Your Nickname: Jessica
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
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: Akiva Katz-Eleor, Jordyn Dimbleby, Archer Radley, Margo Amherst, Josephine St. Just, Coralie Malkin, Primrose Woolfolk
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary
Full Character Name: Indica "Indi" Riley Kemp
Character Birthday & Age: June 9, 1993. Officially adopted and brought to England on April 19, 1994.
City & Country of Birth: Seoul, Korea. Adopted by a couple in London, England.
Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn: Halfblood
House & Year: Seventh Year, Gryffindor
Wand: Dogwood wand, unicorn hair core, 11 inches. The handle is smooth and rounded at the end, shaft is knotted. It’s often got dirt in the crevices because she spends a lot of time in the greenhouses or on the rooftop garden. It’s not the most well taken care of wand, but it suits Indi very well.
Physical Description: Indica is an average young woman, by all accounts. She’s averagely tall, she is of an average body type and an average weight. She’s never had a problem with her body image, however, as her parents trying to cultivate a strong sense of self worth and body image. This was partially as a reaction to concerns as a young child that she looked different from her parents. She has always had a rounded face and a rather decently sized nose, with the addition of her very dark eyes and hair, she just never experienced people who looked like her and it made her feel quite bad. Her parents invested a lot of time into the reading of diverse books to her and accumulating different experiences. (It wasn’t like her parents were conventional looking anyway). After time though, Indi learned to accept herself and love the things she didn’t necessarily love at first.
For style, Indi is eclectic. She can – and does - wear almost anything that is comfortable. She likes shirts with her favorite bands on them, comfortable bottoms, and oversized cardigans. While she’s mostly a clean individual, you wouldn’t be surprised to find dirt or plant stains on some of her clothing. Indi does not wear heels – they’re bad for your alignment, her mother always explained, and if someone was misaligned they would experience misalignment in the rest of their lives. She almost always has dirt underneath her fingernails from her time in the greenhouse or her garden and is also usually trailing some kind of white-grey hairs from Bubbles, her cross-eyed cat.
Personality Description: Cool as a cucumber, complete and utter individuality, and free spirit. Indica is the type of girl who does what she wants to do and doesn’t care what others have to say about it. If someone likes Indica, that’s amazing and she’ll embrace them and welcome them into her life with open arms. She doesn’t really imagine people don’t like her, but even if they did. She wouldn’t think anything of it. She isn’t the kind of student who lets other people push her around or change her opinion. Her open-mindedness makes her a good listener, but she will definitely interject her opinion if she sees a need for it. Indi believes in social justice and tries to always speak up for those that can’t speak for themselves, if she hears people talking, she’ll say something.
Indica isn’t the type of person to hold a grudge. If she is angry, it comes in flashes that are white hot and then gone. She’ll yell about something, but then it’s gone. More often than that, anger doesn’t even enter her mind. She’s chilled out and relaxed (often with the aid of her own cultivation efforts). Indi isn’t against sharing and often helps out her friends in that arena, if they ask her. This mostly comes in the form of growing plants that can be used to alter the sense. At home, her parents lifted the age line on the garden ages ago and they’d even begun planting things that attracted billywigs. Truth be told though, Indi prefers the gilly and mushrooms with magical properties. Because she grows things herself, she is often kind enough to her friends to give them the goods.
When she’s in a heightened state, Indi is friendly and vibrant. She loves to laugh and make jokes. Generally, she is gregarious. She prefers things that make her giggly and happy, not tired. Sleeping seems to be a waste of everything altering reality has to offer. Plus, she feels like she concentrates better when she’s doing things and it helps her with her wavering attention. Since her attitude toward school can skew on lazy, particularly in subjects she doesn’t care about, this is quite helpful. When she loves something, she’ll pour her whole self into it and use a lot of her time to get good, but otherwise… Some of her hobbies are eccentric, and she does have this weird little darkness about her, but it’s not accompanied by a dark sense of self. It’s more along the lines of Wednesday Addams, if one were to try and put a finger on it, but then again, only if Wednesday Addams enjoyed 4/20. She just gets drawn to the weird, sometimes occult, things. Unfortunately, much of this is not covered in Hogwarts curriculum, so she spends a lot of her time studying up on things she’ll never get tested on.
As a result, Indica is a laid back student. It’s hard for Indi to take things seriously because she feels like she has all the time in the world to figure things out. Being a kid is about being irresponsible and learning/exploring/experimenting. If people try and force you to conform too early, you never get anything out of your life. As a result, Indi can be a bit flakey and forget commitments to things. She is nonchalant about most things and doesn’t take the world seriously. She wants to be her own person, figure things out as they come, and embrace the things she’s passionate about.
History: Indica was born halfway around the world on June 9 1993 at 2:30 in the afternoon; but her adoptive mom would always tell her that she was born in her heart at the exact same time. It’s always been a topic her family has been exceptionally open about (as if they weren’t open about everything anyway – a little too open, at least to people who listen in on their conversations). But, the story doesn’t exactly start with that detail. It starts with Carol and Jeffrey Kemp.
The pair of half-bloods who never quite walked the same path as anyone else. Shiloh had once considered a career at St. Mungo’s with healing, but as she began her career she was a little less than enthused with the sterile atmosphere of the hospital and it didn’t quite… fit with her vision of what the healing process should be. She found a career elsewhere, as an herbalist, and as she got a little older trained as a midwife as well. She didn’t anticipate ever falling in love with one person, let alone marrying them, but when she delivered the child of Jeffrey Kemp’s sister…
The connection was instantaneous. Both of them were slightly older. Jeffrey had been married before, was a professional chef at La Baguette (The Wand) in a trendy London area, and was turning 42. Shiloh was turning 39, had settled on only ever having cats, and fully appreciated her life – and rooftop garden. It didn’t matter though. They fell in love like teenagers. Since they were both older, they didn’t really think they had to wait very long. Within the year they were married and had agreed, at first, that they wouldn’t be having children.
But, after several years of blissful marriage in their renovated warehouse flat in the Docklands of London, they both realized that they were missing something. They really did want a child. But, by this point Shiloh was 45 and Jeffrey was 48. Shiloh understood the risks of natural childbirth, particularly for the child at her age, and she didn’t want to risk it.
They decided they would adopt. Cue the entrance of Indica. Finding an international agency to adopt was one thing, finding one for witches and wizards… another entirely. It was two years before they’d actually get their daughter on her “Gotcha Day” (April 19) where they met at Heathrow to pick up the little girl. If they thought they loved each other at first sight, getting Indi would blow those feelings out of the water.
She instantly became the center of their world, even if they had a rather… unorthodox view on parenting. While infants require care on a pretty even keel to one another, Shiloh wanted to be an environmentally responsible parent. Plus, with a chef for a father and an avid gardener for a mother, Indi grew up on fresh food from the second she could start real food.
Her childhood was a happy, albeit it slightly strange one. Her parents always had a lot of cats, and expanded the rooftop garden. Indi was a frequent “helper” to her mother in her formative years. With floppy sunhats and wellies, there wasn’t much she wasn’t going to do on that roof in that garden. Except, of course, in the section that was quartered off with an age line. As she got older, her parents were much more transparent about what she wasn’t allowed to be around (at least as a small child).
When it came to teaching her as a child, her parents were huge readers and liked to expose Indica to all sorts of things: fiction, non-fiction… even cookbooks. Her mom made sure to show her all sorts of people represented in whatever she read. They wanted her to ask questions and be intrigued by the world. Her mother taught her how to garden when she was very young, and it became Indi’s favorite pastime. She was also exposed to all types of music, food, and experiences as a child.
She grew very fond of folk music, 60s wrock, and modern American rap music, even when she was a younger student. Plus, if she was reading anything it was usually a scary or dark story. Her uniqueness was fully supported by her family and when she displayed her first bit of magic (rapid growth of kale under her fingers), they were ecstatic. Indi had always had the secret fear she was a muggle, despite being adopted by a witch and a wizard. Even if her parents taught her to not be ashamed of herself for any reason, she knew it would be hard to be a squib (there were almost no good stories about squibs).
But, like all things, when Indi asked about it, her parents gave her an answer. They gave her explanations for whatever she asked, feeling it wasn’t fair to keep information from their daughter. There were no secret gryffons dropping off babies at doorstep stories for Indi, she knew where babies came from by the time she was 8 (in child appropriate language, of course). Then there were the conversations about the age line part of the garden and the tattoos her dad had all over his arms (some of them were not quite… child appropriate). Needless to say, things in the Kemp household were never closed discussions and Indi was always included in whatever was going on. By the time she was eleven, Indi always felt a lot older than she was.
When she got her letter, the family celebrated in their own way (vegan carrot cake and lantern lights on the roof) and then began preparing her for school. She went to all of the normal places her mother and father took her when they were out and about, but now that it was about her experience – about her Hogwarts acceptance – Indi was actually excited about shopping and doing those sorts of things. She’d never necessarily been anti-shopping, but her parents tried to be as frugal and efficient as possible, it just never seemed to be the first thing in her mind to do.
On September 1, when it was finally time, the family saw their daughter off to Platform 9 ¾ with one of their family cats, Bubbles. The young, cross-eyed cat had bonded with Indi and her mother could stand to part with one of her fur babies. So, away Indi went – her trunk packed with her things and Bubbles rather haphazardly in a carrier over her shoulder, she’d gotten onto the train.
At the opening feast, she was sorted into Gryffindor, which was weird to her at first – since she wasn’t the type of person who would slay a dragon or anything. She’d probably offer it an organic kale chip with sea salt and try to be its friend first. But, being as open minded as she was, Indi just assumed her place amongst her red and gold classmates.
Indica began school and just rolled with whatever was going on at the time. She maintained her love of unique things and built a group of friends. Indica is the sort of girl who just marches to the beat of her own drum and while she values her classmates and their opinions, she has a lot of personal integrity to be true to what she believes in. Her motivation is matched by her desire for things, and right now, Indica is more concerned about what she is good at than what she wants to do with her life.
She exceeded only in the classes that she really loved and tended to either slack off or derail classes she didn’t. Indi liked asking questions and professors who couldn’t deal with that automatically put her on their short lists. Indi had to adjust quite a bit to more formalized education – and that took quite some time. She was used to free form exploration and the inquisitive nature of her parents, but Indi didn’t back down and eventually (sort of) got the hang of things.
As per her childhood of encouraged exploration, by her fifth year Indi was experimenting with plenty of things – like most teenagers do, and has maintained such curiosity all the way through. Her parents aren’t strict about it either (feeling they’d be hypocrites if they were). Additionally, because competition has never really suited her, school leadership and quidditch weren’t her cups of tea either. She didn’t want to detract from her passions, though she did dabble in the idea of creating a herbology club. She knew quite a few people who would gladly join. That’s one of her goals for seventh year – if she’s going to leave a legacy that’s what she wants it to be.
All other goals for seventh year are much more fluid. Unlike what feels like many other students, indi has no idea what she really wants to do with her life. She thinks she’s going to just take her time to figure out what she wanted to do – after all, her mother had done that and her father too, for that matter, so it would come to her time. She’s concerned with having fun, doing moderately well, and not worrying about figuring it all out. School is for fun and experimenting and learning – not being groomed to fit some certain ideal of what one’s life is supposed to look like.
Classes: Core Classes
No
No
No
Herbology
No
No
No
No | Electives
No
No
Care of Magical Creatures
Divination
Muggle Studies
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How Do You Fit Into Your House?: Indica has a quiet courage about her. She is her own person and doesn’t back down on her personal convictions. While she might be laid back and care free, she’s not going to let people mess with others without saying something about it. She was taught about non-violent resistance as a child and believes in that wholeheartedly. She also believes that goodness comes from love and harmony, so she wants to accumulate as many friends as she can. Sure, not all of them are her close friends, but Indi believes many people would have a hard time finding something wrong with her (perhaps another indicator of her Gryffindor personality). She marches to the beat of her own drum and isn’t easily influenced by others. She is passionate about the things she truly loves and works hard when it suits her. Indi has a lot of nerve and will ask tough questions when no one else wants to. Though not the most outspoken Gryffindor, or one that screams the qualities of the house, but it somehow fits.
Writing Sample: N/A.
Sum up your character in one paragraph: Indi is a regular free spirit and individual kind of person. She has some strange likes, as far as entertainment goes, but underneath some of the spookier aspects of her life, she is carefree and laid back (that might actually be prone to laziness). Her parents raised her with a healthy dose of good old fashioned, flower power, peace, love, and harmony - mixed with a clear picture of the world. She experiments with (and grows) many things and was raised to ask questions, resist non-violently, and never just accept your lot in life. She takes it a step further, as Indica doesn’t have an idea of what is going on in her life: she’s not worried about it… yet. There’s the rest of her life to figure things out, right?
Indica Kemp; Seventh Year, Gryffindor