Hogwarts School: A Harry Potter RPG

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character name: Julia Laurence

Previous and/or Current Character(s) if applicable: Benji Cuddrun

Character age: 34

Character education:
Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons, Class of 1957
The University of Edinburgh, Class of 1961

Strength and weaknesses (details please):
Julia has a natural charisma and wit about her that draws people in quickly and easily. She has mastered the subtle art of charming would-be allies and enemies alike with soft words and a sweet, playful demeanor. This ability has been an invaluable tool for her father and brothers in their political and social ambitions. She is incredibly intelligent and combined with her charisma, she is often able to stay two steps ahead of her opponents (whether they realize they are opponents or not).

Her unyielding and often blind devotion to her family is a weakness she has not yet been able to overcome. Raised in an incredibly patriarchal family, she has been groomed to understand her place as a woman in comparison to that of her brothers. She allows them and her father to dictate her almost every move, and she is essentially at their beck-and-call, despite the appearance that she is an independent woman with a career. She will do almost anything they ask of her, to her own detriment. She is also known to take unnecessary risks on their behalf, and she will drop everything she is doing if they summon her.

Physical description:
Julia is on the shorter side, around 5’4, often placing her below the height of her older students. You’ll often find her in heels or boots to make up for this. She is slim, with a nice figure. Although she has the money to dress in higher-end fashions, she is rather down-to-earth and prefers casual jeans and sweaters or blouses than anything else. Her medium-length brown hair is often worn down, or pinned back out of her face. Julia’s light brown eyes are the highlight of her features and are often the first thing anyone notices about her. She is usually seen wearing a small smile that reaches her eyes, but if it’s a genuinely happy smile, her dimples will reveal themselves.

Personality (nice, rude, funny etc. Paragraph please.):
The first thing to understand about Julia, is her innate sense of duty and obligation to the people she’s loyal to. She will consistently put the people she loves ahead of herself, every time, without question. One would think this would make her selfless. She is anything but. In many ways, Julia is incredibly selfish, but this selfishness is always rooted in the betterment of her family, status and power. She is not afraid to take what she believes to be rightfully hers, and anyone who gets in her way will be met with her colder side.

Inwardly, Julia is an elitist, though it’s very rare to see her portray this outside of the confines of her family’s home. She is a pureblooded noblewoman, and she’s very aware of the status that provides her.

Outwardly, to everyone who meets her, Julia is soft-spoken, unassuming, a well-brought up noblewoman with impeccable manners and propriety. But behind closed doors, she is absolutely, undeniably cutthroat when it comes to her or her family’s ambitions. She is the type to smile in someone’s face, soothe them, comfort them, all while lighting the match to their pyre. Her loyalty is hard to obtain and harder to keep, but when the woman loves, she loves with an intensity that is unshakeable. Her love of course, being reserved for her family and a few close friends.

On a smaller scale, Julia can be kind, surprisingly caring and has a soft spot for children.

Hopes and dreams. Why are you teaching at Hogwarts?:
To put it simply, Julia is looking for an escape. She loves her job at The British Museum, and will likely retain a part-time curator position there. However, her life and surroundings are changing quickly. Her father is dying of lung cancer, and in the meantime, her brothers are in a struggle for power to retain the family’s status. Her eldest brother, Edward is becoming volatile, quickly and his grasp on her is tightening to a suffocating level. A position at Hogwarts will allow her to continue her career in educating the youth of wizarding Britain, while also allotting her the freedom from her brother she so desperately wants.

She deeply believes in the education of the wizarding youth, however she believes in educating children in all aspects. Dark and light. She will follow the Ministry’s regulations in public. Privately will always be another story.

She also recognizes the benefit of connections with Hogwarts’s professors, considering many of them are well-regarded and respected at the higher echelons of society and the Ministry. This can only strengthen her and her family’s place in the country. 

Biography (500 words minimum. There is never such a thing as too much.):
”Let the sky fall, when it crumbles, we will stand tall and face it all together….”

Blood is everything. It is the lifeforce within all living, breathing things. Carrying nutrients, platelets and oxygen throughout our bodies, blood is what serves us, feeds us, defines us. It is what separates sentient from non, and what defines worth over none.

Lady Julia Sybil Laurence was born in a bath of the blood that would define her very existence for the rest of her life. As her mother was swept away into Death’s gentle arms, Julia took her first breaths into the world that would become her oyster.

As the third-born child and only daughter of William Laurence, one of the most powerful dukes in England, it could be assumed that Julia’s life would be laid out in front of her from the moment of conception. However, Lord Laurence was not a shallow or short-sighted man. She would not be sent to some aristo finishing school, or married off to another noble family at the first chance. His daughter, his Julia, was no lady-in-waiting. She would be raised the same as her brothers; educated, calculated, ambitious. Another portrait of pride and significance in the history of the British aristocracy.

As one of the few Pureblood noble families in Britain, the Laurences took their lineage and status extremely seriously. Since the time of the Norman invasion in 1066, every chess move, every intrigue, every whisper in every hallway was calculated carefully, methodically, patiently. Aligning themselves with muggle nobles and royalty had often felt beneath them, but instinctively, they knew:

Everyone had something to offer. Who were they to not capitalize upon it?

It hadn’t always worked out of course. Many of their lineage were lost to tyrants, petty civil war, and jealous rivals over the centuries. But the core of them remained, steadfast in their quest for power and domination in the land.

It was this innate sense of duty and ambition that fueled the blood within Julia Laurence from the time she was a girl. The castle where she grew up seemed tiny to her, compared to the enormous world that awaited her outside. Within the hundreds of books her tutors provided her over the years, Julia found her calling; a desperate need to absorb knowledge. Knowledge about different cultures, the origin of magic, different wizarding families throughout the world, magical history, and the dark arts.

As tradition required, following her private tutoring, Julia was sent to Beauxbatons instead of Hogwarts for her magical education. There, she was well-liked but also well-known to have a certain distaste for those whose ambitions, behavior or lineage left much to be desired. A tone that could be perceived as disrespectful or uncouth would be met with a flash of brown eyes and a sharp reminder of who they were talking to. She flourished in school, receiving nearly perfect marks in her subjects and could often be found re-arranging books in the library during her spare time. She made good friends with the elderly librarian there, who taught her how to properly research, cite and dictate her findings. She wrote several editorials for the school newsletter and volunteered on the rare occasion in the hospital wing. She found, of course, that healing just wasn’t her forte.

After completing Beauxbatons, she followed her elder brothers to the University of Edinburgh, studying Magical History and Archaeology in addition to a few extra classes in Botany and Chemistry on the side. Learning enthralled the girl. The more she absorbed, the more powerful she felt, and the more she relished every book she could get her hands on. Her brothers found her rather amusing, as neither of them seemed to have the same vigor for education and focused more on the social aspects of their university lives. Valuable, Julia concurred, but nowhere near as exciting.

Nothing was more exciting to the woman than something that wasn’t expected of her. And at first glance, or second, no one would take her for a lover of the darker arts. While her father, brothers and extended family cared little about the difference between use of light or dark magic (as it was all the same to them), Julia found herself drawn to the abyss, drinking in page after page of spells, incantations, potions and hexes. She had never used them of course, that anyone knew of. But they were nice to have in her pocket.

Marriage and men had never been on her radar, much less a priority. Marriage was for status, cementing alliances and providing heirs. Julia already had the first two, and her brothers would provide the last.

An unmarried, educated, pureblooded aristo woman was quite the prize in noble Britain, but the only game Julia would humor, was where Queen takes King.

SAMPLE ROLEPLAY

It was the largest office in Hogwarts and, perhaps to students and newcomers, the most intimidating. The shelves were filled with paperwork, and lots and lots of books. A few of the shelves had various odds and ends that had been saved from previous owners. The sorting hat had a place of honour, but less of one than before. The walls held all the portraits of past Headmasters and Headmistresses, as well as her Russian portraits. Anneka Ivanova's was closest to Karina's desk.

In the middle of the room sat a large desk. Everything was in order. Almost a ruthless order. Important papers were closest to her, with her favourite quill. Then other documents further away. And at the edge is her favourite Venus flytrap and a picture of Vlad.

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.

Karina was not always punctual. Yes, she was aware of the time, she would just deliberately come late. She valued control. And what better method of control than making people wait for you. But she expected others to be punctual to the second. Or early. So naturally Karina Ivansko was not happy.

"You have five minutes to assure me that you'll never be late again." Karina said to the applicant gesturing to the ancient and uncomfortable chair across from her. Her fingernails drummed irritably on the desk. And she had a look on her face that imitated a Russian winter.

(Yes, she had learned well from the great Anneka Ivanova).

Roleplay Response:

Julia Laurence did not make it a habit to be late for anything The woman was impeccably prompt by nature, having been raised that first impressions and respect for peoples’ time were everything. And yet, this interview was already off to a bad start.

The bloody Floo Network was down, which meant apparating from West Sussex to somewhere in Middlesex, having to take a muggle cab (less than ideal…) to the public loos. There she had to flush herself down the disgusting toilet with the rest of the peons, apparate from the Ministry to Hogsmeade, and then practically run the rest of the way to the castle.

Talk about a nightmare. If Julia didn’t want this job so badly, she would have thrown in the towel the moment she’d taken her first glance at that toilet. Surely, the Ministry could come up with better ways to get their people into the building if the Floo Network was down? She’d send an owl to the Minister at her first opportunity.

To make matters worse, Julia had never set foot inside Hogwarts, so she had no earthly idea where she was going. As she hurried up the first set of stairs, she was lucky enough to catch a wayward house elf and snapped, “The Headmistress’s office? Which way?!” The house elf recoiled at her sharp question and pointed in the right direction. “Stairs, take a left, follow the right corridor, up through the Courtyard and the West Bailey!”

Better than what she had been working with before.

As she finally found herself in front of Headmistress Ivansko’s office, she straightened her dress and smoothed her hair before giving a light knock and entered at the woman’s invitation. A chair awaited her, directly across from Karina, and she sat quickly, prepared to offer a sincere repentance.

"You have five minutes to assure me that you'll never be late again."

How very curt. Apparently, manners and polite dismissals of inconveniences were lost upon the Hogwarts sort. Definitely not Beauxbatons. Julia smiled sweetly, though it didn’t reach her eyes, and she sat up a little straighter in her chair. “Not to worry, I won’t waste another second of your time about it other than to apologize. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.” She gave a little nod and reached down into her bag to produce a portfolio that included her CV and letters of recommendation.

“Shall we get started?” Julia smiled again as she opened the small folder and began handing Karina parchment after parchment. “You’ll see on my CV that I began my career with an internship at the Louvre as a junior curator before I moved on to the Vatican…”

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Julia Sybil Laurence
Gender: Female
Age: 34
Blood Status: Pureblood

Education:
Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons, Class of 1957
The University of Edinburgh, Class of 1961

Residence:
Currently, Julia resides at Arundel Castle in West Sussex. It is the seat of the Earls of Arundel and the Dukes of Norfolk, both titles currently held by her father, William Laurence. Within the restored medieval castle, Julia has been allotted a few rooms, including a bedchamber and a parlor with its own private access door to the estate’s library.

Occupation
Since her graduation from the University of Edinburgh several years ago, Julia has been busying herself between different curator roles throughout Europe. Her first job was a restoration internship at the Louvre, followed by a brief stint at the Vatican as an International Relations Officer. Finding this role rather dull and uninteresting due to the lack of research involved, she quickly moved onto The British Museum. There she has had several roles in the areas of research, project management and oversight. Her most recent role has been Curator of History of Magic in English Royalty and Aristocracies. The exhibit only accessible of course, to those of magical capabilities.

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?
Nope.

Requested Magic Levels:

• Charms: 10
• Divination: 7
• Transfiguration: 8
• 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:
Benji Cuddrun (active), Nila Arian (inactive), Mae Garland (inactive)

Biography: (300 words minimum.)
”Let the sky fall, when it crumbles, we will stand tall and face it all together….”

Blood is everything. It is the lifeforce within all living, breathing things. Carrying nutrients, platelets and oxygen throughout our bodies, blood is what serves us, feeds us, defines us. It is what separates sentient from non, and what defines worth over none.

Lady Julia Sybil Laurence was born in a bath of the blood that would define her very existence for the rest of her life. As her mother was swept away into Death’s gentle arms, Julia took her first breaths into the world that would become her oyster.

As the third-born child and only daughter of William Laurence, Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Arundel, it could be assumed that Julia’s life would be laid out in front of her from the moment of conception. However, Lord Laurence was not a shallow or short-sighted man. She would not be sent to some aristo finishing school, or married off to the Northumberlands or Cornwalls at the first chance. His daughter, his Julia, was no lady-in-waiting. She would be raised the same as her brothers; educated, calculated, ambitious. Another portrait of pride and significance in the history of the British aristocracy.

As one of the few Pureblood aristo families in Britain, the Laurences took their lineage and status extremely seriously. Since the time of the Norman invasion in 1066, every chess move, every intrigue, every whisper in every hallway was calculated carefully, methodically, patiently. Aligning themselves with muggle nobles and royalty had often felt beneath them, but instinctively, they knew:

Everyone had something to offer. Who were they to not capitalize upon it?

It hadn’t always worked out of course. Many of their lineage were lost to tyrants, petty civil war, and jealous rivals over the centuries. But the core of them remained, steadfast in their quest for power and domination in the land.

It was this innate sense of duty and ambition that fueled the blood within Julia Laurence from the time she was a girl. The castle of Arundel where she grew up seemed tiny to her, compared to the enormous world that awaited her outside. Within the hundreds of books her tutors provided her over the years, Julia found her calling; a desperate need to absorb knowledge. Knowledge about different cultures, the origin of magic, different wizarding families throughout the world, magical history, and the dark arts.

As tradition required, following her private tutoring, Julia was sent to Beauxbatons instead of Hogwarts for her magical education. There, she was well-liked but also well-known to have a certain distaste for those whose ambitions, behavior or lineage left much to be desired. A tone that could be perceived as disrespectful or uncouth would be met with a flash of brown eyes and a sharp reminder of who they were talking to. She flourished in school, receiving nearly perfect marks in her subjects and could often be found re-arranging books in the library during her spare time. She made good friends with the elderly librarian there, who taught her how to properly research, cite and dictate her findings. She wrote several editorials for the school newsletter and volunteered on the rare occasion in the hospital wing. She found, of course, that healing just wasn’t her forte.

After completing Beauxbatons, she followed her elder brothers to the University of Edinburgh, studying Magical History and Archaeology in addition to a few extra classes in Botany and Chemistry on the side. Learning enthralled the girl. The more she absorbed, the more powerful she felt, and the more she relished every book she could get her hands on. Her brothers found her rather amusing, as neither of them seemed to have the same vigor for education and focused more on the social aspects of their university lives. Valuable, Julia concurred, but nowhere near as exciting.
Nothing was more exciting to the woman than something that wasn’t expected of her. And at first glance, or second, no one would take her for a lover of the darker arts. While her father, brothers and extended family cared little about the difference between use of light or dark magic (as it was all the same to them), Julia found herself drawn to the abyss, drinking in page after page of spells, incantations, potions and hexes. She had never used them of course, that anyone knew of. But they were nice to have in her pocket.

Outwardly, to everyone who met her, Julia was soft-spoken, unassuming, a well-brought up noblewoman with impeccable manners and propriety. But behind closed doors, she was absolutely, undeniably cutthroat when it came to her or her family’s ambitions. She was the type to smile in someone’s face, soothe them, comfort them, all while lighting the match to their pyre. Her loyalty was hard to obtain and harder to keep, but when the woman loved, she loved with intensity that was unshakeable. Her love of course, being reserved for her family and a few close friends.

Marriage and men had never been on her radar, much less a priority. Marriage was for status, cementing alliances and providing heirs. Julia already had the first two, and her brothers would provide the last.

An unmarried, educated, pureblooded aristo woman was quite the prize in noble Britain, but the only game Julia would humor, was where Queen takes King.


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:
Diagon Alley; one of the few places Julia Laurence had not yet explored or unwrapped. Despite her upbringing, much of the shopping within her home was done by the estate manager or ladies’ maids. Having lived in Norfolk, there additionally wasn’t much need to come to London, outside of soirees or parliamentary events.
While excitement and curiosity filled every inch of her being, Julia maintained an exterior of calm and reserved as her eyes took in the sights and smells around her.
Dressed in a cream coatdress with matching pumps and a black leather handbag, she stood out amongst the crowd in their typical robes and wizard hats. Stopping in front of a bookshop, she marveled at a leather gold-embossed book, adorned with diamonds and rubies on the cover. ‘Geo Magic and It’s Origins’ the title read, and the woman decided on her way out, she’d stop in an claim it for her own. Such a gorgeous work would only go to waste unread in the shop window. 

“Merlin’s fog watch, my heel is broken! Help!”

Julia turned just in time to see a red-headed woman, laying on the ground, shoeless and hollering in a ridiculous manner. What a scene she was making. Julia watched silently, only moving to hold her handbag slightly closer to her side. Who knew if this was all a rouse to distract and rob some unsuspecting sucker in the chaos.

It was then, that Julia realized who the screaming woman was. Amelia Nixon, the lackluster reporter with the frog article to her name. Julia had read it several weeks ago on the train from Norfolk to Edinburgh, prior to the seminar she had been asked to give at her alma mater. It was a dull read, at best, but the woman had potential, if only she were given something important to write about.

Without wasting another moment, Julia breezed across the cobblestones and swept the woman’s shoe up in one graceful movement. She crouched down, knees together, as a proper lady did and smiled gently, holding the shoe out to the ridiculous woman. She raised one eyebrow in the most subtle fashion, “Well Miss Nixon, it seems you’ve taken quite the tumble. How about we see if we can get you back on your feet?” Julia stood and snapped her fingers at a man passing nearby. “You!” she called to him. “Do you not see this woman sprawled out on the street like common roadkill? Be a gentleman and help her up. Now.”

Everyone had something to offer…. 

OTHER
How did you find us? Current member