Danni Sylvester

[Danni Sylvester]

ABOUT THE CHARACTER
Name: Danni Sylvester
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Class: Defense Against the Dark Arts
Celebrity: Vanessa Branch

Facial Properties: Where to start with her? Danni’s vainness and skill with charms has made her certainly striking to look at, in some respects. While none of her is ‘new’ – meaning she hasn’t given herself an entirely new face – it could be considered ‘improved’. The best comparison, and possibly easiest to comprehend, would be like an artist taking a photo of the ‘old’ Danni and then modifying it, to enhance the best and downsize the worst to end up with the best possible.

Her skin is slightly tanned, very, very lightly, for spending too much time outside causes her to sunburn. While some would expect that, with charms, she would have flawless skin. Not hardly – she’s always been a bit clumsy, and scars aren’t as easy for her to hide beneath charms as you might think. Scars are permanent, and so, even if hidden beneath her illusion-charms, they’re still there. On the left-most corner of her lower lip is a small, jagged scar from where her friend accidentally busted her lip while they were playing a game. On the underside of her chin is a small indent-like scar, from where she gashed her chin by falling out of a tree. And the last, and least noticeable, of all her scars would be on her hairline, gained by playing hide-and-seek. Running through a forest to try and reach ‘base’ in time, a tree thorn caught her on the side of the face, leaving behind that two-or-so-inch mark.

Danni’s eyes are a bright gray-green. With light make-up around them, they’re one of the first things noticed about her; as the saying goes, eyes are windows to the soul, and Danni’s eyes show a happy, fun loving side of her. With her, though, perhaps her window is a little fogged up; her eyes don’t betray her whole self, but, as far as most are concerned, for first impressions, they do a good job of getting points across.

Her hair would be the next thing to look at. Her hair is certainly not as noticeable as her eyes; a sunny blonde, as though to match her personality, her hair is curly and a bit prone to getting unruly in the wind. It detracts in some aspects to her attractiveness, but, then again, in the wind, whose hair is going to be perfect?
Physique: Danni’s body is something that she can’t change, and it drives her insane. Slim, short, and bony, no matter what she does, she can’t change it. Eat all she can, and she simply ends up lying in bed, feeling sick. The curse of her mother, she says, whose body was as slim as hers. While some might aspire to be as skinny as she is, when one sees her not wearing the baggy clothing she likes so much (worn in an effort to disguise it), it makes her look almost malnourished. She’s not anorexic – by no means is she (she loves food, especially junk food), but, according to a doctor she met, her metabolism is simply a bit faster than some others’.

Standing at about five feet, three inches, Danni’s not amongst the tallest; in fact, she’s downright short. In fact, many of the sixth and seventh years are taller than her, and even a few fourth and fifth years are nearing or surpassing her as well. She doesn’t do a whole lot to try and fix it anymore, although she used to, when she worked at the Ministry, wear high heels at all possible moments and even stuff tissue paper in her heels in an effort to make herself seem taller. In the end, she simply ended up with sore feet, so she has long since given up.

Personality: The first thing that one should understand about Danni is that her looks aren’t gained by genes or luck. Through countless charms, she’s slowly modified her looks to be what they are. Extremely vain, she’s also very self-conscious. While she might be able to hide it, she keeps a half-wary ear out for any degrading comments and, once heard, immediately sets out to right them. Over the years she’s become skilled at subtly changing her appearance, although if you compare an image of her the day she heard a comment and one a month after the comment, you’ll definitely be able to pick out differences that help to fix what was the problem.

Danni’s world has always been about fun. She hates having to do anything boring, for, as she views it, there’s no point unless you have fun doing it.
Moving on, Danni’s also one of the happiest people you’ll ever meet. She makes it a goal to be happy, and oftentimes it simply emanates from her. While her bubbly personality isn’t exactly enough to make the meanest or those most determined to hate the world feel the same way, she’s got a knack for staying happy in the face of everything.
That’s not to say, however, that Danni is perpetually happy. In fact, she never would have landed herself a job as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher if she didn’t perceive the evil in people. Danni’s also got a talent for seeing things in people that they might not want to, or just can’t, see. While it’s rarely ever good, she always feels the need to blurt it out. This can occasionally make her a very unpopular teacher, but, in all honesty, who can expect anything less from someone like her? Her constant goals to improve herself have led her to believe that all people do, or should, strive to better themselves as well.

Danni hates sitting still. She can’t stand it; if something bad is happening, you can always count on her to either be part of it or trying to stop it. She’s gotten many other, less noticeable, hurts from this desire. For this reason, she’s got a habit of drumming her fingers, cracking her knuckles, or doing anything at all to keep herself occupied, so long as it isn’t standing still.

When in Hogwarts, Danni had a bad habit of disregarding the rules. While she was never stupid enough to enter the Forbidden Forest or something, she had quite the reputation. As a teacher, she’s very unconventional in her methods. She doesn’t like simple book learning, nor does she like having students write essays. Her most common method of teaching is a sort of ‘trial and error’, where she shows the students a few times, and then they get it on their own. She helps them, yes, but she feels that by messing up a few times they will realize what they’re doing wrong, and hopefully never make that mistake when it really matters. Danni’s most common homework assignment is to practice a certain spell and then successfully cast it in class, or to research a specific creature to defend one’s self against, although the latter is much less common than the former.
Her style has sometimes put her as one of the less liked teachers. Not because she doesn’t make students read books (if anything, most students would probably like her); it’s the fact that, because she did so well herself in Defense Against the Dark Arts, she sometimes refuses to see the fact that she’s pushing students. While, after many complaints from parents, she’s begun to tone it down, her firm belief in defending yourself from the unknown often leads her to forcing her students out of their comfort zone.

Many students ask, when they go through their first year with Danni with a minimum of book use, ’Why this way?’ Well, the answer would lie in one of Danni’s greatest insecurities. While many people favor one method of teaching, whether it’s by doing or listening or reading or any other method, most students have a broader range of possible methods than Danni. You see, she has extreme difficulties learning by reading. She needs to do to comprehend. While this, by no means, should be taken to mean that Danni is slow or incompetent, but she can’t understand written directions as well as she can a demonstration. This inhibition has spawned her to believe that everyone could benefit from demonstrations more than books, and many students might be very ready to agree with her if it gets them out of reading those ‘stuffy books’, as Danni calls them.

Danni is really very clumsy when it comes to doing almost everything. The only time she is actually not clumsy is when she isn’t focusing on not being clumsy; in other words, when her mind is roaming or she’s just out for having fun, she’s as graceful as everyone else (average, mind you – by no means will she ever be able to dance ballet to ‘Swan Lake’ by contemplating how phoenixes manage to cure with their tears), but oftentimes, with her self-consciousness and desire to fit in, everything seems to go wrong with her.

While Danni is normally a very nice and happy person, she’s also not afraid to show her stuff. She’s got a fiery temper and a short fuse, so it doesn’t take a whole lot to get her angry. When she does, she’s prone to snapping at everyone, even the Headmaster, were they unfortunate enough to speak to her when her temper flared. When she’s angry, don’t let her slight figure fool you. Since magical ability isn’t so much affected by size, she can be quite the force to be reckoned with! She’ll attack with everything, from a sharp tongue to a wand to simple fists and nails.

Likes:

• Having fun (if it’s not fun, then it’s not worth doing);
• Unconventional teaching methods (she finds your typical book-learning boring, and she never felt she gained anything from it);
• A good, light hearted comedy (laughing is good for you);
• Improving her looks via charms (you can never be too beautiful);
• Disorganization (much more human to be disorganized than perfect);
• A good friend or two (never any fun to be all alone, is it?);
• Midnight walks (she loves the cool night air and staring at the stars);
• Hot baths

Dislikes:

• Simple book-reading to learn (you have to do to get it to stick with you!);
• Degrading comments (about her – it makes her a bit more on edge than most);
• Tight spaces (she’s claustrophobic);
• Spiders (she’s arachnophobic as well);
• Her teaching methods being challenged (which, considering her style, happens quite often);
• Depressed people (depression can sometimes rub off on her, and she'll spend ages, locked in her room, feeling sorry for herself);
• Feeling cold, in any way

History: Danni never had a hard life to live. She was born into a well-to-do, pure-blood wizard family. She never had to work; she never had to try at anything; in fact, everything seemed to come easy to her. At her young age, it simply seemed that good wizarding was genetic.

Being an only child, her parents were incredibly possessive of her, making even the smallest scratch into an ordeal worthy of panic. She wasn’t allowed to go outside without both of her parents trailing in her wake. She never felt she had any friends, for most of them were terrified of the looming shadows that hovered at Danni’s side. While her parents had only intended good, through their constant worry for her only fueled her rambunctious personality.

When Danni was young, she met a girl who stood up to her spoiled ways. When Danni wanted to play with the girl’s shovel, the girl refused, stating that when she was done making her castle, Danni could borrow it for a little while. She even went so far as to state that it was ‘playground etiquette’ to share and not just beg or demand. Needless to say, Danni wasn’t very used to that or she might have accepted it. And so Danni, who was quite shocked by the girl’s refusal and perhaps not thinking about it, threw herself at the girl. After a match of hair-tearing, shin-kicking, and stomach-punching, the parents intervened. As can be surmised from the vaguely smug expression on Danni’s face – or what little could be told from her face, as much of it was puffy with bruising, that ‘smug expression’ could have been simply her cheeks swelling – the girl left the park with more than just a very swollen face and many bruises to count, which is not to say, however, that Danni got off scotch-free. On the contrary – Danni was confined to her room for two weeks straight of boredom, which continued to fuel her rebelliousness.

On Danni’s seventh birthday, she was presented with her very first broom. A simple training broom, but the greatest thing she’d ever been given, nonetheless. Ecstatically beginning her practices the next day, Danni began training for Quidditch, something she knew she would try out for in Hogwarts. After all, she had to go there, right? She was a witch, as her parents said was certain. Even a few odd things had already begun to happen, as Danni tapped into her magical ability: blows that should have hit her went astray; balls mysteriously bounced out of the way of someone about to kick them; her vegetables would, on the rare occasion, spontaneously combust. All were signs, her parents said, that she was most certainly a witch. So much strangeness could only mean, they believed, that she was quite powerful too. Spontaneous combustion of spinach wasn’t to be taken lightly.

Turning eleven was an important year for Danni as well. It marked the year that she received the owl carrying her Accepted-to-Hogwarts letter. Ecstatic as her parents, although for entirely different reasons: her parents looked forward to a powerful witch to work in the Ministry, perhaps creating ties to get them ‘special treatment’; Danni, on the other hand, looked forward to escaping the grasp of her parents.

Happily going on a shopping spree in Diagon Alley, Danni acquired the cat that she keeps with her as a familiar, as many students do. A small, compact Tonkinese cat she named Othniel. Her parents bought her the best of everything and, to her dismay, completely demolished any attempts of hers to befriend someone by their imposing presences. Finally, in a much fouler mood than earlier that day, arriving at the Platform, she quickly leaped onto the train with little more than a hug, quick ‘bye, love you’, and wave.

She graduated from Hogwarts, excelling in Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms, but only scraping by in Potions, proving to her parents that she had much more faith with a wand in the hand than a bottle of some greenish goop.
Resume: Much of her life has been spent working for the Ministry of Magic. When she started out, she played the role of court reporter in the Ministry’s Courtrooms.
After two months of what she described as ‘monotonous, depressive, and utterly dreary atmosphere’, she was ‘promoted’ to working at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, specifically the Improper Use of Magic office, acting as a secretary, mainly sending out letters to students who used magic outside of Hogwarts. While still not the action that she might have wanted from everything, she certainly was entertained by some of the descriptions of what went on outside of her cubicle. Eager to please, and still waiting for a position in Hogwarts, the letters always left on time, promptly arriving by owl within twenty-four hours of the incident. She kept files in order, she was always at the door of the Ministry at the exact same time every day, with very little variation.
Lasting for two years of that, she was once again promoted, this time to the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Quite happy in this position, she stayed for seven years, where she ordered, and oftentimes snuck some reading in of, the files of various accidents.

ABOUT YOU
Name: Cepheus
Years of Experience: Two and a half to three
Sample Post: Already did one for Tanith.
Other: *edited*

Okay, well, I originally planned to make a male professor…but, in the name of gender equality in the way of professors, I went with a female. xD

And yes, I realize that she’s not what you’d expect in a DADA teacher. Don’t worry – I’ve got a plan for her, I made her personality a little nutty specifically for the purpose of DADA. Make it more interesting, I guess, by having someone you wouldn’t expect in the position. I've also got an idea for why she's so childish at times, that perhaps could be brought out through a plot.

[Abbie Chalk]

Accepted