Fabia

This character is retired, and is no longer in play. Fabia flits away to Paris and takes up residence in a garret overlooking the Boulevard Haussmann. The Three Broomsticks is sold to pay her assorted debts to card sharps and couturiers.

The Dowager Doxy
Portrayed by Maya Plisetskaya
Name: Fabia Travers
Aliases: Alias Sophia Clarke, alias Sophia Prince, alias Mrs Bertram Travers, alias Fabienne de Quérouaille, alias Fabia Iskanderova, alias Mrs Edward Fairfax.
Birthday: September 18th, 1877
Position: Unknown
Lineage: Half-blood

Description

An elegant, expensive woman who lost her youth some time ago but is not yet prepared to admit this fact. She has a long face, a long nose; big soulful dark green eyes below high-drawn brows; carmine lips, and a mole above them, on the left from her point of view, the right from yours. Almost, but not quite, too much makeup for a face upon which time has left ample engravings. The present shade of her thick dark red hair is owed to henna rather than nature; she wears it in a Marcel Wave which undulates from the pale olive expanse of her forehead, to the chignon low on the back of her neck. Her scent is French and very heady.

Even now, long after leaving the stage, she has kept her dancer's body. Slender and sleek, well-disciplined, possessed of such regal posture, such easy and graceful carriage, that she seems taller than her five feet and four inches: her frame is just the thing upon which to hang the latest Muggle fashions, and this she does with relish. Today, for instance, she's wearing a two-piece ensemble in duck-egg blue silk: a calf-length dress created seemingly without a single seam, beneath a bolero jacket with infinitesimally puffed sleeves. White gloves, pearl-drop earrings, low-heeled shoes made of silkworm cocoon skins.

There's a glass in her hand. There's always a glass in her hand.

Background

Born in 1877. Father a pureblooded Prince of typically eccentric tastes; mother an opera-dancer with whom he briefly dallied. Brought up in London, to be worthy of her father and follow in her mother's toe-shoed footsteps; till the fateful letter. Attended Hogwarts 1888 till 1892, taking only her OWLs. Spent one set of holidays with the Princes: never again. A bastard, half-blooded, with passions deeply rooted in the wider Muggle world, she didn't integrate fully into wizarding society. In 1894, despairing of what she really wished, she consented to marry her sweetheart from school, who'd been a year ahead of her and loved her beyond sanity: Bertram Travers. They were more or less together for seventeen months, before she ran away, to Paris, to dance. There was no divorce.

Wand

Length: 12 1/8"
Wood: Pine
Flexibility: Very springy
Core: Unicorn hair

From 1896 till 1909 she appeared as a corps girl then a minor soloist with assorted European dance companies. In 1910 the Ballets Russes took her on as an emergency substitute; she had three seasons with them before a hopelessly romantic, hopelessly inept young(er) Englishman flung a pale pink rose onto the stage at her feet. She slipped on it, broke her hip, and lost her heart. She had nineteen years and a Squib daughter with her Muggle lover, whilst they lived as man and wife amongst a shifting bohemian set in London. He suspected she was more than other women, but never KNEW — she was furtive in her magic, taking a perverse pleasure in doing things the hard way, in getting along without the world and the people who had (she considered) rejected her. In time her perfectly natural enchantment of him waned. In 1932 he ran away with a diseuse. Then in 1933 her utterly normal daughter married an utterly normal man. And so Fabia's own life has grown smaller, lonelier with the passage of time, as she's lost all the things for love of which she turned away from wizardry.

In September 1938 she received an owl notifying her that her wizard husband had killed himself, leaving only the will he'd written when they were first married, in which she was his only heir. Most notably, heir to the sinecure purchased for him by his family: the Three Broomsticks pub, of which he had been the absentee landlord for nigh on thirty years. And, because her memories had softened, because she had meanwhile given everything of herself to not-quite-achieve her dreams, because she did always love him, because Gryffindor types can't resist the scent of a crazy challenge, and because, in the final analysis, there was nothing else left, she decided not to sell the pub, not to sit in London collecting the trickle of income from it, but to go there herself and see if it isn't too late for her to… conjecture what might have been.

She will be a good pub landlady because she's interested in people, lots of people. She will be a not-so-good pub landlady because she's interested in drink, lots of drink. She will be an amusing pub landlady because she has an extensive repertoire of tales from her youth, not all of which are, strictly speaking, true.

Repertoire

Don Quixote: Street Dancer, Mercedes, Grand pas (demoiselles d'honneur)
Giselle ou les Wilis: Wili, Zulma, Myrtha
La Belle au bois dormant: Fée Violente, Fée Diamant
Le Lac des cygnes: Swan, Two Swans, Spanish, Mazurka, Pas de trois
Coppélia: Swanilda's Friends, La Folie
Le Corsaire: Slave, Third Odalisque
La Sylphide: Bridesmaid, Sylph
La Bayadère: Grand pas (Gamzatti), Second Shade
Paquita grand pas: Pas de trois, Jumping Variation
Cinderella: Wicked Stepmother
Le Petit cheval bossu, ou La Tsar-Demoiselle: The Mare

~ Ballets Russes ~
L'oiseau de feu: Thirteen Enchanted Princesses
Polovtsian Dances: Gliding Dance of the Maidens
Daphnis et Chloe: Lyceion
Chopiniana: Sylph, Mazurka
Scheherazade: Odalisque, Zobeide
Le Sacre du printemps: Young Girls

~ Gala Pieces ~
Le Lac des cygnes: Black pas de deux
Don Quixote: Kitri's entrance
The Dying Swan

Quirks

Bites Off The Unchewable Once a Gryffindor, always going to throw one's dainty cloche hat over the wall.
Doesn't Stand On Ceremony Endless revolutions in artistic and bohemian circles have worn away whatever instinct Fabia might once have had toward social proprieties; she'll happily chat with anyone, receive guests in her pyjamas if that's what she happens to be wearing when they arrive, and sit on the floor if she's run out of chairs.
Invariably Somewhat Sloshed Dancers don't overindulge. But, in the course of a busy social life after she left the stage, Fabia became rather fond of a drink or six; and in the last few years, since she's been alone…
Vanity, Vanity, All Is Vanity Accustomed to being thought beautiful, she is fighting a cunning rearguard action against Time… but without ever really doubting that she looks splendid. She has still the habits and manners of a beauty.
Wealth: Well-To-Do She has almost always had plenty of money (usually from the men in her life, one of whom has even been considerate enough to off himself and thus equip her with a steady income for her old age), but when you take into account her profligacy it's a wonder she's not worse off than she is. Grasshopper, not ant.

RP Hooks

  • Are you an habituée of the Broomsticks? We're bound to meet.
  • Are you interested in the Muggle world? Ask me anything.
  • Hogwarts students: I may be ancient, but I'm much cooler than your parents and grandparents.
  • Do you like getting drunk and dancing to gramophone records? Come in, come in…

Logs

Logs featuring Fabia Logs that refer to Fabia

Relationships

Frid

Frid
Fabia's valet since March 1933. He does everything from laying out her clothes to managing her money; she wouldn't last five minutes without him, now that she's so accustomed to his services, and they both know it…

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Emma Hargreaves
Fabia's only child. A Squib. Born in 1914, on the eve of the Great War. She is prudent and sensible and respectable, so much so that you've really got to wonder where she gets it from; and has to date produced five little Hargreaveses. Fabia visits her perfect Muggle household in St John's Wood regularly and sits about helpless with confused admiration.

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John Hargreaves
Emma's husband. A more upright Muggle solicitor you could not hope to find. He is not a great admirer of his mother-in-law; he frets over her possible future influence upon his children.

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John Hargreaves
Eldest grandchild. Born 1934. Just old enough to worship his grand-mère.

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Sarah Hargreaves
Grand-daughter. Born 1935.

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Cecily Hargreaves
Grand-daughter. Born 1936.

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Philip Hargreaves
Grandson. Born 1937.

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Samuel Hargreaves
Grandson. Born February 2nd, 1939.

Gallery

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