Philippa Dobbs
OOC
| Game | Journal | Portrayed By |
|---|---|---|
| Secretss | pip_pippa | Ashley Madekwe |
Basic Stats
Full Name: Philippa Mary Dobbs
Nickname(s): Pippa or Pip
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Date of Birth: June 22, 1960
Zodiac: Cancer
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Bloodline: Halfblood
House & Year: Slytherin 7th
Extracurriculars: Student head of chess club, Slug Club, Daughters of Diana
Wand: 9 in, fig, dragon heartstring
Pet: None
Family
Father: Richard Dobbs (muggle; deadbeat)
Mother: Lisa Dobbs (née Smith; witch; alcoholic; Hufflepuff 1951)
Brother: Edward Dobbs (wizard; Ravenclaw 1975; obituary writer: Daily Prophet)
History
It was love at first sight for Lisa Smith when she met Richard Dobbs. He was a muggle! Lisa had muggle family, of course, but they all knew about magic, and she was just so tired of magic all the time, all that wand-waving and remembering spells and Richard just lived so simply and he didn't even realise it! She may have thrown herself at him a bit, but he was flattered by the attention, and found her little "oddities" adorable (such as not knowing how to operate a telephone). Sure enough, they got married, and set about having children.
Lisa was enjoying living a muggle life, with all of her magical things packed away at her parents' house, her wand hidden away in the back of her sock drawer, but of course it completely slipped her mind that young wizards, like their first child Edward, might start displaying magic at inopportune moments. Such as when Edward was a bit more than three, Lisa was off at a prenatal appointment (as she was pregnant with their second child at the time, a girl who would be named Philippa) and Edward was at home with Richard, who witnessed his son break a vase with a toy, and then the broken vase pieces flew back together and mended themselves. Richard was yelling on and on about their house being haunted or their son being possessed when Lisa returned from her doctor, and she had to admit to her husband that she was a witch and that their son appeared to be a wizard.
Richard could not handle this new knowledge of the wizarding world, or that his wife had been lying to him for years (not to mention that witchcraft was pretty much entirely counter to his strict Catholicism: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live and all that). After months of tenseness and coldness between the pair, and the less-than-celebratory birth of their daughter, Lisa and the children returned from Philippa's one-month well-baby check to find the house empty of Richard and his things.
From then on, life was rough on Edward and Philippa. Their mother spiraled into a depression, they lost their house, and they were shuffled from place to place. Lisa's parents took them in briefly, before turning them out when they discovered that Lisa was stealing all their alcohol and trying to fence her mother's jewellery for more. There were stints in homeless shelters, and even a period of time when Philippa was five that they lived in a cardboard box on the street. Lisa drank a lot and tended to be unable to hold down jobs for long … when she bothered to find a job. It quickly fell to the children to find ways to sustain themselves. Both learned a bit of pickpocketing, and they did odd jobs for people in exchange for petty cash. When Edward received his Hogwarts owl, he considered not going: all the books and supplies would be expensive, and he hated to leave Philippa behind with just their mother. But Pippa pointed out that he needed an education to be better than their mother, so they scraped together what they could to at least outfit Edward in second-hand robes, books, and supplies. Lisa was too drunk to see Edward off on the train, so it was only his little sister who waved good-bye from the platform, promising that she would be ok.
And she was, for the most part. She had learned very well how to pick pockets and swipe things from store shelves without being noticed. And when her mother could pull herself out of the bottle long enough to sell herself to men for money (as she did frequently when Pippa was eight), Pippa pawned whatever jewellery or trinkets her mother's men might gift her (the her being Lisa). By the time it was Pippa's turn to join Edward at Hogwarts, she was just relieved to have 3 guaranteed warm meals every day and a real bed every night. To her brother's surprise, Pippa was sorted into Slytherin, a dangerous house for someone with as much muggle blood as the Dobbs children had. But nobody really had to know the truth about their family, anyway … so it was easy enough for Pippa to pass as more pure than she actually was. And Slytherin was a good fit for her … she had developed high ambitions and the determination to get her there, all from not ever wanting to be like her mother.
As her years went on at Hogwarts, Pippa concentrated on her studies, knowing that poor scores would get her nowhere. She also had well-crafted lies on hand to explain away anything: her less-than-expensive clothes, why she and her brother stayed at school for the hols, why they never invited friends over to their house during the summer. There were times when Pippa even almost believed all the lies herself. She wasn't particularly a teacher's pet, but she definitely was a bit of a suck-up to the professors: she wanted it to be known that she was a Good Student Who Was Going Places. She was rewarded handsomely for this when Professor Slughorn invited her to join his Slug Club.
Now in her seventh year, she is ready to get out of school and get going with her life, but still unsure of what, exactly, she wants to do. Nothing too public, which would lead people to dig into her family and history (and therefore reveal all the lies she's told), but something important. Something world-changing …
Personality
Positives
- Driven: In the hopes of proving herself to be better than either of her parents, Pippa is exceedingly driven to succeed. She's powered by drive and ambition to pull herself out of the rattrap that is her life and make a life for herself that's actually worth something. She won't let anything get in the way of her goals, no matter what it is. It's what put her into Slytherin over Ravenclaw: she has the characteristic drive and ambition of the snake house, and that overrode everything else the Hat saw in her head.
- Ambitious: Pippa doesn't wish small, she dreams big. She doesn't want just any old job, she wants to get into a position of power. One day, she could even be Minister for Magic, if she wanted (she doesn't, she'd rather be one of the people behind the scenes who is making everything actually work than be the public face of the government). She dreams of running companies, or making her way to a high-level behind-the-scenes job in the Ministry … something where she's not a public face, just someone who gets things done.
- Intellectual: The Hat could have placed her into Ravenclaw because Pippa does crave knowledge, but her desire for knowledge is rooted in the desire to be able to do things with the knowledge, not just for its own sake. Her desire for knowledge also comes from a great need to disguise her upbringing and prove that she belongs among the upper echelons. So she reads, she learned how to play chess (and soon excelled at it, as it requires cunning and planning ahead), and she knows how to pass as someone who comes from knowledge.
Negatives
- Kleptomaniac: Things around Pippa just have a habit of ending up in her possession. It's not an adrenaline kind of thing, it's simply a fact of survival to her: she started filching money out of too-full purses and wallets when she was little, to buy food when her mother was too drunk to think of things like that. Or she'd "find" someone's expensive watch or piece of jewellery and either return it to them for a finder's fee or fence it. She won't steal from her own roommates, because that's just the stupidest move you can make (who do you look at first when something disappears? The other people who live in your room), but items from shelves in Hogsmeade have found their way into her pockets and bag without being paid for.
- Accomplished Liar: The only way that Pippa has gotten through her life is from being able to lie. Lies come out of her mouth as effortlessly as the truth … in some cases, even moreso. She and Edward long ago fabricated an alternate life for themselves, so that they wouldn't have to tell their new friends at Hogwarts all about what their life was really like, and Pippa has stuck with it. Of course, nobody knows that her entire life is a lie, so she has no trouble with lying to people's faces without them realising it. The trick, of course, is to almost believe the lie yourself.
- Self-serving: Although Pippa does want to give back to those who are in the sort of position that she and Edward were when they were growing up, she is also monumentally self-serving. It's not often that she does something that has nothing in it for her. Everything she does is coloured by it: she always stops to think before doing anything for someone else, "What's in it for me?" Sometimes, what's in it for her is just providing further truth about the lie that is her life, sometimes it's a more tangible reward.
Likes: The colour green. Tea. Ice cream. Chess. Brewing potions. Proving herself worthy. "Finding" expensive jewellery that has been "lost" by its owner. Swimming. Food. Having a warm, comfortable bed.
Dislikes: The cold. The colour orange. Alcohol. Going hungry. Lying (which sounds like it should be oxymoronic, but although she is great at lying and does so all the time, she wishes she didn't have to). Muggles who just can't handle the magical world.
5 Facts
- Pippa's mum works overnight and throughout the morning at a bakery, so she needs to sleep during the day, which is why she's not allowed to invite friends over during the hols. (Actually a lie, but public knowledge as the truth.)
- Pippa started working at Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour in the summer after her fifth year because her mum wanted her to learn the responsibility of having a job. (Bolded part is a lie, but the rest is true and the entire thing is public knowledge as the truth.)
- Her father died when her mum was pregnant with her, which is why she doesn't know him. (Actually a lie, but public knowledge as the truth.)
- She sometimes will buy second-hand clothes and supplies because she would rather spend less on herself and donate money to the less fortunate. (Actually a lie to cover up that she doesn't usually have the money to buy new clothes and supplies, but public knowledge as the truth. That's not to say she's not charitable, as she does try to donate her time, but she doesn't have the money she pretends to have.)
- She will not touch a drop of alcohol. If any is offered, she'll pretend to sip at it but not outright refuse. (Sorta private? Depends on how much people pay attention if they give her booze.)