ANDROMEDA NEREID BLACK

[ANDROMEDA NEREID BLACK]

Andromeda
Nereid Black

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Don't you dare look out your window
Darling, everything's on fire

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•the basics • the basics • the basics •[/center][/size]

Full Name: Andromeda Nereid Black.
Greek Mythology: Andromeda was the daughter of a king, and quite beautiful. Her mother claimed she was more beautiful than the Nereids (sea nymphs) and as punishment, Andromeda was chained to a rock in the sea as sacrifice to the angered gods. (On a happier note, she is saved by Perseus, who she then marries.)
Nicknames: Andy, Andry, Meda – just a few of the ways people have shortened her mouthful of a name.
Age/Year: Sixteen/Sixth
House: Slytherin
Blood Status: Pureblood
Wand: Rosewood, ten and three-quarter inches, dragon heartstring core.
Alliance: Neutral
Play-by: Leighton Meester

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The war outside our door keeps raging on
Hold on to this lullaby
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• personality • personality • personality •

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Likes: Sweets, Cissy, her cousins, Quidditch, Charms, boys, earrings, books, friends.
Dislikes: Violence, Bella, her mother & aunt, being controlled, condescension, pressure, spiders.
Strengths: Wandwork, mediating, flirting, assertiveness, kindness, persuasiveness.
Weaknesses: Sweet talk, potions, family, focusing, loneliness.
Amortentia: Chocolate, champagne, strawberries, and vanilla.
Dementor: When Andy was five, she got her first glimpse of what her older sister would later become. She and Cissy had been playing in a room by themselves, when Bella came storming in. Angry, the eldest sister started shoving things and screaming. Andy had seen Bella’s tantrums before, but this was worse than ever. Seeing her baby sister’s fearful face, she’d covered her and then sent Cissy out the door and closed it, leaving her to run to her bedroom. She stood her ground against Bella, told her to stop having a fit: and that was when Bella turned on her, and went from trashing their playroom to shove at Andromeda. Andy fought back, but Bella was bigger and stronger. Andy had come out of that encounter with scratches and bruises all over, and crying. Bella had never hit her before – but that time was only the first.
Boggart: “I’m so afraid of losing everything. I’m scared that I’ll lose my family, either through death – I wake up in a cold sweat at night, sometimes, from a dream where a different sister, or cousin, is dead on the ground in front of me – or through the tapestry at Grimmauld Place, like Sirius.”
Veritaserum: “I don’t agree with them anymore. Not at the core. Thoughts like this are what get Bella to hurt you, to get Mother angry enough to disown you…”
Personality:
In contrast to her sisters – one intimidating and violent, the other prissy and reserved – Andromeda is a breath of fresh air. A normal girl, Andromeda is fun, friendly, loving, loyal to her friends, and just a little bit boy-crazy. Andy loves a good party as much as she does a quiet corner with a good book, and while she grew up craving solitude, ever since she arrived at Hogwarts, she found herself seeking out people – regardless of house, especially in the last couple of years. She’s also rather optimistic; despite her rather dreary upbringing, Andy is one of those people who will always try to find the silver lining. She is studious – she doesn’t just love books for pleasure reading; she truly enjoys learning, and is often towards the top of her classes (except for potions). However, she isn’t one to pass up a nice afternoon in the sun or an evening under the stars. Andy loves being outside, with friends or a guy or even alone. When stressed, she finds the best relaxation high above the ground, astride a broomstick.

Andy isn’t nearly as prim or proper as Narcissa, or sometimes, even Bella, can be, but she was raised in the same Black household, and she knows her manners. She’s very capable of grace, and while she can be blunt… it’s very clear that Andromeda is an individual with class. However, hers is not a chilly one. She’s very friendly and talkative when the mood strikes – as it often does. She’s most often found with a smile, and laughter is never far from her lips. She is of the opinion that far too many of her housemates are far too serious, and she seeks to remedy that, or at least to balance it out with some lightheartedness. A fairly relaxed girl, Andy is one of the girls most likely to try to defuse a tense situation with calming words. She’s also one of the last people to stress – over exams, over insults… it’s just personal drama amongst her friends that is guaranteed to send her into a mental frenzy.

However, for all her calm nature, there is one more thing in which Andromeda can get just a little bit crazy: boys. It all began last year, in earnest. Of course she’d had some crushes and cheek-kisses previous to her fifth year, but it was then that her heart truly began to flutter when certain boys walked past. Now, it’s worse than ever. Andy’s a huge flirt, though it’s indeed turned down when she’s in a relationship. Andromeda is a faithful girl, and she abhors cheating. As for any special boys who have caught her eye… well, that’s something that Andromeda keeps to herself – and maybe her friends.

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Even when the music's gone
Just close your eyes
The sun is going down
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• appearance • appearance • appearance •

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Hair color: Andy’s hair is dark brown, and falls down across her shoulders. She keeps it down – straight – most often, though she does love headbands and isn’t afraid of pulling it up, either.
Eye color: Her eyes are her very darkest feature: so dark brown that the difference between her iris and pupil is indiscernible in some lights. Andy loves her eyes, despite the fact that it’s one of the few things that keeps her strongly tied in physical appearance to her elder sister.
Facial structure: Andromeda inherited the gorgeous Black bone structure, same as her two sisters, and the darker complexion of their father, as Bellatrix. Her lips are full, and her eyebrows highly arching: another family trait, all the better to scathing condescend.
Body structure: Petite – at five foot and five inches - and lithe are the best words to describe Andy. Perhaps she isn’t quite as graceful as Cissy in some ways, or as intimidating as Bella in others, but Andy holds her own. She isn’t short, by any measure, but she does fall below some of her contemporaries in the height department. Her curves are gentle, but definitely noticeable, and while she isn’t muscular, her body is very toned and she is deceptively able to take care of herself.
Clothing Choice: Andy spent far too much time in her childhood as her mother’s plaything when it came to clothing, and it has caused her to begin to resent the idea of the clothing that many of the other pureblood girls – even her sisters – don. However, she does have an enduring sense of style that has developed over the years. Still, this doesn’t keep her from wearing jeans and a t-shirt when the occasion calls.

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You'll be alright
No one can hurt you now
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• family • family • family •

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Mother: Druella Rosier Black, 42, pureblood
Father: Cygnus Black III, 46, pureblood: entrepreneur
Siblings:
Bellatrix Black, 17, Slytherin, pureblood
Narcissa Black, 15, Slytherin, pureblood
Other:
Sirius Black, 17, Gryffindor, pureblood: cousin
Pyxis Black, 16, Slytherin, pureblood: cousin
Regulus Black, 15, Slytherin, pureblood: cousin
History:
Born into a family as dark as the name suggests, Andromeda Black was brought into the world on March 23, 1962. She was the second of three daughters born to Cygnus and Druella, and she by and large favored her father. It was Cissy – born a year later – who favored Druella, the pretty little blonde princess. Perfect for dress-up. Andromeda’s childhood had not been a happy one, but she survived. She was the middle child: struck between the darling eldest and the sweet baby. She was simply plain old Andy, a blank slate for her mother to mold and then send away to her bedroom. Often, when Druella was distracted by something else, Andy would dismiss herself and disappear into a corner of the house to hide away – no one ever found her at those times, but she was fairly certain, even at a young age… no one was looking, either. When she was five, her older sister beat her up, and that had just been the start. Bella was a violent girl, always had been, and it only had gotten worse as she’d grown older.

Andromeda had found something in those hidden away moments while she was growing up. She brought books with her, most times, and found that she could disappear wholly inside the pages there, and doing so made her feel more free and happy than she generally felt in the confines of her home. Now, Andromeda wasn’t an unhappy child, though she did feel largely out of place between her siblings and the pressures from her parents… but such feelings of displacement are common among middle children. She coped – through the hiding, and the reading, and a large amount of daydreaming. Of course, her habits of going off like that – either to a corner of the house, or inside her own head – didn’t endear her any further to her mother.

Things got better the year that Bellatrix went to Hogwarts; Sirius went too, that year – and that was the messy bit. Sirius had been sorted into Gryffindor… the first Black not to be sorted into Slytherin House in at least recent memory, and her aunt and uncle had thrown a terrific fit when they’d received the news. Bella was as proud as ever of herself as exactly what everyone expected of her. She got in trouble a few times that year – that violent streak rearing its ugly head – but Andromeda knew that no matter what the letters to Mother and Father said, Bella was capable of much worse, especially now that she had a wand of her own and was learning to use it. But during the year that Bella was away, things were better for Andy at home. For a while, her mother had been busy comforting her aunt and uncle on the disappointment of Sirius, and then there had been the periodical messes Bella made to clean up with the headmaster… the two new Hogwarts students were apparently keeping the staff, and their parents, rather preoccupied. Andy looked upon it as a beautiful blessing. She felt bad only for Sirius, and happily disappeared into some of the books she’d bought while they’d gotten Bella’s school supplies in August.

The year was soon over too quickly, and as summer came, Andy would steal Bella’s textbooks for reading material. They were full of such interesting information! Andy had found herself hungry for knowledge that summer, and the textbooks from Bella’s own first year at Hogwarts had provided plenty, so that by the time that it had come to August again, and Andy received her own… she knew much of the information front and back already. Bella, uninterested in the textbooks once the year was over, had never noticed them missing, and thus Andy escaped the summer by and large unscathed. Soon, it was time to make the trip to King’s Cross, same as they had the year before. Andy had grinned and waved at Sirius from behind her mother’s back – Sirius had always been the favorite among her two male cousins, because he was far more fun than Regulus – and then she’d skipped over to Pyxis and brought her over to sit in the compartment with her and Bella. The two incoming first years listened intently to Bella’s stories, and her reassurances. They would both be Slytherins, no problem at all. They weren’t like Sirius.

That evening, when the Sorting Hat was placed upon her head, there was a moment of silence, and Andy started to worry. Slytherin? Are you sure? The voice – the Hat’s voice – whispered in her mind. Yes! Yes! I’m sure. I need to be in Slytherin. I do! She was half-panicked, afraid of being like Sirius. A sheer disappointment. It wasn’t Gryffindor, that the Hat believed she may belong in, but Ravenclaw… but still. Slytherin was the House for the Black family. For the Toujours Pur. Alright, if you insist, the voice came, a moment before it shouted the decision to the full hall: Slytherin. Andy grinned widely and joined her sister, and the others, at Slytherin’s table. She was welcomed into the fold quite happily, and spent her time that first year among many of her sister’s friends, and making those of her own in the meantime. But, just as much, she spent time with Sirius and his friends, the three Gryffindors he spent all his waking hours with. She loved those days, when she hung around those four. But they were few and far between those first few years at Hogwarts, because she needed to be a good daughter.

However, as the years passed, Andromeda found herself doubting the validity of all the hatred directed towards the half-bloods and Muggleborns that she had met at Hogwarts. Some of them were good people, talented witches and wizards, intelligent and interesting. In interacting with them, she was beginning to poke holes in what she’d grown up believing, at the indoctrination her parents had foisted upon her. She kept these thoughts secret, only ever telling Sirius the truth. No one else could know. The summer of her fourth year, Sirius made a huge leap, and Andromeda wondered if she could ever have that strength, to defy their family in such a way. He moved out of Grimmauld Place, and into the home of the Potters. A frightening thought, to Andy, and she worried about him when he wasn’t at Hogwarts. He was still family – even if their parents didn’t agree with her on that mark – and especially then, Andromeda started spending more of her time among him and his friends.

Now, as her sixth year at Hogwarts begins, Andromeda feels as though she has found her place, finally: she has struck a balance between her friends in other houses, and the ones within her own. She has two wonderful (well, most of the time) sisters, and three amazing cousins. Her grades have never been better, and she feels as though life is going to never change. Sure, she’ll change the schoolwork for a job at the end of next year… but despite the rising tensions, she’s certain that this will be her life, forever.

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Come morning light
You and I'll be safe and sound
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• the player • the player • the player •

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Alias: Michele
Age: 22
Experience: 8 years.
Code Word: Alohamora
RP Sample:
From an old AU forum on which I played a different version of Andromeda:

Andromeda Nereid Black. What the hell kind of name is that? In her family, it wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary, but in the world as a whole, it was one freakish string of words. Named after a mythical woman chained to a rock in the middle of the sea because her mother pissed off the wrong mythical creatures – coincidentally the ones featured in her middle name – to be offered to the sea god as a sacrifice. Who but the absolutely insane would do that to their daughter? Not the mother in the myth – the mother she had. Of course, it wasn’t as if her other family members had normal names. Narcissa’s certainly fit her – vain as she was, the myth probably applied – and Bella’s, too… “Female warrior” – it fit to an extent, if warrior could be translated into insane to a nearly frightening degree woman who enjoys torturing random people she does not like. Andromeda, though… a sacrifice? No. She didn’t quite feel like an Andromeda. Not to everyone, anyway. Most of the time, she felt just like Andy or Dromeda, because the full form felt so… big. Formal. Not like her at all. Though there were people who could get away with it; mainly because the way they said it made it sound just as familiar as the nicknames she usually preferred.

Andy realized she probably shouldn’t be wandering the dungeons, pondering her family’s strange habits in naming children. She’d been aware of that since she made the decision to walk down the steps that led to the dark, cold depths. But she was a bit sick of the Ravenclaw common area, always studying as usual… but in more recent weeks, there had begun to be a bit of drama in that section of the castle. Her other usual places were beginning more and more to fill up with the same things. It was almost as if there was no corner of the castle that didn’t hold a bit of it, and she was trying to clear her head. Andy needed thinking space, and apparently the library was not safe from it, either – even studying becoming a hardship there, let alone some quiet time. All of her usual spots, the ones that had once been safe for just curling up and reading or simply thinking and being alone, were constantly being filled, and often those places had reminders of not quite pleasant memories. Everything in the castle had been going crazy for the past couple of months, and it always seemed to be getting better, just to prove that it was really still becoming worse.

She was well aware that, down here, she could run into a number of people she wasn’t particularly fond of, but she was alright with that. Bella and her new fiancé no doubt had been warned not to cause too much trouble; Andy was sure, what with her eldest sister’s most recent transgression. Lucius was more than likely busy with some matter or another. Alecto was probably with him, God only knows what they were doing. And no one wanted to think about that. Tristan, well, she wouldn’t have a real problem seeing him, but he was around her best friend more than she was, recently, so she doubted he’d be lurking about. Narcissa… Well. Cissy wasn’t a problem. She never minded running into her younger sister, no matter how she appeared to the other girl. They’d always been closer, before.

Bella used to torment anything smaller than her in that house, just as she was tending to do here at Hogwarts, but fewer things fit that description when Bella herself was smaller. Before her magic, it was mundane little objects that were freaking scary in her hands. There were times when the three little girls would be patiently waiting for the elves to give them a snack – but when Bella was staring at the carving knife with that glint in her eyes, Andy would grab Cissy’s hand. She would have always said it was to protect her little sister, but it was for her own comfort as well. She and Cissy weren’t, of course, always the closest. They tattled on each other when possible, but when they were genuinely scared, they would go to each other’s rooms for support. That was all gone now, obviously, but there were times that Andy missed her little sister.

At this point, there was no going back. That much was crystal clear. Even if she could, Andy wouldn’t. She knew that she was right. This whole pureblood thing was nonsense, and the things her family did to preserve their birthright, or their bloodline, or simply their pride… it was horrible. And while there were moments that she wondered, what if I had been sorted into Slytherin? There was still an undercurrent of knowledge that she was where she belonged. Shivering with the chill in the air, it was easy to imagine her life if she had simply gone along with everything; if the hat had deemed her potential in Slytherin greater than in Ravenclaw. She would probably be just like Cissy now. Quiet. Refined. And that was always where the illusion shattered. She just couldn’t imagine herself as she was now, as something so different. As a child, she’d been quiet, and had known her place and how to keep it. She had even kept those traits for her first year at school. It was in second year, when she began to make friends with people that her family would think below her, that her views began to shift. And that magnificent wall that dear Cissy held on to so tightly, crumbled for Andromeda.

She frowned, still walking the vaguely familiar dungeons, drawing her cloak tight as she remembered just why Tristan said he preferred things above ground. It was chilly down here… and it made her grateful for her bed in the tower. However, she felt peaceful, and she was able to be alone. She certainly wouldn’t want to sleep down here, but it was a nice thinking spot.

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[ϟ ADMIN ADRI]