Hogwarts School: A Harry Potter RPG

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Emelia Wainwright (goes by Willow Madigan)
Gender: Female
Age: 29 years old
Blood Status: Halfblood

Education:
No formal education.

Residence:
7 Grimmauld Place, Islington, London, England

Occupation:
Curse-breaker and information broker.

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

Requested Magic Levels:

• Charms: 10
• Divination: 7
• Transfiguration: 10
• Summoning: 5

Do you wish to be approved as a group with any other characters? If so who and for what IC reason?
No.

Please list any other characters you already have at the site:
Cleo Fawcett.

Biography: (300 words minimum.)

The New Orleans summer air clung to her skin underneath her dress; now that her gaze was downcast, she saw the pollen he’d taken offence to—it was no way to dress on the Lord’s Sunday.
 
(Emelia had heard the words ‘the birds and the bees’ and understood it meant pollination. Her mother had cautioned her it meant sin.)
 
The heat and sweat distracted her from the sting on her cheek. Spanish moss reached languidly for her from their perch on the warped, desaturated oak trees lining the dirt road that led to the house. She could hear the insects buzzing on a crow carcass not far from where she sat, on her knees before her father.
 
“Good girl, Emelia. I’m proud o’ you for not cryin’.”
 
His voice was fat with satisfied authority, and Emelia looked up at him with a grateful smile on her face. Matthew Wainwright commanded love, and Emelia felt proud in her obedience.
 
(Pride was a sin, and Emelia dug her nails into the flesh of her palms as punishment.)
 
“Now go change your dress.”
 
Rising to her feet, Emelia ran into the house without looking back and did as her father commanded.
 

The wooden church creaked with the mass of the flock, filing in one after the other. The twins, Emma and Camilla, rushed past Emelia as her mother ushered her and Cecilia, the youngest, forward. They were last in the line of siblings: Annabelle came first, which Emelia had been told had angered her father—women had been carved from the ribs of men, and so a woman could not exist when a man was absent; Noah came second, forcing her mother to abandon Annabelle; the twins were left mostly to their own devices because they had each other; Mathilda had come next, cementing the female supremacy in a family that didn’t acknowledge it, and her mother had poisoned Mathilda’s mind against their father, so her father had claimed Emelia, and Emelia had claimed Cecilia.
 
Noah and her father, as it was right, sat down in their pew first. Then her mother, with her darkened skin passing just enough to sit with them, and Annabelle. The order didn’t matter after that. The twins were off somewhere else instead of by their family.
 
The blood of the arc of the covenant—
 
A young man in impressive robes brushed past their pew, and her parents bowed their heads for the dean. Emelia, unable to help herself, felt her gaze drawn. He was much older than her, even older than Annabelle, but he was not as old as the pastors, and judging by the giggles of young women his age, he was handsome.
 
Emelia couldn’t look away because he was unsmiling. There was a grave foreboding about the weight of his eyebrows and the way his watery, blackened eyes looked at her, nearly lifeless. Emelia looked at him, and the dean looked back at her, and she had never felt so cold in her life.
 

“This is my body.”
 
On her knees in front of the altar rail, hands braided so tight her knuckles blanched, Emelia opened her mouth. The sacramental bread tasted like nothing, and she pressed it against her mouth without chewing until it dissolved on her tongue.
 
“This is my blood.”
 
When she looked up, it wasn’t at the chalice. It was at him. He held it towards her steadily, his gaze holding hers. Emelia accepted it with both hands and drank.
 
Long after the Eucharist, as the church procession washed away from shore, the dean called for her.
 
”Miss Wainwright.”
 
There were enough of them that they all turned, Annabelle too sure that she had been chosen. Her mother looked back protectively, her father possessively. The entire Wainwright family crashed themselves on the surf of the church. The dean hadn’t moved from his position in front of the altar; he did not send his flock off at the entrance to the church but trusted them to find their own way home.
 
”Perhaps it is time to take confession.”
 

The afternoon air was thick like molasses when Emelia sat down in the confession booth.

“Bless me, Father, for I’ve sinned.”

Out of all the lines of the Sacrament of Confession, Emelia only felt like herself saying this. Her knees were starting to hurt, the bare skin against hardwood hassocks throbbing. Something about the way he sat there, on the other side of the gridded window, watching her, made her cheeks blaze.

“Continue.”

Willow hadn’t noticed she’d been staring.

“My last confession was three months ago.” It wasn’t a lie if you didn’t know it was a lie.

Silence met her, heavy in the air. Outside she heard crickets, the buzz of bees. Inside the booth, the air was stuffy. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Emelia fought not to cough.

“And what sins have you committed since then, child?”

She could hear him lean closer, the wood whining as he shifted in his seat.

“I’ve been proud, Father. Proud of obeyin’ my dad an’ receivin’ his praise.”

“Obedience is something to be proud of,” he spoke behind that grid, and Emelia felt his voice run down her spine like electricity. Emelia felt like the Devil was spinning a web around her with his chains. She felt like she was choking with sin, even as she sat, completely still, delivering her confession.

“You’re a good girl, Emelia,” he said. His words sounded strangled by a chuckle that wouldn’t come out. “You’re going to continue to obey your Father, right?”

Emelia nodded, not sure who he was referring to. Every man who wanted her obedient carried the same name.

“Are you familiar with Exodus 22:18?”

At home, her King James Bible lay open, face-down. Another sin, her mother would say if she saw. Books should be treated with respect. The Book should be treated with a bookmark.

Emelia looked up, the backlight masking him in shadow and spilling onto her face instead.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”


“Emelia.”

The candle in her mother’s hand flickered as she breathed, and Emelia stared at her through the darkness, incongruous eyes invisible in the shadows.

“Come with me.”

Slowly untangling herself from Cecilia, Emelia swung softly out of the bed, her long, white nightgown falling across her bare feet. Careful steps curved from the heel of her foot down, making sure to smooth down splinters before they broke skin. In front of her, the only indication of her mother moving was the low, orange candlelight.

She was led through the house and up. They walked like every step was a secret, an unheard truth in a house full of sleepers. As her mother pushed open the trapdoor to the attic, light spilled down into the corridor.

Emelia closed it as soon as she pulled her feet up, the hem of her dress nearly caught on the outline.

It smelled like asafetida. A single stem lay smouldering in a copper bowl, but from the cross-beams and diagonal rafters hand several bundles of different herbs. Emelia walked close to the pestle and mortar and immediately drew back from the acrid, overwhelming scent of cloves. There were chalk drawings, forbidden books, small clay figures of the loas, a cauldron.

Damning evidence, if anyone ever found it, but not even her father knew.

Her mother brought her a cup of something steaming.

“Drink this.”

Emelia had been brought up to obey.

“What are we doing tonight, Mother?”

Ruth Wainwright, her Creole inheritance passing down more than a tanned skin and a foreign quality, looked at her daughter with the eyes of an owl.

“Tonight we’re introducing you to the baron.”


They did not ask her how they’d met, which defied her expectations but didn’t surprise her.

Francis, a charred obelisk beside her, watched with greedy eyes as his mother asked Emelia to come with her. The house was darker than the cemetery the night they’d met. He’d materialized from dusk and shadow, and she’d been too preoccupied with the ritual—two eggs, broken over a flat piece of stone; a ripped white piece of cloth, partially dipped in something thickly viscous; chicken feathers tied to chicken feet with a hempen twine—to notice.

Her shadow had pulled apart from her and stood there, waiting for her to notice. He’d have to speak before she’d looked up.

In front of Willow, now, his mother walked with purpose and a presumption that she was being followed. The house was bigger than her family’s, well-furnished, low-lit. The walls looked like they were running with something black.

She could no longer hear Francis’ footsteps behind her.

It was a surprise when their destination, somewhere in the back of the house, turned out to be more of a foyer than what she’d originally entered. As if she’d entered a second mansion in the back of the first one, Willow followed Morgana into a cathedral, curved staircases in the back leading somewhere she couldn’t imagine.

In the center of the room, in a lone leather armchair on top a small rug, sat a relaxed, powerful-looking man, like a king on his throne.

He did not get up.

“Ah, this is her, then?” he said magnanimously, looking her over appraisingly from his seat.

Willow hadn’t noticed before that the periphery of the room was occupied by more than twenty other people of different ages, all staring at her. A few looked like Francis, only burlier, younger, rocks. Francis had told her he was the oldest—

(Heir to his kingdom; he’d been a man for a decade.)

—he could afford to be compliant when he wanted to.

“Well, girl. Let’s see how you fare.”

Dinner was an informal but cloying affair. The house demanded silence, and the family obliged. Not all of them ate together, either; Willow noticed that the table she sat at—with Francis, his parents, his brothers—was made up mainly of men.

Every action was measured, every question pointed.

Most of it was obscure moral philosophy. Questions like what she would do if someone betrayed her to save a life or how she would navigate a repulsive conversation if she needed from the person. When she spoke, even the cutlery fell silent. The table left room for Emelia’s voice.

She didn’t think enough of herself to believe they valued her thoughts more than their own.

Still, Emelia, a next-youngest girl in a group of seven, felt heard.

Tongue worrying the back of her teeth, Emelia responded with only a slight nod and a glance down when they dismissed her from the table. She was led into a room of only women. They were rowdy compared to the main table, their laughter like clinking glasses, and they freely turned their attention to her.

Most were older, most were outsiders, all of them were married. To brothers, to uncles, to off-branch family members who now owed their lives to Morgana and Aurelius. They didn’t gossip, didn’t offer any insight. Instead, they haunted her, flitting about like elves dancing in the forest, asking her about the chicken.

Emelia didn’t mention her mother.

They didn’t seem to care.

When Francis stepped inside, he simply stood next to the door, watching her. Out of the corner of her eye, she was watching him too.

The women ignored him until he cleared his throat, and then they parted like the Red Sea.

Francis moved economically but beautifully. He was a gentle wave that chose not to grow destructive. He was a pinch of salt from a deadly dose. When he offered his hand, Emelia took it.

She only had eyes for him too.

He led her away, his deep, calm voice enveloping her in the empty hallway.

“You did well. They’ve invited you back.”

They had not. They had allowed Francis to.

Her hand resting in the crook of his arm, he escorted her upstairs. The corridors were carpeted, the wainscoting immaculate, the portraits hanging on the walls disturbing.

Emelia was fascinated.

Francis led her into a room by extending his arm, like a man setting a bird free from its cage to let it roam inside his study. Lightly, she sat down on the bed, swinging her legs, once. As she watched him, he glided over and sat down on one knee in front of her, taking one foot in his hand.

With the other, he started coaxing off her stockings, gently, like a lover’s caress.

In his soothing manner, attention fixed on her legs, he said, “And once they’ve accepted you, you can be mine.”


He wasn’t dead, she thought as she turned on the faucet.

Ice-cold water spilled onto her hands, burning them, like hellfire. She watched the water turn red as rust, a fire in her veins washing down the drain. Every prickle of her skin screamed.

The train lurched, jolted by an errant rock or an animal come to end on the tracks, and the golden ring—an heirloom and a leash—she’d taken off a second ago fell from her fingertips down the drain. Emelia looked out the window, as if it had never happened at all.

It was Blanche, her godmother—a farce of a title, considering she’d always been her mother’s friend—who had first told Emelia her family thought she was dead.

(It was Blanche who had first told Emelia a lot of things.)

Disbelieving, she’d told Francis they ought to visit. Francis had told her he didn’t have time. Francis had told her he needed her there. Francis had told her she didn’t want to be unavailable to her family (and when he said ‘her’, he meant ‘his’). Francis had asked what they had done to deserve her insolence and negligence.

Emelia hadn’t told Francis about Blanche.

It was Blanche who’d first told Emelia about the others.

When Emelia told her what he’d done to Marcus, a man she shouldn’t have fallen in love with—born on the wrong side of the tracks, born with responsibilities heavier than Atlas, born with a will to do the wrong things for the right reasons—it was Blanche who had given her the knife.

Emelia had chosen the name Willow Madigan herself.

The life she had been supposed to live with Marcus lay West, so Emelia fled East.


The bar rug squelched underneath her heels, and Willow sent Torin a sarcastic smile. He, bastard that he was, took off his jacket in response, waving it in the air as if about to spread it out on a puddle in front of her.

Willow raised her shoe to his chest before he could let his clothes soak in the beer and pushed him to his feet.

“M’lady,” he said, his Irish forming as a grin on his face.

A couple of the old boys had taken out their instruments and decided to play jukebox for the night. Willow figured that was why this was their haunt. It reminded Naoise and Torin of home. All songs Gaelic, in some form or another.

Willow didn’t try telling Scottish, Irish, and Welsh apart, and Naoise and Torin didn’t pretend that hoodoo and voodoo were the same thing.

Naoise, the big bear, too tall for his own good, barely got a drink before he motioned towards the darts.

“You really wanna get it handed to you again?” Willow said, one hand resting on her hip.

(They made the mistake of thinking he was scary when he was all fuzzy arms and fuzzy heart. Then they made the mistake of thinking he wasn’t, and they took him for granted or soft. It usually ended badly for people to underestimate Naoise.)

Naoise shrugged and said something she barely understood.

Willow shrugged and allowed him to dig his own grave.

When she joined Torin at the bar twenty minutes later, he’d built a pyramid of empty beer glasses.

Torin, thankfully, rarely spoke to her in broken English.

(She’d called it that, once, and they’d nearly disowned her. But they were her boys, and they couldn’t get rid of her; addiction was a horrible disease, so it was a good thing they were just co-dependent.)

Instead, he spoke to her in smokes and smirks, cigarettes ping-ponging between hands, stolen glances, empty compliments.

Torin spoke to her like any other beautiful girl.

She knew his respect only from his lack of trying.

In the background, the first, long-drawn notes of Danny Boy started playing. It didn’t matter what Willow and Torin had just been talking about; they both perked up, gazes straying to Naoise, his face reddening and his chest expanding with a raging cry.

(Torin was looking for trouble to join it; Willow was looking for trouble to watch.)

Torin was out of his chair, sliding out of his jacket with a savage smile on his face.

Willow was two steps behind, finishing his drink.

NB: Powerplay of Torin and Naoise allowed in advance.

Roleplay: 
You come across one of these posts on the site. Please select one & reply as your character:

Option One -
Amelia Nixon was many things, but she was never a pushover reporter that people could just usher away with a busy shuffle past. She was dedicated and eager to cut to the very middle of the current political tensions because she was Amelia Nixon and her articles would most certainly become front page material.

“Sir, please! It’s for the Prophet, how do you feel-“

Another one brushed passed her, the shuffling busy masses making their way through Diagon Alley for the lunchtime rush. This had been the best possible time to get people, but none of them were giving her anything to go with.

Only momentarily discouraged, the short red headed lady took a seat on a nearby bench. Her quill resting in her left hand and her notepad ready in the opposite hand. Amelia pouted, tapping the quill against her leg as she scanned the waves of people for somebody - anybody - who looked like they had something to say.

She had been dreaming of her name in bold print, Amelia Nixon: The Source of Today’s Tomorrow. She had been dreaming of the larger office and the secretaries that would fetch her the morning coffee and fetch her anything she needed. The VIP interviews and the most exclusive press passes. But all Amelia had was a page seventeen piece on the rising number of frogs in London.

Hardened by a day of no success, the reporter stood up and started to trod off down the alley. A loose stone on the cobble path caught her heel, sending the distraught girl toppling down to the ground.

“Merlin’s fog watch, my heel is broken! Help!” she yelled as she tried desperately to recover her shoe frantically in the middle of the Diagon Alley moving crowds.

Roleplay Response:
There was something grating about the British. Something so comically foolish that it seemed more for show than anything, like a five-year-old trying to get attention by pretending to fall over nothing.

Willow wasn’t laughing when the girl tripped.

She was rolling her eyes.

And for some reason, she was walking over. Quickly glancing around to check the flow of the pedestrians, Willow crouched down lightly. A couple of people were starting to gather, which annoyed her. She’d rather they be left alone.

“Don’t worry, I’m a nurse at St. Mungo’s,” she lied, waving them away. “Please give us some space.”

Reaching out for the girl without haste, Willow asked, “Do you mind?”

As she waited for an answer, she reached back and snatched the heel from its pinch in the cracks.

Calmly, almost deceptively professional, she said, “Don’t wear heels on cobblestone, especially if you’re walking around a lot.”

OTHER
How did you find us? Other