AINSLEY. velvetvioletvesper. ALCOTT.

[Ainsley Alcott]

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Ainsley Velvet Violet Vesper Alcott
Gender: Female.
Age: 27. 22 December 1945.

Education: 
Homeschooled.

Residence:
___, Castine, Maine, USA.
Small flat in London.

Occupation:
Heiress. Cat masseuse.

Do you plan to have a connection to a particular existing place (example St Mungo's, the Ministry, Shrieking Shack) or to take over an existing shop in need of new management?
No.

Requested Magic Levels:

• Charms: 7.
• Transfiguration: 7.
• Divination: 7.
• Summoning: 7.

Do you wish to be approved as a group with any other characters? If so who and for what IC reason?
Mildred Beatrice Alcott, dud darling of a sister.

Please list any other characters you already have at the site:
Esme Faracy, EDSA, AHSA, IFSA, AGSA, Poppy Malthus, Sophie Thistlecomb, Noah Carmichael, David Rathburne, Georgia freakin' Darcy y'all, Calvin Tate, Doris McKenna.

Biography: (300 words minimum.)
Inbreds, all.

They say that the purity of your blood isn't related to your ability to perform magic - and perhaps it isn't. Squibs, of course, and the odd muggleborn pop up like toast (when you least expect it), even the best breeding yields sub-par results (also like toast, for neither magic nor muggle invention has proven a way to perfectly brown a piece of bread - and they call us civilized). Yet the upper echelons of pureblood society are remarkably closed to the rest of the world - pure marries pure, breeds pure, and anything more or less is destroyed, cast off, forgotten.

Go on, look at any pureblooded family tree. There will be burn marks.

And there is nothing wrong with this, for you cannot truly refute a society which built the world. Our existence proves them right, and who is to say that there isn't some truth to blood purity? So long as there are enough families to effectively intermarry, the system works, the legacy propagates, and our world progresses into infinity.

The story of how Ainsley Alcott met Nannette Lavoie is unremarkable, for I never saw my parents as particularly remarkable creatures. It's difficult to be anything but what you're born into, and they were both products of their environment - he the wizarding elite, she the same. Over the course of their respective childhoods they met, felt a spark, and summarily wed close after graduation. Cousins, really. It's to be expected.

And there is nothing wrong with that, for it has a poetic beauty - the natural rhythm of life, to learn, to love, to wed, to produce and procure more players to this game. They learned, loved, wedded in quick succession, and then came the long wait.

The problem is inherent in our way of life, for if wealth only marries wealth, pure only pure, then the intersection of both wealthy and pure is limited. Constant intermarrying forces further limitations, combined with the gradual diminishment of certain lines, the inability of others to permeate the inner circle. It leads to certain deformities, inadequacies.

We are a society hunted.

Realization is slow, and comes softly in the night - a whispered conversation between a husband and wife in the early morning hours, the knowing glance of a mother to her daughter-in-law across the breakfast table. They are things never spoken of, worries and cares buried in myriad business holdings, endless functions. There are ways to occupy one's time that do not produce meaning. Entire lives can be squandered in routine.

It was nearly fifteen years before an heir was produced, aptly named Ainsley for the father and unceasingly doted upon by the mother. My mother. My father, too, but I'm sure you can see that.

My own upbringing was equally unremarkable, albeit lonely, for Nannette had been an only child, Ainsley (the elder), the same, and there were no cousins with which to play and only my runt-like shadow, Beatrice -- Trixy, for company. It was a meager existence, but Castine was forgotten and set in its ways.

A quiet childhood led to a similar adolescence, for Nannette refused to send us away and Salem Institute would not have suited us anyway. Instead we remained cloistered in the red-brick house, the sea creeping ever closer to the white porch, the copper turrets rusting green with age and salt from the air. Our house was enough of a museum as it was, for my father's father had been an excellent taxidermist and mounted some of the most ferocious beasts along the long hallway bisecting the front of the house from the back - my grandmother, in her death, bequeathed the entirety of the Lepore belongings to Nannette, covering the upper floors with trunks and cobwebs.

It took years for reality to set in, like a final coating of dust across the collection of mirrors leading to the third floor, but the predicament was clear - with no male cousins, nor appropriate second-cousins (they had married Muggle or died out generations ago), this would be the end of the family line.

I always knew my father was weak, but watching him give up in the face of this proved it, and I was never able to respect either of them afterward. I never believed that my parents were infallible, for the wreckage of human folly manifested readily on the cliffs surrounding our home, but to suffer with such disappointments was unheard of and too much for me to bear. Prudent, I waited until they were older - more fragile, bent and weathered by the surf and salt - and committed them instantly.

Sometimes the only thing to do with something you love is to let it die.

ROLEPLAY
Roleplay Response:
Ainsley had always heard voices that weren't there, mostly because there were never any voices to be had. It mattered little what they said, and she often could not discern their words amidst the cacophony, only that they spoke and they spoke to her, surrounding her with chatter and life while the house in Castine slowly faded into nothing.

She spent most of her life waiting to die, saw it as inevitable, watched paper dry and curl, wither into nothing. The world was a large place, of that she was sure, but in the Alcott home, time stood still.

There was no reason to leave, for even at her age Ainsley had not explored all the rooms, not delved into the trunks of trash and wonder, not conquered the stacked suitcases in the foyer or the litany of newspapers filling the kitchen pantry. If a world existed beyond Castine, it was irrelevant. Ainsley did not require it.

Still, a letter from a foreign gentlemen caught her attention, and she departed to London on a lark. The Floo made her legs shake.

""He misses my and his mommy."

Ainsley blinked and walked away as though nothing was there at all.

Children were, after all, naturally, to be seen and not heard.

[J. Walsingham]

HEYYYYYY.

You're in. Gold star.