CHARACTER INFO:
Character name: Dorcas Arden Meadowes Age & Birthday: 21 & October 25th Gender & Pronouns: Cisfemale & she/her Occupation: Obliviator Blood Status: Halfblood Previous House: Gryffindor Previous Affiliation: Order Face Claim: Ryan Destiny Patronus: Dorcas’s original patronus was a Mink. Minks are protective and territorial and do not like when their people are attacked. They are also resourceful and clever and smart. However, after Dorcas’s kidnapping, her patronus has changed to a bat. Bat patronus’s represents transformation and rebirth. Bat’s are often thought of as guides to guide people through difficult situations. Wand: Ash, unicorn hair core, and 10 inches long
BIOGRAPHY:
TW: torture mention, kidnapping, starvation, ptsd
Dorcas Arden Meadowes was born on a crisp autumn evening to Atticus and Audrey Meadowes. She was a welcome addition to their son, Reginald, and a few years later a third child was born, a daughter named Marin. The Meadowes family was firmly upper middle class, with Atticus working in the Ministry as a barrister in the International Magical Office of Law, and her mother working as a private tutor, employed by plenty of families in London. They lived in a perfectly nice townhouse in the wealthier section of London, and the Meadowes children were provided with plenty of opportunities to learn about different cultures. It had always been important to Atticus and Audrey that their children were well-rounded but never spoiled. Dorcas and her siblings spent hours playing at a nearby park with wixen and muggle children alike. Her parents had always prided that their family was open-minded and accepting of everyone–Audrey’s father had been a muggle, after all, and the children spent plenty of time in the country with her parents.Â
She always felt lucky that she had an idyllic childhood and she had no complaints about it. She and her siblings were close and she had plenty of friends growing up. They spent most of their childhood playing in the streets of London or at her grandparent's country house. Dorcas had always been the brave one, the one that they would rely on to come up with the games or to jump into the pond to rescue a lost toy. Her mother always said that Dorcas was too fearless for her own good, but Dorcas never saw it that way. She just did what was needed to be done.
On her eleventh birthday, she received her Hogwarts letter, and she was excited to attend Hogwarts. Dorcas famously had her trunk ready to go in May, a story that her parents often told to their friends at dinner parties, much to her chagrin. That September, Dorcas got to join Reginald on the Hogwarts Express, quite certain that she would join him in Ravenclaw, so it was quite a surprise when the Sorting Hat was placed on her head and almost immediately called out Gryffindor. But Gryffindor fit her in a way that Ravenclaw never would have. In Gryffindor, she made a close group of friends, and she excelled at her classes when she attended them (she was not against skipping class here and there on a particularly beautiful day).Â
Her parents had never been the type to hide something from their kids, so she had been aware of the growing tensions in their world from a young age. When war broke out, her father encouraged his kids to do the right thing, whatever that meant for them. For Dorcas it meant joining the Order after graduation. She worked at the Ministry as an obliviator by day and did missions for the Order at night. Sometimes she got tidbits of important information through her work at the Ministry (nobody ever noticed the young girl hanging around), which she always passed along to Dumbledore and the Order.Â
In the early fall of 1980 Dorcas went missing. Dorcas had been on an Order mission and when she didn’t show up at the safe house they feared that the Death Eaters had gotten to her. When she didn’t turn up after a few days and no word came from her, she was officially declared missing. Her father blamed himself for what happened, and as the months went on the people closest to her started to fear that she had been killed. But Dorcas wasn’t dead. On the day of her kidnapping, she woke up in a dark dungeon with another girl that was taken out of the dungeon and murdered before she could ever get her name. From that moment on, Dorcas’s life went dark and she was subjected to torture and near starvation. On one occasion she was brought in front of Voldemort himself and she was so sure that that was it, she was going to die. But she didn’t.
The day after Christmas Dorcas was found unconscious in Knockturn Alley and was rushed to St. Mungo’s. When she woke up she told the Aurors about the torture she had endured, but she couldn’t remember faces or identify anybody that had been there. Dorcas couldn’t remember how she had gotten into Knockturn Alley, her memory was hazy. The torture that she had endured nearly broke her. It made her angry and lost and she wasn’t the same person she had been before. She was acting recklessly and Dumbledore told her to sit things out for a little while, heal, and then she could return to the Order.
None of them realized how quickly things would change and the war would end in what felt like the blink of an eye. Dorcas should have been relieved. Her captors would be punished, whoever they were, and Voldemort was dead. She still could hear his voice in her nightmares. But instead of feeling relieved she was angry. Angry that she didn’t get to take part in taking them down, angry that she had been tortured, angry that everyone didn’t seem to understand her. After a particularly bad breakdown that resulted in Dorcas being put on leave at work, her parents sat her down and told her she needed to take a leave from work and get out of England. It was decided that Dorcas and Marin would travel to America to visit some distant relatives and to get to see the world. It was a relief, leaving England.
But now it’s time for Dorcas to return home to England and return to her real life. Vacation is over and real life needs to start again. Only Dorcas has decided to return home just in time for the Ministry to decide to release dangerous Death Eaters.
