Morgan Vanderveer

[Morgan Vanderveer]

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Morgan Gloaming Vanderveer
Gender: Female
Age: 19

Education: 
Was homeschooled until she was thirteen, at which point she transferred to Bayou Annunciation

Residence:
Morgan rents the attic of a little old lady's house in Kensington and Chelsea.

Occupation:
Morgan does freelance reporting for Spunk, a teen wizarding magazine aimed towards boys; works part-time at a potion shop in Knockturn Alley; and does odd jobs around the property that she's living on.  She's also in school trying to get a double-major in magical history and publishing: she's hoping to become a full-time writer and editor in a major publishing firm.

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: 11
• Transfiguration: 9
• Divination: 5
• Summoning: 7

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:
Brinley Grisham, Teddy Yijunhana Kim, Carlotta Steppe, Puck Clarkson, Rowan Clarkson

gargantuan violet kittens hop

Biography: (300 words minimum.)
Morgan was the third-born of five children, and the only girl.  She had two older brothers, Ajax and Barbaro, and two younger brothers, Varenne and Shergar.  Her father was a ranch hand in Kentucky, and the family went to where the work was, living two or three years in the barn at one ranch and then moving on to the next.  Some places were better than others. Morgan and her siblings were usually expected to help out with the work wherever they were, and at night they did school work.

Morgan's father's true love was the horse races, which he liked to gamble on.  When he won, he'd buy each of his children a present.  Morgan always asked for writing supplies and books: she loved to read and write. When she could, Morgan would spend hours in a library. She tried to read classics: she dreamed, even at an early age, of going to college. She saw education as her best bet in getting away from the nomadic life that she led with her family: she loved them, but she wanted more structure, and she didn't want to have to do so much manual labor for her whole life.

Growing up, Morgan was always able to whip through her chores faster than her brothers. They used to jest that she had "magic hands" that could squeeze the milk out of cows at triple speed.  When she was eleven, she got a letter that said that she really did have magic.  Her parents, however, didn't have enough money to outfit her for school nor to pay for the school.

Morgan was at first angry with her parents for not helping her get an education, and then she gritted her teeth and tried to find a way to pay for it herself. She started doing odd jobs anywhere that she could.  Sometimes, this would mean that she had to walk one or two miles to get to a nearby farm or ranch to help out.  She took five percent of her profits and gambled them, hoping to earn a bit of extra money.  It was two years before she had enough money to put herself through school, and when she was thirteen she finally had enough money to attend Bayou Annunciation.

Throughout school, Morgan was constantly aware of the fact that she was hanging on to her education by a thread.  She took as many classes as she was allowed and studied hard, always fearful that she wouldn't have the money to come back the following term.  While she was at school, she would tutor her peers for a fee, and in the summers she was back to working odd jobs.  When she was old enough, she started working full-time jobs in the summer and would babysit or help on farms when she was off, and she would save any extra money she earned for potential hard times.

When she finally graduated from Bayou Annunciation, Morgan had just enough money saved to put in a semester's tuition at a magical university in London. She lived with her parents that summer and worked, and then in August she made the move to London. Once she had her school paid off for the summer she had almost no money to her name.  She put in applications at local shops and while she was waiting for replies she did odd jobs for locals.  She had a girl friend at the university who'd attended Bayou with her, and for a while Morgan crashed on the floor in the girl's dorm.  Halfway through her first semester, Morgan finally got a full-time job at a potions shop and within the same week had made a deal with an old lady named Anne that she would keep the woman's house in shape in exchange for a room—Anne's attic.

ROLEPLAY
Reply as your character to the following:

It was impossible for Dianne to stay out of trouble. It wasn't that she was looking for trouble, it's just that trouble always managed to find her. Today she wished she could find something equally familiar but more comforting.

The five-year old girl hugged her puffskein closer to her and brushed her face in its soft fur for comfort. She had named him herself and he was always her special pet. No she was certain she had never gone down this side street before. Her anxiety increased every second as darkness fell as she walked down the road. A loud noise came to her left and she buried her face in her pet's fur completely. The scared girl bolted the opposite way slamming the both of them into the wall of the nearest building. Tottering back a few steps she found a door a few feet to her right and ran to open it. What light there was inside spilled out into the darkness and she spilled into the room.

Once in, she was caught between the impulse to curl her cloak up more tightly around her and loosen her grip on it. She wasn't alone anymore but she was now among strangers instead, which was nearly as terrifying. Her puffskein had recovered from the shock of the wall and now was purring contentedly as the girl hugged it, causing a mildly calming effect on the girl. Gathering her courage, she marched up to the nearest person, pulled on the nearest clothing hem and blurted out in a loud voice:

"I'm lost and it's dark and I wanted to know where I am but I'm not scared but I am worried that Sambundeakin is scared because he's little and needs something to eat and wants to go home."

She paused to draw a breath in her nearly never-ending sentence, "He misses my and his mommy."

To explain the scared girl held up the custard-colored puffskein. Sambundeakin the puffskein, however simply purred as if nothing on earth was wrong in the world.

Roleplay Response:
It was Sunday night.  Morgan had just worked a double at the potions shop and she had a major divination exam in the morning.  She didn't even want to take divination.  She'd never had patience for divination: she couldn't understand how people could deal with a magic with such uncertain results.  She liked to deal in the concrete, the real-world. But the university she was attending expected her to have a "basic knowledge" in all subjects, and now it she was tired and sore and her head was killing her, and she still didn't know the difference between rhabdomancy and extispicy.

She was in a coffee shop, nursing the world's largest cup of black coffee.  For the most part, she liked living in England, but she couldn't understand how so many people around here could get by just on tea.  She couldn't imagine getting through her current schedule without coffee. 

She was glaring down at a flashcard when her robes were yanked on.  She turned and squinted at the girl through hazy eyes. She made a mental note to send a birthday card to Shergar. How old was he now? Eight? Nine? He couldn't be older than nine, could he? She'd check when she got back to the attic. Oh, the attic. Crap. She'd told Anita she'd mow the lawn this weekend.  That hadn't happened, which meant that Morgan was bumping it onto her ever-increasing Monday-lunch-break list. And she had the deadline for her article coming up…

The kid was still talking.

Morgan gently massaged her eyelids.  She stared at the girl. Why was this her problem?  Morgan didn't mind kids. On a normal babysat for years, and it was one of her favorite odd jobs.  But this was just about the least convenient time to be dealing with a lost kid.

"Your puffskein isn't scared," Morgan said.  "See how he's purring?  He's fine, and as long as you remain calm, he will, too.  He can tell how you're feeling.  Now, where's the last place you saw your mother?"

Hopefully Morgan could get the little kid taken care of quickly so that she could get some work before bed tonight.
 

[Professor Tibble]

Accepted.