Hogwarts School: A Harry Potter RPG

Name: Annette Helen Saint Auxpris
Age: 24 (13 April 1949)
Birthplace: Allesley Park, Coventry, England
Education:
primary.
Cavendish School for Girls, London (5-11)

secondary.
Beauxbatons Academy, France (11-14)
Wadsworth Academy, Balkans (14-15)
Ecole d'Maisons-Laffitte, Paris (15-17)

medical.
The Endsworth-Laurie Institute (18-22)

Magical Levels: C10D12T10S8
(Increased levels due to her status as a Healer.)

Biography:
“What about your family?”
“I don’t like to talk about them.”
“And why is that?"
“I don’t like them very much. And they don’t like me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I know who I am.”

Everyone in my family has had an arranged marriage, and I’m not sure that any of them loved each other at all. From my earliest recollections, I can speak of my grandparents – and I am quite aware how miserably theirs failed, particularly given my grandmother’s inability to say more than yes, no, thank you, and goodbye. It became quite a pain when she was unable to iterate even a hello (she never quite mastered the concept). Imogen always smiled wryly when I questioned her about Catarina Devon’s fluency – it wasn’t until long after her death that I learned how effective her grasp on the language was. We had quite a laugh over it at her funeral, decidedly not the most appropriate place – but the Saint Auxpris daughters have never been much for appropriation.

Aunt Darcy always seemed to understand. She had an arranged marriage, too, though she was in India at the time, right before the war. Some of my favorite Christmastime memories are of Aunt Darcy’s curry and her stories of hot, dry days in the sub-continental desert. She simply could notstand Dorian when they first met, regaled us with tales of his pompous air, doing all the voices. She had the prettiest laugh. Somewhere along the line, they fell in love, Dorian and Darcy. They still are – you can tell when he takes her coat off, gently caressing her shoulders, or the look that crosses his face when she tells their story. I think they might have been the only two to love each other.

I’m not sure if my parents had an arranged marriage. It was never hinted at, per se, but it makes sense - if Darcy was forced to marry, and Andrew was forced to marry, then why wouldn’t Charlotte be forced to do the same? My father was an only child, so I have no brothers or sisters to compare him to, but Charlotte, my mother, wasn’t the sort to be an outlier. I assume their marriage was arranged without their opinion, and for what it was worth, they worked rather well together.

I don’t think they loved each other, though. Imogen spoke of, in hushed rooms when no one was around, how Charlotte loved everyone and everything, selflessly, perfectly, but Pieter… Pieter doesn’t love. Or didn’t love, until me. It was always an unspoken point of contention between Imogen and I, Imogen who failed to cooperate with Pieter and Pieter who adored his youngest daughter. She watched out for me, and I heeded her advice, but Pieter never saw Imogen in me, or me in Imogen. He was quite possibly the only one.

Pieter St. Auxpris is a strong man. Fearless, as it were, he is broad-shouldered with straight blonde hair and green eyes – my eyes. Or, rather, his eyes are also mine, as I am quite sure he had them before I did. We’re the only two – Imogen, Alethea, Charlotte all possessed the Alcott penchant for clear blue. I took after my father.

Alethea and I were born at the end of April, and our mother died two days later. We never spoke of it, and I don’t remember our first home in Coventry. I learned all of my history from Imogen; I learned most everything from Imogen: she was the single greatest mother figure in my life. It was always a point of contention between Alethea and I: she took after Katherine, our benevolent stepmother, but I wanted to be Imogen when I grew up. Forever sixteen and terribly pretty, her perfect complexion and broken smile haunting every picture ever taken of her, I wanted that. I wanted it badly.

My formative years were spent mimicking her walk, her smile, the lilt of her tone. I failed, naturally, and at more than only this. In contrast to Alethea, the exemplary student, I was passed from our private London school where the uniforms were woolen, the education standard, to Wadsworth Academy, to Beauxbatons, to Maisons-Laffite. There were different reasons each time, given by harried headmistresses and frustrated house mothers, until Pieter finally had the good sense to send me away.

Maisons-Laffitte would have been the perfect thing for me at fourteen. At fourteen and a half, or perhaps newly fifteen. But at fifteen and a half, my formative years had come to a close amidst the cacophony of cigarettes and late nights, fast car rides and the lindy hop. All the same, Paris restored me. It was a Catholic school, magical but terribly small. Mass was required twice a week, and I grew to love the silence that the Chuch provided. There were missionary excursions on the weekends and the holidays, and Pieter didn’t want me to return home – especially not then.

While London was full of white and tulle, lace and pearls for Imogen’s wedding, I was sent across the globe to Bolivia, Adelaide, St. Augustine, returning only in time to don the palest pink bridesmaid gown and escort my eldest sister, my role model, and everything that I aspired to be, down the aisle of her wedding. And perhaps it was the combination of these three, melding together like a lethal cocktail, that pushed me to see whose face Imogen addressed as she said her vows, a wickedly wry smile forming on her pink lips. Everything was pink for Imogen.

My graduation was unremarkable in my eyes. I wore a white dress with a simple cut, the thinnest strand of Charlotte’s pearls around my neck. There are boxes of photographs documenting the day, the red roses and the close-up portraits. I look happy in them, and I truly believe that I was happy. Alethea had graduated two weeks prior, radiant in a dusk-blue dress, her features clean and honest, Rome rising in the distance. She had been accepted to a graduate program there, and Pieter was sending her around southern Europe for the summer.

It was the last time the three of us stood together. The photographs depict us as I think we would have wanted to be seen: young, pretty, inescapable. Imogen’s dress was red, Alethea’s gray, mine white. Our smiles are identical, our faces interchangeable, and we were happy then. There's rarely room for stasis, however, and things soon changed upon Imogen's death.

We fractured, which was perhaps the one thing that we weren't supposed to do. Alethea returned to Rome, and Ellerie to London, and I escaped to America. There was nothing stabilizing about Imogen's death, though it did little to shake anything up, either. There was just absence, something missing, and while my sisters never spoke of it, we all felt the loss.

Enrolling in the Endsworth-Laurie Institute, a magical-medical institute in Boston, granted stability once more. Six, eight, nine months passed after Imogen's death before things began to fall back into place - but it didn't matter, because at the end of the day, they did. With a little too much coffee and never enough sleep, I interned at St. Mungos, took classes in Boston, and utilized my apparation license to the fullest extent. Two years passed and it paid off - even my father was impressed when I graduated from the same school I initially enrolled.

Time passed quickly - too quickly, for you spend so much of your life yearning to be older that once you are older, there doesn't seem to be much beyond it - but I began working at St. Mungos nevertheless. It was hard work, unfriendly at times, downright cruel at others. If I wasn't afraid of death before, I certainly am now - the finality of it cannot be grasped until you're covering up a child's body, walking away from a blood-splattered scene.

I don't talk to my family much anymore - not after Alethea's funeral three years ago. It feels as though my time is up and I'm quietly cheating death, for my role model is gone and my twin with her - all that remains is Ellerie, and she's hardly human at all. I spend my time in Boston more often than not - still in the same apartment that I once shared with Lynette, though we've moved things around a bit. I had twins - a boy and a girl - and Theo and Tilly claim my old bedroom with it's high walls and sun-warmed floors. It's better this way.

In talking with my mentor - one of the Chief Healers at St. Mungos - I described the restlessness now swelling in the pit of my stomach. Gavin has always been an understanding man - severe at times, don't get me wrong for he's scolded me more than my own father has - but understanding. Good. You can be good without being kind, I think, for one does not predicate the other. In discussing my restlessness, he suggested Salem Institute for a year - get away from the hospital, removed from the death and the trauma and the calamity that surrounds the trauma ward. It wears on you, you know. You can only bend so far without breaking.

I don't think this is forever, because I love the chaos, but it would be good for now. Sometimes I forget that I'm not dead, and it would be nice to be around the living for awhile.

Strengths & Weaknesses:
Enthusiasm
When Anne falls behind something, she falls behind it with all of her weight. Relentless in her pursuit, ruthless in her efforts, if Annette thinks that something is with her support she will do all in her power to show it. This makes her a dedicated scholar, a loyal friend, and a dedicated person.

It also means that she can have tunnel vision, or the ability to defocus on everything else while she is in pursuit of one particular goal. This can cause her to be blindsided at times, impulsive at others, and manifests itself as a weakness as often as it is a strength. This wouldn't be the first time that someone has called her 'ruthless'.

Insight
Anne's mother died giving birth to her and her sister, Alethea. As a result, Anne was raised by an odd medley of mother-figures, ranging from the au pair that her socially-inept father hired, to her elder sister, to the stepmother that eventually joined the family. Each of these figures had different perspectives and different beliefs that they spent varying amounts of time imposing on Anne (and Alethea), and while Anne found it stifling and obnoxious as a child, it has lent her a knack for seeing the big picture. This has contributed to making Anne a strong diagnostician and an adept healer, particularly in trauma situations.

Of course, it's also one of her greatest weaknesses as Anne tends to over think the small things. From ordering a sandwich at the deli to considering possible courses of treatment, Anne has the tendency to hesitate if not pushed, and will often reconsider her decisions after the fact. A second weaknesses comes as more of a family trait in that Anne is highly judgmental and makes snap judgments upon meeting everyone. This leads to her being self-selective and having a very small group of people that she can truly depend upon.

Commitment
The Saint-Auxpris family has always been closely knit, but Anne also extends the extreme loyalty shared by her sisters to her closest friends. She isn't afraid of commitment, and is nothing if not a risk-taker, and this too, is a double-edged sword. Positively, it pushes her to adept to newer medical techniques, to trust implicitly, and to be less guarded than her sisters.

Conversely, this means that when Anne falls, she falls very hard. She takes disappointment badly, and while slow to lose her faith, Anne is also incredibly slow to build it. She's easily befriended, but it takes a long time for her to truly begin sharing with other people. She's defensive of those that she loves to a fault and enjoys making friends, though she often feels weighted down by her responsibilities and tends to shirk them entirely at times.

Hopes & Dreams:
The first time that Annette felt at home was in the trauma ward of St. Mungos. Perhaps it was because she was not born there and had no recollection of the terror of her own birth, or perhaps she's always had an affinity for green (the same color conveniently manifests in her eyes). Anne has never been the brightest, never the most eloquent, she was never the family favorite until the death of her sister - and even then, Pieter has treated her more like a wild dog let loose in the yard than an actual person.

In contrast to her sisters, Anne didn't wait for her family's approval - whether this was a conscious decision or otherwise remains unknown. Relocating her life to America removed her from her father's influence, and obtaining her healing license absolved her youthful indiscretions. She likes herself, and she's found a home in medicine - Anne was a troublesome student during her formative years, and she's both compassionate and firm. She hopes that a mixture of the two will give back to the wizarding community from which she has benefitted so much.

Subject Taught: Healer, Medicinal Magic