CHARACTER INFORMATIONCharacter name: Juniper Ellwood-Luxe Steele
Previous and/or Current Character(s) if applicable: Juniper Ellwood-Luxe, Coco Prince, Vincenzo Kedding, Clio Rolfensen, Angel Winsday, Pepper Grace Grimm, etc
Character age: 26
Character education: Hogwarts '37, Gryffindor
Strength and weaknesses (details please): Magically, she's strongest in Transfiguration and Charms with Divination trailing slightly behind. As a student, she dueled for all three terms (5th to 7th) she attended Hogwarts and captained in her seventh year. Post graduation, she spent several months training to become an Auror until she resigned as per her husband's wishes. Paired with practical application, she also consistently remained one of the top minds in her graduation class with several Valedictorian titles under her belt. She finds tangible magic to be more to her tastes than "illusionary" which is why Conjuring and Summoning is her weakest subject.
Physical description: Juniper has honey blonde hair and forest green eyes. She's only a modest 5'3, so her stance isn't exactly intimidating. What she lacks in height, she makes up for in commanding presence. There are faint freckles that cross the bridge of her nose, but they become more prominent when she's been exposed to the sun for long periods of time.
Personality (nice, rude, funny etc. Paragraph please.): Ranging from stoic to jovial, her personality often reflects those who surround her. She's played the "mature older sister" role ever since the time her mother abandoned her family and Juniper was left to raise her two younger brothers. She's serious about education, although she often takes a "sink or swim" approach when it comes to her students. In her opinion, it's better to throw them into the thick of things and let them think creatively for themselves rather than baby them. As for her family and friends, she's fiercely protective and will do anything to keep them safe.
Hopes and dreams. Why are you teaching at Hogwarts?:Hogwarts holds a very special place in her heart. It reminds her of simpler times and the love she's always held for knowledge. She treats the staff and particularly the students like family. Following the invasion of the castle by Germans where one student was killed and many were traumatized, Juniper wishes to return to keep the children and sanctity of Hogwarts safe with her own hands. In her mind, things might have turned out differently if she had been there.
Biography (500 words minimum. There is never such a thing as too much.): Juniper Kedding's life only truly began at the tender age of four when her beloved younger brother Charlie was brought into the world. He was so tiny with his pudgy hands, button nose and bright green eyes. Her father had proudly beamed at her, gave her an affectionate pat to the head and introduced her to Charlie as his "big sister". Never had those words been so profound to a four-year-old child. Just one look at Charlie was all it took to spark a kinship that not many would ever be able to comprehend. It was never quite a brother complex. It was something infinitely deeper than that. To a precocious child like Juniper who soaked in everything like a super absorbent sponge, "big sister" was a term that she took to heart. While Dad was busy working, she would have to watch over Charlie and teach him everything that she knew (which was only so much considering she was merely four). However, considering how small Charlie was, obviously she would have to protect him from things that were bigger than him. That was what a "big sister" did or, at least, that was what she believed.
Everything was not peaches and cream in the Kedding household. Charlie was too young and blissfully innocent to realize that something was amiss with their mother. Juniper, on the other hand, was not so naive. She was just a little too smart for her age, which turned out to be a blessing and a curse. The change her mother experienced was like a slow cancer that gradually ate away at the familial bliss they had previously enjoyed. Perhaps it had always been there and Juniper had simply been too small to understand, but irregardless the situation dramatically worsened when her second brother arrived in the world.
There were so many times that Claret had asked Charlie if he missed Daddy. It was a passive aggressive question, something meant to plant a seed of unhappiness in the child's heart. The questions stopped when Juniper had interrupted and posed a simple question. "Mommy, do you miss Daddy?" In retrospect, it was probably Juniper's fault that things had turned out the way they did. It was possible if she had simply kept quiet that her mother never would have turned into a shadow of herself. When Claret ceased her motherly functions, Juniper was the one took up the reins and assumed the role of matriarch. It was a bittersweet role that she played. On one hand, she very much loved and adored her younger brothers. On the other, she felt robbed of her own childhood. It was a forced maturation into adulthood and she secretly resented her mother for being so selfish. However, those feelings were ugly and Juniper hated herself for feeling that way for someone she had once loved and admired. Despite her suppressed black emotions, Juniper never once spoke back to her mother. It turned out to be her second mistake and eventually put the proverbial nail in the coffin for their once picture-perfect family.
Juniper had her temporary freedom when her acceptance letter came from Hogwarts. She would be studying there at the start of the year...or, at least, she would have had IT not happened. The memory itself would always remain fuzzy, but in the month just prior to the start of her first year, everything fell apart. Juniper had been upstairs paging through her brand new books that her father had given to her just prior to leaving again. He had taken her on a trip to Diagon Alley to pick up her school supplies and she had picked out her wand. It was an unusual instrument considering what it contained on the inside. There was an undeniable sensation that made her uneasy when she learned that it contained the fang of a werewolf. However, she had dismissed it as most would do.
Her studies stopped when the yelling started. She had barely dropped the book when she heard Lowell start to cry and the muffled shout from Charlie. Dear, sweet, adorable Charlie who never raised his voice or got upset. By the time she had made it down the stairs it was already too late. Lowell was running into the forest, Charlie was behind him and then IT happened. Time stopped. Crimson rained everywhere until it pooled into a puddle beneath the spot where Charlie laid. It was a memory that would continue to haunt her for the rest of her life.
The ultimate betrayal happened when Charlie was released from St. Mungo's and her mother finally left and never came home. In order to help her father who was now struggling to raise three children alone, Juniper opted not to go to Hogwarts. She home schooled herself with the books that would have otherwise been assigned to her and studied whenever she could while simultaneously raising her two younger brothers in place of her missing mother. It was only when Charlie finally came of age and received his own acceptance letter that Juniper decided to finally go to wizarding school. After all, Charlie had changed and as she had seen with her own eyes, people could be quite cruel.
At Hogwarts, Juniper excelled in everything she applied herself to including dueling as a house captain, playing Quidditch captain as a seeker or chaser, editing the school paper, assisting younger students as a teaching assistant and manning the hospital wing as a nursing assistant. Consistently at the top of her class with her grades, she was named Gryffindor Prefect at the beginning of her seventh year. Somehow, she still made time for a social life beyond school activities and developed a rather tumultuous love/hate relationship with Lysander Ellwood-Luxe that spanned all three years of her schooling.
A brief stint as a trainee Auror ended with her rather sudden marriage to Lysander in November 1938. In September 1939, they welcomed their first (and only) son named Nero into the world. Unfortunately, Juniper was thrown another curveball when Lysander's life was cut woefully short with his assassination on January 7th, 1939. With her son now poised to inherit the title of Head of Family, Juniper was left with very little time to grieve. With the absence of Lysander, there were many social and political bridges left half-constructed for her to complete. Time waits for no man or woman and Ellwood-Luxes do not mourn.
Time passed in drips and drabs, but she started to mend her emotional wounds when she found employment at Hogwarts as the Magical Defense professor in September 1939. The sense of community and the feeling of doing something productive was precisely what she needed to regain meaning in her life. However, it was Maverick Steele who provided her with the stability she so desperately needed at home. Ever her personal rock, he essentially nursed her back to reality and reminded her that her purpose was to now raise Nero.
They married in the summer of '42 and welcomed their first child, Anise, together in January of 1945. During the term of '44-'45, Juniper took a leave of absence from Hogwarts to prepare for Anise's arrival as well as assist her dear friend, Wesley Winsday, with finding a cure to his curse. However, things have settled down, a cure was found abroad for Wesley and Maverick is more than happy to be a doting, stay-at-home dad.
SAMPLE ROLEPLAY(Please respond to to this in third person past tense. Do not write the other characters' reactions. Only your own.) It was the largest office in Hogwarts and, perhaps to students and newcomers, the most intimidating. The shelves were filled with various odds and ends, with a place of honor for the Sorting Hat, and the walls held all the portraits of past Headmasters and Headmistresses.
In the middle of the room sat a large desk. Everything was in order, for the current occupant had always despised a messy desk. It was the sign of a messy mind, and she had always favored neatness.
A clock sat on the desk, which currently showed the time to be 2:05. The meeting was supposed to begin at 2:00 precisely.
Along with order, Anneka valued punctuality. She was a very busy woman these days. Even during the summer, she had a number of matters to attend to. Interviewing and hiring staff was only of those matters. The newest potential member of her staff wasn't making a good impression.
She paced the room, black heels clicking against the stone floor. When the door finally opened, Anneka turned, her expression reminiscent of a Russian winter. "You are
late."
Explain yourself was what her face said.
Roleplay Response:It had been one hell of a day.
She wasn't quite certain when her small family had become something akin to a circus, but clearly she was the tightrope walker with a balancing act that threatened to teeter off the wire at any given point in time. Maverick had assumed the roles of both juggler and lion tamer as he passed Anise from arm to arm while trying to prep her bottle. Their little bundle of Joy was clearly the lion as she roared her hunger for the entirety of the household to hear. Nero thought he was the master of ceremonies; giving running commentary about the goings-on to Nana Dog as if she were the audience.
After finally getting everyone settled down for lunch and giving strict instructions to her husband about when to change Annie's diaper, she'd finally managed to stumble out of the cottage precisely when she
should have been meeting with Anneka. It was thoroughly unlike her to be late -- she was typically early -- but family had a way of making everything infinitely more complicated. Was she really going to be able to manage teaching again if this was going to be the daily routine?
"I-I'm so sorry, Headmistress!" She swung the door to Ivanova's office open without bothering to knock since the woman was expecting her (judging by the look scrawled upon the Russian's face, she'd been
expecting her for several minutes already). "I just...um." Her sprint through the hallways had left her red-faced and thoroughly out of breath. Defeated and golden hair slightly deflated, she gave a sharp laugh and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "I lost track of time. I promise it won't happen again."
