Madeline Williams [Female Canada]

Madeline is one of those people that is there, but nobody ever notices. She doesn’t stand out much and is easily forgotten. Her whole life she has been overshadowed by other, more important and interesting people. This has made her rather shy and timid, especially around people she doesn’t know well. She believes she isn’t as interesting as others and people would probably prefer to talk to someone else than her.

She doesn’t like bothering people for things she needs. However, this often only means more trouble for herself. She likes to look out for others and wants them to be safe and healthy. She is a born worrier and can come up with the worst kind of disaster scenarios, when it’s actually not that bad.

Though Madeline is kind and if you’re in trouble she will try to help wherever she can, even if she barely knows you. She believes that you don’t need a reason to be nice to someone else. And if one does nice things, nice things will happen to themselves in return. Or that’s what she keeps telling herself at least.

She is a bit socially awkward and doesn’t make contact with people easily. For her it takes a bit longer than usual to start seeing someone as a friend, because she believes people don’t really want to hang out with her due to her crippling shyness. She will always try to be a good friend though.

There are times she snaps and just lets everything out what has been bothering her, but she really tries to withhold herself from doing this. There is a lot necessary to get her really pissed off. But believe me when I say you do not want to be around when that happens. It’s not pretty.

Though she is quiet in nature, she can be quite fierce when she absolutely needs to, for example when she needs to defend herself. She doesn’t like fighting at all, so this side of her isn’t shown very often. One of the places she doesn’t mind letting her anger out is either the hockey field, or -less frequently- on the Quidditch pitch. There she is able to let all of her pent up frustration, or even aggression, out. When she’s not playing herself, but watching a match, she also gets a bit more vocal than usual. She has tried to hold back, but just can’t help herself as she gets caught up in the excitement of the game.

Appearance:

Madeline has long wavy blond hair, which she usually wears in two pigtails to keep it out of the way. However sometimes there is one stubborn curl that never does what she wants it to and sticks out from all the rest.

Her sense of fashion is simple, but elegant. She prefers comfort and practicality over looks. Though of course, like any girl, she does pay attention to her appearance and tries to make sure to look respectable in public.

Her frame is rather petite. She is skinny, but not thin. One wouldn’t say it at first, but she actually does have a decent amount of muscles and is stronger than you would expect a girl of her size to be. This is undoubtedly the result of years of carrying heavy books with her, and a decent amount of hockey practice.

She wears glasses and is rarely seen without a book or some other reading material.

Strengths:

Care of Magical Creatures, Trasfiguration and Herbology are her best subjects
Though she is by no means bad at her other classes, being the studious girl she is. Those are just the ones she is extra interested in.

Fast and agile flyer
Thanks to her small frame, she is light and quick on a broom. Though in weather with strong winds it does work against her, as she is blown away easily. Luckily she rarely ever flies in storms.

Languages
Madeline speaks both English and French. She also picked up bits and pieces of other languages from the many books she read, sometimes even enough to be able have a small conversation.

Invisibility
She is naturally not noticed a lot. Though she is also a master in the Disillusionment Charm. This charm has saved her ass in numerous occasions when she was lurking where she wasn’t supposed to. For example the times she sneaked into the library after hours because she had read about something and just needed to look further into it right away.

Handling cold climates
The cold winters of Canada have made her more adaptable to cold environments. Often she doesn’t even mind the cold all that much. She loves snow, ice, and especially ice skating.

Weaknesses, phobias, quirks, etc.:

Quiet and insecure
She is very shy and barely speaks up if there’s something on her mind that she wants to tell somebody. She has an inability to speak in front of a group of people, even if it’s just a small group. She can’t do it.

Passive aggressive
Like any other person, Madeline gets annoyed or angry over things she doesn’t like. Though she hardly ever speaks up about it. Even though she seems polite and well behaved on the outside, Madeline’s mind is a lot less innocent than one might expect. When something irritates her, she doesn’t say anything about it out loud, but inside she’ll be cussing at whoever is too blame. When she does try to voice her frustration, she is often not listened to or she backs out at the last moment.

Afraid of hurting someone, or being hurt herself
She likes to make herself believe she is used to being ignored by now. Truthfully though, it hurts every time. If anything, the hurt grows stronger. In addition to this, she is also extremely careful not to step on any toes herself, often too careful.

She fears growing old, alone and forgotten, more than anything
What if she is so unnoticeable and unimportant that nobody will ever stick around? People may appreciate her company for a while, when she helps them with their homework or whatever, but after that they all move on and she is back to being invisible. She doesn’t want that to last her whole life.

Duelling
She doesn’t like fights at all, so duelling is no exception. If it’s duelling for class, she gets nervous and messes up her spells. If it’s duelling in the hallways... well, she mostly just tries to avoid situations like these. She really doesn’t want to get caught up in something like that.

Your Character's backstory:

Madeline grew up in a little muggle village in Canada with her wizard father, and muggle mother. Their life wasn’t very eventful at all. It was nice and quiet. Though Madeline didn’t have many playmates.

For all her life, books were Madeline’s best friend. She learnt how to read exceptionally early and truly enjoyed it. Anything with letters on it she picked up and started to read, until there wasn’t a book or pamphlet in the house that she hadn’t at least read twice. Or at least those that she could get her hands on.

In her hunger for something to read, Madeline had a particular fondness of the top shelf of her father’s large bookcase, despite -or perhaps especially because- not being allowed to have them. That was where her father kept his books about magic. He let her have the more harmless books, though books with spells and potions were kept safely out of her reach. If she got her hands on them she would surely get it in her head to try them out, even though they didn’t yet know if she had inherited her father’s magic.

The way in which she found out that she was a witch was rather harmless. While she was reading she unintentionally made little things like pencils or papers close by float through the air. The more she enjoyed what she was reading, the more stuff went flying. Most of the time she was too caught up in the book to even notice. It wasn’t until her father once walked into the room while it was happening that they found out. He had called her name, her head had snapped up, and a dozen things fell to the ground. Madeline didn’t know whether to be happy that she was a witch, or to be annoyed with her father for interrupting her when she was reading a particularly good part.

She was happy to be a witch though, since she found the magical word endlessly interesting. And, she hoped, maybe her father would finally let her have those books about magic she wanted.

Growing up, Madeline didn’t just stay inside to read every day, though sometimes it appeared that way. She liked nature, and especially wintery landscapes got her excited. Winter meant cold and snow and -more importantly- ice. She was part of a female ice hockey team, and she wasn’t bad either. Though ice skating and hockey is it for Madeline as far as sports go. She does like Quidditch too, but never had the guts to try out for her house team. At Hogwarts it’s no different. On the few occasions, like gatherings with the wizard part of her family, she did play, taking the role of a Beater. She was already used to handling a hockey stick, so she figured she could wield a bat as well.

(( If there’s ever a female!America who wants to be related to Madeline, I‘m good with that. Just say the word and we can discuss a change of history. ))

We Just Got A Letter:

On the day Madeline turned eleven, she was excited beyond all reason. She woke up early, running to the window to see if there were any owls there to bring her something. Nothing was there. T-that didn’t matter, she told herself. She shouldn’t have expected an owl so early. It was on its way, surely. The rest of the day she kept glancing up at the sky, as if she could wish the owl bringing her letter into existence.

She didn’t have much attention for the cake, or the kids from the neighbourhood that her parents had invited over. When it was time to unwrap her presents, she cheered up a bit again. Most of the packages had a shape that wasn’t hard to identify, books. But not even those could make her forget about the letter. As she flipped through the new reading material, her eyes went over the pages, but she found she didn’t take any of it in. Her thoughts kept wandering to other places.

Maybe the owl had an accident on the way and was just going to be a little bit later. They could have forgotten to send her letter. Or perhaps they had decided that she didn’t have enough magic after all, and so she didn’t belong at a magic school. Thinking about that last option upset Madeline greatly.

Eventually she just crawled up on the couch, searching for comfort in her new book, not believing the letter would come anymore. She stayed that way until she fell asleep, book laying open on her chest on the page she’d been reading.

When she woke up in her bed the next morning, the letter would be waiting for her on her nightstand.

---

The letter from Hogwarts was a bit of a surprise, to say the least. She had been expecting the annual letter from her school with the list of books she needed to acquire that year, but it didn’t come. Instead she got a letter with an unfamiliar seal. Hogwarts School For Witchcraft and Wizardry? She raised an eyebrow in confusion. This had to be some sort of mistake.

Though it was addressed to her, so she opened it and her eyes flew across the parchment. Her eyes widened in shock as she read on. An exchange program? In England?! That was all the way across the Atlantic Ocean!

The idea of studying abroad certainly did intrigue her. Going to school in another country, think of all the things she could learn. Though she didn’t know if she wanted to be that far from home, far from everything she knew. She didn’t know if she’d be able to. Would she be able to get by in a completely new environment, far from all that she knew and trusted? She had to think about this.

When she told her parents about it, however, they reacted enthusiastically. And eventually, after some persuasion, she decided to take the plunge and go to Hogwarts.

The Sorting:

Madeline was nervous. She didn’t think she’d ever been this nervous. Well, perhaps at the sorting at her school in Canada. Or when she had her first classes. Or when she had to leave her country behind and travel to Britain... Okay, she got this nervous a lot, but that didn’t mean it felt less bad. It’s something she would never get used to, she supposed.

She fiddled anxiously with the sleeves of her robes as she kept her eyes fixed on her shoes. She couldn’t look at the stool she had to sit on soon, or the hall full of students that would be watching her. They were only halfway through the alphabet. She cursed her last name at moments like these. It meant she would be one of the last to be sorted, giving her the chance to make herself even more nervous than she already was.

The group of students waiting to be sorted became smaller and smaller. And then finally...

“Williams, Madeline.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Her feet refused to move for a moment, but then she managed to step forward. Her eyes were still directed at the ground as she walked towards the stool and sat down. She risked a glance at the crowd and immediately wished she hadn’t done that. The feeling she might faint overwhelmed her. She closed her eyes, her hands gripping the edges of the stool tightly so she wouldn’t topple over.

Luckily the hat was placed on top of her head soon, distracting her somewhat from the watching crowd. “Well, this one isn’t hard,” The hat mused. “Ravenclaw!” It shouted out. And Madeline breathed a sigh of relief. Not because of the house she had been put in (she would’ve been okay with any of the four houses so long as she could study in peace), but because this meant she could finally step away from the front of the room and disappear into the crowd of students, becoming just another face amongst the many others.

Alright, since you fixed those little things I told you in the chat, I'm glad to say I think your application can be accepted! We'll have to wait for an admin to move your app and make you an official member, and the admins might have something to say about your app; one should be on within a couple days to move your app or give feedback. Very nice though, I hope we can get to RP soon!

I talked to Matthew and while she's okay with them not being related, she would like if you changed Madeline's last name to something different! c:

I can see what you mean, but you should probably message Matthew about this, since it will take more time if I act as the messenger. Just talk it over with Matthew, I'm sure it shouldn't be too big a problem! Pop in the chat too, if you can, it's easier to talk there.