CHARACTER INFORMATIONCharacter name: Nora Lowsley
Previous and/or Current Character(s) if applicable: Helga Hugglesmithe et. al
Character age: 46
Character education:Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry -- 1931-1938
Strength and weaknesses (details please):With solid N.E.W.T.s in both Transfiguration and Charms, Nora barely managed O.W.L.s in Divination, Conjuring and Summoning, and Potions.
Nora has a penchant for asking questions to people that she shouldn’t. She’s been poking her nose into things long before she left Hogwarts, long before she became a reporter. This has the tendency to come back and bite her.
Physical description:She is over forty which means she practically has one foot in the grave. Nora keeps her red hair cut short, much shorter than when she was a student. In real life, she tends to wear sturdy clothes made more for travel than dresses or robes.
Personality (nice, rude, funny etc. Paragraph please.):Nora is friendly. She tries to help out those people that need it, and gives people as much space as they require. She hates bullies though. Growing up as a Muggleborn, especially when they were treated much more poorly than now, she was used to being on the short end of the stick. With enough prodding on this she can be set off, though her age has tempered any outbursts into cool fury. She is well known for her sarcasm and often uses it to put people that are too full of themselves in their place.
Hopes and dreams. Why are you teaching at Hogwarts?:Nora normally feels drawn back to Hogwarts after some time away. Lately, especially after her adventures with a competent Smallweed, she was reminded of how much more interesting it was to mentor young students. She also took up a teaching position at Cambridge and, while it did scratch that itch, it wasn't as good as working at the old magic school.
Besides, as a Librarian she wouldn't have as much responsibilities this time around.
Biography (500 words minimum. There is never such a thing as too much.): Life could change in an instant. It could be something relatively benign. A letter appearing in a mailbox, inviting her to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Sometimes, it was dramatic. Nora’s parents vanishing when she was still in Hogwarts certainly fit that bill.
Other times, it came as a blow out of nowhere, something that only you really understood. Interning at the Ministry for Magic, she sat powerless as the Wizengamot debated on whether to strip from Muggleborns the right to work at the Ministry.
She wasn’t put out that day, that summer, she just never returned.
Nora, born in Canada and raised in the UK, was always the odd one out. Especially after her parents vanished. Yet being a Muggleborn wasn’t easy before either. How many times did she have to grit her teeth and take abusive comments, dismissed because she was lesser? The problem with Hogwarts, when she was there, was not the school. It was the people.
When she left, Nora worked with the Daily Prophet for a few years. She was on the forefront of covering the war, scoring a top interview with Sheppard Kedding after the first Blitz. Of course, Nora had noted that blood tests were carried out in the shelters. Just another way that a tragedy was used to further an agenda of persecution.
When the war, and the war after the war, ended, she drifted away from the Prophet. Writing articles no longer held the attraction as it once did. A chance encounter in Knockturn Alley turned her back to what had been one of her goals, so very long ago: teaching at Hogwarts.
Her two years there had been unremarkable. Unremarkable was good. None of her students died, at least in her own class. The school wasn’t taken over. Wars didn’t break it, it was just - normal.
When she left, she took after one of her colleagues and decided to travel. It was something she had wanted to do for a long time, it was just that the travel restrictions of war and post-war had put a damper on that. Freed from the UK for the first time since her parents moved her there so very long ago, she left. Nora spent the first few years following Moira’s footsteps through China and Tibet, before diverging on her own path. She worked freelance with some Cursebreakers in Egypt, fought zombies on the Zombie Trail, tried (and failed) to create spells while on a deserted island.
She returned to the UK to find it had stayed the same. She had changed though and, after another two-year stint at Hogwarts, was off again to travel the world. Nora evolved into a freelance curse breaker and adventurer over the last six years of her life, utilizing a series of contacts around the world from her travels to hear about strange things and pop in to help out.
Eventually, she took a job at Cambridge as an associate guest lecturer, helping out one of the first female lecturers at the country's second-best university in delivering lectures and marking papers. Though, it was a job that couldn't last forever. Eventually, there would be questions on her qualifications that she couldn't explain away with magic. Now, there's a gap in her work back in the UK.
Perhaps, a smaller position at Hogwarts might be the right fit.
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 favoured 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:She was on time. It had been one of the most difficult things to learn - punctuality. Working at Cambridge, or timing a trap in a tomb, required you to have an exact sense of temporal matters. She had even gotten to Hogwarts early this time, cognizant of her previous two failures to show up to the interview on time.
It was good to be back, even if it was just going to be for this visit. The walls had that familiar feel, the sound of footsteps clattered on long-remembered stones. It would be the same here as she had left it. Oh, the students would be different (but, not that different) with different names (but, once again, not that different names) yet the same things would be happening.
Drama, heartbreak, wonder, excitement, love- or, what teenagers called it anyways.
As she approached the Headmistress's Office, perfectly punctually on time, she froze. Not literally, that would have been a nice trick. No, Nora had made a mistake.
She couldn't be on time.
Anneka liked to put potential professors on edge. She liked to level that classic glare at them, as if she had just ridden in from Siberia on a bear and was annoyed at you for existing. If Nora was on time, that wouldn't give Anneka the upper hand. She would feel uncomfortable and out of place and, perhaps, push harder on other subjects which could be an issue in the interview.
So, Nora waited. She found an open window and popped out of it, getting out of the summer heat of the castle to sit on the tiles of the roof. Her sonjurn outside was timed enough that she wouldn't take far too long, the old pocketwatch she kept making sure of that.
Yet, she would enjoy the view and the sunshine.
Once she was well and truly late, Nora clambered back in the window, dusted herself off, and made her way up to the office. Anneka was there with that look on her face that she could remember far, far too well and she sat in the chair to be admonished by the Russian witch.
It had been a success, then. Nora had timed it perfectly.
"Headmistress," Nora leaned back in the chair as she observed the woman who had, at one point, just been the Quidditch Referee, "if I were on time for an interview you think I'd have been replaced with a boggart." The little tricks that the Headmistress could play with that stare would work on others.
She too was from a land of cold and snow, a little glare couldn't hurt her.
"Where should we start?" Nora smiled, "I can assure you, even though I was a Hufflepuff, I do not eat books."
Outside of occasional snacks.
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