Amata Carpenter
OOC
| Game | Journal | Portrayed By |
|---|---|---|
| Find the Horcruxes | agony_aunt | Rachel Weisz |
Basic Stats
Full Name: Amata Jean Carpenter
Nickname(s): AJ; Grizel Hurtz (pen name)
Gender: Female
Age: 36
Date of Birth: April 20, 1943
Zodiac: Taurus
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Bloodline: Halfblood
Hometown: Walsall, England
Residence: A flat on Catastrophic Cove somewhere in Canada
House & Year: Ravenclaw 1961
Occupation: Agony Aunt (advice columnist): Daily Prophet
Wand: 8 in, maple, phoenix tail feather
Pet: 3 snakes
Family
Father: Geoffrey Neil Carpenter (muggle; carpenter; b. October 26, 1913; d. March 15, 1973)
Mother: Laura Catherine Carpenter (née Brooks; witch; Hufflepuff 1932; midwife; b. January 3, 1914; d. March 15, 1973)
Brother: Michael Geoffrey Carpenter (wizard; Ravenclaw 1957; magical architect; b. late 1938)
Sister-in-Law: Elaine Belinda Carpenter (née Burrows; witch; Hufflepuff 1957)
Nephew: Peter Neil Carpenter (wizard; Hufflepuff 3rd; b. February 14, 1966)
Niece: Lisa Catherine Carpenter (witch; Gryffindor 1st; b. November 19, 1967)
History
Childhood best friends grow up, become sweethearts, get married, have a couple of kids together. It’s like something out of a story. That is pretty much how things worked with Geoffrey Carpenter and Laura Brooks. Neighbours in childhood, they practically grew up in each others’ house. Their friendship only slightly wavered when Laura found out at the age of eleven that she was a witch, and she ended up going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Although she couldn’t tell Geoffrey all about her school or about her being a witch, they still remained close and eventually fell in love.
After Laura finished her schooling at Hogwarts, Geoffrey proposed to her and they were married that summer. Once they were married, Laura was able to tell him, without breaking the Statute of Secrecy, the truth. It put a strain on the early years of their marriage, but Geoffrey came to accept it and decided that he loved Laura too much to let something like that come between them: he understood why she had had to lie to him about her school, and she assured him that her being a witch was the only thing she had ever lied to him about.
In late 1938, the once-again happy couple welcomed their first child, son Michael Geoffrey. Although Geoffrey was a little bit worried about what life would be like with a witch wife and possibly witch children, he still loved his son to pieces and dreamed of teaching him to play catch and football, as well as hopefully one day imparting upon his son his love of carpentry. He didn’t even wholly mind the book of wizarding fairy tales, The Tales of Beedle the Bard that his wife bought to read to his son. The morals of the stories seemed sound, even without the witchcraft involved in it.
Just under four years after Michael was born, the family once again grew, welcoming a little girl this time. Laura had become fascinated with the Tales as she had read them to her son, particularly “The Fountain of Fair Fortune.” It took some cajoling, but Geoffrey relented and allowed his wife to name their daughter after her favourite character in the tale, Amata, as long as they could use Geoffrey’s mother’s name, Jean, as the little girl’s middle name. Shortly after Amata was born, Michael began showing signs of magic, causing his blocks and toys to fly around the room when he was mad about the attention that his baby sister was receiving. After such displays, Geoffrey did not want to take the risk of any more children, so they stopped at two.
Amata always felt a little as though her father didn’t quite love her as much as her friends’ dads seem to love them, but she couldn’t fault that her life growing up was a happy one. She proably annoyed her older brother to no end, tagging along with him and his friends and trying to follow him around everywhere. She had her own friends, of course, but she was fascinated by her big brother. He always seemed to do the most interesting things. And he was also the one to first give her the nickname “AJ,” understanding why she hated her first name so much. For a while, Amata had even gone by “Jean” just to annoy her mother (and in an attempt to get her father’s attention), but gave it up when her father didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Thanks to Michael, though, Amata had a nickname that she could use without having to continually explain her unusual first name (especially since most of their friends and neighbours were muggles and would have no idea about the Tales of Beedle the Bard).
Of course, 1 September, 1950, rolled around, and Michael went off to Hogwarts. It had been expected, of course, and it was just as expected when Amata’s Hogwarts letter arrived four years later in 1954. Michael had been sorted into Ravenclaw, and although Amata didn’t particularly care which house she ended up in, she did end up in her brother’s house anyway. Of course, being in the same house made it easier for Amata to resume trailing after her brother, who was a fifth year to her first year. She found him even more fascinating than ever, considering all the more advanced magic that he could do and all the classes that he took.
She made friends of her own, of course, and managed to not entirely annoy her brother. Amata sometimes felt as though she was just about the only Ravenclaw who wasn't interested in just marks and scores and such like that. The subjects she was interested in, she threw her whole self into. The ones she wasn't so interested in? Yeah she studied for them, of course, and managed passable marks, but she wasn't obsessed with perfect scores or anything like that. Rather, she preferred to spend her time doing her own reading or research.
Her years at Hogwarts were more or less unremarkable. She passed all her OWLs, but opted to take only three NEWT-level classes so that she could devote more time to studying for the classes she truly enjoyed, instead of spreading herself thin by trying to be a show-off by taking too many classes and not doing well in any of them. After first year, when Amata had to ask her teachers right away to call her AJ instead of Amata, hardly anybody actually called her Amata except to tease or taunt her. Which did occasionally happen, particularly by the pureblood children who had grown up hearing the Tales. At least the muggleborns just thought it was a weird name or something.
After Hogwarts, Amata encountered the same problem that many of her peers had: she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. The idea of simply doing research or teaching didn't particularly appeal to her, and she would simply have been happy to be paid to read all day, every day. It so happened that her mother knew the Daily Prophet's editor at the time (they were close friends in school), who mentioned to Laura that he was looking to have an advice columnist of sorts. Amata, who felt that she was good at advice, applied for the position and was granted it — though she did ask for one condition: that she be allowed to use a pen name and that nobody else at the Prophet office would know who she was. She rather liked her privacy and didn't want people bothering her on the street for advice — it kind of ruined the point of a column if people were expecting to get their advice for free. The condition was granted, and it was set up that any letters sent to the Prophet offices for Grizel Hurtz, the Agony Aunt, would be forwarded to an anonymous owl post box that Amata had access to.
For over a decade, Amata worked hard for the Prophet, answering questions that were owled in by readers, and really feeling like she might be making a difference for them. She also occasionally held brief jobs as a waitress or bartender or shopgirl or basically any kind of part-time work so that it wouldn't look too weird that she seemed to be supporting herself on nothing. Through it all, she had a string of boyfriends that she thought might have been serious, but all came to nothing but a continual broken heart time and again. It seemed as though Grizel Hurtz, Agony Aunt, was brilliant at dispensing the advice, but her real-life counterpart, Amata Carpenter, was just plain rubbish at taking it. She was incapable of seeing that the men that she was attracted to and dated were absolutely horrible for her, and nothing her friends said or did could convince her that she was being an idiot.
During this time period, Michael got married and had two children, a little boy and a little girl. Amata loved visiting her nephew and niece, and she loved spoiling them rotten, but she hated when they were throwing fits or messy or (when they were still in nappies) smelly. But at the same time, she found herself sort of wanting one of her own. Whenever the urge popped up, she repressed it, reminding herself that she loved her peace and privacy, and her neat and tidy home, and a husband and baby (because she still believed that the first ought to preceed the second) would just disrupt that. But she began looking more at the men she was dating, wondering if any of them were marriage material.
None of them were, really, but that didn't stop Amata from dating them until they broke her heart.
But then on 15 March, 1973, as the terror of You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters was still beginning, Geoffrey and Laura were two of the many muggles and muggleborns who were targeted simply because of their blood. They were attacked in their home and killed. Amata was devastated. She'd always been mad at her mum for saddling her with the name Amata, and felt as though her father didn't truly love her for her being a witch, but she was still devastated by their deaths nonetheless (or perhaps it was because of her strained relationship with her parents that she was so devastated).
Afterwards, Amata wanted to take a break from her job, but couldn't really see how she could do so, so she trudged on. It began to bring her less joy, however, solving other people's problems for them when she couldn't solve her own. Her advice began coming out a bit more cynical and jaded, but after a few harsh words from the editor, she went back to the cheery and optimistic farce that had always been the way of the Agony Aunt, though she did throw in a bit of disguised cynicism now and again.
Six and a half years after the attack, and the wounds still feel fresh. Worse than that, Amata is disappointed with the Ministry's lack of leads as to who killed her parents. She would have thought that they would have been brought to justice long ago. Her biological clock is still frantically ticking, moreso now that the war has only gotten worse. She feels silly that her biggest fear is dying without having had children, but … that's just the way it is for Amata right now.