multiversal Application

[greatestofthese]

Out of Character Information
Name: Carly
Username: veryroundbird
Are you over the age of eighteen? y
Current characters in Baedal: Jones, Alexia Swiftdawn

In Character Information
Basics
Character Name: Charity Burbage
Username: greatestofthese
Fandom: Harry Potter
Played By: Charlotte Gainsbourg
Icon: here

Canon Character Section
please note that like 80% of this is A) headcanon and B) Carly making shit up to make hpverse make consistent sense /o/
Physical Description: Charity is in her early forties, has dark, shoulder-length hair, laugh lines, and slightly birdlike features. Her facial expression tends to gravitate toward "serious" as its neutral state, but she has a bright smile and an easy laugh. For her sense of dress, she prefers professional attire; while she is, in fact, a professor at Britain's only school of magic, she is also the professor of Muggle Studies and can, therefore, get away with skipping the damn robe. She doesn't even know why those are still a thing.

Sexuality: There are no canon examples, soooooo: headcanon! Charity is straight and married, although she has kept her marriage on the DL because she kind of... regularly gets death threats for her political views and essay writing on that subject and she doesn't want to put her family in danger. She initially met Thomas Edwards at Hogwarts, where he was in Hufflepuff house and the second generation of his family to have magical ability, but didn't take much notice of him until they met again at Oxford and hit it off over philosophy. She finds intelligence and an academic nature extremely hot.

History: Charity Burbage was born at the late end of the post-war baby boom to Justice Jerigan and Richard Burbage. Justice was part of a long line of very clever witches with a progressive bent; Richard was a muggle-born wizard who'd left the magical world to go fight in the second World War. She grew up with both a keen interest in learning and a sense of justice and inclination toward making the world a better place.

It took a while for her to fully work out what that meant to her specifically, though. She grew older, and as expected from her strong magical talent, received an invitation letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She was sorted into Gryffindor, and immediately set about causing trouble.

Not the sort of trouble that most students get into, though--she wasn't caught sneaking around the castle after hours or playing pranks. She asked questions. She asked why. She started petitions and sent them to the Headmaster, who mostly laughed at them. She threw pencils at Professor Binns until he would consent to elucidate on what she had asked and got poor grades on papers because she refused to answer the set topic and instead began questioning the topic itself.

Her parents were pleased, which meant that there was nothing doing. Flitwick enjoyed her, since she was clever and--unlike many other students--had a fondness for innovation and wanted to know more about how spells worked; McGonagall appreciated her in a way, and was impressed with Charity's talent and skill, but wished she would stop being so disruptive.

As Charity was about to end her studies at Hogwarts, Lord Voldemort was rising to power; however, she had other things on her mind, including heading to Oxford. Nonetheless, she still kept abreast of events in Wizarding Britain and the quickly souring political situation.

She ended up studying abroad and interned with the Center for Alchemical Research in Egypt, but kept up correspondence with her younger cousin Verity, still in England, who was increasingly into politics. During that time she also wrote several essays on her theories for the root of the situation in England (stagnation, unwillingness to challenge the status quo, fear of progress), which she copied to the Daily Prophet (none were published during that time).

During that time, she continued to learn, but also was considering her future plans. She found herself increasingly drawn toward education, as a field; her experiences as a student in Wizarding Britain and then in other countries had given her a yen to make the experiences of future young magical learners better. She returned to Oxford to get a teaching certification, which was where she re-met Thomas Edwards.

She and Thomas had been at Hogwarts at roughly the same time; he was a second-generation wizard and had been in Hufflepuff house. He as well had a fondness for learning that the wizarding world hadn't satisfied, and had, after undergraduate education and a stint working at the Ministry and then in various mundane white-collar jobs, returned to get a law degree. They hit it off immediately, and were married a year and a half later.

Charity and Thomas had a daughter, who they named Vivacity (traditionally, Charity's family named children after virtues they hoped the kids would have). The situation in the country, however, was not ideal to raise a child, particularly since Charity was likely on the Death Eaters' hit list for her political opinions which she insisted on voicing loudly whenever possible, so the family temporarily moved abroad to America, where Charity guest-lectured at several universities, both magical and muggle, and Thomas built his law career. They were briefly interviewed by government officials and think tank writers more than once regarding the situation in England; apparently the Ministry of Magic had refused to accept aid, and many wizarding communities had posted travel warnings.

Voldemort, of course, fell a year later, although the Edwards-Burbage family waited a few years to move back while things calmed down, and while they finished up commitments overseas. While they did like it abroad, England was home. Vivacity attented the best muggle schools they could manage, and received her beginning magical education at home from her mother and father; she was already showing magical ability, and Charity's own family and study abroad had taught her that not all magic was cast with wands.

Viv turned out to be bright both in her studies as well as in personality; she made friends easily and was, with her parents' guidance, kind, friendly, and idealistic. (At the age of eight, she had decided that she'd be Minister of Magic, Prime Minister, an astronaut, and an Olympic medalist.) They made sure she spent time with children her own age of both mundane and wizarding backgrounds.

Time went on, and Viv grew up, and soon enough she was heading off to Hogwarts for her first year of official magical education. Charity couldn't have been more surprised when she was sorted into Slytherin house--although it did make a certain sort of roundabout sense. She did, certainly, have ambition.

Due to the events that transpired at the end of the year, though, and some difficulties Viv was having with her housemates, Charity wondered if she ought to be closer to her. When the Muggle Studies professorship opened up, it was serendipitous. (She denies that she went to Hogwarts and told Albus Dumbledore in no uncertain terms that she would have the position but that... may have been what happened. If it is in fact possible to tell Albus Dumbledore to do anything that he didn't already want to do.)

Of course, she nor Vivacity publicized their familial relationship; having a mother as the Muggle Studies teacher would only make things worse for Viv, but at least she could be there for her in her off-hours and be doing good work at the same time. While she personally would have liked for her course to be mandatory for all students, she attempted (mostly successfully, if only from student self-selection) to instill values of curiosity, understanding, and a certain sense for ethics in her students. In her opinion, many wizards tended to see muggles as something less than, and she aimed to change that. (As well as cure at least a few young wizards and witches of that boggling tendency to be eternally perplexed by anything run with electricity.)

One of her favorite students was Hermione Granger; while Granger clearly didn't need the class, she was very bright, asked a lot of good questions, and was willing to think critically about the whys and the hows of current and historical wizard-muggle relations.

She, of course, continued to write, and increasingly so as it became more and more clear that old conflicts were going to return. Voldemort was not so much the problem, in her mind; it was the sort of ideology that allowed asshats like him to flourish and have followers. One man with a murderstick can only do so much, even if he is stupidly immortal.

So the summer of 1996, she made up her mind. Thomas and Viv were overseas visiting family friends while Charity finished up her lesson plans in her Hogsmeade apartment that she used mostly for work, so there was no danger to them if someone got a bit shirty about it. That, and she would be waiting for it.

When they came for her, she fought liked the doomed woman she was; some fell to booby traps she'd set up and she killed more than one of them before they managed to subdue her. She figured if they wanted her temporarily alive, she might as well give them what for.

They tortured her, mostly for amusement, trying to make her recant, but she wouldn't. If there was one thing that Charity Burbage would do over her own dead body, it was compromising on her beliefs for her own personal comfort.

So they killed her.

--or wait. She saw something that might have been a flash of green light, yes. But it turned out to be...

...a little green-tiled room?

Powers: Charity has Harry Potter-type magic; she uses a wand to cast spells, generally, and uses dog latin in the casting. She is quite good at charms and potions; she is all right at transfiguration, although she ethically objected to turning animals into objects at the age of eleven since it smacked of animal cruelty. (She brought a clipping of "The Rights of Animals," which she requested her mother owl to her.)

She has experience in alternate methods of casting magic. She has a cousin who is something of an expert in that field; Charity is nowhere near as good, but has practiced enough to be fairly reliable wandless, and occasionally casts ritually or via other implements such as magic circles and materials with documented magical properties.

Talents/Abilities:: Charity has a B.A. in Political Science and History, a M.A. in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Political Science. She also has a Master's of Magical Arts in History of Magic from Harvard's Magical Studies department. She has a number of published journal articles in both muggle and magical academia and is a noted essayist in her areas of study. (She would really like to take over History of Magic, but alas.)

Personality: Charity is strongly in tune to social justice and educational ideals; this is not because she ran into any particular hardships as a young person, but because it was something instilled in her by her parents at a young age. As a person with opportunities and a fine mind, it was her responsibility to use those things to better the world.

Indeed, what she saw as she grew up only reaffirmed what she'd been taught as a child. At Hogwarts, she saw most of her magically-raised peers using their privilege to bully others and enforce the status quo.

She also is a very determined, resolute person; she does not leave things half-finished if she can, and is completely unwilling to compromise her ideals. Most importantly, in her view, she is very careful to examine the beliefs and ideals she holds and why she holds them. While she takes a more intellectual bent to her bravery than most Gryffindors, she still embodies the courage and brashness that the house she was sorted into is known for.

Object: It's not her wand! She will not have a wand, at least to start. What she has instead is her theses and a handful of copies of journals for which she's written articles, both magical and mundane. Apparently the powers that be want her at the University.

Reason for playing: Well, first of all I kind of love Charity because even though she appears in one scene, which is where she's getting killed by Voldemort, you know she's kind of a bamf at least in some ways: she published an essay in the Prophet which was basically publicly giving the finger to Voldemort, and likely knowing the probable consequences.

Also I just kind of like the fact that there is someone in this universe who canonically is into ideals. /o/

Gods: Ruun, as she is both an educator and an essayist, and is in love with the written word and intellectual discourse. Possibly Eliandre, since she was also snatched right from death's doorstep and is really into justice.

4. Original Character Section

Writing Samples
First-Person Network Post: glorious dear mun post is glorious

First-Person Journal Post:
I knew it I *knew* it, this is *definitely* my calling. Hah! Who'd ever have thought I'd be teaching at Hogwarts! And yet here I am. And a good thing, too; my predecessors seem to have considered this a rocks-for-jocks sort of class. I also don't know *why* this course is only taught to third-years and above as an elective; I'll have to talk to the Headmaster about making it required for all years.

I swear, it's like half these kids come direct from several centuries ago. But we'll get there, I hope. If they're taking the course, at least that means they're interested; I've set them on reading selections from age-appropriate muggle authors to illustrate what little difference magic makes in genius.

I've so much ground to cover, though. This class is about muggle culture, yes, but considering how little of it they get elsewhere, someone's got to teach critical thinking and--well--*actual* culture. Only the muggle-born children recognized *Pietà*, for the love of Pete. And all they knew about the second World War was that it was "some muggle war that was about the time of Grindelwald." If Binns wasn't already dead, I would murder him.

Yes, it's good that I'm here... though I should really finish up these assignment plans before it's time for weekly tea with Viv. Always busy, but that's how I like it, after all.

Third-Person Action Post:
Fuck, does everything hurt. Just shifting to what would ordinarily be a more comfortable position is a bitch, so Charity's sort of awkwardly curled up, leaning slightly against a wall of the dungeon. She can't believe the Malfoys have a goddamn dungeon. That's practically medieval--oh, wait. Nope. She can definitely believe it.

Her laughter is hoarse and comes out more like a cough. Okay, maybe she won't be trying that one again. At least she's still got her sense of humor, though. There's that. It helps stave off the voice in the back of her head that whispers you're not leaving this place; you'll never see your husband or daughter again; you're a dead woman.

She could have written that article from the United States; she could have taken her family overseas and asked for protection and everything, and all would be well. But she is tired. Tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of trying to toe the line such that no one takes too much offense. Sometimes revolutions are born of little gestures--of educating others, of demonstrated kindnesses, of quiet words. And sometimes they need to be started by grand gestures.

She can hear Bellatrix Lestrange's raucous, mad laughter echoing down the hall now, and schools her features into a grim, determined smile, and recalls her Hugo. *Whatever happens today, through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution we are about to create.*

Misc
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