Physical Description: Tall for her age with a skinny build and a square face that, in Emerson’s opinion, makes her look like a bobblehead doll. She thinks that wearing her long, black hair down helps combat this “problem,” but hates how it gets in the way when she’s working or reading, so more often than not it winds up plaited anyway. Her wide set eyes are dark brown framed by scant lashes and sharp eyebrows. Generally quite pale, Emerson breaks out into a riot of freckles every spring and summer thanks to all the time she spends outdoors.

Mental Description: Reserved, focused, and studious: these have been the first words written on her school reports for as long as Emerson can remember. She dreams of becoming a famous barrister (or solicitor, she hasn’t quite decided yet), and winning an Olympic gold medal for equestrian jumping. More than anything she hates to have her inadequacies pointed out, no matter how small and/or imagined they might be. A rivalry is ten thousand times more likely to get under her skin than flat-out bullying or social sleights which she’s become rather adept at ignoring thanks to years of being surrounded by one kind of snobbery or another. While she can be very goal-oriented, she isn’t a selfish person. Emerson is the kind of friend who’ll pick up on subtle changes in behavior and be the first to respond with a shoulder to cry on, homework help, or an offer to bestow grievous bodily harm depending on the situation at hand.

Biography: Emerson's parents are bad wizards.  Literally bad wizards.  No Death Eater hoods here, just two fully-grown Hogwarts grads struggling to produce basic levitation charms.  After barely scraping one NEWT apiece, Aldric and Xenia West decided to ditch this whole magic thing and go seek their fortune in the muggle world.  Their families (and every other person who'd ever seen either of them try to cast a spell) were in full support of this plan.  Thanks to a parental loan, some blind luck, and their pureblood-bred knack for social climbing, the Wests were able to build a happy, lucrative, and well-connected life for themselves. There was only one thing missing: a perfect, darling bundle of joy.

Enter Emerson. Given their own severely limited magical abilities, Aldric and Xenia assumed that their daughter would be a squib. After all, a few hundred years of pureblood inbreeding was bound to dry up the magical well sooner or later. With this in mind, Emerson was raised knowing about magic the same way that other kids knew about zodiac signs: Mummy was a Sagittarius, Daddy was a Leo, and they’d both gone to school at a place called Hogwarts so they could learn how to levitate things and make fire appear without a lighter. Other than a few off-hand comments about quidditch and politics, Emerson’s upbringing was almost entirely devoid of magic. She attended an independent muggle primary school, took extensive horseback lessons, and planned on going to a prestigious boarding school to develop her equestrian talents and earn a place at the Russel Group university of her choosing.

All of those plans imploded when an owl delivered a most unwelcome letter on the morning of her eleventh birthday. Aldric and Xenia had made yet another magical miscalculation: their daughter was a witch, and there was nothing they could do about it.

First Instance of Magic: This, Emerson thought as she felt herself lift out of the saddle, was going to be A Bad Fall. She’d fallen loads of times before, obviously; a person didn’t make it through six years of almost-daily lessons without tipping off their horse a few dozen times. There was quite a difference, though, between a fall and A Bad Fall. The former ended with a bruised ego and maybe a bloody nose. The later…well. Amy McIntyre had spent two weeks in hospital having her leg bones pieced together and Holly Jones had quit riding altogether after they’d popped her shoulder back into place right there in the dressage ring.

Even now, as she flew over Unity’s neck, Emerson thought that had been an overreaction on Holly’s part. Was she about to smash chest-first into a stone wall? Yes. Would it hurt? Oh, absolutely. But she wasn’t about to strop off because she’d made an ill-advised jump. Well, a forbidden jump, technically, but Miss Greene had been urging her to push herself, so -

Emerson threw her arms around her face, grimacing into the worn fleece of her jacket as the wall rose up to meet her. Her stomach twisted, bobbing like it did when she took the lift in Daddy’s office building. Stone scraped her knees, which didn’t make much sense, then scrabbled against the bottom of her boots, which didn’t make any sense at all.

She lowered her arms. Her heart hammered in her chest, only to leap into double time when she realized she was standing atop the wall when, by all rights, she ought to have been crushed against it. Unity stood some ten feet away, exactly where she’d refused the jump. The black mare cocked her head and blinked up at her rider almost as though she was waiting for an explanation. “I don’t know either,” Emerson said, “It was almost like-” Her throat closed around the word but it hung there all the same. Magic.