Briar Thackeray

Personality= Briar Sydney Thackeray – though she does not know this to be fact herself – is an amalgamation of many versions of who she might have been, each one created by someone else. A different shadowy figure at the edge of a memory that is unfailing in only one thing, and that is failing her in the first place, when it matters. Little of her is a result of genuine originality.

However, as a general rule, she is rather quiet, preferring to observe and be shrewd rather than be boisterous and sociable. She never likes to play her hand too hastily. And yet there is a portion that craves the danger that has been forgiven her, wants to party and do all the 'regular things' people do, all these constant contradictions walking about in one body. Briar has interest in writing, as well as magical theatre, but what captures her most completely is the thought of who she might truly be. If she had the chance to find out, would she find out her dad is a rich bachelor living in the Maldives, or owns an apartment in Monaco? There's an element to her – she's a material girl, just like him.

The part of her that is most like her father's friends.

Idealistic and creative though she might seem, the cunning underside is often hidden, but even this comes from something pure. She wishes to know so much about others simply because she knows so little of herself. The other side is the part that looks over her shoulder, feels oppressed rather than sheltered, feels eyes everywhere they shouldn't be. The part of Briar that forces her curiosity to become so quiet lest her tongue get her into trouble, forces her not to trust people as much as she might like to do.

The part of her that is most like her mother. History= Roses – blood-coloured, but softer somehow, as if they had been stained that way by blood itself – stood in the living room of her birth mother the day she was born, and the day her birth mother died; she was thusly named 'Briar', as a homage to the fact that even in things of great beauty, there is also harshness and pain. The middle name 'Sydney' is simply geographical, and nothing to do with her country of origin, and 'Thackeray' from the author William Makepeace. And thus, by a group of people she barely knows, she was given what for some is the most defining shard of identity, and for others, something to be discarded with a muttered 'what's in a name?' Briar knows she was born in Moscow, during the March snowfall, but does not know if she is Russian by birth. (She is.)

She does not know the name of her birth mother, but she does know her father has been evading the Ministry there since before said mother ever fell pregnant, so the chance of said father making an appearance in her life is little to none. She does know she spent several months in the care of an orphanage before being taken in by friends of her father's, and persistently moved from place to place, a bit like stolen goods. It is these 'friends' who were the people most definitive in forming her identity, her amalgamation of beings who might've been, and it's just too bad that she can't seem to remember anything about any of them.

Briar Sydney Thackeray does not know her father is dead. She likewise does not know that her mother is not. Names of people she's certain she once knew have seemed to blur, but other memories stick out in screaming colour. The day she first started to toddle around the safehouse in Munich. Seven years old, eating in a restaurant somewhere on the Costa del Sol, when suddenly she sets the neighbourhood bully's skirt on fire. (This is generally accepted as her first sign of magic.)

The day they decided she was a little too rough-and-tumble to go to Beauxbatons; the day her Hogwarts letter arrived. But her family and anyone related to her seem to be greyed and faded, her every search coming up empty. Upon arrival at Hogwarts, Briar was sorted into (insert house), and here she found a camaraderie, but found that the large patches of childhood her mind was and is missing makes it nearly impossible to work out who she truly is, especially when they appear to impact her so profoundly. Especially when they forbid her from certain activities like Quidditch that could lead to her coming to harm, as if there was something to fear or hide. And she cannot honestly say that their warning – particularly as she can't remember who they are – that they have eyes everywhere does not inspire in her a great deal of paranoia, nor that their fear of Quidditch but encouragement of physical and magical training doesn't make her think that maybe they are hypocritical.

Her true goal is to find out who she is, emotionally, and literally.