Erica Nightshade
Raena Deveau
4th Year Hufflepuff
Beater
Evander Deveau
7th Year Ravenclaw
Head Boy
Jason Ramsey
2nd Year Gryffindor
Mark Sorelli
6th Year Hufflepuff
Posts: 385
(1/7/06 2:40 pm)
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Erica Nightshade
OOC
Name: Erica Nightshade
Contacts: ezmail is preferable, but my e-mail is TryToDreamAgain@aol.com
Age: 17
Code: Hermione Granger
IC:
Full Name: Erica Lee Nightshade
Nickname(s): Midget or shorty, but only in jest at her height by her closer friends.
DOB: October 29th, 1992
Year: 7th year
Blood: Halfblood.
House Preference: Ravenclaw
Why: : If there is one thing that Erica is serious about, it is school. She always makes learning her first priority, and will never, EVER, be seen without a book in her hand (or bag). She has a general thirst for knowledge, especially things that she isn’t supposed to know, which has sparked a recent interest in the subject of the Dark Arts, though she isn’t evil… just curious. She isn’t all book smarts, though, as she has the logic to balance work and play, never working so hard that she neglects to have fun with her friends. Overall she’s just a very logical, smart girl.
Physical Appearance: Though she’s determined to beat genetics, Erica always feels short as she walks the corridors of Hogwarts among all of the older students. Standing at a mere 5’2” at the age of 17, most of the school towers over her by a good three inches, at least, since she wears low shoes most of the time. Erica weighs in at a healthy 115 pounds, which is due to her general laziness over the weekdays, though it’s spread out so she still appears skinny. On the weekends she enjoys to fly or go for walks in the afternoon. She does these things over the weekdays when she doesn’t have too much homework! Her complexion is almost always pale, no matter how much sun she gets. Her skin only burns in the sunlight, again and again, and never reaches the tanning portion of the process. Her middle finger on her right hand has a blister on the side from her almost constant writing. There is a small mole right above her right eyebrow, which she hates, as well as one on her back (which isn’t visible unless she’s wearing a low tank top or a halter top).
Erica’s hair is a stunning shade of dark chocolate brown. When it’s wet it appears as if it could be black, and she often leaves it wet after washing it, allowing it to air-dry instead of blow drying it. When she does dry it right away, her hair gets very ‘poofy’ and frizzy, giving her the appearance of somebody who’s just stuck their finger in an electrical socket. Naturally it looks a little dry, so she uses a special shampoo and conditioner to give it an added shine, which also helps straighten it a little. If she left it go, the bottoms would curl out, which is something she hates. After having cut it very short the previous year, Erica’s hair has grown out to a length that’s a little past her shoulders. Though often let down, maybe tousled with gel a little to allow the choppy layers to show, it’s just as often seen tied back away from her face in a loose bun or pony tail, often when she’s flying or writing so that it doesn’t get in her eyes. She doesn’t use an alarm clock, so she often doesn’t have enough time to do her hair in the morning if she oversleeps. On these days she’ll simply throw her hair up and claim a bad hair day.
Her eyes are one of the best qualities about her, in her opinion. Though she’s seen many plain, boring shades of brown, Erica loves her eyes, which are a profoundly insightful shade of deep brown. Her eyes always have a look of attentiveness and curiosity to them. They also have a warm quality to them, and they always seem to twinkle when she’s smiling. Her eyes show all over her emotions, making it very easy to tell exactly what Erica’s thinking even though she may not come out and say it. They have a rich quality to them as well, showing a certain depth if you look into them deeply. You can always tell when Erica’s interested in something because her eyes will widen just a little in curiosity, and it’s even easier to tell when she’s offended by something because her eyes will widen a LOT in disbelief. She wears contacts, as her mother prefers for her not to fix things like that the magical way, and wore braces as a small child, though they’ve been off since she was ten. At night, before bed, she can be seen mulling around the Common Room or wandering the hallways in her glasses. Her eyebrows are naturally a little bushy, but she plucks them to thin them down substantially.
One of the things she hates most about her appearance is her small lips. Something she inherited from her mother, her lips are smaller than most people’s. She has a small overbite, so that when she smiles you can only see her top row of teeth. (She can’t stand it when people can smile and show all their teeth). Her teeth are now straight (thanks to the braces) and since she brushes three times a day (after every meal) they’re also a nice shade of white, only slightly stained from soda drinking. She despises make up and will only wear limited amounts of tasteful eye shadow and minimal eyeliner when she feels like it. The only make up she uses every day is her lip-gloss. She has a fair complexion and doesn’t want to ruin it with pounds of make up clogging her pores.
When she isn’t wearing her school robes, she can usually be seen in something comfortable and casual. She hates to dress up or wear uncomfortable clothing just to look good. Even though she hates being short, the most she’ll do is wear a pair of shoes that have a relatively short two inch heal, though she’ll only wear chunky heals and will never be seen with thin, stiletto heals. She finds them very uncomfortable and not worth wearing. Most of the time she’ll simply wear sneakers, or walk around the school in a pair of navy blue fairy slippers. Usually she’ll wear jeans, her favorite pairs being those of a darker blue, and a simple t-shirt. Many of her t-shirts have names or pictures of bands she enjoys, many of which are muggle, and muggle cartoons that she enjoys. A lot of her shirts are black or darker colors, just because she thinks darker colors they look better on her. She has a few other brighter shirts, though she’ll grudgingly admit that while she loathes the color pink it does look the best on her.
Pesonality: As stated above, one of the first things you’ll notice about Erica (aside from her kind personality) ((and assuming she gets her nose out of a book long enough to talk to)) is that she knows at least a little about pretty much everything. Ever since she was four she’s been reading and learning, and growing up she’s preferred to spend entire days locked in her room reading books instead of watching TV or playing with dolls. She appreciates the value of a good book, whether educational or just for fun, but you’ll never see her acting superior to anybody or trying to show off.
School is her first priority during the weekdays. This may be why she doesn’t have as many friends as she could; she usually spends her nights locked away in her dorm studying, doing homework, or reading a good book. Some times she’ll come down into the Common Room to talk with her friends, but only after she makes sure all of her work is done. She is rather unorganized, though, which makes things a lot harder on her than they have to be. Even though the space in her dorm seems like a mess, she knows where everything is within the clutter. She has a hard time keeping her clothing ironed and pressed as well, so her uniform tends to be a little wrinkled when she wakes up late or just forgets to hang it up properly.
Erica has many pet peeves, but the one that shows the most is her obsession with grammar. She can’t stand it when somebody uses poor grammar, such as ‘Tom and me went to the store’ or ‘You did good’ instead of ‘you did well’. She visibly cringes when she hears it and has a tendency to get a little annoying with correcting people all the time. She tries to stop herself, but it usually comes out before she can even think about it. If it happens to slip from her mouth, she’ll even correct herself, and then apologize before continuing! As a writer, this type of thing comes naturally to her.
Even though she’s very knowledgeable, Erica never flaunts it. In fact, upon first meeting her (and even after being her friend for a while) you’d never guess she was so smart, which is mainly because of her severe social anxiety disorder. She hates to speak in public (which includes in class) even if she’s sure she knows the answer, and will shy away from huge social gatherings such as dances (this is besides the fact that she can’t dance. At all. If she had to dance to save her life, she’d die. You get the point.) She keeps a good luck stone in her pocket at all times, which is dark blue, in the shape of a triangle, with the Chinese symbol for ‘inspiration’ on one side and ‘strength’ on the other side, in bronze. She likes to believe things like that really do work, just as she likes to believe that everything they do in Divination class is true, despite the skeptics and her own logic telling her it isn’t. After you get to know her, Erica’s shyness fades away and you can see that she’s a very confident person (deep down). This past year she’s worked on being more confident, trying new things and working on not caring so much what others may think of her. She’s working on not second-guessing herself so much, and overcoming her social anxiety.
She has her flaws as well, such as art and arithmetic (arithmacy). She’s never done well in math-related subjects, but loves a challenge and continued to take it, determined to beat it. She has decided to give it up this year, finally able to admit to herself that she isn’t going to be good at everything. She’s not the best artist in the world either, which is something she hates. A lot of her friends can draw, and the fact that she can’t really bothers her. Still, she can barely draw half-decent stick figures, and she’ll be the first one to admit that she can’t draw. It’s something she tends to avoid at all costs, much like dancing.
Erica loves to be friends with people who have a good sense of humor, as she has a good sense of humor herself. Her own humor, however, tends to be a bit more cynical and sarcastic than most other people’s and often times can be taken the wrong way.
The concepts of fate and destiny play a huge role in Erica’s personality. She believes that whatever is going to happen is going to happen, and that there’s not a whole lot anybody can do about this. Yes, everybody’s choices help determine the outcome of their lives, but she thinks that if her destiny is to fall off a broomstick, then she’s going to end up falling off of a broomstick. She’s determined not to end up like her mother, one of those people who stays inside ‘just incase’, won’t climb out onto the roof ‘just incase they’d fall’, all of those ‘what if’ people. That would be the worst thing that could happen to her, in her mind’s eye.
Her biggest fear is growing up. She panics every time she thinks about the end of this year, which will mean that she will have to decide once and for all what she wants to do with her life. She’s afraid that she won’t be able to make it in the real world, even though she knows that she probably has what it takes to do virtually anything. She tends to set irrational goals for herself that she can’t reach, and then pushes herself to unhealthy lengths.
Erica’s greatest strength is her writing. She is very talented when it comes to the written word, and can compose any number of pieces; short stories, novels, poems, songs… you name it, and she’ll write it. This also comes in handy when she writes essays for classes. She does very well on written examinations, and does especially well when the writing she does is personal or open to opinion. She loves writing, and will do it any chance she gets. Anything logical like puzzle solving, or anything that just needs a calm, level head to think things through is what Erica’s good at. She is a good listener, and she’d just as talented when it comes to giving advice. Mainly because of her logical way of looking at situations, she always seems to know the perfect solution to any problem.
Her best subject is Potions, and she loves it because there is nothing hidden or difficult about it: so long as you can follow instructions, then you can be good at Potions. She knows that it does take a certain amount of skill and talent, but for the most part all you need is time and discipline, of which she has plenty to spare!
History:Erica was born on October 29th to Christine and Nathaniel Nightshade. She has been blessed with being brought up in a mixed household. Her mother, being a muggle-born witch, still preferred the good old-fashioned values of doing things the muggle way, such as cooking and cleaning. She always got up to pick up the remote on the TV, unlike her father who just summoned the remote control. Even though this set up may sound fallible at first, it wasn’t that difficult to adjust to. Of course magic was used more often by her father, who was a half-blood, but Erica was still exposed to it growing up. She had access to all of his books as well as a few extra if they made a stop at Diagon Alley. She was content to sit alone in her room and read or write to pass the time, and rarely needed the company of others. She preferred to be on her own, feeling that those were the times when she got the most done and (often times) had the most fun! She had a large imagination, and often loved to just play make-believe. She had an imaginary friend until she was 11 years old, that’s how creative she was.
Her relationship with her sister is a special one. A whole four years younger, she doesn't feel as if she has a lot in common with her younger sibling. They're opposite in appearance, Rebecca having blond hair and blue eyes, and her little sister also had different interests. Her little sister was very sociable and always wanted to play with others, which often annoyed Erica. Her little sister also craved attention from everybody else, and would constantly change her likes and dislikes to please whomever she was friends with at the time. This made Erica lose a lot of respect for Rebecca, even at the early age of 11 (Rebecca being 7). She always makes fun of her little sister, but the second one of Rebecca's friends made fun of her Erica was at her sister's side, defending her against any bullies. She always said, "I may be able to pick on you, but nobody else can mess with my little sis!"
Family was always big with both sides of her parents. Her father had a brother, Garreth, and she was very close to his two children Maire and Gavin. Maire was one of her best friends growing up, and she enjoyed spending time with her cousins. Her mother didn’t have any siblings, but her parents loved spending time with Erica and taking her places. Erica’s grandparents usually allowed her to spend the weekends sleeping over when she was younger. Her mother insisted that family was all you had in the end, that they were the only people who would never forget about her, even when she was old.
Erica was always amazed by magic from a young age, mainly because her mother taught her how to live without it for the first few years of her life. She had to do chores such as clean her room, vacuum, and do dishes, all without magic, while a lot of her friends didn’t have to do much of anything besides watch their parents wave their wands and have the house practically clean itself! This taught Erica the work ethic that she still has to this very day, that if something’s worth doing then it’s worth doing well. She always liked the satisfied feeling she had looking at her room, freshly polished and smelling like lemon, and knowing that she’d done that all herself. Her little sister was always lazier than Erica, and she'd have her father use magic all the time instead of doing the work herself.
Erica always got along well with both of her parents, though she always felt a little more comfortable around her father for some reason. This isn’t to say that she likes him more, as she could never really decide which parent she loved more because they’ve both been equally kind and supportive to her growing up, but she just has a special bond with her father that’s lacking with her mother. Her little sister always favored their mother, so it all evened out for the most part.
Growing up, Erica never really went outside a lot to play with the other kids in her neighborhood. She preferred to stay inside and read a good book or write… writing has always been a hobby of hers ever since she had learned to do it! Whenever she goes shopping she’s always in need of parchment and ink, though she much prefers using the muggle notebooks and mechanical pencils that her mother had given to her for her 9th birthday. Erica has a few muggle quirks about her such as her use of physical labor when magic would suffice as well as her use of muggle pencils and paper, quirks that are frowned upon by the many Purebloods at Hogwarts. She tries not to pay attention to them, finding something sublime about being unique.
This isn’t to say that she doesn’t care what people think at all, though. Since she didn’t have a whole lot of friends as a young child, she felt the need to fit in with all of the different ‘cliques’ from the moment she entered Diagon Alley to get her school supplies and started to meet new friends there. It seemed as if everything was new and exciting, and the entire wizarding world was full of possible friends. She soon learned that not everybody was very pleasant to be around, and that she couldn’t be friends with everybody. She also realized that she wasn’t a very good people person. She tended to get nervous very quickly while in large groups, afraid to trust people she didn’t know well, and too eager to impress those different or older than she was. Being the sharp-witted girl that she was, even at eleven years old it didn’t take Erica long to realize that she was trying to be somebody she wasn’t. She wasn’t a very outgoing person (socially), and she wasn’t the type of person everybody would want to be around (she could get pretty sarcastic at times, even if she was just joking around). She hoped to be able to let down her guard and try to be friendly to everybody while at the same time staying true to who she was. In the end she had usually ended up reading books at the far end of the table during lunch, as well as avoiding social gatherings such as Quidditch Matches, since she always felt out of place in those situations.
During her first year at Hogwarts Erica was the shy girl. She usually sat off to the side during meals and she would usually sit in the back during classes when she got there early enough. Though she always paid attention and didn’t sit in the back to goof off, she sat back there to avoid being called on. Many Professors asked her why she never answered any of the questions in class, and she didn’t really know what to tell them. She knew that she didn’t want to come across as a know it all, but that wasn’t the whole reason. She made a few friends, but many people just assumed that she didn’t want to be bothered because she read all of the time. This wasn’t the case at all, she was just too shy to reach out and be sociable.
During her second year things went pretty much the same as in her first year. She was still shy and she still always had her nose buried in a book. She started to go to the Quidditch Games to watch, and while she had a lot of school spirit she could never keep focused on the events of the game and often brought homework to do or catch up on while she was watching the game. She discovered that she loved to write and read poetry as well as novels, and started a small poetry notebook which she continued to fill with poems (even now, in her seventh year).
It was during her third year that Erica realized how few friends she really had. She tried to talk to more people, but many cliques and groups of friends had already been formed. She broke into a few of them and managed to fit in, though she was still the quiet one. She often just went along with whatever everyone else wanted to do, and while this made her a lot more friends than she had before she still didn’t have any close friends. She did, however, find the time to finish the first novel she had ever started, which had begun in her first year. Though it had taken her the span of three years, she was thrilled with the progress, even when she admitted to her friends and family that it was amateurish and not really worth anything. She began several other novels with ideas she had come up with, hoping to write something publishable by the end of her seventh year.
During her fourth year she made her first real friends. She began to be more open with her personality and tried to partake in more conversations. She didn’t want to be the shy, quiet girl for all seven years of her school life! While she was horrible at meeting people (she would get even quieter and more nervous when she spoke), she did try harder. She hated being so shy, but she couldn’t find a way to get around it. She didn’t let it get to her this year, though, and she even began learning the rules and strategies of Quidditch through some of her friends who play the sport.
It was during her fifth year that she began to slowly fall back into her old ways. As it was her O.W.L. year she had to study even harder than she had been during her first four years at Hogwarts, and so she spent even less time hanging out with the friends she had made. Towards the end of the year she even began to skip meals in order to spend more time checking out books in the Library. The school Library was like a second home for her, and she began to spend less and less time with her friends. On the up side, it all worked out for her in the end because she got top marks on most of her final exams!
Last year, her sixth year, she had N.E.W.T level classes to deal with and even more pressure, though she managed to find a way to relax more that year. She managed to keep her nose from consistently being buried in a book, and she tried to stop staring at the ground when she walked. She overcame her shy and timid nature to an extent, and branched out a little by talking to new groups of people. She made a few good friends, and talked to a lot of people that year. She made new friends, and began to get very interested in Quidditch. She managed to balance school and friends, and found that she was a better person for it.
This year, her seventh and final year of Hogwarts, she realized that she had to change for the better. Whenever she had made friends in her previous years they had usually been older than her, and now that she was in the highest year she didn’t have any of those old friends left. She couldn’t afford to be shy anymore; it is now or never. She is determined to make some type of a mark and get her name out there… perhaps a huge seventh year prank or something daring, something nobody would expect of her. This would be her year!
RP Sample: Erica looked around the Common Room, searching for a familiar face. She found several of them, many from her year and a few others, but each of them was surrounded by a group of friends. Listening in on their conversations from her seat by the fire it didn’t take long to learn that they were all catching up on what the others did over the summer holiday. She smiled a little to herself until one of the chattering students, a 3rd year girl, noticed her listening and gave her an odd look. Erica quickly turned her eyes back down to the sentence she’d been reading in her book. If only she were as confident and charming, personality wise of course, as Dorian Grey… imagine what he’d say to her here, not even able to join in on a conversation with a bunch of fourth years! Still, it was their conversation, and she didn’t want to interrupt or intrude.
It took her several tries to finish that particular sentence because several loose strands of her layered, chocolate brown hair kept falling in front of her russet hued eyes, obscuring her vision. A few more sentences down she found herself unable to concentrate on her book. This was a rare thing for her, but she knew that she’d made a promise to herself to be more sociable. That certainly wasn’t the case now as she was sitting alone by the fire, legs curled up underneath her while she read a book written ages ago, a Muggle book that half the students here hadn’t even heard of. So what could she do? Every time she had the idea of talking to one of the other students she always felt out of the loop, and she didn’t want to disrupt their already-in-progress conversations. She found the idea of a 17 year old girl unable to start a conversation a very absurd idea, but here she was just the same, pondering the best way to make some new friends. Sure, she’d made a few friends last year, but they had all been older and now that they had graduated she realized that she barely had any friends in her own year, or even younger than her. She couldn’t go out with people still calling her ‘that quiet girl’ all the time! She was Erica Nightshade, and she was determined to make a name for herself.
Putting the bookmark in the crease of the page she was on, Erica closed the book and looked around the room once more. She spotted a few sixth year girls just across the room talking about the upcoming Quidditch season. Erica had just begun to play Quidditch herself over the summer, but didn’t’ think she was good enough for her House team or anything. Either way, at least she knew enough about it to join in on such a common topic. She’d read several books on it, even though she hadn’t sat down and watched a school Quidditch match since early last year. As she got up from the armchair, though, she discovered a moment too late that the leg that had been curled up underneath her had gone numb. With one very ungraceful movement Erica wobbled a bit on the unfeeling leg before having it collapse under her, causing her to fall to the floor with a soft thud.
Even though only a few select groups nearby noticed her, as most of the Common Room was too wrapped up in their personal conversations to have noticed her quick descent, it felt as if all eyes had turned on her. Erica’s face blushed a deep crimson as she quickly got up, burying her face back in her book as she made a hasty retreat up to the second year dorms. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day to start her new social life.
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