❝ In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses. ❞
RILEY HAYES-GOLDSTEIN really is the spitting image of MARGARET QUALLEY, right? For someone only 23 years old, RILEY has been forced to endure so much. Yeah, that HALFBLOOD has been scraping by at the sanctuary since MARCH, 2028, working as a SUPPLY RUNNER in the DIVISION OF FORAGE. SHE is a CIS-WOMAN and is known to be SARDONIC and PESSIMISTIC but also WITTY and MORALLY RESPONSIBLE. Best of luck surviving through this. ⊰ JINX, 24, PST, SHE/THEY ⊱
CHARACTER PARALLELS: Daria ( Daria ), Seth Cohen ( The OC ), Veronica Sawyer( Heathers ), Ron Swanson/Ben Wyatt ( Parks & Rec ), Quentin Coldwater ( The Magicians ), Pam Beasley ( The Office ), Zari Tomaz ( Legends of Tomorrow ), Nadine Franklin ( Edge of Seventeen ), Lindsay Weir ( Freaks and Geeks )
PINTREST: [ x ]
When you meet Riley Hayes, a picturesque childhood in a picturesque suburbia is not what you would expect and yet it was exactly what she had. Born on the cusp of summer and fall, Rachel and Christopher were over the moon to have their daughter born on August 28, 2010. Finally, a child to complete the perfect family unit. Maybe they had hoped for a boy despite what science said ( hence the name Riley & a full name for a boy they had prepared ) but, they had a daughter and for the first ten years of her life they pampered her greatly. Trips to the coast every summer to visit his side of the family where Riley was praised for being such a pretty, good girl, and what seemed like infinite love from her father was doled out as long as she was what he wanted her to be. The younger girl was cooperative, it was in her nature it seemed, because she loved seeing her parents happy with each other. As long as Riley stayed within the lines, stayed within Christopher’s lines at least, everything would be well. Even when Riley started to develop a few habits and interests that were off the wall, he brushed them aside as childhood obsessions. Never could he accept his family for what they were which is exactly why he left.
[ PARENTAL ABANDONMENT TW ] The ugly truth was, Riley was an accident and the picture painted had been a lie – not that Riley knew until then. While she knew they had gotten married young she’d never known how much exactly her mother had given up to be with her father. Rachel Hayes had left her family, forsaken her religion ( as Christopher was a very religious Christian man ), the semi famous Goldstein Wizarding name, and moved down south into this suburbia all with the promise of a family. The biggest thing? Magic. When Christopher left a year before Riley entered Hogwarts school, Riley was forced to grow up and pick up the pieces of a broken lost woman who simply couldn’t find herself in the rubble that was the aftermath of her father leaving. But finding out she was an accident was the least of her worries. No matter how much poetry she wrote trying to figure out her mind, oftentimes thinking she was losing it, something within her was different, something within her felt different. [ END PARENTAL ABANDONMENT TW ]
It took a few months to coax the why from her mother, and truly she was her caretaker. It wasn’t until her 10th birthday when she got the letter from Ilvermony that she realized what exactly was off. When she confronted her mother – her mother just poured everything out to her. Who Riley was, who her family was, what she was doing with her life before she met Christopher. At first, Riley couldn’t believe it – – she’d grown up hiding comics under her bed, hiding anything about the supernatural away. Even if her whole life she had felt a weird pull to these people who didn’t belong in her comics, these freaks, she never in her wildest dreams thought she’d have something in common with them. It all made sense though, and finally the pieces of her life started to come together. Riley knew what she had to do, so at the age of 10, she went with her mother to Wizarding NYC to try to find out more. To try to find the family her mother left behind.
After that, everything fell into place – her family was beyond accepting, even if they gave her shit, more than she’d ever known from her dad’s family and her mom started to get better as she become more true to herself. The family reconciled, helping Riley and Rachel move into a flat in NYC, in Chinatown. Rachel got a job at the American Ministry as an assistant and with the help of some family members and Riley started to prepare for school wizarding school. She’d never been more happy in her life. New York City was her home, more than her podunk shitty town ever had, and she felt a freedom that made her wander the city, she felt a freedom to finally be herself. The only issue then? Riley wanted to go to a school far away from everything, because even if New York was her home, she needed to a break from being in the states. A break from all these people who knew who her family was & really, a place that was her own to find her own in the world. Easily, she picked Hogwarts and was delighted when they accepted her no matter how far she was. Hufflepuff was the perfect house for her, even if she wasn’t the most conventional or stereotypical kind of one.
For years, she pushed away a lot of the pain she felt – she figured her pain was her own, it was selfish of her to dwell on it or even think about it when she had this new fantastic life. Only in her poetry would she divulge her feelings, only her poetry knew that she felt inexplicably lost in the world the more she saw it. Around her 14th birthday, she met two boys in school who were a bit older than her but the twins ended up being her half-brothers – as they found they shared a father. A scumbag father who’d also been horrible to them. It was then that Riley wanted to distance herself from her father even more, fiercely signing and writing her last name as Hayes-Goldstein or just Goldstein when she could get away with it.
[ DEPRESSION MENTION ] The thing was, the reminder of her father, the reminder that he was out there ruining more people’s lives, that he was out there spawning more children really intensely messed with Riley’s head. Why wasn’t she good enough for him to stay? Why couldn’t they have been enough? It was stupid, but the thoughts started to consume her and the lost feeling just got bigger. [ DRINKING, DRUGS MENTION ] Picking up vices like smoking, smoking pot, drinking beer after a long day of work, anything to escape the feeling that she didn’t really have a place in this world. Not one she could see. What was she even going to do with her life after school? What did she have to offer the world? A loneliness she could not shake slept with her at night like any blanket did, every day felt like she was smothered. [ DRUGS, DRINKING, DEPRESSION MENTION END ] Every day there was a new realization that she didn’t know what the hell she wanted to do with her life, that she didn’t really have a place in the world.
After graduating she lived in a tiny shitty flat by herself in muggle London ( but she loved it ) with her cat Bogart the 3rd, worked at a book store in Diagon Alley and focused on her own writing, attempting to get it published. When the Inferi outbreak happened she had just gotten her first non-rejection from a publishing press, at 23, but as fate would have it the world fell apart. When the climate in the Wizarding World of England became a developing war zone, Riley wanted nothing to do with it but because of who she was – because of what her religion reminded of her – she couldn’t just stand idly by. Riley knew that even if she was Neutral, she would fight & die with her friends if need be, but nothing prepared for a zombie outbreak. Riley is beyond fucked up and freaked out by the idea of zombies, finding comfort in her religion but questioning it even further – how could G-d allow this? She did what she could for the effort at Hogwarts, angry, scared, and simply trying to make sure the people she loves survives as well as herself.
LIKES & INTERESTS: Cult Classics - Movies ( Heathers, Dead Poets Society, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Cruel Intentions, The Breakfast Club, Almost Famous ), Blue raspberry Slushies, Donuts, Judaism, Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, The Smiths, the color blue, writing poetry, e. e. cummings, art museums, greek mythology, rmemes, Rolling joints on her favorite books, biblical mythology, astronomy, astrology ( she finds it very entertaining in a mocking way and would never admit there’s a small part of her that enjoys it ), Star Wars, black cats, black cats named Boggart, black nail polish, tattoos, carnivals, comic books, ferris wheels, puns, the sea, jellyfish, NPR every morning, going to the beach at twilight, 4 am drives, 5am runs, spliff.
POSITIVE TRAITS: Observant, Cooperative, Strategic, Witty, Intelligent, Resilient, Responsible.
NEGATIVE TRAITS: Reserved, Pessimistic, Sardonic, Secretive, Curious ( it will get her into trouble ), Awkward, Suspicious.