Accepted! ~Elle
About You, the Writer:
Your Nickname: Sparky
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: Of course!
How did you find us and decide to write with us? One of the RPG advertising sites a few months back.
If you have written other characters here, list them all: Jonas Trevelyan
Full Character Name: Noriko Wakahisa
Character Birthday & Age: January 12, 1997; 14 years old
City & Country of Birth: Manchester, UK
Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn: Halfblood (Pureblood father, Halfblood mother)
House & Year: Slytherin Fifth Year (as of September 2012)
Wand: Nine inches, ash, phoenix feather
Physical Description: Noriko stands about average height for a fourteen-year-old. She has long black hair, pale pink skin, and dark brown eyes, which sometimes shift nervously from side to side as she attempts to shrink into the background.
Noriko has a distinctive Mancunian accent, leaving no mystery to where she was born and raised. When she is not in official Hogwarts uniform, she dresses in nice, neat skirts and pressed shirts, still partial to the color green. She has a bright smile, though she is far more likely to look serious, particularly where house points are concerned.
Personality Description: When she was a first year, Noriko seemed an odd fit for Slytherin House: anxious and quiet, preferring to remain in the background rather than draw attention to herself. In the years since, she has begun to come out of her shell a little bit more. She is fiercely competitive, and cares deeply about winning, especially when House points are concerned. Although sometimes timid in class, Noriko works hard to get things right, and secretly desires to be recognized for her hard work.
Noriko tries hard to be deferential and respectable to authority figures, including her professors. She is still somewhat gullible, and can be an easy mark for her classmates. Although she naturally tends to believe anything that a knowledgeable-seeming individual tells her, she has started to be a little more suspicious of less-trustworthy individuals.
Noriko is also extremely superstitious. Her parents made the unfortunate mistake of turning most of their cautionary warnings to their children into threats – don’t play with the strange dog because it could be a Grim, don’t talk to Muggles because they might find out that you’re a witch, don’t play with your father’s wand because it might explode and burn the house down. Although Noriko is not quite as superstitious now as she was when she was younger, she still takes care to do things the right way and avoid bad omens. Her side of the fourth year dorm room is still covered in potentially lucky symbols and good luck charms. This has driven her to study Divination, and she is deeply envious of any natural Seers.
Noriko is a quietly determined individual. Her parents told her to make them proud while she was at school, and she intends to be the best student in her year, no matter what it takes. Though she will outwardly take quite a bit from other students, she inwardly bristles at being teased or directly put down and will secretly hold a grudge for months. If she truly wants something, she will secretly break the rules or manipulate her way into getting what she wants. Noriko loves to make up songs and stories; years of acting multiple parts in her home-written “operas” have given her a knack for imitation and adopting other accents. At Hogwarts, she has also discovered a love for drawing, and sometimes experiments with charms to animate her creations.
History: The Wakahisa family were an old Japanese wizarding bloodline with a reputation for turning out skilled onmyoji and other magic users. During the 1940s, the family had loose connections to Grindelwald, which ended disastrously with the dark wizard’s defeat in 1945. Noriko’s great-grandfather, who had never really been on the best terms with the less reputable branch of his family, immigrated to England a few years later in hopes of raising his children away from the long shadows of the Wakahisa name.
Several generations later, Noriko Wakahisa was born in Manchester. As her parents’ first child, her early life was spent enjoying every privilege and ounce of attention that Masaru and Kitomi Wakahisa excitedly gave to her. Even after her younger brothers were born several years later, though, Noriko’s childhood was extremely lonely. There weren’t many other wizarding families close to Manchester, and her father was rarely about as he frequently commuted to London, where he worked at the Ministry of Magic.
Her parents were nervous to let her interact with Muggle children, so Noriko grew up without many playmates. She occupied her time by inventing songs and poems on her own and would often stage dramatic “operas” with the help of her younger brothers. Unfortunately, the boys were really too young to do much besides standing where she told them and shouting a few words on cue, but Noriko made do by speaking many of their lines for them in different voices. She developed a knack for acting parts and adopting different accents, though she was terrified to display this talent in front of anyone but her immediate family.
When Noriko was nine, a year before she would presumably start at Hogwarts, her father took the family back to Japan. It was a well-intentioned attempt to make reparations with their long-estranged relatives, but it ended as poorly as could be expected. Relations between her parents and her many aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom spoke a language that Noriko could not understand, were strained from the start. Masaru and Kitomi eventually concluded that they were correct to raise their children so far away from their roots, and reaffirmed their intent to break off ties with the Japanese branch of Masaru's family upon returning home to the United Kingdom.
Noriko, though, had discovered a branch of her family that she never even knew existed. Lonely for so long, she was delighted to meet all of the cousins and second cousins that she had never even known existed. She latched on to one of her older cousins, Toshiko Wakahisa, who spoke English and adopted her as a sort of younger sister. Her parents, distrusting Toshiko’s attitudes towards the Dark Arts and her intentions towards their daughter, discouraged the relationship, but they were loathe to outright forbid their eldest child from speaking to her cousin. Even after returning home to Manchester and leaving for Hogwarts, Noriko has continued to write to Toshiko, keeping in touch with her on a regular basis.
Her early years at Hogwarts have passed uneventfully, aside from a habit of mishaps in class. In her second year, her middle brother Taiki (one year younger) was also sorted into Slytherin, and he quickly proved to be the bane of Noriko's existence. In her fourth year, her younger brother Daichi joined her at Hogwarts as well, getting sorted into Hufflepuff House. Now entering her fifth year, Noriko is thrilled to have finally achieved her dream: becoming one of her house prefects, empowered to help keep her classmates in line and ensure that Slytherin win the House Cup.
How Do You Fit Into Your House?: Noriko is very ambitious, a trait that will certainly grow in her as she gets older. She wants desperately to succeed at school and to make her family proud by living up to their high expectations. Though she is too young to have been put in many morally questionable situations, as she becomes more comfortable at Hogwarts, she will do almost anything to accomplish her goals academically.
Noriko is also secretly fascinated by her family’s forbidden history. She is intrigued by the idea of dark magic, although it would take a lot to get her to admit it since her parents so vehemently disapprove. Although her parents are worried about her after her Sorting into Slytherin (her father was a Gryffindor and her mother a Ravenclaw), Noriko is likely to fit right into the House often considered to be the most sympathetic to the Dark Arts.
Sum up your character in one paragraph: Noriko is a Slytherin fifth year student who can be quiet and meek, but still fiercely competitive. Despite her parents’ stern warnings, Noriko is also secretly fascinated by her family’s dark history and harbors a hidden desire to learn more about the past.
Noriko Wakahisa: Fifth Year Slytherin; Prefect