Approved! - Kelly & Kit
NOTES: I have deliberately avoided detailing her husband and family as much as possible in case anyone wants to adopt them. I have also avoided specifying who else may have unsuccessfully courted her, any usual business partners, and so forth. Contact me if you want your character to have some connection to Opal!
Your Nickname: Jack
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 RP Site
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: Sachairi Emburne, Saxon Montague
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary
Full Character Name: Opal Sophia Greengrass
Character Birthday & Age: December 22nd, 1963; 46
City & Country of Birth: Tipperary, Ireland
Blood Purity: Pureblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts - Slytherin
Job/Position: Breeder/trainer/seller of flying magical beasts; although she works with winged horses and griffons as well, she is best known for her high-quality lines of sport and racing hippogryffs.
Wand: 9 inches, rigid, chestnut and dragon heartstring (specifically, Norwegian Ridgeback). The whole wand is narrower than average. The grip is ornately decorated with stylized carvings of coiling vines and berries, though not in high relief to keep the grip comfortable. The 'butt end' of the shaft has a small gold ornament fitted onto it magically so that the metal and wood are one solid object (the core was fitted into the hollow wandwood after being carved and the gold piece used as a closing cap.) The ornament was done in the shape of a dragon's claw gripping a small sphere of polished astrophyllite. The shaft, meanwhile, is glossy-smooth and, though basically quite straight, a few small knots and sanded-down stubs of twigs remain to remind the viewer of the tree branch it once was. It is a family heirloom, handed down from her mother and her grandmother before her, but Opal's rapport with it is very good nonetheless. Except when she is trying to do things those august women would not have approved of (which is rare) the wand performs as well for Opal as it did for her mother and grandmother. This wand was made by Gerbold Ollivander.
Opal still owns her old school wand (silver lime and runespoor fang), but hasn't used it in many years, since her mother died and passed down the chestnut wand. It is old, frayed, and dormant; she keeps it in good repair visually speaking, but it is no longer in working condition. Its 'retirement' is spent in a display case on Opal's mantel. There are a few other "retired" (read: broken or disloyal/unusable) wands on display there, but the silver lime wand is the centerpiece, having once actually been loyal and useful to Opal. All the others on display are either 'dead' or disloyal, but kept due to their value as family heirlooms and conversation pieces. ("This one was captured by my husband's grandfather in India from a local after a duel - its loyalty never really changed, he had to put it on display, but it's been in the family ever since regardless. He claims it's got a makara-whisker core but I think he's just keen to show off.")
Physical Description: Opal is a solid-looking woman. Standing 5'10", with strong but blunted features and a robust build, her looks are basically plain, but she knows how to present herself to best effect and can be quite striking when she puts her mind to it. Her large-boned frame carries noticeably more of both muscle and fat than average, particularly for a woman. The extra pounds give her a gently rounded look, smoothing the sharp edges and hard planes of her otherwise well-exercised, muscular body, so that she still appears feminine even when she is in the middle of lassoing a rebellious winged stallion or staring down an angry griffon.
Her active lifestyle prevents her from becoming truly obese, but being overweight runs in her family and she has never been able or willing to go to the lengths it would require to slim down completely. (And in truth she doesn't really want to. She enjoys feeling large, strong, and solid while still being able to look beautiful and feminine. So while she doesn't allow her weight to get too high, she also doesn't push herself to lose too much, either.) A close observer may notice that Opal tends to look a bit plumper when she is happy and thriving, but that when things are going badly for her, she slims down. This is because she eats less when she is upset, worried, or depressed, causing her to lose some weight. When things improve, her eating habits return to normal, so that her weight returns as well.
Opal likes to think of herself as having red hair and green eyes, but in truth, the colors are more ambiguous. Depending on lighting conditions, what she is wearing, and how much time she's spent in the sun recently, her hair may appear anywhere from a brownish dirty blonde to auburn to a sunbleached strawberry blonde, while her eyes are more of a greenish-bluish-gray than truly green. She has elevated but flattened cheekbones, plush lips on a small mouth, large eyes under narrow arching eyebrows, and a strong jaw with prominent cleft chin that might have given her a mannish aspect if not for the rounding, softening effect of being slightly overweight.
Her peaches-and-cream complexion is mostly clear, and she has not begun to develop true wrinkles yet, but her skin is starting to show that telltale looseness, though it is very subtle. No one would ever mistake her for a woman in her 20s anymore, but she doesn't really look like she's coming up on 50, either. She could either be a well-preserved late 40s (which she is) or a prematurely worn-down 30-something (which is what people tend to take her for on first glance unless she's dolled herself up and gone out of her way to look her best.)
As a proud pureblood, Opal never wears Muggle clothing. While working, she may don men's robes, as she finds them more practical and easier to move around in, but on her own time she is always seen wearing witch's dress robes of varying degrees of fanciness. She favors shades of rose, green, champagne, and anything else she believes compliments her hair, eyes, and/or complexion. She is rarely seen without some small amount of makeup, even when she is working with her beasts, but Opal dislikes excessive makeup and never goes overboard with it.
Personality Description: Clever. Calculating. A planner. Social. Upper-class. Likes to be financially secure and not to have to worry about money, so she can do whatever she likes when she feels like it, but isn't particularly fixated on wealth for its own sake. Proud. Self-assured. Anti-Muggleborn but not necessarily anti-Muggle per se - at least in her own mind. A segregationist who believes that it is unnatural for Wizard and Muggle to mix, but who doesn't view herself as looking down on Muggles themselves. (In reality her attitudes are very similar to those of certain American whites during the Jim Crow era - "separate but equal" and all that.) Genuinely likes magical creatures and is enchanted by flying and flight, especially at high speeds. If she had the build for it, she might have chosen to be a racing jockey instead of a breeder. Not fond of broomsticks - she is competent with them, but finds them very uncomfortable, much preferring the broad back of a flighted beast.
Values tradition and history (even though she found it boring in school due largely to Professor Binns' presentation, or lack thereof.) Interested in secrets. Enjoys gossip, but also enjoys knowing things others do not, and so will not always share everything she's heard or picked up on. Circumspect in her use of Legilimency, but still often tempted to use it by her own curiosity or desire to get a social or business edge. Believes in luck and chance more than destiny or fate; oddly this has helped her with Divination since it helps her grasp the idea of there being many possible futures. She is not a Seer per se but is skilled at lesser aspects of the discipline and got good grades in that class at Hogwarts. She is also skillful at Charms, somewhat less so at Transfiguration; in short, she is better at dealing with traits and surface aspects than with fundamentals.
Likes to be physically active and directly involved with things, particularly her business. Doesn't hesitate to take charge when she sees fit. Enjoys feeling strong and capable, but also being beautiful and feminine. Favors silver as a color, but wears more gold jewelry. Likes opaque, patterened gems (such as her namesake, but also pearl, jade, and the like) rather than clear ones (sapphire, diamond, et cetera.)
Very close to her husband and devoted to him. Can be very affectionate and kind. Not usually malicious, yet she tends to be motivated by unconscious fears and anxieties, which can cause unexpectedly aggressive behavior when her buttons are pressed. For example she is afraid of Muggles and suspicious of Muggleborns because she unconsciously believes that magic and magicalness are 'normal', and therefore views Muggles as subhuman on some level, even though she would deny this if asked (and would not believe herself to be lying.)
History: Quick Notes
-- Opal Sophia Travers was born in Tipperary, Ireland, on December 22nd, 1963.
-- Raised within a proud, old Pureblooded family, and quickly picked up on the family traditions and attitudes. She honestly believes them to this day, including the Voldemort-esque idea that Muggleborns have somehow gotten their powers dishonestly or unnaturally. As a child, Opal was somewhat afraid of Muggles, in the same way that many Muggle rich whites are somewhat afraid of minorities from the inner city. She looks back on this as a childhood whimsy, the same way others look back on fears of the dark or spiders, but the truth is, she's never truly outgrown it, only relegated it to her Shadow (to use the Jungian term for it.) As an adult this anxiety is more apt to manifest as suspicion, distaste, and condescension or patronization rather than obvious fear or aggression, but if her buttons are pushed too badly, the ugly truth may come out (to her own shock as much as that of others around when it happens.)
-- Received her Hogwarts letter at 11, as expected, and was quickly sorted into Slytherin. The Travers who was to become a Death Eater was her cousin, and they were not especially close, particularly given the wide age gap between them, but she was proud of her cousin and would have mostly supported his decisions if she'd known about them (even if the idea of violence makes her rather uneasy - it's all so -barbaric-.)
-- In Third Year her chosen electives were Care of Magical Creatures, Arithmancy, and Ancient Runes. She disdained Muggle Studies and everyone who chose it. It's the "soft option" in her mind.
-- Was not chosen to be a prefect at Hogwarts, something she bears a minor grudge for to this day.
-- O.W.L. grades:
Astronomy A
Charms O
Transfiguration E
Herbology E
DADA A
Divination E
Potions A
History of Magic A
Ancient Runes A
Arithmancy E
Care of Magical Creatures O
-- Opal learned Legilimency and Occulmency during her sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts, studying those subjects with avid interest until she had them down to her own satisfaction. Of course, she did not do this openly. Opal was first exposed to the concept of these powers in a sixth year Divination class. They were not covered in detail, being mentioned only in passing as useful to some aspects of Divination, but the idea took hold of Opal's imagination, and she spent the rest of her time at Hogwarts secretly researching and practicing Legilimency and Occlumency as much as she could (often using her studies in advanced Divination to cover up her true activities since it was in that subject she'd heard of it to begin with and thus it was the first thing to occur to her when she felt she needed a cover.) She is circumspect to the present day about using this ability, not wanting it to become commonly known that she can do it. She believes she'll lose the advantage if her skill at Legilimency is common knowledge. Still, when she feels the need, she doesn't hesitate to take a peek into someone's mind, and she routinely practices Occlumency to protect herself against similar intrusions. Not that she is usually at much risk of such, but "it takes a thief to suspect a thief" as it were.
-- NEWT scores:
Charms O
Transfiguration E
Divination E
Arithmancy E
Care of Magical Creatures O
-- After Hogwarts, Opal went through a slightly unsettled period in her life when she was courted by several men; all respectable Purebloods of course. Unlike most of the rest of Wizarding Britain, she was hardly affected by the rise and fall of Voldemort - pureblooded enough to be acceptable to him and his minions, yet not extreme enough in her views to become involved with them, she was not directly involved in any of the events of either of Voldemort's reigns. Eventually she married a Greengrass and changed her surname (although she often introduces herself as 'Greengrass nee Travers' as a way of bragging about what she views as her exceptionally distinguished bloodline.) As previously mentioned she was proud of her cousin the Death Eater, at least for a while. Toward the end, when things got extreme, though, she became more cool toward him and eventually she stopped admitting her relation to him in polite conversation after Voldemort fell the second and last time. After all, she might believe in the separation of Wizard and Muggle, but murder and mayhem? Killing fellow Purebloods just because they won't fall in line behind you? Well... that's a bit uncivilized, isn't it?
-- After marrying, Opal started her business. It was slow going at first, but, perhaps not coincidentally, after Opal applied her expertise in Charms and Divination to the problem, her business began to thrive. She does not at all view this sort of thing as "cheating" or dishonest - she is a witch and witches use their powers to help themselves, right? She takes it for granted that her competition does exactly the same things she does, too. (And for all she knows, they might - she's never actually checked into it, just assumed and acted on the assumption, an unusual lapse in her general perspicacity. Perhaps, to her, it's so intuitive that any rational magical person would do as she does that it never occurred to her that there was a chance they might -not-.) She is still married to the same man and their relationship is reasonably good, even surprisingly passionate at times after so many years. They are a well-matched pair. She divides her time between attending on her husband and her business. Opal is genuinely fond of her magical creatures, and is very personally involved with the business even though it has grown reasonably large over the years. She keeps active strings of eventing beasts as well as bloodstock, and is a common sight at hippogryff races in particular. She is also involved in such sports as Abraxan steeplechase (a remarkable sight given the size of the competing animals and the fact that at least half of any given course is aerial) and griffon battling, which involves using spells to allow the naturally aggressive griffons to battle each other without being able to actually inflict harm on each other, although illegal "full contact" rings exist, and a few ugly rumors suggest that Opal is willing to supply beasts to the illegal rings, although she would never be seen there herself.
Describe your job duties and how you go about them: Opal is the full-time owner-manager of Silver Grove Limited, a business with three distinct aspects, all of which Opal personally manages and runs to varying degrees, although she also has several employees who help with various aspects of her business, ranging from grooms, handlers, and jockeys to accountants and security experts. She enjoys working with her beasts, but her business is too large now for her to do everything the way she did in the early days. Silver Grove maintains three distinct yet overlapping areas of activity: breeding, trading, and eventing.
Essentially, the business's foundation is the bloodstock. Opal's collection of bloodstock is reasonably large and very well-maintained, and one of her favorite activities is shopping for rare, high-quality animals to add to it. She has several active lines going and a few prestigious 'singletons', such as her retired champion steeplechase Abraxan and her breeding pair of Maltese griffons. (She can't afford to keep too many Abraxans at a time due to their huge size, even as rich as she is, not with everything else she owns as well, but that stallion more than pays for his keep in stud fees - she is very proud of him.)
Her best-known and most successful breeding projects are her racing hippogryffs, which she has several variants of, ranging from extremely swift but quickly-tiring short distance sprinters (these often have a Quarter Horse-esque appearance to their equine parts and their bird half tends to be akin to a small eagle or a hawk) to big-hearted medium-distance chargers (Thoroughbred-esque and with hawkish bird parts) and the elegant but remarkably tough endurance racers (who tend to be surprisingly small and delicate-looking, with their equine parts most closely resembling an Arabian and their bird parts often more like those of a small hawk or a falcon than an eagle, although her most popular endurance line has a harpy eagle-like look to their bird half.) She breeds for quality and performance first and foremost, but is also attracted to especially lovely or rare colors, patterns, and other features. For example, the harpy eagle-like look took a lot of selective breeding and a bit of magical tinkering to achieve, and Opal's dearest wish is to develop a griffon that is part peacock or at least appears to be. (The rest of the world would probably find it appalling but she thinks it'd be gorgeous.) She is also known to produce excellent griffons for a variety of applications, including battling, other forms of eventing (there are griffon races as well, though less commonly due to griffons' greater aggression compared to hippogryffs), and the more traditional guardian/sentinel griffons.
Every year, Opal personally selects which of the bred foals/cubs/et cetera are to be kept and trained, which are to be sold as working animals, and which are not high quality enough to perform but too good to cull outright - these are neutered magically and sold as pets or for pleasure riding, cart pulling, or similar jobs. At this point in her career Opal's bloockstock produce very few offspring so bad as to require culling, but where unexpected flaws appear, Opal does not hesitate to neuter the animal and cut off the bloodline. She tends to keep these animals in an out of the way paddock; she doesn't want their low quality to be associated with her business, so she won't sell or ride them herself in public, but she can't bring herself to kill them just because they're no good. Opal thinks of this group as her "pets" to some degree, though she also sometimes sets aside particularly good-looking specimens with lesser working ability (especially those with fine conformation and comfortable gaits both on land and in the air) for her own use in public as well. She won't waste a good racing animal on her own pleasure riding, but she does like to show off, so mediocre but good-looking animals often wind up being trained as pleasure steeds and being ridden by Opal for her personal transportation when she wants to make an impression.
Once the animals to be sold have been chosen, they are trained and raised up until they are old enough, at which point they are placed on the market. She places her animals in auctions and public sales, but can also be contacted for private sales and studding or mare-trading arrangements. A Silver Grove animal is not always hugely expensive, necessarily - a skilled animal from a common bloodline won't be as pricey as a similarly skilled animal from a rarer bloodline or with a more unusual coloration, so it's possible for people of middle-class income to own a Silver Grove animal - but they are considered very high quality and auction prices often rise quite high for the best specimens, so that the cream of her sold animals - with occasional exceptions (since even Magical folk can't always tell a scrub from a winner with 100% accuracy at a yearling auction) - tend to be owned by richer people. Opal always attends these auctions and sales events if she can - not just to keep an eye on her own interests, but also to browse the offerings of other breeders for likely additions to her eventing strings or her bloodstock herds. She considers excessive line breeding 'lazy' and so prefers to keep as diverse a collection of bloodstock as she can manage.
Meanwhile, she does her best to keep the ones with the most potential for herself, generally - though sometimes she relinquishes one of these 'best of the best', usually in a trade with another breeder to get them to give up a similarly prized specimen, sometimes in a sale to someone she is particularly fond of or wants to impress or wheedle a favor from later on. In any event, those she keeps are raised with exquisite care, exercised just enough but never to excess, and trained by Opal personally when possible; for those times it isn't, she has hired several very skilled trainers in the various disciplines she is active in to take over for her. Some of them are assigned specific animals to work with while Opal takes over the training of particular favorites and allows others to step in for her when other obligations take precedence.
Once these animals are fully trained and old enough to compete, Opal begins entering them in relevant events. Those animals who perform especially well or who have unique traits that Opal wants to perpetuate (such as her prized dun perlino hippogryff) are retired to the bloodstock herds once they have reached the end of their performing/working careers. Otherwise, animals who are no longer able to compete but are not high quality enough for Opal to want to breed them are usually put up for sale or neutered and retired to the "pet herds". This is also the fate of bloodstock who have reached the end of their breeding careers; most are sold to idle witches and wizards to live out the rest of their lives as pampered pets or easygoing pleasure steeds. In this way Opal manages to extract the maximum possible income from every single animal she breeds while perpetuating her business without having to spend more than she feels necessary on new stock. With that said, she does shop for new stock on a regular basis, since turnover is fairly high in some of the events she participates in. (For example, her mid-distance racing hippogryffs often begin their careers at age two and are ready to retire by age four or five, although unlike some owners Opal is careful to space out her event entries so that her animals are as rested as possible for each competition, with the result that she doesn't wear her stock down as quickly as some owners do.)
Elaborate on your expertise in your field: Opal has always had an affinity for animals. She received an O on both her O.W.L. and her N.E.W.T. in Care of Magical Creatures. She also scored highly in Charms and did reasonably well in Herbology, both abilities which she finds useful in those parts of her business that directly concern her animals. Meanwhile, on the financial side, she also studied Arithmancy at N.E.W.T. level and did quite well, although she also employs specialist Arithmancers so that she doesn't have to devote so much time to the finances of her business that she must stop working with the animals directly. Opal has been running Silver Grove for almost two decades and has built it into a thriving business with many successful bloodlines and eventing champions to its credit. It is her pride and joy in life and she invests much of her energy into nurturing and maintaining it.
Writing Sample: "Easy now," Opal wheedled, pursing her lips and clucking soothingly with her tongue. The headstrong Maltese griffon tossed his regal silvery-blue head, refusing to make eye contact with his handler, but the witch persisted. Murmuring nonsense in a quietly musical cadence, as she often did to distract and thereby calm difficult animals, Opal reached up and took gentle but firm hold of the griffon's odd part-bird part-feline muzzle. The griffon growled, but Opal ignored this and pulled gently on the beak-tipped muzzle, so that he was forced to look down at her. Reluctantly, the griffon allowed his gaze to lock with Opal's, and she returned the stare without flinching or releasing the griffon's beak.
One of the assistant grooms leaning on the paddock fence flinched as the griffon dug his foretalons into the soft earth of the paddock at Opal's touch - many humans would have been eviscerated in that moment. But Opal knew this griffon, had owned him for several years, and she could tell by his body language that he was not truly angry, only challenging her authority over him by being stubborn. She did not, therefore, draw her heirloom wand to compel his obedience, though it hung at the ready at her belt; this was an issue of willpower. She knew from long experience that resorting to magic so quickly would force the griffon to obey for the moment, but it would lessen his respect for her and teach him to believe that she could control him only with the wand. She could not afford to lose even one iota of this wild beast's respect. She may own him, but he was no more domesticated, in truth, than a captive dragon.
For fully three minutes the griffon and Opal stared each other down, sizing each other up, watching each other for minute signals. Finally - to the great relief of the observing staff and to Opal's satisfaction but not surprise - the Maltese griffon lowered his head until his whiskery face was level with Opal's waist, dropping his gaze to the ground; the griffon version of the hippogryff's bow. "Good lad, fine lad," she praised the creature, running her fingers through his surprisingly fine, silken leonine mane. Then she gestured imperiously to the waiting staff. "All right, you can enter now. Bring the English tack, please - I won't have his mouth torn by those awful Spanish bits."
Sum up your character in one paragraph: Opal is a 'moderate' pureblood supremacist, if such a thing can be said to exist, in that she believes in a sort of 'separate but equal' doctrine rather than indiscriminately murdering them. In truth she is somewhat frightened of Muggles and suspicious of Muggleborn witches and wizards (although she has no problem with half-bloods or with part-humans so long as their human ancestry is magical.) She can be cunning, calculating, and at times willing to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals, but she is not actively malicious for the most part and can be a very nice person so long as you're not married to a Muggle or something. She is genuinely fond of the animals she breeds, trains, and events and loves to fly. At best, she is just another person doing what she can to get by in the world. At worst, she's a frightened, prejudiced woman who bears an unfortunate resemblance to certain Muggle racists and other biased individuals, little though she knows it.
Opal Sophia Greengrass: Flying Beast Breeder/Trainer/Seller