Application for Hogwarts School
→ CHARACTER INFORMATION.Name: Maureen Chambers
Birthday: April 21, 1936
Hometown: Liverpool, England
Bloodline: Halfblood
Magical Strength (pick one): Divination
Magical Weakness (pick one): Charms
Year (pick two): Fifth, Sixth
Biography: The letter came on time, as usual. Her grandmother hadn’t failed in their regular correspondence since as long as Maureen could remember. The letter carefully detailed the sights of New York and the old friend she had met with downtown. It smelled like freesia and the looping characters brought her some comfort. But Maureen could not shake the gut feeling that there was something else going on.
The matriarch had been poised but evasive in her correspondence. She gave detailed accounts of her travels but after years of reading her writing, the tone of the letters suddenly seemed off. And when asked about it she had expertly deflected the questions entirely. No one else in the family seemed to notice any difference in her behavior and the longer it went on the more she felt foolish for being the only one to think so. She had not seen her grandmother Perenelle in several months and the insecurity bubbled up in her chest before she could push it back down. It was possible she’d never been as fond of Maureen as the girl liked to imagine and she was only now old enough to know it.
The young witch set that thought aside as she carefully placed the letter in the box on her desk and quickly picked up another. It was from Loretta and the words shimmered pink and wavered on the paper from the charm she had taken to using on her letters. It was pretty but terribly difficult to read. From what she could make out, her friend had finally had some success with the hair growing potion she had been working on but now it seemed her hair wouldn’t stop growing and required further experimentation before she could try selling it.
Maureen sighed at that, knowing she’d be roped into her friend’s testing group after the bet she lost with her at the end of the last school year. It wasn’t even so much the testing itself which annoyed her, she didn't mind helping her friend, but rather the tiresome hike up towards Ravenclaw tower which did not appeal to her. Maybe she could convince her to conduct her beauty experiments closer to the lower level classrooms. Even better, she could try roping in a few other students willing to test some of the products out, as a favor.
In the last few months of the previous school year, Maureen had sold a few Remembralls and Auto-Answer Quills that she’d been accumulating from her older siblings as they left Hogwarts. While she’d already collected on the money, she didn’t think it was unreasonable to ask a favor of some of those students she’d helped – they had used the items at their own risk but they’d all done well in their classes as a result. Also, she would never actually report them to their professors but the threat that she might talk would be more than enough to convince at least a few to help her friend out.
Which reminded her, their other friend’s birthday was coming up and she had yet to buy her a present. Emilia didn’t care what she got so long as it was thoughtfully picked out. And with the remaining money she still carried from the small betting pool she ran during the last quidditch game of the year, she had just enough to get her something nice.
A pleasantly distracting thought which tugged on her consciousness. Maureen thought of herself as the kind of person that people should want to be friends with. She was loyal and selective and she didn’t understand those people who allow so many ‘friends’ into their inner circle. It sounded exhausting. She never surrounded herself with too many people at any given time and liked to keep her relationships to others firmly under her own control. She initiated friendships, not the other way around. Apart from Loretta, but the beautiful, dazzling Loretta was a living exception.
Maureen set aside the letters in their box and turned back to her packing for school. The room was cramped and musty but she had stayed for most of the summer in hopes that her grandmother might come home for a visit. After the war and her family’s home, among many, had been bombed out, they moved in with her grandparents just outside of Liverpool.
As she folded clothes and packed school books into the weathered trunk, her thoughts turned again to the recent school year. The sporadic events – from selling those items under the table to the betting pool – of the past year seemed closer and more related after a summer of reflection. She was almost sad that it was over; the minor dealings she’d been involved in were a risk but also a nice distraction from the monotony of the school year. Putting down the sweater she was unsuccessfully shoving into the nearly full trunk, Maureen glanced at the box of letters with the two most recent letters sitting on top of the stack. Taking only a few moments of deliberation, she abruptly made up her mind.
Maureen reached over to her desk, pulled out some spare parchment and a quill, and started to plan.
→ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.House Request: Hufflepuff, Slytherin
Personality: Maureen is usually ineffectual and prone to laziness but the recent tension surrounding her family has prompted her take on some new hobbies, however morally dubious they may be. Maureen doesn’t scheme and hustle for money or even really for notoriety – she’s looking for something she can control and distract herself with. It’s more than a little self-destructive. Since she isn’t half as smart as she pretends to be, it’s likely to blow up in her face sooner rather than later. She’s curious and selfish and claims she doesn’t like to get involved, but somehow always ends up getting involved. She is partial to the practice of Divination because of its allure and the prospect of knowing what’s going to happen before it happens. She is skilled in it but not exceptionally so, although she sometimes markets it as such when it suits her. Combined with her own intuition she can fake being a better diviner than she really is. Her favorite spell is Accio because she likes to have things brought to her and also she really is that lazy sometimes.
(I should clarify that, of course, no rare or special items would appear in or affect the story without permission from admin.)
Appearance: Maureen has plain features but an intense gaze. No matter where she is she tends to look bored or like she’s just about to fall asleep. She’s of average height and maybe a little underweight. She used to wear her lank hair short but now she isn’t growing it out so much as she just stopped cutting it.
→ SAMPLE ROLEPLAY.Option I:Maureen really needed to get somebody to this part of the deal for her. The trunk she was guiding down the dungeon’s hallway thumped loudly against the wall. Even with a levitation spell this was a little too hands on for her. Maureen groaned and gripped her wand tighter. The charm she was using was basic but then again charms were never her specialty. Too much memorization. She should have made those two grubby looking fourth years she’d just gotten the trunk from bring it to her directly. As it was, she was risking getting caught with its contents: a couple dozen pots of Self-Correcting Ink. Demand was high with the fourth years who were especially nervous about starting to prepare for their OWLs the next year and the upper year students who were burning out from their intense class schedules. Scholastic pressure made for very good business.
She had intended to take the small trunk straight back to her common room without delay, but with all the noise she was making she’d be lucky if she got half way there without getting stopped by a prefect with a suspiciously rattling chest. Seriously, she’d be lucky if her awful attempt at a levitation charm hadn’t already cracked half the ink pots. She might have to stash it somewhere along the way and come back for it at a later time. Absentmindedly, Maureen contemplated all the most exclusive hiding spots along the way which weren’t already full of something she was hoarding away, but her train of thought was cut short.
The faintest sound of someone’s voice further down the dark corridor drifted towards her. Maureen heaved in a breath of the dungeons stale air and waited for any sound, frantically looking about for a place to hide the trunk.
"Hello! Is Emma Birch here?"The person the voice echoing off the stone walls belonged to was decidedly young and almost certainly foolish.
“Hey, keep it down will you?” She said into the dim hallway ahead of her, her immediate fear of being caught slipping to the back of her mind once more.
Maureen, her clanking trunk still wobbling precariously in the air, stepped down the corridor and towards the voice. She quickly came upon a small, younger student, probably some first or second year, and sighed. Those younger students who didn’t have a common room down here usually hadn’t taken enough potions classes to become accustomed to its foreboding, dark passageways and rank smell. And based on the name she’d just mentioned she could guess why she was down there. It also wasn’t unusual among the younger students; they sit around telling ghost stories until they’d jump at the slightest bump in the night then dare each other to come down to the dungeons, a place unfamiliar to most of them.
The older witch took another look at the obviously shaken girl and could almost imagine the gleam in her eye as she saw the opportunity before her.
“You sure are a brave one for wandering around down here alone,” she said, lowering her wand to rest the trunk on the ground behind her. “Even I don’t like to come down here by myself. What's your name?”
“Tell you what,” She leaned over and give the girl a reassuring smile. “Why don’t you walk with me back out of the dungeons? That way neither of us has to walk alone.”
That way, if they got stopped by anyone she could just as easily pawn her off onto them and make off with her trunk. She wasn’t sure if it was more or less suspicious for her to be transporting a trunk around the castle with a baby first year trailing behind her but she intended to use it to her advantage, if possible. Besides, if she helped the girl she might be able to ask a favor of her later on.
→ ABOUT YOU.Please list any characters you have on the site (current and previous): Wisteria Po (I know I’ve had at least a few more, none which I remember RPing for very long)
How did you find us?: I’ve been here before! Although it’s been a while. I recently remembered this place and how much I liked it and realized that my writing was at its best when I wrote here. Plus I missed the HP.
