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Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary


Full Character Name: Imani Makena Lynott
Character Birthday & Age: July 17, 1993
City & Country of Birth: Liverpool, England
Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn: Halfblood
House & Year: Hufflepuff Sixth Year

Wand: 9 inches, apple, unicorn hair, springy with a spiraled shaft.

Physical Description:
The first thing one notices about Imani is her height: at 5’11”, she towers well above the girls in her year, quite a few of the boys, and looks like a positive giant beside the ickle years. To match her height, she has a long willowy build, and has elegantly grown into the gangly limbs which once made her appear awkward and gawky; though to her dismay she is still flatter than a piece of parchment.

Imani is of mixed Eastern African and European ancestry, and as a result she has a warm caramel complexion. She has soft features: a turned up nose, full lips, high cheekbones. Her most striking attributes are her big, brown almond shaped eyes; they are highly expressive, and make it nearly impossible for her to conceal her true feelings. She has a love-hate relationship with the thick, frizzy dark hair that cascades down her back.  She occasionally tames the wild curls with a straightening spell, but most of the time she merely ties her hair up away from her face.

Outside of school uniforms, Imani’s style is simple but fashionable: her wardrobe mainly consists of cardigans, camis, skinny jeans, flats and colorful sundresses during warmer months.

Personality Description:
Imani wears the badger crest upon her robes with immense pride, and tries to exemplify Helga Hufflepuff’s teachings in her day to day life. Like her favorite founder, Imani is warm, open and accepting of other people even if she disagrees or shares many differences with them. The Hufflepuff makes an effort to familiarize herself with every student in the castle, from the smallest first year to the snarkiest Slytherin, because she believes school unity is the only way to conquer prejudice. Even when others are rude to her, Imani rebuttals not with insults or anger, but by killing antagonistic types with kindness. To her friends, she is the listening ear when no one hears them, the shoulder they lean on when they need support, and the warm hug at the end of a rough day. Although she is capable of befriending nearly anyone, she is especially fond of and protective over first years, earning her the nickname the ‘Badger Mum.’ It isn’t unusual to see at least one or two tiny figures trailing behind her tall form in the corridors.

The Hufflepuff’s bubbly personality is part of her charm, but sometimes her perpetually cheerful nature wears on people’s nerves because she doesn’t know how to turn her happy button off. While she is supportive and encouraging, she hates seeing her friends in distress and wants to do whatever she can to make them feel better, not realizing that people sometimes just need someone to listen to them, instead of fix their pain. She is friendly and outgoing, willing to walk up to any stranger and strike up conversation, but Imani has a timid side in that she despises and runs from conflict. She refuses to entertain any sort of argument or debate, simply preferring to agree to disagree; in part because she is a pacifist, but also because she is self-conscious and doesn’t believe she can be on par in a verbal sparring match against her wittier peers.

She supports Hufflepuff house and her Dad’s old team out of loyalty, but Imani isn’t a fan of Quidditch or competition in general. In fact, she is quite terrified of heights and cried her way out of flying class in first year, for fear of falling to her death on a broom. Imani is cautious and won’t heedlessly throw herself in danger: you won’t see her hurling jinxes in the dueling chamber, venturing into the Forbidden Forest or petting dragons anytime soon. But she has a quiet strength and bravery; if she ever had to put her life at risk to save another person, she would do so without second thought.

Imani doesn’t possess above average intelligence, but she is hard-working and prudent enough to do well in most of her classes. She excels in Charms, Potions and Herbology but falters in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Arithmancy and other classes that involve a lot of magical theory. She has an artistic side that she expresses through painting, and carries a sketchbook filled with listless sketches of her classmates (usually without their knowledge). She sings like a banshee ridden with strep throat, but she is a talented harpist, and you can often find her in an empty classroom plucking dreamily away at her harp’s strings. Imani isn’t a frequent visitor of the Hogwarts library, or an avid reader of dusty magical tomes, but she has a secret addiction to risqué romance novels and pours over them weekly. At sixteen, she is a hopeless romantic and has had her fair amount of crushes, but she hasn’t dated much and doubts she will find a knight in shining armor to sweep her off her feet amongst the inept testosterone plagued boys at Hogwarts.


History:
Imani was born on July 17, 1993 in Liverpool, England to Peter (a muggle-born English wizard) and Rashida (a pure-blooded Kenyan witch) Lynott. Growing-up with mixed heritage and blood opened Imani up and made her accepting of other’s different than her from an early age. As an only child, her parents doted on her and she reveled in their affections, but Imani often longed for a brother or sister to play with. The loneliness she experienced when she was small could be why she has adopted so many younger students as her own upon arriving at Hogwarts.

Although happy, Imani’s childhood was not perfect. Imani was raised in a modest townhome hidden by concealing charms in a middle class muggle neighborhood. Rashida worked long, strenuous hours as a mediwitch on the Spell Damage floor in St. Mungo’s and carried the brunt of her family’s financial responsibility. After returning home from a grueling shift at the hospital and dealing with bossy Healers and difficult patients, Rashida was often cranky and irritable, snapping at her husband and daughter over the simplest thing. But in spite of her strictness and impatient mood swings, Rashida has always been a warm and loving mother, only doing what she feels is best for her daughter and desiring to give Imani more than what she herself has had in life.

Before Imani was born, Peter held a reserve spot as a chaser for the Appleby Arrows professional Quidditch team. In fact, her parents met while Peter was a patient at St. Mungo’s being treated for a head injury from a  rogue bludger during practice. Rashida was the mediwitch who attended to him, and Peter still refers to her as his ‘Angel of Healing and Mercy.’ After merely warming the bench for several seasons, the team fired him, and decades later her father hasn’t stopped living in his ‘glory days’ of playing professional Quidditch. He has tried instilling his obsession with the game in Imani, and she supports the Appleby Arrows just to humor him: in fact, some of her favorite memories from childhood are going to matches with her father, not because of the sport itself, but the opportunity watching Quidditch gave her to bond with him.

Since the Appleby Arrows fired him, Peter has bounced from job to job, doing everything from training security trolls to working as a traveling cauldron salesman. Presently, Imani’s father is trying to market his own brand of ‘Lightening Lynott’ racing rooms to little success. His instability has put a strain on her parent’s marriage, but in spite of their disagreements and financial hardships, they love and depend on one another. While Peter lives in his dream world of fame and fortune, Rashida is the glue that holds their family together. From her mother, Imani has inherited her strong work ethic and protective nature, while acquiring her dreaminess and hopeless romanticism from her father.

Because they were worried muggles in their neighborhood would discover their magical abilities, Imani did not attend the local primary school as a child, and her parents tutored her privately instead. Her father encouraged her to express her creativity and artistic side, and her mother emphasized more practical subjects like writing and arithmetic. The summer of her eleventh birthday, an owl baring a letter arrived at the Lynott’s door, announcing Imani’s acceptance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Her parents were thrilled and promptly splurged the money they saved on Imani’s school supplies and robes. Upon arriving at Hogwarts, Imani was sorted into Hufflepuff house, and she has been a proud badger ever since. In the beginning, she was quite shy and homesick, but by the end of her first year she loved Hogwarts and the friends she made so much she dreaded being away for an entire summer.

At Hogwarts, Imani has established herself as the perpetually perky tall Hufflepuff girl who is always willing to lend a helping hand to any student in need. She isn’t the castle’s brightest student, but she is hard-working and studious, polite to her professors and obedient, rarely ever even toeing the line when it comes to following rules. Other than taking younger years under her wing, she has been an active member of several clubs, including the Wizard Art Appreciation club and playing her harp for the Hogwarts Orchestra and Choir. In her fifth year, she managed passing all of her OWLs, earning Outstandings in Potions and Charms, though she nearly failed Defense Against the Dark Arts and decided to drop the class in her sixth year.

Now sixteen, with her final year drawing closer, reality has settled in and Imani is beginning to realize Hogwarts won’t be her home forever. Her mother is pushing for her to start a Healing internship at St. Mungo’s after graduation, but Imani secretly longs to travel the world as a magical missionary and aid other witches and wizards in countries where they are still being persecuted for their abilities.


Classes:

Core Classes No Charms No Herbology No No Potions Transfiguration

Electives No No No Muggle Studies No

How Do You Fit Into Your House?: Imani is a Hufflepuff because she is hardworking, prudent, loyal and accepting. Above fame and glory, knowledge or heroism, Imani simply wants to be known for being a great friend.


Writing Sample:
Imani walked along the path that made a serpentine shape around the lake. The majority of students were still inside the Great Hall eating dinner, but she left early, wanting to bask in the crisp cool evening air before curfew. She adored people, being surrounded by laughter and friends, but the evening walks she took around the lake were her daily meditation, a chance to momentarily lose herself in her own thoughts.

She thought she was the only student outside, when the figure of a small boy crouching by the lake caught her eye. He had his back turned to her as she approached him, and he was crying as mournfully as Moaning Myrtle on a bad day, completely unaware of Imani’s presence. The Hufflepuff girl touched his shoulder gently, and he started in fright, jerking wildly around to confront her. His cute little face was smeared with snot and tears.

“W-what do you want from me!?” he snapped, with a temper perfectly suited for his Gryffindor robes.

“Nothing,” Imani said. “I just want to know what’s wrong. Why are you out here all alone, crying?”

“I wasn’t crying,” he snapped back, pale cheeks flushing. “Only girls do stuff like cry.” Imani didn’t say anything, and merely studied him with her deep brown eyes. He faltered under her stare, and turned away from her in obvious embarrassment at having been caught in the act of something so shameful and girly as crying. “It’s just… I hate it here. I don’t fit in at all. I’m not meant to be a wizard. Some git called me a mudblood today. I just wish I could go back to being a muggle and forget this place ever existed.”

Imani resisted the urge to wrap him up in her arms and squeeze him tightly. Instead, she shook her head. “You’re wrong, sweetie. Of course you’re meant to be a wizard. Some of the greatest witches and wizards in history have been muggle-born, just like you. Hermione granger was best friends with Harry Potter and the most brilliant witch of her age, and she was muggle-born.”

The boy wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, but she’s a girl.”

The Hufflepuff sighed and crouched low to the ground so she and the boy were eye level. “The fact that you’re muggle-born makes you even more special, you know. You weren’t just born into magic: you are so special and important that magic chose you. That’s pretty wicked, isn’t it?”

He pondered her statement for a moment. “I guess you have a point.”

Imani smiled and reached inside the pocket of her robe, withdrawing a wrapped chocolate frog. “Here, have some chocolate. It always makes me feel better when I’m crying.”

The boy eagerly accepted the candy and tore the wrapper open, plopping the wriggling frog in his mouth. Still chewing, he said, “Thanks. You’re kind of cool, y’know, for a girl.”

Imani laughed and left the small boy by the lake. It seemed the ‘Badger Mum’ added another adoptee to her collection of precious misfits and little lost souls.


Sum up your character in one paragraph:
 Imani is a sixth year Hufflepuff who simply wants to be happy and good to others. She is accepting of people from all backgrounds and walks of life and collects friends like flowers. She avoids confrontation and competition at all costs and has a childlike naivete that can be easily preyed upon by the ill intentions of others. While she is timid and won’t recklessly throw herself into danger, she puts other people first and would sacrifice herself to save someone else if she had to. She isn’t the cleverest student at Hogwarts, but she is hardworking, with a creative and artistic streak. She prefers escaping into her romance novels and dream world rather than face the harsh realities of life. Even when faced with maliciousness and hatred, Imani’s kindness is her greatest strength; almost nothing seems to shake her sunny disposition or wipe the smile off her face.