Hogwarts School: A Harry Potter RPG

CHARACTER INFORMATION

Character name: Mary Flannery Finlay

Previous and/or Current Character: Lu&Cru.

Character age: 32

Character education:
Hogwarts School - Hufflepuff, 1932
St. Mungos, Internship - Magical Nursing

Strength and weaknesses:  Mary Flannery's greatest strength is perhaps her greatest weakness as well: she puts the well-being of others before her own.  This makes her a fantastic ally, able to--or perhaps, unable to do anything but--stand firmly beside whatever cause she puts her mind to.  She is by and large a selfless person, happy to put in extra effort to help someone achieve a goal, but sometimes does this at the expense of realizing her own.  Working on a team is a strong suit, but she often struggles to when it comes to working on her own, always finding herself seeking out others or wrapping herself up in more community-minded projects.  Because she so fervently believes in the potential of every individual, she can sometimes find herself frustrated when people don't realize this potential or end up sinking time into people who are (what she would refuse to admit as) lost causes.

Physical description:  Other than being fairly tall for a woman (standing at around five feet and eight inches), Mary Flannery is fairly plain.  Her eyes are a normal shade of brown; her hair, an unremarkable shade of the same.  The later is usually worn down and in loose curls, or tied back simply with a plain ribbon.  Her style of dress is relatively demure, consisting of mostly earth tones, and certainly modest--her arms and legs are almost always completely covered.  There are perhaps only two notable qualities about her looks: one, she is obviously not afraid of doing work, as evidenced by the callouses on her palms and the usual presence of some mess or another somewhere on the knees or elbows of her clothing; two, she always seems to be deeply engaged in and pleased with whatever she is doing, eyes focused and alert, a smile ever-present, giving the impression that there is nothing else she'd rather be doing other than exactly what she's doing at any given moment.

Personality: Patience isn't just a virtue for Mary Flannery--it's a lifestyle.  Mary Flannery seems never to be in a hurry.  She never rushes when she's going places, never gives away that she's on on a time-crunch even if she is, and will happily explain things as many times or in as great of detail as the situation requires.  Voice light and tone sweet, she's also a cheerful person, but not in an excitable way; she's simply genuinely happy and seems constitutionally incapable of speaking a harsh word.  When it becomes to behavior, she favors rewarding the good and ignoring the bad, or otherwise gently correcting misguided attitudes in hopes of inspiring better ones.  Decidedly mothering, she has a particular fondness for children, though she's never found the time to have her own.

Still, she's not as stuffy as she might seem. Though she can come off as more than a bit of a goody-two-shoes and perhaps a bit infuriatingly nonplussed, she's managed to keep a sense of child-like wonder with the world.  Now and then, she enjoys doing frivolous things just for the sake of doing them and has (and encourages in others) a strong sense of play.

Hopes and dreams. Why are you teaching at Hogwarts?:  Aside from being asked by an old school friend, Mary Flannery likes to go where she feels she's needed most.  Due to the current political climate and the guests occupying the school, Hogwarts feels like the right place to her now.  She's one of those frightfully romantic types that believes that if she can change one student's life for the better, she's doing good work.

Biography:
When asked what her proudest moment had been, she would unfailingly answer the time when her bantam hen first place at the county fair.

For other moments in her life, she was simply thankful.

She had been thankful, at eleven, to be accepted in to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  It had come as quite a surprise when the post owl swooped down on the farm cottage that housed the Finlay family.  Between two parents and four siblings, Mary Flannery had been the only one with a drop of magical blood.

She had been thankful then, too, for the scholarship she was gifted; without it, she would not have been able to leave her small hometown in Ireland for school.

At fourteen, she was thankful to the school's hospital wing; it was there, bandaging skinned knees and mending broken bones, that she discovered her passion for medicinal magic--the beginning of a life-long love affair.

When she was seventeen, she had been thankful to graduate--not with honors, not with Prefectships or Quidditch Cups or Dueling Championships to her name, but with knowledge and the lasting bonds of friendship.

She had been thankful at eighteen for St. Mungos, for the internship they had allowed here there, and she was thankful, too, for the skills she gained there in nursing, in caring, in service to others.

At twenty-three, she had been thankful for her friends--in a larger way than she had ever known.  Coming home to find herself suddenly orphaned, the memories of her missing family already blurring at the edges like a photograph left in the sun, it was her friends she had turned to first.  In a time that felt familiar and foreign at once, they became her family.

She was thankful, when she was twenty-six, to--but never for--the War.  It was a dreadful thing and she knew it, but she was thankful nonetheless to be able to volunteer her service to the servicemen--to comfort the ailing, to heal the wounded, to sit with the ones who wouldn't make it, offering them a friendly face and a sweet song.

When she was thirty, she was thankful for her local orphanage, for the opportunity it provided her to nurse those most in need--magical orphans like herself, young witches and wizards in the making, caught up in the same blurred space that had left her alone, too.

At thirty-two, she was thankful to Hogwarts, for allowing her to teach some of those very same children, to meet new ones, to foster the same love for magic that she harbored herself.

For all of these moments, she was thankful.

But if you asked Mary Flannery Finlay of what she was most proud, it would unfailingly be the summer day when she was seven that she and her favorite bantam hen won first place at the county fair, the pair of them both standing together on the pavilion stage--the hen looking pleased, Mary Flannery smiling in her simple gingham dress--to accept the blue ribbon that still travels with her today.



SAMPLE ROLEPLAY

Roleplay Response:
"...and this is one of when I got lost in the forest, but it's ok because nothing ate me up, see? No bite marks!"

Two sets of footfalls echoed down the empty hall--one erratic and quick and belonging to a young girl, the other steadfast and stable and belonging to a young woman.

"...and this is one about the time when me and my very good friends tried to feed the squid in the lake some grass, but he didn't like grass so he tried to suck on Effy's arm instead--see how grumpy her face looks?--but I can't blame her, I'd be grumpy too, but as you can see from my face there, I just laughed instead."

They had been through at least a dozen drawings already.  It was time for an intervention.

"These are all very good," said Mary Flannery, her voice in great contrast to that of the young girl she spoke to; it was sweet, calming.  Her footfalls stopped and, bending slightly at the knee, she put herself more on the young girl's level.  The move did not seem condescending on her body as it might have for some adults. Instead, it gave her the appearance of genuine interest.  "I like what you do with faces.  I can almost feel what your friends are feeling in these pictures."

"Thank you, but I'm not done," the little girl said, shuffling a large stack of pages.  "I have plenty more to show you, don't worry."

"I would love to see them," Mary Flannery said, and she would have taken the time to look at them then, but she suspected she was running behind on her schedule.  Offering an encouraging smile, she redirected.  "Perhaps we could meet up later and you could show me the rest.  I'll make us some tea and you can tell me all about them."

The small girl considered this for a moment, weighing the options.  Mary Flannery noted that it seemed like a great struggle for the small one, her features screwed up in thought.

"But will there be cupcakes?"

"If you'd like," the woman said with--there was no other word for it--a giggle, the sound of it trilling like bells.  "I'll see what I can scrounge up for us."

After another moment of thought, the girl bleated out "Deal," and then trundled off, still shuffling her drawings.  Mary Flannery continued on, her pace no more hurried than it had been when she was walking with the girl.

Though she wasn't sure exactly how late she was when she opened the door to the Headmistress's office, it was clearly late enough; Mary Flannery was met with a sharp reprimand and a glare that somehow put ice into Headmistress Ivanova's otherwise pleasantly brown eyes.

"I am late," the Irish woman admitted gently, an apologetic expression taking place of apologetic words; for the young woman, admitting wrongs openly spoke louder than any sentiment of regret could.

Still, she did feel the need to offer some variety of explanation; the Headmistress seemed fit to burst in her frustration, so Mary Flannery redirected.

"You have very enthusiastic students at your school, Headmistress," she began, steps leading her towards the other woman's desk, the seat that would be meant for visitors to her office.  "You must be so proud of them."

Smoothing her skirt beneath her, Mary Flannery sat in hopes that the Headmistress would do the same.

"I'm terribly excited that you're considering allowing me to join your staff."