Appearance: Slender and of an entirely unremarkable height, Sylvia Engelbrecht has never been one to demand attention. There is very little of her that demands anything, really. Straight brown hair falls past her shoulders, framing hazel eyes and a light, cool complexion. Her features are soft, though any childlike sweetness is often contradicted by the seriousness of her expression. With her eyes usually fixed on or through another person, Sylvia tends to look skeptical, distracted, or mildly unhappy even when she is merely thinking. She usually keeps her hair loose, occasionally pinning it back with a simple clip or ribbon when it begins to bother her. Any attempt at a ponytail is generally abandoned by the end of the day.
Like the wardrobe of most eleven-year-olds, Sylvia’s closet is less of a curated style and more a collection of unrelated pieces. Around her neck she wears a circular jade pendant.

Mental Description: How strange it is that, for all the time she spends trying to understand others, Sylvia has not the faintest idea of herself. To put Sylvia Engelbrecht into words would be to chart a black hole. This is not to say that she is devoid of character, but rather that every trait she possesses seems to exist only in comparison to someone else. Practical, observant, and often mistaken for cold, Sylvia wants desperately to be known as her own person, yet how difficult must it be to become that when she has never learnt to see herself without someone else beside her.

Biography: Born into the great Engelbrecht name, Sylvia has often wondered if she might feel lighter as a Pierre, tucked beneath her father’s quieter surname rather than carrying the weight of a family crowded with philanthropists and academics.
Her parents, being the bright and righteous people they are, attempted to give their children the freedom to develop interests beyond the family’s control. No career was forced upon Sylvia, nor was she expected to become a copy of any particular relative. Yet being surrounded by people who appeared to have already discovered some important purpose made this freedom feel less generous than intended. Sylvia was allowed to become anyone and, therefore, became increasingly frightened that she might become no one at all.
Her twin brother, Argenis Pierre, should have borne the surname of equal shine to his first. He was many things Sylvia was not: tender, charming, openly moved by the world, a feeler through and through. The pragmatism which once earned her so much praise gradually became evidence of some supposed coldness. When food fell to the floor, Sylvia picked it up and continued eating while Argie mourned the waste; when a toy broke, she reached for glue while he grieved its nuts and bolts. What once made her sensible now made her heartless, while her brother charmed every room by feeling aloud. She loved him dearly, of this she was certain. Yet between them, as is most natural between twins, there had always been comparison and therefore competition. Sylvia had long believed it was one she would lose, and all she wanted now was for Argenis to win happily. For him to remain the golden child while she withdrew into silver, the lesser metal, or perhaps into the far less flattering role of the family’s black sheep.
With Zhouyin, siblinghood was much less layered. While others handled him with the peculiar delicacy for his past, Sylvia saw little reason to treat him as anything other than her brother. He had his own stocking beside theirs above the fireplace, a toothbrush from the same packet, and the same silver running through his name. What further proof of belonging could possibly be required?
His presence also offered Sylvia a reassurance she hated herself for needing: however far she strayed from the family, blood still fastened her to it, a claim Zhouyin could never outdo, or so she told herself in her least generous moments. It was a mean little comfort, made worse by the fact that he had never once treated belonging as a competition.
Perhaps in apology for this cruelty he never knew she possessed, Sylvia tried very hard to be the best sister she could. She taught herself cat’s cradle for him, their fingers joined again and again by the same loop of string, and when he discovered she would soon be leaving for Hogwarts, Zhouyin gave her a circular jade pendant strung upon the very cord they had passed between their hands. Sylvia has worn it every day since.

FIOM: Sylvia was nine when, during another one of their family dinners she suspected existed solely as an excuse for the elders to size up the children as though they were betting on horses, she overheard her grandmother saying that Argenis felt enough for the both of them.
This sentence trailed after her back to the table, where she sat turning the silver clip in her hair between her fingers when suddenly it crumbled beneath her touch, its jagged fragments cutting into her palm.
She bled silently upon her napkin, watching the dark stain spread through the linen, and did not cry. She simply picked the silver pieces from her skin and slipped them into her pocket, where they sat cold against her thigh for the remainder of the evening. No one took notice, and Sylvia told no one. That night, she hid the lusterless pieces beneath her mattress, where they have remained ever since.