Camila Gutiérrez Beauxbatons

Name: Camila Gutiérrez
School: Beauxbatons
Year: 1st
Status: Pureblood

Appearance: Fine featured with long blonde hair and clear hazel eyes, Camila could and has been described as ‘doll-like.’ She’s rather tall for a girl her age, with a slender frame and delicate hands that don’t seem to have seen much work.

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Personality: At odds with her sweet appearance, Camila tends to be somewhat histrionic. She’s clever enough to play a good girl with adults and the members of her family, but with her peers she is loud, brash, and arrogant. She will often belittle people at the drop of a hat, and she looks down her nose at near everyone.

Unlike most people her age, she is genuinely confident in herself. She enjoys challenges and has an uncanny ability to accept failure with aplomb. Uncaring of consequence - particularly since her parents dote on her regardless of what she does, plus she is essentially set for life with their pureblood fortune - she will purposefully get failing grades for most of the year. This ensures incredible pressure near the end of the year when she has to get near-perfect grades to pass. The more pressure she’s under, the more she thrives.

Due to certain events in her past, she romanticizes the ancient Muggle perception of ‘witches’ as old herbalist crones who live in stone hovels and curse towns who don’t treat them well. While she hasn’t much desire to curse anyone, she’s decided that in the future she’d like to become a master potioneer to take after the stereotype she enjoys. Though most people don’t see this side of her, she has a mischievous streak and likes to use harmless spells to cause confusion and chaos. With adults she puts on a tinkling, gentle laugh, but her expression of genuine mirth is a loud, un-girlish cackle.

History:

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It is said that there is a curse on the Gutiérrez family, though no one can pinpoint where it started or why. Still, if you trace the lineage of this Spanish Pureblood family back through the generations, a pattern begins to emerge. None of them were satisfied with what they had regardless of how great or how much it was, and hundreds of years plus a day ago the itch of wanting more that ran through them led them to ruin. Camila's many-greats-grandfather gambled their sizable fortune away in old Muggle parlors, and the disgust from other Purebloods at his having consorted with lesser beings destroyed the Gutiérrez's social foundation in one fell swoop.

Shunned by high society and destroyed financially, the next five generations lived harsh, destitute lives. Each patriarch grew progressively crueler and more desperate until the weight of those lives fell upon the shoulders of Camila's father, Julian. The itch of needing more was strong in his blood, but for once it brought about good tidings. Julian was far and away the shrewdest man the family had ever known, and the passed-down cruelty made him willing to step on anyone to further his goal of turning the Gutiérrez family around.

By the time he was in his mid-twenties, Julian had created a business and ruthlessly clawed his way to the top of his competitors, gaining him enough wealth to put the family back on track to being considered respectable. The next step was erasing the social stigma that still plagued his 'cursed' family, and for this he managed to set up an arranged marriage between himself and the daughter of another Pureblood family who were well-respected but in need of financial assistance.

Carmen Azarolla turned out to be a good fit for Julian, being nearly as ruthless as her husband and, while the pair didn't love each other, in the end they found something more crucial; they liked each other. They had three children out of necessity, deciding it was the correct number to have in case one or more of their children were failures.

Camila was the last of these children and the only girl of the family. She had two older brothers - Gabriel, who was eight years older than her, and Andrés, who was five years older. Despite being heavily involved in Julian's business and often busy, Camila's parents weren't overly bad. They loved their children after a fashion, and Julian saw in Camila that same thirst for more that was in him, which forged a bond between them that wasn't there with the other children. A fundamental understanding of sameness that no one else in the family shared. Julian taught the boys they needed to be tough and merciless, but he didn't see the need with Camila since he felt she would become that kind of person no matter what he taught her. Instead of strict lessons, he offered her whatever she wanted and gifted her anything she could desire on a whim.

For a few years, all was well. Except... as time went on, Gabriel didn't demonstrate any sign of magic. It stretched longer and longer, until even Andrés showed his first magic and the truth couldn't be denied. Gabriel was a Squib.

To his parents, one who came from a crumbling family and the other who came from a family just finally beginning to ascend after many generations, this was a horror of the highest magnitude. It couldn't be allowed to get out that one of their children would never be a wizard, especially with their views on Muggles. Gabriel - the kind older brother Camila loved who had been a model child before being declared magicless - was banished from the house to live with relatives all the way over in America. Andrés and Camila were forbidden from visiting him, communicating with him, or even mentioning him.

It left a strained silence in the household and a dark mark in Camila's mind. She had naturally been raised to believe Muggles were the bad ones, that they would discriminate against wizards and that they had stolen the Gutiérrez family fortune so many years ago because they were evil, but if that was so... then what was the treatment of Gabriel to be called? He wasn't a Muggle, and his being a part of the family wouldn't mean anything bad since he wouldn't discriminate against them.

Wizards were cruel. Wizards were the ones who discriminated. Conversely, reading history, Muggles... did the same. Which side was right? Were either of them? The only ones who seemed totally innocent were the 'witches' in Muggle stories who simply lived as they wished and were punished for it. When Camila brought that up with Andrés, he laughed her off, and between his dismissing her and their internal frustration about Gabriel being sent away, they began to fight.

Camila was proven Not A Squib when she got in a shouting match with Gabriel and he was suddenly muted, as if someone had pressed the mute button on a remote that controlled his volume. No matter how his mouth moved, for minutes no sound came out. When it finally did and he told their parents, Julian and Carmen only cared that their daughter was a witch; they were overjoyed to hear it.

It was the final straw in Camila and Gabriel's relationship, that spoiling of their parents' youngest daughter and further strictness towards their 'oldest son' since they were determined Andrés had to be perfect to make up for his brother. From that point forward, the remaining siblings became incredibly frosty towards each other and haven't gotten along since.

Camila, for all her cleverness, had too many conflicts in her family relationships and so had issues making friends. Her boisterous arrogance didn't help, and by the time she got the acceptance letter to Beauxbatons she was eleven years old and hadn't had a single friend in her life. This was fine; she needed no one. She would become the solitary crone in a cabin in her stories.

Now she attends magic school, and has no plans to change to accommodate anyone. She does poorly in school on purpose for the pressure, only keeping her grades up in Potions class since that is what she wants to do in the future. Nonetheless, her parents - and her father in particular - spoil her no matter what kind of grades she has.

Broom Racer: No
Quidditch Player: No
Duelist: Yes
Stats:

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Stamina - 5
Evasion - 5
Strength - 0
Wisdom - 10
Arc Power - 10
Accuracy - 5

Ability:
Lovely Creature

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Though she wants to be like the witches in the stories she loves, the one thing Camila doesn't like about them is how they're always portrayed as ugly, warty old women. There is something that makes her singularly uncomfortable about the process of aging; the grooves it carves into people's faces, the liver spots it puts on their hands, the rheumy, glazed look of their eyes. She has to hold back waves of revulsion when old women or men clutch her hands to shake, feeling like they want to somehow steal her youth so they can look as they did when they were young.

To combat this, she spends painstaking hours on her appearance. She has her father order tinctures and creams to keep her skin soft and supple, and to reduce any chance that she'll ever develop wrinkles. It's completely illogical and most certainly impossible, but she does it nonetheless. She works hard to ensure there is nary a blemish or discoloration anywhere on her person.

Not that she needs to be concerned about her appearance. Her mother is an absolutely stunning woman, so much so that it makes her father proud to take Carmen out and see the jealous stares he earns. Camila inherited many of her features, from the small nose to the dimples to the long, shining blonde hair. At her age, most of the people at the Pureblood parties fawn over how adorable she is and how pretty she'll grow up to be. Ever since she was young, she knew this and used it to her advantage - a pout here would get her a free candy at the shop, and crocodile tears there would let her leave a particularly boring situation.

Still, there is one thing she inherited from her father. Her eyes are a light hazel, almost gold in the sunlight, and when she narrows them a person would be hard pressed to think of her as soft. That sharp contrast between 'pretty little thing' and 'discerning young woman' elevates her from someone you'd simply glance at to someone your head would follow. She is distractingly lovely, but anyone who sees that gaze and knows Julian Gutiérrez wouldn't want much to do with her.

Recently she's started experimenting with cosmetics, which help enhance her features even more. Sometimes she'll lay it on too thick and look odd, but her mother - a woman who for years weaponized her beauty since her family didn't have much else - is teaching her a subtler touch. Once she masters it and matures into a woman, she'll undoubtedly have just as much success as her mother with using her looks as a weapon.

WC: 443