Ivy Dervila Ballantine
Age: 27
Birthday: October 7, 1991
Personality: She's spirited, social, intolerant, mischievous, stubborn, reckless, flighty, protective, messy, charming, and un-empathetic. She's
not understanding, quiet, introverted, merciful, serious, flexible, lazy, manipulative, ambitious, studious, cowardly, passive, thin skinned, or forgiving.
<More to come>
Appearance: She looks very much like her mother, except with a Ballantine nose and mouth. Her hair is a dark brown and worn long, often wild and somewhat messy looking. There's a bit of a curl, especially at the ends. Her eyes are dark brown and her skin tone is light. She's an average height, with curves. Although she used to be quite round she's lost a good deal of weight due to the revolution. Ivy's appearance has changed very little since she was a teenager.
Blood: Pure
Wand: 9 inch Cedar with dragon heartstring core. Somewhat pliable but not springy, distinct color and scent.
Academics
Graduation: 2008 from Dissendium
2nd Year P.E.S.T. Scores: Charms
O, Defensive Magic
O, Flying
O, Transfiguration
EE, Potions
EE, History of Magic
EE, Herbology
EE5th Year W.O.T.S.I.T. Scores: Charms
O, Defensive Magic
O, Potions
O, Herbology
EE, Transfiguration
EE, Arithmancy
A, History of Magic
A7th Year G.O.L.D. Scores: Defensive Magic
O, Charms
O, Potions
O, Herbology
EE, Transfiguration
EEA Family History
| QUOTE |
The Graham Family: Kennedy Graham (1932 – 2013) + Honora Casey Graham (1937 - present)
Kennedy Graham was born in County Kildare, Ireland, on October 7th 1932. He was the fifth child of eight; traditionally, Graham's had many children and his branch of the family was no exception. He had two older brothers and five sisters. His father was a Councilate in International Magical Law and his mother ran the farm. They had a comfortable existence for the first part of Kenny's life, despite the ever-present understanding that their family was different from the other pureblood families they knew, a subtle difference which meant that other pureblood children rarely visited the farm. It made no difference to him because he had many siblings to play with and plenty of work to keep his mind busy. In the spring of '42, several months before his tenth birthday and three years before the infamous battle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, Kenny finally learned what it was that made his family different. “For the Greater Good.”
A psychopathic witch who was obsessed with Irish blood purity—something the Irish prided themselves on even more than the English did, especially in those days—knew very well about the Graham family philosophy. For the last six generations the Scottish family had lived on Irish soil, driven out of their own country because of political turmoil. The witch hated them because they did not adhere to the Eireann purist culture by fraternizing with half-bloods, muggle-borns, and muggles alike, despite their pure blood, which was a slap in the face to all things magical and Irish.
So one spring day she waltzed into the house and murdered the mother and all five girls. “For the greater good,” she wrote on the wall. The oldest brother, Devlin, apparated to the Council and grabbed his father, who was so devastated by the event that he sank into an alcoholic depression for the next three years.
After many months of ceaseless mourning, father packed up his sons and what remained of his life and moved to Dublin, where he could more efficiently drown himself in work and alcohol. A coworker of father's had taken pity on the family and arranged for them to move into the apartment next to his. Horace Casey knew something of loss; he had recently been widowed as well, his wife succumbing to a then-unknown magical disease, leaving behind Horace and their six year old daughter Honora. The two families relied on each other heavily for the following five years. Eventually the father's grief lightened enough that he stopped drinking, but there was a joylessness in his life that remained with him until his sudden death in '53. Kenny's older brothers left the country as soon as they were finished at Ballynahatin; Devlin moving to Scotland in '45 and Patrick to America in '47. Kenny finished out his school career without them in the summer of '50.
Even though he didn't always have his brothers there to help, he was an extremely good student with a potent combination of talent and dedication. He couldn't hold onto a girlfriend for longer than three weeks, but he did get top marks, coach the aingingein team, play as seeker on the quidditch team, start a dueling club, and make it a habit to beat the snot out of every snobby purist that crossed his path. His incredible gift with Offensive/Defensive magic and strong sense of justice made it clear that he was destined for an illustrious career as a Fearghus (auror equivalency) or Ceann Garda (hit wizard equivalency).
As soon as he left school, that's exactly what he pursued. His applications for both programs were accepted, and it was decided that he would take the Fearghus course of training with additional training for Garda, should they need him. After saying goodbye to Horace and Honora—who by that time was fifteen and secretly, stubbornly, head over heels in love with Kenny—he moved into his own apartment, away from the sorrows of his father for the first time in eight years, and plunged into his work.
When he emerged from training he was one of the most formidable human weapons the Irish had ever procured. In 1953, while he was still very new to the job and his father had just died, he caught the woman who had killed the women in his life; they had a spectacular duel, during the course of which he alternated between shouting every obscenity known to wizardkind and laughing hysterically. He used crucio on her six times in a row before reinforcements arrived and stopped him from killing her. The witch spent the rest of her life in Dagda, the Irish hospital for the mentally unwell, and Kenny was scheduled for trial. The charges were dropped when he singlehandedly arrested eighteen English wizards who had been planning to blow up the Council a week later. Instead of jailing him, they gave him an eighteen pound gold medal (an act which he attributed, until his dying the day, to the fact that the criminals were English). He had been working for less than two years, but Cursin' Kenny had already established his reputation.
One year later, he was so entrenched within the Council that they couldn't recall how the police force got on without him before. Kennedy Graham was a household name, his face was frequently seen in the papers, and every sensible single pureblood witch had their eye on him. None so much as Honora Casey. She, if none of her contemporaries, had not forgotten where he came from or what his family believed. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the only one who could ever hope to manage a marriage with him. She knew him best, loved him best, and would not abandon him when he brought a muggle-born home to dinner or landed himself in the hospital with extreme injuries.
Honora was nonetheless surprised when he appeared out of the blue at her graduation party in the summer of '54, and without any warning, proposed to her. Pulling her away from the other guests, he talk to her, agitated and pacing. “I was sitting there in my apartment, no one around, with my mind stuck on work, on the people I've imprisoned and hurt and killed, where my mind always goes when I've nothing to think about. When I couldn't get the bloody images out of my head I tried to think about da and my brothers, but that just made it worse. Every damn thing I thought about made it worse. Even when I tried to think on my mother, it didn't work for me, I couldn't see her face anymore. But all of a sudden your face was in my mind, and—Maeve Hon, I know I sound crazy, I know, just listen—and when I saw your face, I could think clearly again. I never realized just how—lonely, and—agh! Fine, damnit all to Scroblach!” At which point he knelt on one knee and proposed. She accepted, with the air of someone who had been waiting impatiently for a delayed guest, and as soon as they were done snogging the faces off each other, went to tell Horace the news.
The wedding in the fall was nearly as joyful as the next twenty years of their life. They had thirteen children in quick succession. Kenny continued to meet the greatest success at work, and was eventually promoted to head of the police department in 1969. Honora made an excellent mother and wife, and somehow managed to bridge the ever-present gap between the Graham family and social acceptance. The two remained married until 2013, the year Kenny died, after 59 years of work, love, and turmoil. Honora would die at the ripe old wizarding age of 122 in the year 2059. One child would die at the hands of deatheaters; five would die in the Irish blood revolution; seven would live long lives; nearly all of them would bless Honora and Kenny with grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even a few great-great-granchildren.
The Ballantine Family: Kevin Ballantine (1927 – present) + Brigid Parrish Ballantine (1928 – present)
Kevin and Brigid would be bound to marriage by the age of five, when Brigid took a child's boat paddle and knocked him about the head with it. Such violence wasn't surprising; Kevin always had been and always would be an incredibly stubborn, hot-headed man of the Aran isles, brought up to be exactly like his father and his father before him and so on, while Brigid was groomed to be a traditional Aran woman, knitting sweaters with a flick of the wand and knocking her man off when he went too far, just like her mother and her mother's mother and all the mothers before them. It was a match that was historically bound to be perfect.
The two were born and bred on Inis Meain, into a reclusive magical community that hadn't gone past the Galway coast in over two hundred years. They made their livelihood off the sea, were instructed at home by tutors who also grew up on the isles, and never thought to look beyond the the three spits of land in the Atlantic that they called home. They didn't realize it, but they had the purest magical Irish blood in existence, a result of their reclusive culture. What they did realize was that their way of life was dying.
Kevin was born an only child, while Brigid had two sisters; the Ballantines, Parrishes, and three other magical families with children comprised the remnants of a culture that had, until the 19th century, thrived on the islands. It used to be a totally self-sufficient system that could avoid the storms and trials of the outside world, but as muggles flooded in with their ships and nosiness, and magical families died out and moved out, and their poverty became more pronounced, it was clear that they would soon be facing extinction. Arranged marriages were particularly common during the 1910's through 1930's, when things were really desperate. As soon as Brigid whacked Kevin, their parents decided the two would be a good match, the sort of match that would hopefully repopulate the islands. Their lives were decided for them before they could remember. Work, marry, work, have lots of babies, work, and then die. That was the plan.
As was tradition, Kevin inherited his grandfather's wand and began magical training at the age of seven. Brigid started magical training at the age of six with her mother's wand, as was tradition. Their training, in both magical and non-magical subjects, lasted until they were fifteen. For the next four years they were apprenticed to an adult, working, earning money and helping their families. Then—surprise!--Kevin found out he was getting married to that annoying bird two houses down, and Brigid found out she was betrothed to that pain in the arse Ballantine two farms up. They were married in the winter of 1947. To their parents' dismay, they didn't have children until nearly seventeen years later when they were well into their thirites, and even then they only had one, a son called Conn, who was born in '64.
Whether they admitted it or not, they really did enjoy aggravating each other, and their personal philosophies were well aligned. They raised a child that was admirably bull-headed, stubborn, stuck in his ways, as well as hard-working, sensitive, and extremely devoted. The years when they had been childless had seen much change on the isles. The world was coming to get them. With new programs instituted by the Irish council that required every child to receive “regulated” education, and a new deluge of muggles, the couple agreed that the Aran way of life was essentially dead. Even if they were too old to catch up with the world, they could help their son in at least some small way. In a fit of rebellion they bought Conn a new wand, books, and uniform, and enrolled him at the prestigious Irish school Ballynahatin Academy.
Shortly after this their parents died. Whether this was a result of the “fishing plague” of '77 or utter disgust that their only grandchild was getting a public education, they're not sure. They continued their lives on the isles, with their son bringing home more knowledge than they had ever been exposed to and planting dreams in their head of one day traveling the world by flying carpet—together. They achieved their goal in '93; after working the fish market in Galway for fifty years, they had enough money to pack up, buy a magic carpet, and leave their old lives behind. The two would live for another thirty years, until 2023, when they contracted a deadly virus from a fish dish they ate in a Brazilian market. They died happy, glad in the end that their parents and culture had pushed them together and their blood still flowed in many veins.
The Ballantine Family Continued: Conn Ballantine (1964 – 2013) + Viveca Graham Ballantine (1964 – present)
Conn Ballantine and Viveca Graham lived lives in two different worlds. Conn grew up in extreme poverty as an only child, with his father and mother and the sea his only company, and no distractions except more work. Viv was raised in a wealthy household in the city of Dublin that burst at the seams with people, from her twelve siblings to her visiting relatives to the politically influential guests that each seemed to stop in at least once a week, to partake of Honora's excellent cooking and the good company of the Graham's. When the two first encountered each other at Ballynahatin Academy, it was similar to the way European explorers must have felt when they first saw an American Indian in person. There was fascination on Viv's part, and self-conscious terror on Conn's. Even though he was awkward, rough, and spoke more Irish than English, she was kind enough to hold a conversation with him on their first day. From the moment he stumbled into the good graces of the dark eyed princess he was determined to stay there.
For the first three years, she would be his only friend. He had an extremely difficult time adjusting and fitting in. His volatile personality didn't help matters; Viv, for her part, got along with almost everyone splendidly, and loved socializing and having a good time with people more than anything. Her best friend was Dervila Leery, the only daughter of the High Counselor, a strange girl who was nearly as volatile as Conn. Her oppositional defiant personality was a direct result of her incredibly strict pureblood upbringing; High Counselor Leery was the most recent in a long line of strict purist Counselors, and he spared no expense in practicing his ideologies on his daughter. Dervila was frequently told that she would one day marry a man of her father's choosing, a fine upstanding man like that Eustace Quigg...the Quiggs, any Irishman knows, are so inbred that it makes their eyes crossed.
It's no wonder that Dervila developed an obsession with Conn. He eventually became more comfortable with English and people, and when he did, his opinions emerged in their full offensive, independent glory. It was beautiful to the oppressed pureblood witch. But he tried very little to disguise the fact that he adored Viv more than anyone. This eventually led to the breaking of their awkward friendship; while they were working on transfiguration homework together in the Misneach commons in the beginning of fifth year, Conn burst out saying “I can't transfigure this damn pin cushion, and I can't transfigure who I am, so you'll have to do the transfiguring.” And he lunged forward and kissed her as passionately as a fifteen year old could. Viv, being Cursin' Kenny and Honora's child, did the sensible thing and hexed the lips off his face, gave him a screaming twenty minute lecture that out-howled most howlers, and told him to never speak to her again.
Then she went into her room and cried the rest of the night—“He stole my first kiss!” accompanied with a bucket of sobs—while Dervila tried to talk some sense into her. Secretly, Dervila was glad that she was out of the way. Conn was devastated as well, but his detestation was more of the irrational violence and sullen refusal to eat or do homework kind. Now he had the memory of her heady lips to torment him. If anything, her demand to not speak to her again only made him more determined to win her over. During that year and the next he went through a strange and sometimes painful transformation. He worked two jobs during his summers to earn enough money to buy better clothes for himself, a neater haircut, a small library of books about etiquette. He got in less fights and when he did get in them, he made sure to win. His grades improved and he joined the aingingein team, where he excelled.
His greatest boon on his quest to steal Viv's heart, however, was undoubtedly the growth spurt he went through in the summer before seventh year. It was not lost on anyone that when he left school at the end of sixth year he had been scrawny and awkward, but when he returned for seventh he was tall, lean, trim, and classically handsome, with messy sandy hair, pale blue eyes, and a new-found confidence that suddenly made his traits noteworthy. Girls found him “charming,” “endearing,” and “sweet,” rather than “odious,” “loud,” and “stupid.” Except for Viv, who saw him exactly as he was and would never give him the time of day again.
She didn't start paying attention until he and Dervila started dating. The scandal was intense; when the High Counselor's daughter was around her boyfriend, she acted like “a b*tch in heat,” according to one of the Crionnas. She was so upset at her best friend's fawning behavior that she broke her personal vow to ignore Conn, and made a huge scene at the aingingein pitch during practice by snatching a broom and flying after him.
She attempted to kick him off his broom; instead she wound up on Conn's broom clinging to his waist for dear life after almost falling to her death. After much dramatic shouting on the solid earth, he did a repeat of the fifth year incident, this time with Dervila watching. It sorted things out quickly; Viv realized that she adored his passion and dedication that was so much like her father's, Dervila realized Conn had never really cared for her but just hoped to get closer to Viv, and Conn realized that he was going to marry Viv after all.
They were wed two years later in 1983. Kennedy never trusted Conn; Viveca was his favorite daughter, beautiful and generous, and he knew she would hate the life of poverty she was marrying herself into. She wasn't made to survive as a fisherman's wife. And Conn—Conn was trouble. He dared to duel Cursin' Kenny to prove his worth, and he was lucky the only thing he lost was his eyebrows.
As soon as the wedding was over, they rushed off to the isles, got pregnant, and plunged into poverty. Conn's insistence that he do the work he was taught as a child, and raise his children at his birthplace, guaranteed that they would perpetually be living from hand to mouth, no matter how hard the two worked. Viv felt cheated. The couple never discussed this part of their life, as it nearly resulted in the divorce of the young couple, kept together more by children and a physical necessity for each other than any agreement on parenting or finances. It took ten years for them to find a balance. By that time, six of their eight children were born and knew no other life than that of Aran. When the last two boys were born, it was clear that the pair couldn't handle any more, even if Viv was accustomed to her lonely existence. They already relied heavily on one of her brothers for financial support, and their family had suffered several blows over the fifteen child bearing years. Viv's eldest brother had been murdered by deatheaters, and her best friend Dervila had committed suicide in '90, after enduring seven loveless, drunken years of marriage to Eustace Quigg. Money was a constant struggle, particularly when the children entered school.
They were stretched thin. But they persisted despite everything. When Conn was killed in the Irish Blood Revolution in 2013, he had given his wife many precious gifts, particularly their children and a thick skin, which she desperately needed to pull through the revolution. Once her two youngest boys were tortured to death in front of her, her spirit was greatly broken, and then more deaths were piled onto that which almost destroyed her sanity completely; her daughter murdered by Fearghus, five siblings murdered by Fearghus, her husbad murdered by Fearghus, her father murdered by Fearghus, and presumably two more of her children also murdered, all by the Fearghus. By 2016 she was prone to babbling nonsensical things about the past and her hair had turned from a rich auburn to a silvery white. She alternated between her living children's houses, particularly Harry and Felicity, because being around their children seemed to help her cope. She would eventually die in Dublin in the summer of 2021, at the age of 57. |
The Ballantine Family Continued: Ivy Ballantine (1991 – present)
It was clear from the moment of her conception—a frantic and heated reunion after Conn barely made it out alive of a vicious storm at sea—to her birth—a breech, after a month of severe morning sickness and four months of nonstop kicking—that she would make things happen. And most of them would not be pleasant. “She was in such a hurry to take on the world she didn't know her arse from her head,” declared Viv in an exhausted voice moments after she was born. “This girl can be yours Conn, you can bear her trouble better than I.” He named her Ivy. “So she'll grow on you, darlin'.”
In a way, Ivy really was her father's child more than her mother's. She had his raging determination and hated being told not to do something—which is why she frequently stole her elder sibling's wands and made wild concoctions explode in the kitchen, went swimming at odd hours of the night, and broke both legs when she jumped off the roof insisting that she could fly if she wanted to, not to mention the times she dared Harry to 'hold your breath' contests so intense they both passed out, threw jarveys in muggle gardens to watch their expressions when the animal started shouting obscenities at the unlucky discoverers, and nearly drowned her sister's boyfriend when she stupefied him into the ocean at the tender age of ten. Even her first sign of magic was violent, when, at the age of three, she fought with Bernie over a jar of sweets they had discovered in a cabinet, and she grew so mad at Bernie that when she got the jar away from her, she accidentally shattered every piece of glass in the house, cutting Bernie's hands to ribbons.
Yet despite all her mishaps and all the headaches she caused her parents, she displayed a marvelous sense of fortitude that lent itself well to a cheerful worker. She would agree to mostly anything if it kept her from boredom, even if it were gutting fish or whitewashing the house. The trick was to find enough for her to do so she didn't have enough time to do anything she shouldn't. But that was very difficult. Ultimately, they had to come to a compromise between Ivy's unfailingly reckless behavior and how they wanted her to behave, by punishing her harshly for the stunts she pulled off. Ivy's father followed the system of punishment his father had used; if the child injured themselves doing something they shouldn't, he wouldn't use magic to heal them. If they injured someone else, it was the belt for them. All other punishments involved lectures and being locked in the house with their strict and grumpy grandparents. Nothing ever really improved her behavior and her parents did everything in their power to keep her occupied.
During her childhood and youth, while her grandparents were still home, she spent her time playing with her siblings, working, and being tutored, mostly through gran and pop and ma. She was bright but not particularly interested in the reading, writing, and basic math she was being taught. By the time she was old enough to attend Ballynahattin in 2001, her oldest sister Felicity was already married and out of school, Joselee was on her way out, Derry was in his fifth year, and Bernie in her third. Even though Dissie had sent several Ballantine children through already, it was not quite prepared for the youngest girl. She was the most offensive child and for the first three years no one liked her much, except for a foreign girl called Holly Vlammende-Schoen. The two were an inseparable team that became known for their fiery, dangerous pranks.
When fourth year rolled around in '04 Ivy saw a change in the tides; perhaps because of her perky outgoing Misneach personality, or her older siblings, or her good grades and participation in sports, or maybe just because most of her fellow students were terrified of her, she suddenly became popular. The round-faced, strawberry blonde Ballantine frequently overlooked sleep in favor of more interesting activities. It was during this time that she also became interested in boys. (There was a direct correlation between the number of boyfriends and the number of detentions she acquired.)
In fifth year Mia Jayden's twin arrived at school, the short and all-around unimpressive Bram. On top of all her other school activities—studying, pranking at all hours of the night with Holly, socializing before, during, and after classes, participating in the quidditch and aingingein teams, practicing her powerful offensive magic skills in the dueling club, and snogging various boys—she added Bothering Bram as one more thing to keep herself busy. Ever since a harrowing incident in Derry's sixth year, when he was almost killed by a violent Seirbhe student during a quidditch match, she had hated all Seirbhes. Their rivalry was a natural extension of that, though she never really did anything to hurt him, per se.
In 2006, things in Dissie darkened. During a school masquerade, the mangled body of Kieran Brynn dropped into the middle of the dance floor and altered the students' lives forever. A murderer was running loose in the school halls; a murderer that Ivy was naturally inclined to find. She and a team of students went on a quest to find the person. Eventually they found the murderess Marion Fry and disposed of her, but at the cost of her hair color changed to auburn due to some inept spell casting by Jayden, half her leg blown off by a firecracker, and more drama and multiple personalities than she cared to think about.
But their troubles were just beginning. A year later a man called Cormac MacFealltoir arrived at the academy with a pile of new laws in hand. Blood purism was on the rise again.
Partly out of guilt, partly out of pity, and largely out of rebellion against MacFealltoir and the blood purists, Ivy secretly began tutoring Bram in potions during their seventh year. At first the Friday night lessons were an awkward nuisance, given her already-packed schedule that now included quidditch captain and work with a group of “dangerous revolutionary” muggle-sympathetic students. But as time went on she started to rely on the lessons as the only peaceful and reliable part of her week; compared to the rest of her life, teaching Jayden how not to blow off his eyebrows with felix felicis was delightfully relaxing. They procured a strange sort of respect for each other, which was enough for them to scheme together against some nasty Seirbhes with a bit of polyjuice potion and snogging. Their newfound friendship was a small bright spot amidst the increasingly dark and dire current events.
The calm before the storm lasted until a series of murders at the end of the year, right before the summer of 2008; Caroline Everard's beloved father and Bram's sister were both murdered, along with multiple other Irish witches and wizards outside the school. A mere two days after graduation, Ivy's grandfather, Kennedy Graham, appeared at Inis Meain, told Ivy to pack her belongings, and sent her straight into police force training. Due to precarious relations in the department, he insisted that he train his granddaughter himself. It lasted from the beginning of June to January the next year, during which time she only saw her family once, on her nineteenth birthday, and spent an average of twelve hours a day training. Her granda had two goals; insulate her from society until she was well equipped to handle the pressures, and give her the sort of training that the purist-minded Fearghus never would have given her, as poor and pro-mixed blood as she was.
When she arrived for her Ceann Garda interview on January third, she had undergone a transformation even more dramatic than that which her father had undergone years before. Kenny had taught her how to act like a purist pureblood witch. With her mother's natural beauty now evident in her adult features, a newfound sense of poise, and her talents honed to near-perfection, she was too tempting for the most skeptical member of the police force. The head of the Ceann Garda hired her on the spot. Kenny, as head of the department, eventually granted her licensing in multiple areas, including Fearghus-level certification.
She worked with the Garda for almost three years, racking up multiple captures, kills, and awards, and essentially doing all the dirty work that the Fearghus were too preoccupied to handle themselves. For while Ivy was doing her job, the vast majority of the police force was busy buying into Cormac's plan to bring Ireland back to its “traditional conservative roots.” I.E., purist cleansing. The Grahams and the grandchildren that worked in the Council managed to retain their political clout despite Fearghus pressures to support Cormac's pro-purist bills. They secretly began a group called the Free Blood Organization, which was designed to arm muggle-borns and half-bloods with the tools to fight purists on all levels; in the government, in society, ideologically, and literally.
In late September of 2011, Ivy and all other FBO members were finally forced into hiding, when the group was revealed by a traitor. Early in October, the Fearghus raided the Ballantine home on Inis Meain, torturing the two youngest boys to death while Viv watched, demanding that she tell them where her father and the others were hiding. The incident almost drove her out of her mind and sent Conn into an alcoholic depression from which he didn't emerge for many months. Ivy's mother was sent to America, with Felicity and her family, to recuperate. Ivy, in a typically rash decision, gave herself up to the Fearghus a few days after the incident.
The Fearghus put her through their realignment program for the next five months. They would be five endless months of torture, containment, and psychological abuse. Finally, in April 2012, they released her back into society, supposedly as a good upstanding purist witch. She worked as a secretary for the new Fearghus police force, gathering information and sending it to the FBO, whom she still secretly worked for. Only a few weeks after she started working for the Fearghus she was enrolled in a pureblood marriage program, and a week later, she was picked out of the crowd by a certain Edward Garrow. After a single brief conversation, during which Edward revealed that he was very wealthy, influential, and charismatic, and after one week of preparations, during which Ivy spent sick with an inexplicable terror, they were quietly married on June 25th.
The twenty four hours following the wedding quickly revealed to Ivy what her gut had been telling her; as well as being wealthy, influential and charismatic, he was also domineering, obsessive, and aggressive. She did her best to portray herself as a totally subservient, meek witch, but it was too far against against her nature and he was impossible to please. At first she managed to satisfy him, but as the war outside grew more violent, and each of them became more entrenched in the work they didn't tell the other about, their marriage became just as bloodthirsty. In September of 2012, at the same time outright fighting between the FBO and Fearghus began, she found out he was a closet alcoholic who had no qualms about enjoying the company of other women or performing dangerous experiments on muggles; he found out she frequently went on trips when he was at work. Naturally, she was punished for not being faithful, and had to make it up to him by staying locked in the house for a week, without her wand, because it was “too dangerous out there for you, my dear.”
The marriage quickly crumbled into domestic abuse over the next ten months. Ivy spoke up more frequently and continued sneaking out of the house to help the FBO, incapable of keeping up the charade under all the stress. Edward made it a habit of taking away her wand and locking her in, then turned to more violent means when she continued being defiant. Before the winter was out he was physically and sexually abusing her on a regular basis, citing her “appallingly disrespectful behavior” and “the stress of the war on their relationship.” But they both knew the real problem. Ivy wasn't what he wanted. But what he wanted was impossible.
On their one year anniversary in 2013, Edward caught Ivy drinking infertility potions, and his reaction was so swift and violent that she wasn't capable of leaving the house for weeks after. The FBO, ignorant of her situation, thought that she simply couldn't get away from the Fearghus. She finally managed to get away again on the first of August; just in time for a major battle at the Council. During that battle eight Fearghus teamed up to kill Kenny Graham, and Ivy was so devastated that she did nothing to disguise her grief when she reappeared at Garrow's house. Once again there was a violent episode, and once again she was laid up, for almost two weeks this time, during which she realized that none of the blood she had shed over the last six weeks had been from her regular woman's cycle. Ivy was never late.
August 13th, 2013: The Council Bloodbath. By this point Ivy felt as if she were suffocating, both in her marriage and in the war that had torn apart the things she loved most. Terrified, depressed, and physically and emotionally compromised, she showed up before the battle, unable to show any signs of happiness when Harry and Caroline announced that they were pregnant and couldn't stay to fight. The FBO's plan had originally been to surprise the Fearghus during one of their leader's meetings and cut the head off the snake in one swift blow (their own numbers and supplies were so depleted by this point that they wouldn't be able to last the month); but when they arrived at the Council, there was an army of Fearghus waiting for them. Ivy rallied her last strength and, determined to get killed fighting rather than die locked up with That Man and his future brainwashed children, she plunged in with Holly next to her.
But some cruel higher power had different plans for her; rather than dying, she witnessed the deaths of her father, sister, and best friend, all of them killed in the blast of fiendfyre Vlammende-Schoen produced, and the subsequent collapse of the Council building as the walls were smashed to pieces. She and Derry only managed to apparate out because their father shielded them. She and Derry reapparated into the Irish countryside; she didn't have many fresh wounds, but he had been severely injured. Dazed by grief and exhaustion, they wandered for several days, until Derry's wounds became infected and she had to leave him at a muggle hospital because she couldn't perform the healing spells.
It would be many months before she heard any news from magical Ireland; who had won, who had lost, whether or not they were still fighting. It didn't matter anymore, when so many had died. At first she thought she would just let herself starve to death, but when her unborn child reminded her that she had another life to take care of, via weeks of severe morning sickness, she relented and stumbled into the care of an old muggle couple who owned a farm in Kildare. They didn't have any children of their own and doted upon the twenty two year old, tending to her mystery wounds, comforting her in her sudden and uncontrollable crying fits, and never asking any questions or letting anyone else know that she was there. She would eventually come to realize that they thought she was just a poor bird who got herself into a mess with an abusive arse that was out to get her, and the scenario was so fitting that she never dissuaded them from thinking it.
Kendra Holly Ballantine was born on April 1st, 2014. (Breech, after months of kicking.) A profound shift in Ivy's universe occurred when she held her daughter for the first time; she suddenly wanted nothing else in the world but to spend the rest of her life quietly, away from the world, with her Kenny. Her grandfather could have hopped up from the grave at that moment and speeched to her about courage, justice, and the importance of the Garda until he keeled over again, but she wouldn't have cared. So she said goodbye to the couple that had cared for her, promising that she would return frequently and repay them somehow, and plunged into single motherhood with the same enthusiasm she had once displayed when she plunged into a fight or a quidditch match.
Edward eventually spotted Ivy and Kendra one day by accident, in the winter of 2014, when Kenny was seven months old. Having thought his wife was dead, and with no idea that she had been pregnant in the first place, he was enraged. He made it his goal to take the two back and punish Ivy for what she had done. Eventually he succeeded on at least one account; in September of the next year he tracked them to a muggle boarding house and kidnapped Kendra, but was unable to catch Ivy as well.
Once again, Ivy's world was brought down around her, and she spent the next three years following after them, trying to find out where he was keeping her, being led on by clues and hints which were really designed to trap her again.
In August of 2018, exhausted, hopeless, and emotionally devastated, Ivy stopped by her grandfather's grave in Phoenix Park, Dublin. That Man was there and attacked her, and she managed to escape, but splinched his leg off in the process. She broke down in the Leaky Cauldron; it had been the most unlikely place she could think of at the time. By some strange twist of fate, Lucy Simington, once a school friend and Derry's finacee, was there, and she took Ivy back to her apartment to clean up.
With a renewed determination, she decided it was time to enter the wizarding world and look for Kendra that way. Three years away from her daughter was already driving her mad. She interviewed for a job in the Ministry and was accepted on the spot as a hit witch; a few days later she attended Derry and Lucy's wedding reception, the couple having been reunited when Ivy owled him to say she knew where Lucy was, and she caught her first English criminal. During the same party, she saw her mother, Harry, and the kids for the first time in over five years, and also saw Bram Jayden for the first time in ten years. When she returned to the party after dropping the criminal off, she broke down to Bram, unable to contain everything any longer after seeing those familiar faces. She told him everything that had happened to her, and when she had unloaded, he revealed that he knew where Kendra was. She was one of his dementology patients.
As soon as she had a good night's rest and could start thinking clearly again, she began concocting plans to have Bram help her get Kendra back. At the same time she worked as much as she could at the ministry, eager to build up a reputation and get as much information as possible. And, in a fit of rebellion, she started a relationship with her boss, Ben Astbury, one that was admittedly more about her trying to feel loved than any attraction she felt for him. She tried to keep herself as busy as she could until she couldn't bear waiting any longer. Then she appeared at Bram's apartment, determined to charm him with food and coffee and convince him that he should give her Garrow's address.
Naturally, it didn't go well. Bram knew better than to give her any information or promise to help, because her first reaction would be to rush head-long into disaster. Instead they did the sensible thing and had a huge argument, a la fifth and sixth years at Dissie, and Ivy stormed off to the Ministry, declaring that she would get what she wanted with or without him.
...To be continued.
OOC Info--
Name & Contact Information: Carmen/Ashlynn/Ivy/Admin/Darien/Whatevs.
Previous Roleplay Experience: Fiveish years of continual RP/Admining