McAlarney, Sydney - Third Year

[Sydney McAlarney]

Accepted! Welcome to Hogwarts: The New Ages!

Full Character Name: Sydney Elyse McAlarney
D.o.B./Age: 19 May 2016/12
Place of Residency: {MUST be in the UK area} Presently: Liverpool, Merseyside, UK
Blood Status: {Pureblood, Half-blood, Muggleborn} Half-Blood

House Preference 1: N/A
House Preference 2: N/A


History:

Parent(s): (Mother) Jane Ellison-McAlarney {deceased}; (Father) Lewis Andrew McAlarney {deceased}
Sibling(s): Bryce McAlarney (Ravenclaw House - Fifth Year; 16), Adelaide McAlarney (Muggle - Year 9; 14)
Other(s): Diana Sybll Smitts (Guardian), John Gregory Smitts (Guardian); Gregory, Ella, and Timothy Smitts (triplet cousins, age 3); Ean Smitts (cousin, age 1)
Economic Status: Middle Class (£35,000/yr)

{and at least 3 Good Sized Paragraphs}

Sydney Elyse McAlarney was born the 19th day of May in the year 2016 of the common era. She was born to Jane Ellison-McAlarney and to Lewis Andrew McAlarney in Sydney, Australia. Keeping with the naming ritual of her elder brother and sister, Sydney was named for the city of her birth. Unlike her elder brother and sister, Sydney never actually lived in Australia, save for her first few days in the hospital. As soon as she was cleared for release, the McAlarneys moved from their home in the city to their home in the Lake District of Northwestern Great Britain. Syd would spend her childhood in those overcast, broodingly romantic hills and boglands.

Emmett Michael Stoker was her first best friend while Syd lived in the Lake District house. When Bryce was sent away to the boarding school in Lusanne, Switzerland, Emmett Michael was the only boy Syd would play with. He was a quiet boy from the beginning, and that served Syd well enough because she made up the rules of all the games they played anyway. Emmett Michael was very pleased to simply tag along and try his best to win when winning was on the line. Emmett Michael Stoker had many virtues, his silence being one of them and his complacency being another, but he had one crippling vice: insatiable curiosity. On invitation, Emmett Michael was over at the McAlarney cottage for a stay-over one night. He got lost going to the washroom (which is not difficult when the exterior of the house looks small, but the interior has been magically extended some floors beneath the surface) and wound up outside the door to the study. It wasn't a far reach from the washroom on that level, but the door was ajar (never a good sign in the bowels of White Thorn Cottage) and voices were drifting out from between the cracks. Neither of the two voices (one a man's, the other a woman's) were heavily accented. Emmett Michael distinguished the lady's voice to be that of Ms Jane Ellison, his hostess. The other bore no particular British accentuation. If he had time to guess it, Emmett Michael might have confessed to hearing an American conversing with the woman within. The young boy - a peat-cutter's son - might have stayed to hear the entire conversation, but one particular strand of the conversation gave him immediate pause; the man referred to the woman by a name Emmett Michael had never heard before. "Alana Wood" was no one that Emmett Michael had ever heard of before. 

The next day, at breakfast, Syd posed the question Emmett Michael had been working through with her the night before. Mrs. McAlarney deftly changed the conversation, and soon Emmett Michael was spilling all his secrets, including that it was his curiosity to learn who this mysterious "Alana Wood" was, along with other things he'd heard. Later, strangely, Mrs. McAlarney invested in a game of King of the Hill, something to rouse both Sydney and their guest. Emmett Michael was given the honor of being first king. Addy joined in the game and helped Sydney take the hill and the imaginary Queendom as well. Emmett Michael's urgent cries for help changed the course of the game, however. Syd came upon Addy, tirelessly trying to dig Emmett Michael out of the bog he'd run into a few meters beyond the cottage. Addy attempted to explain the situation, but Syd couldn't understand what she was saying. Emmett Michael had slipped into the bog, gotten caught, and when Addy found him, he was up to the middle of his thighs. The medical team that came to excavate him could only answer grief-stricken questioning from both Sydney and her mother with grim looks. "Seems like he was deep enough in to lose both those legs, partially, at best." Hours and days of questioning followed, first from the Stokers themselves, then from neighbors, then from the medical staff at the hospital in Liverpool, and finally from the local police. Throughout each interview - which called upon the sisters and their mother - Sydney betrayed no emotion. A second bout of interviews followed, but these came from "friends of the Missus" who Syd had never seen or met before. Her "lessons" in physical and psychological training began soon after.

Memories of Emmett Michael Stoker haunted Sydney all the way to the Watford house, where they moved next. She never shared what she saw in these nightmares to anyone except for her Mum, who determined that training her mind to control her emotions - both inwardly and outwardly - was in order. Part of this psychological training was to go through endless rounds of questioning one might endure at a psychologist's office. "One must know the game in order to play it," Mrs. McAlarney instructed her on one of their sessions. "And if one is going to play the game, one has but two options: to win, or to submit." Mrs. McAlarney prized herself and her daughter on being able to keep their secrets locked behind a wall of resolve. "It makes you very powerful when you play the role of the confidante." Sydney didn't get it right away. The memories didn't get easier to handle either. They began to effect her mood and her attitude. She began to get irrational on both happy and angry ends of the scale. Even Addy would admit to her manipulative and annoying power. In school, even, she began crafting stories about what she saw in her nightmares. They all followed the same basic plot lines, but it wasn't until she was asked to draw pictures to accompany the stories that alarm was raised. The villainess of her stories and pictures bore striking resemblance to old primary school depictions of her mother. Mr. McAlarney got involved then. 

Syd began to develop a better and more private relationship with her father after he approached her about the pictures and stories. Given that Mrs. McAlarney spent weeks on end away for her job, the father and daughter had plenty of time to work out the wrinkles in the story. Mr. McAlarney divulged that both he and Mrs. McAlarney worked for the government as ambassadors of their countries. He had served as Australian Ambassador to Great Britain, and she as British Ambassador to Australia. An incident in Darwin, Australia had pulled them both back to England, however, and now they were based here. Sydney shared her experiences with the training sessions she had been enduring, "the lessons" she was instructed to call them, which seemingly ended their talks. In her time alone, Sydney began to play with things, natural things. If she was unhappy and she glared at a patch of grass for too long, it would wither and die right before her eyes. If she was feeling giddy, sometimes a light sun shower would happen. Or a chorus of birds chirping. Or a flower might blossom randomly if she was happy. These things were unexplainable things, though Sydney's trained observance had noticed other odd things before; things that just didn't make sense: the three levels of cottage beneath the terrain in White Thorn Cottage. Only the silliness of magic could explain these things, and magic didn't exist.

Harvest Festival, November 2025. Dad gathered the family together and introduced them to long-lost cousins they'd never heard of before. Sydney didn't trust these new faces, until one, a French woman named Josefine Toureaux, took her aside and magically created the most beautiful garden Sydney had ever seen. When Sydney tried to do the same, white thorns grew and choked the flowers. But from the thicket garden, blindingly white roses sprouted from the thorns. This was the meeting at which Dad told the family his dark secret: he was a Wizard, and he feared that there were more Magic Folk in the family as well. Bryce, for one, was known to possess magic, but Mr. McAlarney thought there were more, lurking under the surface. Syd knew then.

Christmas, December 2025. Dad's health shot so low that he lost his physical abilities to walk or move. His death came shortly after Bryce returned from school, and even though Sydney pleaded with Bryce to take her with him when he went back to school, her older brother never did. 

February-April 2025. Mum took Sydney on her first trip to Australia, during which time Sydney became friends with a young Wizard called Alexander Blackpoole. Through letters and, eventually, owls (from Alex) the two formed a bond around their shared and different experiences with their world from opposites of the globe: the Wizarding World was suddenly a very large and (at times) frightening place. With Alex's gentle reassurances, though, Sydney learned to roughly accept herself as a member of this new, tentatively invisible world.

Fast Forward to September 2026. Following two years of communication with Alex, one day, her dear friend magically materialized (of course, by this I mean to say, he used all age-appropriate forms of travel to arrive) at Syd's doorstep, and a wild day of exploration and a little bit of fun ensued: Syd's first trip into the Wizard World (Diagon Alley). By this point, Sydney was well aware of her mother's disdain for the Wizarding World and for Magic Folk. "They killed your father and almost killed your heathen brother too!" She would reply to dismiss any further talk about Sydney going to Hogwarts, Bryce's magical school. But while she was certain her mother disapproved of "those heathens", Sydney never actually made certain that she would be disapproved of for being a Witch herself; Bryce rarely got bad press with Mrs. McAlarney, since the Elia incident and since their father died, but he'd never been in favor the same way Sydney had been. Using her steely resolve, learnt from her mother and their "lessons", Syd broached the subject head on one night at bedtime. "I'm going to Hogwarts next year, Mum. I've known for quite some time now that I'm a Witch. And Lex, my friend, he's a Wizard. And we've spent a lot of time talking about the Magic World, so you've got to talk about it too! You've gotto, Mum!" The reaction was instantaneous. "This is not a conversation we're having at bedtime, Sydney," Mrs. McAlarney had replied, bittersweetly. "You're tired, I know. You just need a good night sleep and we can talk about this in the morning." But as she'd gotten up from the bed and gone to turn off the light, she had turned and given a queer look to her daughter - one Syd never forgot - and axed the entire conversation with, "You know how I feel about those Heathens, Sydney. It hurts that you should bring Them up." Weeks later, Sydney and Mrs. McAlarney boarded a plane to Australia. 

After the plane crashed, Sydney endured a very long and strange journey from Australia to the South Pacific Islands, spending much of October and November being fostered by a fisherman and his wife on Vanuatu Island. With some aid from Lex Blackpoole, however, she was able to escape and in December, before the borders closed due to weather conditions, Sydney was spotted crossing the border from India to Pakistan. Some ten weeks later, the British government was tagged from their embassy in Moscow, Russia, to claim a little girl (about age 10, roughly 4ft 10) claiming to be a diplomat's daughter.

April 2027. Sydney Elyse McAlarney, seven months dead, was finally reunited with her foster family in Liverpool. Despite a week of rehabilitation and questioning from the JIC, Sydney hasn't spoken to anyone, save Lex, about what happened between boarding the plane and returning to the United Kingdom. She still has nightmares, but when things get really bad in her head, she grows the same garden of thorns that Josefine taught her, always adding her own trademark roses to each thorn.


Personality Description: {at least 2 good sized paragraphs}

Syd has a developing personality. Part of her development stems from the experiences she has had, and the trauma that has arisen from going through so much at so young an age.

After getting to know her very secretive extended family, Syd has developed a distrust of people she doesn't know, especially secretive people (particularly adults with secrets). When she assumes this persona, Syd finds lying incredibly easy, and her ability to become someone else without a second thought is more than just a defense mechanism when Syd is operating under this persona. She is jumpy and quick to temper, and major signals of this personality are her readiness to fight and her need to control.

However, there is a gentler side too, and while it is all but gone, it has not been forgotten. Many times, tirelessly, Addy has made the effort to comb this side out of her little sister. This is the personality that Syd has forgotten. It is a personality marked by laughs and moments of light-heartedness. It is a personality influenced by the vibrations of imagination tingling in the brain, of creating stories that become memories. Sydney forgets it because the last person to really engage with her in this personality was Emmett Michael Stoker, and her memory of him is tied irrevocably to the horrible life he must lead now. Because of her. Addy is good at hypnotising Syd, though, with precious objects from that time - tokens, as she calls them - that call Sydney back to this kinder, happier self. Sydney desires very deeply to become that person all the time, but the internal war is devastating. 

Erasing years of bad habits trained into her because of her Mom, is a very daunting and difficult task, particularly when she has to put her guard up because of the twists and turns fate throws at her. She is a work, in progress.

Physical Description:
Height: (can be metric or unit) 4'10"
Weight/Build: 125lbs; slender but strong
Skin Tone: Caucasian
Hair Color and Style: Light brown, long to the shoulders, but often pulled back
Eye Color: Deep blue

{and at least 1 good sized paragraph}

Though she appears to be skinny, Sydney is deceptively strong. In comparison with her brother and sister, Sydney looks easy to manage, but victims have learned the hard way of how she really is strong. Don't let the malnourished, sad little girl you see fool you. Those baggy misfitting clothes conceal a deeply physically and psychologically empowered young woman warrior. She can swim an impressive distance for a girl her age, and if she found you in a dark alley somewhere, it would behoove you to be friendly to her, because she doesn't "hit like a girl". But her rough-and-tough lifestyle hasn't been the only physical part of her training to date. Sydney knows how to wear "civilian" clothes too. She has been trained in what sort of dress can cause what kind of reaction from a desired target, and she knows that actions can seal a deal as well as bare-knuckle fist fights. The one thing the two approaches have in common is quite simple: you'll never see it coming.

Likes: {at least List 3}

• Nagging/Teasing/Managing people
• Having things done her way/Bossing people around
• Being able to lend a hand when someone is in dire need (but only then, not before and never after)

Dislikes: {at least List 3}

• Selfish people who try to manage her
• Snobbish people who don't have time for her (especially) or others (generally)
• Her mother/anyone who is secretive and dangerous because of their knowledge

Special Talents: {at least 1 good sized paragraph. Doesn't have to be magical talent}

Syd is a particularly good liar. Her own natural instincts for lying in the right places has rarely gotten her into trouble. "The truth is very cumbersome," Mrs. McAlarney has always told her. Sydney just thinks it's a waste of time to tell the truth, especially when the lie makes people (though sometimes only her) happier. While all this is true of her lying capabilities, Sydney doesn't know if a lie can be good or when a good lie is appropriate to be told. And since she has never been trained to socialise - nor has she had the inclination to ruin any other innocent peoples' lives like she did with Emmett Michael Stoker - Syd doesn't know how to lie to people she would consider friends. 

RP Example: {MUST be written in 3rd person past tense. At least 2 good sized paragraphs}

Timothy Smitts rolled himself over onto his back and pulled his foot over he chubby tummy, wiggling his miniature toes (and his ears, Syd noted) until he could reach out and catch his big toe between his chubby thumb and pointer finger. Making some sort of noise that meant nothing to Sydney but clearly meant, Yippee! I've got something in my fingers that I never touched before! in Tim-talk, he yanked the toe to his toothy mouth and popped it in. When he opened his mouth, a few droplets of blood rolled over his lips and slid down his chin. 

He's bleeding again! Syd thought as she snatched up the cloth handkerchief Aunty Di had given her for such an occasion and wiped away the blood. "So that's why you were crying all night, is it?" She scolded her little cousin as he grinned up at her and sucked away at his big toe. As Syd sighed, her baby cousin wiggled his ears again. "You're a freak! I hope you know that!" Black Syd was fighting forward out of a forced oblivion, enforced by White Syd, and so the battle of Black and White raged on into a new battleground. "I shouldn't have said that, Timmy Boo. You're a cute freak." Timmy Boo wiggled his ears again and continued to suck on his toe. He didn't know how to walk just yet, unlike his twin brother Gregory, who waddled over to Syd and plopped down, fecal matter oozing out of his cloth diaper. Black Syd wrinkled White Syd's nose as she lifted Gregory up and carried him to the washroom sink.

I'm never having babies, ever!

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