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Author Topic: Neddy Palmer!  (Read 726 times)

* Charles Neddy Palmer

    (30/04/2018 at 07:15)
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  • Recording Artist & Instrumentalist
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Application for Hogwarts School




→ CHARACTER INFORMATION.

Name: Charles Edward "Neddy" Palmer.

Birthday: 21 June, 1942.

Hometown: Hogsmeade, Scotland.

Bloodline: Pureblood.

Magical Strength (pick one): Charms.

Magical Weakness (pick one): Divination.

Year (pick two): 1st (preferred) or 2nd!

Biography:

"Every little breeze seems to whisper 'Louise.'
Birds in the trees seem to twitter 'Louise.'
Each little rose tells me it knows I love you."
My mum is a song.  She’s Louise, and no one could ever capture her essence as perfectly as Maurice Chevalier.  She’s like the light-hearted ping smile of getting something right.  She’s stumbly slow-dances with Dad when he isn’t out late working, and a raspy whisper and jumping on the bed while she lays there and laughs— rough and rickety with coughs.

If Mum weren’t a song so sweet, I think she’d be the sound of quickly shriveling roots.  Sometimes, her fingers feel like the last breaths of life in my palms, or a fading whisper against Dad’s lips.  Those are the worst days.  The days that words spring from my nails and scratch themselves against the doorways and notes on an old page.  (Five years ago, carving out the first sentences, and three years ago, the first lines.  One year ago, the first decent poem, and three months ago, the first complete song.)

In that notebook is where my family sounds best.  My mum is a melody on a 1929 record.  My dad is the off-key beating of pots and pans in the kitchen.  My sister is a harmony and underrated pages of similes.  And I am a note.  Incredibly plain, though masking restrained potential and uncertainty that borders mystery— or so I like to imagine.  Otherwise, I’m just the parchment that carries all the ink of my family tree.  Either is fine enough.



"Mimi, you funny little good for nothing Mimi
Mimi, you sunny little honey of a Mimi—"
My sister is... I suppose you could say she’s a song, because Mum named her for Maurice Chevalier’s 1932 "Mimi", but it’s only partly true.  Dad didn’t really get a say, but that’s fine because we all know it suits her.  ‘Funny little good-for-nothing Mimi.’  Maurice doesn’t have the most clever lyrics, but I always laugh at that line.  Mimi pouts, but takes pride in being a ‘sunny little honey’— even though she’s more grey and navy than sky-orange.

Mimi is my favourite accompaniment.  We stomp out rhythms on the carpet, and chant mum’s favorite poems to her when she cannot read them herself.  Dad comes home and Mimi kicks my foot under the dinner table, and I try not to look gloomy while we eat our mashed potatoes in silence.

I don’t care much for silence, which Mimi says is funny, because I hardly ever talk when I’m not at home.

I don’t have to worry about silence, though, most times, because when we get home from school, Dad is still gone at his boring job, and Mimi grins like sundown and makes great big noises with her shoes and lungs.  Mimi is good at sounds.  She makes the best crashing noises and shouts louder than I can, both shrill and growling, and she jumps between cushions with a springy boing that sounds like Mum’s laugh.  Her face turns blotchy and pink when she runs too fast, but I like the way she doesn’t mind at all, just smears back her sweaty bangs and jumps on my back.

And I like the way Mum smiles and watches us from the couch or the bed, and doesn’t mind when the chair falls over or I hum a bit too loudly.  I tell them that one day soon I’ll perform on big stages and television shows, with my shiny saxophone and like, five drums.  Mimi says she’ll be the dancer.  Mum smiles, but she doesn't say anything about it.  I guess she thinks she won’t be there to see it.

She will.



"Et appelez ça comme vous voulez, moi j' m'en fous
Tout c' que j' veux, c'est d' pas m'esquinter l' chose"
My dad is anything but music.  He’s a ball thrown against the side of the house, or a frustrated, squishy expression when Puddlemere United or Gryffindor lose a Quidditch Match.  Anyway, it’s not his place to be music— his large steps make me shove my drumsticks and notebook under the mattress, and I try to smile a little harder when he looks at me like he’s seeing the future.  He wants me to be something big, and I want that too, but we have different ideas about Big.  He thinks Big comes with sweat and a uniform, and gloves and a red leather ball and the cheers of so many people.  I think Big comes with sweat and a saxophone, and words and a drum and the cheers of so many people.

I guess we’re not so different, after all, but he doesn’t smile like Mum does when I hum and tap rhythms on the table.  And he doesn’t ever sing along.



"Elle n'avait pas un très bon caractère
Elle était jalouse et même autoritaire
Pourtant, j'en étais fous."
"I’m gonna be something, you know."

That’s all I say when she takes my notebook.  Mayfield looks at me like I’ve just picked my nose, and continues to flip through the pages.  Her eyes are the sort of brown that almost look red in the afternoon, and her hair is the color of flax.  She’s the kind of girl that I write lines about, all freckles and pouty pink.  But I don’t like her.  I hate her, sometimes.

She points a pretty finger at a spot on the page.  "What does this mean: Almond Breath?  'That you still suck up oxygen and hum through a wheeze is the greatest blessing, dear mother of the sky.'"  She scrunches up her nose and makes this ugly scoffing sound— it isn’t a very good look for her.  "Is this meant to be poetry?  That is so stupid."

I just shrug, and don’t move to take back the notebook, even though my ribs hurt from keeping quiet.  I don’t like the way her mouth moves around the words meant for Mum, or the way her fingers grip the pages, like she means to rip them.  I stay still, though, because I know she won’t ruin it.  She’s not a violent girl, just lonely, I suppose.  "I’m gonna be something," I say again, and I’m confident in it, even though she isn’t.

She sneers, and hands back the notebook.  "Well, buy me a pony when that happens, why don’t you?"  Her eyes shine like city lights seen from a mountaintop, and I put away the precise color of them in my memory.  Her teeth are like silver dollars, bright and cutting, but underneath the blinding reflections, she’s a rusting penny.  I figure she’d make a good song.

Just not that one.



"En le voyant, j'ai reçu un grand coup au cœur
Et depuis il est tout mon bonheur."
He grins like a trampled sunflower, torn up and unfazed and yellow-orange.  I smile back, and try to match that shade, but all I manage is a faded replica, dried up wheat rubbed between palms.  Somehow, his smile gets bigger and I begin to think that our colors are the same, anyway.  His hair has all sorts of colors in it, blonde and red and brown, and the way the strands blow in the wind reminds me of fire.

I like to think that I am the smoke.

He talks about girls like they’re flowers to be plucked or jewels to be thieved, and I nod eagerly because I like the way his voice sticks in my skull for hours after I go home.  We throw pebbles at houses, and he calls me his wing-man, which means I say good things about him to pretty girls, so they’ll want to hold his hand and walk with him by the railroad tracks.

It’s an easy job.  There are a lot of good things about him.

He doesn’t stay long.  He’s gone in a few months, with the clicking of train tracks and a frown that matches the scowls of other military families I’ve seen.  It’s the wrong color, and I hate that it’s the last I see of him.  After he’s gone, Mimi looks at me odd, and tells me to stop acting like that.  Mayfield taps her foot impatiently at the door, looking like she has something ugly to say.  At school, a few boys pull my hood down over my head, and kick at my heels and laugh.

Mum just frowns, like she sees something that I don’t, and that’s the worst part.



"Il faut quitter dès ce soir
Adieu, ma belle capitale
Adieu, non, au revoir!"
At the station, I push the hair from my forehead and hug Mimi again.  Her song is stuck in my head, and I hum that funny bit of it, but it’s forlorn like a goodbye.  She rolls her eyes and whistles a part of 'Chasin’ the Bird' by Charlie Parker— he’s my favorite jazz player.  Mimi’s gotten pretty good at whistling, but sometimes I wish she’d sing instead.  She’s got a voice like a blue Sunday morning or a shrieking sparrow, and she says I sound like the crunching of snow.

Dad looks at us like we’re embarrassing him— girls aren’t loud, and boys don’t hug.  I wipe my hands on my uniform and kick at a stain on the ground while he avoids the inevitable farewell for as long as possible.  The train is almost loaded and the staff is calling for last calls when he finally moves, and pats my shoulder with his big hand.  "Make me proud, little lion boy," he says, and pushes me toward the train.  I bob my head once and catch Mimi’s eye.

She’s grimacing.

I squish into a seat with a load of other first years, and try not to catch Dad’s eye out the window.  Most of my luggage is stored away, but my arms are wrapped around the oversized saxophone case on the floor.  Dad bought it for me when I promised I’d join Quidditch, in his honor.  He never made the professional teams like he always wanted, so he’s spent the past several months trying to train me, and talking about all the trophies I’ll earn for Gryffindor, and what a great Captain I’ll make one day.  I just nod, and Mum makes a grimacing face, but doesn’t say anything either.  I look at her like I’m suffocating, and she changes the subject for me.

I’m no lion.  Nor am I a sportsman.

As the train begins to huff and jolt, I finally turn my head, and see them out the window looking at me.  Mimi is waving, and he is smiling— not a proud smile, but a wistful one, like he’s imagining himself living through me again.  His best years.  I smile back, even though it’s hard, because I have a feeling he won’t be smiling when I send home my first letter.

Make me proud, little lion boy.

I don’t think he’ll be very impressed.


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

House Request: Hufflepuff or Slytherin please!

Personality: A follower and borderline pushover, but prepared to work and bend over backwards to rub shoulders with other musicians.  A critic— never satisfied with his own work or the words of others.  Dismisses nothing, forgets nothing.  Embarrassingly clingy, and prone to unhealthy attachments, for the aesthetic.  Personality like a confused butter knife.  Idolizes women, but doesn’t understand this seemingly universal obsession with kissing them.  Ew.  Outspoken about music, and almost nothing else.  Obsessed with implementing ill-fitting instruments into modern music— hence his saxophone and tambourines.  He thinks moods are days of the week-- he does his most intense discarding on Wednesdays, reserves Sundays for thinking sad and abstract things, and does his best work on Thursdays and Mondays.

Appearance: Pretty average in every way, with brownish wavy hair and limbs that are just a bit too long for his body.  His ears stick out a little, so he often grows his hair long on the sides to cover them.  He talks and walks in stanzas, like his whole life is a poem or a song in the making.


→ SAMPLE ROLEPLAY.
Please reply to one of the Sample Roleplays below.
OPTION TWO:

Perspective.  It was an odd word, and so easily forgotten or neglected by both creator and businessperson, in favor of (supposedly) more efficient inspirations or gains.  The artist put pen to paper and stared at the same speck in the sky, searching their mind for a revelation, and the politician looked nowhere but the ground.  Neddy wasn’t like that— or at least, he hoped he wasn’t.  He took odd and overgrown paths, but he got where he wanted, in the end.

He lay squished between the flowers and looked up at their undersides, where their stems met their petals.  Not many people looked at that part of the flower, but Neddy found it fascinating, the way the green shifted so suddenly to red, and yet it managed to appear natural even in its stark contrast and pointy shapes.  Neddy wanted his music to be like that.  He daydreamed of soft violas and angry drums, acoustic guitars and a blaring trumpet.  One day, he promised that eager thrum in his mind, he would play all of them, and people would call him The New Yardbird, and they wouldn’t pull his hood over his head and kick at his heels.

(One day, he promised, Dad would smile at him because he was Neddy, and not because he was the only son.)

There was a growing sound somewhere to the right, a chaotic crunching that Neddy thought complimented the elegance of the tiniest breeze in the leaves.  He didn’t move as it got louder and closer, simply allowing the sounds the melt together and create the greatest symphony of silence and dewy crackles.

“You blasted rat!  Where are you?”

He frowned.  Now that wasn’t right at all.  The inflection of the words should have been different, either entirely curvy or entirely flat, altogether slower, and perhaps with a few sarcastic stomps between the lines.  Neddy shifted slowly until he was upright, and was about to say something about it, when the owner of the crunching voice let out The Loudest Sneeze that Neddy had ever heard in his life!  By Merlin’s beard, it was louder than his Dad!

He couldn’t help but stare.

“That was a mighty sneeze,” he said, and ignored the boy's snotty (funny, that) attitude.  Perhaps, if he looked hard enough, he would figure out the older boy’s secret to such decibels of uncontrollable noise.  “Would you do it again?”


→ ABOUT YOU.

Please list any characters you have on the site (current and previous): Ronnie Beckham, Andromeda Crowley, et al.

How did you find us?: Google, somehow~

* Anneka Ivanova

    (30/04/2018 at 12:15)
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  • Hogwarts Headmistress
  • [Winner!] HSNet 30-Day Challenge
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Mr Palmer,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

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 Castle.


Sincerely,


Headmistress
and if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free
to those who ground me, take a message back from me
tell them how I am defying gravity

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