while francesca, herself, has never done anything that scandalous and has handled herself quite well despite what she has had to grow up with, and even has friends with higher reputations and in the upper class, her family has had some issues that were public: her elder siblings are not shy about how they don’t like her, her father was fired from his ministry job for being an alcoholic and it’s possible people know he hasn’t gotten clean and continues to drink, they had to move from bartonburg north to south afterward along with a few other downgrades in their lifestyle, and most of the money that the garlick family uses to send francesca to school and pay for what they do have belongs to the elder siblings’ and francesca’s step-mother’s families.

father: sean garlick [b. 1817]
mother: francesca garlick née vivaldi [1827-1876]

brother: --- garlick [b. 1848] & family
brother: --- garlick [b. 1852] & family
sister: --- née garlick [b. 1857] & family

step-mother: --- garlick née [b. 1851]

half-sister: --- garlick [b. 1879]
half-brother: --- garlick [b. 1882]

face claim: nicola coughlan
ethnicity: caucasian
height: 155 cm
weight: 68 kg
build: chubby
eyes: blue
hair colour: red
hair style: up in light waves or curls, has a fondness for feathers or flowers
distinguishing features: despite being on the lower end of middle class and unable to afford them, she owns a few expensive jewelry pieces that were gifted to her by her best friend, jessamine parkinson; she also sews and alters most of her own clothes!

scent: flowers, honey, and lemon

demeanor: francesca has a sweet, warm, even motherly presence that can be easily compared to a warm hug or freshly baked muffins; you know that when she’s around that you will be safe, protected, and there will be someone who will take care of you. despite being a friendly person who is willing to befriend anyone who gives her the time of day, she’s definitely more of a wallflower who feels uncomfortable being the center of attention, so it’s not likely you will find her making a spectacle of herself. she is a romantic, who tends to fall in love with the very concept of love and gives her heart very quickly, which means she’s also very prone to getting hurt easily; but, it also means that she can giggle and be a bit flirty and even sometimes shy and stare at you from across the room with a longing look in her eye when she chooses you to be her interest for the time being.

fashion: despite not liking to be the center of attention and preferring to stay on the sidelines of most public events, chessie’s fashion style is bright and colorful; rich colors, not just pastels, flowers, and feathers, and she likes to mix muggle fashion with wizarding fashion, even creating her own designs and sewing them up together. if it wasn’t so below her class, she would enjoy being a seamstress, but so far most of her designs are limited to drawings she has done or things she has altered to wear herself. she prefers gold jewelry against her skintone to silver, as well as the bigger pieces of the past years to the modern smaller ones, but she can only afford so much when she shops for them. many of her more expensive pieces are gifts from her close friend, jessamine parkinson, who has also given her old dresses of hers to tear apart and experiment with when designing and sewing.

TW: alcoholism, child abuse/neglect, parental death

early childhood
1876 - 1887
it seemed to everyone like mr. sean garlick and miss francesca vivaldi were the romance for the ages; he was a rising star in the ministry of magic, she was an upper class debutante from rome, italy who came to ireland with her elder brother after the death of their parents, and the two were love at first sight. they had a rather idyllic life in a beautiful cottage in the countryside and had three lovely children; two sons and a daughter and they all seemed to do particularly well when it was time for them to go to hogwarts. their eldest was engaged to be married, their youngest was almost ready for her grand debut into society when it all fell apart; francesca fell pregnant by accident and when she gave birth, a lovely daughter, she didn’t survive the process.

her death crushed the entire family, but also due to all of the societal expectations, it also meant that the eldest son postponed his wedding, their oldest daughter would not be debuting until she came out of mourning. in his grief, sean named the little girl after his deceased wife, her middle name one of his wife’s favorite names that they hadn’t yet used, and he would dote on her with his whole heart. he would spend hours just holding her, as if somehow by caring for francesca would bring his wife back, but perhaps he knew that if he put her down, one of his older children may have killed the child for taking away their mother.

francesca’s siblings hated her and they would make that quite clear to her from the moment she was old enough to understand the concept of the word ‘hate’ and that horrible feeling was only made worse when in 1877, sean remarried, sold their old home in ireland and moved them out to bartonburg, hogsmeade. he didn’t love her, not really, but he needed someone who could be a mother to his youngest and she was nearly a spinster, having been told by a seer that she would never bear children of her own, so he doubted that she would mind if their relationship was more about safety and security than actual love. the woman didn’t mind at all and she was very happy to take care of francesca, but it seemed the seer must have lied about her infertility or made an awful mistake in her reading, because by 1879, she had her first child, a daughter, and by 1882, she had her second child, a son.

sean tried his best to love his two new children, but knowing that they didn’t belong to the love of his life sank him into a deep depression that left him drinking so much that he lost his job at the ministry and forced the family to downsize their home and take out loans that his wife wasn’t sure if they could pay back. sean’s older children tried to pitch in what they could after that, his daughter married fairly well and her husband was kind enough to help keep them afloat at least for appearances sake, but they were always one bad year from potentially sinking to the working class. meanwhile, francesca was beginning to get a bit older and understand that her family could no longer afford the luxuries that it once did, for instance, she had to say goodbye to her governess, whom had previously taught all three of her elder siblings, but no longer could work for them as she was too expensive, and so she was then introduced to the one paid for by a group of middle class families to share. her father was always sick, as far as she was told, which was just the polite euphemism for too drunk or hungover to do anything fun with her, her step-mother was always stressed about something, and her older siblings would ignore her at best, berate her at worst if they ever came into contact with her, which aside from the middle son who lived at home until he was married, wasn’t that often.

it was a difficult home life for the next few years; sean eventually got himself another job, though it barely kept them in the middle class and often relied on his sons to help, her step-mother seemed too busy with her actual children to pay any mind to francesca, and she didn’t have a whole lot of friends. she learned to be very independent early, but it also taught her to be incredibly nurturing to those who also felt like lost lambs the way she was and that would stand out when she had some interactions with her younger siblings or younger children in the community. her father, when he wasn’t drunk, hungover, or working, did lavish her with things he probably couldn’t afford, gifts, he’d teach her italian songs that her mother used to sing, tell her stories, and make her feel a little less alone, even if for only a few minutes. her father would always apologize for not being good enough for her, even when she was barely old enough to understand him and francesca would always forgive him.

at nine years old, francesca found herself walking by herself in padmore park and came across a girl playing chess against herself; she didn’t know what compelled her to approach the girl, especially as she could tell by her silk ribbons and her new dress that she was above her somehow, but she did and offered to join her game. she would lose terribly, as the girl, who would introduce herself as jessamine parkinson, was the best chess player she’d ever met, but the two girls would become fast friends and would meet often in the park to spend time with each other. they would talk a lot and eventually it would come out that both of them dealt with difficult home lives that they weren’t supposed to talk about and it brought them closer; she felt less alone to know this about jessamine and they became confidants, especially knowing they’d be in the same year at hogwarts.



hogwarts school of witchcraft + wizardry
1887 - present
before leaving for hogwarts, francesca’s father would give her a golden locket, one of the few nice things they still owned, and inside it would be a picture of her late mother, and she would cherish it forever. she held jessamine’s hand tightly after they left the first year boats and entered the great hall for the sorting and didn’t let go until her name was called, not wanting to separate from her only friend before she had to. it was devastating for francesca to watch as her best friend was sorted into ravenclaw, leaving her by herself in hufflepuff; she barely ate anything at the feast, despite being hungry and she would cry all night at the injustice of it all; perhaps it was a bit of a dramatic reaction, but for someone who had no one - as her half siblings were too little to care about her and her older siblings hated her existence - losing the only person she did have felt like a death sentence.

it cheered her up, however, that jessamine didn’t seem to mind that they were in different houses and she still would sit with her during lessons and they spent time together. once francesca got settled she even began to make new friends, joined a few clubs like the book club and the gardening club, then later in her school career she added on art club along with art classes and showed up sometimes to care of magical creature club to take care of the animals. she thrived at hogwarts, and even though she knew that there were still people who knew of her family and teased her for all the stuff they knew about, she had nothing to worry about because her best friend protected her and was not afraid of making up vicious rumors and gossip if she had to.

in her third year she would choose care of magical creatures and earth magic as the electives that interested her most, but ended up tacking on muggle studies since she had a small bit of a curiosity about what it was like to be a muggle since her mother was muggleborn and never had a chance to ask her about it. as she got a bit older, now a teenager in years, francesca started to notice there were even more glaring differences between her and some of her classmates; there were students not there anymore because of the expense of school was too much for them whereas others were talking about whether they were going to go to finishing school after their o.w.l.s or not. as she was middle class, she was neither destitute nor one of the heiresses, but she also knew that her education was largely funded by her step-mother’s family because of her father’s problems with holding down a job. while some of her classmates knew their future was to marry and keep house, francesca turned to her hobbies to see if there were things she could turn into a trade - she loved to design and sew, so she got into that in case she had to make money as a seamstress, and she considered if she made it far enough she could do something with herbology, and maybe if her employers could look past her family’s troubles, she could even be a governess or chaperone.

after completing her o.w.l.s, she fully expected that her parents would inform her that she would not be returning to hogwarts; that her step-mother’s family had gotten tired of paying for her and she was ready to figure things out on her own. but, that was not what happened; instead, she was told she would be going back to get her n.e.w.t.s, just like her elder siblings did, and francesca was over the moon… the only catch was that she had to earn favor with her upper class friends and debut properly in order to try to marry up. francesca didn’t think that was too big of a problem, as she was still friends with jessamine and some other upper class girls, but she felt sort of gross about the idea of using someone for their money; she was a romantic, someone who swooned and cried and dreamt up every scenario from the romance novels she read - she would marry for love or not at all. but, she wanted to go back to hogwarts so badly, so she agreed to the terms, feeling she made an awful decision, especially because they made her make an unbreakable vow over it to ensure that she would not go back on her word once she graduated.

francesca was too ashamed to tell anyone about what she had promised, as nobody liked a social climber or a golddigger, but she didn’t want her hogwarts education to end so soon. as she entered her final year at school, joined by her two younger siblings, she felt like the date on the calendar was a ticking time bomb, as it was only a matter of months before she was supposed to enter society and find an upper class man to marry before she entered spinsterhood. she kept considering telling her friends, at the very least her best friend, but she was terrified what they would think of her; she couldn’t bear losing them.

strengths: artistic, forgiving, honest, independent, loyal, nurturing, patient, protective, responsible, romantic

weaknesses: anxious, cowardly, disorganized, gullible, fanciful, nosy, passive, pushover, socially awkward, wallflower

likes: baking, bright and bold colors, citrus, cooking, earth based magic, embroidery, croquet, cross-stitch, fashion designing, feathers, flowers, gardening, golden jewelry, knitting, painting, playing chess with minnie, rainy days, reading, romance, sketching, sour candy, sweets, taking care of animals and people who need it, telling good puns, walking out in the sunshine

dislikes: alcohol, being the center of attention, blood purists, bullies, classism, dying plants, dull colors, having to start a project over, her family’s poor financial situation, her elder siblings, humid weather, not being able to help those who need it, not being able to tell her friends things, social climbing, violence, unbreakable vows, when she has to apologize for minnie’s behavior

fears: a class drop, a significant rep drop, being alone, dying because of the unbreakable vow, losing her friends, especially after they find out about her need to social climb, never finding true love, seeing someone suffering that she can’t help or protect

goals: find a career she enjoys, perhaps with animals, fashion, or plants, have children of her own, marry an upper class man to survive the unbreakable vow, preferably one that actually loves her, not make an embarrassment of herself after her big debut

habits: apologizing for things she didn’t do, blushes easily, eavesdrops a lot, falls in love too quick with anyone who pays her attention, likes to hug or hold her friend’s hands, nurtures anything in need, offers her help whenever she can, romanticizes everything, sketching out ideas for new designs on spare pieces of parchment, talks a lot when nervous or anxious, wallflower

hobbies: baking, cooking, croquet, cross-stitch, designing outfits, diary writing, embroidery, fashion, gardening, knitting, long walks in the park, nurturing animals, painting, reading romance novels, sewing, sketching, tutoring students, wizard’s chess

— skills —
01. fluent in english, italian, latin (magical), learning french
02. has an affinity for earth based magic; herbology, comc, etc.
03. knows basic first aide - both muggle & magical
04. skilled fashion designer & seamstress
05. talented artist, specifically drawn or painted artwork (mostly fashion designs)

— trivia —
amortentia: baked goods, knit fabric, & petrichor
boggart: marrying someone that does not love her or care about her
clubs: art, book, comc, & garden
electives: art, comc, earth magic, & muggle studies
patronus: unknown
pets: pumpkin, barn owl
quidditch: doesn’t care to play
religion: christianity
romantic orientation: biromantic
sexual orientation: bisexual
titles: none
zodiac sign: aquarius