Your Nickname: Sarah
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: 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: Knox Greyfriar, Nate Briggs, Figaro Sellaphix, Theodora Kingstreet, Niobe Thursby, Zora Roh, Xiomara Hooch, Juno Grimalken (quiddy)
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Secondary

Full Character Name: Vesta Tims Baddrick
Character Birthday & Age: 1 August 1971; 38
City & Country of Birth: Preston, Lancashire, England
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts; Gryffindor

Cover Job (If any): None
Type of Criminal: Common thief and mugger
Allegiances / Loyalties / Political Faction: None

Have they committed any previous crimes?: Yes
If yes, what were they and were they convicted?: 1997: Arrested by muggle authorities breaking into a muggle corner shop.  Served 2 years.

2002: Captured a few days after a mugging trying to sell the wand she took in the act.  She was sent to Azkaban for 3 years. 

---

Before, between and following, she's robbed dozens of homes, and mugged dozens of muggles and wizards alike.  She takes money, trinkets, jewelry - anything that looks like she could sell easily.  Sometimes she takes personal items, just to be an asshole.

Each time gets a little more violent.  She uses Dark Magic to threaten her victims, then Dark Magic to keep them quiet.  She's injured many, but never killed.

What crimes might you commit in the future?  Discuss all possible: More theft, both personal and break-ins.  Since being released from Azkaban, her level of violence has increased.  She's getting better - Azkaban is a great motivator to improve.
Are you currently under pursuit by the Ministry of Magic?: No

Wand: 9 inches, dragon heartstring, maple.  Reported Stolen. Her original wand was snapped in 2002

Physical Description: She looks probably older than she is, her raucous twenties and time in Azkaban dulling her skin, sinking her eyes, thinning her hair.   She's white, middle-aged, with black hair and wrinkling skin.  Vesta isn't physically strong, nor unusually tall, and her posture is skulking. 

She wears heavy coats full of pockets.  Potions, and powders, the more tactile side of her Dark Arts knowledge.  She clods around in heavy boots, scowling mostly.  When she does smile you can almost see the traces of that good girl still there.  The one who cheered on the Cannons, the one who hugged and kissed her father at Christmas.   

(I am so sorry, Ms Garafalo.  I really do think you're lovely.)

Personality Description: Snappish, vulgar and completely self-serving.  Vesta is untrusting and untrustworthy.  She has very little faith in anyone who seems weaker than she is, and can't afford to trust anyone who seems like a possible threat.  Perhaps the only person she ever really trusted was the old wizard who taught her her first real curses, but the care between them was shallow at best.  They had a comfortable arrangement, that's all.

Authority figures be damned - they just get in the way.  She spits on Aurors, good-for-nothing goody-two-shoes! The man.  If they had any kind of sense they'd be corrupt, and so she assumes most of them are.

Inside, she's afraid.  Afraid that she'll feel happiness ever again, having wasted all she had in drink, potions, and the thrills of exploiting others.  She wants to feel happiness but has no idea where to look.  And until she accepts compassion from others, she'll probably never learn to give it.

History: Vesta was a good kid.  Happy, decent grades, plenty of friends.  But Vesta was easily impressionable and when she left Hogwarts, like so many other students, she didn't really know what she wanted to do.  That first summer out is critical.  She moved to Leeds and spent the summer with friends - the wrong sort of friends.  She quickly went through all her money, partying and making merry.  Clothes, booze, concerts.  Soon, the thrills were harder and harder to come by, and going straight seemed further and further away. 

The kids, now in their twenties had begun to come by their meaning dishonestly, stealing and heavying to get what they needed, what they wanted.  The Dark Arts were just another way to get there.  In exchange for theft, Vesta learned nasty curses from an old cranky wizard, one of the left-overs of the old days.  She never knew his name, just that there was blood on his hands and an accent she couldn't quite place.

The Dark Arts are tempting, powerful, gratifying.  Vesta began to believe that if she could take it, she deserved it.  If people wanted to be safe, to keep what they loved, it was up to them to do what they needed to do.  People were generally soft and stupid, or so says Vesta. 

Vesta's been caught twice, and sent to Mungo's once - when a victim did just what Vesta preached and defended himself. 

There's no one that Vesta doesn't case - doesn't consider as a possible target. 

She's recently relocated to London.  Greener (read: golder) pastures.  Her Dark Arts guru's dead by now, but she has her own ways of finding new, nasty ways to convince pedestrians to empty their bottomless pockets.


Writing Sample: --

Sum up your character in one paragraph: Vesta believes she deserves what she can take.  She's gone from a normal kid to a Dark Artist, just getting worse as time goes on and the power and thrills entice her.  She sells what she steals.