E L S E W H E R E A D U L T
CHARACTER INFORMATIONCharacter Name: Edward Helios AmberghastGender: Male.Age: 57Blood Status: Pureblood.Education: Hogwarts (Slytherin)Residence:Harrowdown HallOccupationHead of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement + Wizengamot Member + Retired Hit WizardEligibility for Dept. Head role. (Approved by Atticus Rivera)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?The Ministry.Requested Magic Levels:
Adult characters have 32 starting levels to distribute across these four categories (less levels can be used if you so desire, but no more than 32). The number of levels on the lowest ability must be at least half of the highest ability.
If you want levels above the usual 32 total, or a significantly uneven distribution of starting levels, please fill out and submit the Exceptional Levels special request form here.
- Charms: 10
- Divination: 6
- Transfiguration: 6
- Summoning: 10
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:Indigo, Xanthe, etc.Biography: (300 words minimum.)
An exhaustive dossier detailing Edward Amberghast’s decorated career as an Auror (Hit Wizard, 1939 — 1949) with the Magical Law Enforcement Department:
(Page one of twenty-five:)AwardsOrder of Merlin, Second Class
(1949)Order of Merlin, Third Class
(1945)MedalsThe MLE Department Medal of Honor
(1948, 1949)The MLE Department Medal of Valor
(1942, 1947)The MLE Department Combat Cross
(1939, 1940, 1942, 1943, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1949)Commendations Honourable Mention
(1939, 1940, 1941, 1943)Exceptional Merit
(1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949)Commendation—Integrity
(1939-1949)Commendation—Community Service
(1939)Meritorious Duty
(1940, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949)Unit Citation
(1942, 1943, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1949)MLE Dept. Purple HeartPurple Shield
(awarded to those injured or killed in the line of duty)(1949)
hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry
1934
The elbow of Adrian Demott, ‘friend’ and fellow Slytherin, went rummaging for a rib.
“What?” Edward snapped.
“She’s gawking at you again, Ed. The freak — Dresden.”
But he did not look, not at the girl, not at the gagging gesture Demott made.
“I hate her. How do you put up with that? The staring? Those awful eyes? Everyone knows she has a weird thing for you, mate — totally obsessed. Total freakshow central.”
“I don’t care.”
“Nah, you know what? It’s not sick they make me feel, those eyes,” Demott shuddered.
“I reckon it’s something much worse.”
hogwarts
1934
He picked violets for her, still warm from the sun, its petals — even bruised within her pained, defeated grasp — were the exact colour of her eyes, exactly as they were seven years ago when he found her, crying in the Greenhouses, eager to share: ‘I have found a flower just like you.’
“How much more of this?”
“Elizabeth—”
“You don’t have any idea how this hurts. What it’s like to see your eyes across the hall, looking at me like I’m nothing. Like I’m a stranger—”
“El—”
“Like when you look away I won’t exist.”
“Elizabeth, please, slow down. You know it won’t always be like this,” he lied, once, “and that I can fix it, with time,” twice, “when I have control of the family, that’s when I can change things,” three times — then saved his best for last.
“This pain isn’t permanent.”
But his lies were merciful, and the truth was not.
“I love you, Elizabeth.”
harrowdown hall
1936
So intense was her trembling — her tall, graceful figure rigid with anxious energy — that Cosima Amberghast lost complete control of the volume of her voice, her finger wagging in her son’s face with as much menace as most could hold a wand.
“You thought we wouldn’t know? That we wouldn’t find out? Have you spent so long cavorting with that Mudblood wench that you’ve forgotten who you are?”
“She a halfblood, actually—”
“Don’t you dare talk back to me, Edward Amberghast. Don’t even think about it. She’s nothing.”
He looked to the far side of the room, at his father emotionless, smoking a cigar in silence, not even looking in their direction. For a fraction of a second — one that was immeasurable, incomprehensible and irretrievable — a pang of something someone else would have realised was empathy, trying not to suffocate inside of him, and would have indulged it, as something other than a curious and unfortunate and ultimately meaningless realisation, meant to die.
elizabeth’s garden
portishead, somerset
He sat there alone for over an hour, as silent and still as the cherub statues either side of him, staring as if incapable of expression into the garden’s bright and vibrant blossoming, her flowers and foliage built like plate armour around her desperately quaint little home. He had told her, more than once – more than anything, because she alone cared about such things — that his hands lacked the gentle touch to make things grow, that there was no poetry in his heart, nothing waiting to blossom in his soul.
By the door — and on one side only like that meant something, like even in silence she was speaking something too profound for him to fully comprehend — a large clearing completely covered in violets, blooming brightly, so overgrown and abundant, as if nothing else in her garden was so unafraid to grow.
“Ed—”
He didn’t wince. Didn’t do anything, not until he remembered what she said, how she had looked at him beneath the furrow of her brow, how she seemed almost infuriated that the stoic, dutiful man that she loved saw nothing poetic inside himself, as if there was no room in there for anything but the bright reflection of her soul.
‘I have found a flower just like you,’ she repeated, her words almost as stubborn as the recipient.
Almost.
So she put them there, by the door.
“Ed, love — what’s the matter?”
Suddenly, desperately, he wished he hadn’t understood.
His head lifted. He didn’t wince. Didn’t do anything.
Suddenly the violet in her eyes flashed darker than it ever had before, like she knew, her betrayal blossoming, heavy, lidded, reaching frantically for any sign of plausible disbelief and burning a hole right through him when none was found.
“You were right—” he began to say.
“No.”
“What was it you said? You have such a way with words—”
Her hand clutched dramatically towards her throat, like she was about to be sick.
“A legacy of lovelessness and cowardice. Stone hearts bleeding cold blood—”
“No—”
“You were right.”
She was crying, he wasn’t sure when she started, his own face hard, set. Too late to go back.
“Don’t do this — you can’t do this — not now,” she reached out to him, but that part of him was gone.
“It’s done.”
And he was gone.
She sat there alone for over an hour, not silent, not still, and when she left that place, their home, she left it for the last time, hesitating only for a moment, kneeling near the violets, blooming by the door, and digging into the rich soil a small hole as wide as her hand, not unlike a tiny grave.
Just big enough to hold the baby’s rattle, buried without sound or ceremony in the last of the dying sun.
And she knew even then she could not take back what she left there in the garden, buried with their son. Gone.
a pristine beach on the french riviera
1941
“Are you Penelope Amberghast?”
The woman turned, stunning and ethereal, her hair a gossamer veil thrown by the grateful wind across her perfect shoulders.
“Oui, darling, oui,” said Penelope, her voice warm, enveloping. “And you are?”
“No one important,” said the woman, her strange, ambivalent demeanour lost on Penelope who simply smiled, glowing, and moved her hand to lightly rest on her stomach’s noticeable swell.
“A friend of the family?” asked Penelope, as if her wide eyes and aching smile wished to rival the brightness of the sun.
“Yes, sure, of course — who isn’t? Such lovely people.”
The woman reached out her hand, hesitating over Penelope’s stomach.
“May I?”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Penelope brightened, stepping forward and practically insisting.
But Penelope did not understand the woman’s words, uttered in Latin, nor sense the ominous and unspeakable something belying the gentleness of the woman’s grasp, too busy throwing ear-to-ear smiles over the strange’s woman’s shoulder, and beckoning with a wave more arriving visitors, spotted in the distance.
Penelope turned back to her, to finally ask her name, but found only emptiness awaiting her, the woman with the dark, violet eyes already gone.
harrowdown hall
november 11th, 1941
The impending birth of an heir brought every living Amberghast to Harrowdown, and of all people it was the father to arrive last, Penelope’s piercing screams meeting his arrival home.
He was stood either in or just outside the door until it was finished, until his exhausted, semi-delirious wife called to him, their son swaddled up into a bundle of pristine white blankets, her face — staring as if she had not existed until that moment — transfixed by the face of their son.
The elves scattered out of the way, inviting his approach, but as he got nearer each step seemed to take much longer than the last, heavy and aching, an almost insurmountable foreboding, its strangeness tangible in the air like that too was against him, playing tricks on him, the realisation that all dreams turned into nightmares when not allowed to end—
“Eddy, my love — isn’t he perfect?” she asked, her accent elongating every syllable in a way he still could not stand. “His eyes, have you ever seen something so beautiful? Something that shines so bright?”
It was then he was close enough, too close (or too far) to turn back, lifting his gaze as he looked into the boy’s eyes, his own eyes widening in horror.
Violet—
“Indigo,” his wife said, rocking the child in her arms, looking down at him with a smile so bright the sun itself would falter and fade with envy.
“My darling little Indigo.”
Penelope never heard the silence. She turned her head and he was gone.
harrowdown hall
january 13th, 1943
“Sir, it was not an easy birth,” said the elf, trembling with fright, “Miss Penelope will be fine but your son, sir — your son is very weak, very sickly. We had to send word to St. Mungo’s. The healers said he was lucky to make it through the night, he—”
“His eyes?” asked the stone statue that looked just like Edward Amberghast.
“His eyes are fine, sir—”
“What colour are they, you insipid creature?”
“G-g-green, sir. Bright green! Miss Penelope is quite taken with them, she—”
Edward stood, moving finally, overwhelmed with cold calm, with pure relief, completely incapable of retaining most of what the elf (still talking) said and thinking only about those eyes, now with one less place from which to haunt him.
“Send for me if either of them take a turn.”
harrowdown hall
11th november, 1947
Penelope, still sobbing hysterically, ran from the room.
“It’s your birthday, Indigo,” said the man, not looking at the boy, his tone predictably clipped given his words were spoken through his teeth.
“Why didn’t you open any of your presents? Why did you scare the other children away? Why did you make your mother cry?’
“Go away!”
“Indigo—”
It sickened him, the snarling sound his child made, the fire burning in those violet eyes, and as he looked and looked he realised it wasn’t a child he saw or anything that seemed reliably or relatably human.
“I hate you!” it screamed, and while Edward hated to look at it,
it wouldn’t look away.
“Why?” and Edward, who took remarks on his reptilian logic as compliments, regretted it the moment the syllable slipped forever away.
“You ruined everything.”
The child snarled again, its eyes burning hot, bloodshot and red at the edges, like it hadn’t slept, like it had been crying for days. But there were no tears, there was no cry for help — nothing but dark violet, and betrayal, and rage.
“It’s all going to burn.”
mount vesuvius
1949
After six months chasing Thomas Stockton — whose ill repute had fast been turning into infamy — it was all over in a matter of minutes, the dark wizard within reach but undeniably gone, slain, as Edward himself pulled himself up against the jagged rock — his bleeding profuse, begging at him from every direction — and his fingers, barely trembling, completely covered in his own blood, touched at the empty space where one of his eyes should still have been.
Then, and it was so sudden, so reminiscent of delirium, and he was so bereft of strength that there was no questioning, not when those violet eyes appeared, hovering just above his fallen foe, or when Elizabeth Dresden materialised into something fully formed, a face in which those dark eyes could sink, and looked back and forth between them from her haunches, shaking her head.
“Quite the pickle you’re in,” she said, and what should have been teasing sounded cold and hard.
“Elizabeth—” His remaining eye struggled in and out of focus, his body slumped upright even as he crawled towards the voice, convinced Apparition would send him scattered to the four corners of earth.
“Oh, it’s not me you should be worrying about.”
He felt a hand ruffle through his hair, convinced it was the breeze.
“Your optic nerve is about to die.”
Her hand, maybe his own, flipped back Stockon’s head, rolling open his eyes.
“Nothing in an ice cold grey, I’m afraid,” she taunted, “not even a psychotic shade of violet, in honour of our son. Brown will have to do.”
The hand he thought he felt in his hair he felt on his cheek, then those eyes, for just a moment, before he looked around, suddenly alone, and heard her small, whispered sound.
“I need your eyes wide open when he burns you to the ground.”
harrowdown hall
december 25th, 1952
It was hard to hear much of anything over the racket of Malachite and Calliope, fighting between themselves (as was their biannual tradition) over who received the better presents and why, and so occupied were they by their game-like squabbling — and so occupied was Penelope, by her basin of wine — that no one had noticed Persephone, playing quietly by herself.
Beside her stood a particularly small elf, half-hidden by the settee, its enormous eyes glued to the floor, and though it waited dutifully and in complete silence for some wrapping to vanish, or mess to clear away, or to fill the child’s needy hands with what usually proved to be the favourite gift — that being the
next one, almost without fail — Persephone remained enthralled by what was in her hands and uninterested in the awaiting deluge.
He dropped down onto his haunches beside her, thin lips pulled into the ethereal strangeness of his smile, strained but genuine, his expression like stone wallowing reluctantly in the sun.
“What do you have there, darling?”
Her head whipped around suddenly — her smile as bright as her golden waves, as wide as it had ever been — followed close behind by something soft, and ugly in its crimson—
“Papa, look what Indy got me — Look! It’s a Lion — you know, for Gryffindor. Like him.”
Persephone uncrossed her legs and bolted upright, allowing her little lion to briefly graze across her father’s immaculately tailored shoulders, completely unaware of the severe look on her father’s stone face, or the salt she’d kicked into his most vulnerable wound.
harrowdown hall
1968
He stood in the doorway, watching Xanthe pack (overpack) her school trunk, his daughter’s face lighting up the moment she noticed him. Even Penelope — who rarely noticed anything other than her own reflection — had said to him he was slipping, in her accented words: a make-believe father that no one still believed in.
“Are you excited for school?” he asked, not
only because he had nothing else to ask her.
“Yes, Papa! Of course.”
“Your mother and I are very proud of you, Xanthe, that’s why we know you’ll be sorted into Slytherin
“You’re so funny, Papa! I’m a second year!” she replied, with complete sincerity. “You know that.”
He didn’t.
And he was gone.
Roleplay: 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:“Well of course it’s unethical,” said Edward, his graceful brow etched with a severe line. “That’s why we’re in a back alley, and why you’re not in Azkaban.”
“They’ll kill me if they find out what I told you.”Edward smiled thinly at the man.
“Then I suggest you not tell them.”
The slovenly, odious informant stood there in stunned silence, several emotions playing quickly across his expression, but when no punchline followed he resigned himself to Apparition, sighing darkly as his magic consumed him from below.
He rounded the corner, inconspicuous like idle stone, exiting the small alleyway and stepping back onto the main street. The disaster awaiting him there, in the form of what he could generously be described as a woman, was perplexing to him, then annoying, then perplexing again, and his hand hesitated over his wand for just a moment before settling back by his side, perfectly timed as she toppled to the ground.
“Walking
is difficult,” he said, and despite his severe look — and despite even the outreach of his helping-hand managing to seem likewise serve and threatening — it lingered there, charitable, genuine. Perhaps as genuine as any of the Amberghast family’s routine (there was a calendar) acts of charity.
OTHERHow did you find us?
Google
