Physical Description

With a milk-pale oblong face, washed out locks and eyes, and pallid lips, Violet is all the shades and coldness of a barren landscape. A slightly birdlike if otherwise nondescript nose sits above her pale, puffy mouth— usually bloodless. Her skin is a homogenous alabaster. In the right (but certainly artificial) light, one can see a shower of freckles across her cheeks and nose, a remnant of a more human body. These little quirks are more visible after a feeding. However, when there is any color in her visage, it also serves to make her look somehow (more) menacing: a predator’s triumphant, affected blush and swollen, blood-colored mouth.

Violet has thin, pin-straight hair, which is most often kept white-blonde. It lands past her shoulders in one layer, but is frequently pulled back into a clean bun at the nape of her neck. A large, high forehead, sharp jaw, and visible overbite do not soften her overall appearance. Violet's cornflower gaze lends a handsome idleness to her features, but it can also be eerie, shallow, something less than human. Her eyes frequently seem too still and too uniformly colored. When she has fed, the whites of her eyes and the skin around of her lids take on a red flush, like the rest of her features. But where it livens her mouth and cheeks, it often makes her look sad, ill, or angry around the eyes.

Violet’s fangs are small and discreet, appearing to enlarge when she feeds or becomes overly emotional. The fanged expression she wears when she is hungry is off-putting and hypnotizing at the same time, an inborn, sometimes involuntary tactic for attracting prey. It is in these time only that Violet’s canine teeth are plainly visible. The woman is usually very in control of her emotions, finding detachment easy due to both her affliction and the amount of time she’s had to teach herself.

In a shadow, she can look uncomely, bird-boned and overly wan. In the right lighting (though never the sunlight), Violet possesses a pleasing, magnetic, almost unnatural portrait, something commanding.

Violet often favors dark colors, black, navy, red, and grays, but nothing is off the tables. At times, she will make a stark contrast to this and wear all white, cream tones that blend with her skin and remind her of her former life. She appreciates strict tailoring and fitted, swanlike pieces, be it a dress, cloak, robes, trousers. She will wear gowns and long cloaks for a stroll on the town, and somehow make it look normal— as normal as a vampire can look to the human eye, anyway.

Personality Description

Violet mightn’t breathe oxygen, but she breathes life into many of the stereotypes that swath both vampires and magazine editors.

Young for her position upon first appearance, it takes only a line of speech from Violet for most people to distinguish the fact that she is not a twenty-something wunderkind.

Untouchable in the way that very successful people often are, she is the sort of woman with whom one would avoid sharing an elevator for fear of offending. Despite projecting this persona, encouraging the rumors by refusing to negate them, she is not so easily offended, but rather amused or bored or simply accustomed to being treated this way by others. It is far preferable to take command of the average employ's or stranger’s fear than to become the victim of it.

Regardless of this untouchable air, Violet is highly opinionated. One must to be, to be an editor of a fashion publication that dabbles in societal trends and politics. Though she carefully crafts her editor’s letters for readers, it is easy enough to decipher Violet’s opinions on law and culture in her writings. She is, at turns, quite frank, when she feels the need to be. She sees great sense in diplomacy, but is opposed to tiptoeing around certain issues if it means unfortunate history repeating itself. Violet can be very outspoken in formal speeches and has been known to lobby lawmakers at private “lunches” (with a glass of blood for the lady).

The vampiress is not bound to a strictly traditional moral code. She appreciates logic and intellectuality more than she appreciates most things, and can find sense in certain morally gray decisions if they bring about success and progress, more than she can find sense in willful fear, stupidity, or the ostracizing of non-humans. If the ends justify the means, Violet might make (legal but) cold and carefully calculated decisions. This sort of decision making is fueled by remnants of her family’s attitudes (if not their beliefs), peppered by a lifespan longer than most. Violet certainly does not always sharply consider the emotions of others when making decisions.

Violet believes that vampire rights should mirror those of werewolves, given their similar, often non-genetic afflictions and the fact that many vampires are wizards or witches before they are bitten. She is grateful that non-wizarding vampires are allowed to integrate into their societies, and finds half-vampires useful in bridging the divide between the fearful and the accepting.

Violet unabashedly makes her staff work nights to accommodate her condition, and it is a job requirement well-known by her employees before they dare apply for positions in her office. The number of applicants far outweigh the number of hires, and however taxing a job it is to work for Violet Islington, it is a job worth having, one worth its weight in gold. A year spent under Violet’s wing will afford most people any job they wish in publishing, entertainment, journalism, or fashion. It is often a Triwizard Tournament-level feat, to last a year in the Runwitch building.

A love for rationality aside, she is a demanding, exacting, cunning, cutthroat captain of the Runwitch ship. Despite a no-nonsense aura and philosophy, she is sometimes seemingly exceptionally nonsensical in her demands, which at times verge on the impossible. Outside of her building, those who work in fashion are often highly accommodating to Violet, knowing that to scratch the editor’s back is to be rewarded in kind. Violet can make or break a career. However conscious her writing contributions, she can be scathing behind the scenes… or in interviews.

This coldness suits her personal life well. She loves her hyper-social career, but she often would rather spend an evening in reading or listening to records and enjoying a glass of something suspect to non-vampire onlookers, than cram into a human-centered pub with a gaggle of friends. This is not to say she hasn’t friends or holds many grudges, only that she appreciates solitary pursuits. Violet’s oldest friend, August, floats in and out of her life at will or at Violet’s own behest. It has become a comfortable, mutual relationship, though it has had its bumps, large and small. At this point, they are equals rather than parent and child or teacher and student— or vampire and victim. It has been a platonic bond since before Violet took the helm of Runwitch. Violet has no plans of her own to make a second companion.

The biggest effect vampire life has had on Violet’s personality is time— and time has indeed left its mark. Experience, wisdom, accomplishment, and perspective have all been amassed and skewed by the heaps of time Violet has on her side. But with those things have come a vampire’s detachment and a personal distance from her “peers”— both those her age and those who look her age. While she still has emotions, being both a human and a “creature,”  Violet’s range is less obvious and more guarded than the traditional human one. She sometimes neglects to notice or appears to not care about the human sensitivity of those around her.

Violet sates her appetite for blood with many of the products available for vampires in modern wizarding society. She also regularly orders nourishing blood drinks from a vampire-friendly bank and Ministry sources. She does not favor regular donors (that is to say, feeding regularly on one particular person, though some blood types are more pleasant than others), but will sometimes feed on the willing without turning or killing them. Thus far, she has never had to kill for nourishment. For every stereotype she upholds, there are many she also proves false. At her current age, she has no problem managing her appetite for blood.

While Violet’s vampire aura is sometimes overt, she does not act on vampire instinct in her professional life, and tries to maintain a separation of personal and professional uses of her nature, most importantly so that she might keep her credibility. If her credibility and position are (sometimes more than) occasionally questioned by media and certain circles of society, she does her best to pointedly ignore, aloofly deflect, or bitingly answer the accusations… in that order.

History

1887-1913

Born in 1887 in London, into a wizarding family, Violet was raised with an outward Victorian sensibility— modest, detached, unwanting— and just beneath that gossamer layer, the pink-cheeked, indulgent desires of a privileged young witch. Her family were exceptionally proud of their heritage, their centuries upon centuries of good blood, rich magic, and cunningly earned title. Even as the muggle world changed, the domineering attitude of old, monied wizarding families only brewed stronger. The modesty they projected was the fashionable sort of the time. Conservative but painfully well-tailored. Really, it was exclusivity masquerading as modesty, thin as the linen dresses the Islington women wore in the summers.

Her life went much like that for two decades: a young woman raised in a lofty place, fenced in by privilege; her whims were those of a spoiled girl, her knowledge of the world largely limited to the traditionalist lens her parents provided, despite being well-traveled and well-educated. There was a willful and comfortable ignorance in those days.

Much like their lifestyle, her family’s dynamic had a clockwork: on the surface, her father was the patriarch, conventional, decisive, unbending, proud. Behind the sheer curtains of their front room, her mother ran the house, disciplined the children, was firm where her husband had a soft edge. She criticized Violet on a daily basis. Character building. Violet loathed her mother, adored her father. She followed them both through Hogwarts School, delighting in her father’s favorite subjects, sharing interests with him, but all the while becoming more governing, sure of herself, confident in the incontestable way of her mother.

After school, Violet took the customary year to travel without her parents, enjoying the far reaches of the globe before returning to London to work for a respectable astronomer. In the days, she slept late, enjoyed exploring galleries and museums, watched people in the park, taking in their quirks, their faults, their curiousness. At night, she worked, poured over maps and star charts. It was a lovely life, one full of promise, if also sometimes a solitary one. But adulthood came with bit of independence that she hadn’t had in her childhood, and Violet spurned any suggestion that she might settle down.

The thing that came to the observatory glass when she was alone, charting the moon, and watched, was not human, not entirely. It was something less, in those days, and later, something much more.

If it had been there before, in the several months Violet had been working with the astronomer, she had never once noticed. Now, though, it was plain as day.

Violet went whiter than any nightmare had made her. But it was not entirely fear that gripped her, that stopped her from shivering, made her freeze like a hex. There was something hypnotic in the gaze, something knowing. She had thought to grab her wand, after a brief moment, before climbing closer to the window. She raised it only as she reached him— it was a definitely a him— and silently cast Lumos.

He stared back, calmly. “Good evening.”

Violet’s lips parted with surprise. The glass was thick, near impenetrable with charms that kept it pristinely in place, the shrouded the very open room from muggle detection. And yet, she could hear him just fine.  She did not know whether he could hear her, her breathing, her heart. She thought maybe he could, despite the charms, despite the fact that she had not voiced a syllable.

It was that simple, really. So easy to wander out of the observatory and into the dark, to get a closer look a the strange, hypnotic creature.

1913

She did not know what they’d told her mother. This was her first thought as she woke in a room, not unpleasant, but slightly damp, the sort of atmosphere that suited a wine cellar. Underground. But she was not foggy-brained, not disoriented. She had lost time, but the world was so clear. She knew that she had died, in a manner of speaking.

And when she looked up, she remembered, immediately.

It was not the same vampire, not the one who had attacked her. They could not be more different, but both had a kind of hypnotic quality. Now, however, it was easy to distinguish that it was, in fact, smoke and mirrors. Now she had it, too.

He spoke, his voice melodic, a hint of an older time, a promise of a future. He apologized, but he sounded thrilled as he said the words. And for some wild reason, Violet felt the sincerity in the absurd display.

He had dealt with the beastly one, the one who had turned her. Violet did not ask, at the moment, what that entailed. She could guess. He was a vampire.

But he was also a calming smile and bright facade. His teeth. Her own now gleamed like that, pearls for grabby, wanting hands that were unaware of the blood-hungry things that lurked in the rocks and seaweed where the clams rested. His tallness was impressive, his movements graceful as a woman’s, surefooted as a teenaged boy’s. He was childish, but unmistakably old. Whatever he retained from his life before seem amplified and washed out at the same time. Pale and ancient and brimming with power.
August, like the summer. That was his name. It was ironic, to Violet.

He had been born so long ago that it did not matter, the exact year. August loved history, loved to show, with maddening laziness, that he knew it better than anyone he might chat with in some shadowy corner in some pub where he did not drink. But years bored him, too: the things men remembered were the least important, usually. They were things that weren’t a part of that circle, he claimed, and so they could see it better than anyone.

She was annoyed with herself for having been so easily tricked. Glad the thing who had done it was gone. Angry with him, this August, for steeling her away, but grateful, too. And curious.

Hunger outweighed all of those feelings. The rage seemed to evaporate from cold, dry skin as she sat up, looked around, listened to his song-like story and explanation. They were most definitely no longer in the observatory; they might have been down the road, but it seemed a world alway. What coursed through her, the heightened senses, was remarkable; it was the same thing she’d been drawn to at the glass. Now it was a part of Violet. In a way, she felt freed.

She looked down at the wand in her palm, but hadn’t a chance to use it. August took it, snapped it, an apologetic look in his eyes.

It was then that Violet lashed out. But it was short-lived, and she was weak. She hadn’t yet fed, knew nothing about being a vampire. She was bound to him, at least for now.

1913-1995

It seemed to be the thing that she was missing, the thing that would allow her to sit squarely above a life of dullness, to accomplish everything she wanted. What she was trading seemed negligible. If Violet would learn otherwise later, she hardly felt the inclination to dwell.  August had betrayed her, the human her, with his delight at having a new vampire friend, but as far as vampires went, he proved a fine companion. Violet was welcome to stay as long as long as she pleased, free to go when she wished.

What he taught her was invaluable, even if it was his kind’s fault she’d had to learn it. Their quarrels were great and numerous, in the beginning, and Violet proved fierce in debates, which only confirmed for August that he made the right decision. Conflict aside, she found vampirism to be a gift. She became much stronger, a vampire in her own right, as months passed. There was an equality between them, theirs was a partnership. Particularly with her maker out of the picture.

August was not a savage, but he was not a tormented soul. He drank from those who let him, and at times took his drink from creatures he could attract with his innate charm. He did not kill for sport, but he did not think it a damning task. He was practical. Like Violet, he had been a wizard first.  She learned from him how to find those who would share their blood, and how to pick others in a pinch. In the early years, it was often hard to resist anyone and everyone, but Violet persisted in training her will. Soon, she did not need his lead, in fact regularly eschewed it, paying him back in whatever way she could for dragging her into a new life— half thankful, half vindictive. Violet refused to be prey, but a new life meant a new way of judging bonds. August learned as much from her as she did from him: she was his first real vampire partnership, the first person to have his back. She was the one who convinced him to register with the Ministry.

As for her family, the human one, Violet waited months to show up, at first watching them from afar, and finally springing in on her parents one night. Or, rather, ringing the bell. They had heard before they saw her, but it did not do very much to lessen the shock. It would be many years before Violet could have another, proper conversation with anyone in her family, and she thought it just as well. In the end, her parents acknowledged her, but left their fortune to their other children— which was fine with Violet. Her blood status was laughable now. She was pure of blood, but she was also non-human. It was hard to unlearn those sorts of things, and remarkably easy, too.

Decades passed, and Violet dabbled in many hobbies and careers. Astronomy was among her first loves, but certainly not her last. The beauty of the field only sparked other loves and voracious appetite for knowing. With experience came confidence, and with that a kind of ruthlessness in pursuit of success. At times understated, at others, overt. Violet became more and more independent. August, recognizing this, gave her space, continued to travel without her while Violet pursued a sizable niche of Wizarding London. One that did not necessarily require her to employ magic. Violet missed the magic, the nostalgia of simply holding the wood that would not create spells for her in this new life, but she remained plenty busy not to dwell.

By the 1960s, her artistic interests most often landed her in museums, galleries, and showrooms. She settled nicely back into London, where vampires were again enjoying a surge popularity that coincided with pop cultural shifts. A penchant for being well-dressed cushioned her social status, and she freely offered style advice to London’s social set. The intrigue of her condition certainly did not hurt. It was paralleled by an untouchable coldness, two things at odds that created the perfect mystery. She began to work parttime for various magazines and designers before becoming a fulltime in-house fashion editor and stylist for Witch Weekly, the only stylist who needn’t a wand.

Violet flitted between London and Paris in the early 70s, during the first wizarding war. It was a time during which the very same vampires who had enjoyed popularity a decade prior were steadily being used by one side and demonized by the other. She laid low, freelanced, and made many a friends among the Parisian wizard couturiers. At the conclusion of the war, she resumed working for Witch Weekly in London, and was increasingly asked to style cover stories and conduct interviews. Her address book and wartime travels became strong assets as the world started to calm own again.

1995 - present

In the mid-nineties, Violet was offered the position of editor-in-chief of Runwitch, the favored magazine of the fashionably conscious. The irony of a vampire running a publication with “witch” in its title was lost on no one. It was an esteemed role, coveted, but Violet elevated it to a new level, and proved commercially successful as well as liked among the elite. The magazine became something lofty but widely loved, a fashion publication that offered bay window views of the intertwining industries of runway, art, music, theater, sport, and even politics.

Violet keeps a starkly clean townhouse, a house whose bright neutrals are shaded by day and drowned in light by night. Because the woman makes her staff work nights to accommodate her, the townhouse rarely seems to see any activity at all. Violet hosts an annual dinner for wizarding comrades, and there people might see a warmer side.


Describe your job duties and how you go about them,
As editor for the magazine, Violet oversees all articles and editorials. She writes letters for each issue of Runwitch, controls the overall direction of the magazine, and styles stories and occasionally writes articles of her own. She is the “face” of the company, a person always invited to sit front row and comment upon designers’ collections. She is known to help sell lines and raise money for various fashion projects. Because of the “high fashion” angle of Runwitch, the magazine is often tied to high society and dabbles in social commentary, women’s issues, art, architecture, travel, and even politics. Violet’s experience and age give her a certain wisdom in choosing subjects and writers for her magazine.

Elaborate on your expertise in your field.
Violet has many years experience styling and editing fashion “stories,” as well as writing for fashion and other publications, including Witch Weekly, The Daily Prophet, and her current magazine. Her combined skills make her an opportune choice for editor. Violet’s condition also make her a controversial and progressive choice, which in turn drives interest, discussion, and publicity for Runwitch— all of which satisfy the magazine owners’ drive for commercial success.

Sum up your character in one paragraph.
Violet is a 120-something vampire who has used her age, experience, and amassed influence to land the coveted role of Editrix in Chief of Runwitch Magazine. While a Ravenclaw alumnus who favors rationality, Violet has become a somewhat cold and calculating character during the many decades of living with her affliction. Violet is an exacting boss who makes her staff works nights; her reputation is widely known in the wizarding world. In addition to being known as “difficult to work for,” Violet is also known for dabbling in politics and promoting vampire rights.

Character Name: Violet Islington
URL Link to Biography: here

Type of Creature: Vampire

How did they become a creature?
Violet was attacked by another vampire in 1913. She woke to discover that she had turned, and could no longer perform magic. Her maker was "dealt with" by another vampire, August, who helped Violet learn the ropes of vampirism and how to survive in her knew state.

Are they registered with the Ministry of Magic?
Yes

If yes, what does registry entail?
Violet was registered shortly after becoming a vampire. The Ministry has documented when she was turned and where she resides and works, as well as her previous addresses and occupations. Violet is a publicly known vampire and publicly known advocate for vampire rights. She regularly receives blood supply from Ministry-approved sources and routinely checks in with the division in charge of monitoring vampire activity in Wizarding Britain. Violet persuaded her companion, August, to register shortly after she did.

Are they considered a 'Dark' Creature?
No

If yes, are they currently under pursuit by the Ministry of Magic?
No

What crimes have they committed?  Were they convicted?
Violet has never been convicted of a crime. She has never killed for blood. While in her early years, she struggled with controlling her appetite, she is not a violent vampire and long since learned to keep her appetite in check. Violet lawfully advocates for changes in attitudes toward vampires and is active among the community of vampire advocates who hope to see laws evolve.