InsaneJournal

Full Name: Melanie Ivy Platt.
Nicknames: None.
Age/Birthday: 29 / 29 February, 1972.
Loyalty: Shares the ideals of Bellatrix and her followers. Will likely eventually seek a position amongst the Moirae.
Marital Status: Single.
Bloodline: Pureblood.
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Former House: Gryffindor.
Wand: 10 ¾”, Rosewood, Hippogriff Talon, whippy.
Boggart: An angry dragon, specifically an Antipodean Opaleye.
Patronus: Bobcat.
Amortentia: Patchouli, spearmint, beeswax, wet earth, and a hint of sulfur.
Occupation: Former dragon poacher, ‘retired’ after sustaining an injury that left her unable to continue. She tends to job hop, and currently works as a shop girl at Hyde & Pelting Clothiers, a high-end clothing store that specializes in items made of various beast skins
Noteworthy: Excellent memory, especially for faces and things she has read. Talented in Herbology. Very accurate aim with offensive spells.

Appearance:
Melanie is on the tall side, standing at around 5’8”, and has an athletic build. She’s muscular but still possesses a distinctly feminine softness to her limbs and hips. Her hair is slightly wavy and a dark medium brown – it used to be cut quite short for manageability, but after she began working in a shop, Melanie saw no real reason to keep it short. It has currently grown out to just below her shoulders, and tends to look a bit unkempt. The feature people tend to notice most about Melanie is her eyes, which are large and dark hazel.

Her complexion is fair, with some freckles on her faces and arms. She has a long, thin face with a rather nondescript nose and a wide mouth, lips often a bit chapped. There is a long, ugly scar down the length of her left arm, the remains of many attempts to keep such disfiguration from resulting after a brutal run-in with an Opaleye two years ago. Melanie smiles often, but the expression rarely reaches her eyes – it often seems false. For someone who works at a clothing shop, Melanie doesn’t seem to care much for her personal style. She dresses well for work, but otherwise dons simple robes and traditional but plain fare.



Desired played-by: Rebecca Hall




Personality:
Melanie has always been an adventurous individual – she is often on the look out for the next great opportunity to arise, and she used to love traveling and feeling the thrill of the hunt her former job entailed. It is just as hard to pin her down in one place or job as it is to pin her down in a conversation. She has a sharp wit and processes information quickly, tending to hop from topic to topic with little provocation. While this makes her an interesting conversationalist to some, it also makes her rather annoying to others who can’t follow her branches of thought, or who don’t want to.

Still, Melanie does not come off as particularly friendly. For all that she can hold her own in a conversation; she seems too distant, always thinking of the next thing. Her demeanor is one of cool-headedness, and she approaches new situations with a reserve that belies her enthusiasm. She is actually a very patient individual and possesses a quiet intensity. While her habits and style of speech make her seem scattered and possibly even disinterested, Melanie takes her passions very seriously. If there is something she really wants, she is highly tolerant of waiting for the perfect moment to attain it.

She loves information and reads incessantly, often spending her lunch breaks perusing books or newspapers and neglecting to eat properly. While capable of team play, Melanie is perfectly happy to be left to her own devices, where she feels she can focus better anyway. She has a knack for concealing her feelings on things, and is likewise perceptive to the thoughts and feelings of others. She generally tries to present herself as open and pleasant, and prides herself on her own self-control and sensibility.

Given this, Melanie can’t stand that her reaction to dragons has become so visceral and beyond her management since surviving a botched hunting trip a few years ago. It kills her that she can no longer do the one thing that she truly loved, and Melanie struggles with feelings of uselessness and restlessness. Every job she has had since then feels wrong, and though she starts new endeavors eagerly, she quickly begins to feel disenchanted and unsettled.

People who interact with her on a more than superficial basis tend to note that she seems melancholy and troubled, though for the life of them they can't place why, as she seems otherwise quite normal. This is a fairly accurate evaluation, as the past two years of her life have seen Melanie become rather insecure in regards to her purpose. She’s constantly searching but has yet to reach a sense of fulfillment.

Positive personality traits:
Patience, directness, curiosity, self-control.

Negative personality traits:
Resentment, selfishness, doubt, dissatisfaction.

What motivates him/her:
In large part, finding something that makes her happy again. Melanie based a lot of her satisfaction with life in her former career as a dragon hunter – after she sustained physical and emotional scars from an attack and could no longer perform the job, she felt like she was no longer herself. She is constantly looking for the next big thing that might make her feel fulfilled.


Immediate Family:

Sylvester Platt – father, 84 – Is a retired dragon hunter and hide dealer. Growing up, Melanie was closest to her father. Although he was well into his fifties when she was born, he had a real fondness for her. Melanie grew up listening to his stories of dangerous and exciting hunting trips and wanted nothing more than to do that. She began to accompany him on hunting trips when she was seventeen, and didn’t look back.

Adelina Platt (neé Peixoto) – mother, 65 – Adelina is Sylvester’s second wife. The two met when Sylvester was in Portugal on business, a few years after his first wife passed away unexpectedly. They had a sudden and short-lived relationship before marrying barely a year later. Adelina was not expecting to have a child, and wasn’t very keen on giving up her career in broom development to raise Melanie. Even today, her relationship with Melanie is distant.

Lewis Platt – half-brother, 48 – The only child from Sylvester’s first marriage to Felicity Max. Lewis was almost twenty when Melanie was born, already engaged in his own life and affairs. The two were never close, and Melanie tends to view him as more of an uncle or cousin than a brother. He works for the International Magical Trading Standards Body, and is married with three children aged 23, 18, and 11.


History:
Melanie was an unexpected event in the lives of her parents, Sylvester and Adelina Platt. Still, the two of them had very different reactions to her birth – while Melanie’s father was thrilled at the prospect of a child (it having been twenty years since his son was born), Adelina couldn’t wait to get back to her job as soon as possible. She was raised largely by hired help, but was also fortunate to become very close to Sylvester despite the fact that he travelled a lot. Her bedtime routine as a toddler often involved him recounting thrilling tales of his exploits abroad, hunting dragons and wild beasts. Her childhood dream was to do the same thing one day.

A good part of Melanie’s childhood and adolescence coincided with the war, and the creation of Bellatrix Lestrange’s regime. Though not very prominent in society, the Platts and Peixotos both were fairly old Pureblooded families in their respective countries of origin, and thus felt little fear about the goings on around them. As far as they were concerned, their bloodline and views would suffice to protect them in those dangerous times, and Sylvester and Adelina alike were quietly supportive of the Moirae’s efforts. Though they did not take an active part in the war, it was clear where their loyalties were, and they made sure the right people knew it. Melanie likewise adopted her parents’ beliefs, as children with a healthy respect for the authorities in their lives tend to; Bellatrix’s work was making way for a new, better, order of things, and the young girl was grateful to be coming of age in such a time despite the troubles of a war.

When she left home for Hogwarts at the age of eleven, Melanie was sorted into Gryffindor, where she made a few friends but was mostly happy just to be around others with a sense of adventure similar to her own. She maintained average grades, never excelling beyond the norm in anything except for Herbology. Melanie had a green thumb as a girl, and still keeps a garden in which she grows her own food along with a variety of other plants. She also played Quidditch for the last two years of her schooling, as a solid Chaser. When she graduated in 1990, it wasn’t long before she had taken up a career similar to her father’s. Though he had by then retired from the field and had taken up a post as a dealer in dragon hides, horns, blood, and other useables, Melanie hit the ground running as a hunter.

From the age of nineteen into her mid-twenties, Melanie involved herself in any and every hunting party she could. She became a world-traveler, hitting each continent at least once, and eventually coming to visit too many countries to count. It was a thrilling life – the planning, the waiting, the care it took, and of course, the knowledge that one’s life was always at risk. It demanded that she keep her wits about her, and a successful hunt was one of the greatest joys Melanie could imagine. She envisioned herself doing this into mid-life, as her father had, and then retiring with a comfortable bit of money and perhaps becoming a hobbyist researcher.

In November of 1998, this changed. Melanie was in New Zealand tracking a group of Antipodean Opaleyes with three companions – two, Mona and Evander, were long-time friends who she’d gone on many trips with before. The other, Teague, was fairly new to hunting, very eager to prove his mettle. After days of setting up and preparing themselves, they set out one morning intending to make the kill quickly and cleanly. Teague messed up though, and in his excitement he startled a female Opaleye tending to her eggs, inciting her wrath. She attacked the four of them, killing Mona and Teague, and severely injuring Evander and Melanie.

Though Melanie recovered physically from her wounds – bites and burns mostly to her left side and back – with some scarring, emotionally and mentally she was still unable to return to normal. The next year she tried to return to the field several times, but found she could hardly stand to view living, breathing dragons even from a distance. To do so brought severe nausea, panic, and fainting. She began to have vivid nightmares and lose sleep. It became clear to Melanie that she was unable to do the job, and as much as it pained her to admit it, she began searching for temporary solutions.

Returning to England was largely disappointing. Melanie found herself surrounded by mundane job opportunities and boring people. She took up a succession of jobs; bank clerk, quill shop employee, even tried working for a diviner. None lasted for more than a few months, as Melanie grew increasingly disenchanted with trying to sort out a new life for herself at the age of twenty-eight. Still, what else was she to do? Talking to a variety of people who claimed they could help her, trying various calming potions and memory therapies, and she’d lost touch with Evander, who appeared to have moved on with his life much better than she had. Nothing had worked.

Most recently, Melanie has become employed at a clothing shop, Hyde and Pelting, where she finds that working with dragon hides and those of other beasts hardly seems to trouble her, even makes her feel a bit empowered. She is still not as satisfied as she’d like to be, but for now she has accepted that it brings in money and that will have to be enough.

Name/Alias: Christa.
Are you over 18?: Yup!
Preferred means of contact: AIM – lux sublunaris or email - rust.and.stardust@hotmail.com
Time-zone: EST.
Quote: "To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a Twin." - Lord Byron

Plans/Ideas: WAAHHHH I DON’T HAVE ANY. :D Naaahhh…here’s a few, not necessarily dependent on or related to each other.

1. As Melanie is so unhappy with her current situation and, quite frankly, desperate for an exciting change, I would like to see her become directly involved with Bellatrix and the Moirae. With her background as a tracker/hunter, she would probably make a good assassin, but I could also see her taking an interest in more subtle positions.
2. Melanie is quite vulnerable to manipulation right now, as she is looking for any way to change her life and feel like she’s making something of herself. There is probably a chance that she could be swayed by either side, given the proper circumstances.
3. Finding some friends. Melanie’s incessant traveling for the past years has left her without many connections in England, and she has lost touch with most of her fellow hunters. It would do her some good to forge some actual relationships.
4. Highly likely, some job-hopping. She would want to maintain a day-job regardless of her status in or out of the Moirae, but gets sick of them quickly. Her time at Hyde & Pelting is wearing on her, and she would like jump at an excuse to quit.

Referral: I was referred by Bee and Alex, who I play at wished with right now. :)
Have you pimped us?: I confess I have not. ...Yet.


First Person:
Merlin. Sometimes I am convinced that, when I walk through the door of the shop in the morning, I am going to march right in and hand in my resignation. But then I never do, because I know that would mean having to find another job without the security of this one. If you call dealing with self-entitled customers and their daft complaints “security”.

There was a woman today. I thought she looked like a pleasant enough person, but then she opened her mouth, right? Whingiest tone imaginable, telling me how she ordered this dragon hide jacket weeks ago, but now she has it and it doesn’t fit properly round the waist. So I smiled, and I asked her if she’d had us do a fitting, and she said of course she had, but she’d been on a diet (yes, that’s right, a diet), and planning to lose the weight, but she hadn’t. And of course, now she wants her money back, or a refitting, or something.

Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, even if her original thinking was, I think, stupid. She was just rude, though, talking to me like I’m some sort of idiot who doesn’t know what she’s doing and probably couldn’t find a better job than shopgirl. Please. In the end of it all I just smiled and put her down for a refitting at minimal extra cost, and she simpered at me and thanked me in this imperious tone. Lovely. What happened to courtesy? I just can’t get over the nerve some of these people have.

It’s really time to find a new job. Wow, I swear I am not that bitter, really.


Third Person:
It was a late Monday night, and Cornelia had made her way to the library after an oddly difficult day of teaching and grading assignments from her second and sixth year classes. The prospect of similar assignments from her third and fourth years the next day was not especially appetizing; at least not if they were going to be anything like the ones she'd received earlier. Was it really possible that that many students hadn't been paying attention? Well, no matter--they got what marks they earned. In the meantime, Cornelia had been meaning to work on some concoctions that would cover up any imperfections on one's hands. After all, working with chemicals and potions all day did not make for especially smooth hands, and she had put up with the callouses and scars for long enough. As she wandered down one of the aisles, Cornelia puzzled over why she hadn't thought of this before.

(From The Bell Jar, as Prof. Cornelia Balder. Link to full RP session… http://community.livejournal.com/thebelljar_rpg/28983.html#cutid1)

RP Journal/CDJ: painperdu