lovelace, serena

[Serena Lovelace]

<sup>gorgeous icons courtesy of didi-kins :)

__________________________________________________________</sup>


{ A B O U T . Y O U }

Name: fief
Gender: femme
Age: eighteen
E-mail: x
Twitter: x
Years of RPG Experience: six
Other: teddy

^{__________________________________________________________}


{ Q U I C K . Q U I Z }

How did you find us?
What about ISS inspired you to join?
Do you have any suggestions for us?

^{__________________________________________________________}


{ A B O U T . T H E . C H A R A C T E R }

Name: Serena Evangeline Lovelace.
Age: Fourteen.
Gender: Female.
Year: Fourth.
Face Claim: Elle Fanning.

Canon or Original? Original.

Facial Properties:

Her face is wide-set, she’s always believed, in a stately oval shape. Serena’s jaw is stern and square, though softened as much as makeup and curls will allow. Her hair, of a medium length, is a brilliant yellow-gold, lightening in the summer and darkening in the winter, according to its exposure to sun. Her eyes are a steel-gray, blue-ish in some lighting, and compliment her pale white skin and blond hair nicely, in her own humble opinion. Her nose, however, is Serena’s least favorite of her various traits, as she feels it is sort of pug-shaped and too pinched at the end, though she works with it as much as she can. She blames it on her father’s side of the gene pool, seeing as the Lovelaces all seem to have peculiarly shaped noses. Her cupid’s bow lips, though, are all on her mother’s side, also slightly pinched but always a pretty shade of pink. She worries, though, sometimes, that her chin is a bit too little because her bottom lip reaches down so far, but there’s not much to be done about that. What’s odd, though, is that her thicker but shapely eyebrows are a few shades darker than her hair, a phenomenon that Serena would desperately like to fix but sees no conceivable way to do so. At any rate, she is generally satisfied with her facial features, and accents her strengths with makeup just as well as she underplays her weaknesses.

Physique:

In terms of height, Serena has always been a bit tall for her age. However, this has aided her greatly in her ballerina tutelage. Indeed, she is one of the taller girls in her dancing company, standing at a full 5’6’‘ at only fourteen years of age. Her legs are long but well-toned, which she maintains via practicing her dancing at least once a week and sometimes going for the occasional jog around the quidditch pitch while the hot boys are playing. Overall, she’s thin and trim for her age, perhaps a little too thin, but no one ever says anything about it and so she never does anything about it. Her torso is short and narrow, tapering off to wider hips than she’d like to have at this age. Sometimes Serena worries that her head is too small for the rest of her body, and that maybe it sits on too wide of shoulders, but her mother assures her that her figure is in want of nothing, and therefore she was put slightly at ease on the matter. However, she still has her various concerns, such as she feels her feet are too large and too flat, and maybe her arms are disproportionately long, and sometimes her knees look a little knobbly from a distance, but... well, in the long run, the only thing Serena can really conclude about herself is that, at least she’s not fat.

Wand Type: Cherrywood, 12 inches, unicorn hair core.

- - - Well, it only makes sense that she has the prettiest wandwood, right? Cherry is such a nice, springy little wood, and 12 inches is a perfectly adequate length. Unicorn hair also suits Serena very well, as her favorite mystical creature is undoubtedly a unicorn. Overall, she has been very pleased with her wand, and over the years has become quite attached to it, as is natural.

Wand Expertise: Charms.

- - - Well, duh. She’s good at being charming. But really, Serena is just very talented at little charms and such, though she prides herself in her ability to perform above-par in every single class. Well. Except Transfiguration. But she’s convinced that the only reason she’s doing poorly in that subject is because McGonagall is too hard shabby of a teacher. Truth is, Serena’s vanity can’t handle that she’s actually bad at something.

Patronus: Teacup pig.

- - - It’s a cute little teensy piggie, with a pretty little bow, and it prances around most adorably, in Serena’s opinion. It represents the fact that Serena is very pretty and cute and charming on the outside, but in the end, she’s still just a pig. In a greedy sense, though. But pigs are indeed loyal creatures, easy-to-please, eager to perform. This represents Serena a little more closely. Therefore, her patronus is well-suited for her.

Boggart: Being fat.

- - - Don’t laugh. It’s true. She’s shallow, yeah, okay, we already know this. But honestly, being fat is her truest, worst fear. It would make her a pariah. An outcast. Ugly. Alone. And those are all things she just cannot handle.

Personality:

S P O I L E D & shallow

Since she is her mother’s only child and the only person in the world who can really make her mother happy about the current circumstance of her life, Serena has been put on such a pedestal that she finds it impossible to get down. Not that she’d ever try, really, but still. Her mother’s own issues of self-worth were all vested into her daughter, and it is Serena’s job to be perfect so that her mother can, too, feel perfect. It is a weighty burden for a child Serena’s age to carry, but it is one that has been thrust upon her ever since her birth, and she has known little else. As a consequence, she is possibly the most shallow and self-centered person you may have the displeasure of meeting. The world revolves around Serena, because that’s just how it is, how it’s always been, and how it always will be. But on the tail end of that, Serena feels a lot of pressure to maintain her perfection, and therefore has many shallow fears that stem from her physicality. For instance, her Boggart is herself, overweight, because to Serena, that represents failure. And, if she is a failure, her mother won’t love her anymore, and her family will desert her. At its root, her fear is probably centered more around abandonment, seeing as she never really has gotten over the chiefest rejection of all, from her father––but Serena isn’t mature enough to see it that way at present, and so for now, she comes off as, well, a shallow bitch. Ugliness and fatness utterly repels her, and she will not be seen with anyone who does not fit her particular profile of what an attractive person should look like. To Serena, everything is about appearances, about who she is seen with and by who, and what was she wearing, and how did she look. That’s the only way to get ahead in this world, and to live up to her mother’s expectations of her. and maybe one day, if she gets to the point where she’s just good enough, her father will realize what a mistake he made, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll come to love her, like he should have all these years. But these are all more secret and hidden fantasies for Serena, and she shares them with no one. In fact, she has a hard time letting anyone really get in to her; she’s a closed book, or at least tries to be, and doesn’t like sharing much of her personal life (in terms of her family) with anyone. Especially not fat people. Or ugly people. And certainly not with anyone who, Circe forbid, would actually listen, or might actually care.

A N X I O U S & paranoid

As a result of the unfortunate incident involving her cousin, Samuel, in her youth, Serena has come to associate pleasure with guilt and shame. As a result, she has developed a mild nervous disorder known colloquially as autophagia, which causes her to nervously bite, pinch, and scratch at her skin. The areas most afflicted are her knees and arms, but she tries to cover up the scares and scabs, and when she can’t, simply blames the bite marks on her cat, Twinkles. It all started subconsciously, the fall after the incident, and by the time Serena noticed it, she didn’t think much of it and was able to hide it well. She has become quite the little expert at concealer and various other ointments, and usually has little difficulty hiding her marks. Still, it is inconvenient, and she would stop if she could, but it seems to be the only way that Serena can get any relief from her fear of intimacy and pleasure, with which she is confronted on a daily basis, as Hogwarts would be nothing without its promiscuous couples. Serena likes boys, and she wants to be with them, but she just... can’t. Every time they do so much as touch her, she has to bite or scratch or pinch herself, because she feels so disgusting and so horrified and ashamed, she can’t help herself. She’s only ever kissed a boy before, and that was enough to send her essentially off her rocker for days. What was more, she had a very difficult time covering up her scratches and bites, and one student in her Charms class noticed it and asked what had happened. She, of course, blamed it on her cat, and was able to smoothly evade what could have been a sticky situation. She is exceptionally paranoid, though, about people finding out about it and telling a teacher or the nurse, for if that happened, they would surely contact her mother, and that would just ruin everything, because her mother would be so worried and disappointed, and Ingrid just couldn’t handle that kind of stress, given her health. So Serena keeps everything quiet and closed off, and deals with it in her own private way. Mostly, though, she doesn’t see it as a problem. It’s not like she’s really doing anything that bad. Right? It isn’t very ladylike, and perfect girls certainly don’t bite themselves, but in Serena’s mind, she has to do what she has to do, and inflicting minor pain on herself is something she just... has to do.

E L I T I S T & closed-minded

If her mother or her family said it then that is simply the way it is. There can be no other correct answer other than that which her family provides. That is what Serena was raised to believe, and what she still believes. The Carmichaels know better than anyone else, even old Professor Dumbledore, and Serena must take all other information from any wide variety of sources with a grain of salt. Serena’s mind is small, and limited, and though she does well in school and gossips endlessly and learns all sorts of things from other sources, she really, truly believes that the ultimate authority on everything is her family. If they say mudbloods are filthy, then mudbloods are filthy. And nothing will change her mind on the matter. One of Serena’s various faults is that she is blindly accepting of everything they say, and sometimes, she projects this gullibility onto schoolmates whom she particularly adulates, such as Rita Skeeter. If Rita says it, then it must be true, because Rita is so beautiful and popular and perfect, and Serena wants––needs––to be just like her. When Serena puts someone up on a pedestal, they never, ever come down, and she starts to respond to them as she would respond to her family; hanging on every word, respecting their every decision as if it was pre-ordained by the gods, following their every instruction with absolute precision as if her life depended on it, and sacrificing her own beliefs in order to agree with theirs, since theirs have to be right. The world is somewhat black and white for Serena, in terms of her family and icons. They are either right, or they are wrong, and since they cannot conceivably be wrong, they must therefore always be correct. She is intensely and fiercely devoted and prideful of her family and various idols, which often causes her to be slightly elitist. However, she doesn’t care what others think of her championship of people like Rita, and her family. Other people wished they had the strength of Serena’s conviction, and really, she feels quite sorry for them. It must be terrible to constantly be in the wrong.

D E S P E R A T E & clingy

Because she was essentially abandoned by one of her primary caregivers when she was a child, Serena develops a tendency to leech on to people whom she cares about. Her family, for one, and her idols and icons, for another. She collects Rita Skeeter’s tabloids and rather obsesses over everything Rita wears, does, and says. She writes in pink ink because Rita does, she wears little dresses because Rita does, etc. In her desperation for approval and recognition, Serena can go a little overboard and can turn idolization into obsession very, very rapidly. She does this, too, with her father, and has a collection of newspaper clippings and various other paraphernalia associated with him tacked into her diary, so she can keep it hidden from her mother and the Carmichaels, who are locked in a decade-and-then-some feud with the Lovelaces over the failed marriage of Dontavius and Ingrid, her father and mother. But despite this, and despite the fact that the reports she has collected of her father have not all been... well, favorable, Serena still knows she is destined to love him, and hopes to meet him one day, and have him love her too. It is his approval she ultimately seeks, and attempts to replace with other people who she, too, idolizes. But since her father is so far away, and since her idols are so close, it is easy for her to get attached and very clingy when they are around, which gives her an opportunity to feel included and valued, even if they don’t notice she’s around. Serena has friends, but more than friends she has role models, and more than role models she has obsessions, and to them, she clings like butter to bread. The void that her father left in her has grown to an immeasurable size, and she still attempts to fill it with as many people as she can. Giving up, for Serena, is not an option, and though she does not recognize her quest for social acceptance as really part of a psychological need for her father’s love, she will still fight for her goal until it is met. No one denies anything from Serena Lovelace, after all.


Likes:

Bubblegum.

- - - Ever since she was a little girl, Serena loved to pop, pop, pop the gum in her mouth, before her mother told her it was rude. She loves the taste, the feel, the sweetness of the gum, and how it leaves her breath fresh and delicious in case she should meet with someone important through the course of her day.

Blood.

- - - She doesn’t know what it is. Really, she doesn’t. Serena just loves the sight of blood. It entices and fascinates her in this really, really morbid way. Whenever she’s injured to the point of bleeding, she often enters this strange sort of trance where she just stares at the blood and people have to remind her to clean it up or else she’d probably just play with it all day.

Jewelry.

- - - Come on, she’s a girl, and she’s a spoiled one, at that. Serena loves shiny things, and jewelry in particular is one of her chiefest weaknesses. She adores all kinds of jewelry, but detests anything that is in the ‘gold’ category. She believes gold is pretentious and only used by those who wish to show off. Instead, Serena is a fan of silver, and usually wears pieces in that variety.

New dresses.

- - - Shopping is amazing. And fancy clothes are the best. Now, Serena is a practical girl, and isn’t the type to wear only dresses everywhere, but whenever she gets the chance to wear one or buy one, she takes it. Comfort isn’t even a factor when it comes to fashion. If it’s pretty and it makes her look good, she’ll wear it. No one ever said beauty was a cake-walk.

Her hair.

- - - Her favorite feature about herself is most likely her hair. It’s glossy and shiny and flow-y and pretty and thin and blond and, well, perfect, if Serena does say so herself. She’s talented at doing her own hair, usually without the aid of spells or potions, and revels in this ability. She likes doing other girl’s hair too, of course, in fancy little ways––it’s just a hobby of hers. But mostly, she likes doing her own hair, and looking her very best every day.

Lipgloss.

- - - It’s shiny, glittery, sparkly, pretty, and it makes your lips look full and rich. What’s not to like about it? It’s not too overpowering, too, so when Serena’s just going to class but wants to look nice, all she has to do is squirt on a little lipgloss and she’s set to go, with her make-up looking complete but not obnoxious.

Rita Skeeter.

- - - She’s... sort of her idol, admittedly. In Serena’s eyes, Rita has got it all: the attention, the fame, the beauty, the fashion, the style, the tabloid... she’s perfect. Serena wants to be just like her when she gets older. Consequently, she’s gotten sort of... well, obsessive, about the tabloid, and about impressing Rita at any chance she gets, and so she’s managed to procure every single issue of the tabloid since its premier publication. She hides this at the bottom of her clothes trunk, but re-reads them almost as often as she breathes.

Gossip.

- - - Hah, yeah. See above. Serena loves to hear who’s doing who, who got kicked out for what, who’s stoned, who’s the school slut... yeah, all of that. Serena is a budding little socialite, and she adores everything that is said about everyone in the school. She’d kill to be in the tabloid, at least once, for anything. She doesn’t care. She keeps up with everything religiously and prides herself in her ability to find things out before many others do.

Romance novels.

- - - Oh, everyone has their guilty pleasures, right? Well, for Serena, she can’t get enough of sappy, cheesy, silly romance novels. Yeah, bodice-rippers. I know, classy, right? Well, whatever. She’s got to learn how to give a BJ (yes! she knows that that is) somewhere. ...Hah. Anyway. She just enjoys the storylines. And they often end tragically, so it’s even better. She has a stash under her bed. Don’t tell.

Dental care.

- - - She likes having her teeth clean. It’s a bit of an obsession, really. She brushes and flosses after every single piece of food she eats. She doesn’t know why; it’s just been a habit of hers since she was little. She can’t stand the aftertaste of food in her mouth. So she carries around her little dental kit in her satchel for school and she’s constantly ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Shoes.

- - - Gods, is she ever obsessed with shoes. Next to jewelry, they’re Serena’s favorite things ever. She has an entire trousseau of shoes at home. Flats, stilettos, wedges, heels, spikes, clogs, slip-ons, sandals, slingbacks... you name it, she owns it, and more than likely in three-pair. She only brings a small collection of shoes with her every year to Hogwarts, and then constantly cycles that collection throughout the year via a parcel exchange with her mother.

Diaries.

- - - To Serena, there’s something undeniably charming about a diary. She’s rather copious with hers, and writes at least one entry per day so that she can keep track of her life. Her diaries are ultra-girly, with as many frills as you can think of––and that’s just the way she likes it. She writes in pink ink, duh, because that’s the color Rita Skeeter writes in. Therefore, the best color ever. Duh.

Lockets.

- - - They’re pretty. Little hearts, that can be locked away. Serena loves the symbolism. The idea of a little charm that represents a closed heart. Call her a pessimist, and she’d probably agree with you, but she just, she loves it.

Alcohol.

- - - Okay, so, yeah, she’s fourteen years old. She hasn’t ever had that much alcohol. But she has had it a few times at parties under the supervision of her parents, and she just loves its bubbliness and fizziness. Of course, being the way Serena is, she really only likes sweeter alcohols. Her favorite is champagne. She’s never been drunk, but she plans to remedy that this year.

Ballet.

- - - Serena’s been doing ballet for ten years now. She started when she was four years old, at her mother’s suggestion, and has continued ever since. Now that she’s going to Hogwarts, though, Serena can only attend classes during the summer, but that’s alright––she practices still once a week in her dorm, just enough to remember everything but not enough to totally overwhelm herself. Serena loves ballet.

Boys.

- - - She’s fourteen and she’d admittedly a liiiiittle bit boy-crazy. The thing is, though, she doesn’t really like relationships, so... her options are a little limited. But yeah, Serena has more crushes than she can count. Boys, boys, boys. She’s, well, only been kissed twice before, but she really likes it, and she really likes boys, and she’s really hoping to get kissed again this year.

Manicures & pedicures.

- - - Feeling pretty and sharp are always plusses in Serena’s book, and if it weren’t for her little travel-mani&pedi kit, she didn’t know what she’d do. The house-elves are quite adequate, surprisingly enough, at fulfilling her wishes in that department, and so it is rarely that she is seen without at least a clear gloss on both hands and feet.

Purebloods.

- - - Anything else is just, ew. I guess that personally, Serena doesn’t have any problems with mudbloods, but she’s always been taught to detest them, so that’s what she’s always done, and always will do, probably.

Dislikes:

Makeup.

- - - It’s so fake, in Serena’s opinion. She’ll wear some of it, yes, because only ugly girls don’t wear it, but still. Excessive makeup is just stupid. Not only does it make your skin break out, but it makes you look like a floozy, or worse, a wannabe-floozy. No. So Serena wears a little bit, but not too much, because, ew.

Relationships.

- - - It’s just too much for Serena to handle. Too much stress. Too many what-ifs and decisions, too hard to let someone in like that with the knowledge that it could one day just disintegrate. She just doesn’t like it. Boyfriends are nice and all, but she doesn’t plan to get into a relationship until she finds someone worth settling down with, who won’t just pick up and leave her one day.

Ugly people.

- - - Come on. No one likes them. Serena’s just honest enough to admit it. Yeah, if you’re ugly, odds are she’s not even going to give you the time of day. She just hates looking at ugly people. They’re disgusting and she hates every single one of them, no ifs ands or buts.

Secrets.

- - - She has plenty of them herself, but she doesn’t like them in other people. Which, of course, she realizes is unrealistic, but... well. She doesn’t like it. Serena doesn’t even like having her own secrets, but there aren’t any ways she can avoid that, really. It’s just sort of an inconvenience that everyone has to deal with in their lives, but that doesn’t mean she can’t dislike it.

Nosy professors.

- - - Oh, for real? Get a life and get the hell away from the note I’m passing. Serena is convinced that the only real reason teachers get so pissed about note-passing between students is because they miss the days when (or if, in some cases) they had social lives and passed notes in school. Serena has a hard time respecting most teachers, to be honest.

Twins.

- - - Circe, do they ever rub her the wrong way. Girl twins, boy twins, it doesn’t matter. She hates them. They always get so much attention all the time, people stare and point and gossip, and for what? Just because there was a greedy little sperm that could? Um, wow. Get a life, people.

Perfume.

- - - In Serena’s opinion, a girl should smell naturally beautiful, with the aid of body soaps and lotions. Perfumes, though, just cross the line for her, and she doesn’t know why. But Serena feels that if it isn’t applied in the shower, then it shouldn’t be worn.

Sex.

- - - Alright, fine. Penetration scares the fuck out of her. No pun intended. Yeah, part of it is that she’s only a fourteen year old girl, but the other part of it is that she really does have a legitimate fear of penetration in her nether regions. Which she’ll work out... when she has to.

Plainness.

- - - Oh, for Merlin’s sake, if you’re going to be ugly, then be ugly. If you’re going to be pretty, be pretty. But pick one, will you? Plain people are so very annoying to Serena. They’re, like, caught between this limbo of ugly and pretty and she just wants them to make up their minds because, honestly, it’s really annoying.

Marriage.

- - - She wants to get married some day, yeah, but as for right now, it’s a little scary of a prospect. So... binding. Like, you find that one person, and that’s it. Serena doesn’t believe in divorce. So 1960. And she’d be damned if she was caught dead trying to file for it. So, yeah, it’s scary. She doesn’t want to fuck it up. And part of her doesn’t want to be held down like that. Part of her doesn’t know if she can be.

Fat people.

- - - She has no sympathy for fat people. Serena believes it’s their fault, and so help them Morgana if they start whining about being fat, she’ll hex their faces off. You don’t want to be fat, you work out and eat less. Simple and clean. Really, if you can’t do those two simple things, then you are a pretty big failure.

Broken promises.

- - - Well, these aren’t fun. She hates it when people swear to something and then break that vow. If she could bind everyone’s promises to her with an Unbreakable Vow, then she would. She takes promises seriously, most of the time. Well... if they’re made to her, anyway. She never said she wasn’t a hypocrite.

Abandonment.

- - - Being alone. One of Serena’s greatest fears is being alone (if she’s in a room full of ugly and/or fat people, that also counts as alone). If she’s alone, there’s nothing to do, no one to please, no where to go. If she’s alone, that means no society, and if there’s no society, that means... there’s nothing. And Serena can’t stand that. She literally cannot handle being alone.

Scars.

- - - They’re inconvenient. They get in the way of what you want to wear or how you want to wear it, things like that. They’re just not practical to have, but sometimes, it can’t be helped.

History:

mother: Ingrid Evangeline Carmichael-Lovelace - - - thirty six.
father: Dontavius Malcolm Lovelace - - - thirty nine.

virtute et numine

Serena was Ingrid Lovelace’s last hope.

At the age of twenty-two, and after a year-long engagement and four years of marriage, Ingrid was steadily proving to be infertile. At least, every time she got pregnant, she couldn’t bring the baby to term. Two miscarriages, a stillborn... and, honestly, Ingrid didn’t know if she could take it any longer. Unfortunately for her sake, neither could her husband, Dontavius. Dontavius was from a long line of Irish purebloods who took the surname Lovelace, and he had wed Ingrid, a Scottish pureblood, in the hopes of continuing his line. When it was soon discovered that she had difficulties conceiving, it seemed as though their marriage was doomed to fail. Theirs was not a love match, after all, but merely a political alliance between their respective families. Dontavius was an astute and practical man, and though he had been warned against Ingrid’s sickly and frail ways, he had discarded it in favor of her dowry and physical appearance. She was a beautiful girl, blond of hair and blue of eye, and made a highly suitable wife to show off at various galas and dinner parties. Indeed, he thought he might even grow to love her, though that was quickly proved null after the second marriage and first stillbirth. Ingrid was desperate to please her husband, so much so that even though she struggled with conception, she ignored the emotional pain it caused her and constantly urged him to make love to her. After every failed birth, she put on a brave face, followed the physician’s instructions, and tried again. But at the age of twenty-two, she was starting to take on the physical frailty of a woman much older than she, and it became clear that her body was beginning to buckle under the pressure of the conception of an heir. Dontavius loathed the woman and avoided her at all costs, only communicating with her within the folds of their sheets, during the hours of business where they would try, and try again, to conceive. Ingrid was sure that Dontavius hated her. And to be honest, she would hate him too, if she had it in her. The quest for a child was so consuming that Ingrid could feel little else but mad desperation. She wanted a child, of course, for her own selfish reasons, but mostly she wanted a child because it was her last hope for a happy life. With at least one heir, Dontavius would soften, she hoped, and perhaps they could even grow to love one another. This was, anyway, Ingrid’s fantasy. It was what got her through those long nights of a heavy man grunting over her, threatening to snap her very being in two; a man whom she did not love. That was, perhaps, the worst of it. She could love him, she knew it. He was handsome, strong, and had a regal bearing about him––he was intelligent and wise, and sometimes his very presence soothed her, because there was something about him that made her feel safe. However, at the present, he was so frustrated with his sickly wife that he honestly loathed her, and though Ingrid knew that, deep down, she buried it, and instead turned to her own distant dreams of a love-filled marriage in order to distract herself from the inevitable truth––without a child, she and her husband would never have even the remotest chance at happiness.

And this is why Serena was her last chance. When Ingrid discovered she was pregnant, she was terrified. Her body had underwent so much strain in the past few years that she’d become horribly emaciated and weak, and could barely stand or walk, let alone carry around a second human being. Additionally, she was too afraid to tell her husband, lest he get his hopes up (or worse, lower them) and start treating her differently, or expecting too much out of her. She wanted to wait until she was a little farther along before she told anyone, even her doctors, and so she kept things to herself and continued life as normal, never betraying a hint of anything to the contrary. However, she did attempt to nourish herself more wholesomely, and ate more frequently, with the assistance of her house elves. Things were going well for the first month, it seemed, and with a flickering hope, Ingrid kept up her healthy regimen and even tried to go out and get some fresh air in the gardens once or twice a week. The color was returning to her cheeks, and suddenly she began gaining weight and resumed a more healthy-looking appearance. She was not fully recovered, of course, but many of her companions noted the change, and Dontavius did, too. Finally, when she reached her third month, she divulged the news to her doctors at St. Mungo’s and was greeted with the pleasant news that the baby seemed to be doing very well, and with patience and nutrition, the outlook for a healthy birth was good. She shared this news with her husband, who was pleased, overall, with the information, but still held on to his comfortable skepticism, despite his pleasure. His feelings toward his wife had not changed, and he had taken several mistresses over their four years of marriage, but he did attempt to make Ingrid more comfortable for the duration of her pregnancy. He was still absent for most of it, but visited Ingrid as much as he felt was appropriate. This did nothing to raise Ingrid’s spirits, but she found that her mood was already better, now that it was dependent on the tiny life-form inside of her. For some reason, she felt that this pregnancy was different than the others; Dontavius wasn’t as involved, since he’d come to anticipate the worst, and perhaps that had something to do with it. He did make her so very anxious, when she was with child. At any rate, Ingrid had hope, and for the first time, she felt a glimmer of hope––real hope––for her future.

On the seventh of June, these hopes became all the more real. At around eight o’clock in the morning, Ingrid’s water broke, and her contractions began soon after. In order to ensure her comfort, Dontavius decided to pay for the physician from Mungo’s to help Ingrid give birth in their home. Dontavius, however, remained in his study, too anxious to remain any closer to the birthing room––and too proud to admit his anxiety. The doctor arrived via floo powder in a timely fashion, and soon enough, Ingrid went into full-blown labor. It lasted for an agonizing thirteen hours, but at the end of it all, a beautiful and healthy baby girl was born, and Ingrid seemed to be doing well enough. Dontavius was highly disappointed that Ingrid had given him a daughter, but he supposed that a girl was better than nothing, and he could get plenty bastards off his various mistresses at any rate. He could always disinherit the little chit when the time came. He gave Ingrid permission to christen the girl anything she liked, and left the home, tipping the doctor on his way out. For two weeks, he was gone, and Ingrid was left to manage the household on her own, with a newborn baby girl and a small staff of elves. She’d decided to name the girl Serena, because it was only by the serene grace of the gods that Ingrid was able to conceive, and gave her the middle name Evangeline, which was a tradition in Ingrid’s family for all its girls, as far back as anyone could remember. Thus did Serena Evangeline Lovelace enter the world, and from the second her mother held her in her arms, she was the most important human being in the world. Little tufts of blond hair and bright gray eyes proved she was her mother’s daughter, though the nose was undoubtedly an unfortunate Lovelace trait, and Ingrid found that she was totally devoted to her little daughter, more than she had ever been to anyone, even to her husband. Her husband who was absent after the birth, and who, she knew, was still smarting from the anger of conceiving a daughter––well, he was ungrateful, in Ingrid’s opinion, and it was from that moment on, the two were locked in a constant hatred of one another. But Ingrid didn’t care, because she had a little girl, and that little girl was everything, and always would be. She doted on her endlessly, and instructed the house elves to do the same, and soon enough, Serena was easily the most spoiled little girl in the whole of Ireland. Anything she wanted was immediately at her disposal. She knew how to demand for things before she knew how to say thank you. And it seemed that this set the precedent for her behavior for the rest of her life.

toujours prest

Dontavius returned from time to time to pay the bills for the manor and check on his wife and daughter, to whom he showed absolutely no affection at all, but for the most part lived on the other side of the country with his mistress and his three sons by her. It had already become clear to Ingrid that Serena would be disinherited, but she knew it was no use fighting her husband on the subject. She promised her little girl that she would instead be heir to her mother’s family fortune, rather than her father’s, and soon enough, the two of them would escape from the Lovelace Manor and return to Scotland, to live with Ingrid’s family. Though the two were very concerned with preventing the scandal of a divorce, Dontavius and Ingrid found living separately to be an ideal situation, however much they were talked about. At least they weren’t getting a divorce. When Serena reached the age of five, Ingrid took her and their house elves and moved back to Scotland to live on her family’s manor. Serena found that she preferred her mother’s side to her father’s anyway, and though the Lovelace split was the talk of the town for a while, which caused both Ingrid and Dontavius much embarrassment, Ingrid found that she was truly happier this way. Her family, of course, was disappointed in her, but the Carmichaels had never really put that much stock in pureblood society (at least, not as much as the Lovelaces), and found themselves more apt to protect their daughter than to force her into a socially acceptable union which made her terribly unhappy. While the Lovelaces were cruel and unmannerly, the Carmichaels, though still higher class Scottish purebloods in their own right, were often faulted for being more sentimental and protective of their kin; they refused to let go of Ingrid and Serena, once they had them. Pridefully, they wanted to raise Serena to be more like a Carmichael than a Lovelace, and decided that they would train her to be a bright little witch, one of which they could be proud. Let Dontavius keep his bastards; for they had Serena, and she would come to outshine them all, in the end. And so it came to be that Serena was even more spoiled and indulged, and was indeed treated like a little princess (and still is) by her mother’s side of the family as well.

She was growing into a fair young lady, and at the age of six, already had applications for betrothals. Her mother, though, refused to allow her daughter to be betrothed in the same way that she had, and rejected every proposal, no matter how prestigious the family from whence it came. Serena’s attractiveness was not unnoticed by her little cousin Samuel, though, who was a few years older than her and often played with her when he could. Though Serena was only seven, and Samuel thirteen, he found himself very attracted to her, and often experimented with her physically in ways which she would later come to be very ashamed about. Sometimes, he would touch her chest, and kiss her, and fondle the sensitive area between her legs. He only did this for one summer, though, before his mother caught him and sent him away. It was enough to humiliate Serena, though, for she didn’t understand what was wrong with the behavior––she quite liked it, it felt nice. But her mother kept telling her that she must remain pure, that what she and Samuel had done together, while relatively harmless, was still bad, and she should never, ever do it again. From then on, Serena felt a deep, heated shame about the incident, and it was never spoken of again.

Her first display of magic came when she was eight years old, and she was having a particularly nasty tantrum in regards to a dress she was forced to wear to a party but did not want to wear. Amidst her screaming and crying, the dress changed color and shape altogether, melding into the dress she wanted to wear, instead. It was a happy moment, though, for Serena had been a bit of a late bloomer in terms of her magical ability, and for a while it was speculated that she might be a Squib, which would have held disastrous consequences for everybody in the Carmichael family. Luckily, though, that was another scandal averted. Serena was pleased with herself, perhaps too much so, and added this as yet another feather in her hat, flaunting it to anyone and everyone who would listen. Ingrid could not have been more pleased with her daughter, and there was even a party held in her honor, for finally displaying her magical ability. Then, of course, when she turned eleven, she received her invitation to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where anyone who was anyone went, she was told. Serena was ecstatic. She and her mother went shopping right away, and bought absolutely everything she needed, in the absolute best quality, for the absolute highest price, and then some. She was determined to be the best-looking and most prepared first year witch at school, and by Circe, if anyone stood in her way, they’d have something unpleasant to answer to. She counted the days until she could board the train, and finally when she did, Hogwarts became the center of her life. The castle was filled to the brim with drama and socialites and everything, and it was just so exciting, so much more exciting than her dreary Scottish manor back home. She adored it. She had a little difficulty making friends, at first, just because she was a little snobbish, but eventually she found her niche and ever since has never lost it. Now, as she enters her fourth year, Serena is hoping to expand her own social career and make a name for herself, in addition to keeping up with her schoolwork and all the latest fashions. She’s got her goals, her ambitions, her aspirations, and if anyone threatens to delay their realization, well, she’ll have to just owl her mommy.




Sample Post: please refer to posts made by regulus black, severus snape, alecto carrow, and ted tonks :3

^{__________________________________________________________}


{ C O N T R A C T }

I solemnly swear that I, FIEF, have read the rules, understand clearly what my responsibilities are now that I am joining ISS, and will abide by these standards set by the staff.

[Professor Albus Dumbledore]

accepted !

[/color]



[/center]