Name: Cyril Delphinius Penworthy; “Squirrel”
House: Ravenclaw
Year: Sixth
Wand: Swishy, 11 3/8 inches, Redwood with a Unicorn Tail Hair core
Bloodline: Pureblood
Birthday: October 29, 1969
Pet/Familiar: A Little Owl called Flufferbiffikins
Physical Description:
Upon seeing Cyril for the first time, most people come away with the impression that he’s a bit silly looking. When pressed, there is no single thing that can be pinpointed as the source of the silliness, but more of a mismatch of features that don’t exactly clash but somehow don’t quite complement each other properly. That has always been the case, but recently, it has only gotten more exaggerated. At sixteen years old, he has mostly finished with the changes of puberty. Thank Merlin. It’s been rough. His limbs have lengthened considerably, but he carries it fairly well, coming off as more lithe than gangly, and the last he measured, he stood at five foot eleven. His voice, mercifully, is done deepening, so he doesn’t squeak anymore, but he still has a higher tone than a lot of the men in his family. Not piping, like when he was a child, but still more tenor than bass.
His skin is pale, but prolonged jaunts in the sun leave him burnt red and crispy before eventually transitioning to freckles. Most of the time, he carries freckles well into the winter before they fade, and he is notoriously forgetful about sunscreen charms. He flushes easily, and it tends to spread to his extremities, but his cheeks aren’t overly rosy on a day-to-day basis. He will occasionally have a break out of facial blemishes, but they are mostly caused by stress, and he doesn’t stress out that often. His face is becoming slightly angular as he loses the baby fat, with prominent cheekbones and a jutting chin. The outside lines of his face, the frame, is quite pointy, but all of the inner lines – the curve of his lips, the slant of his nose – are more subtle. Kind of nondescript, actually. His lips are ever-so-slightly pouty, not quite plump, but not thin either. Most of the time, they are stretched into a lopsided grin or separated to expose small, decently straight teeth as he prattles on and on. His nose is barely noticeable, except to note that he has one; it is on the small side and kind of blobby.
Cyril’s eyes are a pale blue and tend to be rather expressive, despite the fact that they are set a little too close together. He’s got quite long eyelashes, but they are fairly light and do not make him look too girly. The eyebrow situation could do with some improvement; they are not overly thick, but he does not take as much care with them as he could. Half the time, they are sticking every-which-way and desperately need smoothing. Like his eyebrows, his hair is a light, sandy brown, and it wouldn’t curl in a cloud of steam. He keeps it on the short side, but long enough to disguise his somewhat protruding ears, and he usually does all right with a comb. Dressing is a horse of a different colour. His clothes are high quality and of the current fashion, but he has strange taste when pairing pieces together. Fortunately, for formal events, he is required to wear dress robes with very little leeway in terms of personal touches, and he manages to pull off a very respectable look. It’s the everyday style that eludes him, as he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t wear a polka dot jumper with pinstripe trousers.
Personality Description:
The biggest talent Cyril possesses is an ability to find out what annoys a person most, though he is not conscious of this. He doesn’t mean to irritate people and is not deliberately a nuisance; it just seems to come naturally to him. On the contrary, he tries his best to get along with people and is a placator by nature. He is affable and almost criminally cheerful, and his optimism tends to get on people’s nerves. He greets everyone as a friend and very seldom stands on formalities. There is nothing shy about Cyril, and he will talk to anyone. He has a tendency to come across as rather arrogant and entitled, but he is trying to work on that in order to retain friends. It is marginally successful. Even with the huge sense of entitlement, he is not prejudiced. He treats Muggles and Muggleborns as if they were beneath him, but he also treats other purebloods that way. He can’t help it; he’s always been treated as though he was the best person in the world, so is it any wonder he believes that? His mother wouldn’t lie to him. Still, it is not everyone else’s fault that he’s better than them, so he tries to be compassionate and kind.
Whether it’s the silliness of his appearance or the persistent optimism, he tends to be taken as a halfwit. That is not true, but he does nothing to dissuade those notions. What does it bother him? He is very self-secure and has the ability to laugh off a lot of teasing; experience has shown that teasers hate that. If he had any sort of penchant for subterfuge, he could use his image to his advantage, but he is not ambitious. He is not very good at manipulation, preferring to be honest when he can. The future is a mystery to Cyril, and he is fine with leaving it that way. He doesn’t worry much about what will happen; he just sort of drifts along, whatever will be will be.
Still, he likes to please his parents, and his schoolwork is always done on time. His marks are excellent, which is a mystery to many people, as he seems to be daydreaming in class and doodling. He is an auditory learner, with something of an eidetic memory, and he can recall lectures he’s heard throughout the term while he’s taking the exam. It takes him a really long time to complete his exams, but he usually gets the answers correct. He can also remember conversations word for word, which seems like it could be a useful skill, but it’s not so good when he’s said the wrong thing and his mind replays it over and over and over. Fortunately, he doesn’t spend much of his time thinking, so there’s only a limited opportunity for overthinking. In most situations, his brain doesn’t even come into the discussion. His ears and his mouth push his brain into a corner and tell it to wait until they ask it a question.
Cyril tends to be restless and full of nervous energy. He doesn’t have the look of an athlete, and he could take competition or leave it, but he likes to be active; his favourite activities are boating and riding, but he also enjoys flying. He prefers broom racing to Quidditch, though. Most of the time, he is moving somehow, whether it’s tapping his feet or twirling a quill in class or just shifting around in his seat. His attention span is the same way, and his focus flits back and forth, easily caught by one thing but pulled away by another, so his homework sessions are typically fragmented and scattered. He works on one project for a while, then switches to something else. He’s incredibly fickle, but not when it comes to people. Cyril is very loyal to his family, and he trusts them above all. The thing that would break his cheerful spirit the fastest would be to insult his family.
Brief History:
The Penworthy Estate is situated on the outskirts of a Muggle town called Swindon, which seems to be expanding alarmingly close to their property. Of course, the main manor home went to the eldest Penworthy son and his family, but through judicious application of luck and blackmail, the other children have managed to wrangle portions of it for themselves. Leontios Penworthy was the second-youngest son, but the youngest recognized, and he was the least greedy, so the home he got was a modest three-story abode on the edge closest to the town. He settled there with his new wife, Philippa, who was a former Ward, and she set about making it as tasteful, yet pretentious, as possible. Theirs was an arranged marriage, of course, but they got on fairly well. It was no great passionate love, but there was companionship and contentment.
Their life together was fairly calm, without any need for rush or bother, and after about two years of married life, Philippa calmly brought the heir into the world. Cyril was born in the autumn, and Leo was at the Ministry on business at the time, and by the time he got home, the child had been cleaned and dressed, and all evidence of the entire birthing process had been removed. That summed up the way their family worked pretty well, actually. Of course, the tiny scrunched up baby did not have a name yet, as that was Leo’s right, but they had discussed it beforehand. He was supposed to be named Delphinius Ward Penworthy, but when Leo was holding him and looking at him, he just looked like a Cyril. Philippa was not pleased, but it was not long before even she agreed that he could only have been named Cyril.
He was a precocious child, very curious about everything, and his mother was always fishing him out of places that he wasn’t supposed to be able to get into; he was a crafty little thing, but he was so pleasant and cheerful that no one had the heart to scold him much. From a teeny tiny tot, he was given tutors in all things, most notably French and Equestrian, but he was typically a squirmy scholar and not prone to sitting still. That was great for burning off his energy and falling into a dead sleep early in the evenings, but his tutors tended to be in a perpetual state of pulling out their hair. Loving parents doted on the child, and he never wanted for anything. In a less agreeable child, the results of such attentions could have been a disastrously spoiled brat, and there is some argument that the potential became the reality, but he is no where near as entitled as he could be.
Of course, a lot of that attention was stolen away from him when he was about four years old. The thief was his baby sister, Cynthia Terpsichore Penworthy, who was a shock to him, and he resented the intrusion into his life by a squalling, smelly infant. The lavished affection and attention had been all his up to this point, but now he was forced to share, and actually, it looked like the intruder got more than he did! It seemed only logical that he should run away and find better parents, ones who would not have to be shared. That didn’t last very long, and his father found him filthy and fast asleep in the stables. During his bath, he made quite pompous demands about how he expected to be treated, if he was going to stick around, and it amused his father, so he was hugged and patted and allowed to sleep in his parents’ bed that night.
The screechy thing in the cradle eventually stopped screeching as much and got bigger and crawlier and a teeny bit more fun. When she could talk, Cyril liked her much better and consented to letting her follow him around. She slowed him down, but she was spirited. A little too spirited: she was always getting Cyril into trouble. He could ride his pony around the field all afternoon with no problems, but if Cindy was around, any number of things would go wrong. And they usually did. Cindy was wild, and as a toddler, she was a destructive force. That only proved what Cyril had always thought: that his parents had been crazy to add another child when their first one was doing just fine on his own. If that wasn’t enough, it wasn’t that long until another one came along. This one was different, though.
With Cindy, there were warning signs: his mother got all fat and crabby, and they decorated the nursery. But there was no warning this time. Eight-year-old Cyril left that morning for a riding lesson, and his mother had looked the same as she always did. He barely said anything to her, too busy wolfing down his breakfast and running out the door to converse. Being deemed big enough finally, he was allowed to do some exercises on a real full-sized horse, and he was in a rush to get out there. He didn’t come back in for lunch, knowing full well that his mother would send some out to him if he didn’t come in, and she did. So, it was well into late afternoon when he did tromp back to the house, and as soon as he entered, he knew something was up. He was ushered up the stairs as quickly as possible, washed against his will, and hustled back down to eat in the kitchen. They never ate in the kitchen.
After dinner, he and Cindy were called into his father’s den. Their father looked kind of drawn and stricken, and he informed them that they had a new brother who was asleep upstairs. Cyril protested vigorously. Why didn’t anyone tell him there was going to be a baby? Mummy hadn’t gotten all fat or anything! His father explained that it wasn’t a baby, it was an older boy, older than Cyril, who was Daddy’s son but not Mummy’s son, but he was going to be living with them. It was quite perplexing, but they were sent straight up to bed. Cyril didn’t stay there, of course, as he was too disturbed by the idea of a new intruder into his family to just lie around and sleep. He crept up to the attic room where this supposed ‘brother’ was stashed. There was a boy there, a fact that astonished him, and he moved in closer to inspect the trespasser.
He sat there for quite a while, looking at his brother’s face, and then at his own in a hand mirror, trying to convince himself that it really was his brother. Brothers were supposed to look alike, right? His father looked like his uncles, but this brother didn’t seem to resemble Cyril very much. Of course, it was difficult to say, since he was lying on his side, and his face wasn’t entirely visible in the dark room. Cyril went over to open the curtain, letting a little moonlight pour into the room, but as soon as he leaned back over the bed, this brother suddenly sat up and clocked him right in the face. Yelling and stumbling backwards, Cyril fell onto a chair and then through it as it broke beneath him, and it was only a moment or two before his father was bursting in to see what was all the noise was about. It was Cyril who was scolded, even though his nose was bleeding, and he went back to bed just as perplexed as he had been before his little excursion. That was the first time his brother hit him, but it would not be the last.
This brother became a fixture in the house, and while Cyril had vowed to have nothing to do with him, he could not avoid the other boy. Mortimer was his name, and he seemed to skulk about the house in silence for the first couple of weeks. Cyril couldn’t help being interested in him, mysterious as he was, and somewhat frightening, too. When Cyril followed him, he sometimes turned around and looked at the smaller boy, and there was something in his eye that told Cyril to keep his distance. But did he? No. He was incapable of that. He didn’t have much time to get this brother to warm to him, as the brother was going to Hogwarts in the fall, but he thought he did a good job of it. After all, he had gotten Morrie to talk to him, and he even had a nickname! He was starting to be rather pleased with the idea of having a brother.
It was only a couple years before Cyril was joining his brother at school, and he was thrilled to be in the same house. His father had been a Ravenclaw, too. It was interesting to go to school, though he was kind of blindsided by all the homework. He enjoyed meeting new people and learning new things, but there were an awful lot of rules, and he was not used to being disciplined. The first detention he had left him feeling mortified, and he did a better job of following the rules after that. He missed his mother, but she sent him all kinds of goodies, and he acclimated to school life soon enough. It’s just routine now.
Important Relationships:
Leontios Penworthy: Father; He is very lenient with Cyril and has never been much on discipline, but a disappointed word or look is usually fairly effective at keeping the boy in line; Cyril loves his father and does his best to make him proud.
Philippa Penworthy nee Ward: Mother; She is very concerned with pureblood society and how her son will fit into it; She wants the best for him, and pushes him to achieve more and climb the social ladder.
Mortimer Sullivan: Half-Brother; After a rocky start, Cyril considers himself fairly close to his half-brother; They bicker back and forth, and Mortimer pushes him around like a real brother; Cyril likes that.
Cynthia Penworthy: Sister; She is more rough-natured than Cyril, and he doesn’t always understand her; She has more in common with Mortimer than with Cyril, but he loves her and would do pretty much anything for her… within reason.
Cousins, to varying degrees, that he interacts with: Max Westbrook, Tarquin de Morgan, Miles Westbrook, Fenella Lowe, Meg Westbrook, Olwen Lowe, Nero de Morgan
Likes: Boating, riding, racing, banana pudding, tea, origami, buttons, owls, being outside, being barefoot, candles, strong winds, bright colours, music, lots of space
Dislikes: Sitting still, ink blots, coffee, licorice, blood, violence, people who can’t seem to get along with anyone, Muggle clothes, being cramped, morning breath, colds
Class sign-ups: Divinations, Charms, Transfigurations, Potions, History of Magic
PB/Avatar to be used: Sterling Beaumon
Roleplay Sample: Done.
How did you hear about PI?: A little bird.
Eeny: Done.
Meeny: Done.



