The Basics
Age: 27
Blood: Muggle-born
Wand: Ash, unicorn tail hair, 10 inches
Appearance: Cecilia is the definition of petite, standing at 5’3” and weighing in at 104 lbs. She has brown hair, which is on the unusually long side for the time being—she has a habit of randomly cutting her hair. Her eyes are also brown. Her grandmother used to say she looked like a pixie, which Cecilia didn’t start taking offense to until she learned what a pixie really looks like.

School and Work
Graduation: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Ravenclaw ‘08
OWLs/NEWTs:
OWLs
Astronomy EE
Charms O
Defense Against the Dark Arts EE
Herbology O
History of Magic O
Potions A
Transfiguration EE
Ancient Runes O

NEWTs
Charms O
Defense Against the Dark Arts EE
History of Magic O
Potions EE
Transfiguration O
Ancient Runes O
Current Occupation: Writer—specifically, of memoirs.

History:
Childhood
Cecilia Gerhardt was born to Haldan and Ainsley Gerhardt on June 4th, 1991. She was the couple’s first child, and when she was born the family was living in the London townhouse owned and still inhabited by Haldan’s parents. In 1994, the twin sisters, Leigh and Leslie, were born, followed in 1996 by a son named Concord (nicknamed Con).

Haldan and Ainsley both worked long hours at menial jobs; and since Grandpa and Grandma Gerhardt were happily demented, Cecilia took it upon herself to run around after her younger siblings. If the truth be told, it was less for their safety’s sake than it was out of her interest in keeping things clean and perfect in the house for when her parents got home from work. She waited up long hours until they came home every night, and every night her father would pat her on the head and her mother would hug her, and they would thank her for taking care of the house.

She threw a fit when she was old enough to be sent to school because she was sure that something was going to be ruined while she was away, and it wasn’t until her father threatened to send her away to boarding school that she ceased complaining and went. She was teased by the other children because she was much smaller than them, because she was constantly wiping her desk clean and because, when they were learning to write, she was painstakingly slow. When the teacher asked her why she always took so long with her writing, Cecilia simply replied that all the letters had to be perfect. Once her teacher was satisfied that it was only her perfectionism causing her to go slowly and not a lack of understanding, she provided the girl with an old typewriter on which to do her letters when in class.

Cecilia was, even at a young age, a good student. She had an excellent memory and it served her very well, allowing her to breeze through her homework quickly and get back to minding her brother and sisters.

Hogwarts
The Gerhardts weren’t sure what to make of the Hogwarts letter when it arrived. All Cecilia cared about was that the letter was asking her to go away to a boarding school, which she was absolutely adamant against. Whatever the school meant by “witchcraft and wizardry,” it was obviously some kind of special arts school and the eleven-year-old had no interest in it. But Ainsley had lately become worried that her daughter was growing up too quickly, and the next day she had off she took Cecilia in search of Diagon Alley.

It wasn’t until they found a building that Cecilia could see, but Ainsley couldn’t, that the girl became interested.

At first, she hated Diagon Alley. It was loud, crowded, dirty, and full of squishing and squelching things she’d never seen before. But the people were so interesting that it made up for all the grossness. She went home with all of her supplies dying to go back and talk more; she was sure that she could never know enough about every person there.

When she arrived at the school, she was sorted into Ravenclaw and she fit in there quite well. She missed her siblings very much, but she enjoyed studying, learning and discussing things with her housemates, and she made a few good friends. Students outside her house were sometimes annoyed by her curiosity, and many had to admit that it was off-putting, the way she remembered everything.

She was made a prefect her fifth year, and graduated with good marks.

After Graduation
Cecilia had a few job offers after she graduated, most of them from departments in the Ministry that needed organized Ravenclaw students for secretaries. She politely turned them down and got herself a job working as a server at Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor in Diagon Alley.

About a year after she graduated, Cecilia met Barbara Gibson. The elderly witch came to the parlor every day, sometimes with a friend, sometimes with her shopping, but usually just with a notebook and a pen. Cecilia thought that was extremely odd, considering the old woman appeared to be blind. One day, unable to stand it anymore, she approached Barbara and asked if she was, in fact, blind. Mrs. Gibson replied that she was, and when Cecilia asked her what the notebook was for the woman replied that she just liked to have it so it looked like she was doing something.

After that, Cecilia made it a habit to sit with Barbara and talk to her. The woman was more than happy to answer any questions Cecilia had, and as it turned out she’d had a pretty interesting life. She’d been a writer before she went blind; a writer of sordid romance novels which she claimed were based entirely on her own experiences. When she went home, Cecilia wrote down what the old woman had told her. She had decided to write the writer’s story.

Over the next two years, her questions became more and more specific as she filled in the blanks and created a timeline based on what Barbara said and when her various books were published. Barbara would only laugh at her curiosity and answer the question, not thinking anything of it until Cecilia asked her if she’d like to hear a story. Cecilia read aloud what she’d written about Barbara’s life and brought the old woman almost to tears.

Barbara died a month after Cecilia finished her memoir, but Cecilia comforted herself with the knowledge that her book was published. The wizarding world ate it up, eager to know the woman behind such titles as “Vampires in Venice” and “Splinched Hearts.”

Cecilia soon discovered that magical folk are as a rule vainer than Muggles, because the ice cream parlor was soon flooded by people who wanted her to write their memoirs. She arranged it with her boss and set up “office hours,” during which she would sit at one of the tables and have a short conversation with one of the applicants. If they didn’t interest her, she sent them away. When one woman asked her who had given her the right to decide who was interesting and who wasn’t, Cecilia replied: “Ma’am, I can’t write about you if I don’t find you interesting. It’s that simple. Besides, I’m horribly curious, and if I’m not interested it’s highly unlikely that anyone else will be.”

In the past eight years, Cecilia has written four more memoirs and has gained a reputation for accuracy and writing style that adjusts itself to the subject of the memoir. She’s quite sought after, and still conducts all of her business out of the ice cream parlor. Lately, though, she’s been questioning her career.

Personality: Cecilia is a very knowledgeable woman, which is different from being intelligent. Cecilia knows a lot of information. She is “book smart,” if you will. Her mind is stuffed full of random bits of trivia and details, but she is not the best at applying her knowledge to practical situations. A good student though she was, her skill is in absorbing information, not putting it in practice. She doesn’t have much of what people call “sense”; that is, it’s often hard for her to figure out the simplest way to accomplish something on her own. This is unfortunately coupled with an impatient nature. As such, she gets easily frustrated and can become snippy quite quickly.

She’s quite curious, to the point of being nosy—which is perfectly acceptable in her line of work. Her mother has commented more than once that it’s the perfect career for her. Cecilia is no longer so sure. She has never been one prone to low self-esteem, if only because her focus is so entirely on the other people around her, whether she’s taking care of siblings or gathering research. However, at age twenty-seven she’s reached a pre-mid-life crisis and realized that she’s spent so much time enveloping herself with other people’s lives that she has no idea what her own dreams and goals are. Her single-minded, task-oriented nature tends to make her forget about herself when there’s work to be done.

Despite all of it—her nosiness, her impatience, her inability to multi-task—she is a genuinely caring person driven by her love of people. Though she can be sharp when stressed, she believes that everyone is worth notice and that, she says, is why she’s so nosy. She has a big heart, and she falls in love rather easily. It’s often difficult to tell, because when she likes someone she asks them a lot of questions…which is exactly what she does normally. But the more information she has, the more comfortable she is, so though it takes her awhile (depending on how often conversations happen) she usually builds up the courage to make a move.


OOC Info--
Name & Contact Information: Spiv!
Previous Roleplay Experience: OMG!