FULL NAME: Winter Weatherley Carmichael
NICKNAMES: Winter's just two syllables, y'all. Winnie is utterly unacceptable.
AGE/DOB: 16, April 19 / Aries
YEAR: Junior
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Human-shaped fleshthing trying not to think about it. She/her is fine, they/them is fine. Everything is FINE.
SEXUALITY: Yike.
HOMETOWN: Huntington, WV / Elflock Falls, WV
APPEARANCE:Something about Winter just screams Jim Henson & Studio Ghibli collaboration. A striking girl with elfin features, her prediliction for neutral, earthy colors, going barefoot and being dirt-caked only heightens the aesthetic. There’s a wildness about her that her oft tangled blonde hair does little to mitigate. Her fashion sense is less a sense of style and more simply trying to hide herself beneath layers and layers of sweaters and shawls.
A long jagged line of a scar cuts across her left cheek, glaringly obvious even with make up, she pretends not to be self-conscious about it. You’d be surprised how often strangers comment on it, and yet Winter still hasn’t quite grown numb to the attention it receives. She likes to make up wild stories about how she got it, and rarely divulges the truth.
West Virginia born and bred, Winter’s got that trademark country twang of someone from the hills. She generally strives to be well-spoken, and while she doesn’t alter her accent much, she tries her best to enunciate.
HEIGHT: 5'7"
BUILD: Soft
PB: Taylor Hickson
INSPO:
What a strange little gremlin you are, Winter Carmichael, making yourself so hard to love, when love, as a concept, has always intrigued you. The politest thing most people have to say about Winter after a first meeting is that she is
quirky. There’s charm to her, certainly; a uniquely strange sense of humor, a confidence in her own opinion and comedic timing, and a general air of awkward approachability – she gets talked to by strangers
a lot, to her horror – but true to her name Winter doesn’t exude much warmth with new faces. She is closed off, mistrustful and almost secretive. No one leaves a first meeting with Winter feeling like they’ve got a good idea of her at all.
What’s clear is she’s an anxious person, nervous hands, prone to distraction, gears in her head constantly turning. Stumbling in speech with all but her closest friends, she stammers and gets herself stuck very easily. There’s a lot of
thinking going on in Winter’s head at any given moment, much to her detriment, and assuming the words come out in the right order to begin with, she frets a lot over whether she’ll be understood. So she plays that up, leans into the awkward goofus thing, makes fun of her own inability to speak. Rather than being worried about being wrong, she revels in it, defaulting to either self-deprecating humor or obviously faked bravado before anyone else can hurt her with judgment. Somehow, she toes the line between absolutely hopeless and slightly endearing.
Introverted, but prone to loneliness, Winter craves deep, deep connections. She doesn’t want to be the life of the party. She doesn’t want a million friends. She wants a few people whom she can’t live without, to understand and be understood. It’s not that she dislikes most people. On the contrary, she’s very fond of most of them. It’s just that she hurts easily and is deeply afraid of making herself vulnerable. In a way, she’s a romantic, yearning for meaningful bonds with people who fascinate her. The problem is, she’s not exactly forthcoming, herself. She’s guarded at the best of times, dithers and undershares when it comes to personal matters. Winter doesn’t trust. Living with a mother prone to truth bending and honeyed empty words has left her wary of other’s intentions. She tends to gravitate, then, toward those who make her feel safe. If you’re earnestly sweet or baldly rude, she’ll have an easier time dealing with you than with someone who seems to be wearing a mask.
And Winter has a knack for knowing whether or not someone is being genuine. Empathetic to a fault, the benefits of the gift start and end there. Winter is an intuitive person, but she’s also sensitive to the mood of a room, or the moods of the people she’s engaging. Downturns sour her own attitude quickly, while high energy leaves her feeling anxious. She never really seems
comfortable when she’s out and about.
Give her boundaries and structure, then. She likes to know where she stands, and where you stand, and she likes to keep both those positions marked with big red X’s, and also for sirens and air horns to blare if one of the two of you moves too far from your spot without first completing the proper paperwork. That’s not how the real world works, though. Given all of the above, social interactions are often an exercise in pain, endured with a gritted smile. Sometimes Winter is bearishly grumpy as a result, or more likely just prone to unseriousness. Teasing and jokes get her through conversations, though she nevertheless always at least tries to be kind. Not nice — not even necessarily friendly — but kind.
No matter how you slice it, and no matter how much she wishes otherwise, Winter is soft-hearted and moody. A crunchy, prickly outer shell on a gooey center. Sensitive, to be sure, but that should not be mistaken for fragility. She takes teasing well enough, but will snap back with more than she takes if she feels attacked. When it comes to relenting, Winter may bend under gentle pressure, particularly from those she is fond of, but flexibility is not her strong suit. If she believes in something — and often she has very strong opinions about very many things — she is absolutely relentless, stubborn to a fault. A fighter, easily wound up. Suffice it to say, figuring her out is a lot of work, and it’s not necessarily worth the trouble.
Which is why it’s good she knows how to entertain herself. For as much surl as she projects, she’s actually a deeply passionate, imaginative person who falls in love with things easily. Her repertoire of hobbies and interests is rich and varied. Whether it’s digging around in the dirt outdoors gardening and foraging or staying in to polish off a book or watch a bad horror movie, what Winter loves is experiencing and exploring. That means she’s also fond of trying new things, which is how she got into Muggle Magic Club in the first place. Not some long burning passion, but a hobby she deeply enjoys and finds soothing to practice when her nerves are frayed.
But broadly, she’s fearless in that regard, uninhibited when it comes to trying something that interests her, and not super fussed about embarrassment or danger. Maybe it’s more accurate to say she can be a bit of a dipshit, driven to try things that look like fun, regardless of the consequences. Once she’s made up her mind, she’s going, whether it’s safe or not. There’s that stubborn-to-a-fault thing, back at it again.
Winter likes getting to the very roots of things, taking them apart and seeing how they work. People fascinate her as much as they terrify her, both psychologically and physiologically. She is driven to know, and while generally she works with a strong moral compass, she can sometimes get swept up in “doing good” without thinking of what it takes to get there.
Her relationship with the world of magic is somewhat unique, somewhat toxic. Winter was heavily sheltered from magic as a small child. Aware that there was something
odd about her family from a young age, but not informed of what specifically that oddness was until her own powers manifested. On top of that, her mother has always (hypocritically) insisted she rely on mundane tools and skills, rather than magic. For her first years of study, when she was home, Winter’s wand was locked away. In that way, her exposure to magic was not unlike that of a muggleborn whose parents don’t believe or trust in what they’re seeing. Though she enjoys magic and its conveniences, she tends to rely more heavily on mundane skills than her wand, and she was only
just permitted to get her Apparition license when she swapped that 50/50 custody to an unofficial 90/10 staying with her dad. She tends to kneejerk to “I will get in trouble if I do this thing with magic,” and “It’s bad to make life easier with spells” as a result of her mother’s attitude. As she struggles to untangle that mess and find her own feelings on the matter, what she’s discovered is that she has a very passionate dislike of the Statute of Secrecy, at the
very least.
FUN FACTS:
🍄 M-B: INFP / ENNEAGRAM: 6w5
🍄 Winter will read just about anything you put in front of her: books, pamphlets, newspapers, signs. She tends to prefer fiction to non-fiction, but at the same time, loves poring over reference books.
🍄 Winter frequently jokes about wanting to "build her ideal mate", Dr. Frankenstein style. Hard to say if she's joking, considering her interest in anatomy and physiology.
LANGUAGES: English and Bad English
HOBBIES: Reading anything she can get her hands on, foraging, gardening, trying new things, doing exactly what she was told not to do, voraciously consuming B horror movies, maladaptive daydreaming
SKILLS:GREEN THUMB: A hobbyist gardener who takes pleasure in being surrounded by green things, Winter's skill in plant rearing is the product of a lot of research and care, and not any particular inherent knack for it. If she doesn't have the answer to a plant-related question, she knows pretty much exactly where she can look it up lickety split.
FORAGING: Mushroom foraging was a weird little hobby Winter picked up as a bored preteen that grew and expanded as she's gotten older. Primarily, she's still most interested in finding mushrooms and things that you can eat, but she's also picked up an eye for potions ingredients and useful things like adder's stones and fairy rings.
SLEIGHT OF HAND & CLOSE-UP MAGIC: A good, stilling hobby for exceedingly nervous hands, Winter is a regular prestidigitator. She enjoys cardistry and card magic tricks most of all, but she knows enough misdirection to "entertain" at a children's party. Legermaining is a hobby Winter pretends to be less passionate about than she really is, though now that she's slid into the president's slot of the Muggle Magic Club, her seriousness is a bit more open.
ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF HORROR & ITS TROPES: Winter has watched A Lot Of Horror. Too much horror. Many, many times. It very lightly informs her aesthetic — she's into classic monster movies.
COSTUME MAKE UP: Winter isn't really serving looks. She knows how to put on a face, how to cover a scar, especially, but all that time spent hiding her imperfections eventually diverged into just straight up painting her face. Fooling around with cosmetic putties and things like that. Her IG is full of photos of herself done up as various horrendous monsters.
FAMILY:LANEY OWENS-CARMICHAEL (mother. hotel manager.)
Winter's mother is a landmine of a human being, oversensitive, demanding of time and attention, and notorious for making her unhappiness everyone else's problem. The embodiment of "act your age not your shoe size." A muggleborn witch, she blames most of her perceived problems on her half-muggle, half-magic childhood, and the system that "failed" her. In truth, Laney's life isn't half as bad as she purports it to be. She suffers from an outsized sense of her own importance and frankly impressive lack of drive. She loves Winter, but unsurprisingly sees her daughter as an extension of herself, an accessory. Laney frequently bemoans the fact that Winter is also a witch, "because that probably means any other babies will be magical, too, and so I had to stop with you. But I do love you, honey."
STEPHEN CARMICHAEL (father. herbologist/florist)
Doing his best after failing his daughter pretty damn well for the first eleven years of her life. Stephen Carmichael is a clever, soft-spoken man who never quite seemed to fit all those contracting and handyman jobs he held over the years. A muggleborn wizard, he was alienated from his highly religious muggle family the moment his magic manifested. For much of his life, Laney was the only thing he had. Stephen was very much in love with her as a boy, as a teenager, and even into adulthood, but he matured and she did not, and her treatment of their daughter finally broke their bond. Stevie doesn't hate magic the way Laney does, and is trying to do right by his daughter by helping her to find her footing in the world of magic. He's recently made the jump from odd jobs to owning his own small florist shop/nursery on the edge of Elflock Falls. Unfortunately, Stevie Carmichael is a Major Dweebus and he's really embarrassing. Gosh dad. Ugh.
BACKGROUND:Winter Carmichael was born in Huntington, West Virginia to Laney and Stephen. It was just the three of them (and often, a babysitter), no extended family. Her parents worked opposite shifts to raise their girl and make ends meet: Laney took nights at the DoubleTree By Hilton downtown, and Stephen worked days as a contractor and handyman. Though ostensibly they seemed like a normal blue collar family unit, it didn’t take Winter long to realize that perhaps some things about her family weren’t so normal after all.
First of all, most of the neighbor kids’ moms didn’t make a scene of everything the way Laney Carmichael did, but that was the least weird thing about Winter’s family. Nobody else’s parents could teleport, for instance, and none of the neighborhood kids knew anything about a hidden part of Huntington you could reach by going ‘round the back of the DoubleTree. Her dad had shown her, Winter would insist, and everyone thought she was telling stories. At first, the neighbor kids liked Winter’s weird imagination, but her insistence that she’d seen her father clean up the dishes with a flick of a wand, or that the family’s cat was supernaturally smarter than everyone else’s quickly lost its charm. Imaginative Winter was soon labeled a
liar instead, and that would follow her for years.
So, she spent a lot of time on her own, and made her own fun where she could find it, in front of a computer screen, nose in a book, in the woods behind her home. An insatiable curiosity was evident right away, always eager to try new things, to learn. She pestered her parents constantly about how unusual her family was compared to the neighbors, but her nosing was met with uncomfortable, stony silence. Isolated, she fostered that
weird imagination into something big, though it was always a source of shame, since that made her a
liar. Her parents never
did do a great job of explaining things. Both of them indulged in the convenience of magic from time to time. Stephen was a bit more relaxed about it, producing his wand to make households tasks easier, but Laney was more secretive, and angrier if she caught her husband doing spells. Was this also shameful? Is that why it was secret? Is that why the kids she’d once thought friends now called her a liar? When her own abilities started to manifest, she was terrified that she’d be in trouble.
Unfortunately, her parents didn’t take their daughter’s magical abilities well. Laney was a particularly foul mix of unsurprised and disappointed to find that Winter had inherited their magical blood. Worse still, somehow, the advent of Winter’s magic seemed to pull at the very seam of her parents’ marriage. Had she been a bit older, she might’ve noticed that Laney and Stephen’s bond had been strained for some time — just the sort of thing that happens to two people who married young and without seeing what the world had to offer — but for little Winter, it seemed that she was the cause of her parents’ worsening arguments, the long silences. Living in the Carmichael household was always a bit of a balancing act, walking on eggshells, but now Winter felt like it was mostly her fault.
Even after it was clear that Winter was a witch, her first introductions to magic came only as a matter of necessity. As they took the most basic steps necessary to ensure their daughter would have what she needed, Winter was encouraged to embrace the muggle world, and not magic. At length and nearly with glee, Laney would recount her and Stephen’s own experiences with the magical world. The story always went the same: two muggleborn kids, failed by the system, alienated from their non-magical families by secrecy restrictions. At the end of the day, all they’d had was each other, and they’d retreated to the very edge of the magical world, living nearly as muggles, because magic had
hurt them.
It made the prospect of going away to a magical school absolutely
terrifying for a little girl just growing into these abilities. Her mother had made it sound like the worst scary movie, a living nightmare, and the prospect was so daunting she’d had a panic attack getting ready for school on her first day of sixth grade. In the end, Winter went and found that most of the stories her mother had fed her were untrue. She had long found her mother confusing, the way she exaggerated, the way reality seemed to warp when she’d retell the story of it later. Now, Winter knew, her mother was a
liar.
Winter had a knack for magic. And finally, she shed that
liar moniker that had doggedly chased her since her earliest days. Here, other people’s parents teleported, too, and
everyone spent time in that hidden part of Huntington behind the DoubleTree. At home, her parents’ marriage continued to rot, but at school she finally felt normal. Her father seemed happy to see that Winter took so well to magic. He quietly encouraged her while her mother fretted noisily, and Winter dove into studies that interested her. Most of them, incidentally, were fascinating to her, but she liked Herbology best of all.
She was twelve, between her seventh and eighth grade years, when she had her accident. It was so stupid, the exact sort of thing you’re warned about: running with scissors. (For the record, Winter took it to the next level, by stupidly running with scissors
in her mouth.) By all accounts, it should’ve been an injury that magic could clear up quick, but her mother refused to take her to a healer. Instead, Winter went by ambulance to the nearest trauma-equipped emergency department. She made a full recovery, but the whole ordeal had been traumatic, many days spent in a hospital bed. Where a healer might’ve been able to ensure Winter was left unscarred, muggle doctors can’t work miracles. Instead of seeking magical aid, Winter’s mother put her through cosmetic surgery the family could barely afford to repair her tattered face, and in the end she was still left with scars on the left side of her cheek.
It was complicated. Laney tried to reason that she was taking a stand against unfair Statute rules prohibiting magical medical treatment for muggles. An absolutely worthy cause, but one Laney had never before championed, and only seemed to bring up when her decision to drag her daughter’s treatment out came up. Stephen, on the other hand, accused Laney of being so self-focused she was willing to drag her daughter through hell to make her injury all about her. The long and harrowing ordeal finally broke the Carmichaels’ marriage. They separated. Custody was and still is in dispute, but currently shared 50/50 by each parent. Once Winter had fully recovered, Stephen moved out and away, to a
wizard town. Elflock Falls, north and east of Huntington. “Closer to where you’ll be going to high school, bug,” her father had told her, at the time.
While she certainly had the grades to go elsewhere, Winter was bound for Peckenpaugh at fourteen. Even
that had been a fight with her mother, who didn’t want her off at a boarding school, but she’d eventually relented. Free schooling, free board, and her father nearby, she was set. Boarding turned out to be what she needed. What her whole family needed. Always a good student, she really thrived once she was liberated from home, and even during breaks, she now had the excuse to stay with her father instead of her mother — infinitely better, even if he was still a mega dork. By the summer of her freshman year, her father had served divorce papers to her mother. While the matter of custody is still a touchy subject, the fires cooled a bit.
Winter got active with the school’s Druidic Arts program, even landing herself the TA spot during her sophomore year. So, imagine her despair when the program was cut at the end of that year. She still grouses about it, but it made swapping into Pre-Healer Studies a natural choice — she’d always wanted to be a Healer, anyway, after her accident. Perhaps as consolation for losing Druidic Arts, Ms. Treetops christened her the new Herbology TA at the start of her junior year, very much without warning. Considering she’s also shouldering a Muggle Magic Club presidency, Winter’s going into her junior year praying for death every moment she isn’t busy — which is not often.
WAND: Acacia, will-o-the-wisp cinder core, 9", springy. The wood of Winter's wand is worn smooth, the color faded but the grain dramatically dark, like driftwood. The handle, left largely natural and full of holes, has been inlaid with quartz to create a more solid grip. It's a beautiful wand that looks much older than it actually is. Acacia wood and will-o-the-wisp cinder core make for a very subtle, very poweful, very finicky wand that responds to no one but its owner.
FAMILIAR: A bearded dragon named Jim Jimmers, Esq.
CAREER GOALS: Hoping to become at least the arms, legs and maybe the face of a Bride of Frankenstein Healer!!!!!!!!!!
PART-TIME JOB: Pizza Pi(e)rates
CLASSES: Must've been something in the air the year the current junior class was born. Winter compulsively needs to
do and do well. If her brain is unoccupied, even for a moment, she falls apart. So, busy, busy, busy, and successful as a result. There's
always something she could be studying, an assignment she could get a head start on. She goes above and beyond in just about every class, and finds herself often overwhelmed as a result.
CHARMS: One of her favorite classes, Winter takes well to Charms's feelings-y subject matter. Unsurprisingly, she's fascinated by the most complex Charms: Patronus and things like that.
POTIONS: If Potions was taught by anyone else, Winter would find it terribly boring. She's not particularly gifted at mixing potions, but it's simple enough for her to memorize ingredients and amounts. Mr. Berzelius is the only thing that makes the class not a snore, and boy is he good at that.
TRANSFIG: Oh fuck. Ms. Min. Please. Slow down. It's too much. Too many numbers. Shit. A borderline A in the class is absolutely killing Winter.
(H) C&M: Delightful course, delightful teacher. While Magizoology and Cryptozoology aren't her passions, Mr. Trullinger has always been Winter's favorite teacher. He's fostered a love of the subject in her.
(H, TA) HERBOLOGY: Winter's always loved Herbology best. Likes getting in the dirt, making a mess, memorizing facts about plants and fungus, likes being surrounded by green things and teaching others how to tend to plants, themselves. Having served as the Druidic Arts TA in the previous year, shifting over to Herbology when that program ended was a very natural move.
DEFENSE AGAINST the DARK ARTS: If the class weren't so lecture heavy, Winter might struggle less. She finds the content of the course immensely interesting, but her brain just flies right out the window as soon as Mr. Purcell opens his mouth. She frequently has to copy others' notes, and often asks to study in groups.
(H) WIZARD LIT: BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS. Give her every book. Let her read it twice. Winter just wishes Mr. Crockett would err more sci fi than romance with his schlock once in a while.
(H) PRE-HEALER STUDIES: Doctoring has been in Winter's head since her accident, working from the inside to bring advanced magical medical care to muggles, somehow. However, she had never intended to take Pre-Healer Studies, having much preferred the Druidic Arts advanced study offered last year by Ms. Treetops. Despite some lingering crankiness, her transition into Pre-Healer Studies has been smooth. She likes Greatheart's teaching style and her philosophy.
ALCHEMY: 100% positive that Mr. Berzelius only picks the worst Potions to study, hoping he will make his students look absolutely ridiculous. That' fine, though, Winter loves a goof. She finds Alchemy fascinating, tearing apart Potions and really looking at its bits and bobs.
EXTRA-CURRICULARS:MUGGLE MAGIC CLUB: (President) Winter joined Muggle Magic Club on a lark her freshman year. She thought the concept of wizards learning sleight of hand and "illusion" was a riot, and in a way it poked a bit of fun at her mother, who insisted she'd left the magical world behind while sneaking spells the very second anything became difficult for her — bringing muggle things into the magical world, instead of keeping the two apart. What Winter quickly discovered was a knack and a passion for close-up magic and cardistry. She takes the hobby, if not the club, itself, very seriously — she's happy to use club meetings as an excuse to get milkshakes with friends, if that's all anyone wants to do on a given day, but it drives her fucking nuts when Pocket schedules a party right over meeting time. Just this year, she was elected president of the club, and she's happy to keep running it the way it's always been run.
MARCHING BAND: (Percussion)
CONCERT BAND: (Percussion / Theremin)
ARITHLETES: Has a bad habit of panicking and saying something smartass and dipshitty instead of the right answer.
CREATIVE WRITING / BOOK CLUB: MORE. BOOKS.
FILM CLUB: Mr. Stirling can we please watch more movies with ray guns.
GAMING CLUB: Man, fuck Monopoly for real, but Winter's happy to roll dice or play The Sims.
SORTING?:There was something in each of the four houses that spoke to Winter. Deeplurk being the home of stubborn independent students made it a very obvious first pick for her, but Thorntrail's work ethic and emphasis on what Winter felt was strong personal relationships also appealed. Mothgarden was a strong contender — a house of curious intellectuals? Count her in! In the end, Mothgarden's question that tipped her to the spring door. "Where do
you want to grow?" Her whole life it alw0ays seemed like she was just doing what her mother allowed, and for this door to make her choose? She knew where she had to go.
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