(no subject)
User Name/Nick: Kimtoo
User LJ: a_proclivity
AIM/IM: Hand in a Flame
E-mail:aproclivity at gmail dot com
Other Characters: Miss Parker
Character Name: Merope Gaunt
Series: Harry Potter
Age: 19
From When?: Just after her death following the birth of her son.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. While Merope is indeed a tragic figure in the Harry Potter canon, she is still inmate material. She uses magic to make the muggle Tom Riddle fall in love with her, and she keeps him enthralled with her for over a year until she becomes pregnant. After she becomes with child, she believes that the child will keep him with her. While she is wrong on this count, she belives that she can manipulate the people she loves into staying with her, even if it means denying them agency in their own lives.
Abilities/Powers: Despite Gaunt's contention that Merope is a squib, she actually is a witch. The terror of her father and his actions towards her made her magic not appear at it's best (like Neville around Snape) but she does have magic. I believe that her magic is strong enough to allow her to brew complicated love potions, like Amortentia. Further, she can speak Parseltongue, which is the ability to converse with snakes.
Personality: As a child of extreme abuse, Merope's most important visible personality trait is the ability to make herself almost invisible. She will often shrink from view or discussion, attempting to hide herself as much as she is able. She believes that if she can hide herself from attention as much as possible, then she won't incur someone's wrath. It doesn't work, but it is, in part, a bit like 'if I close my eyes then they won't see me.' It's a child's defense mechanism for someone who never had the chance to grow up.
Around people, she's very quiet, quiet as a mouse, her brother used to say. She tends to watch people more than she interacts with them. If possible, she will spy on a person before she needs to interact with them so that she can learn when it's safe to speak, when it's not and what the person does before they strike out. Most of the time, Merope will agree with what the person is saying just so that she doesn't need to worry reprisals. It is only in extreme cases that she will ever voice a no on anything. Instead she will pretend to go along with things and then subtlety act against them. It is in this way that Merope is extremely passive-agressive, and most of the time she doesn't believe or is aware that she's doing it.
For Merope, trusting someone isn't an issue, especially now. Merope simply has no trust or faith in her fellow human beings. Her early life lead her to not trust people, because even when they were nice, there was always something lingering behind it. Merope's distrust in people has intensified even now due to the way that Tom Sr. abandoned her. She will be more likely to distrust men, and suspect that they are basically out for no good.
Her response to everything is be faux-agreement or flat-out deceit. Her experience with Tom has taught her that people will value the lie over whatever truth there is and this is something that Merope is going to cling to. People are more likely to believe in the beauty of a lie, and lies, in Merope's view are more likely to make someone happy. In Merope's experience, happy people being less likely to hurt you/leave. Merope lies now because it's simply the simplest thing for her to do. It's like breathing for her in a way.
For most of her life, Merope hid her intelligence. After all being smart wasn't something that her father valued. There was no learning in her house, and books and papers weren't something that her father ever permitted. It wasn't that old Gaunt didn't care about reading owls; it was that he couldn't. Merope found a secret stash of books and papers in the back of a kitchen cupboard, and used them to teach herself how to read. Anything good that Merope is, she keeps private. If she doesn't keep good things private they will either be used against her, or taken away.
But by the same note, Merope doesn't value her intelligence. She doesn't value herself at all really. For the entirety of her life, her family taught her that her value was in her blood and the fact that she was the only Gaunt who could actually carry children. That fact, coupled with the fact that Merope was expected to marry Morfin, was the reason that Merope thought that if she gave Tom a child, then he would love her. Of course she was wrong, but the way that people valued her blood made her believe that it, along with the love she perceived, would have made him stay.
Merope's perceptions of love are incredibly skewed. As a child, she equated love with the times that her father's hands stayed, or the times when she would receive a larger piece of the meal than she had thought she would. Eventually, she came to believe that the reason that her father hit her so much was because he loved her, and because he wanted to force the magic out of her. Even after she grew out of that assessment she still internalized much of her own abuse, believing that she'd deserved it because she hadn't lived up to the blood of Salazar Slytherin that flowed many times over in her veins.
While her father and brother might have viewed her as as some sort of disgrace to the Slytherin values, Merope actually did/use them. Though it was only one time when she valued herself enough to actually take action in order to better her circumstances, she did it. Ambition for a better life took over, and she placed this need over everything else. The decision to take action in order to get a better life for herself was one that she planned to take. Merope knew that taking this action was going to be one that would forever remove herself from her old life forever and she didn't care. Throwing off her father and brother's hands for 'love' were worth it in her mind.
In Merope's head, however, she had a highly idealized concept of romantic love. This idealized concept of loves comes from a storybook that she read as a child. She truly did believe that magicked love would lead to the real thing. This is a child's belief and one that she clings to, even now. She believes that Tom didn't love her and their child because her magic and potions weren't good enough to force him to do so. If she thought her magic was strong enough, then she would go find Tom and try it again in a hearbeat.
Merope's poverty has fostered the concept that money will buy you happiness, which is another reason that she'd latched onto Tom. She thought that if she had the money that he did, then she would be happy with him. Also, Merope thought that beauty equaled goodness. Holding up her own ugliness, Merope perceived herself as bad, and she perceived the deformities of her brother and father as bad as well. When she's hoping that Tom Jr. is going to look like his father, she's not only hoping that he doesn't share the Gaunt look, but that he's going to be free of it's 'badness' as well.
After Tom's betrayal, Merope viewed herself as completely bad, and as someone who wasn't worth living. The fact that the man whom she loved more than anything else rejected her in ways that not even her family had destroyed something precious inside of her. Merope then began to cut herself off from things. She completely removed herself from her magic, attempting to deny herself with what was essentially a limb. She also denied her intelligence, instead deciding to believe that she was as stupid as her Father had so often claimed that she was.
For Merope, it was easier to give up on hope, and give up on life than try and save her son. Her self esteem was so low, that she actually felt like she was giving her son a better life by not being there just because she felt so 'bad' and 'tainted' by having the blood that she once did. Merope was so against her magic that she'd hoped giving her son to muggles would give him a sort of protection from the rejection that she herself had faced. This protection also had another layer to it: she felt that muggles would be able to protect Tom from her father. Merope believed that if her father or brother knew of his existence, they would have killed him as punishment for what she'd done.
Aboard the Barge, after her initial posting, Merope will be going into a sort of observing state. She'll find it exceptionally cruel that she'll be the room that she shared with Tom Riddle, but at the same time it was the only period in her life where she felt safe and truly at home. Initially, she's going to be need to be dragged out of her shell by her warden, and forced into doing things that make her interact with other people. However, eventually, she will find a niche hopefully.
Path to Redemption: Merope won't be an easy person to redeem, but with diligent hard work it is very possible. The first thing that her warden is going to need to do is get her to see that her deceiving people needs to stop, even if she perceives it to be in their own best interest. That a person needs their own agency is going to be a big thing that Merope needs to learn, and will probably be her biggest lesson.
She's also going to need to learn to control/use her magic. Her magic is a part of her, no matter how much she attempts to divorce herself from this fact. Merope can't deny it, and she needs to learn that trying to deny that piece of her is disastrous at best, especially if she's to go forward in her life.
Merope is also going to need to learn that she can't just shut herself off. She needs to learn that there are things worth living for, and they don't involve her bloodlines or having a child.
The warden with whom Merope would work best would be someone who is understanding of her history and the violence within it. Also, it's going to need to be someone who respects/is aware of her culture. Having magic is a must.
History: Wiki
Sample Journal Entry: [5-10 Sentences] [The words are hand written in a small, childish script. They are small, but evenly spaced.]
There has to be some mistake. This isn't where I am supposed to be. I was meant to end up some place different then here. I was meant to end up no where. I don't understand how I've come to find myself in his house. I know that he can't be here, none of his clothes are here.
It smells like him.
This is cruel.
Sample RP: Fifty-six steps. It was fifty-six steps from the stairwell to the cafeteria. Fifty-six steps into it then twenty-two from the doors to the food. Trays on the right and the silverware next to them. If Merope was quick, she'd be able to get in and get her food before people even knew that she was around. Three hundred in forty-three steps back from there to the safety of her room. Five minutes, five minutes and she would be away from the eyes that surrounded her.
Shoulders sloped downward, and Merope's thick mass of greasy hair covered her eye. Simple camouflage, taught to her by being out in the city of London. If people couldn't see the lack of beauty in her, then they couldn't remark upon it. It was one of the reasons that she always counted steps--if she looked down then she'd never need to meet someone's eye.
Rolls appeared first, and rolls were the easiest thing to sneak, she'd discovered. People'd look at her funny if she slipped them into her pockets, but so far no one had said something to her. Her tray was piled with rolls snatched with grubby fingers, though she was careful to touch only the ones that she was taking. The grime on her hands gave her the option of marking things, and no one would want to eat anything once they'd lingered over the food.
Not looking at the servers, Merope just pointed to the food she wanted, and when it was on her plate she moved on without a word of thanks. Small portions of the blandest food were what served her best, and she swallowed them as fast as she could before she left the dining hall without looking back.