August 2004
7 y/o
Jennifer was running through the woods behind her home, testing out her new boots. The runes she made on the soles of the shoes were supposed to eliminate all sounds her feet made. So far it was working. Stepping her game one up, she tracked to her obstacle course, making no noise at all. Her normal 10 mile run had been extended with her obstacle course. She had also started field running at a nearby abandoned city. The flats were perfect to practice climbing, and recently swinging.
7-year-old Jennifer was making her armor.
So far she had (hopefully) finished her boots, mask and body armor. Her gloves were still in the making and once they were done they were going to be amazing. She would have a wand holster on her right arm, on both arms on the downside a hidden blade. On the top of her gloves three retractable claws, and on the fingers cat like claws in case everything else was lost. To top it off there would be brass knuckles so that she wouldn't have to worry about breaking her fingers on someone's face, and the fabric it was made out of was dragon hyde, making it totally fire-proof.
Yes, she is violent. Deal with it, or fall in love with her doll mask, like her parents did.
A few months ago Jennifer let a bit of her rebellious attitude shine through to see how her parents would react. It wasn't pleasant in the slightest. Her parents were absolutely horrified when she suggested punching a boy in the face that had been bothering her for a long time now. They actually wanted her to attend a anger management group at her school. She decided that she would never let her parents see her without her mask ever again. It only lead to trouble.
But back to her armor. All she had left to do in order to finish her gloves, was to wait for the owl ordered parts from Gringotts.
Her mask, in contrast to her entire outfit –which was completely black- was completely white, except for where the eyes were, there was thick black glass blocking anyone from seeing her eyes, and charmed to be unbreakable and cold resistent. It was a rather simple mask that reached down to her cheekbones. The rest of her face was covered by a plain piece of black cloth, making it fully impossible to see any part of her face. She would later have to make a more permanent one as the charms would eventually wear off, but for now it would do.
Jennifer looked at her watch. She had to be back inside by 7:00 AM so that her parents wouldn't notice her being gone. She swore in Spanish, she had to head back now or risk her parents finding an empty room. If they noticed she had been gone, she wouldn't be allowed to go with them to Hogwarts, and that meant no dueling training in the RoR with a couple of moving opponents the room provided her with. Besides she was getting really antsy with nothing to aim at except for non-moving objects. That got boring very fast.
Running home, Jennifer climbed the way to her bedroom window with no effort at all. She had done this so many times by now it was getting mandatory.
Just as she had stripped herself of her clothing in the bathroom and turned the shower on, James came knocking on her door.
"Sweetie are you coming to breakfast?"
"I'll be there in 15 minutes dad! Just getting ready for taking a shower!"
"All right sweetie, but don't take too long. We leave for Hogwarts at 8:00, so if you want to eat breakfast you better hurry!"
"Ok dad!"
Jennifer listened to her father walking down the hallway, probably down to the kitchen for breakfast. She sighed, that was just a tad bit close for her liking. She looks down to see the water wash sweat and dirt down the drain while she washes herself. Her parents would never let her get dirty, but a bit of dirt on her felt more natural as the clinical cleanness she usually had that her parents demanded of her. Stepping out of the shower she dried her hair with a simple spell she had learned long ago. Once dry, she began to braid the long locks that would hang in front of her face backwards, the two endings of the braids were then tied together with a white hair tie and a butterfly hairpin pinned on it. Next came her boxers, and a white top. She then got a pair of white tights and a white sundress. Over the dress she wore a light denim jacket and on her feet a pair of light blue boots that reached just past her ankles.
She looked in the mirror and couldn't help the disgusted look from appearing on her face. It was just such a contrast to what she was wearing not even half an hour ago. She mournfully looked at her black ripped jeans, black muscle shirt, dark brown leather jacket and black dragon hyde boots. She already felt as though she was leaving a part of her identity behind by simply not wearing them, and in a way, she was right.
'''''''''''''''''''''''''
After arriving at Hogwarts Jennifer was left alone by her parents, knowing that she wouldn't see them again until they left for home once more. This left her with 7 entire days of free time.
Not wasting any time, she immediately set course towards the RoR, hoping to get some hours of non-interrupted dueling time.
Once in the room she quickly changed her clothing back to what she was wearing that morning. After stretching she set to work.
The dueling dummy the room provided would be set to just above her skill level as to let her always have an opponent that was slightly better as her.
Most times she was the one that ended up getting disarmed, but there were times where she would win.
After just over three hours of dueling she switched to her sword training, hoping to get some of her frustrations out of her system. There was something therapeutic to slashing at a wooden figure with a –very sharp- sword. Currently she was working on a slash that would allow her to take her opponents head off, but she was having a little trouble with it because she couldn't put a lot of strength behind the slashes just yet.
A bit disappointed at her small failure she had the RoR change into the room filled with other students treasures. There was something specific she had been looking for, for a long time now. The problem was that the item was quite expensive, and she had spent all her money on the parts to make gloves with. Besides, this would just add to her rebellion to her parents.
Filled with hope she continued her search for the item.
''''''''''''''''''''
Six days.
It took her another six days to finally find the item. Or rather the parts of one. A magical tool that was used to make magical tattoos with, such as moving or color-changing ones.
What Jennifer wanted to do was make something called an apprentice band.
She had read about the apprentice band in a very old tomb in the Hogwarts library three visits to Hogwarts ago. The band would wrap around her wand arm -thus her right arm- and all magical fields she was training in would appear on it. Each skill would take the appearance of a flower bud, and the more the skill was developed within the person carrying it, the more it would turn into a flower. Ever since reading about it she had wanted one. The band descended from before even the middle ages, and was used to show off the amount of masteries a person had. The band eventually fell out of habit for apprentices to have due to them only having one or two masteries at once, thus the band was no longer needed.
Excited Jennifer left the RoR and re-entered it so that it had shaped itself into a study. Placing the parts on a desk that had appeared she set to put the tool together. By the time she was finally done, it was already time for dinner, as her stomach reminded her. Deciding to eat first and then set to draw the outlines on her arm with special ink, Jennifer prepared herself to make the band.
It was a very complicated design, with a lot of runes on it. Luckily Jennifer had been practicing to draw and carve runes for over two years now, so it wasn't that bad. Add that to the fact she didn't have a hand of preference, she was able to make the outlines without much trouble.
Finally, at 10:30 PM she was ready to start the tool up and set to work on making the band.
It hurt to do, but finally, after five hours of intense concentration, the band was on her skin, or rather under it. The only thing left to do was to activate it and wait.
Once it was activated it would have to rest for four to five hours until anything would (visibly) happen. Exhausted, she went to bed and didn't awake until lunch time the next day.
Blurredly opening her eyes, Jennifer at first was confused as to why it was so light in her room, seeing as she usually woke up at sun rise, sat up. Seeing something black catching her eyes, she looked down only to be greeted with her right arm.
The apprentice band!
The band now has different colored buds on it, a few were half way to turning into flowers, three already completely in blossom, and a few others still in the first stages of buds.
The three flowers she recognized as an orange for ancient runes, the others a dull blue for history and a white one for astronomy.
The few half-way ones were a grass green for herbology, a dark blue for sword fighting, light yellow for charms, black for potions, blood red for knife throwing, white with red for acrobatics, yellow with a purple ring on the outside for defense and purple with yellow ring on the outside for offensive magics.
The mere buds were light blue for flying, light green for occlumency, a bright orange for ligillamancy and a blue-green one for transfiguration.
Her face broke into such a wide smile one could wonder how she managed it. It had worked! She was now an apprentice, but still without a master to teach her.
Right.
Like she needed a teacher. She did fine on her own.
Giving it one last look she casted a glamor over it, not wanting her parents to EVER find out about it. If they did, there would be hell to pay for her marking her 'perfect' skin.
But right now, she couldn't care less. For the first time in years, she felt like she could breathe again.