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Name: Abernathy Lillian Ford (AB, Abby)
Residence/Hometown: Lake Luzerne, NY
Age/Birthday: 19. February 21, 1993. It's kind of an inside joke among the family that she and her sister were born on President's day; instead of celebrating their birthday on the actual date they celebrate it on the third Monday in February.
Gender/Sexuality: Straight
PB: Allison Scagliotti
Any notable differences from the pb? 5'6", thin frame. Her hair is cut in a short bob and she occasionally dyes it in streaks and chunks with Manic Panic. She lives for jeans (and as soon as the school day is done she is OUT of the gray pants and tie). Typically she's in a tank top or tee and some sort of flannel shirt over it. She's in love with converse sneakers and writes little poems on the soles (which she's learned how to spell so that they aren't washed or scuffed away). She has an almost ridiculous collection of converse sneakers in every color imaginable. She's very low maintenance. Most days she won't even bother to dry her hair or even run a brush through it. She is often covered in bruises and scrapes because she's a rough and tumble sort of girl. A pictorial guide to Abby's style.
School/Magic Stuff
Wand: 9 inches. Whippy. Chestnut. Dragon heartstring core. When she gets a spell right it's usually magnificent; when she gets a spell wrong it's spectacularly disastrous.
House and Year: Hulett, Senior.
Schedule: Care of magical creatures II, environmental studies, combative magic, animagus study, magical crafting.
Strongest subject in school: Care of Magical Creatures
Weakest subject in school: Latin (and this one is a real struggle for AB; she gets tutoring from anyone who will help her).
Extracurricular activities: Muggle sports, dueling, intramural sports.
Boggart and Riddikulus: Her boggart has been a zombie since she saw the movie 28 Days Later. Her riddikulus is a double barrel shotgun, which instead of shooting the zombie simply conks him/her on the head and knocks it out.
Amortentia smells like: Coconuts, rain/ozone, french toast with maple syrup.
Patronus: Her patronus is the fox (which she's never found all that fitting, but she's been told it's the most common patronus among her family).
Animagus Form: Abby's animagus is a black bear (Picture. Info).
Family/Relationships
Immediate Family Parents Billy and Violet (formerly Kidd). Violet died when AB was seven. Abby has a very close relationship with her dad as a result. An older brother Timothy and an identical twin sister Bernadine. Bill took to calling the girls AB (even though he can tell them apart). The nickname stuck and people who can't tell the difference between them seem to like that they have a legitimate way to talk to them without knowing exactly which twin it is. Timothy is not magical in any way whatsoever. It is unclear whether or not Bernadine is. Family Tree.
Familiar: None. She hasn't found one particularly suited to her, though she has an affinity toward most animals and is very good with them.
Any other relations we should know about: Abernathy has muggle and squib family all over the Northeast and some wizarding family in the South. Her family up North tend to live out in the middle of nowhere; they're hardy, woodsy sort of people who like their privacy. The wizarding parts of her family tend to migrate South. It's very hit and miss along AB's family tree as to who will end up a wizard and who will be a muggle. Abby has something of a benefactress in her Aunt Veruca Kidd.
She has a tenuous friendship with former archnemesis Adelaide Legaux. Her best friend is Cinnamyn Thompson.
She briefly dated Hawthorne Nikitin in the fall. She wouldn't recommend dating any of the Nikitin boys to her friends.
Personality
Likes: Anything at all to do with the outdoors (especially fishing), flannel (but especially plaid flannel shirts), swimming, wizardry in general (but not the culture that comes with it), all sorts of muggle things that wizards seem to take for granted or frown upon (like electricity), flying, the Yankees, Seattle Grunge music (esp. STP and Pearl Jam), Queens of the Stone Age.
Dislikes: Wizards robes, snobs, hypocrites, most students in the Clemons House, logic fails, religion, politicians (she feels redundant saying so since she's already listed hypocrites, but it's absolutely true), people who take themselves too seriously. Abernathy mostly dislikes specific categories of behaviors that people fall into.
Quirks: -Will run out into the middle of thunderstorms to frolic in the rain.
-Doesn't have a single matching pair of socks.
-Talks to animals the same way she talks to people; she has a real gift with animals which is a little ironic considering she likes to hunt and has no familiar.
-Writes weird little poems (usually on her shoes, but she'll copy them into her journal)
-Has a special place in her heart for Brad Pitt and owns many of his movies. She watched The Mexican repeatedly when she had the chicken pox.
Secrets: -Secretly fears that her sister really does have Schizophrenia.
-Also fears that she'll develop it herself if it's true
Strengths: Strong willed (sometimes a weakness if she's strong willed about the wrong thing), honest, hard-working, fearless in the woods, self-reliant.
Weaknesses: Judgmental, she has to see it to believe it, mischievous, would rather solve a fight with fists than with words, extreme grudge holder.
Detailed personality: Abernathy is a bit mischievous and sometimes finds herself getting into trouble as a result. She can fend for herself and is stronger than she looks (she prefers to be called scrappy). She can be "rough and tumble" and doesn't mind the bruises when she falls out of trees or gets into a fight.
She's very open minded in her personal philosophy; she likes to learn new things. She's usually practical in her approach to new (and old) situations. She's disgustingly determined; if her mind gets set on a course of action it's hell or high water that she's following the course. She doesn't like to be proven wrong, but she'll suck it up when she is.
She has a pretty strong personality. Abernathy is who she is and as far as she's concerned you can take it or leave it. She can get a bit judgmental, especially of people who wear their causes on their sleeves (for example she despises people who are into organized religion; she once openly mocked a bunch of students for having ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday). She's largely unapologetic about it.
When her opinions don't get in the way she's laid back, low maintenance, and easy going. She is very hard to anger, but she's very good at holding grudges. Once you've crossed her badly enough there is no way you're getting back into her good graces.
She's very independent and self-reliant. She's quite handy with tools and fixing things; she spends a lot of her vacations in the garage behind her house fixing old cars. She's aces at outdoors activities, especially the hobbies she grew up with. She'd rather spend her weekends fishing than stuck on campus (and has unsuccessfully tried to start a hunting/fishing club at school on more than one occassion). Despite her love of solitary, quiet pursuits Abernathy is a very friendly and outgoing person.
Personal History: Abernathy grew up mostly in the woods. Getting to her house is difficult enough in the summer, it's almost impossible in the winter (but Abby kind of likes it that way). Abby learned how to fish and hunt early on; she knows how to prepare caught game for eating and other uses. She's excellent at tracking in the woods. She loves to be outdoors and spent most of her summers in tents along the Hudson River.
She went to the local elementary school because her parents weren't entirely sure she'd grow up to be a witch. No one in the Ford family is ever certain until they get the letter, even if they exhibit some ability early on. Her older brother Timothy never got the letter and so he continued on with his muggle schooling. This education didn't prove entirely useless, though Abernathy was prone to dreaming about what the wizarding world might be like.
At the age of seven AB's mom died. It was sudden, unexpected and a horrible loss. Abby grew a lot closer to her dad and her siblings, even though they were a fairly tight-knit group before. They struggled on for a time, since Violet's contribution to their finances was significant. The Ford's learned to get by on less (and with the help they could get from their relations in the area).
Abernathy and Bernadine spent one summer with their wizarding relations at the age of 9. This trip was against Bill's better judgment and it was solely funded by Aunt Veruca (who insisted that the girls get to know the "other" side of the family). This vacation solidified Abernathy's desire to be a witch. She listened and learned as much as she could, even during the course of all the culture shock (Louisiana was not in any way shape or form like her beloved North Country). Abby's heart became set on wizarding.
It wasn't a huge surprise that Abernathy got the letter (she got two in fact, one from Blue Ridge (since several of her relations are alumni) and one from Dresden). The big surprise was that her identical twin, Bernadine didn't receive a letter. This was a hard blow for Abby, though Bernadine didn't struggle with it as much. Abby was never bothered by preferential differences between her and her sister, but this was a significant difference. This would put them in different strata as far as the family was concerned; Abernathy would be expected to migrate south. Most importantly for Abby, she struggled with the idea of being separated from her twin.
Bill didn't want to encourage or discourage her either way. He had raised his children to be independent thinkers so that even at the age of eleven they could make up their own minds. It took Abernathy a good week of agonizing before she could even speak about it with Bernadine. She hadn't officially made up her mind until the end of the summer; her bags were packed but she was inches away from throwing her dreams out the window. By the time her dorm room was unpacked Abby still wasn't sure if she'd made the right decision, but she started at the Lower School at Blue Ridge with funding and hefty encouragement from Aunt Veruca.
Abernathy found herself to be a rather gifted witch, though she didn't at all fit in with the wizarding culture (or the culture in the South). More often than not she'd spend her free time climbing trees or playing muggle sports; she wanted to fit in but she couldn't give up on all the things she loved.
Shortly after she left her letters from home started to get strained. Her father was struggling to say something and he couldn't write it down. It wasn't until Abernathy returned home after the first trimester that she began to figure out what was wrong. Bernadine had started to act strangely in her sisters absence and every muggle doctor her father had taken her to believed that the girl was suffering the early stages of schizophrenia.
Abernathy was devastated by this news and almost didn't return to school. It took some coaxing, but she returned to school and started researching the disorder in her spare time. Over the spring break it occurred to Abernathy that her sister might have second sight and simply didn't know how to process it because she didn't have any other magical gifts. She pestered every person she could, but being only 11 she wasn't taken very seriously. She'd been fighting to have someone visit with Abernathy, or get her admitted into the school on a limited basis (just to take classes related to divination systems), but she didn't have any success.
Disheartened by her treatment by the adults at school, her continuing struggles to fit in, and her increasing homesickness, Abernathy chose to leave the school at the end of her first year. She wanted to quit altogether, but her father knew that she was gifted and needed to explore this avenue more fully. After some negotiation, Abernathy was allowed to start her second year at Dresden Academy.
It was a much better fit for Abernathy and she was so close to home that she could visit on the weekends. This worked better for both sisters. Bernadine asked her sister not to ask Dresden to admit her; she was happy enough at muggle school and to her it wasn't worth the effort. Abby relented and plunged into her studies.
It didn't take long for her mischievous nature to kick in. While at school AB had a tendency to skip classes when the whim took her. She dressed out of code every Halloween. She got into fights at the slightest provocation from Adelaide Legaux and anyone else on her shit list. She was in detention so often that she claimed to have a desk with her name on it. She was actually pretty good in her classes (when she bothered to go, and excepting Latin of course), which is probably part of the reason she hasn't been expelled yet.
Other Stuff:
Abby's handwriting is: Santos Dumont and can be downloaded at broble.com.
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