InsaneJournal

THE PLAYER
Name: Vanille.
Age: 22.
Contact: BalladofQueenBee.
RPG Experience: Already play Ginny and Lily. :']

THE CHARACTER
FULL NAME: Andromeda Elladora Black.
BIRTHDAY: November 20th.
PLACE OF BIRTH: London, England.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Straight.
BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood.
THOUGHTS ON BLOOD PURITY/MUGGLES: Andie quite has a different view of muggles and muggleborns than her family, but it's a view she would never be foolish enough to advertise. She is quite morbidly fascinated by muggles and their world, but she has never dared to explore learning in public. Her entire family, except for a few unsavory bad eggs, is entirely focused on blood purity and keeping the Black family perfect and noble. So far as anyone else knows, Andromeda's views are just the same. Despite her curiosity, she had tried never to let herself slip up to anybody, terrified to disappoint her father, mother, sisters, or worse, her entire bloodline.

HOUSE AND YEAR: Slytherin, Sixth Year.
WAND: Rigid cedar, ten and a third inches, with a core of salamander bone. Held right-handed.
BOGGART: Her father burning herself, Bellatrix and Narcissa off the family tapestry.
PATRONUS: Fox. They represent quick-thinking, adaptability, strategy, and wisdom.
CLASSES: Potions, Astronomy, the Dark Arts, Herbology, Charms, Ancient Runes, and Divination.
POSITION: Prefect.

PERSONALITY: For a girl with a middle name is derived from a relative most famous for beheading house elves, Andromeda is surprisingly gentle once you get to know her. Most of Hogwarts seems to view her as aloof, cold, and there was rumors that she might even be crueler than Bellatrix if you cross her. Even most of Slytherin is fairly certain that Andromeda Black doesn't know how to smile, but all of that changes in the presence of her two sisters. Even though they have their disputes like any teenage sisters, Bella and Cissa both possess the ability to bring out a much more talkative and sweet side of Andromeda, one which she rarely shows to anyone outside of the Black family. When she is with her sisters, Andromeda is like a different person, speaking easily and letting down her walls.

Her two sisters are like her support system, and she terribly dreads the thought of losing either of them. She actually likes being in the middle, having both a big and little sister, and she feels she can tell her sisters anything. Well, almost anything. Even from the two of them, Andie keeps secrets.

She can be as cunning and sly as any member of her family or her house when the situation calls for it. She is a meticulous planner, with attention to detail and an answer (or at least a sarcastic comment) for every question. She has the ability to easily distance herself, from situations and people alike. She has many false faces, a persona and show to keep everyone happy, and she flits between them with ease. Deception and lying come naturally to her, though in her defense the majority of her lying is solely for her own safety and survival in the Black family.

Otherwise a relatively quiet and soft-spoken girl for the house of Slytherin, when Andie does speak up, people have a tendency to listen. It's usually important, and tinged with dry wit. The most reserved of the three sisters, some might consider Andromeda boring or serious, but most of her pureblooded peers seem to respect her all the same. Or they at least respect her bloodline. She usually tries to avoid petty drama, even when her sister Bella is at the heart of it, preferring to waste her time buried in old books and theory instead.

Though she avoids outright fighting or verbally assaulting muggleborns and muggles, Andromeda still always has a well-timed glare or sour look to throw in their direction. Just in case. She betrays nothing of her curiosity about the muggle world, and though she lets Bella do most of the actual terrorizing and berating of their muggleborn peers, she never misses a chance to give her mumbled consent when her fellow purebloods begin ragging on them. Knowing her place, Andie has never spoken up against mistreatment of muggles and even sometimes casually tries to push Bella in the direction of picking on them more, just to seem in line on the whole atrocity.

Incredibly invested in her studies, Andie had no problem discovering early in her life that being brainy was one way to impress her father and keep him off of her back. Not to mention distract him from nit-picking at any other imperfections about her. Some people think she is stuck-up or self-absorbed, but she has honestly just preferred books to people for most of her life. Except for her sisters of course, her near-constant companions. Spending an hour with Bella and Cissa is about the only thing Andie prefers to a quiet hour of reading.

Trained from a young age, Andie slips into the perfect socialite role at the drop of a hat. She is ready and able to play the part that her mother and father expect her to take. Tea parties and dinners with other young pureblooded stock have never been her idea of fun, but she prefers not to rock the boat or bring attention to herself. Arguing with her situation is not, and never has been, an option. She is well-read, articulate, and polite. She knows when to laugh at all of the right places, and to be sure to touch a young man's arm oh so gently while you do laugh at his stupid jokes, but her heart has never particularly been in it. She just wishes her mother wouldn't constantly remind her that boys don't like girls who are too bright.

Beyond her serious and perfectly molded exterior however, Andie longs to break free. She knows how to act proper, but it doesn't cease improper feelings. More than anything, Andromeda wants to move away from the stuck-up pureblood life. She just wants to be able to study, learn, and live her own life. She feels it will never happen that way, her personal dreams come second to making the family look good, unless she wants to be forcibly removed from her own family history.

STRENGTHS: Adapts well, hides emotions easily, can distance herself from situations, highly logical, intelligent, well-mannered, well-read, responsible, level-headed, good at sneaking around [literally and figuratively], surprisingly open-minded, strong in herbology, knows how to get what she wants subtly, generous to those she likes.
WEAKNESSES: Disillusioned with her life/family, frequently worried about her future, somewhat weak in Transfiguration [only got an 'A' on her O.W.L], feels powerless/trapped, can't really say 'no' to her sisters, holding in many secrets, self-doubt, fears her family to some degree.
LIKES: Reading, her sisters, the library at home, the library at school, studying, learning, muggles [and muggle culture, muggle studies, etcetc], butterbeer, moments of solitude, writing essays, having her sisters with her, waking up early, herbology, chamomile tea.
DISLIKES: Being the complete center of attention, failing, disappointing her parents too much, being used/manipulated, her future, blood status, keeping everything bottled up inside, athletics, pepper, being pressured/critiqued, arguing with her sisters.
PERSONAL GOALS: Safely getting through to her graduation is Andromeda's only immediate plan. Keeping herself under control and keeping any and all rebellion under wraps. Now is not the time to start acting out. One day, she thinks she would really love to be a professor, maybe even in muggle studies. But that's an argument for another day.

PARENTS: Cygnus & Druella Black [née Rosier].
THEIR RELATIONSHIP: For as long as Andromeda can remember, her mother and father have been the prime example of everything a pureblooded marriage should be. Proper, stuffy, and stereotypical. Cygnus plays the stoic family patriarch to perfection with Druella his obedient wife at his side, always ready to provide for him and to fuss over the children and other little details.

Though she respects him a great deal, Andromeda has never been particularly close to her father. Cygnus was never very involved in the activity of raising his girls, leaving most of that to Druella, though he has always been present to critique them and make sure that his family is at top form. He ever he had a problem, they heard it. She keeps her marks high to impress him, and to keep him happy. She wishes he could be proud of her for being herself, but she knows that will never happen. She may have gotten her slightly distant personality from him.

With her mother, Andromeda was not very much closer. Even as a child, Andromeda was never particularly fond of being fussed over or made a big deal of, and she was more than happy to allow Druella to focus the full force of her affection on Narcissa. Between doting on her baby, and disciplining Bella, Andie just sort of slipped by. She was obedient and polte, learning everything her mother wanted to teach her, even if she didn't always agree. She loves her mother immensely but finds keeping up appearances around her to be quite tiring, and like her with father, she knows that her mother would be disgusted with her in a heartbeat if she knew her daughter's true opinions.

SIBLINGS: Bellatrix & Narcissa Black.
FAMILY DYNAMICS: There is no one in the world that Andromeda cares more about than Bellatrix and Narcissa. She fits in as the middle child just fine, and contently so. She enjoys the advantages of having an older sister to go to with her problems, but also a younger sister to coddle on and to look up to her. Though they do sometimes fight, Andromeda and Bellatrix butting heads especially, Andie tries to make sure they do most of their bickering in private. It doesn't suit young pureblooded ladies to air their dirty laundry in front of everyone.

Luckily, the three of them almost always get along, and have always been close, ever since they were children. Andromeda would do anything for them, and to see them happy, even if she knows not everyone can see why she loves them. Bella especially, with bouts of violence and general unpredictability, can be especially trying but Andie is incredibly attached to her. It is about her sisters that Andromeda is most worried when it comes to ever considering leaving her family.

PERSONAL HISTORY:
Born exactly one week before her sister Bellatrix's birthday, Andromeda arrived in the world on a chilly November 20th evening. Her father had been hoping greatly for a son, an heir to carry on the Black family name, but he was seemingly content enough with his second daughter. When a third daughter arrived a year later a completed their family, neither Druella nor Cygnus seemed particularly upset with their lot in life, though it became immediately clear that choosing the perfect husbands for all three girls would one day be an essential priority. With all three of them being unable to carry on the surname of Black, both parents knew how important it would be to make sure that each daughter eventually married into another proper pureblooded family.

Learning how to be a proper young lady, and how the most respectable members of pureblood society were meant to behave, were things that Andromeda remembers having drilled into her mind at an early age. Between the three sisters, Andie did the best at blending into the background, finding a love of reading at an early age and wasting hours away in the expansive library in the family manor. While Bellatrix caused trouble and took most of the attention, and Narcissa commanded her mother's remaining attention and companionship, Andromeda was loved to be on her own and to learn. She was happy to spend all of her extra time pawing through various leather bound books. Her first sign of magic, in fact, came when she was seven years old and managed to wandlessly illuminate the pages of the book she was reading in the dark.

Daily elocution lessons, weekly events where they were expected to socialize with other young purebloods, endless teaching and criticism of failure from their father, it all became a blur before Andie even began school. She was glad that Cygnus took the time out to try to teach them, but like Druella, a majority of his focus went to Cissy. Bella had no desire to pay attention, and Andie was already ahead of schedule. Spare moments not spent being educated or molded in any way, Andie loved to spend with her sister. They were her best friends all of her life, and time with them is what she recalls most vividly about growing up.

Everything was rather routine, and Andromeda doesn't really remember any particularly traumatic events in her life until she was eight years old, the first day that she ever encountered a muggle. Raised from birth to believe in blood purity and the importance of keeping wretched creatures known as muggles from mucking up wizarding bloodlines, Andie rather blindly agreed with everything that she was taught. Being of an exclusively pureblood family, which really preferred only to interact with other pureblooded families, Andromeda had never met a muggle or even a muggleborn before attending school. She, honestly, wasn't even sure that she had ever seen one. She was pretty sure they looked just like witches and wizards, but she hadn't been sure.

Muggles were one subject that she didn't have a single book on in the Black family library.

On the particular day in question, Andromeda had been on her way to Diagon Alley with her mother and older sister. Bellatrix, a year older and never one to listen when she was told no anyway, rushed off ahead to greet a small crowd of other children and their parents waiting outside of the Leaky Cauldron. Turning her head to see where Bella was headed, Druella released Andromeda's hand for just a few moments, but it was long enough. Not really paying attention to where they were walking, and finding herself distracted with staring after Bellatrix's receding back as well, Andromeda nearly stepped right out into the street.

There had been loud noise, the split second squeal of quick breaking and the honk of an automobile horn, and Andromeda surely would have been run down if a pair of arms hadn't fastened around her waist and pulled her back up onto the curb. The boy who had pulled her back, whom Andie actually thought had been quite handsome, only looked to be about thirteen or fourteen. He had been smiling nervously, but before she had a chance to thank him or speak a word, Druella had been interfering in the situation, standing in between Andromeda and the boy and glaring sternly at him. His smile quickly turned to a scowl, and he had stomped off across the street, leaving Andromeda confused and with a hysterical mother.

They skipped their trip to Diagon Alley that day, Druella dragging both she and Bellatrix immediately back home. She made Andromeda immediately take a bath, leaving her to soak for nearly two hours, and ordering the nearest house elf to keep an eye on her and to dispose of the clothes she had been wearing into the trash. It wasn't until several days later that Andie realized the boy had been a muggle, after overhearing her mother ranting to her father about how disgusting the whole scene had been, how dare one of those people touch their daughter.

Even at eight, Andromeda's separation from her family values had begun. If muggles were as awful and terrible as everyone said, then why on earth would a muggle bother to save her? Couldn't he have just let her be killed, if he was truly such a rotten person? Sure, they weren't exactly as advanced as wizards and witches, but surely they couldn't be all bad. Andromeda knew she had no place to voice these thoughts, she had been raised far too strictly for that, but the thoughts of rebellion were already taking root.

When Bellatrix left for Hogwarts, Andromeda was quite upset. She had been together with both of her sisters for as long as she could recall, but before any time had seemed to pass at all, it was time for her to join Bella. Narcissa came soon after, in the next year, and it was no surprise to anyone that all three Black sisters in turn were sorted into Slytherin house. Andromeda might not have been the most typical Slytherin, nor was she the most outstanding of her sisters, but she fit into the house quite well.

Never allowed to try out for anything exciting like Quidditch, or to step out of line, things at Hogwarts quickly fell into the same mundane routine as home life had. Day in and day out, constant pureblooded politics and hang-ups. Except now, the comfort of their family was smaller and they were surrounded at every corner by new people and new experiences. Even if they weren't really allowed to experience many of the new experiences.

In her third year, two things happened; she began dating Blaise Zabini and later that month, entirely in secret, Andromeda took her first book from the Hogwarts library about muggle studies. She took it out to nearly the edge of the Forbidden Forest, hiding away there and devouring the entire thing from cover to cover in one afternoon. It fascinated her, and she knew that she wanted to learn more. Muggles were not really scary, not really evil or dirty either, but rather sort of quirky. She was immediately endeared, despite knowing that she should have been disgusted. With muggles, and with herself.

Guilty though she felt about her curiosity, it quickly became a bit of a dirty pleasure, slipping texts about muggles into her usual pile of books every time she made a trip to the library. She learned loads, keeping it all inside and usually returning the books earlier than the rest, just to be safe. She was constantly careful about where she went to read the books, and made sure to never bring them back anywhere near the Slytherin dorms. She didn't even want to imagine the look on either sister's face if they saw her perusing through Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles in the common room.

It was hard on Andromeda, and still is, to keep everything that she feels inside. She is loyal to her family to a fault, loving them desperately. But the more she learned about muggles, the angrier she became with her family, with their whole view on the situation. Really, they were making the situation out of nothing. What was really so wrong with muggles anyway? Sure, they had made some mistakes in their history, but there was no perfect witch or wizard in the world either that Andie knew of. It was all just a bunch of hate-mongering, so far as she was concerned.

She knew what her family believed in, how strongly they believed it and what they expected of her, but the seed of doubt had long since grown in size since her childhood. If she didn't marry a pureblood wizard, would that really be so bad? What would the difference be? If she had children with a muggleborn or even just a muggle, they would still be magical, still witches and wizards that would attend Hogwarts. Except for squibs, and those could even happen in pureblooded lines. Blood, she was beginning to truly realize, was nothing but a bunch of rubbish.

Holding all of this in and more, Andromeda moves ahead to her sixth year of school. She was made Prefect, after the position was removed from Pansy. Andie spends her time split between her studies and her sisters, preferring to focus on anything except for the self-doubt and worry swirling inside of her.

APPEARANCE: Even physically, Andromeda finds herself in the middle of her two sisters. She is the medium between Bella's darker features and Cissa's lighter ones, with lighter brown hair that end in gentle waves at the bottom, reaching a bit past her shoulders. Her eyes are light blue, the same as her younger sister and her mother. Her face is a bit angular, with a pointed chin and defined cheekbones.

Her height comes in at five feet and six or so inches, just a bit taller than Narcissa but not quite matching up with Bella just yet, though she has long legs quite liker her older sister. She is built thin, like the rest of the women in her family, and exudes the same delicately beautiful look. Never allowed to participate in sports or anything particularly strenuous, she is rather physically weak, giving her an even thinner appearance.

Andromeda's fashion sense tends to be dictated by her mother. She wears the latest fashions and styles, expensive and exclusive, but it certainly wouldn't bother her if she didn't. She dresses the way that she does solely to impress her family, and give the proper impression of a young lady. Druella loves to dress the girls in the best that her husband's money can buy. Personally Andromeda prefers neutral colors, cotton tee shirts, and jeans with warm sweaters, but when not in uniform, she is usually found wrapped up in something much more presentable and less relaxed.

PB: Jessica Stroup.


THE ROLE
First person roleplaying sample:
If you're all wise, I'm sure that you've already been shopping for Bella's presents. And I should hope that someone plans to throw her a party? I doubt you'd all want to see her if you didn't. Or if you messed it up.

[Private to Bella]
We've got mail! I went up to the owlery today, and one of the eagle owls from home was there.. I think Mother has sent us our birthday presents. I've shaken it around, and I don't mean to disappoint you, but I do think it is another set of china cups..

[Private to Cissy]
How is everything going with the cake? You've got the elves taking care of it, right? Lemon drizzle, make sure that they know what they're doing. I really don't want to pull Bella off of them if they screw up her cake-

Third person roleplaying sample:
Moving carefully through the library, Andromeda tightly held the growing pile of books against her chest. She had already gathered up the supplementary texts for both her charms essay and her herbology assignment, but there was still one more section that she needed to visit. She didn't want to go there,but there was no way that she was going to be able to leave without at least checking it out first.

She made the same careful precautions that she always made when going to that section of the library, meandering her way through the potions section, then the care of magical creatures section. She'd pause along the way, thumb through a different book here and there on the way each time. Look busy, occupied, absorbed. When she concentrated her hardest, her sisters said that was when she looked her meanest. She just couldn't help it, when she was focused, her face just sort of.. went that way.

It wasn't her fault that it happened to be totally intimidating, or that it kept the nervous looking second year Hufflepuffs from asking any questions as she walking through the row of charms text books. She was almost there now, and she took a quick glance behind her, as if expecting to see someone following her. Maybe a fellow Slytherin. Maybe even Bella. Finding the row of books behind her to be empty, the dark-haired girl exhaled a heavy breath that she had barely realized she was holding.

Why did she stress herself out like this? She knew it was forbidden, not this exact act but it was all the same. It was association with muggles, whether she just took an interest in them and read books about them or she interacted with them. Her family hated them, detested them practically. Pureblooded witches and wizards were the only worthy equals. She had no business with muggles of any sort, yet there she stood, just one row of books between her and the muggle studies section.

Unable to help herself, Andie made one last desperate look over her shoulder, double checking that she was alone. She must have looked very scary indeed while glancing through her books, because even the young Hufflepuffs had vanished. The library had taken on it's usual hush, not even the sound of turning pages. Somewhere far off, someone coughed. Reminding herself that she was a Slytherin, and Slytherins didn't fuss and whine, she pushed aside her hesitation. Expression stony, she made quick strides across the remaining distance, standing as stiff as a board as she reached the shelf towered full of muggle studies text books.

Andromeda reached out carefully, taking one close to her, a thin volume simply called Muggle Fairytales. She had read it before, but it was one of her favorites. It was sort of cute all of the stuff they got so wrong. Looking around herself yet again, Andromeda seemed finally convinced she was alone. Tucking the book into the middle of her gathered texts carefully, she turned the spine of the book to face her chest so that no one would be able to read the title. Satisfied, she headed off to take out her pile, feeling better already as she put distance between herself and the book shelf.

She would return the fairytale book after dinner, after she read it a time or two. Or however many times.

Plot Ideas/Pairings/etc: I didn't have anything special in mind, mostly just sister times, but I would love for someone to eventually find out about Andie and out her muggle loving ways!? I have a couple of people I plan to put on the wanted list from her!