We are currently accepting new applications for Elsewhere!

Author Topic: Camilla Carstairs  (Read 828 times)

Camilla Carstairs

    (01/04/2018 at 09:44)
  • *
  • Ravenclaw '58
  • C11D16T10S11
    • View Profile

Application for Hogwarts School




→ CHARACTER INFORMATION.

Name: Camilla Emma Carstairs

Birthday: January 13, 1940

Hometown: London

Bloodline: Pureblood

Magical Strength (pick one): Divination

Magical Weakness (pick one): Transfiguration

Year (pick two): Third (preferably) or Second

Biography:
LIE Nº 1:
A Carstairs never lies

Bona fides.

Good faith, once the principle the whole Carstairs family had sworn to protect when the law firm
 Carstairs & Co was first created. A couple of centuries later however, a statement no one truly cared about. Skilled liars and ruthless hypocrites, with wealth in excess and thirst for more: defending the rich and guilty, bribing whoever was necessary, manipulating the evidences -- whatever it was necessary to win.

Breaking the law while publicly claiming that justice was all they cared about.

January 13, 1940. Camilla Emma Carstairs was born. Only (--official) daughter of Edward, the brilliant future of Carstairs & Co. Her mother, Alice Carstairs, once known as Alicia Aguilar while she still roamed the buzzing streets of Madrid, trading the ruins of a broken empire for the lies that glued that family together in order to prevent her family from having to return to Spain.



LIE Nº 2:
Your father is a good man

Ignorantia juris non excusat.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Most fathers told their children not to get into trouble or to brush their teeth before going to bed, Edward however, considered that there were more important lessons to teach to a three year old. And he was never around, nor was her mother -- but when he was, he lectured her about legal concepts she didn't not want to hear about, tales about his latest victories in the court instead of fairytales at night -- she was supposed to be the next great lawyer after all.

"Do not worry sweetheart, you can be a diplomat instead, even a politician perhaps".

It was in her blood, they said. Fervent liars in dazzling suits and dresses, expensive necklaces and outstanding fame.

Camilla however, she just wanted to play, explore, read tales about knights and fairies and maybe even build a tree house. And that was she did, with their help (--the maids and house elves, the only ones who were always around) all kinder than her father and warmer than her mom. They even helped her to build that tree house.

Still, in her sweet naivete she genuinely believed he was a good man. Because he always bought her a new dress whenever he came back home after a long trip, and most nights he remembered to give her a good night kiss, he even (--hardly ever) played with her and the toys he bought her.



LIE Nº 3:
Edward Carstairs was a good man

He wasn't, but Milla didn't know that. And even if he was rarely around, even if he only told her about legal terms she did not quite understand, even if he never tried that biscuits she baked for him when she was four... she still adored him.

After all, he was an outstanding liar and pretender, fooling a small girl into thinking that he was a decent father wan an easy thing to do.

December 20, 1945. Officially, it was said that Edward Carstairs had passed away in a tragic accident during a polo game in the French Riviera. The truth however, was that even years after his dead there was still an unsolved case with his name on it, a list of suspects but no real evidence -- vendetta, someone had claimed, some others said it was karma, that nothing good could happen after having helped so many guilty and wealthy men to avoid being punished for the crimes committed.



LIE Nº 4:
White lies do no harm

A few things changed after her father's death. The maids were still always around, so was her mother now -- after her husband's death the Spaniard was no longer as busy, only having to deal with that wicked family she did not quite understand each Saturday during lunch.

And her father was gone yes, but Milla was okay, life was okay: she was still overly eccentric, perhaps a consequence of all the unusual lessons the man had taught her during the first five years of her life, dangerously curious and overly blunt. Still naively happy, still genuinely clueless.

She was the expection. Unlike her family (--her uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents) she rarely lied, bordering a casual cruelty in the name of being honest. At the tender age of seven she claimed that she would tell no lies, because all her family did was lie, and they all looked so gloomy and wicked, even while wearing their dazzling dresses and suits, even when they attended the elegant family gatherings and drank their elegant wines. And Milla, Milla did not want to be like them.

It's such a shame, she used to be so delightful -- her family thought it was stupid, a side effect of growing up as an overly spoiled daddy's girl, but Camilla was determined to believe they were the stupid ones.

It's in your blood, darling -- but she was as stubborn as she was blunt, and no one could possibly change her mind.



TRUTH Nº 1:
It's in your bloodstream

March 14, 1949. Her mother had claimed that it had been for her own good, moving to Geneva, away from a family that only wanted to drag her to the wicked side, but among the streets and buildings of the swiss family the girl struggled to understand how was it good for her.

Many things interested her, and nothing satisfied her entirely.

Private tutors, expensive dresses and a permanent lingering smell of fancy perfume, secret night escapades to explore the city - nothing seemed to be thrilling enough, interesting enough. Her staggering curiosity knew no limits, only being almost satisfied with words. Among the instruments she had failed to play for more than a few months, among the shoes she no longer liked and dresses she no longer used there were books from the family's private collection stacked all over her room (--about divination methods, charms, breeds of birds, foreign cultures, other religions and exotic countries, about everything.)

October 20, 1952. Between the pages of one of them, a couple of unsent letters with the same name on it. Bianca Carstairs. None of the letters were finished, in both the sentence 'your father has passed away' clearly written on them.

"Mama, who is Bianca?"

(False explanations were provided, dismissive answers and quiet responses. But Camilla had always been a bright girl -- the brigtest among her cousins, her father had said-- and she knew.)

"O volvemos a Inglaterra, o se lo cuento a todos*." And she wasn't lying, she never lied. And perhaps she was no liar, but that raw cruelty was in her blood -- she was Edward's daughter, after all (apparently not the only one, however) and she was no saint.

(She may look innocent, but she knew how to leave her mark.)



* Or we go back to England, or I will tell everyone.


→ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.
Note: This section is optional, and is up to you to complete.

House Request: Maybe Ravenclaw, if you think she'd fit better in another one it's okay though.

Personality:
Camilla Carstairs is astoundingly eccentric and surprisingly blunt. Fleetingly interested in everything, although her curiosity never manages to remain for long: painting, poetry, ballet, horse-riding, gardening, cooking... she forgets about old hobbies and finds new ones at an overwhelming speed, finding more easy to remain interested in the theory than in the practice itself (--she knows by heart several receipts of a few Spanish dishes that she will never actually cook, and the first few compasses of one of Mozart's earliest compositions that she has never played at all.) A potentially brilliant mind overshadowed by her absolute lack of patience, her mother says.

Still determined not to lie, throughout the years her blunt honesty has grown to be combined by her tendency to never go straight to the point (she blames her mother's genes for it), usually coming as accidentally cruel as instead of saying that she doesn't like your dress, she'll instead enumerate the exact reasons why blue definitely doesn't suit you.

Alarmingly honest, staggeringly charming, stubbornly cruel, increasingly eccentric and brutally raw.

Appearance:
With a combination of her mother's dark hair and tanned complexion and her father's light eyes, the girl strikes an astounding resemblance to her half-sister -- although Camilla doesn't know that; lean and tall as well, not yet however as she' still rather short for her age. Back always straight, head held high as she tries not to look so fragile and delicate.

Openly vain, she can be usually spotted wearing the latest (and presumably rather expensive) fashion trends, taking pride into her appearance like any member of the Carstairs family. Especially the hair, the hair is capital letters followed by a hundred exclamations marks to stress its importance.


→ SAMPLE ROLEPLAY.

Option I:

The dungeons. A place eleven-year-old Evangeline had not yet travelled since her arrival at Hogwarts.

A place she really was just fine with not knowing; but it was too late. The dare had been accepted, even if it had been done in fear of being kicked out of Gryffindor, like the older girls had said she would because Gryffindors were supposed to be brave.

The air changed instantly when she hit the main corridor of the dungeons. The dampness was almost too much for her and she instinctively took a deep breath to avoid the sensation of being suffocated. There was also a sour burning smell which Evangeline assumed was from many, many Potions lessons.

Further and further she walked, her steps so slow and gentle they made no noise against the stone walls and floor. The feeling that she wasn't alone crept up her spine and raised the tiny hair on the back of her neck. Shivering, Evangeline wrapped her arms around herself. Suddenly, she missed the warmth and comfort of the Gryffindor common room. The fire was always going and it made her feel at ease.

Why had she let those girls talk her into this? She was only eleven, she didn't have to be brave. Surely the Headmistress would not kick her out of Hogwarts for not being brave.

If only she had these thoughts while being dared to search for the ghost of one Emma Birch, whom supposedly haunted the dungeons. It was not, Evangeline had learned, the place where the sixteen-year-old girl's life had ended but as she had been from the house with a snake as its mascot, it was the place her spirit had returned to. That common room was down here somewhere, she'd been told.

Something - the small blonde girl wasn't quite sure what - but something made her stop in her tracks suddenly. There was a low, dull thumping noise. Or maybe that was her heart beating so loudly she thought it was coming from outside her body.

"H-h-hello?" Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Remembering that she was supposed to be brave, Evangeline tried again.

"Hello! Is Emma Birch here?"

The sound of her own words bouncing back at her off the walls made her jump.



She had (accidentally) skipped lunch, a consequence of an unfortunate an also accidental nap between the library's shelves while she read a not so very interesting book about the applications of some potion she was not quite interested in. But the book's cover had been too pretty.

If she hadn't invested the majority of the previous night writing all four essays she had forgot to write before even if they had been assigned more than two weeks ago she would have not fallen asleep - she had tried this time, she had really tried to do her homework before waiting to the very last day, but she always found a way to get distracted by... literally anything, actually.

But well, she could not change the past. What she could do though, was to eat the apple she had found in her bag.

"Hello! Is Emma Birch here?"

"Um?" She hummed, taking a bite of the apple as she turned to face however was looking for that Emma Birch, eyes falling onto a Gryffindor girl before focusing on the apple again -- it was crunchy, she did not like crunchy apples. Furrowing, she discreetly (--barely) threw the apple to the floor, watching it as it rolled until it stopped a few inches away from the wall to her left.

Maybe some bug would eat it, because she was absolutely certain that there had to be more than one bug in the dungeons. She was learning to love this castle, the dungeons however, she was still secretly intimidated by them.

"I don't think so," Her stomach growled so slightly, and the girl immediately regretted getting rid of the apple, even if it of the crunchy type. As she glanced towards the fallen apple, she momentarily forgot about the previous conversation. “... what was her name again?” Emily? Emma? Or had it been one starting with an ‘a’?



→ ABOUT YOU.

Please list any characters you have  on the site (current and previous): Bianca Carstairs & Co

How did you find us?: Google

Aubrey Kedding

    (02/04/2018 at 02:34)
  • **
  • Adult
  • C16 D9 T13 S12
  • Donor
    • View Profile
Miss Carstairs,

Congratulations, your application to Hogwarts School has been accepted. Term begins 01 May, 2018. Currently, students have gathered at Camp Loki. Your admission is joint for both the school and Camp Loki, and we encourage you to spend your summer there. Should you choose, you may also visit our Elsewhere board via the Floo Network to visit or purchase school supplies. We look forward to seeing you at the School.


Regards,
Aubrey Kedding,
Gryffindor Head of House

GRYFFINDOR
blaze my own trails

Tags: