"If a man is sensible, he'll prefer the little dormouse to the handsome tempest when it comes to choosing a wife. Unfortunately for dormice, not many of the men I've ever known had much sense, never mind sensibility." - Lorena Vaughn

Alexandra Christine St. Martin became the first of Roland and Sarah St. Martin's three children at 10:24 A.M. on August 14, an only child for three and a half minutes before the birth of her sister, Lila Evangeline, at 10: 27. Though they would have preferred a son for their firstborn, Roland and Sarah had no reason to think their eldest daughter would turn out anything but a credit to them both. Heiress of the heir of the St. Martin family for the first four years of her life and given her early education by the finest tutors her father and step-grandmother, Eileen, could find, Allie, as she was called from toddlerhood upward, seemed bound to be a perfect pureblood princess and a good role model for her sister, who, it was feared, might rebel later in life or at least resent her brother and sister on account of being the only one of Roland's children who was never his heir.

By the time she was eight, the dream had been given up. Though she was impressionable enough to absorb the pureblooded central dogma without question, she was shy, so much so that the thought of parties sometimes made her sick from terror, and was perceived as being too gentle of manner and slow of thought process to survive more than ten minutes in the cutthroat game of politics she would be called upon to play with subtlety as a hostess and society wife. Allie, who could cheer up her sickly little brother when he was confined to bed or smooth ruffled feathers between her formal, rule-driven sister and more fun-loving cousins without seeming to put forth a great deal of effort, would have, it was agreed, made a fine mother of the hands-on variety if marrying so far beneath herself as to have to care for her own children had been in her stars. Since that wasn't a possibility for Roland St. Martin's firstborn, no one seemed quite sure what to do with her, a girl unsuited to being so much as a debutante but who could not, as the elder sister, remain single. To give themselves time to think of a solution, the family transferred its focus to Lila, who thrived under the attention Allie was just as glad to be rid of.

Frightened of almost everyone outside the sphere of a few carefully selected cousins and her two siblings, every diplomatic effort with the younger crowd was undertaken certain she was about to get in trouble for making it but, having been started before she could think to stop herself, had to be carried out. Around the adults, she was withdrawn, a silent little creature more than likely to jump and drop or knock something over when spoken to who was regarded as markedly less intelligent than even her sister, much less her brother. She became comfortable in the roles of the Peacemaker and the Dunce, and would have liked nothing better than for nothing at all to change. When she was nine, it did. A half-aunt, disowned long before she was born, was dead, and said half-aunt's daughter was promptly dumped on the St. Martins. The disruption to her quiet, orderly world wasn't appreciated, but she did and still occasionally does try to make friendly overtures towards her half-cousin, Anne, some of them taken better than others. The second disruption to Allie's world - her stepcousin, Gwenhwyfar Carey, being excluded from the family for at least three years and maybe permanently - lead to a definite drop in her status among the children's society, as her sister, the interim leader, had no desire to include her. The third, being separated from her sister when she was Sorted into Teppenpaw a year later, was actually quite good for her, but the adjustment period for her was long and difficult enough to leave her, for the moment, a loner at Sonora.

Though she is a little heavier than Lila, the easiest way to distinguish between them is their hair, Allie's always shorter than Lila's. Also helpful are the House badges on their school robes and their habit from early childhood of never wearing matching outfits except for the occasional family portrait in which someone, usually one of their Grandfather St. Martin's sisters, insists that it would be 'adorable' for the twins to be as close to the same as possible. A fondness for sketching helped smooth the way for better relations with her brother, would-be painter Alban St. Martin II, when, bored and lonely, she took to writing to him from school in her first year. They're now close or something close to it, both being better at writing letters than at conversing, at least with each other. Though not especially good at it, Allie has come to like Transfiguration on account of adoring her first Transfiguration professor, Selina Marlowe, for giving her what was probably meant to be a formulaic speech about success being a possibility if she tried but which was taken as genuine encouragement. Most surprising of all, at least to Lila and her mother, she has been growing gradually more assertive over the past four years, sometimes thinking and acting not only independently of her twin but in opposition to her. Roland, at least, is pleased.