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Full Character Name: Camille Isabelle Storm nee Duerr (Professor Camille Duerr)
Although married, with the surname of her husband, for the purposes of applying to teach, Camille has opted to use her maiden name to prevent confusion, and distance herself.
Character Birthday & Age: 19th June, 1952 59 by September 2011.
City & Country of Birth: Ghent, Belgium
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Beauxbatons Academy
Job/Position: Professor of Arithmancy, Hogwarts
Wand: Almond, 8 inches, Unicorn Tail Hair, lightly decorated handle.
Physical Description: Camille is ageing well. Despite reaching the end of her fifties, fortunate genetics, magic creams and a good diet has helped her. Although she is not looking quite as on point as she might have this time the previous year due to her limited income, she still scrubs up. One luxury she maintains is her favourite perfume, with its floral, citrusy scent of lily, peach, apricot and cinnamon. Not sickeningly sweet, but reminds her of summer sunshine.
Her hair is dark with loose curls that she passed on to her son. She keeps it styled to above her shoulders, finding it too heavy to let it get longer. In her younger years she cut it shorter, but at present has it at shoulder length. Camille's skin tone is pale, she does take a tan, though goes through an irritating pink glow in summer sun. Her eyes are bright blue and she has defined cheekbones and neat eyebrows.
She moves gracefully - even though she is tall, about six feet. Beauxbatons taught her well, and she is never seen slouching. Her frame is fairly slight, though she does put weight on her hips and thighs if she does not watch what she eats. Camille is very dextrous. She has beautiful skills in wrapping parcels and enjoys origami. Her handwriting is very neat.
Her personal style is classic. She has worked all her years in finance, so is not short of comfortable suits both cut in a more Muggle style, and the longer cuts of wizarding robes. The colours tend to be black, cream, some grey and the occasional richer deep colour like a red, navy or a green. Her jewellery tends to be gold with some silver, and not overly showy. She has sold some of it to make ends meet, and as such is seen wearing a few choice pieces on a more regular cycle. Some days she only wears her engagement and wedding ring.
Engagement rings were meant to be pretty, weren't they? His own mother wore her rings, but they were passed down from the Storm family rather than the Duerrs. Johann had a memory of sitting at a family wedding as a child, holding his mother's hand while the ceremony went on, staring at the two rings on her long, slender finger, as he sat between his mother and father. He had been four or five at the most, dressed in a simple black robe which itched. The sun had shone brightly, or that could be his memories glossing over the grey, but he remembered being very warm.
"Prettier than these, hmm?" She managed in English to Hannah, showing of her own, rather more understated rings which in almost forty years of marriage had perhaps seen better days, despite the cleaning charms. "Better Duerr than Storm." She assured Hannah, pointing to the ring now on her future daughter-in-law's hand.
Camille's greatest challenge in how she appears to others is her accent. Her tone is soothing, lovely to listen to, but the accent hinders understanding at times. Belgian by birth, she speaks several languages - Dutch from childhood, French from Beauxbatons, German from marriage and work, and English for business. Her English was the weakest of the three, and in the first 9 months of 2010 she has worked on it considerably. Her son, a linguist, has been instrumental in providing support, though since moving to Britain in June, Camille has been immersed, and this has accelerated her learning. She is still completely lost by teenage slang, but given time, will get up to speed.
Smiling pleasantly as she waved off one of her better clients who had come in to discuss a loan, Camille was surprised to see her squat colleague who dealt with mortgages outside her little office door, waving a copy of the Daily Prophet.
"Congratulations! You kept that quiet!"
"Whatever are you talking about?" Camille seized the newspaper, which had been helpfully folded over to show the relevant article. The bank received all the daily papers it could, each of them arriving throughout the day, keeping abreast of the news. Camille tended to resign herself to those copies in languages she was fluent in, German, Dutch and French, which unlike her son, were enough for her. Her English wasn't quite up to par, she'd had no great reason to practise it - everyone here spoke German.
Personality Description: Camille is a stark contrast to the family she married into. She is a loving, concerned and patient mother, resilient wife, and caring friend. She does her very best not to speak a bad word of another, and is genuine in her concerns and well-wishes for others.
Although she is kind and gives others time, she is not a doormat. She can assert herself, though has often been in the shadow of her husband. In the past year or so she has become more independent to contradict her husband as she finds his opinions are not aligned with her own. Wolfgang and Camille are incredibly close, and have had a happy marriage together up until recent months where they have both come under stress and Camille has found herself making decisions and acting on impulses she would never have imagined.
She is supportive of her only child, Johann, despite his questionable decisions and his father's rage. During the early months of 2010 she completely disagreed with her husband, and even resorted to striking him across the face which was entirely against her usual approach.
In the weeks that followed, Camille did temporarily separate from Wolfgang on discovering a new side to her husband, and on confirming quite a few of her suspicions about him were true, or quite probably true. Everything from his less than admirable work at the European wizarding bank they both worked for, to her suspicions about how loyal his secretary was.
Despite this, she takes marriage seriously, she made an oath to stick with Wolfgang, and faced with her husband turned to a wolf, cash-strapped and living in Knockturn Alley, Camille has taken the lead to sort them both out if they are to survive.
Camille never shirks at hard work. Although the couple have a house elf of several years (Camille has assigned it to assist Wolfgang while he recovers) she held down a full time job and ran the house, just as she had before they acquired one. Applying to teach has opened up a possibility from training younger staff at the bank, and she is quite excited to have a new challenge.
History: In 1952, Camille was born in Ghent, Belgium. Her older brother, Martijn was two when she arrived, and the two grew up to be close, joined by younger sister, Florine in 1954. The three Duerr children had a good childhood, spoke Dutch and French and travelled in and around Europe, and North Africa.
In 1963 she began her schooling at Beauxbatons Academy, where each of the Duerr family had been educated. Camille very much enjoyed her years there, graduating in 1970 with commendable results, and a fine young woman. She won an award for her Arithmancy studies.
She had a few suitors as years went on, but Camille was ambitious to want to progress her role, and was not too worried about settling down. Her early years at the bank included further studies in arithmancy, runes and economics.
Camille met Wolfgang while managing the goblins as Chrysopoeia. It wasn't her favourite role at the bank, but Wolfgang was rather good at it and spoke their language. Together they were quite a team for a year or so.
Despite colleagues thinking him a bit sharp, he and Camille were drawn to each other. Wolfgang was never quite the same to her. The two of them naturally understood each other, and found without realising what the other was looking for. They were most fortunate, and soon settled down together, moving in with Wolfgang in Hanover. Camille did not enjoy the floo trip to work each day, though persevered for the sake of living with the man she had fallen in love with.
The two were married in 1975 and in January 1976 Johann was born, and not so keen to have a large family like her brother, Camille and Wolfgang initially decided that one was enough. Wolfgang respecting Camille's wish to return to work when ready, and not to be confined to being a housewife, despite his traditional views on many other aspects of life.
Unknown to the majority of the family, including Johann who was too young to remember, in 1977, Camille became pregnant for a second time, though a daughter was not meant to be, and was born far too early and asleep. It further brought the pair together, despite Wolfgang's shortcomings, determined to pour their attention into their son.
Camille's brother, Martijn married in France, and Camille gained a sister in law in Margo Rosier. Together the pair had five children, Alix, Noelie, Sandrine, Yanis and Sylvie who are now all in their teens and twenties.
Younger sister, Florine also married, she and Thomas Bayard had two children, Ondine and Perle.
Of all the grandchildren, Johann was the eldest.
With financial assistance from their employer, the couple moved to a house in Frankfurt closer to where they both worked so that Camille could apparate with ease. She has never enjoyed the floo.
Camille and Wolfgang were keen to develop Johann's intellect ahead of deciding where he would eventually attend for his magical education. Speaking several languages between them, they understood how important it was to introduce Johann to them at an early age. Camille spent hours teaching him language, mathematics, geography and history.
Eventually, Johann went to Durmstrang, which was the school of the Storm men in particular. With a great uncle a former headmaster, the notion he might attend Beauxbatons was easily dismissed by the extended family. Camille thought he would do well at Beauxbatons, but Wolfgang thought Durmstrang would give him more of a backbone. Son took after mother a little more…
Camille continued to work for Chrysopoeia though made a move to personal banking during Johann's childhood, dealing face to face with customers. Her patient nature, care and attention for individuals made her a good candidate while her husband moved into more strategic decision making in management, investments and foreign markets.
Things began to change in 2009. Their son who had settled for some time, vanished to Britain and was out of touch for a long time which made Camille very anxious. The German Ministry came to ask questions, and Johann's former residence was turned over. Thankfully extended family - Ignan and Gabrielle took her son under their wing and he settled again with a Ministry job which made Camille very proud.
The family would make increasingly frequent comments about the fact Johann was already in his thirties and had not visibly been seen with a young woman. Wolfgang was appalled by suggestions that his son might like men instead of women, though Camille felt she wouldn't be terribly surprised if that was the case.
Camille wasn't as worried as other mothers might be over the pause in his answer, after being confronted with an engagement. It wasn't so long ago she'd more or less resigned herself that Johann probably wasn't ever going to settle down with anyone before she was old and grey, and then, probably not anyone conventional. For Solomon's sake, the family seemed to have some sort of quiet bet on the outcome. It irritated Wolfgang horrifically, even if Camille had found out he'd bet on Johann having an altogether conventional relationship and settling down to provide grandchildren for them both. The Storm family were always so boastful, it could be tiring being in a room with them all.
However, in her eyes, Hannah was pretty, very pretty, even if she had been half dressed on their arrival, and even if her home was somewhat singed. Hopefully the two of them would be able to find somewhere nice to live, together, and furnish it in a more traditional style, with space for him to do his research and work, just like it had been a year or more ago, before he'd got himself into trouble. She'd been so proud of him then.
Wolfgang spent time going back and forth for the Tetrawizard Tournament, and relations between him and their son became fraught, resulting in some distressing exchanges of words after a family funeral. This became worse with a confusion over whether Johann was marrying a young werewolf healer in January of 2010, and Camille and Wolfgang temporarily split to allow Camille to understand what was happening to her little family.
She spent some time with her brother and sister's families before returning. Although she still loves Wolfgang, their relationship changed slightly. Camille was more suspicious of him, and entirely unsupportive of his dodgy dealings.
When Wolfgang was eventually sacked from his role at the bank as a result of trouble and a very strange incident when there were two of him at home to Camille's alarm (unconfirmed as polyjuice) she tried to seek revenge by telling the media in Germany. The bank retaliated by letting her go too. The pair were evicted from their house which was still owned by the bank, and left Germany in shame.
In Britain, they stayed in Godric's Hollow in their cousin Ignan's house, temporarily reuniting with their son. Nothing was the same, everyone was at each other's throats. Although Wolfgang managed to get a job at Gringotts, it was not the same as before, and Camille struggled to get some hours there at all, making small money on correcting company accounts. The couple were often at odds, arguing, stuck living in a one room flat in Knockturn Alley. Her husband was out at odd hours, and although this worried Camille, it meant they weren't arguing.
In July, things worsened as Wolfgang was bitten by a werewolf. Nothing was as it seemed and he was hospitalised for some time due to his injuries and could not work. Desperate, Camille appealed to Hogwarts. She thought the role might be able to support them both, and she could be with Wolfgang outside of teaching hours to help him get back on his feet, or cope with his transformations.
Though, she presumed at that point he was a free man after he recovered enough to leave St Mungo's…
The longer Wolfgang stayed at St Mungo's the more depressed and withdrawn he became. Camille learned more of the events that had caused him to be turned, and argued terribly with her son when he came to visit them around the full moon. She blamed Johann fully for what had happened, after all, his former fiancee had bitten Wolfgang!
In August, Camille learned that she had been accepted for the post of Arithmancy professor. While back and forth to the hospital to try and support her husband who barely spoke to her, she studied the curriculum and planned lessons. Without any income, her cousin, Ignan, paid the rent on the Knockturn Alley flat until she could pay him back.
In September 2010, Wolfgang stood trial as a prisoner. Camille sat through hours of accounts from others, learning the truth about what had happened. Before her husband could give evidence, he died in the dock, poisoned. Camille was more than distraught. Miranda and Ignan took care of her in her daze and arranged for her to move into Hogwarts, and out of Knockturn Alley, so she was around supportive company. Mother and son were reunited, and Camille hasn't quite stopped apologising for being so wrong.
Since then, life has become a little more stable. Camille has adopted Hogwarts life, made new friends and become closer to her maternal family based in France. She is still angry that there is no progress on her husband's murder, and angry at how she was deceived, but has been able to make reparations. With Johann's help, they recover some hidden funds and financially compensate Hannah Bombay by Christmas.
Camille is enjoying being her own person, able to travel where she wishes around her job and duties. She feels closer to new members of the family than she ever did, and feels more independent. Although she continues to wear her wedding and engagement ring, she does so in memory of the husband she fell in love with, before everything, which is the one she wants to remember.
Job Description & What expertise makes your character qualified for their position? As Hogwarts Arithmancy Professor, Camille hopes to educate students who choose the elective from their third year until they take their NEWT. She will not live at the castle, but will assist in any way her role requires, teaching lessons seeing students one to one, attending staff meetings and celebrations.
Her education both at Beauxbatons and subsequently in banking have prepared her with Arithmancy. During her career she has qualified or achieved competencies in arithmancy. In personal banking she would assess the personalities and backgrounds of clients and their probability of paying back loans, and navigate complicated rules and regulations the bank laid down regarding offering finance and advice to the magical community.
She has taken the time to discover and query the Arithmancy curriculum with the Wizarding Examinations Authority, both because she applied to be an examiner with them, and because she was contemplating a new challenge as a Professor - if they'd take her.
Sum up your character in one paragraph: Camille has always been an accommodating, loving wife and mother. Brought up in Belgium, attending Beauxbatons she has spent most of her life in finance. 2010 has brought her unforeseen challenges and upheavals, and she is taking charge of her own future this time.
Camille Duerr (Storm) // Profile // Professor of Arithmancy