InsaneJournal

Emma Dobbs for euphorialane
The Player:

Your name: Edward The Amazing And Sparkly Marble Statue Cullen
Your age: Really old, but I look 18-ish
Timezone: Whatever timezone I want, since I'm SO FAST I can change timezones in mere seconds
AIM contact: lulz sparkly vampire
OOC journal: likes_coffin_bait
Previous RPG experience: Really Phosphorescent Guy? That's totally me!

The Character:

Name: Emma Louise Dobbs
Birthday: 27 January, 1983; 21
Blood: Half-blood
Former house: Hufflepuff, 1994 - 2001

Sexual orientation: Pansexual
Marital Status: Single

Nationality: British
Hometown: Brighton, England
Residence: 218B above Moon & Sun Cafe

Occupation: Candy slave Honeydukes worker by day, stripper by night
Financial Status: Just barely liveable
Political Affiliation: Anyone who promotes love and happiness

Social stereotype: The free-loving stripper

Personality: Growing up, Emma was always incredibly interested in the people and things around her. It was because of this that the Sorting Hat briefly considered putting her in Ravenclaw, before deciding that she was definitely better-suited to Hufflepuff. After all, Hufflepuff can't be completely full of quiet little push-overs with "doormat" written on their foreheads. Emma was happy to defy the stereotypes by being an outspoken, confident, and spontenous Hufflepuff. To her, "Hufflepuff" isn't an insult, it's a compliment: she's proud to be a Badger. She has the key Hufflepuffian qualities of being a hard-worker and loyal, and she is also very easy-going, nothing really shocks her or sends here into a frenzy.

Actually, Emma is rather like a hippie who somehow ended up in the wrong generation. The whole concept of "free love" is very important to Emma. In her opinion, love is just that: freeing. Love should be freely given and expressed. Waiting for specific days (Valentine's Day, anniversaries, etc) only undermines the truth of the feelings. Likewise, love should never lead to "ownership" ... rather, your loved one does not "belong" to you. For that reason, despite growing up with happily-married parents and aunts and uncles, Emma does not believe in marriage, because she believes that it leads to feelings of ownership toward the loved one, which is just totally not cool. In her opinion, marriage is the very opposite of love.

Love, likewise, does not know gender (or even species). Again, love should be freely given, with no consideration for the gender or species that the feelings are expressed to. Although society might try to dictate that love should be only between a man and a woman, Emma believes that this only serves to undermine the truth about love, and that it stems from people's fears of the unknown.

Emma believes that the human body is beautiful and nothing to be ashamed of. Part of this belief stems from living so near a nude beach growing up, and indeed living almost directly off of it for the past few years, but people who are uncomfortable with their own bodies are doing a disservice to themselves. Your body is beautiful the way it is, and there is nothing shameful about showing it off. She often returns to the nude beach in Brighton to sunbathe (yes, in the nude) when the weather is good, and she is also completely fine with routinely taking her clothes off for money. If people want to watch her do so because they don't have someone to go home to who would do the same (or that someone wouldn't do that anyway), then that is perfectly fine. Likewise, if a man wants to sleep with her, regardless of having an existing romantic relationship, then again, that is fine because love should be free, which means that it should also be open; monogamy again attempts to force ownership upon love, which isn't what love should be about.

Childhood:
- Father: Patrick Ronald Dobbs b. 6 November, 1955; d. 16 July, 2000; Ravenclaw 1967 - 74; was a diplomat in the Department of International Magical Cooperation
- Mother: Elizabeth Mary Dobbs (neé Kegg) b. 13 April, 1956; Ravenclaw 1967 - 74; Healer at St. Mungo's (spell damage)
- Sister: Lisa Emmeline Dobbs b. 21 March 1985; Ravenclaw 1996 - 2003 (trainee healer)

- Uncle: William Cornfoot b. circa 1947
- Aunt: Margaret Cornfoot (neé Kegg) b. circa 1950
- Cousin: Stephen Cornfoot b. 29 December, 1979
- Cousin: Sophie Cornfoot b. circa 1986

Patrick Dobbs and Elizabeth Kegg met at Hogwarts in 1967, when they were sorted into the same house. They were friends from the start, but both were stubborn and pig-headed, so they frequently got into heated debates over just about any topic under the sun. Grades were a constant battle between the two as they fought to score better than the other on homework and exams, but especially their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. Both dated other people while students and had no romantic inclination toward the other, remaining friends instead. After finishing Hogwarts in 1974, they went their separate ways, Patrick into the Ministry and Elizabeth into St. Mungo's. Although they stayed friends and met occasionally for lunch or tea at first, after a couple years they drifted apart. Until, that is, six years later, when Patrick was admitted to the hospital after having been hit by a hex that had him gobbling like a turkey. Elizabeth cared for him and, after he was cured, their friendship rekindled and into something more. Seven months later, in the middle of 1981 and shortly before Voldemort disappeared, they eloped.

Their first child, a daughter they named Emma, was born at the beginning of 1983. Second daughter Lisa followed two years later in early 1985. The childhood for the Dobbs children was rather quiet and peaceful. Because both of their parents were still working their respective jobs, they were often cared for by a nanny. Patrick and Elizabeth tried to be around for their children as much as possible, but neither wanted to give up their career to stay at home. When Emma was four and Lisa two, the family settled into a small house in the coastal town of Brighton, England.

Emma became immediately fascinated with the people around her, and she loved spending time at the beach. When she was eight, she managed to escape from her nanny for a short while to explore the beach on her own and stumbled upon the nudist area of the beach. Instead of being shocked by the people who were, well, not fully clothed, she was actually even more fascinated. In fact, she was fascinated by the whole Kemptown area itself, the whole bohemian aspect of it all. Unfortunately, after she told her parents all about where she saw, the current nanny was fired and a new one, who was better at keeping a firm eye on Emma and Lisa, was hired, so Emma had little chance to return to Kemptown.

When Emma was eleven, her Hogwarts owl arrived, and she was happy to go off to school where there were sure to be more fascinating people to watch. She was sorted into Hufflepuff, and was very excited when the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students arrived for the triwizard tournament. When the rest of her house was outraged by Harry Potter making it into the tournament along with their champion Cedric Diggory, Emma was very zen and calm about it, very "well, he's part of our school, too, so we ought to support him as well." She was as shocked and terrified as the rest of the school when Cedric Diggory died during the third task, but she wasn't sure if she believed Dumbledore that You-Know-Who was back. Indeed, as her family subscribed to the Prophet (and her father worked for the Ministry), they believed Dumbledore and Harry Potter to be crazy, but Emma was quoted that summer as saying "crazy is just a state of mind."

After it was revealed that Voldemort was indeed back and the war began in earnest, Emma and Lisa (who joined her sister at Hogwarts in 1996) were fairly safe from the goings-on of the war, secluded as they were at Hogwarts, away from the fighting. Wards were put up around the house to keep at bay those who might mean the family harm, and Emma and Lisa were more or less restricted to the house during the summer hols (they stayed at school for the Christmas hols). Despite the family's attempts to remain safe, Patrick died near the end of the war, taken down by a Death Eater.

War involvements: Emma was a seventh year when the war ended, and although she toyed with the idea of joining one of the programmes that had been set up during the war, it was rather pointless by the time she finished school, as the war was over, and none of them particularly interested her, anyway. Instead, she ended up with a job at one of the Hogsmeade shoppes that she had loved the best while a Hogwarts student: Honeydukes. She managed to scrape together enough money to get a small one-bedroom flat in Kemptown, but she simply was not making enough money at Honeydukes to afford both her rent and food.

It was one of her neighbors that gave her the idea for a secondary occupation to supplement her income: the neighbor, a muggle girl named Chastity, was a stripper, and she pointed out that Emma had a great body for it, as well as the requisite lack of shame. As the club had recently lost a couple of their strippers, Chastity brought Emma to her club one night and introduced her to the owner, who gave her an audition. Emma, who had recently turned nineteen, shook it for all she was worth and was rewarded with a job. With the money that Emma made during her shifts at Honeydukes and the money she made at the strip club, she was much better off than before, though she still hovered around the just-barely-liveable line. In early 2004, a disagreement between Emma and some of the other strippers led to Emma quitting. Through word-of-mouth, she found out about the Alley Cat on Knockturn Alley in London and secured a job there. Due to constantly smelling of candy, thanks to her job at Honeydukes, she started using the stage name of "Candy" at the Alley Cat.

Living in Brighton but working both in London and Hogsmeade, Emma wanted to try to centralise herself and try to work and live in more or less the same place. The fact that a branch of Honeydukes had recently opened on Euphoria Lane, not far from Knockturn Alley and the Alley Cat, prompted her to start thinking about moving to London and transferring from the Honeydukes in Hogsmeade to the branch on Euphoria Lane. What really cinched the move for her, however, was when her old school friend Ellie Cattermole wrote to say that she had finally moved back to Britain, though she was still living with her parents. Emma suggested that they get a flat together on Euphoria Lane, because then they would both still be "independent" and "on their own," but they would be able to split the rent on the flat and have someone to hang out with when they were both home from work.

Height: 5'3"
Distinguishing marks/features? The first thing that anyone notices about Emma, even when she's stripping, is her hair. It's about shoulder-length, thick, wavy/curly, and a gorgeous shade of golden-red (and yes, the drapes match the carpet, ahem). With her red hair and freckles, it's easy to assume that she might be a long-lost Weasley, but she actually bears no relation to the famed red-haired clan. She also has a sweet, unassuming face, such that people often do a double-take when they find out that she's a stripper. She certainly looks much more like she would be at home serving candy to small children than up on stage, taking her clothes off for ogling men.

PB choice: Erin Chambers
Preferred character journal: freelovencandy | freelovencandy

Relationships:

Spouse/Partner/Flatmate/Etc: Ellie Cattermole (roommate)
Relationship length They've been friends since childhood, since their fathers knew each other through their ministry jobs. They became roommates for the first time when they were both sorted into Hufflepuff in 1994, but as flatmates now, they're only just moving into a flat together.

History/Dynamics: The confident, easy-going, spontaneous Emma has, for pretty much the entire time she's known Ellie, been the one to drag Ellie along on her crazy ideas and get her to have fun, be less worried about pleasing people, and be more spontaneous.

The Writing

Third person sample:
"Here you go!" Emma smiled, handing the bag full of sweets to the rosy-cheeked little boy who stood in front of the counter, his eyes gleaming with joy as he took his purchases from her. That was one of the things that Emma loved about working at Honeydukes: she got to be around kids all day, and they were absolutely adorable, but she didn't have to do anything but feed their sugar addiction. She would hate to have children of her own, all those dirty diapers and things like that, but selling things to other people's children was perfectly fine.

As the little boy tottered off with his purchases, the teenage girl who'd been behind him dumped her own armload of candy onto the counter. Emma rang up and bagged her purchases, then told the girl how much she owed. Money exchanged hands, followed by the bag of candy exchanging hands in the opposite direction. The money went into the register and Emma turned to see that a familiar face had been in line behind the girl.

"Oh, hello!" she said with a smile as she began ringing up their purchases. "How are you today?"

Additional info:

Where did you hear about us? Well, I was in Houston a while ago with a bunch of totally awesome girls, and they just kept talking about this thing called Euphoria Lane, and I just couldn't resist.

Anything else you think we should know? My ear itches.