Nicole Wilson

OOC

Game	Journal	Portrayed By
MCMXCIX (1999)	acrophobic	Carey Mulligan

Basic Stats

Full Name: Nicole Lucy Wilson
Nickname(s): Coley
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Date of Birth: May 3, 1981
Zodiac: Taurus
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Bloodline: Muggleborn
Residence: A small flat in muggle London
House & Year: Hufflepuff 1999 (was in Azkaban 1997-1998; did not return for 1998-1999)
Occupation: Assistant to an herbologist
Pet: None

Family

Father: Thomas Wilson (muggle; banker; b. September 15, 1950)
Mother: Dolores Wilson (née Clarke; muggle; secretary; b. February 7, 1951)
Brother: William Wilson (muggle; reporter; b. October 23, 1979)

History

Thomas Wilson and Dolores Clarke met in a rather traditional way: at work. Thomas was a banker, and Dolores was a secretary at his bank. One day, he asked her to join him for lunch, and then they began dating. In 1977, they were married. Their early married life was quite normal and very muggle (even though they didn't know that the word muggle existed; now that they know the word, they agree that they are quite muggle, and quite proud of it, too), with no odd occurrances or anything out of the ordinary. Their first child, a son whom they named William (Will for short), was born in late 1979, and although their life became much more busy, what with having a baby around the house who needed feeding and burping and changing and sleeping, the Wilson household was still as normal as any other household that had a normal new baby.

However, it was when their second child, a daughter named Nicole, was born in mid-1981 that their normal, muggle lifestyle came to an end. Oh, yes, the first few years with baby Nicole were as normal as can be with two young children running around the house, but then things started getting just plain downright weird. Of course, anytime that anything odd happened around Nicole was just chalked up to coincidence, or just plain ignored. Surely anything weird happening with Nicole was just the reactions of a younger sister trying to get attention from her parents and older brother, since Will was always earning high marks in school and was popular and athletic, while Nicole only managed passable marks and was clumsy and shy. The idea that she might be a witch was preposterous (and, as such, never even occurred to her or her family), as witches were things of fairytales and didn't really exist. Or so the family assumed.

They were proven wrong in the summer of 1992 when, shortly after Nicole's eleventh birthday, a representative from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry showed up at the Wilson household, and they informed the family that Nicole was a witch and invited her to the school. Thomas and Dolores, of course, thought it was all completely bollocks, until the representative showed them a display of magic and pointed out that Nicole being a witch would explain anything weird that might have happened around her growing up. The family finally accepted the news that Nicole was a witch and that Hogwarts was the best place for her, so on the first of September, 1992, Nicole joined her fellow young witches and wizards at Hogwarts. Unknown to Nicole, however, the news fostered in her family a sense of fear, fear that she would return from school the following June and turn them all into newts, or something.

At the school, she was sorted into Hufflepuff, though she knew very little about the different houses, only what she had heard on the train. Despite the Sorting Hat's song about the differences between the houses, she didn't really understand why they were being split up like that and told that they were different from each other, then have them compete against each other. It was certainly a change from home; while at home, she was constantly being compared to Will, at school she was looked down upon for being a "mudblood" (she had to ask one of her new friends what that meant) and a Hufflepuff.

As in her muggle primary school, Nicole did not particularly excel at any of her classes at Hogwarts, with Herbology and Potions being the only exceptions. Classes like Transfiguration and Charms, which required more wand-waving and magical prowess, were beyond her. Flying lessons and astronomy classes were the absolute worst for young Nicole: she was utterly terrified of heights. Even just hovering a few feet above the ground during her first flying lesson caused her to throw up. She could scarcely pay attention to a thing during the practical astronomy lessons, when she would have to climb the stairs all the way to the top of the astronomy tower; halfway up, she would start sweating and shaking, and once she managed to get up there, she could only sit and stare at the stones at her feet.

Of course, her first year was the year that everyone was talking about the "Heir of Slytherin" who was going to cleanse the school of muggleborns, which only served to make Nicole terrified to leave the Hufflepuff common room. She was more than happy to follow the instructions of the staff and prefects and travel in groups with her classmates. It was partly because of this that Nicole never felt at home at Hogwarts. Neither, however, did she feel at home on the holidays when she returned to her family: they were terrified of her and, as such, treated her coldly and essentially ignored her. Caught between two worlds and feeling as though she didn't belong in either, Nicole took solace in plants: gardening at home and Herbology at school.

The rest of Nicole's shortened school years did not pass much better than her first one: in her second year, everyone was talking about the escaped maniac from the wizarding prison; in her third year, the Triwizard Tournament was exciting, but then Cedric Diggory — who was in her house! (though she didn't particularly know him, since he was so much older and she was so quiet and shy) — died and people were saying that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was back. That summer, Nicole begged her parents to let her stay home and attend the muggle secondary school that she would have attended, if not for Hogwarts; Thomas and Dolores were terrified of possibly witchy and nefarious reasons behind Nicole's begging and refused to let her stay, sending her back off to Hogwarts for her fourth year.

That year was the first one that Nicole felt as though she might actually do well in Defense Against the Dark Arts: Professor Umbridge did not focus as much on the wand-waving part of it, instead just tasking them with reading the textbook, which was perfectly fine with Nicole. She was horribly confused, though, because while everyone had been talking at the end of last year about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named being back, suddenly everyone was saying that Harry Potter was a liar. Nicole borrowed a housemate's copy of the Daily Prophet and saw that even the Ministry of Magic didn't believe him. Nicole didn't know what to believe, so she just kept to herself; until, that is, the end of the year, when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named himself showed up inside the Ministry. Nicole was terrified: she knew what He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had tried to do back before he was defeated by Harry Potter (she might have had trouble staying awake in Professor Binns' class, but Harry Potter was mentioned in the history textbooks, as was He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named), and she was afraid that him being back would mean that he was going to try the same again.

Her fifth year was spent on pins and needles. Professor Snape, whom Nicole had always somewhat liked when he was the Potions master (as she was skilled in that subject, he never had reason to be mean to her), but now that he was the professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts, she was afraid that he would hate her for her ineptitude, which only made her skills (or lack thereof) worse in that class. By the end of her sixth year, when Headmaster Dumbledore died, Nicole was dearly wishing that she had never heard about the wizarding world. Again that summer, she begged her parents to allow her to stay home instead of returning to Hogwarts, and again they refused.

Due to the fact that she did not have a subscription to the Daily Prophet and she spent her summers in the muggle world, she did not know about the new laws about the muggleborn registry. When her parents dropped her off at King's Cross station to catch the Hogwarts Express for her sixth year, she was arrested on Platform 9 3/4 for the crime of stealing magic. Although Nicole begged and pleaded — she would return to the muggle world, she would never use magic again, she didn't mean to steal magic, she always knew that she didn't belong in the magical world — she was convicted and sentenced to Azkaban.

The time that Nicole spent in Azkaban was scarring to her. The Dementors, which had scared her enough when they had been at the school in her second year, now terrified her. All of her fears and worries about not belonging anywhere raged through her mind, courtesy of the Dementors, and she was utterly helpless. The worst times were when the presence of the Dementors drudged up old memories, particularly the one that led to her severe acrophobia: when she was seven, she had been exploring and climbed the lighthouse near her home. Up at the top, she had tripped on a loose stone and would have fallen, if not for the fact that her foot got caught and she was instead suspended with her head and upper body hanging out over the open air. She could not free her foot or pull herself back up, so she was stuck there for over an hour, screaming for help, before someone finally heard her and saved her. It seemed as though that particular memory came back every few times that the Dementors passed near her cell.

It was only Nicole's love of plants and gardening that kept her sane throughout her months of incarceration. Although she was held captive on a craggy rock in the middle of the cold northern sea, she could close her eyes and cling desperately to her memories of sitting in the warm summer sun, digging in the soil, feeling the dirt running through her fingers, watching plants sprout and bloom. She thought fondly of the greenhouses at school, of Professor Sprout. When all hope seemed lost, Nicole clung desperately to the vain hope that, just maybe, she might get out of here; just maybe, she might be able to feel the warm sun on her skin as she dug around in the ground. She promised herself, and any higher power that was listening, that if she could only be released from Azkaban, she would keep to herself. She would return to the muggle world, she would forget about all the magic she had learned about for five years, she would pretend that she was just an ordinary muggle.

Finally, she was released from Azkaban, but not for any reasons that she expected: the war was won. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was gone for good. And the Ministry of Magic was keen to make apologies for what had happened. She was compensated 500 galleons for her time spent in Azkaban, which felt to Nicole like it wasn't enough; nothing was enough to take back those horrible months. Although she was given the option to return to Hogwarts and complete her last two years, Nicole chose not to; she had never fit in there, and she would only be returning for such classes as Herbology and Potions. She also did not like the idea of spending two more years in that drafty old castle, fearing it would remind her too much of her time in Azkaban. With the Ministry's help, she began studying potions and herbology independently, taking an equivalency exam in January, a few months before she would have otherwise sat her N.E.W.T.s. With these results, she got a job as an assistant in an herbologist's shoppe. She did remember her promises in Azkaban, of leaving the wizarding world, but although she had tried, her family did not understand what had happened to her; at least in the wizarding world, she could be surrounded by others who had survived the war.