Full Name: Amber Cynthia Carey

Known As: Amber

Birthday: June 15

Age: Twelve

Branch Affiliation: North Carolina Careys

School Affiliation: Sonora Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry

House Affiliation: Teppenpaw

Appearance

Fair-skinned but for a smattering of freckles, with wide-set cheekbones and a pointed chin, Amber lacks any major distinguishing features to make her stand out in a crowd. Her height is around average, but a build leaning noticeably more towards sturdy than willowy can make her seem shorter. Thick, slightly coarse blonde hair is cut around her shoulders and is generally brushed out in the mornings and otherwise left alone. Her eyes are blue-grey and frequently give away what she's thinking even on the occasions where she manages to control her face. Though polished as often to prevent her biting them as to look pretty, her nails spend most of their time short.

Personality

By the time she was six years old, Amber's mother had positively diagnosed her with a constitutional inability to shut up, an ailment that she never completely outgrew. Naturally talkative, she can't keep a secret of her own to save her life, but tends to do fairly (fairly being the key term) well with those of others. She's also terrible at lying, and as a result is more likely than not to follow the rules. Her sense of humor usually pervades all but the most serious conversations, and can flash from form to form without her noticing several times in one conversation. She doesn't lose her temper easily, and rarely stays angry long if she does. Though she has her ideas on things, she may consent to keeping quiet if voicing them would do nothing but stir up trouble.

Having been raised an only child by her Muggle mother, she's discovered that she can sometimes be shy around other magical kids, especially the pureblooded ones, and towards her roommates. Not helping the situation is the absense of her preferred entertainments (classic country music and old films, both loves inspired and encouraged by her mother) and continued confusion over exactly how she does feel about her relationship with her father and his entire family. The complete foreignness of the things she has to learn at Sonora help distract her from thinking about any of it too much - though by no means brilliant, if a subject interests her, she'll push herself as hard as she has to until she gets it.

Family Life

Until the July after her eleventh birthday, Amber was brought up by her mother Lisa Norris in Abigail, North Carolina, a mapdot consisting of about seven families, an elementary school that shared its campus with a public library and Town Hall, a water tower, and two churches. Her mother, a local woman who'd married "some crazy fool from Charlotte" after a whirlwind courtship and divorced him a mere two years later, raised her on old music, old movies, family stories, and vague answers to any questions she asked about the aforementioned crazy fool from Charlotte, more formally known as Andrew Carey, her father and some kind of high-power businessman who spent most of his time listening to opera and cutting deals in Europe, though Lisa never seemed too sure what kind of business he was in. Her relationship with him and his was limited to rare visits, the occasional letter on some kind of funny paper her mother said rich businessmen used, and lots of presents from people with the labels of 'Dad', 'Grandmother Carey', and, until she was around five, 'Aunt Melanie' attached to them - in the same handwriting.

In Abigail, she was regarded and regarded herself as one of the Norris girls. Her grandfather was a favorite babysitter, and her Aunt Tess, childless and husbandless by choice, would tell anyone who'd listen that Lisa'd had a baby for both of them. Her interactions with her cousins were considered normal: she got along with some, she could barely stand some, and there were some from the other end of the county she didn't know from a grasshopper. Part of her dreads the family's reaction when (if) she ever gets back; boarding schools are thought of as either places for those bound for the state penitentiary after graduation or for snobs whose parents have nothing better to do with their money, and there's no doubt which conclusion they're going to come around to, knowing even the distorted version of things Lisa handed out to them.

Witch or not, her relations with her father's family are tense and, for her at least, confusing. Since, as a girl and a half-blood, she cannot inherit her father's position as Head of the North Carolina Careys, she's both a North Carolina and a Savannah Carey, thanks to her grandmother, who was born into the latter branch but married into the former. Though Andrew theoretically has complete control over the North Carolina Careys and their affairs, he had to get permission from the Head of the Savannah Careys to have anything to do with Amber or Lisa without all three of them having mysterious "accidents". One of his daughters relates to her as a fellow outcast; the other makes a point of insulting her when she can get away with it and otherwise pretending she doesn't exist. The majority of the cousins - some of those from the three other branches are barely blood relatives at all, that she can tell, but they're all referred to as cousins - are split between being terrified of her and regarding her either as dirt on their shoes or in a manner more suited to dealing with a dog tracking mud in the house. At some point over the two months she was among the Careys before her first year, Amber gave up on trying to make heads from tails about it and decided to focus on the animosity coming from her stepmother, Meredith.