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Messages - Catherine Severin

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Archived Applications / Catherine Severin
« on: 31/12/2014 at 09:50 »

Application for Hogwarts School

Name: Catherine Melchior Severin

Birthday: 00.12.22 on June 22nd, 1928 (1966)

Hometown: OX11 7FY, Didcot


Magical Strength (pick one):

Magical Weakness (pick one):

Year (pick two): Third, fourth.


What of the fate offered to Hyacinthus, one of reverent pity and adoration?: admired by Apollo, he was taken as a lover by him, a lucky youth, and beautiful-- what else could a god want, but youth and beauty, of course?-- but Hyacinthus was killed by jealous Zephyrus, the West Wind, who wanted him for his own. Apollo mourned his pretty little lover, and, full of grief, forbid Hades from taking him and formed Hyacinthus' blood into a flower as beautiful as Apollo remembered him to be.

Commemoration was good. To be kept in memory by way of flower form was good; was no Romeo and Juliet, no Hero and Leander, for there would be no dying for the memory of the fallen paramour. There was worship and there was weakness, and to escape into death to avoid pain was surely the former.

Hyacinthus' fate was one to be upheld.

Things were easily separated into two categories: that which was hers, and that which was not.

Frances, for one-- Francesca, purred, because there really was nothing to separate them, naught but fourteen seconds and their Christian names and their flesh and their bone. But Catherine hadn't prayed to that God in years, a habit left behind with their mother and their father, in that stone church where they'd gone all together-- Frances, best and only, she was Cat's. Matthew, dark and pointed and older, was not.


She'd tiptoed down corridors plenty of times in her life, carried a candle, after they'd been swept back, as she stole into the library or into the kitchen for a sweetie, stolen for Frances' sweet tooth and hers alike. After awhile she'd taken to nicking Gran's wand, when she could, trying her hand at early lumos and then eventually incendio because she'd seen a servant do it--

--that is, created fire from nothing, and Cat thought that could possibly be the most thrilling thing she'd seen.

Ignis. People thought Ares because he was called Mars, sometimes, when they thought fire, but it was really Hephaestus they invoked-- he, scorned by Aphrodite, crippled by Zeus, the ugly god of ash and coal and smoldering things. She did not believe in patron gods because she did not believe in much at all, but there was an affinity she had for his ugliness, for the corners he lurked in, overshadowed by the tales of the greater gods. She liked to think he preferred it that way.

"Francesca, venite ad me. I've found a new toy."

It wasn't that they'd been tossed around much as children; there was the one event, the biggest one they'd seen, that separated them permanently from their parents and wrought them anomalies of time, but that was their only upset. It had bothered Frances more, she'd been the one to cry and pray and frown. Cat had accepted it as it happened with a smirk and a tug of her sister's plait, because it came with the revelation that they had a witch for a grandmother and a manor house to inhabit. They had never been at risk to destitution.

Destitution would not have suited them. Matthew, sold away into academia; perhaps they'd have given themselves up for nunhood were that the case, sisters in God and in secret and in front of Hera and Zeus the whole Parthenon--

Lucky that wasn't the case, laudem dei. Never was a risk, never was a risk.

(risks meant little.)

Hyacinthus' fate was one she thought of often, for it was the same fate as Narcissus, and his wasn't half as interesting: vanity was his crime and to be turned to a flower, drooped over his reflection for eternity, was his punishment-- nothing romantic about that, nothing commendable or holy. Vanity was a sin.

(sin, hissed through the void where her front teeth had been, but she hadn't prayed in years, in years--)

Perhaps she wished to be seen as Hyacinthus had been, but conversely to act as Zephyrus had acted. A creature foremost Hyacinthus was, human in his beauty but not much otherwise, looked upon and yearned for and reached toward; gotten, but singularly had: struck down by a jealous competitor (who care what Apollo thought, anyhow, the dandy) who wanted, who desired, as she did--

on bad days she was Persephone, terrible with her power and depraved for her reach, lost in the labyrinths and pounding on the chest of Hades, begging for release.

That was why Cat preferred winter, you see. The world could do without Persephone, aberration that she was. Demeter could throw all the fits she wanted. Catherine disliked tempetuousness, and that made her laugh for the hypocrisy of it.

The gods needn't settle on anything, though; that was the justification she gave herself.


House Request: --

Personality: Possessive, ambitious-- but slight. Her hands feel best when holding something she knows is hers, and she hates when others upset her belongings. She is quick-witted and possess a dry sense of humor, flickering between snide and playful. Blood means nothing to her, but she is a vicious judge of character, and does not relent from her opinion without good reason, or incentive. She does nothing lightly, or halfway: if she likes something, she adores it; if she dislikes something, she loathes it. She doesn't like to show weakness, but has a short temper.

Appearance: Having dark hair and pale eyes, Catherine most often is somber and composed, but when impassioned takes on a quality that can be related to a ticking bomb-- quietly explosive, smoldering behind layers and layers of cover. She is prone to staring, as she works an opinion through aesthetic impression and little else.

Please reply to one of the Sample Roleplays below.

A rabbit track, already, had formed between her dormitory and regular classrooms and frequented areas. The trench she'd created with her footsteps was imagined but it felt all too real, weighing on her soles with a magnetic value, exacerbated by the bag slung crossways over her chest.

Tiresome. How quickly one formed habits, even when one resisted them so steadfastly.

Walking down the western corridor set she took an abrupt left where she ought to have taken a right, to get to Charms class-- it was to break the monotony of her imagined rabbit track, she told herself, and charms wasn't worth attending anyhow. Frances would show her the wand movements later, anyhow, and it was no day to sit between two complete stinking buffoons in an idiot class when she could be wandering about.

Cat had a fondness for exploring.

A clattering of rushed footsteps interrupted her brief evasive interlude, however, as a student came running toward her, voice echoing off the rafters.

"Hey! Wait up, it's for the paper!"

She of course turned, hands clasped behind her, and waited a moment until she'd caught up.

"How can I be of service?"


Catherine gave an irritated sigh.

"It's a matter of taste. I don't like frog's legs, but if others do, it would be idiotic to fault the school for feeding our peers a food they like."

She turned her chin up, just slightly, eyes narrowing.

"Is this the big scoop the Spellbound was promising for next week's issue?" Pushing back her hair, she looked Astrid coldly in the eye. "It's weak. No one cares about frog's legs."


Please list any characters you have on the site (current and previous): Flora Blackwell Chaucer, Dacian E-L, Cassius E-L. lots of others.

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