomatic

           Negatives : untrusting / over-analytical / pushy

☛ OCCUPATION : socialite

C O N N E C T I O N S :

MOIRA PEAKES, LUCIUS MALFOY, AUGUSTUS ROOKWOOD : school friends, distant

FLORA BORGIN : childhood friend, in talks of betrothal

CRESSIDA SLUGHORN : ex-wife, uncomfortable around

ELEANOR GREENGRASS, GWENOG JONES, ORPHEUS HAWKWORTH, EMMELINE VANCE : close friends

DOMHNALL WOOD, AMOS DIGGORY, ALICE BARNETT : school friends, fond of

WALDEN MACNAIR, ALANA MULCIBER, EVAN ROSIER : agitations, condescending towards

[veritas-roleplay]

FRANK LONGBOTTOM ♦︎ GRYFFINDOR ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: MICHAEL B JORDAN ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

Francis Henry Longbottom came into the world one month after his father left it. Uriah Longbottom fell ill soon after Augusta discovered she was pregnant, though his joy at his wife’s condition was undimmed. They discussed baby names over his hospital bed, and picked out colors for the nursery, and chose godparents. Augusta was not alone when she gave birth, and Frank did not lack for family – Uriah’s siblings, Algie and Enid, moved in with them soon after Frank was born to help Augusta raise the baby. The four of them were a close-knit, if not unorthodox, family, and Frank grew up surrounded by love and affection. Augusta doted on him to the point that she was, to many outside observers, overbearing, but for Frank, it was simply the way things were. And even once he realized that his mother hovered more than others did, he knew it came from a place of love. Perhaps Augusta was overprotective, but she was also supremely proud of his every accomplishment, and made him feel as though he could do anything he put his mind to.

Perhaps because he was so sheltered, Frank grew up to be a nervous, overcautious boy. It was not so much that he was shy, for he had a warm, caring personality that drew others to him – but he found himself often weighing his decisions so carefully that he sometimes didn’t make them at all. As a child, he both dreamed of and dreaded going to Hogwarts; he could no more imagine spending so much time away from his mother, and his aunt and uncle, than he could imagine having feathers. But he was also excited to learn. The magical world was daunting and confusing, but it was also exciting and fascinating. One thing he did not understand, and hoped Hogwarts could educate him on, was the predominance on Pureblood wizards. All he understood was there were some wizards like him, whose parents were both magical, and there were some who had only one wizarding parent, and some who had no wizarding parents at all. Being a Longbottom meant he was one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families, but none of the adults in his family really explained why that mattered. It wasn’t significant to them, so they didn’t really illuminate the issue for Frank. He knew that they were wealthy and well-respected, but he had a feeling it was more than that, at least to some people.

Arriving at Hogwarts, his first thought was to be amazed by the size of it. The glittering, starry ceiling of the Great Hall, the wide marble staircase leading to the upper floors, the vast grounds, made Frank feel overwhelmed. The nerves only strengthened when they filed into the Great Hall and were lined up to be Sorted. He had no idea what House the Hat was going to put him in, but out of the four of them, the last one he expected was Gryffindor. Well, that’s not true – really, the last one he expected was Slytherin, not because of their proclivity for Dark wizards, but because he had never considered himself particularly cunning or ambitious. But neither did he think he was very brave, yet the Hat apparently disagreed. For when it was placed on his head, it called out, “Gryffindor!” He tottered off to the sea of crimson and gold on shaky legs, too stunned to soak in the applause and cheers from the table.

Frank’s studies were married principally by the fact that he has a devil of a time staying organized. He lost track of time and forgot when assignments were due, he lost track of finished essays and homework almost as soon as they were completed, and he was forever losing track of his textbooks. Some teachers were understanding, some were frustrated, and some merely sighed and told him to do the assignment over again or do a Summoning Charm for his book. However, at the end of seven years of education, he had, against all odds, received the marks he needed for his dream job. Ever since he was a little boy, Frank had wanted to be an Auror. It began one night in Hogsmeade, when he and his family had been walking by a shop that had been destroyed by Dark Wizards, due to the shopkeeper being a Muggle-born. He had seen an Auror kneel by the weeping shopkeeper, placing his cloak around her shoulders and putting his hand on her arm. The look she gave him, of mingled relief and comfort, was one that Frank knew he wanted to inspire in others someday.

From childhood through his Auror training, Frank never had a problem making friends. He’s the type of person who always looks out for others, from simple things like holding a door open or lending them a few Galleons so they could buy something to eat the Three Broomsticks, to inviting them to stay at his house over the summer when they had nowhere else to go or allowing fellow Aurors in training to practice jinxes and defensive maneuvers on him to get it right. Of course, in making friends within the Auror program, Frank had no idea how drastically and wonderfully his life was about to change. Alice Barnett came into his life at first as a friend, but it soon became clear – to him at least – that she was meant to be more for him. He suspects that he fell in love before she did, though he has never shared this with her. For what does it matter? What matters is that they fell in love with each other, comfortably and surely, like a river carving its bed into the earth. What matters is that, most luckily, she said yes when he proposed. Frank is, frankly, still shocked about this, his good luck occasionally startling him like a tap on the shoulder.

His love for Alice, his relationship with his family, and his close friendships are what sustains Frank through troubling times. Despite his pureblood family tree, Frank has never once entertained such foolish, destructive notions as blood purity – the understanding of the subject that he’d sought as a child had become horror at the world that was unfolding in front of him. It made all too much sense why Augusta and his family never elaborated on the issue. It was because it made them sick to think that Wizards who shared the same wealth and privileges they had, wasting it on demoralizing and hurting other people. Frank finds that it turns his stomach, too, especially the idea that people are actually losing their homes, their businesses, and even their lives for such twisted ideals. As an Auror and an Order member, he is in the thick of these atrocities every day, and repeated exposure does not make it any easier. If anything, it makes it all the worse. He witnesses so much death and destruction because of this foolish war.

Frank can’t deny that he is scared – he feels a frisson of fear every time he watches Alice leave for work or for a mission, each time he does so himself. He is afraid when he does not hear from his family for a few days, despite writing to them. But he tells himself that to give into the fear is to let those who benefit from it win, and he will not do that. And he could not live with himself if he let the war go on without him, knowing that he has the skills and resources to help. Fear is not something anyone can escape these days, it seems. But Frank is determined to do everything he can to keep his loved ones safe, and offer succor to those in need. Perhaps his part is only a small effort in the resistance, but Frank believes every effort makes a difference. They will win this fight someday, he is sure. The hope – for a better future, for a future with Alice – is means the most in times like this.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Frank Longbottom ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 24

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Gryffindor

☛ TRAITS :

    Positives : caring / considerate / resilient

    Negatives : nervous / disorganized / overcautious 

☛ OCCUPATION : Auror

C O N N E C T I O N S :

ALICE BARNETT : fiancée, would do anything to protect

JAMES POTTER, LILY EVANS, CLARA MACMILLAN : mentors, protective towards

EDGAR BONES, ALASTOR MOODY, MAHIRA SHAFIQ : close friends

MEAGHAN MCCORMACK, HERCULES MCKINNON, MIRAPHORA MINA : enjoys antagonizing

RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE, BELLATRIX LESTRANGE, ALINA PARKINSON : feels threatened by

ALBERT PICCARY, OTTO BAGMAN, OCTAVIA ROWLE : drinking buddies

[veritas-roleplay]

ALICE BARNETT ♦︎ HUFFLEPUFF ALUMNA ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: MINA EL HAMMANI ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

I. ORIGIN STORY

She is born under both an invisibility cloak and a spotlight. An only child and heir to another world, she is not shunned, but picked apart. She is different, but does not understand why. She is loved, but does not question why. Her parents are kind yet silent. They do not explain what is and is not wrong with her. They do not explain anything except that she is going to do great things.

II. HUFFLEPUFF HIJABI

She is always expected to go, but it doesn’t make the departure any less exciting. Excited little girl hopping onto a train. Hat above her head, naming her Hufflepuff. She descends into the sea of yellow, and makes herself proud of that name. She is everything they are supposed to be, yet still, she stands out. Still, there’s something ever so slightly off about her. But she makes friends, she falls in love, she makes mistakes. She is steadfast, and it makes all the difference as she gets older and finds the world is not as perfect as she’d once thought it. She is not as off as she’d once thought herself.

III. AUROR AFLOAT

She has the grades, she has the discipline. She doesn’t understand why the road ahead is so hard, but she struggles. She works and studies and does her best, but the amount of effort it takes makes her nervous. But he makes it easier. With a mentor to light her path and guide her way, it becomes something she is decent at, then good at, then excels at. She has found her calling. She has found friends. She has found ( though she has yet to know it ) the love of her life.

IV. ORDER UP

War. She knows it’s coming– it’s already arrived by the time she stepped foot outside of Hogwarts– but she doesn’t expect it to come for her so soon. Order of the Phoenix is what they call it, and she jumps for the chance. Side-by-side with her friends and allies, she knows she can do it. She knows in her heart that they will win. But she struggles. It’s hard not to struggle, when her life clashes in so many different places. She makes compromises, and it is encouraged. For the greater good, she is told. It’s all for the greater good.

V. BESOTTED BARNETT

Somehow, she finds him. Somehow, they wind up as friends, then partners, then before she knows it, she loves him. Her family does not, but she doesn’t care. She pays it no mind. He is hers and she is his, and that is all that matters in the moment. That is all that matters in that and every moment that follows.

VI. CASUAL CASUALTIES

She doesn’t expect it to make her feel as it does. War is not pretty. War is not free. War is not good for anything except making things worse. She finds the world more hateful, she finds the people in it more sinister. She loses faith. She holds onto Frank. She holds onto the Order, she holds onto her religion. She feels the pain of it all and takes the leap. This is not the world she wants to share with her husband. This is not the world she wants for her friends. This is not the world she wants to raise a child in. She is not unstoppable– she is limited, and so is what she can do– but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try. A thin line between compassion and aggression is one that she learns to toe, and she learns that there is more than one way to fight a war, and there is more than one way to stop it. She learns, and she works, and she fights. And she knows, in her heart, that there is nothing more she can do– she is enough as she is. And that, in itself, makes her unstoppable.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Alice Longbottom ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 23

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Hufflepuff

☛ TRAITS :

     Positives : steadfast / resilient / loyal

     Negatives : stubborn / obsessive / fussy

☛ OCCUPATION : Auror

C O N N E C T I O N S :

FRANK LONGBOTTOM : fiancé, protective of

JAMES POTTER, LILY EVANS, CLARA MACMILLAN : mentors, like family

EDGAR BONES, ALASTOR MOODY, HESTIA JONES : close friends

RABASTAN LESTRANGE, RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE : former friends, rivalrous 

MOLLY WEASLEY, SARAH BONES, DAVEY GUDGEON : exchange tips

ROSMERTA MALLOY : gets information from her, ally

[veritas-roleplay]

JAMES POTTER ♦︎ GRYFFINDOR ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER OF THE PHOENIX ♦︎ FC: ALBERTO ROSENDE ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

I. THE BENJAMIN BUTTON

By all accounts, James was born to people that should’ve been great-grandparents. Euphemia was far too old to have children, and it was a surprise to everyone when she gave birth to her son. A little and somewhat sickly boy, he grew, and grew stronger. He looked out of place, and people always asked what had happened to his parents to make it so his grandparents had to raise him. It was always met with a joking response. One thing James Potter never understood was how to be serious.

II. THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD

Eleven years old, and the Hogwarts Express carried him to a whole new life. A glorious life, really, and one that James was beyond excited to enter. Finally, to meet people his own age– he’d been a social boy in his childhood, but never in his life had he been so surrounded by people with less than a ten years’ age difference from him– and go to school was a wonder. He was quick to make friends, and eager to prove himself. Quick-witted little boy, not cruel but stupid, that didn’t know how to be mature. One thing James Potter never understood was how to keep his mouth shut.

III. THE WOLF, THE DOG, THE RAT, THE STAG

Having a werewolf in the family was a bit of a challenge, really. A challenge to solve, not one to accept. He took it in his stride, and they set out to change things. To discover, to learn, to help. He was eager to make it work, and happy to try. He didn’t always succeed, but when did he ever? One thing that James Potter never understood was how to back down from a challenge.

IV. THE WAKEUP CALL

Fifth year was the start of it. Being yelled at wasn’t new, but being yelled at by Lily Evans and seeing the harshness and cruelty that folly and impulsiveness brought on was a startling discovery, and one that changed him. He had to grow up. He had to be better, not just of himself but of Severus Snape. It was a standard he should have down by now, and the fact that in his own way, he didn’t, was beyond alarming. Time to grow up. He was silent for a week, processing and determining, before he pushed up his glasses and started trying to keep his mouth shut. One thing that James Potter never understood was how people could never change.

V. THE BROTHER

Sirius on his doorstep was the happiest and saddest day of his life. He was glad to have him, his brother, his friend, his life partner, with him, but he tried to hide it. It was selfish to be happy, it was selfish to feel pleasure at it, but he did. He supported and he cared for and he barely spent a moment not holding onto Sirius, but inside, he was smiling. One thing that James Potter never understood was that other people could love Sirius Black as much as he did.

VI. THE REWRITE

Graduation wasn’t how he expected it to be, and it hurt. One failed future, and James had to reimagine everything. He tried, he focused, he doubled down, and eventually, he figured it out. The decision to join the Order was an easier one, and he didn’t hesitate. The war was terrifying, and he was scared– scared for his friends, for his family, for his brothers, for Lily. He couldn’t protect everyone, but they were the four that he needed to get through this. One thing that James Potter would never understand was that he was allowed to come first when it came to survival.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ James Potter ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : pureblood

☛ AGE : 18

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Gryffindor

☛ TRAITS :

      Positives : passionate / protective / genuine

      Negatives : immature / absent-minded / reckless

☛ OCCUPATION : healer-in-training

C O N N E C T I O N S :

LILY EVANS : girlfriend, would do anything to protect, loves making her laugh

SIRIUS BLACK, PETER PETTIGREW, REMUS LUPIN : best friends

BERTRAM AUBREY, SEVERUS SNAPE : used to torment in school

BELLATRIX LESTRANGE, WILLIAM AVERY, ALANA MULCIBER : disgusted by

MARY MACDONALD, DEDALUS DIGGLE, EDITH PEASEGOOD : friends

MARGARET MCKINNON, MARLENE MCKINNON : childhood friends, trains with

[veritas-roleplay]

PETER PETTIGREW ♦︎ GRYFFINDOR ALUMNUS ♦︎ ORDER MEMBER ♦︎ FC: TOM HOLLAND ♦︎ TAKEN

B I O G R A P H Y :

Peter Pettigrew grew up in a house that was not particularly wealthy in the material sense – his father was an English teacher, and his mother worked at the front desk of a hotel in London – but was certainly rich in love. His parents doted on their only child, and they made sure he had everything he needed.  His mother knew that his father was a wizard, and so was well aware that the proclivity for magic may be passed on to her son. Both of them would have been happy with a healthy little boy, although Mr. Pettigrew couldn’t help but nurse the hope that his son would also be a wizard. His hopes were proven fruitful when Peter was four years old, and he turned a spoonful of medicine meant for strep throat into pudding. It was the first remarkable thing Peter ever did, after a babyhood of never refusing his bottle and sleeping through the night after only a few weeks; and in Peter’s opinion, it’s the last remarkable thing he’s ever done.

Even growing up with magical powers, Peter didn’t have a particularly exciting childhood. He was a good student, but not an exceptional one. He was not a genius, or an athlete, or a musical prodigy. He was a sweet, pleasant boy, but he wasn’t especially charismatic. He made friends well enough, but he was never the leader of the group, never someone people gravitated toward. He envied that trait in others, and always found himself drawn to it, wishing he knew how to replicate it somehow. All his life, Peter adored the handsome, magnetic boys who graciously allowed him to be a part of their inner circle, and he followed them around like a loyal bodyguard, happy to do whatever it took to remain close to them.

So perhaps his friendship with the Marauders isn’t so much of a surprise. At eleven years old, Peter found himself on the Hogwarts Express, searching for a compartment. He opened the door to find one already occupied by three other boys, and though he intended on ducking out shyly, they invited him to stay. Within moments, he was utterly dazzled. He had never before met a group of boys quite like this – even more so than any of his former school friends, they exuded that indefinable something which he, who found himself to be painfully ordinary, had always envied. And, miraculously, not only did they seem willing to let him hang out with them, they even seemed to like him. He was especially enamored with Sirius Black, whose dark good looks and winning smile made his knees feel strangely spongey.

As he had always done, Peter followed Sirius, James Potter and Remus Lupin through seven years of school – but this time, he wasn’t trailing behind them like a puppy – this time, he was a part of it all, he was included. It was the first time in his life that he was part of the action, albeit one whose main contribution was laughing and cheering when Sirius or James pantsed Severus Snape or got in a scrap. He loved the fact that everyone seemed to stop and stare when he and his friends entered a room, although of course he knew they weren’t looking at him. He almost felt like a celebrity. He was a part of the most popular clique in school, even if he was its most unlikely, most invisible member.

He knew nobody really understood why the other three went around with him, and it was just as much a mystery to  Peter as it was to anyone else. He wasn’t cool or handsome like they were, he wasn’t smart or charming like they were. It was like he was their kid brother that they felt sorry for, or that Mum made them include. They never made him feel that way, never made him feel with any action or word. But it was Peter’s own puzzlement that kept him wondering what they saw in him. A part of him expected to be left out once they graduated, while the rest of them went on to do great things. But even nearly two years on, they are as close as ever, and Peter frankly can’t believe his dumb luck.

Peter’s blood status wasn’t often called into question, perhaps because everyone knew that, if they wanted to get to him, they would have to go through his friends first. But it was clear to him, even from his first year, that there was a difference in the community between those who were born to a wizard and a witch, like James and Sirius; between people like him and Remus, who had a wizard parent and a Muggle parent; and those who came from the Muggle world entirely. Perhaps because he had been raised in both, it never mattered to him and he didn’t fully grasp how deeply some people considered these divides to be. Frankly, he felt like blood status made the least impact of all the factors that made up a wizard – he knew plenty of wizards with Muggle parents who were far more talented than he was, and then there was Peter himself, with a Wizard parent and a none too impressive amount of skill.

So when a war broke out centering around the issue of blood status, of pureblood against those they considered unfit to practice magic, Peter felt like the rug had been pulled out from under his feet, like someone had switched on his bedroom light in the middle of the night and revealed that there were, in fact, monsters lurking in the dark. He knew immediately that there was no way his friends would, as Peter himself would if he could, keep out of the fight and wait for it to pass them by. Peter, never a courageous boy, found himself in the thick of the defense movement that was fighting back against the Death Eaters (which, in and of itself, seemed to be a very good reason to keep yourself out of the fighting – an enemy with ‘Death’ right in the name was terrifying enough). The boy who longed for charisma, to be the type of boy people flocked to and followed, had never pictured himself a fighter, and yet here he was.

If you asked Peter, he would say that of course he is on the side of what is right. He is a member of the Order of Phoenix, like his friends are. Peter would follow them to the ends of the earth, a part of him still desperate to keep his place, as if friendship is a promotion that one has to earn. But he can’t help but feel utterly terrified and completely ill prepared. Peter is not a fighter, he is not brave or strong like his friends are. But he feels as though he is painted into a corner. His first desire, his true desire, is to hide and wait for this conflict to pass him by – but his greatest fear is losing his friends. So it seems as though he’s at the forefront of this fight, whether he likes it or not.

D E T A I L S :

☛ CANON INFORMATION : [ Peter Pettigrew ]

☛ AFFILIATION : Order of the Phoenix

☛ BLOOD STATUS : halfblood

☛ AGE : 19

☛ FORMER HOUSE : Gryffindor

☛ TRAITS :

  Positives : resourceful / determined / dedicated

  Negatives : jealous / self-doubting / selfish

☛ OCCUPATION : Flourish and Blotts employee

C O N N E C T I O N S :

JAMES POTTER, SIRIUS BLACK, REMUS LUPIN : best friends, insecure about

FLORENCE FORTESCUE : mentor

STURGIS PODMORE, LILY EVANS, MARGARET MCKINNON : train together, friends

ALASTOR MOODY, ROSALYN BURKE, BARTY CROUCH JR. : intimidated by

EVAN ROSIER, CHRISTINE HITCHIN, FLORA BORGIN : curious about, wants to get to know better

BERTRAM AUBREY, SEVERUS SNAPE : school rivals, nervous around