Charlotte St. James

Charlotte St. James is a sociliate and Slytherin alumnus.

History

In startling contrast to her darling cousin, Quincy Pratt, Healer-to-Be, the numbers of Charlotte’s brood are exactly zero.

But that, of course, is quite the jump through time to the present.

It all began when the very honorable bachelor Nicolas St. James wed the fresh-faced Grace Coriander with both families’ encouragement. It was two years before their first son and heir, Nicolas Jr., was born, and another two before their second son, Noel, came about. The twins (another pair of boys) arrived the next year, and the St. James family were sure they were destined only for boys.

For three years, having fulfilled matronly duty, and producing not one, but four gorgeous sons, Grace pined for a daughter. Nicolas obliged for want of giving her something to distract herself, and the baby of the family, Little Lotte, breathed her first breath in a pretty spring.

Nicky was father’s ‘boy’, Noel was mother’s sensitive soul, and the twins had each other, but Charlotte was the one whom both parents wanted to pamper and please and call their own. In fact, while this St. James couple were hard-pressed to disagree during any incident in which they could defended their Little Lotte, they were also always comically competing for the rogue child’s affection. Charlotte, who took what each had to offer, could never quite be tamed (though her parents hardly wished to admit it)

Much like her older cousin Quincy’s parents (and perhaps much to the same effect), Charlotte’s mother and father had a harder time than usual sending her away to school. It had been infinitely easier, even exciting, to put the boys on the train and hear the inevitable news of their doing Slytherin house proud. But with Lotte, the thought of her babyish face not poking around her father’s office or popping up in her mother’s vanity mirror was dreadful. However else would they justify their own selfish lifestyles, if not by convincing themselves that Charlotte deserved a good life, and thus a pair of parents to lead by lavish example?

The first semester of school was a bit of a screeching halt. Sharing a room, abiding professors who couldn’t be conned quite as easily as the teachers she had before attending Hogwarts, and eating the things and at the times the school dictated didn’t come as easily as it should have for such an ambitious and precocious child.

But by that Christmas, and with four older siblings to pay her shoulder or get her out of trouble, Charlotte began to excel. She did best in Transfiguration, having a certain flourish for visually-dramatic magic and wand work. She also loved Charms, particularly those Charms that weren’t particularly useful in everyday situation, but which seemed to make Charlotte a very lucky girl at the right moments. In short, she learned to use magic in a very traditionally Slytherin way.

When her brothers left school, Charlotte’s rebellious years appeared to peak. She had her first taste of Firewhiskey, dated a few boys in the year above her, and even skipped a few lessons. (But only a few, for Charlotte knew that keeping her parents at bay was important, at least until the end of school). Concerned letters from home occasionally made their way to the breakfast table, but Charlotte had a way of soothing her parents with good marks and careful prose.

Adam Sugarbee was thirty-three when his eyes found the witchy youth across the bar in The Three Broomsticks. It was a cliched Valentine’s Day, and, thus, fate in Adam’s opinion. Charlotte, who was on a day trip with the school, spent half-an-hour smiling vaguely and making eyes at the man before disappearing without so much as an introduction. They met again when Charlotte spilled coffee on him in a Diagon Alley cafe in the summer before her seventh year. They began dating in secret, and were engaged the Christmas before Charlotte’s graduation.

While Sugarbee was a perfectly respectable suitor for anyone’s daughter, Charlotte was much too young to be his bride, both families agreed. It was with grumbles from Mr. St. James, and suspicious eyes from Adam’s mother that the two continued to see each other.

The fluffy, lovely-dovey mood lasted another healthy seven months before Adam began pestering Charlotte about setting a wedding a date, and attending to those trophy-witch duties. In short, he, as a filthy rich thirty-something, was expected to produce heirs just like Charlotte’s own mummy had done. He needed wedding-banded arm candy for dinner parties, and a perfect wife to entertain the older, blander spouses of his workmates. Charlotte thought up reasons to hold him off. In truth, she was frightened at the idea of marrying so young.

To everyone’s dismay, poor Adam perished during a business trip to Sweden, in a wonky Floo fire. The news brought tears and... admittedly, relief. Charlotte was, quite honestly, sad to see him go. She’d had affection for him, after all. But she also felt free. And the lovely sum of money-- Adam’s entire fortune-- left to his beloved fiance in his shockingly-updated will, helped the young woman in over her head to soothe the pain (or at least she assumed so, initially). In truth, Charlotte had already long ago decided that she was nowhere near ready to have screaming Adam Juniors, and had come to believe that Adam, her soul sate, was not actually her soul mate.

The fight to keep her fortune was long and drawn-out, with much protest from those pesky Sugarbee in-laws. But the papers were drawn, and the money signed over to Charlotte, with the promise that she would distance herself from the family name (as if she weren’t planning on it) and let the family keep their stuffy old estate (she happily obliged). Though certainly she persisted for her own benefit, her reasons were not entirely selfish. Charlotte knew that the Sugarbees' parent-pleasing son would smile at her victory behind closed doors... if he were still around, that was.

Moving to London at age nineteen, Charlotte bought herself a sky-high penthouse outside of Diagon Alley, and began a slew of charity work that any respectable young almost-widow would be admired for. Plus some. She soon earned a name for herself as an up-and-coming socialite, and the articles with Adam Sugarbee’s name attached became less and less frequent. By twenty-one, Charlotte St. James was simply Charlotte St. James in name and in spirit.

At twenty-four, Charlotte is currently, leisurely pursuing career options... or, rather, new forms of entertainment. She spends many days bored, and others indulging her every whim. They’re much one in the same. Her brothers have become like a second pair of parents, always owling her or annoying dropping in to spy on their over-moneyed, under-experienced baby sister.