Madeline Catriona Howard - Second Year - Ravenclaw

Full Name: Madeline Catriona Howard

History/Background Story: Slightly taller than many of her peers, standing 5' 0" tall, she has long curly fiery auburn hair that she prefers to wear in braids, pale skinned marked with freckles. Due to her time being home-schooled by her mother, she loves to cook, and to work in the kitchen with ingredients, and tend her herb garden. Sitting home nights watching her younger siblings while her parents are working, she took to reading anything she could find in her family library - books ranging from Floo maintenance, potion and ingredient prep, the odd Muggle cookbook her mother brought home, and some old charms textbooks from when her parents were in school. Madeline never quite fit in with the other children around her. Her father did not have a glamorous occupation - working for the Ministry in the Floo Maintenance department. James Howard (father - a pureblood wizard) works with the Ministry of Magic in the Floo network maintenance department. He often travels from place to place fixing issues with hearths and other Floo locations when necessary. Isla Howard (mother - muggle born) works at home during the day as a homemaker and home school mom. Madeline's mother was a witch, and quite an accomplished one Madeline thought, but according to her mother, the most important thing she could do was to teach her children and be a wife and mother - that was why she stayed home rather than going out to work for the Ministry, or some other profession. Madeline's own mother had taught her this when she was younger. Isla's mother was a muggle, but Madeline had never met any of that part of her mother's family. Shortly after Madeline's mother had been accepted into Hogwarts, her father and mother were involved in a terrible accident and both perished. As an only child and no grandparents on either side, Isla was blessed by a local wizarding family that was willing to take her in until she graduated from Hogwarts. It was due to her muggle upbringing that Isla loved to cook, and would bring home random muggle recipe books. She made sure not to interact too much with the muggle world - it seemed to help with the loss of her family to just close off that part of her - with the only exceptions being cooking, and staying at home just like her own mother. The family works hard, but with six mouths to feed on a Floo Maintenance Tech's salary, the family struggles to make it. Due to this Madeline does not have any friends outside of her family - siblings and some cousins from a neighboring village. She tends to spend most of her time in the kitchen with her mum, or reading through the family's small library of history books - and when possible getting Owl delivered library books.

First Instance of Magic: When I was 8, on my father's 40th birthday, my mum and I were in the kitchen preparing his favorite birthday dish - venison stew. Mum and I were working on preparing the ingredients first like she always told me. I was in charge of cutting the venison roast into the smaller cuts so mum could put them in the pot to brown. I had completed cutting all of the venison, placed it in a bowl and was walking around the counter when my younger brother crawled in front of me looking at the toad he had just caught. I tripped over his crawling form and lost control of the bowl and venison. As it flew out of my hands and toward the ground I knew my mum would be upset, and my da would be disappointed at losing the costly roast. All I could do was scream and reach for the bowl - and to my great wonder and surprise the bowl with the venison froze in the middle of the air. My mum turned around after hearing me cry out, saw the bowl and started to holler from my da to come in and see what had just happened. Mum grabbed the bowl out of the air and finished the stew. They were so excited that I had finally shown some magic that I got the largest piece of venison that day.