Leonie Wakahisa
 | |
| Léonie Malaya Wakahisa | |
|---|---|
| Biographical Information | |
| Born | 30 June 1994, 24 |
| City of Birth | London, United Kingdom |
| Blood status | Squib |
| Also known as | Leo |
| Physical Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Hair Colour | Black |
| Education | |
| School | Other School |
| Class of | 2012 |
| Occupation | |
| |
| Character Information | |
| Playby | Rina Fukushi |
| Nuri | |
Léonie Wakahisa - "Leo" to some - is a fairly prominent muggle artist known in some circles for her early fame as a child prodigy. She has conflicting emotions about how to meld her life in the wizarding world with her much more substantial muggle lifestyle, and this is reflected in her art. Léonie can be a bit cold and shy at first but she eventually reveals herself to be a friendly and curious person.
Physical Description
On the whole, Léonie conveys the impression of a skinny girl with broad shoulders and an almost boyish gait. Her build is naturally angular. She is prone to hunching when focused on a project, and habitually rubs the back of her neck to massage its occasional aches. Léonie is well-coordinated but far from graceful; her instinctive reactions are often jerky and alert.
Her fashion sense varies from trend-to-trend, although her staple wardrobe is straightforward: white t-shirts or sweaters, jeans, light-woven scarves. She aims for minimalism and comfort but also experiments with the idea of expressing herself through dress.
Léonie wears her long black hair loose and is always brushing it out of her eyes because she forgets to tie it back whilst working. She has a naturally unexpressive countenance, with surly eyebrows and full, unsmiling lips. Her smile is a subtle thing and her (rarely given) grins are positively goofy. Léonie has lovely teeth but doesn't like to grin because she was teased about them being too big when she was younger.
As a result of her vocation, her hands are often stained by paints or inks. She tries to keep them in good condition by indulging in the odd manicure, where the technicians always tease her about the clay and dirt caught underneath her fingernails. When Léonie feels like dressing up, she paints her nails in bright metallic colours.
Personality Description
Léonie has a quiet personality around most people.
She is a visual and tactile girl, the kind of person who carefully examines her fruit in the market before she considers buying any. As a middle child, she is comfortable getting around on her own - especially to places her family rarely expressed interest, such as muggle museums and art galleries and theatres. Léonie comes across as cold to begin with but she is ultimately polite and friendly.
With friends, the squib is soft and sociable and always always always curious. She loves to touch, to question, and to find out what is going on in other people's world view. If you catch her in the right mood, she might even explain her own views.
Outside of her interests in art, she is keen on poetry (English, Japanese, the romantic languages) and cinema. She likes muggle movies and culture, and reads a lot of history. Léonie believes that it's important to live widely if you are an artist so she does not restrict herself. She also likes to play wizarding chess and makes her own bath products. She attempts a vegan lifestyle but sometimes cheats.
When Léonie is working on a project, however, she naturally shuts out any kind of interaction. She might even forget you're in the room with her. But don't worry - eventually she returns to this plane of living, ready to be human again.
History
Akahito Wakahisa met his wife, Diwa Dimatatac, in Barcelona in the early 90s. They were both in Spain as part of a wizarding group tour to the Sagrada Familia, both in their late 20s and both recovering from failed past relationships. It had felt a bit like fate - they clicked and kept on clicking, insomuch that Diwa followed Akahito back to England for a few weeks instead of returning straight to the Philippines after her holiday. Eventually, after a year of many trips and long distance attempts, the couple married. They held their wedding in Barcelona, of course.
Their first child was a boy, Jaimé. Two years later, Léonie came along - she was followed by another brother one year after that. They formed a lovely trio of clever and well-behaved children. Akahito and Diwa could not have been more delighted. And, in fact, Akahito still speaks about their happiness as being their downfall. It was at the peak of it - when he had been promoted at his job as a translator at a wizarding publishing house - that they began to suspect Léonie was a squib.
It had been a minor worry at first. Jaimé had exhibited signs of magic at three or four. When Léonie failed to do so by five, Diwa decided to take things into her own hands, even though her husband assured her that these things happened late with some wixes.
Diwa enrolled Léonie in a muggle Montessori school. There had been a good deal of arguing amongst the adults about this but Léonie herself, often teased by her brother, was keen to mix with other children and learn about the muggle world. It was at this school that they discovered Léonie was a gifted artist. More than gifted, in fact, because her teachers were soon recommending to Diwa that her daughter be classically trained right away. They thought she might be a prodigy.
Childhood & The University of Arts, London
By the time Léonie was ten, her family had resigned themselves to acknowledging that she was a squib. Akahito took it hard but he consoled himself by focusing on his two magic-using sons; he rarely became involved in Léonie's muggle reality, and left her to her mother.
Although she still attended regular lessons at school, Léonie was privately tutored in the fine arts. She began with pencils and charcoal, quickly working her way through inks and watercolours. Her favourite medium at this age was oils, and her paintings were placed highly in competitions alongside adult competitors. She was occasionally featured in the Arts & Culture section of muggle newspapers, the usual feel-good piece about a child prodigy. Diwa cooperated with the Ministry to ensure journalists did not dig their noses into the Wakahisa's lives and the magical community. This contrasted with her almost non-existence profile in the wizarding world; most did not know that Akahito even had a daughter.
At twelve, Léonie was invited to apply to the University of Arts London. Her parents initially refused to give their consent but eventually relented - it was the one thing she'd ever insisted on doing. The squib had always been quiet: her bedroom was her studio and she had been happy to go along with the life her mother was helping to build outside of a wizarding world that did not have use for her. So her insistence, loud and passionate, had come as something of a surprise to the adults. So they signed what they had to sign, took the proper precautions.
Léonie began her studies at thirteen. She completed her Bachelors in Fine Arts at sixteen, by which time she had won several prestigious art competitions and was moving on to experiment in sculptures.
She had led an unusual life, growing up. Although she was watched carefully by tutors and treated as a minor celebrity by classmates, Léonie unavoidably made friends in the muggle world. Some were her age - old Montessori schoolmates - and some were older, the undergraduates who exposed Léonie to mature ideas and concepts that would have otherwise been beyond reach at such a young age. She naturally came to love the internet and would spend hours on university computers.
When she graduated, she kept in contact with her friends. Léonie participated in wizarding society - and drew inspiration from it - but she had long prepared to immerse herself in a muggle identity because she believed that the magical world would never truly accept her. In many ways, Léonie is far from being emotionally mature.
Young Adulthood & The Royal Academy
Directly after university, she began part-time as a barista at the Blackwood Cafe in Hackney (east London). This area is also where her parents have paid for Léonie to have her own art studio - a large studio flat with stained hardwood floors and a skylight for lots of natural light. She also sleeps here, though Diwa insists that Léonie stays most weekends with her family; they are afraid that London's muggle nightlife may easily seduce her into developing bad habits. She is generally quite good at keeping her social life separate and private from them, and tries to give them little cause to worry.
Even without her parents' support, Léonie manages to pull in a healthy income between her art and coffee shop shifts. She tries to spend from her part-time pay check. The lion's share of the rest of the money is split between saving up for an emergency nest egg, and buying materials for future art projects. As she has an existing reputation in the art world, she is trying to focus on finding her creative voice.
At present, Léonie's works are being presented at The Royal Academy of Arts - a favourite in their Young Artists exhibits. She is interested in applying to their graduate programme but has decided to put it off until she is older and has embellished her portfolio. It is not unusual to find her attending the odd talk at the Academy, or participating in its workshops.
Her day-to-day life is fairly pleasant and she is contemplating exploring more of the wizarding world as part of her attempt to forge an artistic identity that melds magic and muggle realities.
Léonie's routine is irregular.
She is an early bird, and likes to spend her mornings and afternoons in the studio to make as much as she can of the natural light. Sometimes this involves doing little more than sketching or reading or experimenting with various materials; she even exercises and dances, willing to try different mediums over inner discovery. When she is dedicated to a particular project, Léonie may spend hours on this portion of her day: painting, sculpting, fine-tuning.
Her shifts at Blackwood Cafe are usually in the late afternoon or evenings. Léonie is good friends with her colleagues - most of them creatives in their own right - and is a perfectionist when it comes to pulling a good shot of espresso. She likes to chat with customers as she serves them their coffee.
When her work as an artist takes her into galleries, she usually attends meetings (with art dealers or establishments) with her mother, who is also her manager. She prefers to let Diwa do most of the business talk.
Léonie has little experience of art in the wizarding world. She does not believe she can compete with wizards or witches who are able to utilise magic to create more dynamic, non-static pieces.
