InsaneJournal

Cassandra Isolde Selwyn

FULL NAME: Cassandra Isolde Selwyn NICKNAME(S): She prefers to be called Cassandra, but many people call her Cassie anyway, and she's really too polite to protest. AGE/BIRTHDAY: 16 / May 2nd, 1961 BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood SEXUALITY: Homosexual, but deeply closeted. JOURNAL: noprophet

APPEARANCE: Cassandra Selwyn was a fairly plain little girl, one with large features totally at odds with her painfully demure personality and a body that she never quite seemed to fit into. Thankfully, she's grown into all of that now, at least for the most part, and is in fact quite pretty these days. Puberty was kind to her, bestowing her with a slim but well-proportioned figure and letting her grow into her once-gangly limbs, though the height she had hasn't followed her into adulthood and without heels she stands at 5'3". Her eyes are her most remarkable feature, wide and long-lashed and a strange grey colour that appears sometimes light and sometimes dark. Her hair is a light brunette, more curly than not, and falls to just past her shoulders. PB: Emilia Clarke; Cassandra's hair is brunette, a la the first linked set, but I will probably be using some of the blonde icons as well for range of expression if that's all right.

HOGWARTS HOUSE & YEAR: Slytherin 6th PREFECT?: QUIDDITCH?: No! That's so masculine, and Cassandra is a lady. CLUBS: Charms Club OWL GRADES: Ancient Runes E, Astronomy E, CoMC A, Charms E, DADA A, Divination P, Herbology A, History of Magic E, Potions A, Transfiguration E CURRENT CLASSES: Ancient Runes, Astronomy, Charms, History, Transfiguration

PERSONALITY: Cassandra has always been a difficult girl to get to know: quiet and reserved and always seeming a bit wary of the people around her, a bit scared to show anything genuine lest someone judge it. Of course, she'd call these traits demure and ladylike, and she wouldn't exactly be wrong, either. She's always unfailingly polite, almost to the point where it gets annoying, and she never shows strong emotion, at least not willingly. A girl of strong passions, Cassandra values control of those passions in herself more than anything else, and spends most of her emotional energy in trying not to let them show. The exception has always been when it comes to her older brother; Cassandra's familial loyalty is strong and goes deep, and it's strongest when it comes to Apollo. Only in his presence does she let down her guard at all; as a result, most people like Cassandra most when he's also around. She's more genuine, then, seems less like she's putting on a show to match with what's expected and more like a normal, emotional teenage girl. Of course, the lone Cassandra has her good traits as well: she is, for example, one of the best listeners you'll ever meet, and she is perfectly and utterly reliable, always doing exactly what she ought to. Don't try to get this girl to break the rules. She won't. She won't do anything at all that's likely to make her stand out. In fact, that's the thing that makes her stand out most of all.

HISTORY: The second child and only daughter of Julius Selwyn and Ilana Crouch, Cassandra Selwyn was born into a life of relative privilege. The Selwyns were no Black family, it was true, but they didn't fall too far below that illustrious status in the hierarchy of British purebloods; indeed, Ilana was herself the daughter of a Black, and while her mother hadn't made the most impressive marriage imaginable- thanks, no doubt, to the shame of her elder sister marrying a blood traitor- Ilana had raised the branch of the family's honour in only one generation with her own marriage. It was, likely, the woman's acute awareness of all of these blood politics that led her to be even more intent on raising her children as perfect purebloods and preserving the Selwyn name than her husband was. First Apollo and then Cassandra, who followed her older brother into the world merely a year after his own entrance, were taught from the very beginning to honour their family's reputation above all else. It was, they were told, the only thing that truly mattered in this world; they were Selwyns, and they were and could be nothing else. Personal happiness didn't matter, only familial loyalty, as far as Ilana's lessons to her children were concerned. As individuals they barely existed. Only in terms of the family did they matter, and everything they did, said, and thought reflected on the family. However harsh these lessons were, there were good aspects to them as well. Cassandra and Apollo grew up caring for each other more than anything else, with almost none of the rivalry typical of siblings so close in age. They were each other's closest friends and only true confidantes, all but inseparable in everything they did. Cassandra came second to Apollo in both age and the fact that as a male he was the Heir of Selwyn, but she didn't mind that; minding it never even occurred to her, except insofar as she knew that some far away day she'd have to marry and her name would change, which always seemed horrid to her in a vague yet terrifying way- after all, if being a Selwyn was all that mattered about her, what would she be when she belonged to a different family? Disobedience, however, was in neither Cassandra's upbringing nor her nature; as a child it never occurred to her to attempt to question, much less change, her far-off fate. And as for his part, Apollo was taught well that he owed all the loyalty and love to his younger sister that she owed to him. He never lorded his 'superior' status within the household over her; indeed, if anything, he deferred to her and loved her all the more because of it. The children grew up as a part of British pureblood society, of course, and they had a profusion of cousins just like everyone in their circle; their ties with those vaunted Blacks were especially emphasized by their parents. Still, they remained truly close only to each other for the majority of their childhoods. And that was just fine with Cassandra; not an outgoing girl- thankfully a trait that was perfectly acceptable in a lady- she was perfectly content to spend her free time with the older brother who meant so much to her. Of course, this meant that the transition when it came time for Apollo to leave for Hogwarts was hard on both of them. The two of them campaigned their parents to keep him home for the year that it would take for Cassandra to be able to accompany him, and they almost succeeded, too- a testament to the power of the siblings working in tandem. In the end, however, Apollo was put on the train, leaving behind a quietly devastated little sister. She did not, however, protest. Cassandra was nothing if not a Good Daughter. Outside of being Apollo's sister, it was her entire identity. The ensuing year was agonizingly slow for her as she waited to turn eleven and then for June to come and bring her beloved brother home to her. She spent the interim mostly alone, although her mother- somewhat disturbed, truth be told, by the sheer strength of the attachment she'd created between her children, although of course that had been her intention- made a point of taking her out nearly every day to spend time among her peers, other pureblooded children waiting to make the trip to Hogwarts in September. Cassandra endured this assault on her private world without complaint, outwardly making friends just like Mother wanted her to. She was polite, she was sweet, she was a wonderful little friend to all the girls she spent time with. And she was completely aloof inside, holding herself back from them, finding it nearly impossible to let anyone who wasn't her brother close. When he came back for the summer, Cassandra was predictably overjoyed, and the way she blossomed once again was obvious to everyone who knew her. She hadn't exactly been drab or disappointing in the past year- on the contrary, she'd played her part to perfection and there could be not a single complaint of her behavior- but with Apollo back in her life she was undeniably brighter. Come September she followed him onto the Hogwarts Express with a great deal of joy, and was quickly Sorted that evening into Slytherin with him, if only out of the sheer strength of her ambition to be the same as he was. Her first few years at school were unremarkable; Cassandra already knew most of her Slytherin peers, and she got along with the majority of them well enough. Even those she didn't care for would never know it: Cassandra was polite and well-mannered enough to hide dislike very well indeed. As she and her peers began to reach puberty, however, it became clear to Cassandra that all was not completely right with her. The difference she was discovering between herself and the other girls she lived and spent her time with loomed large in her mind; no, it loomed enormous. Suddenly, all they wanted to talk about was Boys: the boys they liked, the ones they didn't, who was 'cute' or 'fit,' who had winked at whom and who they wanted to claim as their first kiss. They giggled behind their hands at every meal, trading glances across the table or the room with the boys who had until recently been nothing more to them than fellow students and annoying ones at that; and every smile made them turn bright red. All of them, that was, except Cassandra. She didn't understand it. The were no more interesting to her than they had ever been, the boys: a few were friends, most were bodies taking up space in class, but nothing had changed for her the way it had for the others. She didn't know what her friends meant when they talked about fluttering stomachs and beating hearts, and none of their male classmates looked any different to her than they had last year. The only one she had any real interest in spending time alone with was Apollo, just as she always had wanted time with him; and he certainly didn't make her giggle and blush, or any of that nonsense. In fact, the only time she felt anything like that at all was around one or two of the other girls she knew, the very pretty ones who smiled so much more easily than she did herself and who she suddenly, desperately, wanted to smile at her. Nothing in her upbringing or experience had prepared Cassandra for any of this; Ilana had never so much as talked about the attraction between adult men and women, much less the possibility of homosexuality. It took the young girl some time to figure out what was going on, or rather to admit to herself that she knew: that there was something wrong with her, something very wrong indeed. Being Cassandra, she didn't tell anyone at all. No one could know that she wasn't the perfect pureblood girl that her family wanted. She did her best to pretend that she felt the same as her roommates did, and at any rate they wrote off her reticence as typical Cassandra-style demureness. None of her roommates or fellow Slytherins made her feel particularly fluttery or confused, thank Merlin; she'd grown up with most of them for long enough that they felt more like siblings then potential romantic interests. And anyone she did feel attraction toward- a certain pretty, outgoing Ravenclaw in particular- she avoided at all costs. Her budding sexuality was far from the only thing in Cassandra's life, after all. There were classes and friends and time spent with her brother, and things remained more or less normal for her as OWL year approached and finally came. With the important exams looming, she decided to seek out tutoring in her worst- or, for the most part, her more accurately merely average- classes. This included Potions, a discipline at which she was nearly as hopeless as she was at Divination, her worst subject of all. She approached Professor Slughorn to suggest someone to help her. And, as luck would have it, he chose Moira Fletcher- the very Ravenclaw whom Cassandra had spent most of the last two years trying to avoid staring at. Still, she'd made the request and could hardly back out now, at least not without awkward questions being asked. And so Cassandra had no choice but to accept the tutor she'd been assigned, like it or not. The problem being, of course, that she liked it very much. In close quarters and alone with the other girl, Cassandra was more or less helpless to conceal her attraction; it was, after all, the first major crush of her life. And whatever hope she'd held onto that getting to know the Ravenclaw better would quash the feelings was completely dashed: on the contrary, the more she knew of Moira, the more she liked her and wanted to be around her. It only took a few sessions for Cassandra to become completely and utterly enamoured of the other girl. In the end, however, it wasn't Cassandra who changed their relationship. She was, quite frankly, still far too scared of and repelled by her own feelings to ever have done so. It was Moira who made the move, subtle as it was- a long look and a touch and Cassandra found herself helpless to resist. It had been one thing when she was experiencing an unrequited crush on another girl; it was quite another to find that the other girl felt the same. For the first time in her life, Cassandra was completely unable to control herself and what she was feeling. She gave in, and the two girls began a clandestine relationship that consisted of shared looks, secret notes, and any number of study sessions during which not much studying was done at all. Every day, Cassandra told herself that this time, she'd sit on the opposite side of the table from Moira and keep her focus on her Potions book, this time she wouldn't read the note that Moira slipped into her hand as they passed in the corridor, this time she'd be good and normal and right. And every day, she found herself sitting as closer to the other girl as she could get with everything to do with Potions utterly ignored, found herself smiling a secret smile at the contents of the note and writing out a reply, found herself being bad and freakish and wrong in her affection for another girl. Until one morning near the end of the year, Cassandra woke up from a dream she'd been having in which Moira starred, and realized that if she didn't end things now, she never would. And so she did. If those around Cassandra noticed a change in her during the ensuing time, well, it wasn't the first change; she'd been a little odd all year, her emotions noticeably closer to the surface than they'd ever been before: a Cassandra quicker to smile in a way that reached her eyes, quicker to laugh with genuine mirth behind it. And quicker, too, to lapse into strange and brooding silence. Now, with OWLs only days off, she withdrew again, back behind the polite, ladylike shell she'd always had before, only now the eyes shining out from behind it seemed sad rather than wary. Nobody knew why, and not knowing they mostly ignored it. When OWL results came later during the summer, it turned out that Cassandra had done well enough at Potions to pass. Still, she didn't take the NEWT-level.

QUESTIONS: Answer at least 5. What is your idea of perfect happiness? What is your greatest fear? Being thrown out of my family; or more specifically, losing the love and respect of my brother. What is the trait you most deplore in others? A lack of self-control. What do you do when you get nervous? What do you do when you get angry? Remove myself from the situation. What do you do when you are happy? Smile and enjoy it. What do you do when you are sad? Ignore it to the best of my ability and keep on. Do you have any interesting habits? If so, please list them. On what occasion do you lie? When my family's honour, pride or good demands it. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I'd be attracted to men. What do you consider your greatest achievement? What is your greatest regret? What is your motto?

NAME: Sara! AIM: EMAIL ADDRESS: TIME ZONE: CDJ: AVAILABILITY: EXPERIENCE: