THE BASICSName: Daphne Bennett
Former Character's Name (if you had one): Isabelle Atkinson
Secret Phrase: Secret phrase correct - ECV.
CHARACTER DETAILSHouse Request: None; sort at will! Daphne would be happy pretty much anywhere, I think.
Year: 2nd, 3rd
Bloodline: Muggleborn
Magical Strength: Divination
Magical Weakness: Conjuring/Summoning
Biography:Some children pretended not to hear their parents, purposefully ignored the calls in from the playground, tuned out their nagging siblings. Daphne Bennett was no different.
Except that she was. Daphne could choose what to hear and what not to hear, just like any other child, but instead of flipping a mental switch, she flipped a physical one. She was young when she discovered that her hearing aids turned off - four, maybe five? Daphne had flipped the switch by accident, and panicked. She was used to missing sounds sometimes, but this was different! She couldn't hear
anything! Frenzied, she reached up to ears and began pulling on anything her fingers could find. First it was her ear itself, then the rubber mold that fitted inside and around her ear and suddenly -
boom! She could hear again. Relief washed over her.
Once she realized she could control what and when she heard, Daphne began using it to her advantage. Mum calling her in from dinner, but she wasn’t done playing hopscotch?
Flick. Her older sister Eloise, whining at her to stop stealing her dolls?
Flick. Stupid news program on the television when she wanted to watch cartoons?
Flick. What a great discovery! Extra playtime, relief from lessons, a world of possibilities was open to Daphne at her whim.
For quite a while, no one noticed Daphne’s deceptions. She had learned to nod in the right places when her teacher was speaking, and had managed to pick up some lip-reading so she could answer questions if the teacher called on her. Daphne wasn’t as interested in what she could learn from books as her teachers would have liked. She preferred the things she could learn from the people around her, and she paid better attention to those things - facial expressions, body language, who associated with whom - when she turned her ears off. But her parents got on her if her grades suffered, and she hated being made to stay after for detention if she was caught daydreaming in class, so she made an effort to at least pass. She had been doing pretty well, scraping passing marks and taking in what she pleased, until one day Eloise saw her flip the switch and snitched to their parents.
Their mother was livid. “Daphne Marie, I cannot believe you! We paid good money for those hearing aids, young lady! How long has this been going on? Such rudeness. No wonder your grades aren’t better! Do your teachers know you’re doing this? No, I expect not. Oh, I’ll be having words with them, young lady, don’t you worry...” And on and on and on. Eloise listened with a smugly satisfied look on her face. Daphne wanted to slug her.
After Mum’s interminably long lecture and the meting out of Daphne’s punishment (no dessert for a month), Daddy took over. Daphne could see by her father’s eyes that he was disappointed, but there was something else there too. He sat down next to her and looked her square in the eye. She braced herself for another lecture, but his tone was soft. “Daphne, you have to understand why your mother is angry. You can’t do that to people. You can’t just turn off what you don’t want to hear.”
Daphne crossed her arms and stared at her father defiantly. “I can still hear people, long as I look at them,” she pouted. “I watch their mouths. I can see the words.”
Her father sighed, the rueful sigh of a man who had to explain very difficult concepts to a very young child. “I understand that, honey,” he said, putting a hand on her leg. “But reading lips won’t get you everywhere.” He went on to explain that Daphne’s hearing would diminish, slowly, as she got older, and by the time she was eighteen or nineteen or maybe even twenty if she was lucky, it would be almost completely gone. The hearing aids wouldn’t be able to help her then, so she had to be sure to listen to everything she could now, while there was time.
But Daphne’s young mind had picked up where her switch flicking had left off. She saw Daddy’s lips moving and carefully chose the words she wanted to take in. She nodded carefully in all the right places to show she understood, but her take-away from that discussion was vastly different from what her father had intended. If she was going to lose all her hearing anyway, she’d better get really good at reading lips! When Daddy was finished, she gave him a hug and sprinted off to her room - and made sure to switch off her hearing aids on the way. Time to start practicing.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONPlease include these sections if they are not addressed in your biography.Personality: Daphne is very stubborn and has very definite ideas about what she finds useful. She’s got an adventurous spirit and a bright personality, but her stubbornness often doesn’t win her any favor with her professors, parents, and peers. Sometimes she misses out on things she really wants to do, because she rejected the opportunity out of hand (usually because it’s something that wasn’t her idea); when she changes her mind later, she’s too stubborn to admit she made a mistake. “Bullheaded” is a good adjective for her.
Daphne’s very friendly (to mostly everyone except her older sister Eloise), and would prefer to spend her time socializing than doing homework. It’s not that Daphne’s not intelligent, but rather that she finds life lessons more pragmatic than those from a textbook - and also, she has a hard time following the professors even with her hearing aids on if the class is noisy or if the professor’s back is to her, so she prefers to avoid the whole situation. She does like Divination, mostly because it makes use of all of her senses.
Appearance: Daphne is average, maybe even a little tall for her age. She’s got a slender build, brown eyes, and shoulder-length blonde hair that’s usually somewhat disheveled-looking. Her hearing aids are usually on her ears; she always leaves them on her ears even if she’s flicked the switch off. You know, to give the illusion of paying attention.
SAMPLE ROLEPLAYOption II:“Oh, come now!"
Astrid Bixby’s voice carried down the corridor, the tall blonde girl not far behind. Her interviewee – or victim, depending on perspective – turned a corner and she frowned. They were always soelusive when she needed them. Sure, they would talk as if there was no tomorrow during class, but once she actually needed them to say something, they were nowhere to be found. Gryffindors.
Flustered, Astrid stopped in the middle of the corridor and stared, her parchment hanging limply from her hand. She was a good reporter, really, and she always did her best to make sure that everything she wrote was accurate. She glanced down to the quill, eyeing it with disdain. It wasn’t her fault if her quill misquoted. How was she supposed to know? It made for interesting articles, at least, and if she had misquoted the Head Boy last term as saying he had a love for stuffed animals, then that gave him personality. Astrid sighed.
A pout formed on her lips as she turned away, discouraged. The corridor was mercifully empty, though the doors to The Spellbound – the school newspaper – were ominously closed. Corbridge was a mercifully sweet editor, but Astrid was terrified of disappointing her all the same. She hadto come back with quotes.
Her eyes, blue, trailed her surroundings before choosing a new path, and she turned down a new corridor. A figure was ahead, and her eyes lit up, an impossibly rosy smile blossoming across her lips.
“Hey!” Astrid called, her voice light and singsong. She trotted to catch the person, her shoes clicking on the stone floor. “Wait up! It’s for the paper!” Her legs aided her admittedly poor running, and Astrid gasped as she came closer. “What do you think about serving frog legs at lunch? Some say it’s a delicacy, but others think it’s plain gross.”
Sample Roleplay Response:Daphne should be in class right now, but they weren’t learning about anything useful anyway. Probably just how to turn hedgehogs into pincushions or something. She would just be a few minutes late, and she probably wouldn’t be noticed; Daphne usually sat near the back of the class, where no one would notice if she wasn’t paying attention that day.
She liked the quiet in the halls. Daphne liked quiet in general. Too much noise meant that it was harder for her to hear, even with her hearing aids on, and it was so much work to strain to parse the important from the useless. Flick. Ears off. Silence. Peace. Daphne sat still for a moment on the cold floor and drank the quiet in, like a plant soaking up fresh rain.
Her tranquility was about to be disturbed, unfortunately. Daphne could just slightly feel the vibrations of someone’s heels click-clacking down the empty corridor. Shouldn’t everyone else be in class too? Who was this, running down the hallway at this hour?
A very tall, blonde girl was trotting down the hall, trying to catch someone who was obviously long gone. Daphne recognized her vaguely. Wasn’t she with the paper? She squinted, trying to make out what the girl was saying, not thinking to just switch her aids back on. “It’s for the paper!” The words registered in Daphne’s brain, but very slowly. Yep. Spellbound writer. End of the month. Deadlines.
The girl, looking harried, spoke to Daphne - or rather, the girl spoke and Daphne was the only one there to receive the words. She stared at the reporter for a minute, again focused on the way her mouth was moving, and she sighed in frustration. Why did people talk so fast? It would have been easier to switch her ears back on, but that would be giving up, and she’d have to learn to do this all the time anyway. One day, one day soon maybe, she wouldn’t be able to rely on that switch behind her ear anymore. She caught bits and pieces: “Think...frog...at lunch? Some... deli-..., but others... gross.”
Frogs at lunch? At a deli? That
was gross. She wasn’t entirely sure what the reporter had asked, but her options for remedying the situation were limited. She could ask the girl to repeat the question, or she could comment on the words she caught, but either way, she risked looking stupid, and Daphne Marie Bennett was most certainly not stupid. Or she could turn her dumb hearing aids back on, but that was quitting, and Daphne Marie Bennett was most certainly not a quitter.
Rather than admit defeat or risk embarrassment, Daphne gestured to her ears. For emphasis, she pulled out off the device on her left ear and held it up. “Not working,” she said simply, and shrugged dismissively. “Can’t really hear you. Sorry.”
There. Quick, semi-truthful, to the point. Maybe now the girl would leave and Daphne could enjoy her alone time. She only hoped the reporter didn’t write her question down.
