Approved! - Nuri
Your Nickname: Elle
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: Fauna Blake, Aileen Reid, Abigail Reid, Eirene Antonopoulos.
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary
Full Character Name: Lorelei Hunt
Character Birthday & Age: 51 years old, July 1960
City & Country of Birth: Barnton, Cheshire county, England
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts, Gryffindor
Job/Position: Criminal
Wand: 10.5", blackthorn, dragon heartstring core, unbending.
Physical Description: Lorelei stands at about 5’8’’, with a robust frame that looks like it could weather any crisis without flinching. She moves quickly and impatiently, confident that her actions are justified. On days when she doesn’t feel well and her use of dark magic has caught up to her, she moves more slowly, frustration in every step.
Her face looks made for a variety of emotional extremes – joy, sorrow, and anger in all its forms. Her stare is especially intense due to the pale blue of her hooded eyes.
Her voice tends to carry and can reach an ear-splitting volume when incensed. Her singing voice, however, is the most pleasant thing about her and has a melodic sort of resonance.
Lorelei prefers to wear disguises of those younger and more attractive than herself, not so much out of vanity, but because good looks and youth have power. When she is disguised, her mannerisms change to match her appearance, though she can keep up the façade for only so long.
Personality Description: When Lorelei was young, she hated and resented her lot in life. The poverty of her family, her halfblood status, and her difficulty with magic were all sore points. She felt tainted from the day she came to Hogwarts, unable to fit in with the rich purebloods she admired, and scorned by anyone decent for her intolerance and vindictiveness. If she’d only been born rich, if she’d only been pureblood, if she’d only displayed more magical talent, then her life would have been different. She would have likely been sent to Azkaban with the other death eaters. She would have likely died fighting for someone else’s ideals.
She realizes that now. Over the past twenty years she’s grown much more comfortable with herself, and more dangerous as a result. She’s tempered her impulsivity, though it remains one of her biggest flaws. She’s learned how to manipulate and deceive to get what she wants. She has little to no issue harming others, and in fact, she's proud of her accomplishments and driven to keep the status she's secured for herself. Pretending to be a pureblood has become more real to her than the bitter child she used to be. Anyone who challenges that should expect to face her wrath.
History: Lorelei grew up in the sleepy little wizarding town of Barnton, a refuge for magical folk that muggles encroached on more and more as her childhood passed. Her parents were quietly anti-muggle and went to Hogwarts with Riddle and his minions. They were never accepted into his elite group. Lorelei's father was muggleborn and her mother had many muggle relatives. They were painfully ordinary, poor, and talentless. They regarded their children with disdain and disgust, seeing their own foibles mirrored and flung back in their faces, well aware that they could not offer them a better life.
Lorelei's parents relied on drink and potions to escape their humdrum lives. The mother had some talent in making cheap charms, and would often disguise herself while selling illegal concoctions. The father was adept at mixing potions that enabled their habits.
They let Lorelei fend for herself, attending to her basic needs when they remembered to and at other times foisting the burden on friends and family. When ignored, Lorelei would only scream and cry louder until she provoked a reaction. Her tantrums were legendary. She bullied and took care of her little brother, Leander, who was born a year after her. He grew up to be extremely quiet and passive, and if not for Lore, he might have wasted away.
As she grew old enough to show signs of magic, she also showed signs of viciousness. Lorelei often hid her parent's wands while they were sleeping or in a stupor. She stole from them. She once locked her father in the attic on a hot summer day because he'd irritated her. Her parents retaliated with hexes and slaps here and there, but made little effort to curb her behavior.
The 1960s were a time of great change, and her parents and their friends often complained about the first muggleborn minister, squibs marching for equal rights, and muggles taking over the neighborhood. Lorelei initially paid little attention to their rants. It was normal to her, and typical of her parents to complain and complain yet do nothing.
She loved to sing, loudly and unabashedly, waking her family and the neighbors. She and Leander played games of pretend. They always had one another.
1971 - As the first wizarding war unfolded, Lorelei arrived at Hogwarts and was sorted into Gryffindor. She made friends through sheer assertiveness, sitting close to her peers and taking up their space, treating them as confidants as she detailed the many sordid adventures of her family, and acting as if she already belonged in their lives. Students were thrilled by her rudeness and boldness.
Her behavior soon lost its charm over the course of the school year, and those she had declared to be her very best friends grew tired of her hot temper, her lack of respect for the professors, and her vindictive streak. Any who challenged her felt her wrath, but she had neither the wit nor the connections to make her wrath matter.
When Leander arrived, the sorting hat rested atop his head for ages, eventually sorting him into Gryffindor. Lorelei latched onto him immediately. Her dismal lot at Hogwarts became his lot, and they often found themselves alone.
At one point in her third year she made the mistake of saying that the dark lord's rise was exciting, causing every head to turn in the Gryffindor common room. Black, Potter, and Pettigrew shunned her and the rest of her housemates followed suit. Lorelei tried to befriend the purebloods and the Slytherins, but much like what had happened to her parents, she was ignored for her lack of subtlety, status, and magical talent.
Lorelei bored easily and did not do well in classes. Students placed bets as to how many detentions she could land. Her spellwork was also terrible. For some, their emotions lent strength to their magic, but for Lorelei, her anger and her negativity siphoned away her power, rendering her wand useless at the times she most wanted to use it.
If anything, this made her angrier, and the cycle fed itself.
Leander, on the other hand, took to Hogwarts. It gave him the stability that his home life didn't have. He had the patience for lessons, though he reserved most of his energy and passion for Care of Magical Creatures. He got along with the other students, except for the ones who would bully him to enrage Lorelei. She'd face his tormentors head on, uncaring if they hexed her as long as she got a nasty hex in too. Embarrassed, Leander suggested she take her revenge quietly, at the right time. She listened - sometimes. She began to realize that there were sneakier ways to fight back.
During summers home, Lorelei evaded her parents whenever they demanded she do something for them. They'd argue, but she was crueler than they were, and filled with the wild energy and arrogance of youth. She didn't need to use magic to make their lives miserable. Her parents backed down a little more each year she came back home, becoming afraid of the daughter they'd once ignored.
There were a few bright spots in Lorelei's young life. She enjoyed singing in the choir. She developed a talent for Divination, intuitively predicting fortunes and manipulating others into believing she knew what was best. Lorelei was no seer, but she was sensitive to the ambitions and desires of her peers. She had a way of looking beyond the persona they presented and seeing the soul beneath.
Her Divination professor took her under his wing, hoping to steer her to a more positive future, one without so much self-inflicted strife. He recognized that her soul was especially strong. With the right training, she could understand the souls of others and relate better to people. He helped her gain some control over her negative emotions, and as a result her spellwork improved. For the first time, she felt hopeful about her future beyond Hogwarts, and grateful for the professor who saw her for who she could be. He let Lorelei assist with some research outside of classes. She was often found in the Divination classroom, attempting (and pretending) to commune with departed spirits. After spending her years at Hogwarts struggling in classes, she wanted nothing more than to be seen as important and to prove to the other students that she had magical talent.
The professor was careless about leaving his notes and books all over his office, even books from the restricted section. Lorelei perked up whenever he shook his head in dismay at a particularly dangerous or forbidden spell. Lorelei just needed to try it out with the right people. It took some time to convince Leander to even step foot in the Divination classroom, but convince him she did, along with his friend, Iona, a shy Ravenclaw who had always admired the Hunt siblings from afar.
Lorelei drew a circle around them, placed three mirrors on the ground, opened up the book, and began the out-of-body spell.
Due to her inexperience and the sheer difficulty of the spell, she neglected to remember several key safeguards. Instead of floating out of their bodies, their souls retreated further within. One by one, the three students lost consciousness, became shells of themselves, and when the professor found them hours later, their bodies were cold and it was almost too late.
Professor and Dumbledore managed to reverse the spell, though the three students remained unconscious for several weeks. Lorelei woke first, then Leander, and finally Iona. Each of them felt the toll, especially the Ravenclaw, who had been closest to death. They were ushered into Dumbledore's office, where they were told they faced expulsion.
Leander and Iona pleaded with the Headmaster to reconsider. Lorelei looked at her brother. He had always been much better at school than she was. He deserved the chance to complete his NEWTs.
Feeling unusual guilt and responsibility, Lorelei decided to give him that chance.
Lorelei told Dumbledore that it was her, all her, that she'd convinced and cajoled and finally coerced her brother and Iona into trying the spell with her. Leander and Iona grew quiet, Dumbledore looked thoughtful, and when Lorelei was done shifting the blame squarely on her shoulders, he looked at the two other students and asked them if it was true. Slowly, they nodded.
And that was how Lorelei was expelled before the end of her seventh year.
1978-
Lorelei moved back home with her parents. She could not find a respectable job, and began doing what her parents did - making and selling potions on the black market. Lorelei also told fortunes for profit, and with that contribution to the household, she reached an uneasy peace with her mother and father. Leander graduated from Hogwarts, found a flat far away from his family, and took a job caring for the mystical pets of rich families.
As one year passed and then another, Lorelei felt an increasing sense of desperation. The thought of becoming like her parents, living day to day like they did, never accomplishing anything worthwhile, scared and angered her.
Despite nearly killing Leander, Iona, and herself, Lorelei wanted to continue researching souls. She contacted her old Divination professor, who had resigned from his Hogwarts post shortly after Lorelei's expulsion.
When they met, he saw that she was miserable, and some part of him felt guilty about what had happened at Hogwarts. He felt like he'd failed her. Lorelei saw his guilt and used it to her advantage, demanding to know what she had done wrong that night in the Divination room.
He explained that a soul can't just float away from the body when that body is still alive. The entire soul only leaves after death, and even then, if you want it to stay on earth, it must be properly tethered to an object.
But what's the point of it all, she'd asked.
He mentioned one word: pentral. When a loved one dies, there were stories that suggested you might be able to keep a person's soul with you, either in an object or another person. At her interest, he quickly backpedaled and said the souls often changed when they were trapped, and the more he researched, the more he saw the consequences of all those 19th century pentrals. Few believe pentrals even exist, but sometimes, due to the findings he'd published, he would receive an owl asking for help. Someone had opened a trunk in the attic, or someone had dropped an old family heirloom and caused the pentral to fly out. He did what he could to bring those souls peace.
Lorelei was fascinated, and asked him to bring her along sometime. Did he really want to do it all alone?
He made a serious error in judgment and agreed.
Lorelei went back home to her parents. She waited months for the professor to contact her. She hated waiting. She soon grew frustrated and angry again.
So much so that one evening, when she was telling the fortune of a potion-addled customer, that customer began to overdose and she made no move to help him. She ran around the little shack in the garden that she'd turned into her fortune-telling oasis, preparing the circle and clumsily enacting the spell as he breathed his last breaths. Lorelei could barely remember it from that one failed attempt at Hogwarts, and it did not work one bit. The customer died. She smashed up the place in a fury, causing her father to burst in the door.
He was angry too, angry at the loss of a customer, at this mess so close to his house, but he told her they would both take care of it. Rather than call the authorities (which would have shut down their illegal business and gotten them all arrested), he and Lorelei transported the body to another neighborhood and left it in an alley, hexing the corpse with dark magic to make it look as though he'd run afoul of the death eaters or others involved in the war.
Lorelei tried to be patient. In 1981, she got an owl from the professor, wondering if she was still interested in assisting him, and letting her know he'd received word of a possible pentral causing problems.
As the wizarding world celebrated the Boy Who Lived, as hope lifted them up, Lorelei traveled with the professor whenever he owled over the course of the next five years, leaving her parents and her miserable life behind for a week or two at a time. She tried to be a good person. She even fancied herself in love with the man, though it was not reciprocated. With his guidance, she learned to recognize pentrals, help people who had been possessed, and release pentrals to the veil.
There was a restlessness in her, a duality reflected in her living situation. With the professor, she felt like she was worth something to people, like she had an impact. With her parents, she felt like a frustrated child again, wanting more than what she had.
She wanted to understand how someone could host a pentral without being possessed by one. She'd always wanted to be someone else. When she was home, she continued her experiments. She graduated to murder. On days when her parents were out, she selected a victim out of the customers who stopped by. She poisoned their potion. Instead of releasing a pentral, she aimed to create one through a variety of dark spells, drawing the soul out of the corpse's mouth. She was unsuccessful. Between her failed attempts she would ask the professor seemingly hypothetical questions. He answered, at first, having no idea what she was attempting at home.
Lorelei left the corpses in other neighborhoods, making it look as if they'd been attacked by dark magic. She did not feel remorse, only a sense of excitement. Their lives were pathetic anyway, and she was just speeding up the inevitable. Everyone died. Really, she was doing them a favor.
Meanwhile, the DMLE was closing in, skeptical of the shoddy crime scenes she left behind. All evidence pointed to one person committing these murders. All they had to do was find the culprit. Lorelei's father, too, was extremely suspicious. Customers were going missing, his daughter was acting strangely, and their potion-dealing business suffered as a result. Even the good professor found Lorelei's behavior strange. He stopped answering her questions, and gradually invited her on his trips less and less.
The first time Lorelei was successful in creating a pentral was the day that her father caught her. Like so many times before, Lorelei held a picture frame up as the soul came out of the victim's mouth. She sang to it, drawing the soul into the frame, and sealing it with magic. It did not escape. It remained there. Lorelei had never felt so happy.
Her father circled back to the house that day after telling her he'd be out. He did not see the ritual, but he saw her moving the body. His worst fears were confirmed. He confronted her when she returned to the house, threatening to turn her in unless she stopped.
Lorelei couldn't have that. She was not going to stop.
She hexed her father until he died. For the first time she felt doubt and remorse, staring at his lifeless body. That was when her mother woke from her stupor and came into the kitchen. Lorelei raised her wand, then lowered it. "We were robbed," Lorelei claimed, then ran.
Lorelei ran right to the professor, and gave him a sob story about her father. The professor listened, trying to understand what had happened, until she asked if they could travel together. Assume different names, different appearances (she implied she knew how), and just travel... indefinitely. The professor ordered her out. He owled the DMLE straight away and gave them helpful information about what they'd been doing on their travels.
Lorelei managed to transfer the pentral out of the picture frame and into her own body, changing her appearance. This helped her evade capture from the DMLE, however, it came at a cost. She felt weak and tired most of the time, and the pentral had a great deal of influence on her thoughts and actions, leaving her confused.
Desperate, she showed up at her brother's flat after months of hiding. Lorelei admitted that she was in disguise, and begged him for help. If she had demanded it or threatened him, he likely would have turned her away. Leander was happy with Iona and the simple life they led. But his sister needed his help for once, looked wretched and vulnerable, and he still loved her no matter what she'd done. He did not care for the parents who had neglected him as a child. He let her in.
The DMLE had stopped by several times to question Leander Hunt, and had continued to keep an eye on his flat, hoping his sister would show up eventually. They paid attention when a young woman appeared. They could not prove it was Lorelei, but they waited for her to make a mistake.
Lorelei suffered, the pentral draining the life out of her day by day. Iona was not pleased about Lorelei's intrusion in their lives, but agreed to look into the subject of pentrals in the Ministry library where she worked. Through Iona's research at the Ministry and Leander's own freelance work with magical creatures, they discovered that unicorn blood may offset the effects of hosting a pentral.
As Leander left to procure some, his girlfriend Iona hid Lorelei and took care of her.
Iona was a mousy, quiet, studious young woman, easily overlooked and simmering with resentment beneath her shy behavior. She clung to people with stronger personalities. In another life, she and Lorelei might have even been friends. As it was, Level Two was just an elevator ride away from the library, and Iona began to make chit chat with the Aurors, trying to get a sense of their personalities. She considered making a deal with them, hoping for immunity for Leander and herself if she helped them catch Lorelei.
She should have.
While Leander was gone, Lorelei discarded the pentral that was harming her. Lorelei then poisoned Iona's drink and killed her. It was a little easier this time to extract Iona's pentral, and she did a better job of it. Lorelei donned Iona's likeness, with a few minor variations she was unable to control. She walked outside for the first time in months. She smiled at the aurors she passed on the street.
Now there was the matter of gentle Leander returning home.
When Leander returned, Lorelei (looking like Iona) was sitting with her evidence of letters spread out on the kitchen table. Lorelei admitted she'd killed Iona and stolen her identity, but if he wanted to know why, he'd better sit and listen. He stood there in shock. Look at these letters, she said, letters back and forth from the Aurors, planning to turn them both in. There was a real letter or two from an Auror, but the rest Lorelei had fabricated, mimicking Iona's handwriting. Look at them gathering outside. She pulled back the curtain from the window and Leander saw two officers in plain clothes watching the house. They're closing in on us, but I have a solution. She showed him another letter - a real letter, from the only relative still alive and in touch with Iona. Iona's childhood friend and distant cousin, a squib recently turned heiress. She lived all alone in a huge estate and often asked Iona to visit her.
"You can turn me in and I won't stop you, Leander," Lorelei said. "Or we can make the most of this and start over. We can live the life we've always deserved."
Leander, emotionally broken and grieving, agreed.
Around 1990-
The Hunt siblings showed up at the squib's estate in the English countryside (exact location to be determined), Lorelei pretending to be and looking like Iona. The squib welcomed them with open arms. The Lilly Lakehouse was the perfect location for criminal activities - secluded, surrounded by acres of forest, and situated next to a large lake.
One night, Lorelei weighed down Iona's corpse, and threw it into said lake.
Lorelei wormed her way into the management of the huge household as Leander charmed the squib with his affable, seemingly sweet nature. The squib was relieved to have the company, and to finally get to know Iona's boyfriend. Still, things seemed off. Iona and Leander did not act like they were dating. Iona was moodier than the squib remembered, and Leander seemed so lost and sad sometimes.
Lorelei wanted to continue creating pentrals, but unfortunately, she could never get the squib to leave the house. The squib had been raised by a loving, but extremely protective family who had hid her from the world, and she'd developed quite the complex about stepping foot outside. It was time to enact the next part of Lorelei's plan.
While the squib was in the owlery one day, Lorelei and Leander followed, locking the door behind them.
What happened next was a death too terrible to describe. They killed the squib, and turned her soul into a pentral. The house was theirs. The fortune was theirs. As a cruel gift of sorts, Lorelei removed Iona's pentral and trapped it in an elaborate frame. She gave it to Leander and promised never to use Iona's face again.
Lorelei adopted Lori Lilly's identity, the heiress who was, surprise surprise, actually a homeschooled witch, if anyone asked. She worked on finding a suitable soul for her brother. She began selling potions again, reaching out to the very customers who were afraid to go back to the Hunt house. She got them to trust her, and expanded her network of criminals.
Lorelei discovered that hosting the squib's pentral was not as draining as hosting other witch pentrals like she had before. She felt like she could wear the squib's identity indefinitely. She decided to find a squib pentral for Leander, just to see what would happen. One of her business contacts sent an unsuspecting squib her way. Leander hosted the pentral without a problem, and they learned something that they told only a few others - squib souls make the best pentrals.
For another few decades, Leander and Lorelei lived as Lee Lilly and Lori Lilly in the deceased squib's estate, pretending to be rich, reclusive pureblood siblings. For several years they focused on selling potions, and secretly built up a collection of pentrals. Only once they grew confident in their technique did they begin selling pentrals. They offered customers a new face, and sometimes even knowledge from the pentral that they hadn't had before. They found a reliable customer base in those who used the chaos and terror of war to achieve their own ends. Even a few desperate muggleborns sought pentrals to use as disguises.
Leander grew deeply unhappy with his life, but contributed to the business of murder in important ways. He used his connections in the Magical Creatures industry to bring a herd of unicorns to the forest surrounding the house. They sold unicorn blood as well, and drank it themselves to keep up their strength.
Leander also experimented with using animals as hosts for pentrals. It rarely took well, but when it did, the possessed animals displayed a creepy intelligence and ability to follow Leander's orders. The Hunt siblings kept more than thirty owls in the tower of the estate, several of them possessed, used to send complex messages to various people, avoid detection when needed, and potentially spy.
The main issue in storing and preserving pentrals was the company that they attracted. As the years passed, dementors flitted after the souls when Lorelei drew them out of those she killed or called to souls over a distance. Lorelei developed several wards and spells to keep them at bay, though Leander often struggled to ward them off without her.
Around 2009, Lorelei knew she needed to plan for the inevitable - new identities, new squib pentrals. She had a number of options already in place, but wanted believable identities. She and Leander decided to adopt a most unfortunate child by the name of Calix. He was a fifteen year old, pureblood squib who had been shuffled from home to home after showing no signs of magic. All they had to do was wait till he turned seventeen, when the Care of Squib Children protective charm would dissipate and they could murder him without alerting the authorities.
Lorelei looked for the perfect squib girl. She made it known to a few of her criminal friends, including Ira, that she was searching for a pureblood squib around Calix's age. Someone with connections, but not too many. Someone who could inherit a nice nest egg from her family.
Enter Abby Reid, whose parents had decided it was past time for her to get to know several eligible pureblood boys and, they hoped, pick one as her suitor. In the summer of 2010, Abby visited many young men across Europe, her older sister in tow as chaperone.
When Abby arrived to the Lilly Lakehouse in August of 2010, she was welcomed by Lori and Lee Lilly, two reclusive pureblood siblings and their adopted son, Calix. She spent a few weeks there until her sister received an urgent owl from a colleague. Aileen left.
Abby's visit was extended to a month, then two, then several more, and at first, the family treated her kindly. As Abby realized that none of her letters were making it out and that her host parents were isolating her from the rest of the world, it was too late. Winter had arrived. Dementors were on the loose. Abby's mother believed her to be safe, due to her communication with Lori. Abby's sister, Aileen, was off facing dangers she'd never dreamed of. Abby was alone, except for Calix.
Abby tried to escape several times in the spring and summer of 2011. Their time was running out. When Calix turned seventeen in August, Lori would kill them both.
On a day when Lori was out and Lee was home, Abby and Calix sneaked into the Hall of Pentrals, a maze of corridors full of paintings, portraits, and mirrors. They reigned destruction upon it, smashing mirrors and ripping canvases. The pentrals streamed out.
Dementors descended in a frenzy to consume the souls, pushing against the estate's defenses. Leander tried to fight them back. He met his demise in the tower of the owlery, surrounded by his pets.
Little did they know the trapped pentrals had grown angry and wild. A pentral latched onto Abby, and another onto Calix, changing their identities without the protection of a ritual or spell. The squibs raced to the fireplace. The pentral possessing Calix did not merge well with his soul, and killed him before they could reach the flames. Abby stepped into the fireplace just as dementors and pentrals alike invaded the room.
Lori returned to a house overrun with dementors, escaped pentrals, one dead squib, and one dead brother. She channeled her anger and sent the pentrals and dementors far from her home, scattering them over England.
Lorelei gathered what she could, including her brother's corpse. She left, discarding the pentral disguise of Lori Lilly.
Lorelei Hunt vowed to rebuild her life, bring back Leander, and find the girl who had destroyed everything, whatever it took. She has nothing to lose, and won't stop until she gets what she wants or dies trying.
Describe your job duties and how you go about them: Lorelei is an illegal potions dealer, pentral seller, and murderess. She meets her customers on an island in the middle of a large lake close to the Lilly Lakehouse. She and her brother Leander craft potions in a "closed off" section of their estate. They also sell unicorn blood to criminals who purchase their pentrals or those who need the blood for some other purpose.
To replenish her stores, she enjoys luring lost souls to her through a mixture of magic and music. Once in a while, she'll indulge in good old fashioned murder and trap a pentral directly from the corpse. Criminals who are willing to host pentrals often need them for the disguise and/or to obtain knowledge. Lorelei and Leander hosted pentrals, often choosing squib pentrals as they offered the most longevity.
Elaborate on your expertise in your field: Lorelei gained her potions expertise from her parents, who were dealers, and a bit from her studies at Hogwarts. She learned about pentrals, and souls in general, primarily from her Divination professor. While living with her parents, she used fortune telling to lure in customers and explore what happens to souls outside of the body. She still dabbles in fortunes to this day.
She learned to murder on her own, but learned to hide a body in plain sight from her father. Once she moved into the Lilly Lakehouse, she buried any corpses in the woods by the house.
Writing Sample: Sum up your character in one paragraph: Lorelei is a person ruled by emotions and ambitions. From a young age she has raged at the world for all its various injustices and miseries, prepared to dole out her revenge tenfold. She feels deeply but in a very selfish way, and has little empathy for others. It could be said she’s only ever loved one person – her younger brother Leander.
Lorelei Hunt: Criminal