x✿xWESLYNxxxREMARKAxxxKNOLLEx❀xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxx✿BASICS❀xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
FORMERLY KNOWN AS Alice Huian Zheng, Weslyn Stern
NICKNAMES Wes, Potato Girl
GENDER Female
SEXUAL ORIENTATION heteroromantic demisexual (although she doesn't know it fully quite yet)
AGE 15
BIRTHDAY January 18th, 2037-- Capricorn
LANGUAGES English, basic Irish Gaelic, Mandarin Chinese.

BLOOD STATUS Halfblood
WAND Potato wood, Unicorn hair core. 10 1/4 inches, brittle. There's a little amethyst at the end and the shaft of the wand is finished in a light-dark-light brown gradient. x
PATRONUS turtle not learned yet
MORE-THAN-AVERAGE Animagus (common octopus) not learned yet


FACECLAIM Sakura Kinomoto > Rachel Momo
HEIGHT 5 ft (152 cm)
WEIGHT 100 lbs (50 kg)

xxx✿SCHOOL AND CAREER❀xxxxxxxxxxxx
ATTENDING Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
YEAR Fifth
HOUSE Hufflepuff
CLUBS
■ Art Club
■ Cooking Club
■ Daily Dragon artist
■ Herbology Club
■ Quidditch reserve and watergirl (yr 2+)

BEST SUBJECTS
■ Care of Magical Creatures
■ Herbology
■ Healing

WORST SUBJECTS
■ Astronomy
■ Defense Against the Dark Arts
■ Transfiguration

DREAM JOB Someone at an aquarium...or a mermaid.

xxx✿PERSONALITY❀xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
INSECURE Weslyn carries a lot of self-doubt and her perception of herself constantly swings from “worthless” to “decent” and back. She tends to take criticism to heart, regardless of if these things are true or said in jest. When she does get praise or positive feedback, she’s either afraid it’s "just polite" or fears not living up to that expectation again. She’s afraid of not being smart enough, not being athletic enough, not being good enough--not being enough. And even if she were suddenly "enough", she's starting to question if she would be brave enough to do anything with it.

TIMID Even young, Weslyn learned that the safest way to be was to stay out of sight, stay quiet, and if told to do anything, do it quickly and without question. Weslyn also keeps herself bottled pretty tightly, her mask of “fine” secure-- she’s only seen anger expressed through violence, so she tries very hard to never feel anything like that and ruin her new family with it. The Knolles have done wonders for her nervousness, and her years at Hogwarts pushed her boundaries, but she's still most comfortable with her family, close friends, and hates to step on anyone's toes.

HARDWORKING Whether that means diligently doing what she’s been told to or just playing by herself, Weslyn will find a way to stay busy and out of the way. While she wasn't great at school when she lived in the city, she did try her hardest anyways. She dreams of just one day waking up a great at everything-- then she'd be able to do more with that work!

HELPFUL Weslyn’s favorite way of staying busy is being useful, and she always wants to be helpful: she would never complain of being hungry while her birthparents were away, she lied to get them out of paying more for psychologist appointments, and she tries to be useful around the farm. While she doesn’t like the spotlight, Wes wants to be able to help other people succeed. She might not be the one to do the great thing, but she'd love to be good enough to be their secretary.

SENTIMENTAL Weslyn still has her baby blanket with her, and often turns to it for comfort at night. She clings to the objects, people and knowledge she does have, and hates losing things.

✿HOBBIES
■ Reading about sea creatures
■ Knitting/ crocheting crafts
■ Swimming

✿LIKES
■ Aquatic animals
■ Kenny's paintings
■ Boxty dish (Potato pancakes)
■ Soft things
■ Knit hats

❀DISLIKES
■ Loud noises, arguments, things breaking.
■ Crowds
■ Tests-- both the experimental kind and the exam kind.
■ Boggarts, jinxes and (anything in DADA)
■ Seafood. Partially because it tastes good, but they used to be wonderful little critters.

✿STRENGTHS
■ Sweet and dependable.
■ Empathetic -- Wes tries to be understanding and assume people mean well.

❀WEAKNESSES
■ Coward--she caves in the face of danger or too much pressure.
■ Clingy and in need of a lot of reassurance.

✿DREAMS
■ Working with marine creatures.
■ Being better.

❀FEARS
■ Running into her old family again
■ Being hit
■ Being yelled at
■ Abandonment-- aka the Knolles dropping her like a hot potato

xxx✿BACKSTORY❀xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
✿❀EARLY CHILDHOOD Weslyn used to be Alice Zheng. Alice lived in Dublin, Ireland, where her father, Iain, was busy getting his degree, and her mother, Faye, worked at a pub to make ends meet. Alice’s parents argued a lot: about finances, housing, the future, the fact that they never had a proper wedding ceremony or ring, work, Alice herself. Sometimes these would get violent, and Alice quickly learned that intervening only made things worse and resulted in her getting yelled at or hit. But inevitably, her parents would always get back together.

School was never easy, and nothing Alice ever did seemed to be good enough. Then in second grade, she threw a crayon in anger at someone, missed, and instead managed to explode the crayon over the wall. The school insisted on a psychologist for anger issues. Back home, the financial problems got worse. In an effort to avoid the sessions, Alice portrayed herself as an alternate person with a different family life, basing her story off her favorite characters from cartoons.

Faye had been a witch at Long Jiang School of Magic, but dropped out when she got pregnant to pursue her relationship across the sea. She had planned on leaving magic and that world behind, but as the stress got to her, Faye started using magic to take care of the home. Alice’s magic manifested initially as small things: her baby blanket alone would be able to keep her warm on cold nights, spills on her clothes would vanish when no one was looking. Before Faye properly realized, Iain caught on: He saw Alice as a fascination, to be studied and investigated. Working from home, he would tell her to do things repeatedly and either praise or yell at her. Alice was terrified--she didn't know how to control her magic and mostly she just destroyed things or nothing happened. Faye managed to convince him to keep this "discovery" secret and denied any knowledge of magic, caught between horror at her husband's clinical interest, and her desperation to preserve magical secrecy. She did though, notice his ire was usually turned away from her, and they argued much less.

Finally, Faye’s grandfather, posing as a licensed counselor, offered to raise the child while Iain finished his dissertation and Faye figured out finances. Happy to have his magic passed off as “sleights of hand" and cheerful "entertainment", the old wizard raised Alice in Belfast for three months, taking her to aquariums, telling her stories of Long Jiang, and teaching her to control her magic. As his health started failing, he got her to open up. He convinced Alice there was more to life than surviving the next argument and offered her a restart. Then, armed with false papers in case anyone came searching, he took her to his old friends, the Knolles.

✿❀ADOPTION On Christmas 2044, Alice, now Weslyn, began a nervously happy life with her new family. There were a lot of potatoes involved, but she had siblings to play with now: Yukon always made working in the field fun, she liked reading with Kennebec, and Hannah made her potato pancakes every morning. Trusting that her identity was safely hidden, Weslyn slowly started to bury her past and embrace life on the farm. The next three years were a quiet and happy life. She got closer to her brothers, particularly Kenny, but never quite opened up about what her life was like before. She missed Yukon terribly when he was at Hogwarts, but when her own Hogwarts letter arrived, she was still nervous.

✿❀SCHOOL YEARS
■✿FIRST YEAR Weslyn was relieved to be sorted into Yukon's Hufflepuff house and spent most of her time following her brothers everywhere. She stuck close to Kenny in class, where she found most of her courses both extraordinarily interesting and difficult. Yukon caught on to her following behavior in the first week though, and pushed her boundaries by dropping her off alone at Cooking club. It turned out to be a very good experience, and as the year went on, Weslyn slowly got more comfortable hanging out with her class or clubmates. She attended the Valentine's dance with Yukon and Kenny, but talked to other people there. She even befriended a merman in the lake!

❀SECOND YEAR started with Yukon persuading her to join the Quidditch team. Weslyn didn't really want to play, but she did want to support her house where she could. Otherwise, she kept plenty busy with clubs, and got more comfortable with her drawing and cooking. If she wasn't in clubs or studying with her brothers, she hung out by the Lake with fellow hydrophile Skipper and their merman friend, Asra; if it was too cold to swim, she'd still hang out and knit or draw. She enjoyed the company of Yukon's friends in clubs, her roommate Willow back at the dorm, and was slowly starting to feel more at ease in her own skin.

That summer, while discussing electives and shopping for books, Weslyn came face to face with Faye and a young boy. Thankfully, even though Wes panicked, the incident was waved aside and Faye left. Back at home, Wes finally told her brothers everything about her life before coming to the Knolles.

✿THIRD YEAR Weslyn spent a good part of her year getting as much of Annie Sheehan, her artist mentor and friend, before Annie graduated. Thus, in addition to a bunch of knitting projects, Wes also added a lot more drawings projects to her portfolio. Her electives were equally hard as interesting, and between studying, clubs and swimming, Wes was very busy the rest of the hours. Thus, Weslyn was surprised when her friend Eden asked her out. She agreed, mostly since it seemed to make him really happy. It was mostly studying together, and talking about themselves, and while she was worried he spent too much money on her, she grew to really enjoy listening to his stories and found herself sharing things she usually only told her brothers.

❀FOURTH YEAR Fourth year amped up the pressure in classes. Between four clubs, Quidditch, and classes, Weslyn was constantly studying often under Eden's diligent tutelage. On the other hand, Eden was constantly frustrated with being anything less than the top of the class and constantly vented to her, which was quite stressful. He also had a tendency to stick with her all the time, barely giving her any time with other friends and family. By the end of the school year, Wes started looking for a way to break up without sacrificing their friendship. The whole situation stressed her out greatly, which caused her plants to suffer, and struggling in Herbology stressed her out even more.

At the beginning of the summer, Eden had splurged to take her to the Aquarium in Belfast--the first aquarium she'd ever been to with her great-grandfather. At the end, he gave her the contact information to Alice's old family, including the name of her little brother. With her brothers' support, Skips' encouragement, and her own fear driving her, she finally broke up with Eden, even if it didn't go as expected.
✿FIFTH YEAR
❀SIXTH YEAR
✿SEVENTH YEAR

✿❀POST-GRADUATION



xxx✿RELATIONSHIPS❀xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
FAMILY
■ Parents Hannah Knolle, farmer (halfblood); Kerr Knolle, farmer (muggle)
■ Siblings Yukon Russel Knolle, sweet potato (halfblood); Kennebec Cárthach Knolle, sprouting artist (halfblood)

■ Birthparents Faian “Faye” Cao, bartender and waitress, Long Jiang dropout (halfblood); Lanqiu “Iain” Zheng, physics professor (muggle)
■ Great-Grandfather Cao Xifeng, wandering “magician” and storyteller (halfblood, deceased)

FRIENDS
■ Artist inspiration: Annie Sheehan
■ Eden Harper, Skipper Hawkins, Willow Hill, Tori Miyazawa, Celeste Shoichet
■ Older students: Eion Delacroix, Aspen Hill, Brook Knapp, Gus Moore, Wren Winchester
■ Asra, friendly merman


xxx✿UPDATES❀xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
CREATED May 2019
UPDATED 06 January 2021
UPDATES MADE
■ Year 4 update
■ (recent update)
■ (recent update)

PENDED BY ĸυng 1/3/2020
ACCEPTED BY ~Dia [3/30/2020]
RECENT UPDATES ACCEPTED BY (do not touch this)