Forbidden Child of Darkness
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Posts: 2
(9/14/05 5:42 pm)
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Minerva McGonagall
Out of Character
Name: Wendy
Contact: AIM-ElizBk9. I'll respond to quickest to an ezmail or email (at xo_onyxdawn_ox at yahoo dot com).
Previous experience: About four years RPing, much longer writing Harry Potter fanfiction and such. I'm currently on DNA (which appears to be almost inactive), The Seventh Horcrux, and Hogwarts Pride as an administrator, and I'm on Lament of the Phoenix.
Codes: Correct - Admin
In Character
Name: Minerva McGonagall
Age: 74
Gender: Female
Residence: She has a small home in Scotland, but spends most her year at Hogwarts as Headmistress.
Blood: Half blood (although both her parents were magical, there is muggle blood in her).
Wand: 12 inches, cherry wood and dragon heartstring core. Flexible and excellent for transfigurations.
Occupation: After graduating Hogwarts she wrote for and researched for 'Transfiguration Weekly'. In 1956 she began working as Transfiguration Professor at Hogwarts, and later was instated as Gryffindor Head of House and Deputy Headmistress. Now she is Headmistress of Hogwarts.
Appearance: Minerva is a very stern woman, and that's obvious from the first time one sets eyes on her. Her hair, black with several strands of grey littering it here and there, is always held up in a very strict bun, and her green eyes, rather beady, hide behind a pair of square glasses which add to the sternness of her expressions. She rarely is seen looking anything other than serious - she has a way of looking serious even when she wears a mischevious smile which is commonplace on her face when she feels particularly accomplished with a plan. Her eyebrows arch, with one slightly higher than the other, in a thin line when she is surprised, impressed, or unimpressed by what is going on. With a fairly blunt nose for her glasses to be resting on, the look is complete. She's stern, she's strict, and she doesn't tolerate nonsense.
Minerva very rarely smiles, which is only one factor that adds to her generally impressive stance. She simply is not a woman sane people want to cross, and gives that impression freely. Standing rather taller than most, at six feet even, she is also very thin and feeble, and the lines and wrinkles that line her face are proof of her seventy-two years living under almost constant stress. She is extremely bony, and her legs contribute for most of her height, but she is also much stronger than she looks. Her movements are very firm, very obvious, and she isn't a feeble old woman in any sense of the word. She has the ability to walk so extremely quickly that others have to run to catch up with her - but the only time she ever finds need to run is when her own life or somebody else's is in serious danger. Most of the time her anger is calm and collected, and her face remains stoic when she is confronted with something horrid.
Minerva's fashion sense is rather redundant and monotonous. Most always she wears clothes of tartan, and usually they are long dress robes that are either dark green or maroon or black, and this adds to her overall apperance of being beyond strict. A lady you don't want to cross. She almost always wears a hat as well, which stands crooked on her head due to the tight bun. Which is never loose. Back to her expressions, Minerva has lips that can purse so thin and white that it's almost painful to think about. One look at her and you know - stay in line, be respectful, and work hard. She has an aura of serious, let's-get-to-work attitude, and she is known for being extremely snappish when pressed.
Minerva is a cat animagus, and the creature she turns into is a very strict-looking cat with wire-thin markings, much like her glasses, around her bright green eyes. She is a tabby cat, and is rather thin but large for such a creature.
Personality: Let's see, where to start. The most obvious thing about Minerva is that she is strict, expects much from her students, and is willing to punish those in her own house far more severely than those of others because of this higher expectation. Minerva wears one face all of the time, though if one has the talent they can tell what she's feeling because she isn't one to hide her emotions, and wears them on her sleeve just as any typical Gryffindor would. But most obvious, perhaps, although perhaps not the first thing one picks up when they meet her, is her love for Transfiguration. She believes that it is a subject of higher eloquence than any other subject.
Minerva's heart lies with the Order of the Phoenix or, more specifically, Albus Dumbledore. She's followed him staunchly since before even the first war, back when Grindewauld was still at large - though as a fresh gaduate of Hogwarts, she could not help him as much as she can now. His death shocked her greatly, and still she does not believe that she could ever fill his shoes. There is a voice in Minerva's head which is much like that of Dumbledore himself, and whenever she makes decisions she thinks about what he might have done. Much of her life has been focused around Albus Dumbledore and his actions, and she isn't about to let that changed just because he has left the world in body.
Clearly shown, Minerva is determined and set in her ways. She will always finish what has been started, and is constantly finding it easier to focus on one thing at a time. That is where she has trouble, is focusing on thousands of little things, and so she tends to keep her eyes towards the large goal and considers all the little things a part of that goal. She is very caring, though shows it in a different way than many. Those she loves the most she has the highest expectations for. Example: Harry Potter. She cares for him greatly because she has seen him struggle and watches as he continues to go on. She admires him, yet when he gets in trouble or does something stupid, she is likely to pressure him harder than most others because she knows he can do better, and she wants to see him do better.
Minerva also has a wit to match her seriousness. She can be mischevious when the time comes, and when she is she's very collected and knows what she is doing. In 1995 she was forced to do this when Dumbledore disappeared from the school and she had to not give a thing away about what she knew. She is brave, as any Gryffindor is, and would be quite willing to rush into danger to save somebody she cares for - but a greater courage lies within her as well. She is willing to stand back and protect the innocent while those who have to send out to protect the world. Though she hates this as any Gryffindor would, she knows that it is quite often necessary, and she is willing to admit her own failings (physical and mental), and step down when she needs to.
Minerva is a no-nonsense kind of person. She doesn't tolerate petty excuses from her students or those who are late to class, and she isn't a very forgiving person, either. While she understands that people have their failings, she likes to try to help them get as far away from those failings as possible and succeed. Her temper is short, too, and quite likely to run to the end of its fuse at any moment. But when it does, it's as if it hasn't worked, and she remains calmed and poised, and nobody is ever sure when she's going to strike. As a powerful witch, she is very much able to protect herself and knows this. She is not conceited, but she knows where her areas of expertise lie and she knows where she isn't doing so well.
Minerva also has a love for something which some people might not expect of her - quidditch. She is filled with house pride, and when her house succeeds in Quidditch she is very likely to boast about it. It's a simple pleasure, to see the Quidditch cup in her office year after year, and she loves it. This brings about a subject which seems unrelated, but really isn't. In 1991, Harry Potter did something which should have gotten him expelled - he flew on a broom while the teachers were away. But when McGonagall saw him, he didn't see him breaking a rule (though she was very much aware that he was doing so), she saw him showing off talent. Minerva will not punish people for their successes, even when it was supposed to have been punishable before. If someone's doing something they shouldn't do (such as pranking the castle, as the Weasley twins did in '95), yet they do it with remarkable talent, she will be more lenient with them.
So where Minerva is stern and strict, she can also be mischevious, and where she is a no-nonsense kind of person, she is also willing to see the rules broken for raw talent or absolute need. Her heart lies with Dumbledore, Transfiguration, the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry Potter. She's a Gryffindor, and one of the best examples of one, and though she knows that she won't do as well as Dumbledore as head of Hogwarts, she knows that she will succeed as she is needed.
History: 72 years ago, the McGonagalls welcomed a new face into the world, and named her Minerva. She was always a stern child, and in her family that was generally accepted. While her parents loved her, they always expected more of her than she felt she could give them. If they expected her to learn to ride a broom, it took her four weeks, and by that time it seemed as if it was pointless. They expected her to read all the books on magic she could get her hands on, but she could only get her hands on a few before she turned eleven. She had no siblings, and so the focus was entirely on her. Sometimes she thought this was a good thing, and other times she didn't.
Though the McGonagalls were not a pureblood family, they were pretty well known in society - for Minerva's father and his father had both worked in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Minerva's mother had written several books on how to be a good housewife. The family was a typical wizarding family, upper middle class and hardly concerned about ancestry or anything like that. Minerva grew up with the nick name 'Minnie', which she detested but preferred, anyway, to Minerva. Having such well-known parents, Minerva easily made friends at Hogwarts (where she was sorted into Gryffindor) with anybody who was curious about her mother's latest book. She didn't particularly care for the fame, and quickly changed topics from her own life to the lives of those she became friends with.
In her classes, Minnie always did the best. Outshown by no one, Minnie knew her parents would be proud of her. The hard she worked, the more she thought of how much her parents would love her all the more, and when she came home that summer with the highest exam scores out of everybody at the school, she was not disappointed. Minnie was awarded with a barn owl who she named Barnie. For the next few years he was her source of comfort during times of sorrow (like when her boyfriend for three months broke up with her in fourth year), and her friend during times of happiness (like when she found out he had been dumped by her worst enemy as well).
Excited, loved, and intelligent, Minnie went into her fifth year as a Prefect, and met a man named Tom Riddle who would change her life forever. He was a few years younger than her, and in Slytherin, and he seemed too perfect. He challenged her grades, his hand always rose faster than hers in class, and he even spent more time in the library than she. He beat her there every morning and she either fell asleep before him or left feeling extreme failure earlier than him. The only reason she knew he participated more in class than she, though, was because he often talked to her. She hated him because he outshown her, and because there was just something about the way he spoke - charming though it was - that put her on the edge. Sometimes she heard his friends calling him 'Lord Voldemort', and for awhile she thought they were mocking him behind his back.
But years later she learned that they hadn't been mocking him. They had been worshipping him. The year she became Head Girl he became Slytherin Prefect, and strange things started happening. Rumors had it that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, and she, being Head Girl, participated more than most students in the calming, rumors, and...closing of the school. But after the death of a child, the attacks stopped. Minnie graduated with eleven OWLs and went far away from the school, thoughts of Tom Riddle still haunting her. She found work for a magizine, called Transfiguration Weekly, and shortly she found herself as one of the top researchers and most respected colomnists. She went back to Hogwarts when rumors of a 'Lord Voldemort' began to surface throughout the country, and replaced Albus Dumbledore as Transfiguration professor.
A few years later she was made Gryffindor Head of House and Deputy Headmistress. She taught for many years, and joined the Order of the Phoenix when the rumors of Lord Voldemort became fact. She thought that she might have something on the man, having known him quite well in school, but it came to nothing. The thing that truly got rid of Voldemort was when Lily and James Potter, who had been students of Minerva's before (her nickname faded away as she got older), died at the hands of this 'Dark Lord'. But their son, Harry Potter, hardly fifteen months old, suffered only a lightening bolt shaped scar on his forehead when the Killing Curse was directed at him. Minerva didn't believe the rumors, and so went to the one place where she knew Dumbledore would eventually come - Number Four, Private Drive.
There, she met him and he confirmed these rumors, as well as set the poor boys on the doorstep of a home that Minerva knew from the start would be unpleasant. She went back to teaching, and for several years it seemed as if relative peace at come to the wizarding world. Then in 1991, rumors came that Lord Voldemort was still alive and searching for an object known as the Sorcerer's Stone. She participated in the hiding of the stone, transfiguring giant chess pieces to protect it in a room that it was said nobody would be able to reach. But it just so happened that that was the first year Harry Potter came to Hogwarts, and naturally he screwed it all up, but in the end became their savior. Minerva was impressed with this boy who reminded her so much of his mother, and she made sure to keep an eye on him. After all, not one first year in more than a century had managed his or her way onto the Quidditch House team, let alone doing so by breaking a rule that should have gotten him expelled.
The next year, the Chamber of Secrets was opened again. Minerva felt, then, a deep sense of guilt that she had been unable to stop the Dark Lord when she had first noticed his existance. In the halls when she was a young lass, whispered words and hidden meanings - Lord Voldemort was not a mocking name, and now it was one that more than most of the wizarding world feared to say. Even she feared it, for it constantly made her feel like a failure to even think about. The Chamber of Secrets brought back fresh memories, and her worst fear was of finding somebody dead. Her life, then, she felt, would have come in a complete circle of vile circumstances. Thankfully, none were killed and by the end of the year Harry Potter and his friends had saved the world one again.
Minerva was beginning to think that she lived in a fairy tale. The years past and Potter continually went through horribly adventures, coming back sometimes scared and sometimes perfectly fine. It was in his fourth year, though, when something horrible happened. At the end of the year Lord Voldemort returned to full power. For a year he was silent, Sirius Black was killed, and then when the Ministry of Magic finally admited to Voldemort's return it was too late. He was killing left and right. The current Minister, Cornelius Fudge, was kicked from his office and replaced by Rufus Scrimgeour, who was only a slightly better replacement. By the end of the year Dumbledore was dead, the Board of Education was trying to decide whether or not Hogwarts would resume, and Minerva felt more lost than she had in her entire life.
Now that the school year is indeed starting again, and Minerva is Headmistress, nobody's quite sure what the future holds in store....
Pet: None
Role play sample: Link
Minerva remembered a time when they called her Minnie, and she had been as young as the foolish students who would be wandering the halls and searching for their classes in less than twenty-four hours. Yet this year, the day before term was just a bit different than it had been in the past. Minerva had found herself flung from Transfiguration Professor, Gryffindor Head of House and Deputy Headmistress to Headmistress all too soon. Albus had been a good friend of hers - a mentor of sorts, and a figure to be looked up to as a symbol of hope. He had founded the Order of the Phoenix, destroyed the Dark Lord Grindewauld, and put fear in the hearts of even the most fearful. He had been the all powerful, to her, and his death was like a blow of a thousand brick walls crashing down on her shoulders at once. She was now stepping into his shoes as Hogwarts Head, and she felt like she was being expected to fill the shoes of the man himself.
Minerva didn't know where the years had gone. It seemed like only yesterday that she had been gossiping in the hallways with Tery, giggling over David and making fun of Professor Slughorn. Tery was dead, David was a Death Eater, and Professor Slughorn was...well...still the same old Professor, somehow. Minerva was so different from that little girl, but she missed naive little Minnie just the same. As an old woman, though, she was accustomed to the amount of sheer desire to go back in time and give little Minnie all the knowledge Minerva had now. But it was time to get over such petty desires and take a leading role in the wizarding world. Minerva had the weight of everything lying on her shoulders now. She was supposed to go out there and tell the students that she was now the new Headmistress, and that she would like to welcome Professor Raine, who would be their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and Professor Gavern, who would be their new Transfigurations teacher, Gryffindor Head of House, and Deputy Headmistress.
But Minerva didn't want to welcome them. She wanted them to disappear, to put herself back in the shoes of Deputy Headmistress, staunch supporter of Albus Dumbledore, and what she wouldn't have given to go back to 1993, to put Remus Lupin back in his post as Defense teacher and watch as Harry faced the (now) petty challenge of facing up to his godfather. But now, only five short years later, Remus was resting from his failed mission with the werewolves, Harry wasn't even coming back to school as a student, Sirius was dead, and she was being forced to fill the shoes of the greatest man who ever lived. None of it made any sense in her mind - it was all garbled chaos and ruin, and now she could see no hope. In the days of Grindewauld, when she hung out at the coffee shops with her friends and read newspapers about the great Albus Dumbledore, there had always been that feeling of security. In the first war against Voldemort, when she had been rallying against the Dark in the newly formed and highly respected Order of the Phoenix, there had always been that presense of comfort. And even in the second war against Voldemort, when Dumbledore's name had been slaundered and she had stood there with a knowing smile on her face, there had been a chance.
But now that big-nosed, triple agent, son-of-a-bitch Severus Snape had come along and trampled on that chance, stomping on the fire of hope and throwing the only man who Minerva had believed would be able to bring them to victory - once again - out of the Astronomy Tower. Minerva could only now hope that young Harry knew what he was doing, though she knew that though he meant well, his mind was still that of a seventeen-year-old boy's. Sure, he had been through more, seen more, done more than any of the others in his year, but he was still so affected by the pain of growing up and the injustice of being young...
Minerva's thoughts ran like this for hours sometimes, a neverending, often circling line of fear and dead and worry. Today was no different as she sat in the staff lounge, pretending to read a Transfiguration while she mulled over cold thoughts and cold tea. She was calm and poised as always, but for the fact that her lips were a thin white line of disapproval, and her eyes were surrounded with more than just wrinkles of age. Dreaded creases of fatigue and sleepless nights adorned her wearied face, and her eyes didn't move as she stared blankly at the magazine and the page hadn't been turned for over an hour. Blinking as the clocked chimed eleven, she looked at her watch to reassure herself of the time and her thoughts wandered to the students. How many of them were coming this year?
Because of the recent death of the only man the parents had trusted to truly protect their children, Minerva knew that there would be little more than the staunchest Dumbledore supporters returning to Hogwarts this year, them and the Slytherins. She hated to classify them all as one untrustworthy house of scumbags, but her recent experiences with them had led her to be less than hospitable. Her thoughts towards them went in a direction that she didn't even want to consider, for she had always in the past been a very fair and unprejudiced teacher. Well, that wasn't true, but usually she managed to keep her biases unknown to the world, unless she was punishing the Gryffindors extra hard because she expected them to live up to her standards as they always had in the past.
Standing up, Minerva smoothed the folds of her crisp emerald, tartan robes needlessly and straightened her hat. Then, for lack of something better to do, she turned into a cat and scampered over to the rug by the fireplace and lay down, closing her eyes. But anybody who could read the body language of a cat (and it isn't that hard, I can assure you) could see that she most definitely wasn't asleep. The tabby cat sitting on the rug in front of the fire was as tense as any creature could get, her tail curled around her tightly as she lay so perfectly still that if one stared at her long enough, they might have thought her an extraordinarily well made sculpture. And so Minerva lay, the warmth of the fire doing nothing to calm her nerves, until her keen ears picked up on the sound of somebody walking towards the staff room...
Edited by: Whimsical Soul at: 9/15/05 11:45 am
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