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profile: junior year
i'm not going to tell my new friends about you
no, i'm going to let that slide...
i'm gonna be lazy when i write about you
even though it takes all my might
no, i'm going to let that slide...
i'm gonna be lazy when i write about you
even though it takes all my might
GENERAL
NAME: Ariadne Desdemona Flint.
NICKNAMES: Ari.
AGE/DOB: 17 / April 30 1998
BLOOD STATUS: Half-Blood. The Flints are an old, pureblooded family, and most of her relatives were Death Eaters and sympathizers during the war. If people assume she's a pureblood, she doesn't correct them. However, it's semi-public knowledge at school that she's been disowned by her parents.
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female. She/her.
SEXUALITY: Lesbian. Not out. Dating Jade Otterwell in secret.
HOMETOWN: Wolferton, Norfolk. Recently moved to London to live with her brother.
CONCEPT: Disowned daughter of Death Eaters struggles to unlearn prejudices, enjoy camping.
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE: Ariadne's looks are her first line of defense; if she appears unapproachable, that's what she was going for. She goes to painstaking lengths to make sure she never has a hair out of place. To her, sloppiness is inviting criticism. She wears her uniform immaculately, always curls her hair, and never has a nail so much as chipped.
Her wardrobe is largely hand-me-downs and cast offs from friends, but she's bolstered it with a few more camp-appropriate looks. Her personal style is a little dated, as British wizards tend to be in their sensibilities; her casual clothes are more crisp and clean-cut than her uniform. New and Improved Ariadne can sometimes be convinced to wear jeans or hiking boots for the sake of practicality, but she still has a penchant for wearing skirts and heels, adding a few inches to her already considerable height. On sunnier days, she often wears wide-brimmed hats to spare her complexion from freckling.
Casual clothes. She wears the jade necklace that Jade got her for her birthday daily.
HEIGHT: 5'9".
PB: Willa Holland
PERSONALITY
LIKES: Nice things. Shoes. Jewelry. Makeup. Anything to indicate status. Being praised. Breaking in a new quill. Animal-print blouses. Knowing secrets. Trashy romance novels (this is a closely guarded secret). Horses. Cats. Muggle culture.
DISLIKES: Discomfort. Inconvenience. Being challenged. Being laughed at. Being touched. Uncouth behavior. Messy people. Alcohol. Heavy drinkers. Smokers. Camping.
PERSONALITY:
Mistrusting and deceitful, Ariadne is not an easy person to get to know. That's how she likes it, though; a healthy emotional distance from her peers has been critical to her surviving her school career thus far. She's used to people being out for themselves and is always ready to be stabbed in the back. This all served her well when her friends were all backstabbers, but now that she's found herself inexplicably involved in the close-knit group of juniors at Gooseberry Alternative High School, she's being forced to learn how to be an actual friend. And as far as genuine friendship goes, she absolutely got dunked into the deep end of the metaphorical pool.
Accepting affection isn't something that she's good at, though. Her suspicious nature means that she expects every act of kindness comes with an associated cost, and she is always wary to be socially indebted to other people. In return, she's not particularly nice to anybody else, either. She has a reputation at Gooseberry for being sullen and icy. With people she feels safe with (although they're few and far between), she can actually be very playful and warm, and she has a wicked sense of humor. She loves joking with people, especially people she thinks are clever. Her sense of humor can be a little mean-spirited and judgmental at times, but she clicks best with people who share that same humor anyway.
That being said, people who don't find her sense of humor funny will probably rightfully find her to be very unpleasant. Besides being mean-spirited, she's also very unscrupulous about telling the truth. In fact, it's basically a foreign concept to her. She lies for self-preservation, for amusement, and sometimes just because. Her deep seated need to be well-liked by her peers has made her so adept at backpedaling and double talk that she's past the point of being two-faced. She talks up her stories. She steals other people's stories and makes herself the protagonist. She lies about where she got her clothes and how much they cost. She trash talks people, and if they hear she'll back right up out of it and turn the insult around on someone else. She doesn't even particularly care if people believe her, at this point, as long as they don't call her out on it.
Consequently, there's very little that's genuine about her. She tries not to introspect too deeply, because she honestly doesn't like who she is. Her parents were deeply self-loathing and ashamed of their status, and they taught Ariadne to be ashamed of herself too. Because she grew up visiting a muggle village for her only positive social interaction, she's actually never had a particularly low opinion of muggles themselves, but she is ashamed of not being a pureblood witch; there's a disconnect in her mind between the two things, and the prejudice is permanently ingrained.
Her insecurity over her heritage bled through to insecurities about everything else, too. She's vain and high-maintenance; looking pretty is important to her, and she'll sacrifice practicality for perfectly curled hair any day. She doesn't like physical or emotional intimacy - probably the latter more so than the former. She's put up with making up with a couple boys because her friends do it, but she can't abide any kind of meaningful one-on-one conversation. Coltish and always on the defensive, she's ready to ditch out of any social interaction at any time, whether it be with a few mean words or just by walking away.
Although she has now begun to abandon the aspirations her purist mother laid out for her, like marrying well, those values are still deeply instilled in her. She wants, more than anything else, security - financial and social security are her conscious desires. She has very little money and still strives to maintain her well-to-do appearance and demeanor, and has been raised from birth to aspire to fit into high society. But even more than that, she has a subconscious desire for emotional security. Trust and unconditional love were things in short supply in her life, and on some level she believes she doesn't deserve them.
+ Intelligent
+ Creative
+ Perceptive
+ Canny
= Reserved
= Suspicious
- Unscrupulous
- Deceitful
- Mean-spirited
- Judgmental
SKILLS
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English.
PATRONUS: Auroch; can cast. Info; reroll.
SKILLS:
HISTORY
FAMILY MEMBERS:
Nicodemus Flint, brother & legal guardian, 19. Ravenclaw alum. Staff writer at the Daily Prophet. Having been disowned by her parents, Ariadne considers her brother to be the only family she has.
Penelope Flint, distant relative, 68. Slytherin alum. Wizengamot barrister. Penelope claims to be Nico and Ari's third cousin once removed, although she doesn't seem particularly fussed by details and has asked them to call her Aunt Penelope. She is another disowned Flint, and Nico met her two years ago after he graduated from Hogwarts. She helped him sort out the legal proceedings to officially take custody of Ariadne, and made sure the process was expedited. Ari's not quite sure what to make of her.
HISTORY:
FAMILY HISTORY. Ariadne's parents were an arranged marriage, and considered to be very well-matched by their friends and family. Both came from large pureblood families low-down on the purist pecking order, and both stood to inherit very little. They were married straight out of school under pressure from Cassia's parents.
Not long after that, shortly before the birth of their first child, a public family argument revealed that Cassia was an illegitimate and impure child, a secret that had been closely guarded by her mother. After that, the Flints fell out of favor. Knowledge of Cassia's parentage was an open secret; they weren't struck from the family trees, but they were shunned.
Still, Edmund and Cassia were among Lord Voldermort's supporters when he rose to power. They did what they could to support the Death Eater cause. Edmund fed his father and uncles information from his post inside the ministry, but he was never allowed to take the mark thanks to the illegitimacy of his son and his wife, now pregnant for a second time.
EARLY CHILDHOOD. Ariadne was born a scant few days before the fateful Battle of Hogwarts, and her father elected to stay at the family manor with his wife and children instead of fighting. Ultimately, this and the ridicule they had suffered from their distant relatives were a windfall to them after the war. Edmund was able to evade all charges after Voldemort fell. This was the very last of the Flints' scant good fortune: they were not well-liked by families on either side of the political schism, Edmund lost his job at the Ministry, and what little pride they had left began to wither.
Over the early years of Ariadne's life, her parents became more and more reclusive. By the time she was six, they hardly ever left their home at all, and her father spent most of his days holed up in his office, spreading their remaining money thinner year by year. Cassia was left to care for Ariadne and Nico. Of her children, Ariadne was the favoured one. Cassia saw herself in her daughter, and instilled in her all the self-loathing and shame she refused to feel herself. Ari spent her formative years being told at length about her inherent worthlessness, though her mother still pushed her to pursuing traditionally purist goals like marrying well.
With their manor tucked away deep within Dersingham Bog, the family was rarely bothered by visitors, magical or otherwise. Though their parents were content with the isolation, Ari and Nico were desperate to escape their mother's attentions, and they would often sneak out to the nearby muggle town of Wolferton. Though her brother made friends with the local children, Ariadne preferred to spend time at the horse breeders' stables, where his wife would let her help out or just hide. Especially after her brother left for Hogwarts, this became a necessary sanctuary. She was an introverted child, and preferred spending time with the horses to spending time with people, and especially with her parents.
HOGWARTS. Her own acceptance to Hogwarts came years later, and her trip with her thirteen-year-old brother to Diagon Alley to shop for school supplies was the furthest she'd ever traveled from home. Being in a proper city was more than she imagined it to be, and she took to it like a fish to water. Even Hogwarts, despite its relative isolation, was a huge step up from Wolferton. She was sorted into Slytherin upon arrival at Hogwarts; not too much of a surprise, given her family, although her brother had broken the mold.
Among her classmates in Slytherin house were a handful of pureblood girls who had been brought up in a very different way than she had. They were properly rich; they were from real cities that had more than twenty families living in them. Ariadne set about winning their approval on her first day at Hogwarts and still hasn't really stopped. For all her academic career has been lackluster, Ariadne was a quick study in social skills - a few months into school and she was hardly the girl her parents had said goodbye to at all.
Under the tutelage of pureblood girls like Mara Rowle, Ariadne quickly assimilated to society life. Mara knew that she was a pretender, but the rest of the school didn't know or didn't care, and the fact that she could pass herself off as one of the pureblood girls offered her a sense of security. She soon realized that falling out of Mara's good graces would make her life there miserable, and she did anything she had to do to make sure that that never happened. She was a little crueler in her bullying that Mara was herself, and frequently terrorized the other girls in their clique as well as Mara's victims. She especially liked to gossip about Mara's male counterpart Sam Goyle and his friend Calvin Evercreech, with whom Ari did not get along particularly well. She also tormented Riley Stamper and Ennis Harper during their year abroad at Hogwarts. Nobody liked her besides Mara, but Mara adored her, even going so far as to let Ariadne live with her over school breaks.
At the end of her fourth year, her brother graduated from Hogwarts and broke off with their parents in a public and messy fashion. After disowning their son, Ariadne's parents became more cloying and restrictive with her, and made her stay at the family home over summer break. She applied to Gooseberry largely as an act of defiance towards her parents, and tried to get Mara to apply with her. Mara was uninterested, but Ariadne got in after another girl dropped out of the exchange program last-minute.
SOPHOMORE YEAR. Gooseberry was not particularly what Ariadne had been expecting it to be. She'd assumed that the school would be a little more metropolitan and upscale, since it was attended by the children of public figures like Kingsley Shacklebolt and Viktor Krum. She fell in with Mackenzie Prince and the other mean girls, making a particular friend in Jade Otterwell. Her mild displeasure with the school turned into a deep resentment when Mara and her other friends abruptly cut off contact with her a few months into the school year. Disappointed, upset, and lonely, her grades took a nosedive.
Later in the year, her estranged brother offered to let her live with him over the summer and find her a prestigious internship, provided that she remain at Gooseberry to finish her schooling. After escaping purist society and deprogramming himself from their cult-like beliefs, he hoped that he might be able to help his sister get away from their influence as well; he worried that her pureblood friends at Hogwarts would only drive her further away from him, and knew that Ari's head of house at Gooseberry, Ms. Rhee, was invested in seeing her thrive and succeed. Ari ultimately decided to take him up on his offer, albeit begrudgingly.
To get her grades back up to a passable level, a necessary task now that she intended to stay at the school, she enlisted the help of a handful of tutors. One of her tutors was Asher Guthrie, who ran the school newspaper. After Nico secured her a job at the Daily Prophet for the summer, Ari joined Asher on the newspaper staff to gain some experience in the field. As the only member of the staff not graduating that year, she's inherited the position of editor for her junior year.
Also during her spring semester at Gooseberry, she became involved in the sophomore class's attempts to contact the anonymous writer. Although she hadn't wanted to interact with the creatures in the forest at all, her friends kept getting involved, and she thought it'd be better if she were there than if she weren't. She attended the seance in which the sophomores contacted the ghost named Henry, and afterwards took the fall for it alongside Jade and Calvin.
When the white moose kidnapped Gooseberry students, Ariadne was among that number. She was rescued by some of her sophomore classmates and helped them find a few others; though her encounters with ghosts were few and relatively nonviolent, she was still a little shaken by the experience. Her brother doesn’t know about this, though, as he wasn’t her legal guardian at the time MACUSA contacted parents and she didn’t tell him. Though he’d almost certainly change the terms of their arrangement if he knew, Ariadne’s been using it as an excuse to return next fall.
LAST SUMMER. Upon returning to England, Nico and Ari returned to their parents' estate to retrieve her things. Their intention was to sneak in and out, but their mother discovered them shortly after they arrived. They got into a physical altercation with their parents, who became so violent that Nico apparated himself and Ariadne back to London, fearing for their safety.
Although she was more shaken by this than she let on, the rest of Ariadne's summer vacation went by easily. She enjoyed working at the Daily Prophet, and the editor there who was her supervisor took an interest in her fiction writing.
Nico introduced her to a distant relative of theirs who worked as a legal counsel for the Ministry, Penelope Flint, and she helped him acquire legal custody of Ari. Having also been disowned by the Flint family for not sharing their purist views, Penelope immediately took a liking to Nico and Ari, and has helped them immensely as they struggle to make their own way in the world. She bought Ari camp school appropriate clothing, a new wand, and a Macbook computer as back-to-school gifts.
SCHOOL
YEAR: Junior (Grade 11)
HOUSE: Ebonhide (Former Slytherin)
SORTING: Her sorting was a short affair; she'd more or less made up her mind before she'd gone in, and since she knew the decision would fall to her in the end, she didn't hear the other emblems' arguments. If she were a kinder person, she might've done well in Ribbonfin. But she's not a bad fit for Ebonhide, all things considered. Detail-focused and attentive, all things are puzzles to Ariadne, from difficult new spells to other people. Kindness for the sake of kindness is a foreign concept to her; she always assumes people are working an angle, and is keen to figure out what those angles are. She also has an artistic streak, and though she carefully endeavors to hide it, she also has a secret desire to pursue writing and poetry as a career.
WAND: Ari's old chestnut & dragon heartstring wand was a family heirloom that was gifted to her when she left for Gooseberry. Her father forcibly took it from her when she was disowned and her mother snapped her original ash & unicorn hair wand in half. Her third wand is also an Ollivander's purchase: fir & red oak, phoenix feather core, 13 5/8", surprisingly whippy. A contradictory and hard-to-handle creation, it has been sitting in Mr. Ollivander's stockroom for decades. He tried it with Ariadne when she was eleven and headed to Hogwarts; although it rejected her then, it was the first wand she tried and a very decisive fit this time around. Mr. Ollivander claimed to have not been surprised by this and told Ari that a witch's third wand is often as temperamental as she is, which she felt to be a vaguely insulting remark.
FAMILIAR: Puppet, her absurdly pretty cat. Even though she's a very large cat, she will sometimes jump up onto Ari's shoulders. At Hogwarts the popular rumor was that Ari used her cat to spy on couples sneaking kisses in empty classrooms.
CLASSES: Core: Charms, Herbology, OE, Transfiguration. Elective: aesthetic magic, wizard lit. Advanced Study: Muggle Technology Studies (Beginner).
ADVANCED STUDY: Ari is genuinely intrigued by muggle culture, has literally no exposure to it because she grew up in a purist household in the middle of nowhere, and is now considering attending university for journalism and will need to know how to use computers. She didn't do too well in her classes last year, but would've shown a marked improvement in effort in Mr. Merrill's class during the last two months of the school year and explained her college situation to him when asking for permission to sign up for the class.
SENIOR PROJECT: She's writing a play. Details forthcoming as she figures it out herself.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: After barely scraping by last year, Ariadne is much more determined to do well in her classes as a junior. She has a genuine interest in literature and muggle studies, and those are her favorite classes. She struggles a little with charms and transfiguration as she tries to get a handle on her new, temperamental wand. She has setbacks, but she's trying now, and the marked increase in effort will be apparent to all her teachers. That said, she really does not want to be taking Outdoor Education. But she's planning on graduating from Gooseberry now, which means she's gotta do at least a year, and she's honestly concerned she might fail it on her first go-around.
EXTRACURRICULARS: Cheer Squad, choir, drama, gardening club, equestrian club, fencing & dueling. She also works on the school paper, which she ditched event committee to make time for. (A month or so into the school year, she'll also join gaming club when she joins Casey's D&D campaign.)
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MISCELLANEOUS
MISC: Table of Contents
MISC: The Guthrie Gazette
Photographers: Micah St. Clair, London Holloway
Deputy Editor: Jonathan Wilde
Columns: Hazel Keating (Sports), London Holloway (Advice), Ferdie Ayers (Student Life), Calvin Evercreech (World Events), Solomon Webb
MISC: Memes
CHARACTER NOTES
WANDLORE
Ariadne left this wand in England when she left for Gooseberry and it was snapped in half by her mother when she was disowned in the summer of 2014.
This wand was a poor fit for Ariadne at a tumultuous time in her life, and owed a lot to how poorly she did in school last year. It was too small for her, and after it backfired during her first day in charms class at Gooseberry she grew to resent it. The strange and sophomoric dark magic that had been used to enchant the wand centuries ago has something more of a judgmental sentience than most modern wands, and the "relationship" between Ariadne and the Flint wand began to sour over the course of her year at Gooseberry. When she was disowned, her father easily disarmed her to reclaim this wand, and it now resides unused in the Flint manor in Dersingham.
ARI'S TAROT CARDS
Individual card images and meanings.
Class Schedule