Marlene McKinnon

Name Muzy
Age 37
Contact minorleaguemagpie
Current Characters Lucius Malfoy

Is your character from this verse? Y
Is your character aged up/down? N.



Name Marlene Caitriona McKinnon
Gender F
Blood Status Halfblood
Date of Birth/Age June 16, 1958 | 22

Hair/Eye Color Dark Brown (most of the time) / Hazel
Height/Build 5'4, lithe, dancer's build
Distinguishing Marks Lynx tattoo on her right inner wrist

Marital Status Single as fuck.
Sexuality Kinsey 4

School Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
House Gryffindor
Year Graduated 1974 | Class of 1967


Affiliation Order of the Phoenix
Occupation Manages London branch of McKinnon's Rare Manuscripts and Spellbooks
Residence Apartment above the shop
P.O. Box Here



On the surface, Marlene is the most 100% Done Gryffindor you have ever met. Below the surface, Marlene is also the most 100% Done Gryffindor you’ve ever met. Perpetually just the slightest bit annoyed - something she considers entirely reasonable because she, does, after all, run a retail establishment popular with the most discerning and irritating types of wizards and witches. It would be easy to blame the perpetual annoyance on the day to day, but of course, it goes deeper than that; it’s a frustration born of being the independent good daughter of a distracted single father, and being a halfblood in a time when that’s a bit like being a slightly damaged book on the discount rack.

Among friends and family, of course, other parts of Marlene tend to to take precedence over the annoyed face she shows a lot of the world. She's an almost pathologically loyal friend, a direct reaction to her mother's defection when she was young. Likewise she's very protective - both of friends and particularly about her younger siblings. Her protectiveness, her mother's departure when she was a girl, and the current societal atmosphere combine to give Marlene anxiety issues that she refuses to really acknowledge and manifests itself in a kind of forced fearlessness. This was evident at Hogwarts when, pre-Marauders at least, she was the Gryffindor most likely to take the wildest dare, come up with the most bananas prank, fly the absolute highest to win the Quidditch Cup. As an adult, it means she’ll take dangerous trips to fetch manuscripts from abroad, she’ll work with charms and jinxes with real consequences. It means she has a tendency to get in the face of of witches and wizards that could put her on the map in a way that isn’t, strictly speaking, advisable.

These swashbuckling Gryffindor traits aren’t the most useful in a place and time when the Order exists, but is trying to work within the system, so most of the time Marlene has to tamp down on them and rely on other strengths. In particular, in the past few years she’s developed a sneakiness almost worthy of a Slytherin (she will punch you if you tell her that) and a talent for intelligence gathering. Part of it is a function of the shop she runs - a rare spellbook shop is likely to be a magnet for dark wizards, of course - but part of it is the way she has of blending into the background when she’s not about to set everything on fire.

She’d really rather set it all on fire, though, if that’s an option.


Wiki
Family Iain McKinnon (Father); Josephine Smythe McKinnon (Mother); Callum McKinnon (younger brother, currently Sixth Year Hufflepuff at Hogwarts); Christa McKinnon (younger sister, currently Sixth Year Gryffindor at Hogwarts)

Marlene is the eldest child of Iain McKinnon, a Scottish wizard from an old wizarding family, and Josephine Smythe, a Muggle he met on a trip to London. She grew up near Edinburgh, where the original McKinnon's book shop is with her younger twin siblings Callum and Christa. Following Ministry rules, Iain kept Josie in the dark about his abilities until Marlene started exhibiting signs of having magic - and only at that point, when Marlene was about eight, did he tell his wife that the bookstore wasn't a regular bookstore, his family were all wizards, and their oldest child - and possibly their younger ones - had magical abilities. Josie could swallow the magic but the decade of lies took their toll, and the McKinnons separated.

Josie stayed near to the McKinnons until Marlene went off to school and it became clear that the twins had the same abilities - and then she moved back to London, where she necessarily had less of an influence over family life.

As such, Marlene spent a lot of her time growing up acting as a little mother to her brother and sister, and trying not to be too much trouble for her father. Iain never really recovered from Josie's defection, which taught Marlene to be careful when it came to relationships. Because her father was busy managing two bookshops in two locations and because she had much younger siblings to take care of, it also taught her to be self-sufficient, an attitude that continued once she went to Hogwarts.

McKinnons are historically Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs, and Marlene continued that tradition, being sorted into Gryffindor at the age of eleven and performing well throughout her time there. She wasn't Prefect, and certainly not Head Girl, but she did well her classes, was an excellent Quidditch player, and was known to be a brave and loyal friend, if one with a bit of a temper.

After Hogwarts, Iain told her she could have her pick of either the London or Edinburgh shop - when she'd gone off to Hogwarts, Marlene had had ambitions to join the Ministry, but it had become clear as she went through school that the quietly growing prejudice against Muggle blood would prevent her from rising very far there. It was equally clear that the idea of running the shop nearest to where her mother still lived pained her father - so Marlene chose London. It was easier to keep up with her friends there, in any case.

Marlene is currently twenty-two, having had her birthday in June. She's been running McKinnons Rare Manuscripts and Spellbooks, found near Ollivander's in Diagon Alley in London, since her graduation from Hogwarts, and seems to be living according to the rules of the day, keeping to curfews and living a quiet life with her two cats, Kitsune and Bastet. Under the surface, she's still a pugnacious Gryffindor, and the back of her shop is sometimes home to talk that some might call insiduous.



Charms: Marlene's strength in charms has increased since school, when she was routinely middle of the class at all time. Her work involves dealing with charmed and hexed manuscripts, and as such she's developed some finely tuned expertise in the area, including developing her own charms to deal with ancient hexes and jinxes that come through the shop.
Transfiguration: By far her strongest class at Hogwarts, Marlene was routinely at the top of the class and got high marks on her O.W.L.s here, enough to qualify for N.E.W.T. level classes. She's also a registered animagus with the form of a bluebird.
DADA: Highly competent. Transfiguration was her strongest class, but DADA was her favorite, and she routinely was teacher's pet - whoever the teacher happened to be that particular year. Likewise, dealing with cursed objects regularly is bound to keep one's skills sharp.
Magical Combat: Marlene is the type of person who's as inclined to fight as she is to talk - which means that, while she wasn't officially in the Dueling Club, she's gotten herself into several duels over the year. She can hold her own.
Flying: The first magical skill Marlene ever learned - when her McKinnon cousins decided to teach her Quidditch - she's sometimes more at home in the sky than she is on the ground, and faster than most people on broomstick.
Ancient Runes: She took it in school to appease her dad; now that she's running the bookshop, she's probably more fluent than ever.