Your nickname: Will (internally Evilpizza)
Have you read and agree to the Code of Conduct?: Yep
How did you find us? Originally, coming across some tvtropes page or such link
Have you written here before?: For a few years, gone for ages, then back as of Feb 2024

(NOTE: most of these OOC specifics are unknown to the character, and the greater majority of the populace, IC)
Full Character Name: Ursula Strougler (since coming to the UK, formerly Jana Novákova)
Character Birthday & Age: Nov 3rd 2004; 13
City & Country of Birth: Norwich, Norfolk, Britan
Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn: Halfblooded (presumed in her Ministry file)
House & Year: Slytherin 2nd Year
(Ursula didn’t know her exact birthdate before coming to Hogwarts, having an honorary birthday in the spring. She often claims to be 12/younger than her actual age)

Wand: Ivy, Unicorn Hair, 6.5 inches, rigid with a lightly decorated shaft: a spiraling vine pattern along the length, with a three-quarters knob at the base of the handle.

Ursula's wand is from the last batch of wands Tamzin Ollivander completed as she finished her apprenticeship under her uncle Garrick. Although it wouldn't be purchased until 2016. It's not an incomplete nor faulty wand by any means, although it has the hallmarks of a wand suited for an unusual personality. Or more accurately, a shortened timespan of use. Garrick himself didn't craft wands with Ivy, considering them temperamental. Ivy tends to 'hiccup' with casting offensive spells, lacking in a certain quality depending on core. It's prone to wilting from emotional strife or death of its original owner, especially when paired with unicorn hair which may fade out first. Another unusual quality is its ineffectiveness at learning new spells. Being a parasitic wood, Ivy learns best from exposure to spells from another source, such as dueling or demonstration. It might flounder for the caster learning a spell from solely their own efforts, such as instruction from spellbooks. However, Ivy's shortcomings as a creeper-wood are made up by being especially adept with both Transfiguration and Defensive magic. It's best suited with cynical minds able to deftly step around shortcomings.
(6th sketch in the Unicorn Tail Hair list)

Physical Description: Ursula has long dark hair framing her cherubic face. She has a shapely nose and often smiles with her lips at a slant. It’s rare to see her mouth open when she smiles. As a child she has rounded teeth and large gums. Cute features that might suggest a stunning beauty when she grows older.

Ursula dislikes being so cute.

She’s of a slender, petite size, likely not to grow much beyond 5 feet and a few inches. She has olive skin that tans easily. Ursula has an inquisitive face, with dark eyes that stare into and through you. She tends to frown more than relax. If people warn her “you’ll have early wrinkles” she’ll tell them “that’s the point.” Give her a makeup kit and she’ll try warts, scars and liver spots rather than more conventional looks. She wants to be a fierce, harsh witch that favors the aging of the old crone archetype. Or rather, if she could just be a hag.

Quite notably, Ursula is an amputee. Her right arm is missing, with only a scarred nub just past the shoulder. It’s effectively made her learn to be left-handed for everything from writing to spellcasting. Struggling with writing left-handed was a sore spot for her, to the point she finds she can write better using her right foot, although this isn’t always conducive in the classroom.

A few prosthetic arms have been suggested for her. Her favorite was crudely fashioned from the limb of a flesh-eating tree. Specifically the “Treacle Locust” species within the same family as the mundane “Honey Locust” tree. It was tempered with magical resin based varnish, giving it a deep umber color. The hand is just larger than her own and the fingers are almost like twigs. It has the advantage of connecting to her nerve endings to restore motor control. It will also grow with her as she ages, including regrowing broken sections over time. It doesn’t allow for fine control, including wand casting, and the ability to feel pain from this arm is unusually sporadic. She also has a muggle made prosthetic, although it’s old fashioned making it a tad obvious in certain outfits.

Although when she tires of the drawbacks of both, or during refitting, she’ll just as easily go around without any replacement arm. She will pin or tie off the sleeves of her outfits if that is the case. Most of her clothing has come second-hand so she doesn’t follow fashions all that well. It takes some effort to convince her to dress up. She’s at home in dark colors, such as black, green or navy, that preferably can take a beating for her interests in the natural world.

Personality Description: Ursula is quite observant. She’s a voracious reader and grew up speaking Czech before she learned English, also making her familiar with Slovak and some of Polish due to the linguistic similarities of Slavic languages. She’s a mild prodigy given her advanced reading and learning of English compared to peers her age. You’ll often find her about the Library, Slytherin common room or other places with a book or few.

Ursula is very independent. She gives off a distant, somewhat troubling first impression. She doesn’t appear to care for much besides reading, learning about magic and her pet rat Lolmis. She’s fascinated with learning about the Dark Arts to the point that if you were to call her a hag, she would take it as a compliment. In her attempts to invoke fear within her fellow students she goes by 'Gnarfang' when plotting nefarious magical acts. Although these are mostly claims. Hopefully.

She’s knowledgable but seemingly detached in many school settings, sometimes making pointed jabs to students she is partnered with for assignments. Antagonizing but usually in a way of pointing out what they’ve got wrong, like a rather acerbic critic. Her emotions are usually muted, although if pressed she can be quite loud and disparaging before she would run off to be alone.

What few friends she has keeps close, although she’s worried about losing friends. Those that endear themselves to Ursula would find that she’s a lot more caring and supportive than she let’s on. Ursula’s dream is to find a family with enough older siblings to love each of them in turn. Since being found and moved to the UK she dislikes being around kids noticeably younger than her. In contrast she’s rather direct and mature beyond her years when addressing adults, although lacking in full life experience.

Despite her propensity for going down the path of the Dark Arts, Ursula can be oddly sensible and grounded when she recognizes hardships others have once she manages to look past her own. She exhibits a ‘tough love’ both to convince herself and others she doesn’t care about them that much, so it hurts less if the relationship doesn’t pan out as friends or possible surrogate family. She’s quick to defend against slights to those she cherishes even more than grievances sent her direction. Underhanded tactics and threats of her wickedness are backed up by what she’s learned of nasty magic by emulating hags.

By the time she learned of the magical world, she became keenly interested in collecting famous Witch or Wizard cards from the chocolate frog packs. Including the lines that delve into creatures or other beings, like noted Goblins or Vampires, or her most prized set for famous Hags.

History: Ursula Stroulger is a girl without a past. “Stroulger” is not her real name. Only a few things are known about her origins.

She was discovered as a toddler, rescued from a hag that had bitten off her right arm. This occurred in Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic, during a period of time in the mid 2000s when hag attacks were on the rise in central Europe. At the time there was no trace of her surviving family nor any magical potential within the babe. Only a few letters, ‘URS’ were found on her scraps of clothing. It was the decision of the local Ministry, under advisement from the Germany Ministry at the forefront of combating the hag incidents, to place her in muggle care. With periodic observation to see if she exhibited magic.

She grew up in a kid home (Dětský domov) in the South Bohemia region of the country. The country uses a community based model to raise parentless youth. She was marked as a ‘bez mena’ (no name) but was called Jana Novákova, based on common names at the time. Or as the neighbors colloquially said, Bohuznáma ('God knows' her name). As a young girl Jana was bright, clever and eager, usually cheerful in personality despite the difficulties of her injury.

As she grew up, Jana/Ursula didn’t have the Bohemian blend of features like other kids at the home. She’s been easily mistaken for having Southern European roots, or Spanish-Mediterranean features. The most accurate examination of her background is actually British-Mexican, suggested to have Mesoamerican heritage.

Jana was hopeful to be adopted into a proper family, although she enjoyed being the youngest at the domov. Being the ‘baby of the bunch’ allowed her to soak up attention, clinging to her older foster siblings during her formative years. This idyllic outlook of her situation paled when some younger kids, a pair of siblings, were brought into the care of the domov. Soon she was no longer the youngest, mistakenly believing the affection was being pulled away form her when the attention was focused on getting the younger kids settled. A shakeup of dynamics that led to them not getting along, with troubling behavior on both sides.

And that’s when the inexplicable accidents happened.

Unaware of what she was actually doing, her rivals were struck down by rudimentary hexes. Jana fled in a panic, eventually found by wix who were alerted to the notice left by the German Ministry about the hag attack. Further investigations into her background were made but the results were fruitless. During this time, Jana was placed in the care of a magical family. They had two children, a boy and a girl, although the girl regarded Jana with suspicion. The children’s uncle was a herbologist and woodcrafter who designed her organic limb.

Jana took keen interest in discovering more about magic, curious about both herbology and the hags that she had been rescued from. She began thinking that she might have been a hag child, as those tracing her origins found few leads. The older foster sister was preparing to attend Durmstrang. She had constant pointed remarks for how Jana would likely flounder there given her condition: a one-armed nobody with a false name. The foster brother tried to calm matters but Jana was primed to retaliate against her sister in more subtle ways. She would increasingly attempt to run away to try and meet hags to learn more from them.

And right before Jana got herself in serious trouble again…she received an owl from Hogwarts addressed to Ursula S. Which raised more questions than answers.

School and international wix representatives met with Jana’s magical foster family to discuss the matter with her. A few more details of her origins were found thanks to the Book of Admittance and the Quill of Acceptance, which are only reviewed in advance to note magical children near the UK by birthdate. Or partially, with Jana discovering her name was actually Ursula, which matched the letters on her clothes during her rescue. But the Quill and Book had been very antagonistic whenever her information was recorded, as her last name was smudged, as was her birthplace ‘somewhere in Norfolk’. Her birthdate being in November meant she was actually several months older than believed, as she had been given an honorary birthday in the spring. During these talks young Jana/Ursula was treated to a Chocolate Frog. The first card she collected being Edgar Strougler, inventor of the Sneakoscope.

Remembering the teasing about attending Durmstrang, the newly minted ‘Ursula Strougler’ suggested her new name could be borrowed from the card, in place of the unknown initial. She was quick to jump at the opportunity to attend her own school. The partial information on record, and indeed her acceptance letter reaching her gave her as much right to attend Hogwarts as any other European school. And possibly, even if she never found her original family, finding her own where she could be the youngest adoptee/foster child again, and not have siblings regarding her with suspicion.

Although working on improving her English and getting used to a new environment all over again affected Ursula more than she cared to admit. As were having her hopes dashed when details of her origins hit another dead end. Several families both muggle and magical across Europe, with ties to the UK, were victim to the hag attacks. Leads that again have gone nowhere since Ursula was sorted into Slytherin, Class of 2023, in the autumn term of 2016.

Thus the full (somewhat) details of her past were a strictly need-to-know basis among the castle’s authorities. Since then, Ursula hasn’t minded cultivating the image of being a ‘hag-witch’ with her continued fascination into the Dark Arts, and even uses the name ‘Gnarfang’ to scare off her rivals. While in contrast being rather sisterly to those she likes.

Classes:
Plans to sign up for Runes, Creatures & Divination for her Third year. Never passed Flying in her 1st year so she looks to remedial lessons.

Core Classes Astronomy Charms Defense Herbology History of Magic Potions Transfiguration Flying

Electives Runes Creatures Divination

How Do You Fit Into Your House?: Ursula's grand ambition to find the perfect, for her, family doesn't sound like the typical Slytherin ambition. She's very well-read but favors secret or forbidden knowledge rather than argue morals. She's sardonic and potentially cruel, certainly not minding the propensity for dark artists in the house that lingers to this day. However, it's really her cunning use of applied knowledge and directed, no-nonsense intent that shines the most as she comes into her own among the other snakes. She certainly likes collecting accolades, good marks, secrets, and minor trophies (much like her chocolate frog cards) in her determined efforts to be her own person given her complete blank for a background.

Sum up your character in one paragraph: Ursula Strougler (surname assumed) is a Slytherin student about to move between her 2nd and 3rd years of Hogwarts. She was discovered as a toddler with her arm eaten off by hags, growing up in Czechia with her origins unknown under the name Jana Novákova. As an amputee Ursula has a few prosthetic arms, the most noted made from a magical species of flesh eating tree. She's being fostered during her school years but dreams of having a permanent family (or possibly discover her biological family). She's an avid reader and collector of chocolate frog cards. Although, rather troublingly, she's highly interested in the dark arts at a young age as she goes through her hag-emulating phase. Even taking up the moniker 'Gnarfang' to weird out her enemies...