Accepted! ~Elle
Your Nickname: Stef
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: Yes
How did you find us and decide to write with us? Friend
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: Fir Cuween, Kit Branwell
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary
Full Character Name: Meredith Renfield
Character Birthday & Age: December 28, 1985/ 24
City & Country of Birth: Manchester, England
Blood Purity: Muggleborn
Alma Mater: Hogwarts/ Hufflepuff
Cover Job (If any): Manager/Owner of three London night businesses
1. Calavaras- a speakeasy-styled dance hall and resurant marketed toward the middle-to-upper class. There is one in the wizarding London and a second replicated in Muggle London.
2. Spellpunk- A wizarding youth nightclub
Type of Criminal: Gangster/Mob type
Allegiances / Loyalties / Political Faction: Meredith isn't much of one for political factions or specialty groups, but she is a surface supporter of blood purists and groups like the WBA simply because it helps business (although it's one more reason to pretend to be pureblood)
Have they committed any previous crimes?: Yes
If yes, what were they and were they convicted?: Meredith and her clubs have been involved in too many individual crimes to name. Most of them involve small matters like using her staff and venue to smuggle or transport 'delicate goods' from one person to another.
Of course, serving as a safe middle man means that Meredith gets plenty of information about the goings-on of the underworld. Information gathering and selling serves as almost as good an income as the clubs themselves. Meredith is careful to only sell information back to fellow criminals or members of the law only when it furthers the goals of some specific member or branch of the underworld.
More serious crimes have been committed by Meredith, including the use of potions and drugs to debilitate, mentally impair or kill patrons (the latter of course after the victim patrons are a safe distance and time from the venue).
Word on the street is Ms. Renfield is an active participant in ritual cannibalism, a rumor that has not been either confirmed nor denied. And Meredith seems to encourage this rumor, feeling it adds to her notoriety.
If there's a job to be done in Londontown, if there's dirt that needs digging, Meredith is your girl. She's setting herself up as a Godfather of sort in London to to expand to Edinburgh and Dublin. Right now she's on the big-end of smalltime or the small-end of big time, depending on how you look at it, ever-looking to expand her territory, assets and influences.
To date Meredith has never done time behind bars, from a mix of manger prowess and careful track-covering. She has been brought in as a suspect on several occasions of fraud and illegal transpiration of goods, but was never convicted. It's generally well known that she dabbles in the shady and she has to watch her account books and liquor license and the like carefully as to not give an excuse to the law to come knocking.
What crimes might you commit in the future? Discuss all possible: Repeat offenses of all of the above. She's also interested in setting up a shop in Hogsemede to crack into all that good 'rich students on break with a pouch full of mommy and daddy's money' market. Or to recruit.
Are you currently under pursuit by the Ministry of Magic?: No
Wand: Yew, Dragon Heartstring, 8 inches, slender, inflexible with a decorated shaft.
Physical Description: Meredith stands at 5'7"- tall enough to be striking, especially in a pair of heels but not tall enough she's likely to tower over anyone. Her general look tends to remind the historically-savvy of the 1930s gangster-era- pinstripe pencil skirt, blouse vest and fedora, brown hair with a slight reddish cast pulled into a tight bun. She's got a few good curves to fill out the pencil skirt look, but otherwise she is unremarkable. Meredith is (or was depending on who you ask) a pretty girl, but in a girl-next-door way. Or a schoolgirl-next-door way was she tends to look younger than she is, leading her to try and pay with her cosmetics to make her look closer to her actual age or older.
But her personal style is not the first thing that eyes tend to stray toward. Rather it is the right side of her face that looks like someone ran barbed wire through a rotting patch of skin and then sealed it all up with a nice sterilizing fire. There's signs of fading and healing, but her eyelashes and brow are still struggling to grow back. Her 'good eye' has a yellowish tint and the 'damaged' eye appears cloudy, but both are actually cosmetic altercations of otherwise normal looking brown eyes. No one knows this.
Despite the scarring, Meredith has an otherwise attractive-heart shaped face, and plump lips almost always dyed a deep red with a shadow of a smirk that perfectly matches the slight tilt of her remaining eyebrow. Some women play the game by being looking alluring, some by perfecting an outer innocence. Meredith does neither. Her smirk is akin to the confidence of a poker player than knows the hand of the entire table and the next three cards in the deck beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Personality Description: Meredith is often described as "soft spoken." It's true that she's never been the life of the party, but she hasn't been a wallflower in many years. She has no difficulties striking up a friendly conversation with a stranger. Even so, she tends to think carefully before she speaks, taking her time for the sake of diplomacy. This patience can also be found in her 'business ventures' A little more daring and less caution could have vaulted Meredith to even higher standing and notoriety, but Meredith carefully measures all her options and outcomes before acting. Much like a chess player, she is thinking four or five moves ahead of the current one.
She keeps personal matters and business dealings strictly separate, she may use charm to help dealings along, but always the charms of a quick wit and sly smile rather than a kiss or revealing clothing.
Her sense of humor veers toward the twisted and oftentimes its apparent that empathy went missing about the same time her moral compass did. Meredith can be cold and distant toward the world and it's people, acting like she doesn't care about others' personal issues. Many times, she doesn't
Those who know about Meredith's shady business sense might be surprised to discover the entrepreneur a quite honest young lady. Of course she's not about to run off an confess to authorities and she has a certain reputation to maintain, but she's fully aware and accepting of what she does and the consequences it has and doesn't try and make any grand illusions or excuses as to what she does and why. No grand "visions" of making a better world, he or she had it coming, etc. She's a criminal. Plain and simple. In some ways, she considers herself even more honest than lots of honest non-criminals- she at least is fully aware of her actions and personally accepts the damage she does.
b]History:[/b] Meredith is the middle of three children. Five years separate her from her older sister and twelve from her younger brother. She and her sister are currently estranged.
The Renfields were a poor muggle family when Meredith was growing up, and a small criminal record (petty crimes like car stripping and small-time street gambling cons for quick cash) made it difficult for the family to get any loans or financial help from banks- at lest not without a steep interest rate. They ended up borrowing from a small firm connected to a shady shipping tycoon.
Meredith was completely unaware of magic before she got her letter and she is the only one of her siblings to attend. She was sorted into Hufflepuff and for the most part led a quiet seven years of schooling. She was decent with wandwork but not spectacular and her other classes with the exception of potions, she performed at an average level. Her magical talents had to wait for third year when she was introduced to Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.
As a child she was quiet and softspoken, making a few good friends but keeping mostly to herself. She joined the theatre club on a whim her third year, which helped bust her a little out of her shell.
A mix of classes she was finally really interested and skilled in and the theater club ended up helping her with her grades, as she became more confident and engaged.
Her OWL scores were:
1. Astronomy (E)
2. Ancient Runes (O)
3. Arithmancy (O)
4. Charms (A)
5. DADA (A)
6. Divination (A)
7. Hebology (E)
8. History of Magic (E)
9. Potions (O)
10.Transfiguration (A)
Her NEWT scores were:
1. Astronomy (E)
2. Ancient Runes (O)
3. Arithmancy (O)
4. DADA (A)
6. Herbology (E)
6. History of Magic (O)
7. Potions (O)
After graduating Hogwarts, Meredith became a secretary at the Ministry. Hardly glamorous, but such was the real world and the life of a witch whose skills lay in her mind and not her wand. Barely a year later, Meredith's family ended up in a tight spot with the family they had loaned money from. Meredith immediately took her savings to try and put some sort of payment down and help ease things over and ended up getting a job as a secretary in the company to 'work off' her family's debt- aka indentured servitude. Yes, magically persuading him to forgive the debt crossed her mind but her wandwork wasn't good enough to pull of a confident Confundus Charm, much less the more obvious (and sinister) Imperius Curse.
By this time, Meredith's sister had found a wealthy politician and had happily married into money and power, leaving the family behind and barely sending a postcard their way.
Two years of 40+ hour weeks later and life was actually going well. She still had family debt to work off, but she was making good friends in the company, especially when Meredith discovered a good head for numbers helped wonders making those account books say what you want them to. And she fell in love with the city of London. Whenever she had share time, she worked on her wandwork, recognizing how much easier this situation would have been if she had gotten higher than an "A" in any wandwork class.
Due to the nature of her employment, Meredith was quite aware of the illegal goings-on of the company, and this got her in trouble, not with the law (if only) but a rival group.
A few thugs ambushed Meredith on her way home from work. She would like to have been able to say 'You should see the guy' but the other guys ended up looking pretty good, for dead man. And she lacked pocket-knives and acid. Practice makes perfect (and a side of adrenaline-pumping fear apparently didn't do any harm either).
She had enough sense to make the deaths look like they were done with Muggle methods before getting herself to a hospital.Her boss visited her once for five minutes, offering condolences, a raise and a lawyer.
After a week in the hospital, Meredith was released. She transferred to St. Mungo's for the rest of the month. She confessed to the deaths, but a pretty little 20-year old with a beat-up face was able to get an easy ruling of self-defense, even without a lawyer. For conveniently leaving out any mention of her boss' shading dealings and the thugs connection to a rival group, and playing the role of an innocent young secretary her boss waived off the rest of her family's debt.
Confidence boosted by her spell success, Meredith used her next face-to-face with her boss as a chance to try the Imperius Curse. It worked. As the debt was considered paid off, Meredith made him re-write his will to give her a decent portion of his assets in the event of his untimely death, which happened a week later in an unfortunate burning car accent. Now, how did that happen?
Meredith used her inheritance - a pub and a good lump of cash to open Calaveras, her first information tank with a multi-purpose back room. She also paid off the company to not give her any trouble with promises she wouldn't give them any.
A year later, her business skills had her acquire enough money she opened up a second Calavares, this time in wizarding London, moving her operation to be more focused on the wizarding world and use the muggle one mainly for financing through exploiting tourists.
It was the opening of the second Calavaras that really pushed Meredith into the world of crime and around this time as well- she encouraged cannibalism rumors and made sure everyone knew she was, in fact a pureblood. The latter was simple practicality- lots of criminals or customers into the wizard were blood purists. If she wanted to tell everyone she was a muggle-born, she'd likely find her wallet hurting. That wasn't too hard to do really, since she kept to herself in school and at her various jobs and many times the topic simply didn't come up.
Her third business, the youth nightclub Spellpunk just opened in December and is mostly a legit business, though it does has it's own backroom. As of now, Meredith is getting the feel for the teen and young adult market and possibly see if she can't do some recruiting for her own 'company' Get 'em while their young and all that.
Writing Sample: Sum up your character in one paragraph: An otherwise honest young lady whose moral compass broke down along the side of the road, Meredith Renfield is a business 'entrepreneur' keeping her options and business open and expanding for all sorts of work, using whatever cards fate gives her and managing them to make a better hand. Don't let the cannibalism rumors and the scar scare you- she's a lovely girl. Really.
Meredith Renfield: Criminal