Astrid Nereim | First Year | Ravenclaw

For every Nereim generation in the past several hundred years, there has been at least one witch or wizard who decided (wrongly) that they were the exception to the rule and began dabbling in the Dark Arts. Perhaps it was a family curse, or perhaps it was simply the family's close ties to Durmstrang, where such experimentation wasn't nearly as frowned upon as it should have been, but each time a child was born into the family name, the child's destiny teetered on the edge of a coin flip.

Astrid's parents didn't want that possible fate to befall their daughter, so they left the family castle and fled to England, where they reasoned a Hogwarts education would do a much better job of cautioning Astrid about the dangers of the Dark Arts.

Astrid grew up lonely. After all, she lived in a predominantly muggle town, and, even with her parents' attempts to humble her, the rest of her family constantly whispered in her ear about her own superiority to the non-magical folk of Norwich. She avoided the muggle children as a result, and the few magical children she befriended were mostly friends of diplomacy from other well-off magical families.

The conflicting advice of being told to respect muggles while also being told she was better than them in every way led to Astrid's crushing need to prove herself worthy of the family name she inherited. She rarely, if ever, refuses a challenge or a chance to prove herself, no matter the risk.

Despite her bravado and the fact that her family castle is nestled neatly in a fjord in Norway, Astrid has an ironic fear of water. She can't swim, and boats scare the daylights out of her. It's only fitting, then, that this fear became the catalyst of her magical abilities awakening.

One day, when she was eight years old on a potion ingredient harvesting trip in the woods with her mom, Astrid had a small fall and fell into a lake, but, instead of thrashing about in an attempt not to drown, Astrid found the water of the lake to be quite solid, and quite bouncy. She bounced on the jiggly, gelatin-like surface of the water until she finally found her feet back on solid ground.

Her letter from Hogwarts came a few years later, when she was on the cusp of her eleventh birthday, and her parents were immensely relieved.