It was clear from a young age that Asha was destined to be a healer.
The daughter of a wizard and a muggle woman, Ajay and Priyanka Swaminathan waited with bated breath to see whether or not their only child would display magical tendencies. As an infant, she seemed as non-magical as her mother had been. Still, her father waited, checking every day to see if she’d present her magic to him. He was impatient, inconsolable, for the first three years of his daughter’s life. He desperately wanted her to go off to Hogwarts just as he had, desperately wanted for her to share in his magical world with him the way his wife had never been able to.
When she was three years old, he resolved himself to the fact that his daughter was a Squib. It broke his heart that she seemed to be completely uninterested in magic, incapable of showing him even the slightest inkling that she might have been passed the magic in his own blood. Witches and wizards in his family were not late bloomers—they often showed their talents as babies, and if not, always as toddlers. He was devastated that his daughter would not follow in his footsteps, would never know the joys that magic could bring. Because of that, he simply avoided her, working away the hollow feeling of disappointment in his chest.
Ajay, in his grief, threw himself into his prestigious Ministry job and was rarely home when his daughter was a young girl. It was simply Asha and her mother, day in and day out. Priyanka was happy to be the housewife of an illustrious man, despite the fact that all of his riches were in Wizarding money—she still lived in a grand house, and had house-elves, to boot.
A nanny was hired to look after Asha, to take her to the park and to cook her meals so that Priyanka didn’t have to be bothered. After all, she was always busy—although, being young, her daughter could never quite figure out just what her mother was always so busy doing, and why there were always strange people coming in and out of the house. A carefree child, she learned early not to question her mother and to stick to her bedroom or her playroom unless Nanny was taking her for a walk.
The park came to be her favorite place. At home there was no running allowed—she wasn’t permitted to be loud or to be dirty. She could only speak when spoken to and only play with quiet toys. At the park, she could run and laugh and be free to climb trees and delve her fingers into the sand in the sandbox and to jump off of the swings and see whether or not she could land on her feet. It was all exhilarating, it was all great fun, and the little girl learned to look forward to her time in the outdoors.
One day at the park, Nanny left Asha for a few moments to go and get them something for lunch. She told the little girl to stay put in the sandbox, that she’d be back in ten minutes and they would have lunch together. The moment that her nanny’s back was turned, however, Asha was on the move. She didn’t like rules, didn’t like being told what to do, and she would show Nanny that she didn’t need to be watched like a baby. Tiny, strong legs carried her to the nearest tree and her trainers gripped the bark as she pulled herself up branch by branch. She reached the top just in time to see Nanny turn away from the food stand, making her way back toward the sandbox.
That was when she knew that she would be in trouble. Asha scrambled to descend, desperate to get to the ground and back to the sandbox before her nanny returned there to find her missing. Her mother would be told of her misbehavior, and the thought of her mother angry at her was enough to set her pulse quickening. In her haste to get down from the tree, Asha’s foot missed a branch.
For a split second, her heart skipped in terror and she hung in the air, a clear view of the ground visible through the branches below her. And then she was falling. It seemed that she fell forever, that the ground rushed up toward her in slow motion, that no matter how she flailed and screamed she could not stop her acceleration toward undeniable pain.
Asha would never forget the feeling of her body hitting the hard concrete. She would never forget the sound of her own bones cracking, the sound of her own hoarse scream as it tore from her throat. She cried for her Nanny before forcing herself into a sitting position, her arm bent at an awkward angle. Nanny saw the broken arm and gasped, dropping their lunch and dashing over to the little girl, ready to take her to the hospital.
By the time Nanny got to Asha, her arm was no longer broken. Tears still streamed down her face and she still hiccoughed sob after sob, but there was not a scrape nor a scratch to be found on her body. Her arm was straight and strong. Nanny shook her head and took the little girl home, telling the tale to the child’s mother, who promptly brushed it off. Nanny had probably not had enough sleep, she insisted, and should take the rest of the day off.
Asha realized very early on, as early as possible for a child to understand such things, that her father was not biologically related to her. Of course, she only had speculations as an eight-year-old; nothing could be proven at that age, but she knew where babies came from. On nights when her father had to work late at the Ministry, Asha’s mother would invite men over. When she was young, she didn’t notice much about the men themselves; she didn’t even really know whether they were different men or the same one over and over again. At first, she was horrified, but as the years went on she began to numb herself to her mother’s actions.
All of this led to Asha being a rather rebellious teenager. Her father was rarely home and her mother was always occupied. Her Nanny was let go when she began at Hogwarts, which elated her father to no end—he’d always known deep down that she would be magical, he told himself, and now it was the truth. The only problem was that he was not, in fact, her father, but Ajay was not aware of that fact. He was glad that he’d managed to pass his magical blood to his daughter.
Asha never got care packages from home. Her parents were too busy with their various occupations and preoccupations, and every owl that she sent home over the course of the school year went unanswered. Although she loved to learn, she was too distracted with trying to earn herself attention to study or read or spend any time in the library. She began dying her hair, dressing outrageously, getting tattoos and piercings. She rebelled, she skipped classes, and still none of it worked.
Finally, she figured out something that she thought would capture her parents’ attention. She began to smoke marijuana, and to her, that was the most that she could do. She stopped writing home and spent her holidays in her bedroom, coming downstairs only to eat, always reeking of pot. Still, neither of her parents noticed. She was becoming more and more troubled all the time, and her behavior began to cause her to travel in less-than-favorable social circles. Her so-called friends weren’t even people that she cared about; they were only people who could help her act out and capture her parents’ attention.
Asha’s seventh year was the worst of all. She switched from marijuana to harder drugs, and she found that she rather enjoyed the comforting embrace of heroin. She began shooting up whenever she got the chance, using the substantial allowance money that her parents provided to her. She barely scraped by in school, graduating very near the bottom of her class, much to her father’s dismay—but of course, he hadn’t seen it. He’d been far too busy to attend her graduation.
Her behavior did not change much after graduation. Asha had no ambition, no motivation to do anything but invite her friends over and get high with them. She hardly ever left the house, she had no intention of getting a job or doing anything with her life at all. It was as if she wanted to die—and why shouldn’t she want to? She didn’t have anything to live for, hadn’t for a very long time. At least she would go out feeling nothing.
One night, when she was eighteen, she and her friends were sitting around her house shooting up the good stuff that they’d all pooled their money to buy. Since it was Asha’s house, she got the first hit. After she’d shot it up, her friends goaded her into doing another, and then another. The third one was what did it; Asha overdosed. Luckily, her father happened to be home that night, and he rushed her off to St. Mungo’s.
Asha lived. Her mother did not visit her while she was in rehab, but her father visited every single weekend. He finally had an open ear for her, and she told him everything. She told him about her mother’s affairs, she told him about the marijuana and the heroin, she told him about how poorly she’d done in school. He was sympathetic to her and one weekend, he made the announcement that he’d filed for divorce from her mother. Asha was ecstatic; it would just be herself and her father from here on out. Even if he wasn’t her biological father, it didn’t matter. He’d always loved her as his own, even after he’d found out that she wasn’t actually his as part of the divorce proceedings.
Her time spent in rehabilitation opened her eyes to the world of healing. She was beyond grateful for all of the healers that had tended to her, for the careful attention they’d paid to her, for their sweet smiles and soothing voices and gentle hands. She wanted nothing more than to be that herself, than to help other people who had been like her. She trained for a few years at St. Mungo’s itself before hearing that there was an opening for a medic position at Hogwarts. The memories of her difficult times at school were still fresh in her mind, and she applied right away.
It’s been five years since Asha took the medic job at the school, and despite her personality, she tries to be the shoulder that children like she was can cry on, no matter what it is they need to talk about. She doesn’t want to watch anyone suffer the way that she did.
+ Passionate: Asha is the type of person who puts her whole self into things and loves them deeply. The first thing that she was ever truly passionate about, however, were the drugs. She loved being high, she adored the attention it got her. When she was in rehab, Asha’s passion was redirected to healing, thanks to the people who helped her recover. She loved training to be a healer and loves helping the students of Hogwarts with everything from broken hearts to broken bones.
+ Sensible: Although it took her a long time to become this way, Asha attempts to be practical and realistic. She does not put false hope in the heads of the children, but tries to comfort them. She doesn’t see any merit in things that are fake or things that are foolish, and she doesn’t entertain silly ideas or many frivolous things at all.
+ Sympathetic: As little as she trusts people, Asha also feels very compassionate toward them, students in particular. She had a very rough time in school with all of the classes that she skipped and the drugs and the alcohol, and she doesn’t want any child to feel the way that she did when she was young. She wants the kids to be able to talk to her if they feel alone or afraid or anything, really. Asha has an open-door policy and anything that is said in her office stays in her office.
+ Diligent: Whatever she does, she works hard at. Asha worked hard at getting attention, she worked hard at training to be a healer, and she works hard at her job. She is not afraid of putting everything that she is into something, but it has to be something that she feels deeply about or she won’t even bother.
+ Intelligent: She was not sorted into Ravenclaw for no reason. Despite the stupid choices that she has made in her past, Asha is actually a rather sharp girl. She picks things up easily, which helped a lot when she was training to be a healer. She likes to curl up with a book in her free time and drinks in knowledge whenever she can.
- Cynical: Asha is extremely distrusting of people in general. The way that she grew up showed her that the people that you trust the most only stab you in the back, only hurt you. Her father trusted her mother, after all, and where did that get him? Asha is inherently skeptical of just about everyone.
- Jealous: The lack of attention that she received as a child has made Asha a rather jealous adult. She doesn’t like it when the people that she loves seem to love someone else more than they do her. She gets very upset very easily in romantic situations if things don’t go the way that she planned. Asha tries very hard to quell the jealousy, as it’s not a particularly attractive feature, but on occasion the green-eyed monster gets the best of her and she becomes impossible to deal with.
- Superficial: Being raised with money taught Asha the value of material things. She never really learned much about the fact that there are more important things in the world than the things that she owns, and so she feels more comfortable with a new gold bracelet than she does with a new friend. Asha always attempts to dress well and keep herself well-groomed, and can be judgmental of those who don’t put a lot of effort into their appearances.
- Insecure: Asha isn’t sure that she knows how to be herself without the crutch of the drugs, despite the fact that she is over five years clean and sober. She worries that people only liked her because she bought drugs, worried that people only gave her attention because she went out of her way to demand it, and she is constantly terrified that people won’t actually like her. She masks this with sarcasm and cynicism.
- Aloof: Most of the human relationships that she’s had have proven to Asha that getting too close to people is a very foolish mistake. She tries to keep herself separated from people in general, tries not to let them get to know her too intimately. Every once in a while someone will break through her shell to find the fierce friend within, but it is rare.
