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Archived Applications / Bene Baptiste Broussard
« on: 31/07/2015 at 23:01 »
Application for Hogwarts School
→ CHARACTER INFORMATION.
Name: Bene Baptiste Broussard
Birthday: 16 December 1927
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Bloodline: Pureblood
Magical Strength: Divination
Magical Weakness: Conjuring & Summoning
Year (pick two): Seventh, sixth
Biography:
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been too long since my last confession.”
It had been three days; it had been a lifetime. Like the Mississippi on a clouded, windless day, his voice was slow and smooth, flowing together. He shifted his weight on the kneeler.
The screen of the confessional slid partly open, revealing a dim electric light, the faint outline of a shadowed silhouette. A voice came from the space, distinctly lilting and foreign to present ears—Irish.
“What troubles your soul, my son?”
Bene Broussard would need far more than the span of a single confession to answer that question. He tried anyway, clasping his hands and resting his forehead on the space created there.
“I have been a glutton.”
He had, on cigarettes and bourbon; it was what had brought him here. He had, on the follies of youth, been a glutton, too, and a glutton for safety and, he supposed, punishment.
“I have opened myself to sins of pride.”
That, too, he had done—it rested heavily on his chest, and he knew its counterpart, contempt, rested just beyond the doors of the cathedral in the grey streets of London. So different they were from the streets back home, where they were not called street but rue—his home on Rue Royal, the bustle and barbarism on Rue Bourbon, the fog and infrastructure that both rolled up Rue Canal. So different this all was, from New Orleans, from the South, from the United States.
He had been exiled.
“I have dishonored both my father and my mother.”
This was why, in the last posted moments of open confessional time, Bene shook his head on his folded hands, sinking down to rest his backside on the heels of his black leather shoes. It was this sin, in half, that brought him here.
For the Jean Luc and Emmeline Brossard, problems did not resolve with time or ignorance or change. Being at once one of the oldest Creole surnames and one of the best-established magical families in the easy city by the river made things difficult. Sometimes, no amount of apology, no amount of favors or bribes, no amount of hand-waving or distraction or money could make things go away.
Sometimes, the only thing for it was distance, so they sent him to a distant relation on a distant continent.
“I have done violence to the son of a good man.”
In his mouth, his teeth clenched and beneath his forehead, his fingers flexed. The skin of his knuckles that pulled tight there were still cracked, pulling with scabs that would likely scar one day.
The man, his father’s best friend and a member magical government, was good, mostly. His son was not, at all.
The girl was a woman now, of course.
“I have spoken ill out of turn against the same.”
As the boy laid against the cobblestone-paved courtyard behind the school where both he and Bene attended (a small institution, populated by the handful of magical Creoles who lived in the French Quarter), he had screamed it, not spoken it. Made of equal parts ears and mouths, everyone in the Quarter had soon heard it and re-spoken it.
“I have caused harm to the life of an innocent, and an unborn child.”
There was no other word for what he had done and he knew it—he had harmed that girl, that baby. Instead of the girl going to a nunnery, the baby becoming the late-life child of the girl’s mother (this was the usual procedure), they would become the family of the boy who had caused this all. They would be stuck forever, unsafe.
And he, Bene, would be stuck in London, far away from his home in New Orleans and the wide windows that lined his bedroom and the blissful color that lined the storefronts. He would be stuck at Aunt-So-and-So’s house, with no natural light and only shades of grey. He would be stuck—stuck for doing what was right.
It made him feel a bit rootless. On the kneeler, his bones were growing sore. Confession hurt in more ways than one.
“It’s made me doubt my faith, Father.”
He had, he did—the stick-straight Catholicism of London did nothing to help, so far were the loose and easy shrines to saints and voodoo gods of the Big Easy, where it was just as acceptable to say a rosary as it was to square out a bag of gris-gris.
A pause grew, pregnant, and the shadow on the other side of the screen stirred. Sleepy (for it was late), the voice filled the small, wooden booth:
“And do you feel badly for your sins, son?”
“Yes.” With something like clarity, Bene answered quickly, for in that moment, he did. He felt badly, at least, for their outcome. He went on. “For these and all my sins, Father, I ask for—“
Another pause, and Bene shifted once more on the kneeler. Years of practice informed him that he was meant to ask for absolution, but it was not absolution that he wanted, then. What he wanted, desperately, was home, and neither the priest nor God himself could give him that.
He was seventeen and doomed.
Without another word and with the shake of his head, Bene stood, silent, and left.
→ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION.
House Request: Sort me.
Personality:
For the most part, Bene is a good young man. His moral compass is strong and he stands up for what he believes in, even if it means getting himself into trouble. He is dedicated—devoted to his studies (particularly Herbology, history of any variety, and art) and to his heritage (he speaks Creole French though the language is slowly dying, is mostly a devoted Catholic, and knows New Orleans like the back of his hand). His manners are impeccable—he still stands when a lady enters a room, says please and thank you, and is well-versed in social etiquette as any good Southern boy should be. He is kind and gentle, soft spoken and a good listener. For the most part, he is good.
But as things from the South tend to go, there is also a sour side to the Broussard boy. While his moral compass is strong, sometimes his definition of True North is not terribly true. In his dedication to his studies, he can sometimes forget other obligations, and on at least one occasion has pursued avenues of research that could were less than savory. Now and then (and only now and then, for he knows better), his good graces slip just-so, in the bless-her-heart, back-handed sort of way all Southerners are learned in.
Some other useful information: If Bene were an animal, he would be a black bear (steadfast, determined, but fierce in the face of danger). If Bene played Dungeons and Dragons, he’d always play lawful good, unless he wanted to mix it up a bit with chaotic good. He takes his coffee au lait, with four sugars. He hates the cold because, he says, his bones weren’t built for it. His favorite scent is magnolia, his favorite place to be is in the sunlight of a warm window with good company, and his favorite artistic movement is German Expressionism.
Appearance:
Bene is, other than being a fairly handsome young gentleman, woefully average. He is neither tall nor short, over-muscled nor under-fed. His hair, blonde, is nothing out of the ordinary and his eyes, blue, hold nothing remarkable in their luster. While he carries himself with the manner of pride expected from a boy in his late teens, there is nothing particularly striking or defining about his gate or stance. He is obviously not an athlete, but obviously not a shut-in, either. Bene Baptiste is, much as he appears, just so.
Also, he wears glasses, and everyone knows glasses make people look smart.
→ SAMPLE ROLEPLAY.
Option 2
He could navigate neither by place or pattern, and in the chaos he became miserably lost.
As a younger child, he had used statues, for there were statues everywhere in New Orleans—Jackson, for example, meant he was almost home, and he could calculate his orientation from there. As he grew, he learned the block patterns of the streets, working his way out from Rue Royal to its intersections and beyond, and making sure to learn where the breaks in order were.
There was no rhyme or reason the castle that housed Hogwarts School, nothing certain from which to anchor. The statues, of which there were many, never seemed to stay in the same place for very long. If there was order at all to the layout of the halls—and he doubted very sincerely that there was, for he had never seen such a maze of corridors—it would never help him; the staircases, like the statues, moved seemingly at their own whim.
Bene Broussard stopped short at an alcove, shaking his head to himself and trying to decide if turning the corner to the next corridor would even be worth it. He was not one to shy away from a challenge, but a proper challenge had rules. Hogwarts had no rules.
He had only been trying to make it to the grounds for Herbology class.
Mercifully, his ears perked to a voice—cheerful, sweet, and drawing nearer. Bene turned towards it, backtracking his path and walking to meet the girl half way.
She wanted to know about frog legs. For the paper.
“Ah, ils sont bons, j’en mange beaucoup,” he answered her in rapid French, even though his better sensibility told him that the lunch menu was hardly newsworthy. Then, in English (a sound much different than his French—it was slower, almost lazy, like it had been sitting in the sun for too long, with the words almost strung at the ends), he added, “Especially with a sauce piquant.”
It was a fair answer, at least; Bene had spent many summer nights gigging frogs for the very same dish.
“Now, if you don’t mind, mon cher,” he added, nudging the bridge of his glasses up his nose. “Could you perhaps tell me how I could make it to the grounds?”
[French Translation—“Ah, they’re good, I eat them a lot.”]
→ ABOUT YOU.
Please list any characters you have on the site (current and previous): Current: LMS. Previous: Arlo David Mason, Victory Finn Hir, Ansel Uli Fuchs, Wisdom Grace Willows, Asa Sawyer Asher, and a bunch of other, erm, creatively-named schlubs, one of which I believe was named Owen Worthing Oliver-Wellington, just so his initials would be OW-OW, which I thought was hilarious.
How did you find us?: In the very fiber of my soul.
