WC: 603

Link to your encyclopedia thread: Trunk
Name of Ability that you Are Applying for: Keen Eye
Describe why this fits your character

WC 460/400

Earl Gray looked just like his mother. And Mr. Gray knew he did it on purpose. Whether it was to mess with him or not, that was still up for debate. What wasn't up for debate, was that his son was rather vain. Spent hours in front of mirrors sometimes, tailoring his appearance. Earl had a fine hand. He was a sculptor, a painter, perfecting his own body the way an artist would perfect a piece. Eyes a little bigger and wider. Made his nose a little smaller, the freckles a little more obvious. The eyebrows a little neater. Made his hair an even more obnoxious shade of pink, even curlier and harder to manage.

So over the years, Mr. Gray had become jaded to how beautiful his son truly was. Earl was like....a vase. A glass flower. Gorgeous, but fragile, in the way no young boy should be. Mr. Gray feared that if he breathed on the boy too hard, he would fall apart. He'd taken Earl's mirror away during the summer. Handed him a football and kicked him out of the house, hoping the friends and the exercise would distract him. And yet, Earl always found a way. His reflection in car windows, in puddles. The camera on his phone, when he thought Mr. Gray wasn't looking. He'd grown to despise his son because of it.

Others didn't, however. They loved his son. His mild tempered, beautiful, kindhearted, snowflake of a son. "You are so lucky. He's such a cute kid." He'd heard that line so many times. But young boys weren't supposed to be cute. They were supposed to run around and eat dirt and climb trees. They were supposed to play from dusk till dawn, not stay inside obsessing over their jawline.

Magic had taken that away from Earl. It was a sickness Mr. Gray couldn't protect him from. He couldn't take his boy's curse away like he could his phone. And that blasted app with the obnoxious dances. He couldn't stop him from obsessing no matter what he did. Couldn't make him normal. So yes, Earl was beautiful. Cute. Handsome. He was gorgeous in the way no human being should have a right too. Distracting to people. To girls. To young boys, even. And it was his fault. His, and his mother's.

His mother's fault, for buying him clothes and makeup, and encouraging the obsession. His, for allowing Earl to exist. Their family was a downright mess. And his son was sick with something that had no cure.

word count: 423

Link to your encyclopedia thread: here
Stats: Stamina: 10 Evasion: 7 Strength: 5 Wisdom: 4 ArcPower: 7 Accuracy: 7

First Year Ability

Name of ability that are applying for: Calming Presence
Describe why this fits your character:

Reducio

Cosmo has spent such a large portion of her life existing in nature that nature itself has almost seemed to seep into her bones. The tranquility that comes from long walks where ferns brush your legs, and the patience it takes to learn bird calls or watch the birthing of a fawn have been buried deep into who she is. With each new blissful or breathtaking experience Cosmo's awe and appreciation for wilderness, including the quiet that one often needs to witness its beauty, has grown. Many adults in our world wait the whole year to be able to get away on a vacation and experience the peace that she was raised with every day.

This lifestyle was made possible because Cosmo lives in a gorgeous country town, and because she was homeschooled, giving her countless free time. Everyone around her was living the same carefree life, which has informed her brain as she grew on how to talk and act. All of her role models from her mother to the lady who sells fish in the town square hold a deep respect for one another, and barely any altercations occur. When they do, they are handled maturely and without raised voices or hurtful insults.

Before Hogwarts, the only person in Cosmo's life to expose her to that kind of behaviour was her Grandmother, and the time that she spent living with Cosmo and her mother was possibly some of her most informative times regarding anger. Cosmo's mother taught her to release frustration healthily, by putting space between herself and whichever situation was difficult at the time, only returning once she felt ready. Cosmo's grandmother on the other hand always threw herself into a spat anytime something upset her in any way. This was the first time that Cosmo realised her presence could put someone at ease, and she would spend a small amount of time with her Grandmother after she yelled, immediately the household seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as tensions went down.

Since moving into Hogwarts where there are so many other children with varying degrees of
healthy communication, Cosmo is realising not many others carry around the same little pocket of calm that she does. So she now makes a deliberate effort to move calmly and speak softly if she notices someone is feeling overwhelmed. When she talks to people she knows to listen to them, and really hear, to make sure that she never tries to enforce her own beliefs onto someone else, and to make sure people feel as though their opinions are valuable. At times her optimism and good nature could be seen as naivety, but in most instances it makes people feel liked, and calm.

Word Count: 455

Second Year Ability

Name of ability that you are applying for: Healing Sage
Describe why this fits your character:

Reducio

Many of the reasons for Cosmo having Calming Presence hold true with Healing Sage. Her gentle and caring nature goes hand in hand with her inclination to heal, and her exposure to wildlife from a very young age has given her a confidence around animals that she needed if she was to pull off any of her rescues. Even as a toddler Cosmo avoided standing on bugs, and would waddle around helping her mother spread bird seed and place sticks in the birdbath so frogs and other small creatures could climb out.

Her first real rescues happened when she was a little older, and allowed to wander further than her backyard. She found her first animal when she was six, it was a small brown hare with scratched up hind legs, from what she later deduced was a cat. The hare couldn't hop, so catching it and bringing it home was easy, harder was figuring out how to help it. Her mother made a salve from several muggle healing plants, and they bandaged his legs. Other than cleaning its wounds and rest there wasn't anything either of them could think to do. It took three days but by the end he was happily hopping around the lounge, and Cosmo's mother deemed it time to release it. After that rescue came many others, and eventually a whole room was set up for animals that Cosmo would find and bring in; hedgehogs with eye infections, eagles with broken wings, the list went on and as she grew Cosmo learnt more and more about healing animals.

Eventually the town heard of their little set up, and farm animals would be brought in too, chickens who were being picked on and loosing feathers came in for a little respite until they were healthy enough to return to the flock. A donkey with botfly came and stayed in their yard until he was healed. Sometimes it was sad, because although Cosmo and her mother did as much as possible, they couldn't save all the animals and Cosmo had to learn how to deal with not only the loss of her father, but of many animals over the years too. Perhaps the amount of loss that she experienced is what gives her the motivation to heal anyone she sees in pain, or perhaps it is simply empathy. Either way, Cosmo now carries around a tiny medicine bag in her backpack, and often hands out bandaids to first years with scraped up knees or people coming from herbology who've had a run in with an angry plant.

Word Count: 430

Link to your encyclopedia thread: LINK
Name of Ability I’m Applying for ( Ability for 3rd year): Death Defiance
Describe why this fits your character:

Reducio

Eun-ji comes from a family that is incredibly focused on helping others as well as keeping themselves in good health. Her mother is a healer at St. Mungo’s while her muggle born father works as a surgeon at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Over the years, the young witch learned a lot from both of them. Her curiosity and stubbornness broke her parents’ resolve to keep her away from ugly injuries or diseases. Not to mention their lovely daughter loves ballet and is prone to injuries herself. This meant she would come to learn about as well as experience plenty of medical care and healing spells. Eleanor always said Eun-ji seemed to have a talent for both methods of healing and while she wasn’t allowed to learn the spells herself just yet, she would be allowed to witness the process whenever possible. The young witch would often come to work with her parents since they were too busy with their jobs and didn’t want to leave her home alone. Any attempts to keep the girl away from the unpleasant scenes in their workplace would be soon discarded. She was too sneaky and incredibly light on her feet. It was simply impossible to keep track of her amidst of the chaos.

“Fine, you can survey the accessible areas and ask questions but when I say go, you will turn around and leave, is that clear?” Her mother finally gave in one day. “Alright,” Eun-ji smiled, feeling victorious. “Pinky promise,” her father added in a rather serious tone. After all, there were injuries even adults struggled to take in. She was way too young to see those. Thankfully, the young witch was smart and knew the compromise was inevitable so she didn’t protest against that particular condition. “Pinky promise,” she agreed without hesitation.

After that she would go around the hospitals and ask any questions that came to mind. Her parents would answer to the best of their abilities and make her understand how everything worked. “Remember, We are teaching you not because we expect you to help everybody you meet but to understand those conditions and how the human body works. It might help you recognize the symptoms or nearby dangers but we are mostly hoping you would be able to prevent similar injuries and alignments when it comes to yourself. If you want to help others you must first and foremost keep yourself safe, is that understood?” Eun-ji would always remember that particular piece of advice. Her father was right. She was armed with knowledge that many others wouldn’t have and while it might come in handy when it came to other people, she should always focus on her own safety first. Nobody else would do it for her.

WC: 459
*Prerequisite: Healing Sage (fulfilled)

Link to your encyclopedia thread: click me
Name of Ability or Race that you are applying for:
Fourth Year: Advanced Casting
Fifth Year: Impartial
Describe why this fits your character (not why you the player want it):

Advanced Casting:

Reducio

More often than not his [Glen's] absent-mindedness and distractions led to his spells either not working in the first place or – if he was really unlucky – backfiring on him instead of hitting the target. It also didn't help that he – again, occasionally – got a bit overzealous in his spell casting and pushed far more power into a spell than it actually needed to succeed.

The dichotomy in his spell casting frustrated Glen to no end. Admittedly it really was on par for the course for him, but that did not make it any less frustrating when such mishaps happened. Which was why Glen actually sat down and devoted a big chunk of his free (study) time during his Third and Fourth year at Hogwarts to trying to get a grip on the issue.

Glen being Glen did not make a study schedule for himself to follow so that he would remember to do it regularly and often. No, he practiced whenever he actually remembered that he wanted to practice. (Which, for him, happened surprisingly often, but still.) It was no stuctured progress and success happened in fits and spurts.

In the beginning it was... moderately successful at best, if not a complete failure at worst. (Sometimes he thought that he must've been getting worse before he got better at it.) But over time his epic failures did happen less and less. He still got distracted far too easily (and as such would probably never perfect his spells) to stop it entirely, but as the occasional failed casting, misfires and backfires happened less often, he noticed that he seemed to overcompensate by overpowering his spells more often in turn.

In practice that meant less singed eyebrows or self-petrification and more blinding himself temporarily by overpowering a Lumos (for some reason it was still his most inconsistent spell) or getting hit by a summoned object because it came at him too fast.

On one such occasion he almost managed to knock himself into the Great Lake. The weather had been really nice and he had decided to spent the time between his (early) breakfast and morning classes outside. Naturally, he had lost track of time and when he realised that he was about to be late for class, he'd jumped up and ran a few first steps toward the castle before skittering to a stop because in his panic he'd forgotten to grab his bag. Instead of retracing the couple of steps to his bag like a normal person, he had instead grabbed his wand and Accio'd the bag.

His practicing had borne fruit, and he easily succeeded in summoning the bag to him. Too easily. Half due to his momentary panic, half due to the strength of his spell, while he managed to catch the bag before it hit him in the chest, the bag flew at him hard enough and with enough oomph to stagger him, almost making him topple over as he did not brace himself in time. He must have looked like an idiot trying to catch himself. Oh well, it wasn't like he was known for being poised.

In another such instance he had been looking for the scroll of parchment with his half-finished homework essay for … DADA? Maybe. He didn't remember what class the homework had been for, but he definitely remembered using the Ascension Spell to raise the book he had been reading earlier into the air to check beneath it and having it hit the ceiling with a bang instead of simply making it fly in the air for a moment. He had liked that book and did not appreciate the (minimal) damage it sustained from its adventure. Maybe he should've rather tried to use Wingardium Leviosa?

But, while he still struggled with control, the practice had paid off. He was now more often 'too successful' at casting rather than failing at it.
Word Count:654 (-63 quoted from Spell Spread in the beginning)

Impartial:

Reducio

As they all grew older, Glen noticed another area in which he seemed to be unlike many of his fellow students. Well, 'noticed' is generous. He did not notice. He pretty much got hit over the head with it back in February, when he had stumbled his way into the Valentine's Day event. Heck, the fact that it he hadn't even realised what the event was about – newsflash, Glen, this is not a simple picnic – despite the announcement being pretty upfront about it spoke volumes. Sure, he tended to have his head in the clouds but that was on a whole other level probably. Still, if left on its own it would hardly have mattered. Just another awkward interaction with other people. Business as usual.

But in the aftermath of that, he noticed that some students seemed to be tripping all over htemselves even more than he often did – but only when speaking to select people. Strange. And it wasn't always with the same people (depending on the person) but there was enough of an overlap that there had to be a pattern to this somehow. But Glen was stumped. There had to be something to set those people apart, but he couldn't tell what it could be. To him, it seemed completely random. Well, that wasn't completely true... if it was completely random there would not be any sort of pattern to it and yet there quite obviously was something.

It was only when he overheard two of the students he'd seen act weirdly for no discernable reason that things clicked into place for him. The two were dreamily extolling the “arresting beauty and utter hotness”& absolutely gorgeous” looks of their person of … interest?, yeah, that sounded about right. It still didn't make all that much sense to him, but he at least now knew what was up with people.

Glen himself though did not see the appeal. Sure, this person or that might be aesthetically pleasing or whatever, but so was many a painting and people did not act strangely around those. It didn't explain why some people acted like those people were blinding lights they could not look away from. Well, no, it explained it. He wasn't a complete moron, he had read books and watched enough TV back home that he abstractly understood it.

It just didn't seem to apply to him. There were a lot more fascinating things in the world than people's faces. Seriously, all faces looked kinda the same for all their differences, they were faces. And besides, with how many super-duper awesome (or well, “attractive” if one wanted to be boring) people attended the school they kinda had to blur together, too. If there was just one person maybe he could've understood where people were coming from, but given how many there seemed to be … nope.

Even if someone had been affected in the first place, surely they would get accustomed, grow immune... Like immersion therapy. But no, evidently not.

And then there was the whole other can of worms that seemed to follow on the heels of that – dating. There had been firsties at that event! So weird. He was beginning his fifth year now, and he still didn't get the appeal there either. It took up so much time. Time that could be better spent elsewhere in his opinion. Why would someone want to sit in a stuffy room with someone all the time – and the same person no less? Didn't that get boring?

It wasn't like they did anything interesting then either, from what he could tell. They mostly just … talked. (And some of them kissed, but still. On that note, why would anyone want to do that more than once?) Boring. There was so much else that one could do in that time!

But alright, giving the benefit of the doubt where it was deserved; conversations could be quite interesting sometimes, if not outright fascinating. (Spoons! … come to think of it, did that conversation derail that way because of this stuff as well?? Oh boy.) One could learn new things by having a conversation. Get to know differing viewpoints informed by another's life experiences. So. He had to give them that. But that still did not account for the looks thing!! One did not learn anything interesting by looking at a person and acting like an idiot. Hell, a lot of them time they did not even talk to said person! Really, what was the point?!
Word Count:757

STATUS: Approved