(no subject)
Name: Sheila Winnifred Fawcett. Just Shae is fine!
Blood Status: Halfblood- The Fawcetts maintained a "pure" line for the last few generations more or less by accident. Shae's grandmother on her mother's side, though, was a muggle.
Age/Birthday: February 8, 1981
House/Year: Ravenclaw 6th Year
Classes: Ancient Runes, Astronomy, D.A.D.A., Herbology, Muggle Studies
Sexuality: heterosexual
Appearance:
There was a span of four months where Shae was under the very wrong impression that she would look good with strawberry blonde hair. This was a huge mistake. Not only would blonde hair by its own right look terribly wrong with her olive complexion and dark features, the fact that her hair came out much more orange than anything didn't help. All of the pictures from that point in time (to Shae's knowledge) have been happily destroyed and never referred to again, as she is much more content with her current and natural dark brown hair. However, the one thing that Shae misses about her hair disaster was that it distracted from the fact that her nose takes up a majority of her face, which she has always been extremely self-conscious about. Her nose is the same reason why Shae usually tries to avoid yelling at people, because she has had it pointed out to her on more than one occasion that when she's angry her nostrils flair, which is kind of humiliating.
Shae looks much like her mother than father in appearance, the Mediterranean genetics winning out over her dad's Irish and Anglo Saxon. And while her mother doesn't talk much about Shae's grandfather or their culture, Shae has picked up on a few Maṣrī swear words that her mother will spurt off when she's angry. Despite the fact that she's only 5'3", Shae has never let her tiny build keep her from doing what she wants, choosing to stand on chairs or hopping up onto one of her guy friend's backs without letting them know first (which has not always gone so well...) in order to see over the heads of a crowd. She might be short, but she's squirrelly, and believes that it's better for her to stand lower than most peoples' sight lines: it keeps her from poking out anyone's eye with her gigantic nose. Even though Shae thinks that it's an impossible feat, she really has grown into her features over the past year, and figures that in the long run, it's better for her to have an disproportionately-sized shnoz than to end up noseless like Eloise was.
PB: Vanessa Lengies
Family:
History:
The story of how opposites attract has been told time and time again, each party thinking that their story is the quirkiest and most original of them all. Charles and Kiya Fawcett fall into this category, believing that the tale of their epic romance makes a wonderful story to tell at parties, finishing each other's sentences as they gush and not noticing when their audience stops listening three minutes in. Charles Fawcett, an anal-retentive mumma's boy, was in training to become a librarian (and impatiently awaiting the day Madam Pince drops dead so that he can swoop in to claim her position as Hogwarts) when he first met Kiya Jafari, a hotpants-wearing relationship psychologist (read: sex therapist) of Egyptian descent), in the men's room of a London trainstation. Kiya, refusing to let The Man oppress her into using the loo specified for "her kind" by the skirt on the door, entered the door with the pants. This in turn caused Charles to nearly miss the urinal and mess his own as he flailed to shield himself from the woman in the man's bathroom. Kiya, figuring that Charles was embarrassed for other reasons, assured the blushing man that he should stand proud, as size doesn't matter. Once Kiya had shut the door of her stall, Charles booked it out of the loo, figuring that mortifying moment of his life was over and done with.
As his utter lack of luck would have it, that same woman had been assigned the seat next to him on the ride from London to Hogsmeade, where they were both traveling to meet up with family for the Easter holidays. Despite Charles's best efforts to ignore Kiya's incessant babbling, once the snack and beverage cart was brought round, the two got to chattering, discovering that they both shared a passion for Astronomy and Ancient Runes. The two exchanged addresses, and after spending the week owling each other like excited gerbils, Charles and Kiya began seeing each other, getting married four years later. One year after that the newlywed Fawcetts would finally move out of Charles's mother's basement, settling in a small home in Ottery St. Catchpole, just behind the Post Office. Charles continued to spend nearly all of his weekends and holidays at his mother's house, a practice which only stopped when Kiya pointed out to him that he was thirty-one years old and she was seven months pregnant, and if their child was only going to know it had a father from 6 to 9 pm four days a week, she wanted a divorce. Charles finally obliged, and even guaranteed Kiya that they could spend one minor holiday a year in Giza with her side of the family!
The Fawcetts had three children: Leah, Sheila, and Charles Warden Stanley Amsterdam Fawcett IV (he goes by Stan). Leah, the oldest of the Fawcett children, appeared to be a parent's dream. She was one of the most precocious children in her neighbourhood, always remembering her manners and saying things that would make all of the adults in the room go "awwww, isn't she adorable?" When around others closer to her age, though, especially her little sister Sheila, all of that obnoxious sugary-sweetness would melt away, unleashing Leah's monstrous inner brat. Sheila, however, felt completely trapped in her sister's shadow growing up, as it seemed like she was always the one getting in trouble for things that Leah had done, or would only get noticed when she was messing something up. Even when she was determined to learn more about Ancient Runes than Leah, given that Sheila knew that it was one of her parents' favourite subjects, her father was more focused on the fact that Sheila hadn't put the books back in alphabetical order, Charles nearly blowing a gasket when he found his copy of Ruining Runes by Kieffer Spatterdock shoved into the shelf, binding against the wall, between two books by Percival Finch. It didn't quite get Sheila the attention that she wanted, but it got her a lecture on the importance of proper organization, which was attention nonetheless.
When Sheila was six and Leah was eight, their parents brought home Stan, the baby with a case of colic worse than his own father's had been. Once he got old enough to start talking, Stan dubbed Sheila "Shae", as it was easier for him to pronounce, and the nickname stuck. Shae actually grew to be much more fond of the nickname than her actual name, as that was about the same age that the boy across the road from her took it upon himself to start calling her Sheila-based nicknames of a meaner variety (Shelob and Sheeba being among the least-derogatory). Despite the six-year age gap, Shae was always much closer to her little brother than she ever was to her sister, even though Leah was less than two years older.
Shae was actually extraordinarily shocked when she was sorted into Ravenclaw, figuring that the house was reserved for people like her sister who spent all their spare time studying, sucking up to Professors, and getting straight Os. However, Shae had always been a fan of the colour blue, and she ended up liking most of the people in her house well enough (although a majority of them tended to go absolutely batshit around exam time). It was also a relief to her that she went into school already knowing a few of her yearmates from home, even though she was kind of afraid of Luna "decorating" their dorm room in the same way that the Lovegood's home was. Shae ended up falling in love with her D.A.D.A. class her first year at school (although there is a very large chance that this happened because she'd fallen in love with the Professor), and was ecstatic to start taking Ancient Runes her third year. She has also always loved Quidditch, whether she is watching or playing it, probably primarily for the fact that her sister can barely get a broom to hover above the ground for more than three seconds. Even though she's tried out for the team every year, she's yet to make it as more than a reserve player, but is hoping that this will be the year that this changes. However, with the school's new administration poking their noses into everything, it doesn't seem all that likely...
Probably the most influential moment of Shae's Hogwarts career thusfar was the Triwizard Tournament that occurred in her third year at school. Even though she had a feeling there was no way she'd make it across the age line around the Goblet at only 13 years old during her attempt to enter (and she was right: she walked away with the long white beard to prove it.), she thought it was the coolest thing ever that one of the kids from her hometown had gotten chosen for the championship. She supported Cedric throughout the entire year, and was a little more than traumatized when he was killed during the last test. She was beyond freaked out by her quiet self-focused belief that if the age line wouldn't have worked, that could've been her who'd been killed, upset that a boy who she'd lived a few roads down from her entire life had been killed, and angry that they were all supposed to take Harry's word on what happened merely because he was Harry Potter. It wasn't until nearly the end of her 5th year, when her roommate Melanie's little brother was killed, that she honestly started believing that maybe she'd been wrong about what'd happened.
Personality:
Shae has always been the type of girl who can only focus on one particular subject at a time, putting all of her concentration into getting the task completed, obsessing over it until it's finished. However, a major downfall of this is that she oftentimes winds up putting off her school work in favour of sitting in the same chair all day reading the entire works of Emily Dickinson, or will forget to take heed of necessary life needs like eating or sleeping or using the loo until after she's finished an essay. Once she gets distracted, Shae finds it extremely difficult to build that level of immersion in the subject back up right away, and will abandon whatever she was working on from that point.
She is also very determined to experience as much as possible in her life, no matter how dangerous or unpleasant the outcome, because in her eyes, if those emotions and events weren't there for her to experience, they wouldn't exist in the first place. Of course, this has lead to her attempting incredibly foolish stunts, such as spending a week of her Christmas holiday going barefoot, even in the snow, or jumping off her roof at home and attempting to land on her hovering broomstick. Rather than turning down a dare, even when she knows for a fact that things will probably end badly on her part, Shae will tackle it head on, only concluding that maybe going through with such things wasn't the smartest plan after she's already gotten herself deep, nonetheless dubbing it "a learning experience."
While she's not the Ravenclaw with the highest marks in the slightest (and is pretty much convinced that if she did hold that title, Ingrid would try to smother her in her sleep), Shae tends to flourish in subjects that, in the long run, many people would consider pointless. Shae is a lexicon of useless trivial knowledge, whether it be remembering the names of Tabitha Longfellow's 17 children in order of birth on the Wireless drama Average Apothecary or the shoe sizes of various boyband members. She has an excellent memory for small details and dates, which is probably the reason her best classes involve a large amount of memorization. Despite this, she did terribly in History of Magic, due mostly to the class serving as the location of Shae's naptime. Contrary to what she claims is true, sleep osmosis does not work.
Shae has always been a big poetry geek, finding it amazing as to how poets are able to jam-pack as much meaning as they do into only a few stanzas. There have been occasions when she attempts to write poetry of her own, even though she knows that she can never live up to the likes of "the pros." Her new favourite is e e cummings, even though half the time she herself is not quite sure what he's talking about (although she would never admit it.) Even if the words don't make sense, his use of orthography fascinates her.
For the most part, Shae manages to be easygoing and levelheaded, despite her constant habit of setting herself unrealistic goals. Though Shae still is an attention-hungry troublemaker, it currently stems less from jealousy of her sister and more from habit. Even now with the everyday reminder that not even Hogwarts can protect them from the devastation happening outside its walls, Shae still finds it difficult to bite back the thoughts and opinions that she otherwise would have openly shared. And even when things reach their suckiest, she believes that in the long run there will be a purpose for the events to've happened. Not all art is happy, so perhaps one day this would all be motivation for great art.
Questions
What does your character think of the current situation at Hogwarts, especially the Carrows?
If it had happened six months earlier, Shae might have thought differently about Hogwarts being under new management. It took her a while longer than many of her friends to admit You-Know-Who was actually back, because it was simpler to believe that Harry Potter was lying, because 16 year old boys lie all the time. However, it is very hard to find anything good about Death Eaters running the school. Shae wishes now that she would've dropped Defense (she only continued in the class because she knew there'd be a new Professor going into the year) because what they're learning now is worse than what they learned under Umbridge, and the newly enforced Muggle Studies class makes her sick. One of her best friends, Ben, is muggleborn, and between hearing the Carrows' garbage about muggles and knowing what they've been doing to muggleborns makes it a million times worse that she doesn't even know if Ben is still alive.
What's your character's deepest, darkest secret? Who might know this?
Shae's deepest, darkest secret isn't entirely her own to tell. When Leah was 16, she got pregnant by her best friend Maggie's boyfriend. Knowing that she couldn't tell any of her own friends as word would eventually get back Maggie, Leah confided in Shae (for what seemed like the first time in her life), freaking out about how she could not have that baby. Over the Christmas holiday, Shae went with Leah to get the potion for terminating the pregnancy. Leah completely froze when the Healer started lecturing her on the joys of motherhood, when Shae chimed in "it's mine. It's for me," in attempts to get the woman off her sister's back. After making it home with the potion so that Leah could do what she needed to do, an unspoken truce seemed to be called between the two as to their years of catty competition, and the two never spoke of that night to each other again, nor to anyone else.
Describe your character's Sorting. What about them caused them to go in their house?
Sheila hardly noticed when Professor McGonagall called out her name to be sorted, as she was still focused on giggling over the Orlanda boy (who Shae would later embarrassingly come to find out was a girl and also one of her roommate)'s last name (which would eventually come to be a breakfast-time joke tradition that only Shae would find amusing. "Hey. Hey Orlanda. Guess what I'm having for breakfast. An Egg. Hahahhahaha.") Once she hopped up onto the stool and had the Sorting Hat dropped onto her head, the hat seemed to deliberate for longer with her than it had any of the students preceding her. After ping-ponging between Gryffindor and Slytherin for what felt like (to Shae) an extremely long time, the hat finally bellowed RAVENCLAW at a volume that everyone could hear. Shae darted off towards the cheering Ravenclaw table, scooting onto the bench between Egg Kid and a boy she was pretty sure was named Bend Over.