Physical Description

One of the prettiest witches of her year, Esther is widely considered gorgeous, and for good reason.  Almond-shaped eyes gleam with adorable mischief.  Her silky hair is kept in a neat, darling bob.  Her skin is smooth and clear, free of blemish (-though, granted, she’s always had access to the best products money can buy), and there is a very catlike sort of grace to her rarely found in others of her age.  Her smile – wide, lush and self-assured – is brilliant.

But perhaps the most remarkable is how put together she is.  Her nails are always impeccable, never chipped or bitten; her accessories always complement her outfits, rather than overwhelm.  Her makeup?  On.  Point.  And for a teenager, Esther exhibits an exceptional sense of style; from girlish pastels and wedge heels to fairy-like skirts, berets and suede ankle boots, hers treads the line between classic and fashionable.  Innocent yet mature.  Prep school meets The Devil Wears Prada.  Childhood dancing, piano, winged horse riding and martial arts lessons – as well as a traditional Japanese mother – have only enforced this.

Still, don’t be fooled by her perfect posture; underneath the skirts and blouses is a slim but agile figure, one capable of scaling walls and throwing a much larger person over its shoulder.  Like all Ōoriyashima witches, Esther is adept in hand-to-hand combat.  She is stronger and faster than she looks, and it is an advantage she exploits gleefully.

Personality

At first Esther seems like a perfectly nice person. She doesn’t care about House or blood purity, or make fun of people’s poverty or appearance.  She is respectful towards teachers and worries about breaking breaking the rules, but proudly claims delinquents and troublemakers as her friends and viciously cuts down anyone who maligns them.  She loves fashion and takes a great deal of pride in her appearance, but isn't afraid to get dirty for the sake of work or having fun. And though she might not seem like it, Esther is patient.  She takes care to explain things and tries to answer every question she can, especially in terms that would be more readily understood.  Underneath that polished exterior, she knows that everyone works at a different pace, and all that she – or anyone else, really – can do is coax them along.  Among staff and students alike, she has cultivated a reputation for being ambitious, precocious, helpful and charming—if competitive, cutthroat, and occasionally shallow.

‘Two-faced’ would also be accurate, since the image she projects around adults differs from the person her peers know in many ways.  For one, she can be quite catty.  When she isn’t bowing or smiling cutely, Esther’s gaze is assessing, constantly searching for flaws or cracks in veneer; a casual glance can turn into a long and detailed list of scathing criticisms.  She loves gossip (especially scandals) and social politics and enjoys the power that comes from directing both.  For all that she is assured in her own superiority (which she never flaunts, of course), Esther secretly craves respect and admiration, which she instinctively feels can only be gained through being the best.  Anything that threatens that – or tries to – is mocked or undermined.

Unsurprisingly she makes a poor loser.  She will even obsess over it, if she feels that she has been cheated.

Still, venomous streak aside, Esther is more than the vain and fussy “princess” persona that some still take her for.  In her spontaneous but disorderly circle of friends, she provides structure and support, taking care of the details so that everything goes smoothly.  When loved ones are in a bind, she doesn’t hesitate to help them.  If she is overly cautious about something, that is because she is putting as much thought into it as she does with her own appearance.

Esther’s childhood was a privileged one.  The secondborn and only daughter of two very wealthy, important individuals in the Lipwitch empire, she has never wanted for anything.  Expensive clothes, shoes, flying ponies—anything one might expect of a witch of her circumstances, she had it.  As far as childhoods went, hers was rather sweet.

And it would have been very bland and boring, too, were it not for her mother.

Driven and strong-willed, Shizune Ōoriyashima was a formidable witch who fought tooth and nail to fulfill her ambitions.  When she married Esther’s father, she was determined that her children would be as Japanese as well as English, so she ingrained in them traditional beliefs and values and made sure they knew Japanese.  Every summer they spent a month at the ancestral estate.  Impressing upon her two eldest children the value of hard work, community and self-control, Esther and her older brother Liam did not spend their free time in leisure, but followed a strict routine—one that often left them bruised and exhausted by the end of the day.  Even seemingly sedate arts such as ikebana and chadō took their toll.

Still, Esther did her best.  She pushed herself until she could keep up with her older cousins; she pushed herself until she could beat them, one after the other.  Liam became a rival. If she was expected to do her best, then she would be the best.  But then it grew apparent that her best and the best that her family expected of her weren’t exactly the same; nor did she agree with her family’s values as much as she had before.  She loved glamour and thrived on competition. She didn’t want to be stuck in a lab, toiling over new formulas for makeup, or in a boardroom arguing over numbers and quotas—she wanted to wear the makeup, to be face and recipient of everything she valued: beauty, glamour, admiration.

She, Esther Morrell – daughter of Shizune and John Morrell, granddaughter of Jonathan Morrell, the founder of Lipwitch – wanted to be famous for herself.


For Esther, Slytherin proved a perfect fit from the very start.  She was quick to make friends and endear herself to the teachers and upperclassmen—but when she couldn’t, she parried with words, hitting where she knew would hurt most and tailoring her reactions accordingly.  Gossip was no longer just an interest; it was a tool, a way of weeding out the weak and taking down the strong.  Envy was an opening for manipulation.  Diplomacy was a balancing act between trust and civility.  On top of being the smartest students of her year, Esther was also one of the most popular.

But Hogwarts hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and recent years have only been harder.  While Esther still looks forward to the future, it is now with considerably more trepidation; after the events of February, she – like others – has been doing her best to move on, but there is only so much therapy can do.