Elouise Kalhoun

Posts : 15 Join date : 2017-08-15

Full Name: Elouise Carmine Kalhoun
Goes by: Elouise
Previous Name: Petal

Gender: Female
Sexual Alignment: Heterosexual

Hair colour and style:
Long, dark blonde. Sometimes appears light brown. She usually leaves it down though sometimes, she braids or ties it up in a ponytail.

Eye colour:
A stunning hazel. It’s outlined with a dark grey with green and brown in the middle as well as flecks of gold.

Height: 4’ 9” currently. 5’ 7” when fully grown.
Body type: Skinny and leaning towards the underweight side because of malnourishment but she fills out a bit more as she gets older.

Dress sense:
In a complete contrast to what she used to wear while working, Elouise favours modest clothing now. Where she used to wear skin-tight leotards and two-piece costumes when she worked, she now tries to cover up as much of herself as possible, thinking that there are less chances of men staring at her than if she wore revealing clothing.

Birthmarks: None.
Scars: A few around her wrists and ankles from struggling against the rope Duncan tied her with, but they’ve mostly faded and only an observant person would notice them.

Etcs: A few tiny moles on her right cheek and upper right lip.

Likes:
- Dancing; she has a love-hate relationship with this. When she hears music (or even when she doesn’t and the urge just comes), Elouise feels like dancing. But after the incident, she stopped altogether.
- Warm milk; it helps her feel safe and comforted if only for just a little while.
- When Desire combs her hair; it was during these times that the woman would regale the girl with stories of the world outside, of faraway places and a knight in shining armour, riding on a white horse and ready to save damsels in distress.
- Staring at clouds and making up stories for the different shapes; imagining different lands and worlds using the shapes of the clouds brings Eluoise a semblance of peace and weather permitting, she can usually be found outside gazing at the sky.

Dislikes:
- Insects; traumatised from the six hours she spent in the cupboard, Elouise panics when she sees insects, beetles, or bugs.
- The dark; one of the most common punishments was putting Elouise in the dark where she could not see what was around her. Elouise sleeps with the light on every single night.
- Confined spaces; another thing she suffered was being locked in tight small places where she had to hold one position for hours as she could not move.
- Physical touch, especially from males; a touch that she’s not prepared for, even if it’s from a female, makes her flinch away. It’s an automatic reaction ingrained from her disgust when the men in the club touched her.
- The endearments “sweetheart”, “sweetie”, “darling”, and “pumpkin”. It's what Duncan called her during their photo sessions and just heading behind the words - even if it’s said and directed to other people - makes her cringe and flinch.

Strengths (min 3)
- Dancing; she has a natural talent and flair for it. It’s not restricted to a certain genre (like ballet, hip hop, etc.). Instead, she just moves however she feels like though she has stopped because of the incident.
- Practical things; she may not be good at the theoretical part of studies, but when given and taught hands-on, she excels.
- Imagination; trapped in a life she hated and was terrified of, Elouise developed a vivid imagination. She was never allowed out of the building so she had no idea what the world was like except through stories told by Desire and the other ladies. She would imagine a whole new life for herself and picture different scenes and places in her head.
-History; Eluoise has always been hungry to know and learn more. Most of her education came from Desire. They didn't have much time or resources to do reading, writing, or math, but Desire - who was born and raised in the U.S. - told her the history of the states. She knows all about World War 1 and 2, how America was found and formed, and all the presidents and what they did.

Weaknesses: (min 3)
- Theoretical studies and anything to do with reading, writing, or math; having never gone to school, Elouise has poor reading and writing skills. What she knows she learned from Desire who could only teach her when she wasn't working or sleeping. To Elouise, learning to dance was more important as it meant less punishment.
- Dark and confined places; put her in a dark or small place and she loses it. She will pull through it and endure it but would be traumatised after.
- The sound of a camera taking a photograph; another way Duncan made money from Elouise was taking pictures of her in various states of undress while she posed “seductively”. Duncan sold the pictures to make money. He knew that she hated it and so it also became form of punishment for her, with less clothes and more scandalous poses.
-Insects and bugs, cockroaches and lizards in particular; it was one of the forms of punishment that Duncan used and seeing insects/bugs just brings back those memories. She can get panic attacks from this as well as the previous two listed.

Positive Traits (min 3)
- Resilient; she might break for a while but Elouise has an inner strength that helps her move on and recover even if it’s at a snail’s pace.
- An incredible ability to empathise with other people's pain; she doesn't just sympathise. After going through so much physical, emotional, and psychological pain, Elouise has developed the ability to empathise with almost anyone.
- Conscientious; she takes meticulous and painstaking care when she does things, ensuring the she does a thorough job to the best of her ability.

Negative Traits (min 3)
- Expressing herself with words; she just doesn't know how to convey her feelings and thoughts through words. She used to be able to, but after a few months working for Duncan, words abandoned her. The only way she knows how to express her feelings is through dance. She could describe everything she’s been through, every emotion and thought she has experienced all through dance. But she’s stopped dancing and doesn't think she can start again.
- Painfully shy; her distrust of people in general has led her to keeping silence unless necessary. She doesn't know how to make friends or what to say to them. Having never stepped foot outside of Duncan’s establishment, she has no clue how to socialise with her own peers and doesn't know much about what’s going in the world.
- She doesn't speak up for herself; when Duncan first began putting her to work Elouise would fight and protest. But she soon learned that there was no point in doing so when it yielded no results. She just lets people do whatever they want with her.

Other:
-She’s never tasted chocolate before. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner was usually just bread and water (milk if she was lucky). If Duncan was feeling particularly generous (usually based on how much money Elouise had made), she’d get a boiled egg or a small piece of chicken.
-She doesn't know much about technology or the internet. She knows phones and all that exist, having seen clients use them, and from what Desire tried to explain to her, she knows they are used to call people and “text” people. She just cannot comprehend what the internet is since she’s never used it.
-For the same reason, she doesn't know modern slang like “bae”, “otp”, “selfie”, and the like.
-She has learned helplessness.

Posts : 5 Join date : 2017-08-19

Posts : 15 Join date : 2017-08-15

Age: 11
Birthdate: 5th August

Blood Purity: Muggleborn

House: Ravenclaw
Wand Type: Fir wood, Phoenix Feather core, 9 inches

[Thoughts on fandom-specific areas of life. In this case, it would be magic, blood purity, and the like. Feel free to make lists (likes, dislikes, etc) or write paragraphs. This section is entirely up to you!]

Likes:
~ Flying; in the air she feels free, closer to heaven and the wonderful clouds in the sky with no chains holding her back.
~ CoMC and Herbology; people she cannot deal with, but animals and plant were a different matter. Taking care of something give a her some purpose in life, something to focus on besides the brokenness of her soul and spirit.

Dislikes:
~ The dungeons; she doesn't like them at all. It reminds her too much of Duncan’s basement. No windows, no glimpse of the sun or moon.

Weaknesses:
~ Written exams; because of her poor reading and writing skills, Elouise struggles academically in all subjects in Hogwarts.
~ Arithmancy; for the same reasons she struggles with exams. The only form of math she learned was whatever Desire taught her she can recognise numbers, but struggles with simple addition and subtraction.

TRIGGER WARNING: child abuse, rape, child sexualisation, torture

Thrown out onto the streets by her birth father Arnold, Elouise was found by Duncan, the owner of a brothel and strip club. With no birth certificate or anything on her person to identify her, he took this opportunity, bringing her to his establishment in Ireland where she was renamed Petal and raised by the prostitutes there.

Most of the time, it was Desire (real name Joy), a pole dancer, who looked after Petal. She fed her and changed her diaper, occasionally teaching her how to read when she didn't have clients to entertain. Desire, along with the rest of the women, kept her away from the entertainment halls and rooms of the place, restricting Petal to the room set apart for the ladies to live in when they weren’t working. As such, Petal didn’t fully know what and where she was living in.

When she was six, Duncan put her to work cleaning the establishment up. It became Petal’s duty to sweep and mop the floor, and wipe the tables once the place was closed. Her first time cleaning, she spotted the poles and questioned what they were for. Destiny and Star, strippers who were helping the girl tidy up the place, brushed off her questions. But she was determined to find out the answers.

She was a bright child and it didn't take her long to realise that Desire danced for a living. Still innocent - as the women tried to keep her away from their clients and their business - she asked Desire to teach her how to dance. Desire turned down the child’s incessant requests, not wanting to give Duncan a reason to use the girl (she knew, from overhearing Duncan boasting to his colleagues, that he planned on making Petal into a stripper). But Desire’s refusal to teach the girl only fueled her want to learn. The opportunity didn’t come until a year later when Desire forgot to lock the door leading to the entertainment section. Petal snuck out and watched Desire pole dance for clients.

When Desire came back to the bedroom (the ladies had separate bedrooms from the ones they used to sleep with clients), the excited Petal showed her what she’d learned, copying some of her moves. She had no pole to dance with but the girl made do, imitating the swaying of the hips and the twirling of hands as best as she could. Desire realised that Petal was a natural. She felt the music in her bones and responded with her body. Unfortunately, Duncan, who had CCTVs in all the rooms realised this too.

The next day, he came to take Petal away, wanting to put her to work. Desire begged him not to and told him that she would do anything to keep the child safe. She offered to take on double the clients she currently had and make the money Petal would've made. Duncan didn’t listen and to punish her for speaking up, he raped her. Seven-year-old Petal, hiding under the bed where Desire told her to stay, heard everything. It was then that she realised the nasty nature of the business, but it wasn’t until later that she found out how horrible it could be.

After he was done with Desire, Duncan dragged Petal out of the room where he dressed her up and told her to dance. Petal, not strong enough to resist, had to wear the clothes Duncan jerked onto her but she refused to dance for him. No matter how much he threatened to hurt her or Desire, Petal didn’t cooperate. Though she was young, she was smart and observant enough to know that hurting Desire wouldn't help him.

Not wanting to be challenged by a mere six-year-old, Duncan tied Petal’s right wrist to her right ankle and her left wrist to her left ankle, forcing her into a squat-like crouch. He then carried her to a tiny cupboard infested with lizards and cockroaches and locked her in. Petal, terrified of the insects crawling over her, incapable of brushing them off because of the rope holding her limbs together, and unable to see anything in the pitch blackness, cried and screamed until she was hoarse.

When Desire woke up - she’d been backhanded into unconsciousness - and heard the cries, she rushed to the source of the sound and discovered what Duncan had done. She begged him for the key to let the girl out. “She’s just a child!” But Duncan wouldn’t listen. Helpless to save the suffering girl, Desire sat on the other side of the cupboard, doing her best to calm the terror-stricken child, letting her know that she was with her, and singing softly to her.

Duncan kept her in there for six hours, unlocking the door and releasing Petal only when she was too exhausted to whimper or squeeze out another tear. His only words to her were, “I hope you learned your lesson.”

Desire spent the next few hours cleaning Petal up and hydrating her, cuddling her until the girl could sleep. But there was no relief for Petal in slumber. She would wake every few minutes after dozing off, in terror of invisible insects she could feel over her skin, the sensation too overwhelming for her to ignore. When Desire wasn’t quick enough to stop her, Petal would beat at her skin and scratch it raw in an attempt to get rid of the feeling.

Duncan didn’t give Petal long to recover. He stuffed her back into the costume and made her dance, threatening to throw her back in the cupboard. She did what she could remember from having seen Desire and the other ladies perform. Desire had told her to block out everything out and just concentrate on the music, on the way her body wanted to flow with the melody. Petal did just that, finding that she enjoyed dancing when she forgot she was giving Duncan a performance.

Satisfied with her performance but knowing that Petal would have to do more before he could show her, Duncan instructed Desire to train the girl. Meanwhile, he dressed her up in revealing outfits and made her pose in compromising positions, taking photographs of everything. Petal, terrified of going back to the cupboard did everything he said, holding back tears and weakly protesting.

Duncan circulated the photos to some of his clients, advertising it as fresh and enticing blood. (The photos continued as a business when Duncan found that men liked them and were willing to pay for them.) A few months later, eight-year-old Petal was scheduled for her first performance. As Duncan knew that what he was doing was illegal, he only allowed a handful of people in, those he knew wouldn’t rat him out to the authorities. If the men were satisfied, Petal could have her meals and rest easy. If the men weren’t satisfied - or if she broke down crying like she did her first time or made a wrong move because she was too upset - punishment would follow. Depending on Duncan’s mood and how much money he lost from Petal’s breakdowns and stumbles, this could range anywhere from no meals to keeping her locked in a dog cage too small for her to do anything except curl up in a ball and wish for death.

As the years passed, Petal found a way to cope. She loved dancing and knew that she was gifted and talented, but hated having to do it for the pleasure of men. With some help from Desire and Star - one of the other pole dancers - Petal discovered that if she focused on dancing for herself, ignoring the stares of the men by imagining and creating her own world, she could cope better. She danced for the love of dancing until that was taken away from her.

One night, when Petal was around ten, she was doing her usual routine dance with and without the pole to the whistles and stares of her audience. Everything went fine as she blocked out the sight of the men doing weird things and instead imagined herself dancing alone in the middle of a snow blanketed forest with no one but the birds and deer watching her move to a music within her soul.

But the moment she closed her eyes, a man reached for her, pulling her out of her routine and putting his hands and lips where they were not welcomed. Petal, terrified of what was about to happen to her (despite the ladies trying to keep her innocent, she knew what the ladies did for a living i.e. she knew what sex was), her magical ability manifested as liquor bottles, glasses, and plates falling off the shelves in the bar as well as the lights flickering in the whole building. By the time Duncan heard the commotion and came to her rescue (it was in his best interest to save the girl since money was all he was concerned about and hurting her would put her out of business for a few days), he’d managed to strip her of most of her clothing, giving her a few bruises along the way from his roughness.

That night, Petal wasn’t given her dinner and was handcuffed and put into a small dog cage in the basement. She’d tried to defend herself, yelling and screaming that it wasn’t her fault, that she’d danced her routine perfectly, that it was the man who couldn’t control himself. Duncan didn’t listen. Petal, defeated and dejected, resigned herself to the punishment, staying awake the whole night as her teeth chattered in the frigid air.

The next morning when Duncan went to release her, he found her semiconscious. She’d been unable to move in the small cage and her skimpy costume did nothing to keep her warm, resulting in near hypothermia. Duncan tossed her to Desire who wrapped her up in layers of blankets and made a hot drink for her. For months after that, Petal didn’t say a word to anyone, not even Desire.

Duncan gave her one day to recover before continuing with the photoshoots and the performances. Petal danced as there was nothing else she could do. But she did it in constant fear and not even her imagination of faraway lands could help her. Her fast developing body did not make matters better. She barely slept at night, haunted by nightmares and terror. It began to show in her performances when she stumbled from exhaustion. Nothing that Desire said or did could bring her out of the abyss and Duncan began talking about selling her off.

A stream of men came, each one poking and prodding at her, estimating her value and haggling over her like a common item in a store. Through everything, Petal kept silent and emotionless, the light that was once in her eyes beginning to dim and deaden. Desire begged Duncan not to sell her, telling him that she would come out of it. He wouldn’t have any of it. All he wanted was money and she wasn’t making what she used to make.

A few days after Petal turned eleven, just as she was told that someone would be buying her, a funny looking man came to the establishment. Duncan, thinking that it was another buyer, told Petal to get ready. Not getting nearly enough rest from her performance the night before, she squeezed herself back into her costume and stumbled into the room where the two men were. Her spent mind could not fully comprehend what was being said but when she heard words like “magic” and “school”, she assumed that she was hearing things and ignored it until Duncan got really mad.

Petal, cowering in one corner of the room, was gently told by the strange man to leave the room for a while. After a short time, the man opened the door and told her to pack her things, that she would be coming with him. She went to the room she shared with Desire, still not saying anything, and began to gather the clothes she wore when she wasn’t working, thinking that this man was her new owner.

Desire questioned her relentlessly but Petal retained her silence, letting the man explain things to her instead. Desire, with tears in her eyes, asked for a moment with Petal. She told the girl that she loved her and that she would miss her. Then she gave her a necklace with the word “Elouise” engraved on it, like it was written by hand. She’d found it around her neck when Duncan passed Petal, as a baby, to her. Desire went on to explain that she’d kept it safe, knowing that Duncan would try to sell it or use it as a tool against Petal.

As Desire gave the girl a last hug, Petal broke her silence, whispering, “I love you, Joy.”

The man then took her away, giving her something to drink that helped her sleep without the nightmares. When she was feeling better, he informed her that her name was now Elouise Carmine Kalhoun and that she would be attending a school to learn about magic. She didn’t know what to think, having never stepped outside of Duncan’s establishment before and seeing the world for the first time. But whatever it was, nothing could be worse than what she’d already experienced.

The few days before school started, she stayed with the kind man where she had to acclimatise her sleeping schedule. So used was she to sleeping 3am and waking up at nine that it was quite a challenge for her to keep “normal” hours. The kind man also told her a little bit more about what to expect. He also reassured her that no harm would come to her while she was there. Although she wasn't inclined to believe him - experience had taught her to never trust the word of anyone; you could only trust them when they promised you harm - she hoped that was the case.

Her first night at Hogwarts was spent exploring every inch of the castle. Terror had bred in her a need to know exactly where she was. She paced every room three times, noting every entrance and exit, the easiest ways to escape from a room.

» Ceyal Kalhoun
» This is Our Fight [Elouise]