At 5'2" Ursula is, to her chagrin, painfully average in height. She makes up for this mediocrity, however, by tight-lacing her way to a particularly petite waist and a fairly ample bosom that she's taken to displaying a little more daringly in recent years. Between a predisposition for it and a fair few years of regular childbearing, her hips are quite pronounced too, although this is somewhat exaggerated by her small waist and bustles. Her hair is a dark brown that easily passes for black when not in bright lighting and is kept long - albeit pinned up - as is the fashion. Her pale gray eyes are in stark contrast with her hair and often make her look colder and more disagreeable than she would otherwise.
Her fashion tastes are up to the minute and usually vibrant reds, purples, blues, and greens. At times she likes to try and push the envelope at balls with daring fashion choices. She is left handed.
1857 | Ursula is born, the youngest of her siblings.
1860 | Her first act of magic – that anyone noticed, at least – came at the tender age of three. On an outing with her brother and sister to a park, Ursula is captivated by a Cornish pixie and pursues it. Upon losing sight of it, she realizes she's entirely alone and is so distraught that she not only bursts into tears but causes a localized sudden downpour in the middle of a bright sunny day. She is retrieved shortly thereafter.
1862 | Ursula's relationship with her sister, who is barely a year old than her, starts to establish itself as a turbulent one fraught with a great deal of bickering and competition. Despite being the youngest, Ursula is usually more than capable of holding her own against Benilda and is often the instigator of squabbles but nevertheless sees herself as a victim. A contributing factor for this is the lack of interest her parents show in any of their children. As the youngest and the second daughter, she lacks any sort of novelty that her siblings might have had and does receive less attention than them. However, Ursula's perception of this deprivation is warped out of proportion for neither of her siblings received much more in the way of notice by Ernest or Enid.
1865 | Orson sets off for Hogwarts. This change in dynamic does not improve the relationship of the sisters he leaves behind.
1866 | Benilda finally leaves for Hogwarts, joining their older brother in Slytherin. Ursula thinks this absence will give her parents more time to spend with her but she is proven woefully wrong. Neither Orson nor Benilda come home for Christmas and to Ursula's great despair, her parents decide to spend the winter in Italy, leaving her behind.
1867 | Her parents are similarly absent for much of her last full year before Hogwarts. The only family member she sees with any regularity for any length of time is her grandmother. Not wanting to lose her grandmother's attention, she does all she can to present herself as the perfect granddaughter.
1868 | Summer brings with it her Hogwarts letter which thrills Ursula initially, although this delight is soon diminished when her parents all but shrug at this development – it wasn't as though she was suspected of being a squib. Her enthusiasm is restored somewhat when her father takes her shopping for her school supplies and purchases her the wand of her choosing – a handsome 10 inch beech and unicorn hair wand. Ultimately, the indulgence did more harm than good for the wand took an immediate disliking to her.
Come September, she arrives at Hogwarts without incident and joins her older siblings in Slytherin. Despite two years of Hogwarts separating her from Benilda, Ursula still feels as though she's fighting an uphill battle to escape her shadow.
1871 | Ursula takes up Ancient Studies, Arithmancy, and Earth Magic. By this time she has established herself comfortably in the social hierarchy and is growing more self-absorbed and vain by the day. This is the year Ursula begins to appreciate the opposite sex and soon finds out that she can exert a certain power over them with small gestures like a smile, a gaze, or a few coy flutters of her eyelashes. She practices these skills with growing frequently, although she dares nothing more forward and has no inclination to; it is enough to make a boy blush and then giggle about it with her friends.
1872 | To her great pride she is made Slytherin prefect. This news is met with greater enthusiasm by her family than the arrival of her Hogwarts letter, albeit not by much.
1873 | Ursula is finally alone at Hogwarts. She chooses Astronomy, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, and Transfiguration as her NEWT subjects.
1874 | With her sister on track to be married, Ursula suddenly feels under pressure to find an even better match and in less time than it took Benilda. With very limited exposure to eligible gentlemen while at Hogwarts, she turns her attention to her Potions professor. Having thought he was attractive for a number of years anyway, he is by far the most socially advantageous match to be had among the professors but also within high society he is a good catch, at least for his pedigree if not his occupation. When he fails to give much heed to her lingering gazes and fleeting, coquettish grins in his direction over a simmering cauldron, her mind is set to have him.
1875 | Ursula graduates and, to her delight, manages to secure a dance from Professor Black at the Coming Out Ball. A matter of weeks later she has her own Coming Out Ball because the Hogwarts ball is for plebs. After only a few months of being out and about in society, Ursula is still fixated on her former Potions professor but feels little progress has been made with him. To her surprise, he asks to court her and she readily accepts. By winter they are engaged and Ursula is proud as a peacock, despite her success earning her very little in the way of recognition from her ever distant parents. This doesn't bother her as much as it used to.
1876 | On June 7th they marry. On June 8th, for reasons she can't explain or understand, she feels a vague sense of disappointment.
1877 | Any and all anxieties over her marriage are done away with when she realizes that she's expecting. They move to Hogsmeade from London shortly after in light of the muggle situation. Ursula is practically gloating from January to August, when Sirius is finally born. Except no, the gloating continues because she produced a perfect, healthy heir and isn't she the most dutiful and diligent wife? Ursula finds that she prefers the praise and attention from friends and family over her pink, wrinkly son.
1878 | Disappointment finally sets in properly when it becomes apparent that Phineas' priorities place the school above her. The school also happens to be the only thing on top of her as he makes no effort to resume conjugal visits.
1880 | Ursula is able to manage her discontent fairly well, that is until temptation presents itself late December and she ends up in another man's bed.
1881 | Mortified by her own indiscretion, she is starting to conquer her guilt when she realizes that she's expecting a child that cannot possibly be her husband's. A nervous wreck, she doesn't know what to do with herself. She succeeds in hiding her condition for some months until Phineas is suspicious enough to slip veritaserum into her wine over dinner one evening and draws forth a sordid confession. Disgraced, the running of the household is passed over to Elladora and Iola and she feels certain that her life is ruined. The child arrives in September, a boy, and it is evident that her marriage cannot recover while the bastard remains in the household. Resenting the child rather than feeling any maternal bond with it, Ursula is only relieved when it is found to have died in its sleep some weeks later. Little does she know that Elladora exchanged her healthy bastard for a sickly orphan.
1882 | Her marriage improves a little afterwards, at least so much in that she has resumed her wifely duties. She is soon expecting another child, this time very much Phineas', and feels confident that her marriage is steadily recovering. To her horror, she is drafted into The Hogsmeade Expedition after the selection process was tampered with. The consequence of resisting the draft is death and so she is left with no option but to go.
While on the expedition trail and half-way up a mountain, Ursula miscarries and in her panic, tries to apparate to Hogsmeade Hospital only to splinch herself and cause further complication. She recovers but the child is dead and so too is her pride. Furious and looking for someone to blame, she lays it at the feat of the then Minister of Magic, Darcy Potter, whom she takes it upon herself to pay an angry visit. Brandy happens and then indecent sexual acts on the floor of the Minister's office happen. Ursula leaves her dignity behind in her post-coital horror. Determined to forget it ever happened for the sake of keeping her head and her marriage, this turns out to be impossible some weeks later when she realizes she's either incredibly unlucky or very fertile - probably both. She is fortunate that Phineas beds her before her betrayal becomes apparent.
Iola elopes with a muggle and is promptly disowned. Shortly after, Ursula becomes involved in a plot to kidnap Darcy Potter in her eagerness to avenge her dignity. Also because she really hates him now. She crosses paths with the polyjuiced impostor Minister and stupidly fails to suppress the urge to kiss him. Even the ghost of her dignity is dead now.
Some months later, she crosses paths with an acquaintance from school, Thomas Pettigrew. While she had found him vaguely attractive at school, his short stature had prevented her from thinking very highly of him. She found him somewhat improved but once more thought him of little consequence until meeting him a second time. His charisma and easy charm raised him in her estimations considerably but it was the gift of perfume that really caught her attention, initially. Phineas might have courted her but she realized she felt deprived of a proper wooing and how else was one wooed but by gifts and heated words? When he invited her to his private box to watch a quidditch game, she certainly didn't mean to kiss him, or have sex with him. At least she couldn't get pregnant this time as she was still carrying the consequences of the last unintentional extra-marital boning. Awkward.
A few days after, she finally sorts out her other wand problem with a trip to Ollivanders.
1883 | Darcy Potter's bastard is born and named Phineas after the man who thinks he's his father. Ursula despises him, partly because he serves as a reminder, but mostly because of his ears. Unlike previous indiscretions, she sees Thom more than once and realizes belatedly that she's fallen disastrously in love with him. Oh dear. One evening, for the first time in the history of their marriage, Ursula refuses Phineas his right as a husband out of loyalty to Thom. When she concludes shortly thereafter that she is expecting again, she realizes the impossibility of trying to seduce Phineas to cover it up after bluntly refusing him so recently. He would have to be an idiot not to suspect anything, or so she thinks.
Anticipating the ruin of her marriage and thus her life, she informs Thom of the situation and begs his help. He suggests running away together but Ursula's hesitation puts an abrupt end to that and so the only remaining solution is to abort the child. Ursula is surprised by how reluctant she is to follow through with it and it is with a heavy heart that she does so a few days later. They don't see each other again. The loss of both Thom and their child and the prospect of a life stuck with Phineas sends her into a deep depression which she tries to ease with laudanum. This quickly spirals into an unhealthy habit that leaves her vapid and lethargic most days. It becomes so bad that she can't really remember how Arcturus was conceived.
1884 | After months of strange and erratic behavior, her laudanum habit is finally nipped in the bud with Elladora's intervention. Once back on the straight and narrow, Ursula resolves to be a perfect wife and actually tries really hard. Except the Laughing Plague arrives and both Sirius and Phineas are stuck down with it. A part of her hopes desperately that she'll be widowed but both pull through. The Hogsmeade house burns to the ground and the family temporarily relocate to the Bartonburg home of Hogwarts' Deputy Headmaster. Shortly after, Arcturus is born.
Once the quarantine lifts, the family abandon the remains of the Hogsmeade house and return to Grimmauld Place in London. The change of scene helps in starting afresh and Ursula finally feels something like contentment. She's certainly not happy but her life feels back under control – what does it matter if she slipped up a few times in the past when in the present she's the epitome of a perfect wife? Or so she tells herself. This is all well and good until a Halloween party brings her face to face with Thomas Pettigrew again. Despite best efforts to keep him at arms length, he inevitably gets under her skin anyway. After haunting her thoughts for what feels like weeks on end but is really only two, he unexpectedly turns up at the house in person. As much as she wants to be a good little wife, she tragically still has the self-control of a cat in heat.
Thom arranges for her to have a vanishing cabinet that leads to the cottage where they shall meet in order to keep their affair a better guarded secret than the last time.
1885 | A year riddled with misfortune. It begins with a miscarriage in January which left Ursula rather relieved despite the unpleasantness of it all. Weeks later Phineas II would have a fit of accidental magic resulting in her hair turning a showy shade of blonde which takes a month or so to wear off. Thom confesses murder to her which surprises her in so much that she didn't think him the sort but otherwise takes the revelation well. The revelation she doesn't take well at all is printed in the Daily Prophet, revealing that he has taken a veela to bed. Furious with him for the betrayal as well as the lack of communication after the fact. Hatefully,
she aborts the child that might have been his, deciding at the time that it probably was. When he finally does write, she begrudgingly agrees to meet with him. Despite wanting to withhold her forgiveness to make him suffer, she is ambushed by romance in Prague and never stood a chance. She decides the child she got rid of was definitely Phineas'. Deciding she wants a stylish mansion in the country, she seeks permission from Phineas and gets to work.
1886 | For Elladora's birthday, Ursula drags her to a jeweler where they both get their nipples pierced. This was an entirely selfishly motivated birthday 'gift'. Thom leaves for America and in April, she visits him with the news that she's expecting his child which really could have mostly announced itself because she waited that long. Belvina is born on June 14th and Ursula is initially despondent, having expected a boy. Her feelings on the matter change completely after reasoning from her grandmother and Thom's reaction to Belvina because apparently she needs validation to like her own daughter.
With the construction of the country house complete, Ursula concentrates on furnishing it to her tastes – the part of the project she was most relishing. As soon as it's complete she hosts a decadent house party at which she intends to sneak into Thom's room but after too much champagne, she gets the room across from his and ends up underneath Leon Lupin instead. Unable to keep it to herself, her confession to Thom the next day goes as well as can be expected. Deciding to give him space while she broods in disgrace, she doesn't hear from him again until his engagement announcement arrives which comes a complete shock. When she turns up to his engagement party she tries to have it out with him and, as usual, struggles to maintain any sort of grudge against him. She makes a point of seducing him right there and then, believing that he couldn't betray his fiancée at their engagement party if he really loved her, thereby giving herself some peace of mind.
While she thinks she's fixed their relationship with her magical ladyparts, as it turns out it takes more than a coerced quicky to undo banging your lover's best friend and the mere existence of Hannah Echelon.
Rufina Mulciber, Ursula's best friend, confesses to her that she had an affair which resulted in an unwanted consequence and in the process of trying to comfort and assist her, she confesses some of her own indiscretions. Ursula finds sharing her secrets an immense relief, believing herself completely safe with equal dirt on her friend.
1887 | After sparse communication with Thom since his wedding, Ursula fails to learn from experience and once again tries to fix things with her ladyparts. Her ladyparts are apparently not so enticing this time and don't get the opportunity to work their magic. The seduction does not only fail spectacularly but ends in a hostility. Ursula believes he has strung her along for sex and is consequently distraught. Elladora catches her emerging from the vanishing cabinet and suspects she has been gallivanting with men. Ursula, unable to find even a scrap of composure, somehow manages to do something right because Ella doesn't go to Phineas. Yet.
A welcome distraction arrives shortly after in the form of Rufina and her incubating scandal. The plan to terminate the child goes according to plan until it doesn't and Rufina's Healer sister has to step in and save the day. Ursula finds the whole situation rather uncomfortable and to top it off doesn't get along well with Rufina's sister.
Thom attempts to reconcile with her at her 30th birthday party. Ursula doesn't trust him but also wants to kiss and make up. For once she doesn't go for the second option but instead makes an even worse choice in accepting opiates from his mother. This lead to yet another poor choice in the form of sex with Yarrow Macnair in the hedge maze. She does not remember this leafy entanglement, at least not yet. In low enough spirits as it is, Ursula is particularly vulnerable to the temptation of laudanum and reluctantly relapses. She grows closer to Thom's mother who only encourages her opiate consumption. After another confrontation with Thom at a quidditch match, they are nearly caught in flagrante by Lucinda Cavanaugh and might have been had Ursula been as on board for sex in the corridor as Thom was. Thankfully the crisis is averted, although Ursula is largely unappreciative of how close she was to exposure due to a lack of sobriety. The day comes when Ursula nearly over does it on the laudanum and with the help of a potion from Thom and the most self-control she's had in years, she manages to break the habit again.
Her first outing since her recovery is to Thom's birthday party where she does her best to avoid him, but she isn't so lucky as to avoid his wife who takes great pleasure in revealing that she is with child. Fortunately, flying tigers mangled Thom's leg. I say fortunately because she was distracted from being jealous and bitter over a fetus and was instead concerned for his well being. Thom probably would have preferred Ursula's passive aggression to being mauled by tigers so who's the real winner here? Ursula writes him shortly after and they arrange to meet. She does what she ought to have done long ago and breaks it off with him, although this does come after she failed to get what she wanted out of him i.e. a melodramatic declaration of his undying love and devotion and the impossible reinstatement of that 'new relationship' feeling.
They cross paths a couple more times at social events which tests Ursula's self-restraint to the limit. Extremely ill-content, she decides the best thing to do is leave the country for a few months and run away from her problems.
1888 | Ursula runs away from her problems.
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