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application for the player piano



in character.
FULL NAME: Julianne Imogen Dorny
AGE/BIRTHDATE: 17 February 1981, Sixteen Years Old
HOUSE AND YEAR: Ravenclaw 6th
BLOODLINE: Halfblood
WAND: Holly and unicorn hair, 11 ¼", stiff. Excellent for Transfigurations
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual

USERNAME: piano
PLAYED BY: Kate Nash? If you all think she's age-appropriate.

PERSONALITY:
Julianne's hands speak volumes as to her life: they are long and thin, the tips calloused over from years of pressure; her nails are closely trimmed and neatly manicured into round half moons and covered in a blood red polish to bring attention to them. The hands of a pianist, which is what Julianne considers herself first and foremost.

Playing since the age of three, Julianne has molded her very personality around the demands of her profession – and it is a profession, the first person to call it a hobby will get a hex in the most painful of locations, and we are not talking about the back of the knee. She is driven and persistent, passionate. Somewhere in her childhood, she could have made the turn towards being a diva, but being slightly overweight, Julianne's insecurities kept her from ever indulging in that selfish streak that she clearly has. All artists are selfish, prizing their talent above all other things: the question is, to what degree do you pamper that? And to what degree do you force others to pamper that? A fat girl really doesn't have much stand to bully the world down to her feet. Julianne did what she was told, threw a few tantrums here and there, but in general, made sure that when she left a room, all people thought of her was that she was a brilliant pianist and a very nice girl – if they had nothing bad to say, then they wouldn't add 'fat' into the list of adjectives used to describe her nasty side.

It was the best thing that happened to her, then, when she shot up five inches and finally shed the excess weight in her fifth year. She still has some baby fat clinging at her, but it is clear that her body is quite fit, no longer the butterball she once was. And with her new figure brought her new confidence: instead of being a "yes" girl, who let her manager lead her by the hand, she began standing up for herself. Given that she is still trying out this 'stand up for yourself' thing, sometimes it veers wildly into being just a bitch about things, though she is quite apologetic after she's had some time to think about it, like a hangover clearing out the mistakes from the bender the night before. Clearly, she lacks the happy medium.

Losing the weight was like losing an albatross from around her neck, the need to make everyone like her and overlook her appearance. Now? Either you like her or don't – but for those who didn't, she has a long memory. Boys who suddenly are interest in her now are met with a chilly wall of her personality. She's done being the doormat – and she's not interested in your superficial advances. She has her piano and her real friends and everyone else can just kiss a flobberworm.

HISTORY:
She wasn't supposed to be remarkable, just another ordinary girl. Well, an ordinary magical girl, but her parents were simple people, and simple people usually begat more simple people, as it is simple, unremarkable people who usually populate the planet.

Her father was a halfblood, a British wizard working abroad in the Dublin office of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department. Dalphard Dorny wasn't making all that much money or had any kind of prestige. It was a job that allowed him plenty of leisure time and low expectations, and he rather liked it that way. Her mother was a Muggle, a piano tuner though Erin O'Reilly had no talent at the instrument, none at all. It was simply a craft that her family had been practicing for generations, passed down to her due to the lack of sons in her generation, the way some families pass down cobbling or cabinetry or mortuaries. He met her at the report of a hexed piano that had broken four of her fingers when the strings snapped around her, as if biting her. Their courtship was dull but satisfying, and when they married, they moved into her flat, since it was larger, and had no real expectations that anything that they came across or encountered or created would ever brush against greatness.

But they had a daughter, Julianne, a name that was both practical yet whimsical enough that Erin felt like she was incorporating some of the romance you'd find in the covers of one of those books with long-haired swarthy men clutching a buxom woman close, his face stoic and smoldering. Yes, Julianne was a name like that. They knew right away that their daughter was magical, but she wasn't an animagus or Harry Potter or anything remarkable, just a baby who could make the animals in her bassinet move when she waved her hands in the midst of her colic. Erin would take her along with on tuning jobs, snug in her pram, the sounds of the piano the only thing that kept her silent and content. At the age of three years, the baby was beginning to mimic the concert tapes that Erin played on the stereo in their flat on the family piano; by six, she could play Chopin better than her mum. And her piano teacher. And her piano teacher's teacher, an old man whose hands were so arthritic from years of pounding on ivory keys but had once been the premiere pianist in Paris (having fled to Dublin to escape a jealous ex-lover, as some are wont to do). By eight, she was performing in concerts with the city symphony, the national orchestra, even traveling up to the Six Counties and performing with the Northern Ireland Symphony, a lovely piece by Tchaikovsky, his No. 1 Concerto, have you heard of it? Simply divine, though Julianne is quite partial to Chopin, especially his Prelude, even though it is small and quick, it is one of her favourite ways to warm up, though Debussy's Claire de Lune is her most favourite piece of all time, though it lacks any significant challenge to her, and was something she mastered at the age of four, truth be told.

When she was ten, she played in London with a symphony and took a curtsey and stared out at the audience, all of the standing men and women, staring at her and clapping for her, crying out words like brava, and then she looked behind her to bow to the orchestra, and they, too, were applauding, and it hit Julianne like a hand: she had done this. Just with her piano, her fingers on the white keys and the black, playing the instrument that just felt like a part of her body, so natural that playing was easier than breathing. Or thinking. Or being, given that she was an awkward looking girl, plump with her dull auburn hair. But when she played, she made something beautiful – and she was beautiful, her insides felt perfect when she played. Julianne smiled back at the people, finding her still-dumbfounded and slightly overwhelmed parents, and grinning secretly, for she knew at the age of ten what she was going to do with her life.

Two months later, she turned eleven and her Hogwarts letter came. And it all ended.

There was a cover story, naturally: Julianne went to school in America, one of those prestigious fine arts schools that would teach her how to compose, to be a real musician and not just a pianist. Her mother declared that she and Julianne's father wanted their daughter to have a normal life, just be a regular girl, which wouldn't happen on full blown concert tours, with CDs and going on inane morning programmes like Rise and Shine Dublin where Julianna would play Brahms for adults to gape at as they slurped their morning coffee. To her parents, it was a touch of a relief: Hogwarts had prevented Julianne from becoming something so great and huge that they would never be able to relate to her again,

Naturally, she loathed them for making her go.

Though she was raised knowing she was magical, in full sight of her magical father, where magic was employed to do most everything in the house, with magical friends that she met for playdates at the Dublin home office of the Ministry – that wasn't her. Her father insisted that she needed to go to Hogwarts to learn how to control her powers, that it would be dangerous to her and everyone around her if she didn't learn. They lied to her, said that she could pick her career back up when she graduated. They said that on holidays, she could play with orchestras and symphonies, that she would still be present in the musical scene. But she wasn't stupid, she had been around too many adults and knew her profession too well: she would never be one of the best pianists in Europe, let alone the world, from the moment she set foot on that stupid red train, off to a school in feckin' Scotland where there would be no instruction on her instrument, where there wasn't even a piano, while the world would march on and another prodigy would become the darling, and Julianne would simply be the pudgy girl who once dazzled and then fizzled back out like an overeager star.

Things got better once she arrived, she had to admit. She was sorted into Ravenclaw, and her Head of House was kind enough to introduce her to Professor McGonagall who took Julianne's favourite sheet music – an ancient copy of Debussy's Suite Bergamasque, No. 3, Claire de Lune – and transfigured a magnificent piano for her to practise on. It sparked an interest in that subject, and Julianne has excelled in it, even able to transfigure the piano herself by her fourth year, though it took an hour of practise every night for three years straight and several near disasters and a good two months of creating a hideously out of tune instrument that was almost worse than no piano at all. She has played for the faculty, for guests, for parties, for Slug Club receptions – though she will never be a member, despite her prodigious talent, due to Professor Slughorn having met her father and being, well, off-put by the man, let us say. On some nights, when the Common Room is amenable, she will transfigure her piano in a corner and play, either as music to study to, or like the piano player in the bar, accepting tips in a jar on the lid and filling requests for her fellow students. She has an above-average, even lovely, singing voice, though she personally finds it grating, as most people are apt to do.

It was this – during her fifth year, between slaving at learning a song by a Muggle pop pianist named Ben Folds from some third year's horrible cassette and also figuring out how in the bloody hell to turn a Weird Sisters song into a piano piece – that she began to grow interested in songwriting. Instead of being a prima donna concert pianist, maybe her calling was in making music instead of simply playing it. She taught herself the guitar and has been working secretly on her own songs, something only her best girlfriends know about. She figures: there is a slim chance that after graduation, she can resume her life as a pianist, but maybe there is an unfulfilled niche in the wizarding world for someone like her. There's The Weird Sisters who are – well, exactly, the new group Accio Guitars who, hmm, lack any guitars and simply seem like the wizarding equivalent of those awful Muggle boygroups that have suddenly become popular. There isn't really a singer-songwriter – and a female at that.

Perhaps Hogwarts is the best thing that happened to Julianne's career. But then again, there is still time to go, isn't there.

out of character.
NAME: Merry
E-MAIL / INSTANT MESSAGING: merriestberry, msadventuregirl@yahoo.com
TIMEZONE: EST