Sophia Black

Sophia Black

Wand:  Beech and Phoenix Feather, 7 inches

Wand Wood Description:

Beech: The true match for a beech wand will be very wise beyond their years and rich in understanding and experience. Beech wands perform very weakly for the narrow-minded, ignorant and intolerant. When properly placed, the beech wand is capable of a subtlety and artistry rarely seen in any other wood, hence its lustrous reputation. It is highly sought after.

Appearance:  Long brown hair, Hazel eyes, white skin. She HATES wearing school robes, and gets out of them as soon as she doesn't have to wear them in favor of jeans and a t-shirt.  5'3", so she's short compared to many of her classmates.

Personality: Sophia hides a very introspective and intelligent personality behind an extroverted and average mask. She has learned to be sociable and learned how to adapt herself to the person she is talking to in an effort to avoid being seen as smart. She takes her time making decisions, examining all angles she can think of before settling, but once a decision is made, she leaps into it with both feet. She does nothing by halves. She likes to think well of others, and will trust them until she has reason not to.

Favorite Subjects:  Potions, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, History of Magic

Least Favorite Subjects:  Divination, Muggle Studies, Care of Magical Creatures

What She Loves:  Her mother is more dear to her than anything else on the planet

What She Hates:  Bullies

History: 

Sophia never knew her father. From the earliest time she could remember it had been just her and her mom, trying to take on the world. Lucille Black did her best to support them both, but sometimes things got tight. Sophia never lacked for food, mainly because Lucille would skip meals so her daughter would have enough. The bond of love between the two grew so strong between the two that when the time came to send her to school, Lucille was conflicted on whether or not to teach her herself, or send her to school. In the end, she decided that school was going to be a better, less isolating option.

Sophia turned out to be an exceptionally bright child, mastering reading and numbers so fast she quickly outpaced her peers. Lucille, in an effort to encourage her, bought several children's books for Sophia, but Sophia quickly tired of them. In desperation, Lucille took her daughter to the library and gave her free reign. Sophia picked books well beyond her supposed level to bring home and read, books she devoured quickly.

Out of a combination of boredom and her fellow students making fun of her for being a swat, Sophia began acting out. Though her grades did not suffer, Lucille was plagued with calls from the school during Sophia's early years regarding behavioral problems. Sophia never pushed it too far, never getting a suspension, but Lucille tried to make it clear to Sophia that she couldn't keep going up to the school when she needed to work. Out of love for her mother, Sophia toned her behavior down. The teasing continued until Sophia learned that hiding how smart she was made her more friends than flaunting it. Once she learned to do this, she found she had many more friends, though she never got close to any of them.

To keep her mind occupied, Sophia turned to her books, reading well beyond her year in school. She started reading ahead not only in maths and literature, but also fiction, where she found a deep love for all things fantasy. After reading her favorite stories in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion at age 9, she turned to learning the elvish language from those books by a combination of the appendices and online research. Lucille let her watch Peter Jackson's movies, which she hated as they didn't follow the books at all. Her favorite character from the books was Eowyn, and she felt the movies did that character a grave injustice. When her mother gave her a diary for her birthday that year, Sophia wrote in it in elvish so not even her mother would know her innermost thoughts. The diary became her closest friend, since Sophia felt that no one could really understand her.

By age 11, Sophia had learned to strike a balance. She kept her grades at near perfection, occasionally and intentionally getting a lower grade so her class mates wouldn't start teasing her about being a swat. She wrote in her journal to get out her feelings, while keeping her friends happy. Her truest joy was in her books, which she read voraciously, everything from science books to biographies, but still, her dearest love was fantasy. Wizards, dragons, evil curses, fantastic creatures, and heroic deeds filled her lonely nights with a world she dearly wished she could enter, though she knew they were not real.

In the summer of 2016, a letter arrived, telling her she had been admitted to a "school for witchcraft and wizardry". Both she and Lucille dismissed it as some joke being played by one of Sophia's friends, though none of them admitted to it. Neither she or her mother thought anything of it until a strangely dressed woman knock on their apartment door. She wore robes rather than regular clothes, and a hat that could only be described as a witches hat.

Minerva Mcgonagall convinced both Lucille and Sophia that Hogwarts was real, through a combination of persuasion and demonstration. Sophia could not have bene more proud, nor more excited. Magic being real was a dream come true. Sophia was granted a small scholarship to go to the school, which covered her school fee, along with a small stipend for books and supplies. Professor Mcgonagall explained it would not be enough for new books, but both Lucille and Sophia were used to making a penny, or in this case a sickle, stretch.

The excitement lasted until she and her mother started interacting with the wizarding world. It seemed that the last name of Black was reviled, so they learned very fast not to broadcast it. The one thing Lucille insisted on getting new was a wand, for which she threw in what little savings she had and changed it at Gringotts to wizard money, and the pair went to a wand shop Professor McGonagall had said was the best. After almost an hour, the wand the chose Sophia was one of Beech, with a phoenix feather core, 7 inches long. They were assured it was a powerful combination.

The books they bought were second hand, torn and written in, and in poor condition, but Sophia spent the rest of the summer pouring over them, especially the spell books. McGonagall had made it clear that casting magic before she got to Hogwarts was against the law, so she learned as much as she could from the text books. She looked forward to going more than she had anything else in her life.

It wasn't until arriving at Hogwarts that she found out why the name Black was so reviled, and she was horrified to learn of the things they had done and said.  She was made fun of for "being a Black", despite the fact no one had any reason to believe she was related to them.  Black is a common enough name that any number of people could have it and not be related to that most infamous family of Dark Wizards and Witches, a fact she kept pointing out, but to little effect.  So, true to form, she learned to downplay how much the teasing hurt, and how much she disliked being called "pure blood", especially when it wasn't true.  Most of the other students were quite surprised when she was sorted into Hufflepuff rather than Slytherin, but Sophia could not have been happier to distance herself from the implications of her last name.  Her sorting was a tense moment, as she was a hat stall.  It took the Sorting Hat 6 minutes to place her, as it could not decide between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and either would have suited Sophia.

Sophia applied the same logic to Hogwarts as she had to her earlier schooling, and quickly excelled.  She was very careful not to be the top of the class, though she easily could have contended for that spot, but she was always in the top 5.  In her third year, like Hermione before her, she took all the classes available, as she wasn't entirely sure which direction she wanted to go in her career.  She was provided with a Time Turner so she could make all her classes, and follwed the rules for it's use very strictly, keeping it a secret from all her classmates.  Without the distractions Hermione had, Sophia was able in her 5th year OWLs to get all 12, a fact she carefully hid from others at school.  After consulting with her Head of House, Professor Ferry, she decided to take courses for her NEWTs to put her on the path to being a healer.  She dropped Divination, Care of Magical Creatures, Astronomy, and Muggle Studies.  While she was told she would not need them, she kept on with Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and History of Magic as she loved those subjects way too much to let them go.  As a result of a class load that she could make without time travel, she returned the Time Turner to the Ministry at the beginning of Sixth Year, with none of her classmates aware she'd ever had it in the first place.

In her Sixth Year now, Sophia finally feels she is hitting her stride.  She makes due with the second hand books she has to get, but she has found her balance again.  The one thing she misses while at school is access to the internet and access to the muggle library.

Parents: Lucille Black, father unknown

Siblings: none

Special Magical Abilites:

Non-Verbal Magic: Sophia has a great talent for non-verbal casting, due to her strong imagination and ability to focus.
Potions: Due to its exacting and more scientific nature, potion making comes very naturally to Sophia.
Ancient Runes and Arithmancy: These two subjects are simply extensions of her already proven skill in maths and languages.
Transfiguration: Sophia has the focus and the talent to excel in matters of transfiguration, which relies on exacting standards.

Favorite Spell:
Silencio!