Character Name: Joyce Abigail Heffer
House: Hufflepuff
Favorite subject: None
Appearance/Personality: Quite pretty, dark brown, almost black hair, and brown eyes. Black hair is very long and is in different Victorian styles though it is naturally curly-cues, like her sister's. But never seen smiling. She doesn't dress very modern, either, but very old-fashioned like how she was raised. She even sews her own clothes. Just very simple. Since she does tend to wear long dresses, she has a bit of a habit of smoothing them out. Like with Lucas and his grey hair. She also wears a bonnet, usually white, in the presence of a male, and sometimes gloves. If she wears a ribbon, it's blue to symbolize her unmarried state. If she were in love, it would be red. If she were married, it wouldn't really matter.
She also is extremely skinny because she wears corsets, as required, but because they are so tight and old-fashioned, she has to be skinny to fit into them, and the doctors say they may have done permanent damage to her, to the point where her ribs are really squeezed and she appears even thinner. Someone could take both their hands and fit both of them around her waist when she's in a corset.
Like this thin.
Corset/Dress Examples, she has a couple different styles for the corset.
The best word to describe her was melancholy. It's a pretty-sounding word. And she's pretty. But the meaning...she's just gloomy. Another good one may be morbid.
She also speaks in a monotone voice with no emotion. Not like a snob would, or someone who thinks they're superior, but just someone who has really had enough of living and gives up. She's just so deeply wounded that she honestly can't smile, can't be a happy person, it's not in her.
Skills: She's very smart, but not ravenclaw-smart. She has a different way of looking at things.
Greatest likes: Spending time alone on a sunny day.
Strongest dislikes: Judgemental people.
Worst fears: Losing someone she's close to. So she doesn't get close to anyone.
Wand: 11 inches, Pine, Phoenix feather.
Animagus/Patronus: Not sure yet. She's pretty sure she saw a small bear, like a teddy as a patronus.
History: Joyce does NOT believe the saying, It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
Like how Devon made the opposite of his character with Lucas/Richard, that's what I'm doing here. Joyce is the complete opposite of Rhiannon.
Rhiannon is very outspoken, conniving, and nasty. She's a Slytherin who, when she's lost people she cares about, takes it out on the world. She's a horrible person and physicall violent, a nightmare.
Joyce isn't the opposite in the sense that she's sweet. Joyce is very soft. Rhiannon often has a wicked grin, Joyce has no smile at all. Where Rhiannon has a black heart, Joyce just has no heart at all. The opposite of a smile isn't really a frown, but just no smile at all. Sometimes, at a funny joke, the corners of her mouth might turn up, but that's the best you'll really see. She's not necessairly cold towards people, she doesn't act mean. She just doesn't have any friends, any close pals, and she doesn't want to.
Also, though this doesn't really matter, her father is a woodworker and because they are so old fashioned, her mother is a stay-at-home mom. Though they are old-fashioned and of course don't agree with the morals of witchcraft, they believe family really comes first. They are a bit religious, like they hold hands and pray before a meal sometimes, but family comes first, so they can accept Joyce for what she is. However, they do prefer that she would save the magic for school and not use it at home, where they do things the classical way.
When Joyce was 7 years old, her beloved sister, Rosebud, died. Her sister was a few years younger than her, (She was 4) but Joyce adored her. She loved her like nothing else in the world. Joyce brought Rosebud everywhere with her, carried her in her arms like she was really her mother. Rosebud was gorgeous, lovely, so innocent, so perfect and so adorable. They used to lay out at night and just look at the stars. They did everything together. She just died from an illness unknown. Joyce wasn't really involved with the second wizarding war, none of that, since she's muggle-born.
The effect was incredible. You see, Joyce's family is very old-fashioned. Have you ever heard of families in the late 1800s and early 1900s taking photos with their dead family members? Because they didn't have photos of that family member before they died? Well, Joyce's younger sister's corpse was in their house for a week before her burial. Joyce had to hold her dead little sister in her arms as they took photos. Her little sister was no longer warm. She was so stiff, so cold, her dead open eyes were branded on Joyce's mind. Joyce's face: expressionless. And that's how it's stayed.
In the photos, Rosebud really still looked alive in them. If Joyce were to show you the photo, you'd just see two very stiff young girls. Both of them deathly pale. One of them just happened to be dead. It takes a lot to see it in the photo. Of course, there were photos of her in the coffin as well, with the family holding the coffin. Yet Joyce still remembers the stench of the decaying body. Her skin was literally peeling off her face. After all, they didn't use much makeup to preserve her body.
Her parents were of course, devastated, but they got over it by adopting a baby boy named Billy, just after Rosebud's funeral. So Billy is seven years younger than Joyce.
They also had another daughter the next year, names Terry. Terry is eight years younger than Joyce.
Neither of her siblings are magical. Joyce would never know if Rosebud was, since Rosebud was too young when she died to start showing the signs. One of the first signs of Joyce being magical was when Rosebud died and Joyce was seven, her extreme sadness and loss triggered her.
She has all that love and emotion bundled up inside her. That's what the sorting hat saw in her, that love and that desire to be loved. So it placed her in hufflepuff. But Joyce's fear of losing someone like that again is more powerful than her love for others. So, as a result, she just doesn't love. Not even her parents, anymore. The only person that she isn't monotone and emotionless around is Bryce, who refused to let her spend her time alone and broke through her shell.
*She was transferred to Hogwarts in her fourth year because her parents really thought she needed to be more 'social.' Her sister, Terry, 6, and her brother, Billy, 7, weren't exactly the best companions. After all, once Rosebud had died, no sibling was quite the same. Heck, the main reason her parents had adopted Billy was to try and help heal the wounds that Joyce now just covers up.
She'd been going to a small wizarding school, private, at first, but they knew that once it was 5th year it would be too late, what with O.W.L exams, so they persuaded her to join. She was teased brutally at her old school when she was young, when she first joined as a younger kid at around 8, shortly after Rosebud's death, but after a year or so, when the other students realized she was serious and this was really how she acted, they just came to accept it. Not accept her, of course. She was basically ignored.
Anything else: This story, her history, is based on a true story. Even the names I kept the same. This really happened to my grandmother and to this day, my grandmother refuses to get close to people, even when she's dying. She's scared she'll lose them.
Pictures of 'Rosebud' Actual Victorian Death Photos I found online:
