Desirae Bennet | Insurrection

Post by Desirae Maribel Krum on Feb 12, 2016 18:33:19 GMT -5

Desirae Maribel Bennet
30 - Female - Halfblood - 03/20/1985

Governess

Appearance and Personality
General Appearance: Desirae is a rather petite woman, standing at five feet, three inches. She has dark brown hair with a natural wave to it. She commonly wears it down... though this is new for her, as for many years she has only worn it either up or in a braid, to keep her hair out of her face. She has green eyes, and growing up, she was never big on using too much make-up. However, in the past years, she is never seen without some manner of make-up on, even if she's not leaving the house. It is always lightly done, but perfectly done, as it is something she's learned to be good at over the years. Her nails are also always perfectly manicured, and painted in neutral and pale colors. Though she was never one to dress extravagantly, this too has changed in the last couple of years, and she is always found wearing a dress and heels, even if she's just staying around the house. She is also very slender, some would say too thin. Most of this (pretty much all...) was due to the insistence of her now ex-boyfriend, though they have all been tough habits for her to break, but she is trying to remember now that there is no way that she 'has' to look.
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Skills: Back in Hogwarts, she was incredibly gifted in charms and in herbology. She received some of the top marks in her year for charms in particular, and over the past few years had gotten incredibly talented at concealment charms. In her time at school, she loved spending time in the greenhouses. Desirae is also good at muggle gardening, and always enjoyed spending time with her mum in their garden at home. Desirae is a good cook, though she never really had to learn how to growing up. In recent years she has tried to cultivate the skill more, though she is by no means an expert. However she is quite good at all of the recipes that her ex-boyfriend likes, and was constantly trying to learn more recipes that he’d enjoy to improve her skills at cooking. She has gotten incredibly good at cleaning the Muggle way, since she wasn’t allowed her wand while at home. Whether it is dusting, mopping, or just general tidying, she knows how to do it quickly and thoroughly. She can also do a lot more the Muggle way as well—first aid, repairing clothes by hand, and knitting and crocheting. Desirae is also very skilled at shifting focus off of herself in any social situations, because she never wants to be the one that anyone is looking at, at any given time. For the most part when she does this, she moves the focus back to her (now ex) boyfriend, who is a successful businessman. She’s very good with kids, working in a muggle primary school for six years, which is why she responded to the ad in the paper that @krum put out.
Weaknesses: Even though she got incredibly good marks in charms, she is incredibly rusty with doing actual spellwork, due to not often having access to her wand. She hopes that the skill comes back to her, particularly with her new job, but she’s not one hundred percent certain that it will… at least not immediately. Desirae also has a huge weakness in her self-esteem, as it is low to the point that it is nearly nonexistent. Her family is incredibly important to her as well, and they are a weakness to her because she doesn’t want anything to happen to them. She’s concerned that her ex-boyfriend will go to them to try to figure out where she went, though she didn’t get into contact with them. This was partially because she is ashamed of everything that has happened, and also because she simply thinks that it’s better that they don’t know where she is. Desirae is also incredibly timid and cautious now that she is on her own, because she doesn’t want to let on to anyone what is going on and she doesn’t want Vince to find her. She is also incredibly jumpy, and had a tendency to apologize a lot.
Positive Personality Traits: Articulate, caring, cheerful (mostly faked), generous, idealistic (used to be, less so now…), intelligent, methodical, outspoken (not anymore, though I’m hopeful that will come back at some point…), personable (better with kids than adults at this point), polite, punctual, respectful, sweet, well-read, witty (again that’s something that was truer in the past, but she truly can be very funny, it just takes a while to bring that out of her)
Negative Personality Traits: Anxious, cautious, clumsy when she's nervous, hesitant, inhibited, insecure, obedient, paranoid, passive, reserved, secretive, timid, unlovable (her words, not mine), vulnerable
Hobbies and Interests: Growing up she loved gardening, but hasn’t done that in ages. She does truly enjoy reading, and that is something that she has still be able to do in the past couple years. Mostly though, she’s just cooked, cleaned, read, and listened to music. She also is pretty decent at sewing, knitting, and crocheting.
Character History:

Desirae Maribel Bennet was born in late March of 1985 to Ross and Maribel Bennet. Growing up, she had a relatively normal childhood at first. She showed signs of magic early, and although her mother was a Muggle, their household was more magical than Muggle... in fact, she never had to learn how to cook or clean the Muggle way, because she could always watch her father in awe when he could clean a room at the flick of a wand. Soon, she welcoming a younger sister into the family as well, and everything was looking bright and exciting as she began to look forward to starting Hogwarts and getting to learn about magic herself. Before she started at the magical school, her mother made sure to teach her all manners of Muggle education as well, from history, to science, English, and mathematics, as she wanted her daughters to have the knowledge they needed to succeed in both worlds.

She began Hogwarts in 1996, and she was sorted into Hufflepuff House. Desirae made friends rather easily, and was instantly enthralled by all of her classes, but charms in particular. She also easily succeeded in herbology, and those classes nearly immediately became her favorites. At the end of her first year at Hogwarts, though, the headmaster died, and although she didn't know much about the situation, she knew that something bad must be happening. Her father was far more anxious when she got home that summer, furthering her thoughts that something was wrong, though she was told not to worry too much about it. Over the summer, her mother helped her keep up with her Muggle education, and she looked forward to her next year at Hogwarts. Her second year proved to be more eventful than the first, though, because this was when Severus Snape was in charge of the school. She kept to herself that year, trying not to get in trouble, as she saw what happened to those that did. She was cautious, but she was smart, and at the end of the year, when the battle took place, she was amongst the younger students that were evacuated before it began.

Her remaining years at Hogwarts were rather uneventful, though she certainly had no complaints where that was concerned. She was incredibly happy when her sister joined her at the school as well, though her parents' divorce came soon after, a fact that she was incredibly upset by. She didn't even truly know what had happened between them until her later years in Hogwarts, when her mother finally told her that he'd had an affair. That was still not something she fully understood, simply because everything had always seemed good between the pair of them. Throughout her years at Hogwarts, she'd had a couple of casual relationships, normally just involving going to a dance or two, but nothing more than that. Even though her parents' relationship hadn't lasted, she was certain that it was still possible for them to find happiness, and that she eventually would as well.

However, after she graduated, she watched her father go through relationship and relationship, marrying and divorcing twice more, and she really started to doubt the idea that relationships could work in the long term. She decided to go to university, and studied there in order to get her degree in education. She graduated, and began teaching at a primary school in London. While she had been studying for her degree, she had worked plenty of odd jobs, but they all fell to the wayside when she got her teaching job. She worked at the school for nearly six years, though then she was laid off. Unable to find work teaching, and not wanting to ask her mother for help, she picked up one of the odd jobs she'd had during her time at university, and started working for a catering company in the area. She didn't make the food, or anything like that, since she didn't know how anyways; instead, she worked in the waitstaff for the fancier events that required it. A few weeks before her twenty-ninth birthday, she worked another one of those events, this time an incredibly fancy gala, and she thought it had just been like any other event she had worked. Desirae didn't realize that she had caught somebody's eye at that party until a few days later.

She was grabbing her normal coffee that she got at a shop down the street from her apartment when she ran into an attractive bloke by the name of Vince who ended up asking her out. Right off the bat, she thought that the man was pretty close to being perfect. After all of the failed relationships over the years, she didn't know how she had gotten so lucky as to find someone as good as him. Months went by, and she was incredibly happy with her relationship, and when a disagreement happened between her and her boss at the catering company, she ended up quitting and didn't think twice when Vince asked her to move in with him.

At first, everything seemed absolutely normal and perfect. She was playing around with starting to look for teaching jobs again, but Vince told her that he would take care of her, and that she didn't need to worry about that. And so she decided not to right away. Everything happened slowly, and she really didn't think anything of it at all. He told her to start wearing her hair back because he preferred it like that... he gave her new clothes and started to urge her to wear more make-up. She wanted to make him happy, of course, and so she did it without really questioning it too much, figuring it was just what couples did for each other. Soon, he was convincing her to stay in the house more often and take care of everything there, and that he would take care of her. The changes were so slight that she had hardly even realized that it was happening. And then, one day, when she was pouring him a glass of whiskey, she accidentally dropped it and it shattered... and that was the first time that he hit her.

He apologized, and since he had been nothing but perfect to her their entire relationship, she truly didn't think that it was going to happen again. But everything went downhill after that... She was in a relationship with him for another year, and in that time, did everything that she could to try to keep him happy, though it seemed like nearly an impossible task. She was not allowed to leave the house unless she was with him, and he hid her wand from her while they were home. He was entirely in charge of the money, in charge of what she wore, how she looked, acted, and even what she ate. Desirae was far too afraid of him to even consider leaving, and so she stayed. She slowly lost communication with all of her friends, and though she was allowed to attend her sister's wedding, she had not seen her since and hasn't met her niece. They keep in contact through letters, which Vince strictly monitors, and she can write to her mother as well, but that's all. Even though she knew where he hid her wand, having stumbled across it one day cleaning, she didn't dare take without his permission, even when she had the entire house to clean by hand. It didn't even cross her mind to do something like that.

In the first week of February of 2016, she was trying to deal with the leaking faucet in the kitchen, a next to impossible task for her without a wand or any clue how to deal with plumbing. So she made the decision to hire a Muggle plumber to come over and fix it before Vince could get home from work. In her rush to get it done before he arrived back at the house, she didn't even think about her bruises or how that must look. The plumber arrived and began to fix the faucet, though finally gaining the courage to ask her about what was going on there. She could barely stutter out an excuse before Vince came into the room. He all but dragged the plumber out of the room, where he then killed him. At that moment, she truly realized that if she didn't get out, he would eventually kill her too. The next day, when he went to work, she grabbed her wand from its hiding place, packed a small bag of her belongings, and fled the house without looking back.

She was nervous the moment that she even left, as if he would somehow know she had taken a step outside without his permission. Desirae knew how angry he would be if he caught her, but she also knew that she had time to get some distance between the house. She knew that he would probably talk to anyone he could think of to try to figure out where she went, but with no money, she had no choice but to get in contact with an old coworker... someone that she was quite sure Vince wouldn't even think of speaking to. The man was surprised to hear from her, as it had been a few years at the least, but at how frantic she looked, didn't give much pause to lending him some money. She promised to pay him back, and then she left.

Not wanting to risk even being in the same city as Vince, she immediately headed for Manchester, but only for a brief period of time. She got a cheap hotel room and tried to decide what to do next. It was when she was looking through the Prophet that she saw an classified ad for someone looking for a governess for his six year old daughter. In Scotland. Thinking that Scotland would certainly be far enough away that Vince wouldn't think to look for her there... at least not right away, Desirae got in contact with @krum . When she was offered the job, she made her way to Scotland, slowly though, and cautiously, keeping her eye out to make sure that she didn't attract any kind of suspicion. She had no idea what lengths Vince were going to in order to find her, after all.

Plots and Politics
Where does your character stand in the treatment of death eaters and their families? Desirae does not honestly know much about how bad the treatment has gotten, as she was just at home a lot and didn’t see much of anything happening firsthand. All she knows is what she has read in the paper, and Vince didn’t really have much of an opinion on it, so she didn’t either.

How was your character and their family affected by the reign and death of Voldemort? Desirae’s family was always cautious about everything that was going on in the Muggle world, particularly because her father had married a Muggle and he believed that this put a target on the family’s backs. He was always on high alert making sure that everything was all right, though he was just a halfblood himself, so the ‘target’ on his back probably wasn’t as big as he truly thought it was. Desirae was a second year during the final battle, and thus was evacuated before the battle began.

Family

Parents: Maribel Bennet (née Pelley) – 49, Ross Bennet – deceased
Siblings: Dahlia Maran (née Bennet) – 27 – sister, Virgil Maran – 29 – brother-in-law
Children:
Partner: @vince (ex-partner, but I’m putting him here anyways because drama)
Other Relevant Family: Rosie Maran – 1 (niece)
Family History:
Maribel Pelley was born and raised in Muggle London, and her father worked two jobs to support their family, while her mother was a stay-at-home mum. She had a relatively normal upbringing, though she had a closer relationship to her mother than she did with her father. This was really just because he worked so much, though she loved him all the same... she knew that he worked as much as he did in order to support them all. She finished her education, and she met Ross Bennet when she was 18 years old. The connection was instantaneous, and they fancied themselves in love with each other within only a month of dating. Their families both told them that they were far too young, but it didn't really matter to them what anyone else thought. Within only a few months of dating, Maribel found out that she was pregnant. While this was not apart of the plan, they weren't too fussed to simply get married, because they truly thought that they were soulmates.

They had their first child, Desirae, when they were both nineteen years old. They moved into a small apartment, and Ross went to work at Gringotts. It was a few years later into their marriage when they found out that Maribel was pregnant again. Luckily, his income brought home enough money that they could afford to move into a small house, and he was glad that he was able to support his family.

Maribel made sure to teach both of her daughters all that they needed to know involving Muggle education... math, science, English, and history, as she didn't want them to not have that bit of education too. Apart from that though, their house was magical, mostly because it was just something that they wanted to expose their daughters to so that they would get used to it at Hogwarts.

They had a... relatively happy marriage, but everything started to go slightly downhill for the couple once Dahlia had started Hogwarts as well, and the house was empty. They ended up divorcing after Ross had an affair with a fellow curse-breaker in the wizarding world. Maribel never got remarried after that, though Ross then went through a series of progressively more unsuccessful relationships. He married two more times, both ended in divorce, and he had just met someone when he had to go on a trip to Egypt for an assignment curse-breaking. It was there that he got into an accident, that cost him his life. He was 39 at the time, and so Desirae was 20 at the time, and Dahlia was finishing up at Hogwarts. Maribel moved to Bristol, and enjoying life there, though she is still single.

After Hogwarts, Dahlia moved with her mother to Bristol, and it was there that she met a wizard by the name of Virgil. They dated for several years before he proposed, and they got married in early 2014. They have a daughter who has just turned one in November.