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Your Nickname: Michael
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: Yes
Are you over thirteen? Yes
How did you find us and decide to write with us? Other
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: Member Board
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

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Full Character Name: Itzayana Cordelia Grimlish

Character Birthday & Age: February 22, 2001 - 11

City & Country of Birth: Hounslow, England

Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn: Halfblood

House & Year: Ravenclaw First Year

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Wand

Itzy's wand is of the finest oak, harvested after the Winter Solstice when oak was King of the Forest. It is said that a large colony of bowtruckles inhabit the old oak, and Itzayana is very interested to meet them one day. The core is unicorn tail hair and the length is neither especially long nor short at just under 10 inches.

The wand is supple and the shaft is spiraled.

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Physical Description

Itzy is quite obviously a Grimlish. She has a pixie cut face with sharp lines but smooth edges. Her dark chocolate eyes are bright and inquisitive, her lips full and plump. Her smile is always a bit mischievous, as if she knows more than she's letting on. At only 11 years of age, her ears are still quite large. She tries to hide them behind her shoulder length brown hair but they just stick out annoyingly.

She's the shortest member of the Grimlish clan, but she hasn't grown into her height yet. She is quite thin and boney, with spindly limbs and long fingers.

Itzy isn't very fashionable and doesn't have any desire to change that fact. She prefers dark, earthy colors and is almost always wearing her favorite hat: a pink pith helmet. She carries with her a dragonhide bound scaly green satchel. Inside the bag one would find her journal, quills and ink, a collapsible bug net, gloves, and lots of spare bottles for creature collection so she clinks and rattles everywhere she goes.

She likes to dig in the dirt and walk barefoot so there's always a layer of grime on the soles of her feet and under her jagged nails. Ink stains her fingers from her constant journaling.

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Personality Description

The Grimlish family was known for their quirky personalities and their open-mindedness, and Itzayana was no exception. She has a fascination with bugs (especially magical ones) that borders on obsession. She likes to frequent graveyards and damp, cold dungeons because that's where the best bugs are and ghosts are so darn interesting.

Though she is very kind, with a quiet voice and gentle temperament, she oftentimes comes across as rude. She is always so distracted by thoughts in her own head that it's very easy for her to forget the world around her, especially if a Bowtruckle or Billywig is involved.

A true Ravenclaw, Itzy is a huge fan of reading and is never very far away from her notebook. Like her cousin, Evie, she loves to draw, but prefers to sketch live portraits rather than fantastical scenes.

She is quick-witted and has a rather morbid sense of humor. She is very focused and can happily stare at one spot for hours observing ant colonies or arachnid mating habits. She does not like large crowds, and much prefers sending letters rather than face-to-face conversation.

Like her family, Itzy is rather uneducated when it comes to what makes people tick. She doesn't understand subtlety and gets very anxious when tempers run high. She avoids all forms of confrontation. Though just starting her Hogwarts journey, Itzayana grew up in a very magical household so while she is nervous about making friends, she's confident that she can stay on top of her studies.

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History

The history of Itzayana Cordelia Grimlish starts in the summer of 2000 in a small town on the Yucatan Peninsula. The entire Grimlish clan was on one of their yearly holidays and even the boring and normal Octavious was enjoying himself. Ever the unique destination goers, they were studying the ancient Mayans on this particular trip.

They had such a pleasant time learning the new culture and language that when Octavious and Ida's daughter was born the following February, they tied her name to their time there: Itzayana.

Her name had several different meanings and though her parents couldn't have known at the time, it was quite perfect for the young gal. In Mayan her name translated to 'rainbow lady', in Basque it is either 'shadow' or 'protection'.

Growing up in a huge family, Itzy was rarely alone for long. She had two older brothers, both her parents, her dad's parents, three aunts, a ghost uncle, and two cousins all in the same home. That didn't include the three bats, the monkey, the shrunken heads, the random ghosts, the manor's poltergeist, and all the other familiars and friends haunting the halls.

Itzayana grew close with her muggle grandmother, Antoinette. Annie was an oddball in her own right - able to commune with ghosts, she was a frequent visitor of the manor's small graveyard. Before Itzayana could walk, her grandmother would take her on strolls among the graves singing her funeral dirges as lullabies. As she grew, she joined the other Grimlish children playing hide and seek behind the tombstones.

Itzayana developed a deep fascination for bugs and insects, bordering on obsessive. Her bedroom is filled with glass jars with holes poked in the lids full of all the critters she's managed to catalog thus far. She's often found digging in the dirt for worms or crawling through piles of leaves looking for beetles.

She is rather well traveled for someone her age, though most of her travels aren't to places many of her peers would want to visit. The Grimlish family liked to take informative vacations in highly unusual locales - so while she's been inside a pyramid in Egypt, she's never experienced the simple joys of a beach holiday.

Every year, when September came around, there was a mass expulsion of bodies from the manor. Ichabod, Icarus, Elijah, Evelyn, and Auntie Cassie left for Hogwarts while Auntie Mari headed for her London flat. Her mum and dad were often busy at work, as was her Auntie Rhi. Auntie Opie was usually travelling the world, so Itzy's education fell to her grandparents.

Though quirky, there was no denying the sharp intelligence her family possessed and she eagerly soaked up their tutelage. She learned the basics, like reading and writing and maths, but she also learned the weird - like how to parley with merfolk and fairy mating dances.

Getting her Hogwarts letter wasn't a surprise in the slightest. She was always subtle with magical outbursts, but her cousin Elijah was a seer and he had told the family that she would be accepted. He wasn't a good enough seer to tell her what house she would be in though.

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Classes

Core Classes Astronomy Charms Defense Against the Dark Arts Herbology History of Magic Potions Transfiguration Flying

Electives No No No No No

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How Do You Fit into Your House?

Itzayana is sharp and quick- witted. She has an inquisitive nature and a logical mind. She is fond of learning and pursues knowledge any chance she gets. She has been known to focus on tasks to the exclusion of everything around her. Itzy has a love for reading and uses her artistic skill to further her education by drawing diagrams of critter life cycles or proper wand movements.

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Sum up your character in one paragraph

Itzayana is a young and happy Ravenclaw. She is logical, practical, and enjoys rational discussions. She has an affinity for magical bugs and is more comfortable in a graveyard than she is at a party. She gravitates toward the overlooked - like crawling bugs or pearlescent ghosts. She is rather quiet, but not necessarily shy.

Character Name: Itzayana Grimlish
URL link to the Character's Bio: Bio

Character Age: 16 now 17
Character Occupation: Ravenclaw Sixth Year

Why did your character change occupations and what qualifications do they have?: If given the choice, Itzayana Grimlish would not have become a Ravenclaw, nor would she have joined any other house. She was a Nothingpuff and proud, thank-you-very-much. However, the Hat comes for us all in the end, and it deemed her worthy of the House of the Eagle. Her qualifications include a witty attitude, a scholarly interest in invertebrates, and an almost magical ability to get absorbed in a good book.

Character History 2013 - 2017:
Five years isn't much in the grand tapestry of a life, unless that five years comes between childhood and adolescence. On the surface, seemingly not much has changed for Itzayana: she goes to the same school, still lives with her family in Grimlish Manor, still harbors an unhealthy obsession with invertebrates. Look closely, however, and one will find a thoughtful and inquisitive young woman where an immature and naïve child once stood.

As all good things must come to an end, eventually the Nothingpuffs were officially sorted into their Houses and Ravenclaw earned an inquisitive, yet odd, new member in the form of Itzy Grimlish. This didn't matter much to Itzy, as she felt that a lack of sorting was a sorting. She was a Nothingpuff, and that was that.

The activity (or inactivity) with the Sorting Hat was the highlight of Itzy's first year at Hogwarts. Children, it has been said, are incredibly resilient and can often handle change more easily than most adults. Moving the first years from their so-called 'Nothingpuff House' to proper House Dormitories with rules and prefects watching their every move and so many people doing things at all hours... well, it wasn't easy for Itzy to acclimate, but it wasn't exactly disruptive to her life, either.

Itzayana's second year started with a shock, because Ignan Storm was their new Headmaster. That meant that for at least the first few weeks, Hogwarts was positively boring - even Peeves seemed too afraid to put a toe out of line. Eventually, as things do, life went back to normal and Itzy began to realize that people - regardless of House or Year or blood purity or any of that - were just people. Slytherins were just as intimidated by Storm as the Hufflepuffs. Ravenclaws were no more illogical in walking small than the Gryffindors. Why then, did everyone care so much about being better than everyone else? Though thoughtful and quite knowledgeable for her age, the answers to her question were too far out of her grasp.

Care of Magical Creatures was her favorite new class in year three, though she found the Study of Ancient Runes to be fascinating in its own unique way. Her first boyfriend, a Hufflepuff boy one year above her, didn't want to be her boyfriend for very long. He didn't like sneaking out at night to look for beetles at the edge of the Forbidden Forest and thought that the city of critters hidden beneath her bed was weird.

By her fourth year, Itzayana had reached her rebellious phase. She was not a Ravenclaw, she was a Nothingpuff. She had never felt at home with the Ravenclaws, not like she had with her yearmates. Still, years later, that once unsorted group had a bond that was far stronger than the one she shared with her housemates. She packed only generic school uniforms for school that year, no house loyalty or house pride. She left at home anything that bore the eagle insignia or the colors blue and bronze.

Her rebellion was a quiet thing, she simply refused to accept her place as a Ravenclaw. She ignored orders to change into proper uniform, but didn't otherwise act out. A loss of house points, no matter the amount, didn't matter to Itzayana, as her house had no hourglass, no Quidditch team, no prefects, no representation. This, of course, made her very unpopular with the Ravenclaws, but since they were not her house, her guilt was small. She otherwise respected authority and attended each and every detention with gusto (of which there were several as she refused to stop sneaking out at night to look for good bugs). Still, she was studious and her skill with a wand was quite impressive.

By Itzayana's fifth year, her rebellion had evolved into something else. The problem wasn't that she wasn't a Ravenclaw, the problem was that she wasn't just a Ravenclaw. She was as cunning as any Slytherin, was she not? And was her bravery in standing up to those in authority not as courageous as any Gryffindor? Could anyone claim she wasn't as helpful as a Hufflepuff? The girl who befriended ghosts and cared deeply for the world's littlest creatures? And yes, didn't her logic, her intelligence, and her quest for knowledge make her the ideal Ravenclaw? She was a Nothingpuff not because she didn't fit in anywhere, but because she fit in everywhere.

The more she thought on it, the more she found the entire Sorting system to be appalling. Sorting students based off of personality traits was a terrible system that inevitably led to an 'us-versus-them' mentality throughout the thousands of years of the school's existence. Of course rivalries would crop up and feuds would turn into hatred that lasted for generations. Grouping people based off their traits encouraged those specific traits, but neglected those deemed less worthy. Would it not be better to temper a Gryffindor's hot-headed impulsivity with a Ravenclaw's cool logic? Would a gullible and naïve Hufflepuff not do well to learn a little self-preservation from a Slytherin?

Basing merit on a point system with one group of students becoming winners while three-quarters of the school are deemed inferior - regardless of individual merit - was harmful to morale and individual psyche. Take, for example, one student: studious and kind, a strong point earner for their house and learning eagerly - yet because their peers failed to perform as strongly, they lose the House Cup. That person's accomplishments then mean nothing. That same student, the next year, becomes less studious, they quit trying and eventually stop caring about their education because their effort wasn't worth caring about. 

A system like that encourages secrecy and division, rather than cooperation and unity. How many magical advancements could have been achieved over the years if a few people with a Slytherin's cunning and a Ravenclaw's methodical scholarship had worked together instead of keeping their ideas separate? How many of the laws of the world could have been improved had compassionate Hufflepuffs and assertive Gryffindors been working together since their youth, rather than taught that they are somehow different?

So, throughout her OWL year, she spoke freely of her ideas. She spoke to professors, she told the ghosts of her theories, she even told the merfolk in the lake (not that they could do anything about it). She encouraged her classmates, regardless of year or house, to become Nothingpuffs. She wanted people to act as if the Houses didn't exist. To her, dormitories were just a place to sleep and the only time she spent in the Ravenclaw Common Room was to walk through it to reach her bed. She did all her studying in the library, all her socializing in the Great Hall or empty classrooms (and sometimes in the old Nothingpuff dorms). She studied hard for her OWLs, of course, and otherwise lived life as normally as anyone else at Hogwarts save for her nightly trips sneaking around looking for bugs and her morning dips in the Black Lake to chat with her friends in the merfolk colony.

Itzayana scored quite well on her OWLs and secured herself an internship with the Ministry for the summer before her sixth year working with the Beast Division. It was incredible; challenging, engaging, and just the right amount of dangerous. Her personal history with various merfolk colonies (through her grandfather's writings) and her ability to speak mermish fluently (as she had never given up on her studies in that area) were highly valued in Beasts and she was quickly put to work as a translator. Of course, as she was still a student and only an intern, she was rarely allowed in the field and spent most of her time translating old documents, often hand-written on shells, engraved in slabs of rock, or stamped on long strands of seaweed that one unfurled like a scroll, but had to be kept wet constantly to keep the weed from drying out. There were, of course, modern printing techniques most colonies of merms used these days, but interns were created to do the work no one else wanted. 

She didn't mind, even when the translations got difficult or the subject matter was dry (pun intended), because each sentence she translated, each word used colloquially, taught her a bit more about the true lives of those who live beneath the waves. Books were informative, but too sterile - the things she held in her grasp were bits of actual lives. And with her coworkers, her superiors and mentors, she finally felt at home in a way she never truly did with the Ravenclaws. Here were a group of people brought together by their shared interests, despite their disparate personalities.

When she was forced to leave her internship to return to Hogwarts, she was sad, but resolute. She would return, every chance she got, until she graduated and could begin her career in truth. At school, she remains the voice of dissent, cursing the segregation and encouraging unity, and when on holiday, she will cajole her friends in the Beast Department into letting her help out.


Summary: At 17, Itzayana has grown into a mature, thoughtful, young woman with an odd fascination for bugs and loud, persistent opinions. She strongly disagrees with the stratification of students into houses and is very vocal in her beliefs. She began learning mermish young as a hobby, and that hobby has now evolved into a love for merfolk and their culture (along with a fluency in the language rarely achieved by one so young). While studious, respectful, and attentive, she rejects to being classified as a Ravenclaw. She communicates with the colony of merfolk in the Black Lake regularly, often taking early morning dips with a dose of Gillyweed and spends her evenings cataloguing critters in the corridors.