Evelyn Phillips
OOC
| Game | Journal | Portrayed By |
|---|---|---|
| Pons Novus | hearteningly | Jane Levy |
Basic Stats
Full Name: Evelyn Grace Phillips
Nickname(s): Evey
Gender: Female
Age: 19
Date of Birth: April 20, 2009
Zodiac: Taurus
Sexuality: Bisexual, with a slight lean toward girls
Relationship Status: Single
Bloodline: Halfblood
Hometown: Oxfordshire, England
Current Residence: Diagon Alley, London, England
House & Year: Gryffindor 2027
Occupation: Waitress: Beyond the Sea
Wand: 10 in, maple, phoenix tail feather
Pet: Calico kitten (Butterscotch)
Family
Father: William Jack Phillips (muggle; b. February 16, 1973)
Mother: Susan Alonsa Phillips (née Bones; witch; Hufflepuff 1998; b. November 11, 1979)
Brother: Freddie Phillips (muggle; b. 1995)
Brother: Arthur Phillips (wizard; [house] 2017; b. 1999)
History
3 Significant Moments in Childhood
- Asking Freddie about Hogwarts: Evey just plain didn't know any better: she knew that both of her brothers went off to boarding school every year, coming home only for the holidays, but she didn't understand why they dropped the boys off separately, and why they were going different places. So, one sunny summer day when Evey was four, she asked Freddie, who was 18 and had just graduated from his school, why he didn't go to Hogwarts like Arthur did. It was an innocent question: sheer childhood curiosity. She didn't understand why he got so upset at her, or why it was such a horrible question to ask him. When she went crying to her mum later, Susan told her that Freddie and Arthur were both different, and had each been given different choices for school, and neither of them were wrong or better than the other for it.
- First use of magic: It was a year later, when Evey was five, that she displayed her first signs of magic. She and Susan were putting Arthur on the train to go back to Hogwarts, and Evey didn't want to let him go (she had followed him around like a miniature shadow that entire summer). The train started pulling away and Evey let out a loud wail, and all the empty trolleys nearby went CRASHING into the walls. While comforting her distraught child, Susan promised Evey that Arthur would be back for Christmas in just a few months, and that she would get to go to Hogwarts one day, too, just like Arthur.
- Hogwarts letter: Sure enough, Evey's Hogwarts letter arrived when she was eleven. But by now, Evey knew that the reason that Freddie didn't go to Hogwarts was that he was a muggle, like their father, while she was a witch like her mother and Arthur was a wizard. That was why Susan and Arthur had gone to Hogwarts, and why Evey would be going, too. She was excited, of course, but also terribly nervous: how would her father react? She knew that her mother would be pleased, of course, but would that invisible wall that she'd always felt between herself and her dad just get even taller and stronger when she went off to the magic school?
3 Significant Moments During School
- Selecting electives: Oh, sure, the process at the end of second year to choose your additional classes for third year and onward could be fun … if you had any idea what you wanted to do with your life. Evey was one of those students who ended up poring over the information about the electives, and which future careers required which classes, but all it did was stress Evey out even more. She was only thirteen, she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life! What if she chose a class and was horrible at it? What if she didn't choose a class and ended up wanting to do something that required it? This was far too big of a decision for her to make. After several distressed owls to her mum, she finally decided on Muggle Studies (partly because she hoped she'd have a leg-up in that class, since her dad and oldest brother are muggles) and Care of Magical Creatures. She ended up dropping Care of Magical Creatures after OWLs, but kept up with Muggle Studies.
- Looking to the future: Like with trying to choose classes for third year, meeting with her head of house to discuss what she wanted to look into, career-wise, in her fifth year was distressing. How could she know, at sixteen, what she wanted to do with her life? There wasn't any particular subject that she was extraordinarily strong enough at to want to pursue a career in it, and reading career brochures only filled her with anxiety. She may not have minded the academics part of school for the most part, it was just that when academics were tied into being forced to think about her future that she hated the whole thing.
- Confusion: As her friends were starting to notice boys, Evey was noticing something else: that while she liked boys well enough, she was starting to think that maybe she was thinking about other girls the way that they were thinking about boys. She still liked boys, and even had her first kiss with a boy, but maybe she liked girls better. This, naturally, just led to her being very confused, and not really knowing who to talk to about it … or even how to talk about it. But she was definitely more distracted by other girls in her classes than she was by boys, and all she knew was that this wasn't normal.
3 Significant Moments Since School
- Job hunting: When you don't know what you want to do with your life, searching for a job when you're out of school is that much more difficult. While she had classmates who found their own niches and went with that (Healer training, Auror training, quidditch, WADA, etc), Evey … floated. She spent a few days back at home after the train getting her bearings, trying to figure out if her future was going to suddenly reveal itself to her … and when that didn't happen, she hit the pavement: she went door-to-door in the Diagon Alley area, asking if anyone was hiring, filling out applications. It was only a week or so later that she got a job offer as a waitress at one of the restaurants. Not a glamorous job, but at least she had a job. And after all that time of hoping for a sign, she didn't even recognise it for what it was when it tapped her on the nose.
- Moving out: Having secured a job, Evey did the other thing that she thought all young adults were supposed to do: she went apartment hunting. Not that she didn't love her parents, but she couldn't just live with them forever. She had to assert her independence, and that meant finding somewhere to live. Of course, she brought Susan along with her, and they managed to find her a decent(-enough) apartment in the Diagon area, near where she worked. It wasn't physically close to her parents, but they would never be more than a floo away, no matter where she lived.
- Further confusion: Evey had hoped that getting away from school and being out on her own might help her to get her head on straight about, well … relationships. As if having a job and living on her own would suddenly make her realise that she only liked boys, not girls. No such luck, and it didn't help that her new neighbour was cute (and female … and had a boyfriend). Evey has wrestled with whether or not she should (or even could) talk to her mum about this (talking to her dad about it is completely out of the question, for now at least), but Evey worries endlessly about what her mum would think if she told her that she likes girls better than boys, and worries that Susan will be disappointed in her. She still hasn't told her, but isn't sure how much longer she can go without telling someone. She knows she has that Gryffindorian courage somewhere in there … just not when it comes to her parents.
Personality
3 Positive Traits
- Loyal: Evey is loyal to a fault. If you're her friend, you've got her loyalty for life. She would (possibly) stand up to a rabid bear for you. Of course, she doesn't give her friendship and loyalty lightly, you have to prove you're worth it, and that you're not going to just use her. That's not to say she's not friendly, because she is … she just considers only a select few to be her true friends, and they're the ones who have her loyalty.
- Creative: Evey is exceptionally creative. She always loved making up extravagant stories as a child, and while she's thought about becoming a writer, she doesn't feel like it's "right" for her. But she loves dabbling in all sorts of creative outlets: she's tried drawing and painting, sculpting, writing, knitting. Her favourite creative outlet is actually in the kitchen: she can follow recipies fairly well, and she likes to experiment with making them better. She likes watching the cooks at work do their thing, but can't really imagine doing that for a living, or at least not right now.
- Realistic: In a house known for "act first, think second," Evey is very grounded and realistic. She likes to have a plan in place before leaping in. Or at least to check to make sure the pool has water in it before diving head-first. She doesn't just expect people to be noble-minded and have the same morality that she does, though she does expect people to be consistent about it: if you call one muggleborn a mudblood, you're probably going to think of all muggleborns that way, so we'll be steering clear of you, thank you. She knows better than to pick fights that she can't win.
3 Negative Traits
- Lack of focus: Evey just plain doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, and there's nothing that she's found that just feels absolutely right, so she's a bit aimless. She has a job, and she does her job, but it doesn't feel like a real career, so her heart's not really into it. She has nothing to strive for, no real goals in her life.
- Moody: She does have a bit of a temper, but it generally displays itself with slightly sarcastic moodiness. If she's getting upset over something, she just plain can't hide it, she can't put on a smiling happy face and pretend everything's ok. If everything starts getting too overwhelming, she starts snapping at people and withdrawing.
- Wishy washy: Not quite the same as lacking focus, Evey just plain can't make up her mind sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time. She'll make a decision, sort of, but then change her mind. It either contributes to, or is because of, her lack of focus (or maybe a little of both). She'll stand by her friends, but she can't stand by her own decisions.
Boggart: Multi-legged bugs, particularly centipedes and millipedes. What kind of creature would need that many legs?!
Mirror of Erised: If you were to ask Evey, she'd have no idea, since she doesn't even know what she wants in life; she'd be afraid that she'd see nothing but smoke, like the mirror doesn't know what she wants, either. But if she did get a chance at the mirror, it would show her as the head chef of a wildly successful restaurant, with the woman she loves by her side.
What is your character's outlook on life? Evey has a generally positive outlook on life, but she's realistic about things: the "ideal" isn't best for everyone, or even actually what's really ideal. But there's nothing in particular about life that she can find to complain about.