Aisling Gregory

Aisling Gregory
Gender: Female
Height: Short

Blood status: Muggleborn
Raised in: Muggle
Home: Unlisted in Residential Areas.

Boggart: Giant Octopus

Patronus: Unknown

Notes: She has a bit of a Scottish accent, which is stronger when she's sentimental or emotional. Also has a deep red, very visible scar on her ankle -- from the thing that tangled her when she was younger; it healed, but never faded.
Aisling is a child of the highest mountains and the fiercest, most beautiful storms. She loves stormy and windy weather -- craving to be out in them, for the sense of wonder and possibility they bring. She enjoys looking for the magical creatures hidden in the moonlight, or the most beautiful roses, or secret glens.

Happy, and content with her own company, the world has always felt filled with magic to her. She climbs trees, scales rocks, and hikes in the mountains without fear or worry. Most creatures don’t instinctively scare her -- rather they evoke wonder and delight.

It’s humans who can be scary. Especially shadowy figures dimly glimpsed. And water; anything she can’t see the bottom of -- or the brisk movement of a stream / wave along her ankles. Well, anything at all messing with her ankles. Or that has long, gross tentacles for limbs. Yikes, awful!

Shadows are filled equally with wonder and terror, for she knows the monster under the bed as something real. And magic not only as a wonder, but as a fearful, terrifying thing. She is muggleborn, though grew up sensing magic was real -- knowing it had to be, but with all of the misconceptions on the nature of magic that this brings. Fanciful, imaginative by nature -- the stories she has read and heard have become all too terrifyingly real for her.

Don’t step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.

Never break a Fairy’s circle -- and every circle of mushrooms or too-perfect arrangement of flowers must be a fairy circle!

Don’t break a mirror, don’t spill salt, don’t walk under a ladder, don’t step on someone’s shadow … the list goes on and on -- shaping most of her actions during the day. She doesn’t dare get it wrong, because bad things could happen!

And bad things have happened.

These particular fears drive her to work hard -- trying to understand the forces that seem to hide in the reflections of mirrors, and the patterns of a storm. It doesn’t quite make sense to her -- the divide between what Hogwarts teaches and what she’s seen out in the ‘real’ world. She's still adapting; trying to sort out the real rules and concepts of magic, from all the muggle fiction she'd consumed.

She’s convinced that she's read every fairytale and children’s fantasy books she can find, and has become something of an expert -- in which her first year at Hogwarts quickly brought her back to reality. But she's determined to discover the threads that tie what she knows about the magic, and myth from her home -- to what is taught at Hogwarts. For all her love of a happy ending, Aisling very much fears the truth is closer to the older Grimm tales than to the modern stories.

This search for truth also makes her incredibly furious with people who lie about magic, or are obscure about it. Even simple or yes / no answers aren't enough for her. She needs to know the truth -- and isn’t sure where that truth can be found. As a result, Aisling respects her Professors (even scary Professor Snape) and puts a lot of trust in them -- being the true "experts" of their magical fields. They know the truth, and they dispense it; her Professors want her to learn and understand. 

The most peace she feels at Hogwarts is trying to spot Magical Creatures from the highest spires of the school, or wandering the greenhouse. Her roughest classes are those that involve wand-focused magic -- with Transfiguration being the worse, followed by Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms.

A part of her still thinks that incantations should be sung.
Aisling is from a Scottish / Irish family that lived near enough to nature that she could explore even at a very young age. She used to have the freedom to wander, up until the incident.

No one talks about the incident, though it divides her life neatly into a before and after.

Aisling doesn’t recall where they were or what they were doing. Just that there was an explosion; something flung her into the water, and tried to drown her. She’d glimpsed a shadowy figure -- someone with a wand, who intended to do people harm. She fears dark folk like that now.

Only back then, what she'd seen didn't make any sense. It wasn't possible, right? So she didn't tell anyone -- never spoke of that figure who probably caused the explosion. Never talked about how the water sucked her down into the horrible cold, clammy water.

When it was still somewhat talked about, they always said how lucky she was to be rescued -- but also how she was screaming about about the thing in the water that tried to drown and eat her. They kept telling her it was just a tangled bit of fishing wire, not a tentacle from a Kraken. Just a wire, wrapped around her ankles and pulling her down. Her right ankle in particular still bears the marks, even years after the wounds fully healed. 

Aisling still wakes up screaming at times, if her sheets wrap a bit too tightly around her or the night air is a bit too cold. Or sometimes, she's convinced it happens just so she never forgets. It has left her with a fear of any body of water large enough to hold an octopus -- or any murky liquid that she can't see through.

Learning magic is real did not do her any favors in that area; Octopi could be magical! They could be anywhere, and could appear in any size! Oh, but she hates and fears octopi or squid. Aisling is convinced the Loch Ness monster is one, and that the Wizarding world tries to hide Nessie away from the Muggle world like it does so many other things. Riding the boat across the dark waters of the lake on her first night at Hogwarts was like a nightmare come true.

Since the incident though, Aisling isn’t often allowed out alone.

Too fanciful, too flighty, and too scared. Aisling isn’t quite sure if that’s because her dad thinks she’s strange, or if her dad simply misses her now that Aisling goes away to school. Or maybe her dad is just afraid, like Aisling is, now that she’s so vulnerable -- and the world is so vast and terrifying. He’s still recovering from that explosion too, as it was the same incident that killed her mother.

Now, Aisling reads and studies more often than she goes hiking. When she’s home during the summer, she often reads to her dad -- all the stories she loves and fears. The same stories her grandmother used to whisper to her, when she taught her about the muggle versions of elves and unicorns and dragons.

The stories that had prepared her for the revelation that yes, magic is real. Just hidden away from the muggle world. Because nuclear weapons are real, too. Aisling hates it, this division in her life -- in the world. But she understands it, especially after her first year at Hogwarts. So she reads her dad the stories, and hopes that somehow he understands the deeper message, and might someday accept her fanciful, superstitious, magical self more easily.

Because he's still trying to wrap his head around it all. His daughter is magical, not just imaginative.

He still has to remind himself that Hogwarts is a wizarding school, and that magic is real. He's just proud she got into a good school -- in his mind, Hogwarts was some fancy private school that only very special children could attend. And his Aisling was one of them.

Reading about magic was different to actually using it, though. Aisling is determined to fit into this magical world she'd only ever been able to dream about. She wants to be normal -- well, the Wizarding World's version of "normal" anyway. Because to her, magic and fantasy are normal; her whole life has been building to this moment, to her finding out the truth and attending Hogwarts.

Which meant that come 2nd year, she was going to try out for the Quidditch team. Despite how flying around on a broomstick makes her a bit queasy, even now. Still. It’s very Wizarding, right? And she loves to be high up -- and feel the wind racing past her. Like a home-made storm. Not that that's allowed, of course! And she'd looked it up, to make sure.

But she’s ready, for year two. She’s read even more -- studied new stories and tales of magic over the summer, trying to ferret out what was missing from her dry-as-dust textbooks. Or even the more interesting ones. Anything she could learn... and perhaps something to make Transfigurations less of a trial to her, and the whole magical world less intimidating. But if it's out there, she will find it. Magic isn't just a story now; it's her life.