Introduce your muse! (Specify which character or I get to pick.)
rose weasley learned from a young age that the world wants a piece of you, and doesn’t tend to back down. it’s to be expected when your parents saved the world, apparently, but that doesn’t make it any easier. you don’t grow up under hermione granger’s loving guidance without developing some indignation and righteous anger on the behalf of the disenfranchised, but you also don’t grow up in a world where everyone wants a piece of you without holding tightly to that which you love. rose always felt that dichotomy; the responsibility and fierce passion of caring about the whole world and the entirely selfish need to hold on tight to those who knew you, deep in your bones, who loved you despite the newspapers, for reasons other than your parents’ fame—and a lot of the time, this meant her family. when rose went to hogwarts, she wasn’t sure which house she’d end up in. she had a lot of the fierce, relentless determination to fight for justice that was so frequently associated with gryffindor, as well as a temper to go with it, but. but. but she also valued loyalty to those you loved and fairness, which were very hufflepuff traits. but she also sought solutions that hadn’t been found yet, was willing to push boundaries to try and create or find something better, was willing to give a lot up to achieve the dreams she had for the world, and there was ravenclaw in that. but she also valued nothing more than the people she held closest to her heart—people she would die for, people she would probably even kill for, people she might even let the world burn for, on a day when her innermost heart beat more strongly than her conscientious and just heart—and she was loyal to her own and snarky and could make the hard calls, and there was slytherin in that too.
she ended up in slytherin, and nothing in her regrets it. she was nearly a hatstall—the hat deliberated between gryffindor and slytherin, mostly, for a few minutes—and she is sure she could have also found great value in gryffindor, as well as the other houses, but she can feel the slytherin in her bones. that’s not to say it’s been fun or easy—the daughter of ron weasley and hermione granger, a slytherin? more to the point, a slytherin who was definitely slytherin, but also had a gryffindor streak a mile wide? it was a hard thing for people to come to terms with, initially. it still is, some days. and it’s not entirely comfortable. rose is surrounded by some people who think her mother is a sin against their world, and her blood boils at the thought, because her mother is a queen amongst women, as far as she’s concerned. hermione is flawed, rose knows, but that hardly detracts from how incredible she is. rose has no patience for prejudice, whether it be from within her house or against her house. there is nothing inherently wrong with slytherin traits, and when she hears remarks about “slytherins are dark” as a blanket statement, she usually calls them out on it—people tend to listen to the child of 2/3 of the golden trio, even if they don’t value her opinion, and she has every intention of using her platform to achieve her goals; some might think of that as distasteful, but she considers it pragmatic—or has to fight the strong impulse to sock them in the jaw. she doesn’t always succeed—impulse control is not her strength—and sometimes people prejudiced against slytherin find themselves suffering from a bruised jaw: often considered a traditionally gryffindor response, served by a fierce girl in a green and silver tie. her family still makes up the vast majority of people she holds close to her heart—she’s scored a few close friends here and there, but it’s mostly people she’s good friends with, though not wolf pack level—and her heart is absolutely breaking for her cousins right now, after harry, as well as being absolutely shattered herself on the inside. she grew up showing emotions on her face with her family, but due to their familial fame (largely at hogwarts), she also learned how to control the emotions she shows. she’s never really bothered to do it on her closest sphere, her brother and cousins, but to the rest of the world, she refuses to let them see how much this is all affecting her. it’s got a few people calling her cold and callous, or only concerned with politics and not what just happened on the emotional level, which is incredibly far from the truth, but it suits her purposes to let them think that. she’s mostly just really sarcastic, enjoys making quips with al and louis, and is a very fast flier—most people think she’s a reckless flier, but it’s not quite true. it’s more of a calculated risk. it’s daring, because she takes serious risks, but she always considers the consequences and weighs them up against her skill and chances, and if she thinks she’ll come out on top, she goes for it, even if it doesn’t seem particularly well thought-out to anyone else. rose weasley knows to bet on herself. she’s never let herself down so far.
you’ve heard of the heir and the spare? well, when you’re a girl, you’re usually not even good enough to be the spare, and when you’re the fourth child, and you’re in a traditional pureblood family, and there’s already a girl to be married off? sorry, kid, you’re probably an accident. astraia yaxley—and she knows her name is super pureblood, all right, as if that was enough to redeem her existence in his father’s eyes—didn’t always know the truth of the situation. she never really had a relationship with her parents—her father was always too busy with whatever adult pureblood males are meant to be doing—drinking, astraia suspects—and whenever he did have time for his children, well, he wasn’t going to waste it on the fourth child, was he? especially not when she was a girl. it didn’t help that astraia had inherited dark hair from somewhere along the ancestry tree, and she didn’t even look like her sister, who, for all her eventual flaws in the eyes of their father, at least looked like a classic beauty. astraia spent most of her childhood trying to grow into her own skin, and by the time she looked like she could possibly possess some grace, her father had long since stopped even pretending to give a damn. her mother was somewhat better, but she died when astraia was young, so it didn’t exactly help her much. it wasn’t until she was about nine that she discovered that she wasn’t an intentional child—she would have come to the conclusion herself eventually, but it just had never occurred to her yet, and hearing about it in the form of gossip from two snobby high society women was the kind of blow to her heart that she’d never realised she could have. the thought that she wouldn’t even be there if her parents hadn’t realised around the same time that the rest of the society did and the shame of losing a child, purposeful or accidental, would be too much to bear… that’s something astraia alternates between not wanting to think about at all, and also never wanting to forget, lest she forget who she is: nobody of any purpose except for that which she creates for herself.
she adapted, though. not the heir, the spare nor the first daughter, there was never any real place for astraia. so she made one. she carved herself a throne out of the shadows, making herself a niche amongst the kids who pushed the boundaries—the almost-rebels, if you will. the thing is, astraia spent most of her life just wanting to be wanted. even before she knew the explicit truth of the situation, it was always evident that she was the afterthought, the child who merited the least attention, and so that was what she craved. when she found out about the rumours of her status as an accident, rumours which set in her bones and stopped her veins cold with the undeniable feeling of truth, it made it even worse for a while, just desperately wanting to be wanted on any level, because apparently nobody ever had—but then, after about a year, she just stopped caring. it was absolutely exhausting, wanting to be wanted, and it wasn’t doing anything. so instead of seeking out people’s desire, instead of trying desperately to earn a crown, she decided to make her own. when you want love and appreciation but it never really happens, you learn how to live without it. she stopped waiting for a validation that was never going to come, and started to live for herself. she became more independent, which was synonymous with alone for a while, but it got better. growing into herself, she found people who were more her speed. there was a boy at a function, once, in the easter break before she started hogwarts; he was four years older than her, about a third year, but he had sarcasm written all over his face and recalcitrance in his eyes. when he sidled over to where she was leaning against the wall, rolling her eyes at something a girl her age was saying, and he murmured a sarcastic quip about the girl, astraia knew she had found a forever friend.
a slytherin, astraia is absolutely concerned with her own agency and self-validation. the thought of anyone having the power to hurt her like her parents did terrifies her—she never wants to give anyone the right to define her purpose, and if that means she’s more sardonic than smiley, that is absolutely fine with her. the only relationships she truly trusts are with her siblings, and that very first friend she made for herself—he’s never wanted anything from her except for her sharp tongue and the laugh that he can startle out of her with a particularly outrageous remark or her friendship, and that’s something she feels she can depend on. he’s an heir, after all, who hates his crown, and he’s always supported her desire to be whoever she wants to be. purebloods are super interrelated, so she’s always at least known people in her dorm and surrounding years, but she’s never been too fussed about it. she’s no queen bee of their house—look at one of her cousins, probably—and she’s never had an overabundance of friends. it’s a side effect of not trusting easily. she is the sarcasm to one of her cousins’ sweetness, the slight toughness to her sister’s sometimes-considered-delicate beauty. she doesn’t really know how to break into established friend groups, nor does she have any desire to; she has some friends, generally those who value wit or learning or sarcasm, and that’s all she needs. she seems high-maintenance and has probably been called uncaring, but that’s not it, exactly; she cares very easily, which is why she doesn’t make a point of finding people to care about. if she broadcasted that fact, she’d just end up hurt all the time—this is easier. it’s not exactly conscious; she just ends up holding a lot of people at arm’s length. she feels like such a cliche—poor little rich girl, right?—and she hates it, but when she was younger, she would genuinely have traded all she had in for feeling the love and appreciation. now, she would trade it all in for anyone she loved. it’s a very slytherin thing, wanting to protect your own fiercely, and that’s who she is. she’s never been very good at being a pureblood daughter, but she always tries her hardest to be astraia, and that means loving her friends and those who love her: that is a truth she settled on when she was ten, and she has stuck to it ever since.
also @freesiateas (omg i just looked at your intro and—nzst!! yooooo!! also scooby doo is life. i legit just bought the 2002/2004 films on dvd like a fortnight ago so i could rewatch) this is so long i’m sorry apparently intros are not all i am appalling at
yousharknotpass
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gummygunk
