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F U L L . N A M E
Ceres Valencia Mourne
N I C K N A M E S . A N D . A L I A S E S
A G E
29
D A T E . O F . B I R T H
November 3rd | â
G E N D E R
Female
S E X U A L . O R I E N T A T I O N
Bisexual | Aromantic (?)
B L O O D . T Y P E
Pure
W A N D
Core: kestral tail hair
Wood: pine
Length: twelve inches
P A T R O N U S
She is unable to produce one, as a powerfully euphoric memory is necessary in order to produce the charm.
B O G G A R T
When faced with a boggart, it takes the form of a twelve year old girl with long black hair and an innocent expression. Ceres, still but a child.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Ceres is nothing if not a complicated soul, and a woman whose self-portrait is one glazed by the darkest of shades. She is a woman who is long past trying to heal the scars that line the paper of her personal canvas, and has instead chosen to cover them with shadows and ink. She has been cut deep, and age-old wounds crevice her heart, but instead of filling them, she finds solace in their emptiness.
Ceres has always been intelligent, frightfully so. Her intellect borders on genius, and with it comes a sharp tongue that deftly delivers quick and constantly cold retorts. Her sarcasm is quite often found interlaced into her words, leaving almost every sentence that passes her lips tainted with a patronizing chill. She tends to be the cleverest person in the room, and rarely acts otherwise, her knowledge of her own skill and ability often passing into levels of arrogance and pride (the latter of which is something she holds in extremely high regard).
In many ways, her personal scars and emotional isolation have provided her a source of protection, they have built a fortress around her, and she arms it with words like daggers and all the ferocity of a Hungarian Horntail.
That being said, such pain has proved detrimental to her morals, wearing away at her compass, and twisting the arrow towards a different path. With the lack of justice and love in her life came an altercation of values, a twist in her beliefs. Her hope now disdain, her innocence now hatefulness.
Paired with her intelligence is Ceres' ability to lie and cheat, her knack for manipulation granted by her silver tongue. As much as she enjoys the pain-inducing side of what she does, she has an odd fondness for toying with people, and playing them for fools. Such a thing is something she tends to find easy to do, and does nothing if not fuels her arguable blossoming ego.
When it comes to emotion, Ceres is a glacier, cold and serene. Rarely does she betray herself by showing rage or shock, and instead tends to keep to a few typical expressions. When ferocity hits her, she takes the form of a plague, silent and unseen, but deadly upon contact. When she is in this mood of pestilence, she is frightening in her calm, terrifying from in her small smirks to her straight faces. When struck by the infamously 'red' emotion, she carries with her a tension that is both suffocating and nerve-wracking, and her moment to 'snap' is a constant worry that is rarely founded.
Ceres does show one bright emotion, however, albeit in the grimmest manner possible. She shows enjoyment in what she views as justice. In the pain of those that oppose her and her cause, of those that anger or irritate, of those that in any way bring harm to the very few things she cares about. The cruciatus curse is something she is renowned for, as is she for the morbid smirk that so often flutters across her lips as she performs the torturous spell.
Some say she's psychotic, and they're probably right. For what other kind of person finds joy in spawning agony, bending will, and gifting death? In fact, however, she isn't wildly without purpose, and has a very specific reason that she enjoys these things: power. Any ambition individual will tell you just how delicious power is, the glorious feeling that having true power gives you. The feeling of being untouched by the weaknesses that riddle the rest of humanity, of quite literally holding the world in the palm of your hand, of playing God, and deciding fates based on personal interest and spur-of-the-moment sensations. Power is something that Ceres lived the first eighteen years of her life without. She was clay in the hands of those with power, a toy to be fooled with and a game to be played. Now she is the one on top, and she revels in it. And she doesn't just play the game, she wins it. Always.
As a result Ceres has seemingly relinquished her weaknesses. She acts as though their are no chinks in her armor. That her iron skin is impenetrable. But there are a few things she does care about, a rare few cases in which what remains of her heart beats with a steady, reluctant hum. The people she cares about run far and few, but those people are the ones that she both loves and loathes the most. For they give her the weaknesses of anyone else, be they witch, wizard, or muggle. Her ambition is driven by her determination to leave her haunts behind her, and her old feelings of self-loathing riddle every action she commits. Her smiles are rare, save from her infamous 'killing smirk', but there are times when her lips reluctantly curl into something more genuine.
Above all, she hates what is still trapped deep inside of her.
A scared little girl, stupidly searching for light in a oblivion of darkness.
F A M I L Y
Mother | Lyra Mourne (nee Caelum) | Deceased
Father | Erik Mourne | Deceased
H I S T O R Y
Ceres was born into the elite of wizarding society. The Mournes and the Caelums, two of the wealthiest and powerful pureblood wizarding families, both infamous for their ties with the Dark Lord before his downfall, and both renowned for their mysteriousness. No one seemed to know exactly what went on behind the walls of the family estates, but around the manors hung a fog of grim foreboding. Both families were among a group of pureblood 'sister' families that often married into one another in a so-far successful attempt to keep their bloodlines pure.
Lyra and Erik were the result of an arranged marriage, and they were both as cold and sadistic as their parents and grandparents before them. An only child, Ceres grew up in an environment in which she was little more than an experiment, a toy, a trophy to be flaunted. Affection was rare and upon any mistake, be it a flaw in a spell (of which she was taught the moment she could wield a wand) or a mistake in manners, punishment was harsh. Physical abuse, however, was rare. No, the Mournes were people of the mind, and their 'disciplining' showed exactly this.
One of the most common punishments was locking Ceres in the same room as a boggart, sometimes for hours on end, depending on the level of her 'crime'. As Ceres grew up, the Boggart shifted in form. At six, it was a hinkypunk. At eight to ten, it simply filled the room with black abyss. At eleven, it was a dementor. At twelve, it was her parents.
Ceres continued living this pampered yet torturous lifestyle, and was never without material want. Through her parents polar changes in attitude towards her depending on how she herself behaved, she became adept at being 'perfect'. She never spoke unless spoken to, she never grinned or laughed, she was always composed and well-mannered, albeit cold and distant. She learnt important survival techniques whilst living in the Mourne household, and when she was sixteen, and her parents began giving her short bursts of the cruciatus curse, she learnt how to mask her pain. However, beneath the politeness, and the calm, a storm was brewing. And at the eye of the hurricane, a deepset loathing, poisonous and deadly. Ceres hated them. She hated them more than she could bear.
She wanted them dead.
It was when she was eighteen, just after she'd graduated a wizarding school in America, that she met him. The Master. He invited her, coaxed her to join him. His words were like silk, and everything he said, every promise he spouted, lured her into his web. The evil in his soul was obvious, but it did not deter her. Instead, Ceres saw a more glorious reflection of herself. She was a faded photograph, and he a flawless portrait. And so she ran away with him. She joined his then-small group of eager witches and wizards, some naive, merely eager for a bit of excitement, or an act of rebellion. The others, they were similar to Ceres. Children whose hearts were riddled with black. Hateful, angry children. Some were reluctant, and as they flocked to the Master's side, their eyes were glazed over and distant; victims of the Imperius curse. As she saw them, Ceres felt a smirk tug at her lips.
For two years, she was subjected to all manner of curses. Trained far beyond the point where others had broken, rarely betraying the agony rushing through her veins, burning like fire. It was when she was twenty that she returned home.
Her parents were still there, and when they saw her, their initial shock faded to an odd pride.
Never before had their daughter looked so cruel. So powerful.
"Well done, Ceres, it seems that you've-"
"Avada kedavra!"
Ceres won't deny how wonderful it felt, for it was then that she got her first taste of power. It was something she was soon to become obsessed with.