Physical Description

Adelaide is olive-skinned with thick, coarse, dry-prone hair cut to just past the nape of her neck, the sort that air dries curly and brushes out frizzy. Enviable for its thickness, Adelaide considers it a pain but a security blanket. A weekly wash or two and a strict avoidance of hair brushes keeps it mostly manageable. It’s usually worn straight (or semi so) for practicality’s sake, and thus looks much longer and smoother on any given day. While not adventurous with scissors, Ada likes a new-hip-but-natural approach to many things, and is willing to explore a bit with haircare trends, or let her hair “breathe” by leaving it to its own devices from time to time.

The witch has epically thick eyebrows, too: they start with brushed-up, slightly-sparse and very expressive inner corners (that her foodie father lovingly compares to wheat fields), and taper off into more consistent arches. Far less plucked than her actress mother’s, their hugeness is counterbalanced by their warm chocolate tone, and they frame her face’s focal point— miraculously not the brows themselves, but a round, washed-out green gaze.

Overall, Adelaide is pretty in a summery way, a mix of rose-and-bronze features and something oddly gossamer. She tans easily, holds her weight well on a strong, long frame, and prefers sugar scrubs and natural lip stains to tweezers and hair bands. She definitely inherited her father’s healthy glow and his soft focus features, those relics of an old-fashioned ice-cream man. Her mouth and eyes have the same sort of largeness, wide and plenty spaced out, giving her visage a heart shape.

Personality Description

Adelaide learned levelheadedness from her melodramatic mother and shrewdness from her happy-go-lucky father, but she is generally a rather forward, unabashed, lay-it-bare person. Her work as an agent has certainly made her more open, honest, and, well, blunt, in the past decade or so. It is never fun to tell someone no, but it certainly becomes easier with age and experience.

Ada is always diving into a mountain of papers or chasing down a client. She likes to make plans and follow through on them, though sometimes that means taking a huge detour— which she’s fine with, and at the end of the day usually finds fun (if sometimes maddening). While she has an imagination, and loves an idle dream as much as anyone else, the witch leaves the bulk of laying around and letting inspiration hit to her writers; Adelaide is a doer and a go-getter. Her willingness to run down streets, bang on doors, and talk her way into meetings is largely why she still has a job.

Adelaide doesn’t approach her work as a competition, but as a journey. It is easier said than done, and easier to believe than it is to impart on clients. For publishing is one of the oldest, meanest industries in all the worlds— wizarding and muggle— and being part of an industry family is a luxury that comes with a lot of nonsense. Very luckily, Adelaide picked up Florean’s adeptness for wading through nonsense. It has become a daily routine for her. Figuring out which is the good kind, the genius kind, the kind that will make the world a better place, or at least entertain it, and which nonsense is simply bad tradition, means that her life is, at the very least, hardly ever boring.

Sleep isn’t something she schedules enough of, and it’s something that she often finds gets in the way. While she’ll openly admit her jealousy of someone who has spent a morning sleeping in, Adelaide is glad that she usually has her hands full.

When she does take time to relax, she likes upbeat music, strong caffeine, and fast-pace reads. There’s generally a certain energy to her favorite things, the slowest being melting ice-cream.

Adelaide does keep a dream or two tucked up her sleeves: she’s had a list of flavors she’s kept since she was twelve.

History

FAMILY
Mother - Mariel Fortescue - Acting Coach at the Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts, Member of WAG (Wizarding Actors’ Guild, not to be confused with Muggle or Quidditch ‘wives and girlfriends')
Father - Favian Fortescue - Ice-Cream Maker
Grandfather - Florean Fortescue - Former Ice-Cream Maker, History Hobbyist and Parttime Historian, killed by the Death Eaters
Cousin - Augustine - Famous Theater Actor
Uncle - Finnian Fortescue - Head of Fortescue & Felicitous Publishing House (since 1813)
Aunt Felicity - Member of the Wizengamot, progressive and outspoken, often quoted in the Prophet

Adelaide’s parents met at the theater down the alley from Fortescue’s. Her mother, an actress, was the wandlight counterpart to her father’s behind-the-scenes magic. Raised by a history lover, in a family that dabbled in academia, Favian found himself volunteering at the behest of his father Florean, who wrote bits and bobs for the fledging playhouse: period pieces, poems-turned-plays, historical dramatizations. It was the last one especially that brought the pair together on a fateful June opening night, when Favian— having helped build the sets— was juggling donated tubs of Lightning Bug Sherbert to feed the cast and watching from left of stage. Never had he seen such an inspiring portrayal of a young Rowena Ravenclaw, when Mariel tossed her curls in that navy gown and lectured a peculiarly-mustached but smartly-cast Salazar Slytherin. It is Mr. Fortescue’s favorite pre-Adelaide story, that he stole the love of his life from Slytherin himself.

Three years after their marriage, the girl in question was born to celebratory heart-shaped waffle bowls of Raspberry Adelemonaide ice-cream and handkerchief-earning hyperventilation on the part of an overcome Mariel. A future star, said her mother. The sweetest flavor, said her father. A baby, chuckled her grandfather, by the far wisest of the bunch.

Grandfather Florean was Adelaide’s favorite person in the world, the creator of six flavors inspired by the little witch. Even before she was given a wand, she had her own custom sprinkles, sticky-sweet treats with which to trip on the sidewalk, anger old hags, and make overly confident young boys cry. Who could be happier?

Adelaide split her childhood between an expansive old flat above the ice-cream parlour, and a slightly more spacious house in a mostly-wizarding village just outside of London. The cast of her life was plentiful from the start: the Fortescues were a broad and boisterous wizarding family, with members who had filtered into nearly every niche of the magical community, from academia to government. But their name was always especially known around Wizarding Britain for the ice-cream institution that still stands merrily in Diagon Alley.

Summers were a toss up: sometimes she would spend weeks at a time running around the cobbled streets or stomping across the ceiling of Fortescue’s, occasionally or more-than-occasionally lingering about the shop as her grandfather's helper. Other times, her parents would think it healthy for Adelaide to get fresh(er) air and to find herself in a quieter environment. Reflection. One of her mother’s favorite words, and dually one of her most-agitating exercises.  (Because Mrs. Fortescue, lover of reflection, could not spend long reflecting outside of London or missing out on its faster pace of life.)

These days outside of the city were hardly boring, for they were generally full of cousins and other young magical types. Low-flying games of quidditch, swimming in cold ponds and looking for mermaids, convincing the motherly old witch two doors down to give them baskets upon baskets of pumpkin pasties to snack on in the sun and spoil their dinners. Muggles were a rarer breed in the Adelaide’s life in the village, but she was taught from the start to treat them as anyone else. (If only to leave out the bits about magic.) It is in large part due to her family's positive but protective attitude toward muggles that Adelaide finds them curious but comfortable.

Mariel was never an overprotective type, even if she could be stifling in a distinct way. As Adelaide grew, her mother was oft occupied with her newest performance, or else lunching with the ladies who lunched— that all-important audience— or attending some necessary event to promote her work. Adelaide’s father was happy to be married to such a busy witch, and kept a steadier but still quick pace as Florean’s apprentice in the dessert trade. By the time she was old enough to avoid broom rides from strangers, Adelaide was usually left to her own devices: the choice to work summers in the shop or to dally around the house was entirely hers, and she usually alternated all through primary school.

By then, too, Mariel had come to acknowledge that her daughter was not likely to follow in her footsteps. Ada was still poked and prodded to help here and there, to attend events every so often, but she was allowed to explore other hobbies. Her grandfather especially encouraged it, piling Adelaide’s skinny child arms high with books on every subject, or sometimes just novels whose journeys he said would one day hold purpose for her. And if Adelaide thought many of those books strangely irrelevant to her own life, she still trudged through each, for her Florean also believed that reading for simple joy was of utmost importance.

The more she read, the more Ada was willing to help with her mother’s projects— only in the same capacity her father and grandfather had. She’d hang on to the arms of the writers and directors, asking them millions of questions, sharing with them things she’d written or musing aloud about the motives of writers past. The spotlight paled in comparison to the brains she could pick. It was Adelaide’s cousin Augustine whom Mariel became preoccupied coaching, instead. In fact, Mariel’s discovery of Augustine Fortescue, future golden child of the wizarding acting scene, would later lead to her professorship at the Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts.

On Adelaide’s eleventh birthday, she received her letter and list of books. She knew well before she boarded the train that she belonged in her father’s house, the steady, loyal, earnest house of Hufflepuff. To Adelaide, it had the best of everything: a wisdom oft more clever than Ravenclaw’s, for it knew how to be subtle; a brand of ambition more honest than Slytherin’s; and plenty of room for stupid bravery. But it was the perseverance of the house that spoke to her, and that allotted each of those tools over time.

Adelaide loved school— not necessarily all of her lessons, but the busy aspect of it, the being a part of something so brilliant (and a times ridiculous) as Hogwarts. She loved the dorms, living with people who at turns were her most brilliant friends and the most annoying creatures on the planet. She loved staying up late to hear the thunder, tucked under the sheets with wand light and a half finished essay. Sleep was something that seemed at turns a waste of time and a wondrous luxury. This would become more true over the years, and especially in adulthood.

Year by year, Ada found her true loves. The library wasn’t enough to contain her, and when she was only twelve, the badger badgered her way on to the school paper’s staff by being the editor’s irritating shadow. She was relegated minor tasks, errand runs, restocking— and she loved it. Whenever she was offered a “big break” (usually by way of an upperclassmen’s untimely bed rest or exam-induced exhaustion), she relished the chance to do things that would make others roll their eyes. She tried her hand at all of it: photographing the chess team as they painstakingly made each move, editing the pages no one actually read (ads for tutors and obscure club meetings), interviewing the brisk librarian and grisly caretaker. The voices of others fascinated her, however tedious or unfriendly.

Her familiarity with kitchens meant that potions was a strong subject, even if the teachers were rarely likable. In adulthood, Adelaide would compare them to various clients. Thank them, even, for setting the bar. Muggle Studies and Astronomy were also favorites. But it came as no shock to anyone that her best marks were always in History. Adelaide managed to find even Professor Binns rather interesting after a fashion. Mostly she looked for ways to inquire about his history.

The summer after her third year, after two whole school years of being an official member of the newspaper staff, Adelaide’s grandfather was kidnapped by the Death Eaters. Long outspoken and forewarning of history repeating itself, Florean was also a man of obscure knowledge. His supposed information on the Elder wand made him a target. It was months before anyone heard of him again, and by then it was that he had been killed.

The war came to its end at the close of Ada’s fourth year. That summer, the Fortescues began to pick up the pieces of their lives. Favian opened the ice-cream shop almost immediately, feeling it was deeply important to give everyone something to smile about. Even if it was just a scoop of sugar.

Adelaide found it harder to love the stuff of her childhood when such a magical part of it was gone. She avoided the shop that summer, the reminders of sweeter moments, and instead spent many hours shut in a dark back room at her uncle’s publishing house. While the pages of unpublished manuscripts also reminded her of Florean, it was easier somehow to confront words in the quiet.

The girl gave her all to the newspaper in her final two years of school, giving up subjects like potions to pursue the writing-strong and history-strong NEWTs. She earned a few O’s and was offered a job as an assistant at the publishing house straight out of school. Her hours were early, often beginning before sunrise, which left her enough time work nights at the ice-cream shop and save some galleons of her own. If her father hoped dearly that she would one day take over the family business, he never did anything to discourage her love of the literary field.

Ada spent two years apprenticing before deciding it was time for a change. Her mother thought, fleetingly, that it might mean she was taking up the quill for herself, joining a theater as a playwright and learning the artist’s struggle. Her father thought she was coming into her own as an ice-cream expert. But surprised them both, and opened an independent literary agency straight out of her flat.

A playwright would have had an easy time compared to Adelaide’s first year of recruitment. There were plenty of people desperate to be represented and published, sure, but few would-be writers were willing to take a gamble on a barely-twenty unknown. Her first client was an expert on ghoul removal, all dry-tone and more comfortable with creatures than humans. Her next, a conspiracy theorist, fiery and spitting where the first had lacked punch. If the first wizard’s interview with her uncle had failed to leave any impression, the second had had his name added to an official list of lifetime bans from the building.

But Adelaide’s third client was the charm.

For whatever reason, other agents had miraculously failed to see the promise in the wispy witch’s series of teen scream mysteries. Ada, on the other hand, had found them plenty fun, if indulgently frivolous at turns. It had been Florean who had often reminded her that sometimes people just needed to read, that if all voices were serious or lofty or official, the world would be a boring place. Entertainment held value, and so she saw promise. She needlessly begged the witch to let her sign her, and tirelessly begged her uncle for a third interview. It was the lucky break Adelaide needed: the discovery that got all three of her clients published.

By the time Adelaide was twenty three, the first three novels in the series had been rolled into a ridiculously extravagant stage play starring Augustine Fortescue herself as the bright eyed heroine. The money was enough to pay Ada’s rent for a while, and the clients who followed were enough to curl her hair beyond its capacity. Adelaide begrudgingly loved each exhausting moment of it.

If there is one part of her job that has remained consistent, it’s unpredictability. Nearly four years after her break, Ada’s client list has become a certified motley crew. Her daily owls are always a mixed bag of crazy, concerning, hilarious, and utterly confusing. There are sluggish periods when everyone seems to have writer’s block; wild periods when the release parties roll into each other and sleep is a fairytale. There are clients who never stop knocking on her door, and those who need to be hunted by a professional. The moving variables are hardly nine to five, and Adelaide has had less and less time to devote to the other family business over the years.

Describe your job duties and how you go about them.

Adelaide’s job is to represent her clients in a way that makes them attractive to publishing houses— a harder job than one might think. As wonderful as the writing might be, a meeting with the people behind the quills can be disastrous. Adelaide’s brood of writers are quite frequently more easy to read on parchment than in person, and the marketing skills of the very best of them are usually abysmal. Adelaide loves them all the more for it (and for contributing to her insomnia).

Her mornings usually start with answering owls and Floo calls, tracking down writers to make sure they’re sticking to their deadlines, and reassuring editors and publishers. Late mornings are calmer, tea in pajamas and piles of manuscripts. It’s the time when she can lose herself just a bit, and enjoy the moment. Lunches are for clients or would-be clients, and nights may consist of avoiding the most persistent unpublished types while negotiating for better contracts or smoothing over particularly stormy storms. Adelaide is known to order takeaway just shy of midnight and fall asleep surrounded by haphazard piles of paper and boxes of cold noodles.

In addition to her career, she juggles a schedule at her father’s ice-cream shop, where equal scoops of genuine love for the business, duty, and guilt keep her busy. Fortescue’s is a family relic, one that Adelaide adores, but it is also the only part of her life where she finds herself truly at a loss for plans.

Elaborate on your expertise in your field.

Adelaide is an exceptionally hard worker, someone who is used to juggling all sorts of things at once-- be they fanciful ice-cream orders or a myriad of clients' personalities. She is someone who picks up on the voices of others, takes delight in pinpointing the things that make each one different. While she may not be the most polished, vicious, or lofty agent in her field, she is an avid reader, lover of history, and frequent possessor of the editor's quill. She knows how to find hidden literary gems and dust them off, and she is rarely the sort to stop pushing through until she makes progress.

Sum up your character in one paragraph.

Adelaide is a sleep-shy literary agent from an old and boisterous wizarding family. She wrangles and represents a group of oddball writers whose endless number of flavors rival her father's ice-cream shop. Adelaide struggles with balancing her desires and her expectations for herself, but is overall a happy, confident young woman.