Emilie Towers | Ravenclaw

Emilie's mother, Bliss, died when she was 5. She might not remember her mother well these days, but the day she woke up to her father's cries as he pressed on the witch's chest, begging her to wake up while a woman's voice spoke through the phone, guiding him in CPR, lived in her memory like a rune carved into stone. 'It was an aneurysm, ' Emilie sat in the chair listening to the doctor explain to her father. All she knew was that it wasn't good.

Emilie could still hear her grandmother's wails. How could she possibly be dead, with all the magical knowledge? But the simple fact was that Bliss thought her symptoms were the common cold. She had told her husband she simply needed rest; the headache would pass, it must be a bug going around. She couldn't possibly know that each throb of her head was just the seconds ticking away. No one in Bliss's family had ever had an aneurysm; she was in good health, and she had no symptoms that shouted 'Get help'. 'It's a blessing and a curse, it burst while she slept,' the doctors told Marqus, 'she didn't feel the pain, but it was unlikely you could have done anything'. It didn't feel like a blessing to Emilie.

It took months, possibly longer, for life to return to normal, or as normal as it can be when you lose someone who brought colour and joy into your life. Her father's bookshop was the same, the room she slept in hadn't changed, but everything was forever changed. Her mother's family came and went, offering any help they could, but in the end, it was Marqus, her father, and she who rebuilt their world little by little.

Life was quiet; her father, Marqus, a soft-spoken, gentle man, did his best as a single father to try and bring as much joy to Emilie's life. She took piano lessons, tried karate, and went to renfairs after returning from her grandmother's every summer.

Emilie was a rumbunctious but sweet little girl. She found joy popping out of corners, giving browsers a little fright, taking readers by the hand and leading them to the books she claimed were calling their name, or thumbing through the new arrivals. On rainy days when the shop was slow, Emilie would sneak into the attic to look at her mother's belongings, gently running her finger on the birch wand that her grandmother said was full of magic, or flipping through a photo album that had moving pictures.

Summers were often partially spent with her grandmother and cousins in the magical world. She loved watching her older cousins fly and watching them cast magic like it was second nature. Her grandmother, a shorter but fierce woman, would put her to bed with stories of Goblin warriors, wizards fighting for freedom, or just magical creatures that she claimed wandered around the garden at night.

Inquisitive if a little chaotic. Emilie never stays the 'shy new kid' for too long. Ambivert should be her middle name (It's not, her middle name is Sparrow). She finds being around a good group of friends, laughing, maybe trying to pull off a prank, or just making funny sounds, energizing. But sometimes she needs to wedge herself in a corner, hidden behind a bench or tucked under her bed, reading a classic or comic to find her centre again.

Emilie knew magic was real; she had spent summers with her mother's family, but she didn't feel magical, especially when around them. That is, until she was 10. Stupid Irina McGillis stuck gum in her hair, or tried. Irina often picked on Emilie, but on this day, she was pushing past the name-calling to physical. Emilie sat at her desk reading quietly as they had been told to do when she felt Irina tug on her hair. Emilie didn't know at the time that the girl was trying to stick gum into her dark curls. Another tug, but as Emilie turned to tell the bully to leave her be, she noticed that the girl's hands were covered in a gloopy pink substance. The more she tried to spread the substance on the curls, the more the pink gloop spread on her hands, covering them in a sticky mess. It was finally when Emilie had called over the teacher, and Irina's hands were so sticky and messy that they just stuck to each other, that the substance stopped growing.