"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear." –––––– Oscar Wilde
- Joined April 2016
- Member of Slytherin
- 95 House Points
- 1st Year
United States
Backstory
"post"-romantic
⊰ROLEPLAYING RULES⊱
- Near perfect grammar is a must.
- Gods, please no asterisks.
- Third-person is preferable.
- No one-liners. Seventeen paragraphs, however, are not necessary, but, please, at least try to be detailed. I usually range in 1-3/4 paragraphs, but I am willing to do longer replies.
- I do not RP with canon characters or characters that are related to canon characters. There is some leniency, however.
- Please try to advance the plot. (Think: "Yes, and...")
⊰BASICS⊱
Full name: Rowan Charles Halvorsen
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Birthday: November 19
Blood status: "Half-blood"
Sexuality: Bisexual
Relationship Status: Single
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Nationality: Dual citizenship (US and UK)
Current Residence: Manhattan, but lives in London for part of the year
Aliases/Nicknames: Ro, Rowboat, Chimera
Occupation: Technically Unemployed
Languages: English, Polish, French, and a bit of Spanish
Handedness: Right-handed
Likes: the feeling of snake scales, rain at twilight, the smell of coffee, the muted silence of underwater, the harsh brightness of neon lights
Dislikes: static (or just electrical) shocks, space heaters that make too much noise, Arithmancy (even though she's not that bad at it), peppermint in its entirety
Mannerisms: Rowan often runs her hand through her hair– or over it. She also has a tendency to bite the left side of her bottom lip.
⊰PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS⊱
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<summary>chimera</summary>
Age: 22 Sex: Female Body type: Slender Hair: Cropped and coily black hair Height: 5’10” Weight: 135 lbs. Complexion: Dark Eyes: Charcoal until the light hits them Body Modifications: Rowan has a septum piercing as well as 3-5 piercings on each ear. Rowan has several magical tattoos, including two bands around her left forearm – one 2 cm thick and the other 0.75 cm thick, a band around her middle finger on her right hand, a cursive quote under her collarbone, two delicate bunches of flowers above her hips, and a sigil right below the nape of her neck. However, some of them are slightly distorted due to scarring. Description: Rowan is a tall woman, thin and athletic with broad shoulders and little curves. She is dark-skinned with cropped coily hair that's shorter on the sides and rounded at the top. Her eyes are narrow, the color of charcoal, flecks of amber-gold visible in the light. Her cheekbones are high and soft, accompanied by strong eyebrows with sharp tails. She enjoys wearing eyeliner and always love a little highlight in the corners of her eyes; she thinks they look even sharper that way. Accent/Voice: Rowan has an amalgamation of an American and British accent from her mixed upbring. Usually, though, simpler words will sound more American and more complex words will have a little twist on them. Scent: Rowan often smells citrusy, like oranges, due to a perfume gifted to her ages upon ages ago. However, if/when she does switch it up, she prefers a flowery musk, something light, not overpowering.⊰MAGICAL CHARACTERISTICS⊱
Blood Status: Half-blood Hogwarts House: Slytherin Ilvermorny House: Horned Serpent Can she apparate? Yes Is she an animagus? No Wand: 13 5/16 in, part [paled] beech, part [darkened] pine intertwined/swirled, White River Monster spine core, and a jasper stone on the hilt. The wand is straight, but it very much resembles a vase's silhouette with its many curves. Patronus: American alligator Boggart: A shadowy creature whose form constantly shifts, since Rowan does not actually know what the beast looks like. The only thing that stays a constant is gleaming silver claws with blood dripping off of them. The blood appears to be anyone’s blood, but Rowan knows full well whose it is. Pets: Rowan raised a chimera, whom she named Touchstone, after the Shakespearean character, though she “released” it once it became too large and too wild for care. Now, she just has a black and white cat named Dymitr.⊰RELATIONSHIPS⊱
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<summary>SIBLINGS</summary>Nikolas Thaddeus Halvorsen is four years older than Rowan and a total asshole about it. He works in their grandmother’s shop and is much more of a homebody than Rowan will ever be. The two are very close to each other, brought together by their time at Hogwarts as well as being the two siblings that remember their parents’ death. Castille Lottie Halvorsen, however, is the black sheep of the three siblings, being a squib and also the youngest. She works in her grandmother’s shop as well, living there with Nikolas. Rowan never had much time to ever really be close to her, but she will fight for her, nonetheless.
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<summary>GRANDPARENTS</summary>It doesn’t come as much of a surprise when Rowan tells people her grandmother is the Yalia of Yalia’s Astronomical Emporium in Diagon Alley. For anyone who has been there during the summer before the school season starts up again, they’ve seen Rowan working in the shop alongside her grandmother (and her siblings.) Rowan and her grandmother have a bond like no other, both of them bonding greatly over their love of astronomy and magic. Yalia often tutored Rowan outside of Hogwarts too, teaching her math, history, and science. Yalia wanted Rowan to be best suited for the no-maj world as well as the wizarding one. Rowan never knew her paternal grandfather and only briefly knew her grandmother Jane and grandfather Sammy.
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<summary>PARENTS</summary>Cyprus Peter Halvorsen grew up in Diagon Alley in a small room above his mother’s shop, a room which Rowan herself lived in for a time. He soon knew that he wouldn’t be well suited for running it and instead joined the Ministry of Magic as an Auror. On one mission, he was sent over to the United States to visit with the President of MACUSA, but he fell in love with New York and promptly decided that he would move there someday. And he did. He took a job in MACUSA and there, met Rowan’s mother, Arsène Geneva Frazier, falling in love with her quickly. They settled in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a predominantly Polish (which Cyprus was) neighborhood, where they raised their three children. Unfortunately, tragedy struck when Rowan was 11; a dark wizard attacked MACUSA, leaving several floors destroyed and many employees dead, including both Arsène and Cyprus.
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<summary>ROMANTIC</summary>Rowan never has the easiest time with relationships. She’s so used to abandonment by this point that she doesn’t often try anymore. However, if someone intriguing enough does come along... Well, then things might be just a little bit different. One notable figure in her love life, however, is Dominique Tyler, a girl she dated during her time at Hogwarts. The two were really quite happy together, but time drew them apart. She is currently Dancing Queen by ABBA, a <s>hot</s> hit single.
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<summary>FAMILY BACKSTORY</summary>Diana Rudder was born and raised in Oklahoma in the early 1900-20s until she moved to Atlanta where she met and married her husband. She then moved to his hometown with him: New Orleans. There, she had Jane Rudder who married Sammy Frazier and they had a daughter, Arsène Frazier, who was born a witch. On the other side, Yalia Irene Halvorsen lived in Poland up until the age of 23 until she moved to London and bought a small apartment in Diagon Alley. Born Yalia Irene, she married, but he left Yalia and her newborn son, Cyprus Halvorsen, who was born a Squib. He speculates that’s why his father left, the unknown man being particularly good at Divination, which Rowan partially inherited. Yalia then swore never to mention him ever again as she was a Hufflepuff herself and valued family loyalty above all else. Cyprus soon grew tired of Diagon Alley and decided to move to the US. There, he met Arsène through their jobs in MACUSA. They then had their three children, Nikolas, the eldest; Rowan, the middle child; and Castille, the youngest.
</details>⊰HISTORY⊱
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<summary>BEFORE HOGWARTS</summary>Rowan Charles was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in the early morning during a thunderstorm. Her mom always used to blame that whenever Rowan got upset as a child. But for the most part, she grew up happy. Nikolas Thaddeus was three when she was born and just barely liked her. A quiet child, he was used to having his own silence, so a crying infant wasn't the most pleasant of surprises. Then, four more years later, Castille Lottie was born. All three of the children had a happy and nice childhood, nothing too special and nothing too bad. Sometimes, though, the family would travel to London for the summer to visit her grandmother, Yalia. These were Rowan's favorite summers, as she fell in love with her stars and her grandmother was the brightest constellation Rowan could see. When September came, Rowan would go to a no-maj public elementary school, starting at the age of 5. Her first year there (kindergarten) sucked ass. She hated it. But next year wasn't all so bad. Because in first grade, Rowan met Leo Isaiah Finch, a shy boy with an artistic heart. Well, as artistic as a 6-year-old can be. The two quickly became best friends and stuck together over the next five years. Both were lucky though: both of their families more than readily accepted the other child as part of the family. Everything was going great. At age 11, Rowan was flourishing at Ilvermorny, a Horned Serpent – as much as she procrastinated – and she had a great family and a great best friend, though Leo was a Pukwudgie. But without warning, everything changed. On a fateful summer day, Arsène, her mother, and Cyprus, her father, took young Rowan to their jobs at MACUSA, having done the same with Nikolas when he turned eleven, the 14-year-old a Pukwudgie at Ilvermorny like Leo. The day went without disruption until 9:36 AM (EST) when a shudder ran through the building, an explosion ripped through two floors, Rowan and her parents caught just on the outskirts of the damage. Hours later, when Rowan came to in some magical hospital, she did not see her parents and could not feel one of her legs. The explosion had killed both Arsène and Cyprus. One of her parents or a door or something must have shielded Rowan, the doctors had said. There was no way she should've survived. But she did. However, her leg was severely damaged and it took a few weeks for her to get out of the hospital, a few more in a wheelchair, and the rest of the year spent not walking properly on crutches. Although, in the last month she could deal with just a cane. When she asked why they could not magic her leg back to what it was before, a nurse explained (too simply) that the person who had done this to her family was a dark wizard, a terrorist who used a curse they had never seen before, much less reverse its effects. Rowan's grandmother was quick to fly to America, almost forgetting to close her shop, she would later joke. But until their now legal guardian could arrive, Nikolas and Castille were taken into care by Leo's family for the night, their apartment above the family's coffee shop even more crowded, now holding seven children. When Rowan was released, she and her siblings were swept off to London to live in the apartment above their grandmother's shop in Diagon Alley: Yalia's Astronomical Emporium.
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<summary>DURING HOGWARTS</summary>On the first train ride to Hogwarts, Rowan didn't know anyone she sat with. At least, she didn't know them then and wouldn't until later in her school career. In general, the whole process of arriving at Hogwarts was unsurprising to Rowan, her brother have already described it to her in probably too much detail. Still, there were moments when she was amazed. Sorted into Slytherin, Rowan quickly found her place among her peers in the same house. Cunning and quick-witted with an interesting sense of humor, she fit right in. What she really liked, though, about the Slytherins was their unending and fierce loyalness to their own that she too would adopt before she graduated. They cared for one another, for some didn't have anyone else to do that. Rowan, over the years, developed proficiency in Transfiguration and Charms with good grades in Defense Against the Dark Arts and Ancient Studies. (History of Magic bored her too much, though there's a chance.) She found herself always enjoying changing the way things appeared, shifting them, even if Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration frustrates her. Forever will she try to get around it. Her third year, she met someone with whom she became very close to. Thick as thieves, they instantly connected, spending the Holidays at Hogwarts together that year. But it all went wrong once spring came again. The two had been hanging out and decided to take a little trip into the Forbidden Forest. As stupid as that is in itself, Rowan had heard some sixth years talking about a secret garden and convinced her friend to join her on an adventure. The pair made it to the garden fine – it was very beautiful – but the trip back was what proved to be disastrous. After having fallen asleep in the garden, where it seemed to be sunset for eternity, the second they exited the garden, night wrapped her cold arms around them. This was terrifying, sure, but what was worse was the creature that started chasing them through the forest. Rowan's friend sacrificed himself for her, allowing for Rowan to escape, but she came back, dragging the now unconscious boy back to the castle with help from the groundskeeper. He would survive, but Rowan would carry a feeling of guilt forever for bringing them there in the first place. Rowan never saw the creature in its entirety. But in the few moments where she truly thought this was where she was going to die, she saw silver claws gleaming in the moonlight and the hulking figure of the monster that nearly killed her friend. It would traumatize her, becoming her boggart. It replaced fire, unbeknownst to her. Things were calm fourth year, but by fifth, she had met Dominique Tyler. Unfortunately, Rowan was a bit oblivious at first and completely disregarded Dominique's advances on her, possibly offending her just a bit. But after the annual Yule Ball that year, the two got together, officially becoming a couple a couple days before Valentine's Day. They would be an item for the next year or so, up until Rowan's seventh year at Hogwarts. The two definitely got up to some antics, but Rowan really did love her and tried her best to show it. But, as everyone's greatest enemy, Time got between them and things ended. Fortunately, it wasn't ugly, and they remain on neutral/good terms. Sixth year was also when Rowan met Bill, Roland, Ryan, Gen, Leah, Nessa, Cassandra, and, later, Okami through an internship at the Department of Mysteries. These became her closest friends at the time, though throughout her seventh year, she would grow apart from them slowly, acquainting herself with other people, including Ambrose. It would get worse when she moved back to the States. Through said internship, Rowan would also meet Ollie Fawley, the older brother of Enoch Fawley. Though brief, it was the first (but not last) time she would interact with the brothers. After her time doing the internship at the Department of Mysteries, Rowan also briefly explored teaching when she was hired as a teacher for the FAA, or the Future Aurors Alliance. She very much enjoyed this, having a chance to show off her Slytherin tendencies. As well, she became closer with several of the members including Okami and Cassandra. Ambrose – briefly mentioned above – was a witch Rowan officially met in her seventh year, having seen her around before but never talking. She thought she was pretty cute, and they attended a few balls together, but they only got together right before she graduated. They still keep in touch, though. Rowan graduated Hogwarts as a skilled young witch who had a good shot of getting a solid job in the Ministry of Magic, but her heart lay elsewhere. Choosing to move back to the United States, the last few days of the school year were soaked with sadness and reflection. And, as much as Rowan is not the sentimental type, it was hard for her to say goodbye to all of those she had known and would likely not see again any time in the near future.
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<summary>AFTER HOGWARTS</summary></details>
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