Post by hoopdi on Apr 24, 2008 20:44:09 GMT -6
Basics
Full Name: Magdalena Elise Selwyn
Played By: Coco Rocha
Birthdate: September 29, 1998
Blood: Pureblood
Physical Description
Height: 5’7
Weight: 128
Hair Color: Dark brown
Eye Color: Green
First Impression: Magdalena comes across as an extremely poised and elegant young woman. She is the sort of woman who, even under the cover of voluminous teaching robes will never fail to don crisp, ironed blouses tucked into neat, pleated skirts. She pays meticulous attention to her appearance and how she presents herself to others, not for the sake of personal vanity, but for the sake of exuding an elegant, prim and proper air that she believes all respectable Hogwarts students and professors should do well to emulate.
Hogwarts Specific
House: Slytherin
Wand: Sycamore and unicorn hair, 13 inches
Pet: None
Personality
‘Ambition’ would be the one word that would perfectly encapsulate her. Magdalena believes that there is power to be gleaned from academic successes and social recognition. Consequently, she has strived to attain both during all of her years at Hogwarts. She is methodical and resourceful in her tasks and pursuits. She is judgmental in her assessment of her surroundings. She appreciates and is impressed by aesthetic beauty and will only be satisfied with nothing less than perfection. Ultimately, she desires to present herself to others as a figure to be universally envied and admired: that of a poised and highly-decorated scholar. Whether or not she actually attains admiration for her achievements from her peers is, of course, a different matter entirely.
A keen observer of the personality would be quick to point out that there is inevitably something deeper than her ambition that really drives her: insecurity. They would be correct. However, Magdalena would be the last person in the world to admit to a fear of social rejection and failure and to the fact that throughout most of her life she has been trying to raise herself from the pit of shame that her once-proud family has been mired in for the past decade or so. She wrongly considers fear and insecurity to have nothing to do with her pursuit of success, but in reality, they do.
Outwardly, however, she is the consummate social darling. She relishes the social limelight and is capable of flirting prettily and talking her way in, through and out any social situation. She is even-tempered and congenial; she generally treats everyone with courtesy, friendliness and charm, particularly authority and affluent figures. Yes—she’s quite the cunning little social-climber as well, and one would do well to take caution: there may be an ulterior motive for any move that she makes.
MBTI/Jung Personality Test
Result: ISTJ
Ennegram Personality Test
Result: The Achiever (The Three)
Family History
Magdalena was born five months after the second war ended. By then her father Morgan Selwyn—a highly-ranked member of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad and one of the Death Eaters dispatched to Xenophilius Lovegood’s homestead to capture Harry Potter during the second war—had been caught, tried and found guilty by the Wizengamot. Like many of his Death Eater fellows, Morgan was sent to serve a life-long sentence in Azkaban. Meanwhile, his wife Elisebeth found herself shunned and abandoned by her in-laws in the Selwyn clan. The affluent pureblooded family was all-too quick to distance themselves from Morgan and his wife during his trial for fear that they, too, would be incriminated in some form or another. Morgan was disowned and stripped of his inheritance, and Elisebeth was forced to move out of the family manor and into a small cottage in Whitby where she would raise their only daughter.
Throughout Magdalena’s childhood, never a day seemed to pass by without her mother reminding her daughter of the injustice that the Selwyns had paid them and of the life they could’ve led. Prior to her husband’s incarceration, Elisebeth led a comfortable, pampered life—a life that she often spoke at great detail to her daughter in-between scattered lessons on etiquette and social decorum. Magdalena developed an intense curiosity about her estranged family. They couldn’t have seemed more different to her: they were rich, she was poor. They were well-known and well-connected while she was widely regarded as a nobody, and the daughter of a nobody, despite the surname she carried.
Magdalena also developed a fascination with Wizarding politics, particularly the Ministry of Magic. While her mother pored wistfully and ruefully over old photographs, Magdalena pored devotedly over issues of the Daily Prophet, carefully noting the shifts of power and change from the old Ministry to the new. While her mother clung more and more to the past, Magdalena gained a respect for the present. She recognized that the period of reformation that Wizarding Britain was undergoing would provide opportunities for any witch or wizard who had fallen out of favor and grace during the second war to start afresh and anew.
And if her mother refused to make a new name and life for herself, then Magdalena would do it instead.
Brief Roleplay Sample
The summer morning light filtered through the only window that opened into the kitchen, casting the dun-colored walls into a fiery shade of gold. A girl sat at the dining table, reading the letter that the school owl had delivered just moments before. Looking at Magdalena now, sitting primly and straight-backed whilst she sipped tea with her littlest and ring fingers jutting out daintily, anyone would’ve thought her some extremely privileged and well-off witch were it not for the squalor of her surroundings. She was sitting in a pitiful little kitchen with an old stove, a scrubbed wooden table, and a few pots and pans—all rusting at the bottom, and all hung against the walls upon worn nails. The rest of the cottage was just as pitiful and deplorable-looking for while her daughter had been away at school, Elisebeth had neglected to tend to the house.
And where was her mother now? Magdalena wondered after reading her letter for the third time. The letter bore extremely good news—the best news that any Hogwarts student could ever hope to receive, in fact. But where was she?
Presently, Magdalena heard someone shuffling into the kitchen. She raised her eyes to take in the disheveled sight of her mother, whose hair was pulled haphazardly back and whose cheeks were messily rouged. She was holding a sheaf of letters, which she was brandishing in her daughter’s face.
“Look, dear, look! Here are the letters your grandfather sent me after your father and I married.” she whispered excitedly, hands trembling. "Beautiful letters."
“I have a letter of my own to show you,” Magdalena replied, her lips forming a wan smile as grasped her mother’s hands and lowered them down. She knew her mother wouldn’t listen, not when she was in her current state. But she had to try. “I’ve been made Head Girl…”
“Oh!” Elisebeth exclaimed. For a moment, Magdalena thought her mother was excited for her—a moment that only lasted until Elisabeth continued with: “You know, your grandfather used to be very fond of me back then…”
Magdalena had had enough. She felt her own hands tremble as she snatched up her letter from the table. She didn’t say another word to her mother as she left the kitchen; there would be no use for it. Elisebeth Selwyn was too far gone into the past and she couldn’t be called back.
[word count: 400]
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