Character Info—Cécile Thérèse Renard (Cici)

Age: 24

Graduation: Would have been 2011 if she had graduated

OWLs/NEWTs: OWLs in: Charms (O), Transfiguration (EE), Potions (EE), Astronomy (EE), Defense Against the Dark Arts (A)...I wouldn't ask about the rest.

History: Cici is the only daughter of Amèlie Renard, the only daughter of a respected magical family from Rouen, France. Cici never met her father; in fact, her mother would never even tell her his name. He was from London, she knew that, and he had met Amèlie while on holiday in France; he tripped on the cobblestones that lined the medieval streets and knocked her down. She had been reading as she was walking and never even saw him coming, but she kept her eyes on him after that. Amèlie was truly a beauty, but she tended to dress herself down, trying to draw less attention to her looks—she thought people ought to know her for her intellect. Apparently Cici’s father was the exception; he was charming, evidently, as the only name Amèlie would ever call him around Cici was “le crapaud charmant” and he used his influence over the very young Amèlie to convince her to move to London after only a few weeks together. The 19-year-old aspiring poet quit her job writing for one of the local newspapers and took the little that she owned to London, where she promptly discovered not only that her lover was married (and that he assumed she would be fine with this arrangement) but that she was pregnant. Indignant and full of idealistic righteousness, she cut him out of her life. But, having spent nearly all her savings to move to London and having completely alienated (not to mention embarrassed) her parents, she was unable to return to Rouen, and so she sunk what little money she had into a small flat and set about finding a job.

Nine months later, Cici appeared, and Amèlie had to give up the waitressing job she’d found to care for the infant. Cici was a fairly easy baby; she was usually content, not too fussy, and quite hardy—she was rarely ill. However, staying healthy depended on having some sort of food and clothing, and with money running out, Amèlie was forced to head back out looking for another job. She had more luck pushing the desperate-single-mother angle, and she landed a job at the Daily Prophet, working on human interest stories, a flexible position that gave her time to spend with Cici.

Some might think that a childhood where you lived from paycheck to paycheck would have been difficult, but it was all Cici (who was, up until her modeling career began, always called Cécile) knew. Growing up, she got used to helping her mother around the house—while Amèlie was out on assignment or putting in hours at the office, Cici would clean, do the grocery shopping, and have some form of dinner waiting on the table when her mother arrived home. From the age of 7, she was spending her entire day alone—her mother refused to put her in Muggle schools and couldn’t afford a tutor or a nanny, so once the girl was too old to spend her days in the office of the Prophet, she learned to function on her own. On her own, Cici developed a great sense of independence, so much earlier than most children, and—as her mother had hoped—she embraced her French identity. French had been her first language, and Amèlie always looked at their lives in England as temporary, until she could “someday” afford to move them “home.” The time Cici spent in her mother’s office helped develop her English, and by the age of 6, she was completely bilingual, though her English always had a strange lilt to it—her mother never had time to train the accent completely out of her.

Needless to say, Cici’s magical education did not exactly flourish. Her mother taught her at home what little she could—Amèlie was a gifted witch, but she preferred writing and daydreaming to practical applications of magic. She would spend more time explaining the nuances of various French poets to her daughter instead of the magical history she ought to be learning. Amèlie was still very young, after all. For her birthday one year, she bought Cici a secondhand copy of Hogwarts: A History, and much to her surprise, her daughter absolutely devoured the book. She couldn’t read fast enough; but then, it was a subject about which she knew very little, and the interesting facts she picked up about the relations between wizards and Muggles and their history fascinated her.

Finally, much to the small family’s relief, Cici turned eleven and received her letters from Hogwarts. Amèlie sent her off without reservation; she might have completely secondhand robes and books, but she was in a place where she could learn and make friends—Amèlie never stopped worrying about the isolation in which her daughter grew up, but she could not bring herself to enroll her in a Muggle school. She had always thought that she had no prejudices, but when it came down to it, in practice, she would rather her daughter be alone all day and grow in her own identity than put her in a world of confusion among people who weren’t like her.

But even in a school full of other witches and wizards, Cici was a reserved young girl. She didn’t talk much or make friends easily; she kept to herself and her studies, though she was nice enough and friendly enough if someone did take the time to get her talking. Many of the students in her House, Slytherin, wondered why she had been Sorted there and not to Hufflepuff—but when it came down to it, Cici might have been reserved, but she was also determined. A life of scrimping and saving and caring for herself and her mother had made her a very practical person—she knew she would do what it took to get ahead in the world, to make sure she could get by, perhaps even be successful. As much as Amèlie loved writing, she never moved up in the ranks of the Prophet because everyone knew she’d rather be off in a meadow writing poetry—her stories showed a lack of enthusiasm, though they were eloquent. For Cici, this was incomprehensible—you had to do what you had to do, that was how she saw it, even at age 11, and the Sorting Hat knew she belonged in Slytherin.

Cici breezed through her years at Hogwarts; she lead the discussions in her best subjects—the practical ones, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions—and faded into the background during classes like Divination and History of Magic. She was a shining example of studious behavior and academic excellence in those few classes that she knew would suit her well in the real world, and she passed by the skin of her teeth in the classes she had no use for. Her classmates were never really too sure what to think of her, but due to her early independence, Cici had a sense of self-confidence that kept her from minding that she had very few friends. She had no truly close confidantes, or ‘best friend’ as the teenagers would call it, and it didn’t bother her—she had her mother. They wrote each other at least once if not twice a week; after all, from the beginning of her life, Amèlie was the only other person with whom Cici had any sort of relationship. Unbeknownst to the girl, her grandparents had tried to contact their daughter many times over the years to make amends, but the proud Amèlie had sent their letters back unopened. So Cici had practically no family and only very shallow friendships—but she had plans…she definitely had plans.

But plans change, as she soon found out. The summer before her seventh and final year at Hogwarts, Cici noticed her mother was acting quite strangely. She was often tired, she was eating less—despite the fact that Cici had became a pretty good cook over the years, helped a bit by the magic she was now allowed to use outside of school. After her mother had an odd fainting fit, Cici insisted she visit St. Mungos, but Amèlie refused—she said she was just tired from work and would take a few days off. The rest of the summer, Cici could tell her mother was putting on a façade for her benefit, but the girl never saw her faint again, and so she suppressed her worry. Instead, she focused on going back to school—and trying to figure out what she would do afterwards.

She had ambition, that was clear—no one could deny now that she belonged in Slytherin. Cici wanted to go straight to the Ministry, to do work in experimental charms—Charms was by far her best subject. Her spellwork in the class was creative and powerful, and she knew that with a NEWT in the subject, she could do well. And it was a stable job, one with advancement opportunities, one with great pay—she could get her mother out of that disgusting flat they’d lived in for 17 years, get the two of them well-dressed and taken care of. It was a brilliant plan—brilliant up until 2 months before her NEWTs, when Cici was called into her Head of House’s office and handed a letter that changed her life. Amèlie was dead.

Before she even knew how she had gotten there, Cici was at St. Mungo’s, talking to the middle-aged Mediwitch who had cared for her mother in her final days. Her mother had had brain cancer, a severe and fatal type, and she had known over a year ago that she hadn’t had much time left—she had refused the incredibly expensive treatment, instead choosing to live her life normally and put the money she had into a meager fund for Cici upon her graduation. There was a letter, written in her mother’s beautiful penmanship, the penmanship she’d seen a thousand times on little poems left for her in the morning, explaining everything, telling her only daughter how much she loved her.

Cici, oddly, was torn between grief and anger, though she hated to admit it. Her mother had left her, or that’s how she saw it—if she’d known, there could have been a way. She would have left school and found a way to make sure her mother survived—but that was exactly what Amèlie had not wanted. In the end, it didn’t matter; grief stricken, nearly penniless Cici never returned to Hogwarts to take her NEWTs or to see her graduation. Instead, she laid her mother to rest respectfully, paid the rent on the flat, and less than a fortnight after her mother’s death, she set out trying to figure out the rest of her life.

Being a practical girl, Cici knew there was no way she could get a professional job without a completed education, no matter how good she was with charms. Instead of mourning what she didn’t have, she decided to use what she did have—her looks. She found a somewhat respectable agent, who was the first person to suggest she go by ‘Cici’ instead of her real name, Cécile, and at 17, she began her modeling career. She had a hard time finding jobs at first—there were, of course, many beautiful witches in the world looking for the same jobs. She found some low-paying work in catalogs for wands in which her creative wandwork was actually useful. She scrimped and saved and never splurged on anything for herself, and after a year or two, she started to get a reputation for being focused, driven, and for producing a great product. Her work began to become more regular, and she was the happy, beautiful, commercial witch-next-door face for many regular magical household products.

Cici had of course thought about advancing her career, but she didn’t want to pay to move to a more expensive private agent, and she had yet to be signed by any major management agency. She knew next to nothing about fashion, except what she’d learned modeling for catalogs, but she knew that’s where the money was—and she had to get there. She was still a quiet, reserved, independent girl, but if it was to advance her career, to make herself successful…to ensure she was never in a situation like her mother…then she had to open up. She could never be a flirt, unless she was in front of the camera, but her honest, straightforward nature was refreshing to many and it made her many a contact.

In fact, it made her the contact that changed her career. A high fashion photographer named Andre Benoit asked if he could use her for a shoot he’d always had in mind, done totally in white. She agreed, and at his request, dyed her light brown hair a platinum blonde. That shoot changed her life—it showed she could take risks, that she could be edgy, and suddenly, she was being booked for editorials…and for magical fashion shows. Having no runway training at all gave her a unique walk—not as polished as many of the current models, and she was in high demand because of it. Now, at 24, Cici—who has retained her original agent, a frizzy-haired middle aged witch named Marianne—is a regularly working runway and print model, and her success has enabled her to leave behind the flat in which she grew up and move into a slightly more upscale, but still modest, flat in a nicer area of the city. She’s still alone, without family and with few close friends, but it’s become part of her image—and she likes it.

Personality: Due to her childhood, Cici is highly independent—she doesn’t form close relationships with people, especially not since the death of her mother, without extreme hard word and discomfort on her end. That said, she’s not a exactly a recluse—being a successful model, she spends most her time around people or at social functions. She’s not a partier, which is refreshing in someone young, and her reticence gives her an air of mystery, which in her line of work can be invaluable.

When she is with people, however, especially acquaintances from school or other models and photographers she’s worked with, she is quite friendly—she just doesn’t go out of the way to hold conversations, but she’s perfectly comfortable being a part of one. Her independence could easily be considered an oddity, and she knows that many of the models she works with think her stuck-up, but she doesn’t mind—let people think what they will, as long as she’s still working. People who she does consider friends know the bare minimum of her history and probably some of what she likes and dislikes, as the activities she would limit herself to would be social functions for work, fashion shows, maybe a coffee or lunch, and very, very rarely—shopping. Cici hates to spend money if she doesn’t have to—her wardrobe is fashionable, but minimalist. The only extravagant pieces of clothing she has are a few dresses, given to her by designers she’s modeled for, and these she’s never worn off the runway. She hates the idea of ‘showing off,’ but her idea of showing off is simply most people’s idea of…well…normal. Some might consider her lack of model-esque fashions eccentric, but Cici just thinks it’s practical.

Because she never graduated, and her grades weren’t always consistent from subject to subject, Cici fears that people don’t always see her as a competent witch—more of just a pretty face. She is always glad to prove them wrong—it’s her guilty pleasure of sorts. She doesn’t have much of a temper—it would take quite a bit of rudeness and disrespect to rile her up—but she is easily frustrated by gossip, of which there is plenty in the modeling world, and when people make unfair assumptions about her or about others. Despite her mother’s prejudices and separation from her parents, Cici doesn’t tend to hold grudges against anyone, though she is not fond of Muggles. They make her uncomfortable, because she very rarely has to deal with them. She grew up in a bubble, and…well, she still seems to be in it, sometimes. She considers herself lucky to have any kind of social ability, considering the environment in which she grew up, but she accords that credit not to herself, but to her mother—language was such a huge part of her upbringing that understanding what to say when almost seemed to come naturally.

Cici has what she needs, she does what she wants—but underneath it all, there’s a part of her that wants more. She usually thinks it’s ambition, so she tries for a bigger shoot or a more prestigious fashion show, but if she’s honest with herself, she knows she wants to stop managing herself—she wants to let go and be selfish, to fall in love, to drink til she passes out, to wear expensive dresses and flirt with actors! But until she can recognize that wild need in herself, there’s no way she’s ever going to act on it.

Appearance: Cici stands at an imposing 5’10”, and she’s surprisingly not stick thin, but is rather too well-endowed for a typical working model—the fact that she makes her body work for her is another point in her favor. She has naturally light reddish-brown hair, but since dying it platinum blonde, she’s never gone back to her natural color. She’s very fair-skinned, never tan, and blue-eyed, with full lips that work well for beauty shots. Her fashion is very, very minimalist—she’s chic, but she doesn’t accessorize, except for a different purse now and then; she likes black or grey suits with bright colors underneath, a skirt and blouse, and—of course—great shoes, but she only owns a few pairs (stilettos, in black or bold colors, for parties, and a pair of black flats, for every day). She is, traditionally, more a skirt girl, but she likes a great suit every once and while, if it’s appropriate.

OOC Info--
Name & Contact Information: Ellie, AIM: shades of happy
Previous Roleplay Experience: Several years!