Sameera Taylor
 | |
| Sameera Babita Taylor | |
|---|---|
| Biographical Information | |
| Born | 14 May 1969, 48 |
| City of Birth | Sussex, England |
| Current City | London, England |
| Blood status | Muggle-born |
| Also known as | Meera |
| Physical Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Height | 5' 1" |
| Hair Colour | Black |
| Eye Colour | Brown (original), Silver (glamoured) |
| Skin Colour | Light brown |
| Relationships | |
| Father | Adrian Taylor |
| Mother | Isha Varma Bharadwaj |
| Siblings | |
| Magical Characteristics | |
| Wand(s) | |
| |
| Patronus | Western Moose |
| Education | |
| School | Hogwarts |
| House | Slytherin |
| Class of | 1987 |
| Occupation | |
| |
| Character Information | |
| Neon | |
Sameera Taylor is...pint-sized compared to her boss, Mordecai Hollingbury. This does not make her less of a party girl who takes great delight in getting her way with every single resource available that she can get her hands on. While she tends to give the future a fleeting glance and very much prefers to savour the present, she is hardly a flippant person; her quality lies in her being flexible to adapt and sometimes make slight adjustments when no one's looking so things work in her favour. Very much a true Slytherin.
Despite her rather rule-bending attitude to things, she is very loyal and looks out for the people she works alongside. She will often use her good looks and witty way of talking to get onto people's sides, but from there she keeps secrets so well you could swear she was a black hole for such things. Whispers stop with her. If at any point in time her pursuits are interrupted by someone with whom she works being in danger, she will stop for them.
Appearance/Distinguishing Features
Dusky complexion with almond shaped eyes and a prominent hooked nose, long black hair that has a loose wave to it when released from its usual braids. Her lips are usually coated in lipstick in shades of berry. She’s known for having at least two pairs of earring studs in her earlobes; outside of work she can be seen wearing large gold hoops. She also has her “signature” earring – a silver cuff earring in the shape of a snake that curls around the pinna of the left ear with the head resting above the centre and the tail slipping through the piercing on her earlobe. The snake has emeralds for eyes, and denotes her pride in being a Slytherin alumnus.
Her thick eyebrows are arched, but when she smiles she looks welcoming and friendly rather than icy or cold. She’s a fan of no-nonsense pinstripe suits, sometimes with suspenders, both with trousers or a pencil skirt that accentuates her hips. Casualwear ranges from silk Indian tunics that reach mid-thigh along with a scarf and trousers to long flowing sari-styled dresses, to modern and more Western clothes such as turtlenecks paired with longcoats.
Her hair is always braided, although the braid changes style every two days. She may sometimes stick fragrant flowers into her hair if she thinks a day needs brightening up. She’s definitely a woman who indulges in making herself up no matter the occasion, though sometimes when she gets rigorous with her job she gets stray strands of hair escaping from her hairline.
Her eyes are silver. This is mostly because she thinks she looks dull with brown eyes. It’s a spell that she has to cast daily and wears off in her sleep.
Personality
On the surface, she’s a bright, cheerful woman who embraces her femininity and not very intimidating stature as just the way she is. She’s friendly, gets along well with people and loves gossip. She pays attention to detail, is confident and independent, and has a mischievous streak about her where she often teases and plays the devil’s advocate simply because she believes someone has to be that opposing side in life.
Under the surface she is a Slytherin through and through. She loves achievements and being recognised for them, she sets personal goals for herself and constantly will try to take alternative routes to problem resolutions just to get it over with. She does believes that every problem has multiple ways of solving, and she makes it her mission to find those multiple ways, even if she doesn’t carry them out due to legal or moral reasons. This gives her a morally ambiguous personality from the get-go, and sometimes it can be difficult to tell when she’s being entirely serious and when she’s joking. Even her manner of speech winds and turns wherever it can to have her avoid direct confrontation, and the need to read between what she says is often very common with her.
Her perspective of law is similar to her boss’ in that she believes in wholeheartedly upholding it, and that justice must be brought to those who deserve it. However, her approach to it is no doubt different, in the sense that even words can be made to serve a greater purpose if you put your mind to it, rather than taking it as it is, since criminals and the like would be willing to twist their own. Despite that, she doesn’t have a great sense of long-term effect and doesn't always see all the details, not as much as her boss does, and sometimes her judgements can fall short. Even though she is a confident woman, she still defers to her boss because of this, keen to learn from him how he can think ahead with certainty. Between them, they are a tag-team of seeing the forest for the trees - if one needs perspective, the other provides. They do this unconsciously, as far as the synergy between them goes.
She has empathy for people who have lost loved ones in their lives, and sometimes may bend a bit backwards for them. This is a problem she’s trying to rectify, but she’s worried about looking too “harsh”. Views her boss’ poker face as a little unnecessary, but he does have a better grip on keeping up rigidity than she does. She looks out for the "little people", the people that often bear the brunt of an event and have their sufferings and grievances go unnoticed, and for this reason she and her boss somehow get along well.
Her Patronus, which is cast from memories of good times with her father, is a great Western Moose – the same animal that caused her father’s death. She has chosen it as her champion and to keep her father close to her rather than avoid it due to grief.
History
Childhood
British doctor Isha Varma Bharadwaj and Canadian lawyer Adrian Taylor, both Muggles, would never think that their oldest child would turn out to be a magical child. Born 14 May 1969, Sameera spent her childhood being mothered quite protectively. Although her father was all for letting her on her own to learn first-hand, her mother tended to be the barrier between things such as boys and going out, always telling her that academics would get her further than enjoying herself now.
She grew up in Leicester blissfully unaware of her future, mostly getting upset every time her father was sent off by his employer, a solicitor’s, to their Canadian branch to attend conferences or work on cases there. Despite her father being rather absent from her life, he was never absent from her heart and mind, and she rather used his absences as an excuse to write letters to him in her English class. She was always ready to find some way to do what she wanted to get done.
Hogwarts
When the Hogwarts letter and the officer from Muggle Liaison turned up on their doorstep the day after her 11th birthday, her parents were reluctant to let her go at first, but eventually relented after the Muggle Liaison officer reassured them repeatedly that she would be safe. With that, though she was anxious about her new life, she felt a little spark of adventure when she held what would be her wand in Ollivander’s, and she decided to be part of the wizarding world.
The magic of her wand left her fingers tingling for more, and she began to look forward to her new life. When her sister was born two years later, she was an active member of several Hogwarts clubs, including Duelling, Gobstones and Wizard Chess, and an avid debater when it came to Muggle Studies, especially how she felt that Muggles were not properly represented in the textbooks she read. She was not partial to Quidditch, though – physical activities didn’t do much for her, as someone more detail- and people-oriented.
Early Adulthood
Sameera lived through the First Wizarding War with a lot of fear for her parents, once she understood why it was so significant. When the First War ended, her mother was so afraid for her family that after she graduated they left England to live with Adrian in Canada. Unable to reintegrate into Muggle society despite her mother wanting nothing to do with the wizarding world after the First Wizarding War, Sameera worked in the Canadian Ministry of Magic as an intern in their International Law and Diplomatic Affairs Office before being promoted to full lawyer. While her father didn’t quite get wizarding law, he was more than happy to teach her the nuances of being a lawyer, including being professional and the tricks and tips of arguing in a court. Much of her confidence and public speaking skills come from both him and her tenure as a lawyer in the Canadian Ministry of Magic.
(However, if you were to ask her then why she took up lawyering, her answer would have been “Because my father was one.” She has wised up; her Job Description contains info on why she is passionate about law now.)
Her mother’s hunch on keeping her family away from England just in case something went wrong again came true when the Second Wizarding War took place. Sameera, who originally wanted to return to England to meet her friends, was dissuaded from leaving Canada until 1998, after the War had ended, with her mother as her mother had decided she wanted to go back and continue her practice in England. It was during this time that she applied for a lawyer position with the International Magical Office of Law in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. She was dismayed about the lack of legal cooperation between the various wizarding societies, only to find out that there had been so many legalities involved and not enough international lawyers that she was driven to help try and connect nations through ensuring their laws were compatible with each other’s, as much as she could try, in order to bring forth criminals of one nation who had committed wrong on another country’s soil and so on.
In January 2009, during a particularly bad winter storm, her father died in a car crash – he’d come across a moose crossing the road and had not swerved in time due to poor visibility. Sameera resigned from her job, too stricken with grief to continue with her source of inspiration for being a lawyer now gone. She left for Canada with her mother to deal with the funeral and tie up loose ends, so to speak. One of these loose ends was resolving the cases her father had left behind; while she was not qualified to speak as a Muggle lawyer, she kept the office organised . She understood that her father had dedicated his life to helping people, and she resolved to do this with her own job – but, in context of the society she now belonged to, to look out for those who need the support and provide a voice to all.
Isha decided to stay in Canada as she grieved, but Sameera soon decided that she wanted away from all these bad memories and returned to England in April 2009.
Her eventual choice of joining the Improper Use of Magic Office was a strange one, and the decisions leading up to it no stranger. In the search for another job that would distance her somewhat from international law due to her father's death and not wanting to be reminded of him, she researched the happenings of the Wizarding Wars and began to realise how much she could have helped if she had stayed. Then she discovered the Improper Use of Magic Office and its passive involvement, and decided to see if she could help out...
Her entrance – and assertions – to Mordecai rather impressed him despite a cold start, and he decided to take her on since she seemed to be a fount of ideas that she was keen on making into reality. It’s been over a year, she’s out of probation and she's his deputy, so she keeps to her word and has been invaluable to the Office where the lack of employees would have made it less efficient than it was before.
2013-2017
Early in 2013 due to much of the politicking within the Ministry and the general difficulty the IUM faced in trying to keep an eye on things, Sameera considered returning to Canada to resume being an international lawyer, but it was not a snap decision and she let it simmer in her mind as she observed the British government whilst working alongside Mordecai.
Admittedly as Mordecai had predicted, while the IUM had tried to enforce misuse of magic both within and outside of the Ministry, that effort though not in vain, found very little direction and support. Despite the attempts, Mordecai continued to do his best, maintaining his overall impartiality despite his struggles. Once or twice she caught him looking exhausted and downtrodden over the lack of results his efforts were making, but his silent resilience remained as he continued.
As Mordecai faced criticism of laws being outdated to match the current times, he genuinely made an effort to review the laws with the Office to see where things needed changing. In the effort Sameera, who had been re-evaluating the British Ministry of Magic after the political incidents in years prior and in her experiences, found the experience an engaging and involved challenge, and reminded her of why she joined the Office in the first place.
Mordecai found her insight valuable. Sameera did indeed think like a criminal and that perspective was alien to him. He welcomed the challenge and the two of them would spend many a discussion challenging each other until they came to a satisfactory compromise.
In 2017 Mordecai was injured at Souldern Dragon Sanctuary and was bedridden in St Mungo’s for a month. Sameera took over his job for the time being with support from Dieter and gained a new respect for her boss. To put it in her words, “The necessity to remain impartial in the matters of idiosyncrasies of humans really requires a saint-like disposition to not go insane, and while Mordecai will probably object to being described as a saint I don’t think anything else comes close enough to how he’s handled all of this for that long.”
The first thing she asked Mordecai when he returned to work was how he could deal with such matters. She has never shared the answer she received, but the next question was asking him how she could make his workload easier.
She continues working with Mordecai to this day, ever dependable and reliable, and while Mordecai had not been about to stop her from leaving if she had wanted, he is grateful and appreciative that she stayed.
2018
Sameera had considered at some point in leaving the Ministry in 2013 due to the lack of impact the Improper Use of Magic Office was having on Ministerial affairs despite their effectiveness in upholding the Statute of Secrecy, but Mordecai’s work ethic and perseverance appealed to her more compassionate side, even if barely, and she has secretly resolved to firmly loyal not to the Ministry, but to him as her boss.
Interests
Legislation
Sameera’s knack for constant communication, attention to detail and cunning has been used for her various duties, which run the gamut from keeping in contact with Mordecai, visiting sites where law breaches have occurred and taking note of as much detail as possible, assisting him in investigations and being the “field agent” (her words) when Mordecai has to see to other matters within the Ministry and is unavailable for being on-site. She organises the administrative work and delegates tasks to the appropriate members of the IUM as well as being the mediator/go-to between departments and offices.
Mordecai has given her some freedoms, and thus she’s decided that the Office is about being proactive on the field and reinforcing the law, not just of the people but of the Ministry itself. While looking good, if her insistence on making the dress code within the Office be restricted to “bespoke suits” is anything to go by.
Sameera’s background as a Muggle, with her father’s inspiration and influence, and being involved in wizarding law (and some smattering of Muggle law, but nothing too significant though they share some similar terms) for 23 years. A passion to keep order with all her effort, and always looking out for others in the wake of two wars that have torn their lives apart. A desire to look out for others while allowing them to help achieve the best they can do in any given situation, and always willing to speak up for the little people.
