Post by eileen mei harlowe on Dec 1, 2021 15:16:13 GMT -5
 Eileen Mei Harlowe Waking up next to the person you love most in the world is the definition of having a good life. general info
personality
family information
biography Shen Mei was born in the slums of Beijing, the first child of Shen Guo and An Ni. Three years later, she became the oldest of two, her brother Qiang born that September. The family was dirt poor, Guo and An Ni struggling day in and day out to earn enough money to feed their children. An Ni was a seamstress, constantly bouncing between jobs in the bustling Chinese city, and Guo was a talented but under-appreciated groundskeeper of a wealthy businessman’s home. The family rarely had enough money and food to share between them, but they were happy enough and they made ends meet. Theirs was a hard life, but Guo and An Ni made the best of it for their young children. Mei was three when an unexpected but exciting opportunity arose for the Shen family; the family for whose estate Guo worked was relocating to the United Kingdom, to a sprawling estate outside of London, and was willing to finance the Shen family’s relocation overseas should Guo and An Ni agree to work on the house’s staff. Though the relocation was not something the young parents had ever seen for themselves or their children, but the promise of something close to a better life for them was something they could not afford to pass up. The family moved to London the winter of that year, relocating to the servant’s quarters of their employer’s home. The acclimation to this new country, this new culture, was more than a bit shocking for An Ni and Guo, and it was only made worse by the way men and women looked down on and them and their children, not only for their accents and their struggle with the English language, but for their ‘ethnic’ and ‘foreign’ names. It was less than five months after their move to London that they decided to change their names as well as their young childrens’, hoping to provide their children an easier life and to spare them from the disdain the English seemed to have for them. Guo became James Shen and An Ni became Marie. For their children, too young to make such a decision for themselves, James and Marie chose the name Eileen for Mei and Quinn for Qiang. When their youngest child was born five years later, they chose to name her Julie, nearly all traces of their origins in Beijing erased save their last name. The children were raised speaking equal parts English and Mandarin and Cantonese in the home, but in public they were discouraged from speaking their mother tongue around others. Mei, or Eileen as she grew up as, only began to reclaim her lineage and her culture in her twenties, absorbing her birth name into hers as her middle name and raising her children to speak Mandarin as well as English. Eileen Shen spent the majority of her childhood in England, the memories she had of her home in Beijing muddled and indistinct. She remembered the hole in the roof of the kitchen that leaked when it rained and the tinny radio that sat on the living room mantle, but for the most part her childhood memories were of the small bedroom she shared with her sister in the basement of the Cheng manor and the worn rug that spread across the uneven floor of the living room. On her eleventh birthday Eileen received her Hogwarts acceptance letter, much to the surprise of her parents. Though both were magical, from long lines of witches and wizards, neither had any sort of formal magical education. Though it largely depleted the family’s savings, James and Marie pinched together enough money to buy Eileen the necessary school supplies, most of it secondhand or rented. On September first Eileen boarded the Hogwarts Express for her first year, though her time at Hogwarts would prove short. The unexpected death of the Cheng matriarch spelled tragedy for the Shens. They were fired and expelled from their quarters in the Cheng manor, left to fend for themselves. Though the Chengs had paid for their immigration to England, they were well and truly on their own now. James and Marie worked hard to find new work and a place to live, but they could no longer afford the expensive school supplies and loss of income involved in sending their eldest to Hogwarts each year. Eileen was pulled out of Hogwarts the summer after her third year, staying home with her family and taking on odd jobs with her parents to make ends meet. When Quinn was old enough, he too joined the family’s work, going into groundskeeping with their father while Eileen focused on more domestic roles like their mother. Eileen filled the role of maid or nanny for several years after coming of age, studying on her own to be able to fulfill the role of governess. It was shortly after her twenty-third birthday that Eileen was hired by the St. Croix family, brought on to learn the ways of the household in preparation for teaching the young children of Jacques. The St. Croix manor was where Eileen met the man that would become her husband. Michael Harlowe was a fellow servant of the St. Croixs but a kind and hardworking man that won Eileen’s heart easily. The two were married and built a life for themselves, one with fee frivolities but one filled with love and warmth all the same. Together, they had three children, two daughters and a son. Michael and Eileen alike knew what it was like to grow up in hardship and worked hard to make sure their children did not have to know of it. Their children all attended and graduated from Hogwarts, a luxury Michael and Eileen were never afforded. Together the Harlowes made sure to give their children and grandchildren a better life than the one they had. While Michael earned his final promotion to butler of the St. Croix estate, Eileen continued her work as governess, first for the only child of Jacques, and then cycling through the various pureblood families of high society looking to educate their children before they attended Hogwarts. It was work she was good at, and it brought in a steady enough income that combined with Michael’s was enough to provide for their family, and that was all that mattered. Eileen is at best tangentially related to the secrets of the St. Croix family, though she has observed it all through the lens of her husband’s relation to it. None of the secrets and lies matter to Eileen, not so long as she has her family and her husband by her side. The world is a dangerous place, but for Eileen she hopes she and her family are far enough removed to avoid the hardships befalling people everywhere. RP SAMPLE EXCUSED | miscellaneous  WAND INFO: alder wood unicorn hair ten inches CHARACTER STRENGTHS:
CHARACTER WEAKNESSES:
★ ★ ★ quirks  ………… ★ ★ ★ ★ ALIAS DAKOTA ★ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE TOO LONG THIS CHARACTER BELONGS TO DAKOTA. DO NOT STEAL. |
MADE BY ★MEULK
EILEEN MEI HARLOWE
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ZODIAC SIGN
FAVORITE COLOR
POSTING COLOR
#df2b9f - PINK
#df2b9f - PINK
THE PHYSICAL
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- HEIGHT: 5’2”
- DOMINANT HAND: RIGHT
- SCARS:
- TATTOOS:
- BLEMISHES/BIRTHMARKS:
- PHYSICAL AILMENTS:
THE EDUCATIONAL
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- GRADUATING YEAR: 1977, DID NOT GRADUATE
- OWLS: DID NOT TAKE
- NEWTS: DID NOT TAKE
- LANGUAGES LEARNED: MANDARIN, CANTONESE, ENGLISH
- FAVORITE CLASSES: CHARMS, HISTORY OF MAGIC
- WORST CLASSES: FLYING
- EXTRACURRICULARS:
THE FAVORITES
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- FAVORITE FOOD:
- FAVORITE DRINK:
- FAVORITE ANIMAL:
- FAVORITE HOBBY:
THE ALIGNMENTS
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- MORAL ALIGNMENT: LAWFUL GOOD
- SEXUAL ALIGNMENT:
- MUGGLE ALIGNMENT: 4/10
THE EXTRAS
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- PETS:
- NUMBER OF PLACES THEY'VE LIVED:
- FEARS: LOSING HER FAMILY AND THE LIFE SHE AND MICHAEL HAVE BUILT
- ASPIRATIONS:
