(no subject)

[ex_cafune]

• What sort of profession in the wizarding world would you choose and why?
  
  I would choose to be a spell inventor. The science of magic (and that's a funny phrase) is one that particularly appeals to me, and I would love to be able to be paid to suss out how spells work, and get the chance to come up with new spells and charms. It seems like an endlessly fascinating job, and a personally rewarding one.
  
  
• You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one Harry Potter character other than Hagrid and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you'd want with you.
  
  I'd bring Sirius with me; he knows the area pretty well, he's a brilliant wizard, and not only can he very handily transform into Padfoot, he's also very adventurous and brash where I am more cautious and considerate about going forward in an area I'm not comfortable in. Together I think we would balance each other out and keep each other from getting in too much trouble.
  
  As for an item, I would bring a vial of Felix Felicis, just in case we ran into danger. It would give us an edge regardless of the situation, so I don't have to worry about hauling something potentially useless around, and it's small enough that I can probably use it without being noticed by whatever seeks to cause our impending doom.
  
  
• If you had the opportunity to live forever, but your family and friends did not, what would you choose? And if you did choose to live forever, what would you do with eternity?
  
  I wouldn't choose to live forever, not unless I had a way out for myself. No matter what I sought to do to entertain myself, no matter how far I traveled and how much I learned, no matter all the people I could meet and know and befriend and love, I would eventually grow so tired that it wouldn't be worth it. Plus, I assume this would only be physical immortality. There's nothing to keep me from cracking like a loon under the weight of over a thousand years of memory and loss and being reduced to a gibbering idiot in a forever youthful body without even the chance of a release. I'm not strong enough to handle eternal life.
  
  
• If you could travel back in time to one point, when and where would you go? Why?
  
  I'd like to go to Milan in 1949 and befriend my maternal grandfather. I never knew him before he came to America (Obvious, you say? Probably.) and he never really talked about Italy much, unlike my dad's side of the family, he didn't teach any of his children to speak his native language, and I'd love to have the chance to get to know and befriend him in the place he was born and raised and one day left behind.
  
  
• What HP character do you identify with most and why?
  
  Tom Riddle. Not Voldemort. He was cruel and twisted, even young, but ah, he was alone, so alone. The children of monsters can become monsters (yes, I thoroughly believe Merope using a love potion to get Tom Riddle Sr. was horrific and monstrous) and he became a nightmare his mother could never have imagined, but they also, at one point, could have been something different, something greater. I'm not saying I want to grow up and become a dark wizard, but I can identify in being weak and powerless and deciding to never be helpless again; I can identify with having a cheap poor life full of cheap poor trinkets and clothes, and deciding you wanted something better, and I can identify with finding a school where you finally belonged, where you found the first place that was really home. I think it says everything, that even as a child, he used his powers to seek control, the kind he never had over his life. Come here, Tom Riddle. I'm giving you a hug. (Don't worry, I cast the Babbling Curse on him first so he can't jinx me until I'm a safe distance away afterward.)
  
  
• What would you see if you looked into the Mirror of Erised?
  
  My little sister leading the perfect life of her choosing, happy and content and safe. I've spent most of my life raising her and looking after her and protecting her, and most of what I do even now is to ensure that I can always support her and help her and be a home base for her. She's the best person that I've ever known and I want everything for her, and I'll do whatever that requires.
  
  
• Do you believe that moral actions should be judged by the intentions behind them, or by the consequences they create?
  
  This is a dual answers: for people I personally know, it depends on if I like your or not. I am much more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone I like and admire and love, and take into account the intentions behind their actions. For someone I have a problem with, I'll focus in on what actually happened, not what they tried to do. For people I don't know: I think they should be judged by the intentions behind them to a certain extent, but in the end the actual tangible consequences outweigh whatever ideals the person held. “Actions speak louder than words” may be a fairly stupid and cliché saying in a lot of ways, but in this regard it still stands true. Maybe you thought you were bettering the world by undertaking genocide, but all you did was kill a bunch of innocent people, and that's what you're going to be on trial for.
  
  
• What was your ideal job as a kid? Has that changed? What is your ideal job now?
  
  I don't think I had an ideal job as a kid. Any future I envisioned for myself had no reliable source of income (as far as I can recall), just an overwhelming sense of comfort and security. A modest house where I could laze around, shelves brimming with books, a nice spacious kitchen. Nothing more extravagant than that, and in my daydreams I don't think I ever left the house.
  
  These days, although I'm on track to become a pediatric surgeon, in an ideal world I would get by on my writing. However, I'm still stuck on Earth Prime, so a pediatric surgeon I will be! I will say though, that it is an ideal job for me, just to a lesser extent than writing; I get to have a comfortable life, and help children, which is all I have ever really wanted.
  
  
• If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it, and what would you call it?
  
  My spell would be se deixa, Latin for “I raised you up to the light.” It would function as a healing spell of the mind, calling people back from comas, amnesia and trauma, allowing them to face whatever they had opposed with fortitude and resilience. In the wrong hands of course, it could be twisted: someone who used it on someone with evil intent would throw them back into the trauma they had sought to hide from without the guidance of the untainted spell, forcing them to mentally relive their worst memories unprotected.
  
  
• If you were to face a boggart, what would it turn into? And what does it turn into when you throw the counter-spell, Riddikulus?
  
  I suppose my boggart would be undeniable proof of a god in this world, and thus my subsequent realization that we are all really created and overseen by an uncaring son of a bitch. Riddikulus would change the proof into an Onion article.
  
  
• What do you look for in a friend?
  
  Someone with the patience and tolerance of a saint. You know how you're always fascinated by what you are not, by what you can't understand? It goes like that. I want to befriend people of faith, people who believe in genuine goodness and the light of the world, people who believe people can change, people who are soft and kind and lovely, people who are like a glass of cold water on a hot miserable day.
  
  Of course it almost never goes like that, but I keep trying.
  
  
• What trait most annoys you about other people?
  
  Presumptuousness of any kind-those who go on at length about themselves, those who assume all the world wants to hear about their problems and successes, those who get too close in my personal space. I am very firmly all about control, and presumptuous people seek to have none thrown over them, so naturally we don't get along very well.
  
  
• What do you think are your top five abilities or qualities?
  
  Devotion: I don't let go of people easily, I support those I love against all odds, and (I'm getting better at this) I do my best to remind them of how much they mean to me, how much they've done for me, to let them know that I care for them and love them no matter what.
  
  Honor: I like to think I am a (wo)man of genius and honor. There is no true victory in falsehood. If I can't prove without a shadow of a doubt that I'm the best, I won't even enter the competition. My own self should be enough to succeed, I don't need to rely on tricks and cunning.
  
  Curiosity: I'm smart but beyond that, I love to learn. I love to know. I want to know everything that I possibly can, I want all mysteries unraveled before me, I want all puzzles to fall into place at my touch. Knowledge is power and power is safety. I used to skip those boring mandatory classes in school (freshmen success, keyboarding, etc), so I could go to the library and read up on the subjects that I was really interested in instead of wasting my time.
  
  Conviction: there are very few things I do believe in, but what I have placed my faith, I place it without reservation. I will battle to my death for my ideals, if I have to (though I'm much more likely to kill for them) and I refuse to relinquish them. The same goes for the few people I hold dear as well. They're what hold me together, and were I to let go of them, I would let go of everything. Conviction drives me onward, makes me strong.
  
  Compassion: despite all of my efforts to becoming a stronger person, I remain a slave to this quality in myself. I volunteer; I am easily moved; I do my best to help others out of bad situations, and forget the cost to myself. I give the coat off my back. You'd think it would have been something, quite literally, beaten out of me at a young age, or at least something I drilled myself to ignore, but it remains out of my control. I do my best to help, no matter what.
  
  
• What do you think are your top five weaknesses or worst qualities?
  
  Devotion: I try and make people more than they are, more than any sane human being could possibly be. I almost turn them into quasi-religious figures, I stake everything on them, I won't let them go, I hurt them with my inability to commit to intimacy and my secrets, and despite all of that I refuse to walk away from them even if all we're doing is tearing each other down.
  
  Arrogance: I'm used to walking into a room and being the one regardless of the setting. I'm used to people being drawn to me, I'm used to being the wittiest and the most charismatic-not always the prettiest, but certainly the most distinctive-and I'm used to being able to drink everyone under the table as well. This engenders, as you might imagine, a certain propensity to overconfidence and overestimation of one's abilities. I can recognize it; I just can't stop it. If only I weren't so ravishing, you know?
  
  Greed: this one and devotion feed off of each other. I covet. I envy. I want what I can't have, and then I take it. I suppose you could make some sort of explanatory case for it by way of growing up poor and always watching what other kids had so easily and being desperate for it, but I guess I'll never know if I was born this way or made. All I know is that I want and I pull my friends close to me: I want their eyes on me and no one else; I want to be loved all-consumingly. It wouldn't be healthy, of course, but it would be mine.
  
  Anger: controls me utterly. I have a furious, bone-shattering temper that I can't let out completely for fear of hurting people physically, so instead I channel it into self-hatred that festers and a cruel verbal sparring that always seeks to the cut to the quick, to seek the artery. I grow frustrated too easily, I anger too often, and I cannot seem to keep my calm. I snap, I bite, I drag everyone down to my level until we are all roiling with fury and despise each other.
  
  Guilt: I drag mine behind me like a ball and chain, wherever I go. It poisons every relationship I attempt, every time I try to start anew.
  
  
• Define in your own words the following key traits:
  
  • Courage: You were lost, but you kept walking forward.
    
  • Loyalty: When you knew there was only one thing you would ever want again.
    
  • Intelligence: The pursuit of knowledge, not just necessarily the attaining.
    
  • Ambition: A hunger to improve oneself despite obstacles.
    
  
  
• Name: Jessica
  
• Age: 18
  
• Where did you find out about us? I googled “harry potter sorting communities lj” :)
• Do you plan on being active in the communities once you are sorted? sure!
  

edited to add detail to some answers~