First things first, Nia Papadakis is a sensory overload. She has one mode: on. Loud - both in volume and outspokenness - and self-assured, her presence easily fills a room. The sort of person that gestures wildly when speaking, always makes eye contact and employs gentle touches to create intimacy in conversation. Perky with an unpleasant edge, Nia approaches all people with the expectation that they are intelligent and reasonable. In some ways, that’s good - she’ll give you the benefit of the doubt at first. But there’s something predatory about it; like she wants you to impress (or disappoint) her. Aggressively friendly is a good term for it. Wolfish isn’t too far off the mark, either.

Very nearly fearless, Nia likes to test her limits. A good quality to have in small doses, but a heady cocktail of excess confidence and drive mean that Nia has something of an immortality complex. She’s always pushing herself. Can’t stop, won’t stop pursuing fun or adventure or bad ideas (like scheduled make outs with the people she’s regularly disciplining as a prefect). Constantly teetering on the edge of disaster. If she were a more competitive person, this might bite her in the ass more often. But Nia is a risk taker because pressure is a distraction, not because she has a real need to prove herself to anyone. This can be infuriating for those who are competitive, because Nia is rarely in it to win it. She just wants to feel a rush.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she is something of a divisive person. First impressions are not Nia’s strong suit - neither are second, third or fourth impressions if we’re being honest. She comes on strong, moves fast and won’t wait for you to catch up. Niceness is not something that comes to her naturally, and she isn’t particularly worried about people liking her. Nia is impatient, unsympathetic and often thoughtless when dealing with others’ feelings. It is not malice that drives her, however – Nia does not actively seek to harm others – she’s just insensitive.

Cocky and cool and unconcerned, there’s something stereotypically masculine about the way Nia presents herself. ‘Tomboyish’ isn’t quite right – or perhaps, it’s more than tomboyish: like she’s going for a caricature. Prince Charming made manifest. It’s an image she’s been marketing for longer than she can remember. Perception is everything, and if enough people buy what you’re selling, then it has to be true, right? Nia fancies herself a Cool Girl: big personality, fun and flirty and flippant, able to take on any challenge and free of complicated emotions. It’s by no means a sustainable identity, but after so many years of playing at it, it’s become her truth. Whatever she was before must’ve been boring or bad.

In order to upkeep this uncomplicated, competent Cool Girl image, Nia has to do a lot of boundary setting and compartmentalization. Nia has friends, but doesn’t open up easily. She’s more than happy to talk to you about you for hours, but she’s miserly with details about herself and her feelings. She tends to be stingy with the emotional faucet, as well. Anger comes out as exasperation or disgust. Sadness is not something she allows anyone else to see, at all. It’s a careful game of self-control, and she’s actually, really, not that good at it. Nia can be incredibly moody and her emotions come out as microbursts. Intense and brief and then she’s “over it” and ready to move on.

But she’s never actually “over it” that quickly. Nia bottles her emotions until she exhausts herself. As previously mentioned, she finds outlets in risk taking and damaging behavior, but she’s also not above just laying in bed all day pretending to be asleep, too. Her roommates must think she takes an awful lot of naps. Calling her out on this would probably lead to adamant denial, followed by a brief anger whirlwind, which will of course be trailed by a very long “nap.”

Nia prides herself on being a good prefect. It is very important to her. Nia likes the responsibility because it gives her structure. The rules because, to her, they are simple – black and white. They’re easy to adhere to (in her opinion) and easy to apply. That anyone ever gets caught breaking the rules is just beyond her. Guys, she says, it’s so easy to just Not. She reacts to rulebreakers with exasperation and teasing, but she’ll still take those points. She considers herself fair in application of the rules - and generally, she is - but it’s not the sort of behavior that wins a lot of love among her classmates.

Despite being a little prickly and a lot insensitive, Nia is a good time. She’s a low maintenance friend who’s always up for fun. She likes to joke and tease, erring toward deadpan and sarcastic humor. When a friend is in need, Nia’s sympathetic “Aw, that sucks,” is always followed by some sort of practical advice or cheering encouragement for her pal to solve their problem. She’s not so great at just being a shoulder to cry on. If feelings start to get intense, Nia gets spooked and flees.

Nia has a filthy fucking mouth, like her fellow Ebonhide junior prefect. Unlike Casper, Nia is preoccupied with “setting a good example” and so she frequently self-corrects with cutesy curses. She is also trying to get Casper to start a curse jar with the intent of using the proceeds to buy alcohol (or possibly a small tropical island based on how foul mouthed these two are) for an end of the year party for the Ebonhide juniors.

More than a year on, Nia is still coping with the loss of her mother. Uma, her sickness and her death are verboten. Nia simply cannot speak of any of it without falling apart utterly. She does an amazing job of seeming alright, but rest assured she is most definitely not. Deep down, she’s terrified – of the missing piece in her heart, of getting sick herself, of failing her mother, of her father abandoning her, of losing the house and being homeless. She’s angry. She’s lost. Life after her mother’s death has been difficult and lonely, but she is slowly coming to terms with it.

TL;DR
+ Driven, self-assured
+ Independent
+ Fun
= Flirty
= Cocky
= Risktaker
- Immortality complex
- Not good at Dealing With It, where It = any emotion
- Insensitive, unsympathetic
- Impatient
- Can be just a total fucking asshole

Music
Antonia's primary focus is voice - she's an alto. However, she is also skilled at piano, trombone and trumpet. She knows how to play a clarinet, since that is the instrument everyone likes to throw cute girls on when they first show an interest in music, but she doesn't enjoy it. Percussion and flute evade her. She'd some day like to try out pipe organ, but is hesitant to go traipsing about in a church just to satisfy her curiosity.

Vassilis Papadakis. Father. Half-blooded. Vas is the black sheep son of a semi-respected Greco-Iranian-American wizard family from Philidelphia. Quite the herbologist, Vas makes a living as a landscaper, specializing in elaborate gardens for wealthy witches and wizards. In the off season, he and a few friends put together ridiculous holiday light displays that have supposedly gotten them in trouble with MACUSA regarding the statute of secrecy. At least, this was how it was before Uma died. Vas is a doting father, but he is not prepared to handle a teenaged girl on his own while mourning the love of his life. He dives into his work without joy and encourages Nia to focus on her studies and stay at Gooseberry.

Uma (Kapoor) Papadakis. Mother, Muggleborn. Deceased. The daughter of muggle immigrants from Delhi, Uma was a rebellious, creative, hardworking small business owner - a florist whose arrangements were quite popular among no-maj and wizards, alike. She passed away after a protracted battle with stomach cancer the summer after Antonia’s freshman year at Gooseberry. Nia still cannot speak of her.

Antonia’s mother and father were little more than children when they eloped. Eighteen and fresh from graduating Ilvermorny, a senior summer trip took them to a drive thru marriage shack in Las Vegas and then to a middling hotel for the night. It was a weekend adventure that would dovetail into a much longer odyssey. Neither teen’s family was particularly thrilled with what had transpired, but it didn’t matter. Vas and Uma were in love and ready to start a life together. Nine months later, Antonia was born.

The Papadakises lived in a tiny wizard-only neighborhood folded into the suburbs outside northern Detroit, Michigan. There was hardship – Nia’s family was never financially stable – but happiness in equal measure. Nothing was ever too terrible and the Papadakises fancied that they had something of a lucky streak. Nia was a bright child, and bubbly, with the sort of spark her parents knew might take her places if encouraged. Vas and Uma doted on her as much as they could, but it was rough juggling work and child rearing at such a young age. By virtue of being the daughter of shift workers, Nia grew independent and self-reliant fairly early, but it was a lonely childhood, all the same.

By the time Nia was ready for school, she’d already shown hints of an aptitude for magic. So, off she went to the local day school for wizards. Her mother, who had spent the first five years of Nia’s life working part time for a muggle florist, took the leap and opened her own business on the edge of their neighborhood – open to wizards and no-maj alike. It was a rocky time as Uma’s business established itself, but Nia didn’t notice. School had enough challenges to keep her occupied. She was an eager and accomplished student but struggled socially. Prickly and shy, she made few friends and mostly kept to herself.

At eleven, Antonia enrolled at Ilvermorny. Sorted into Thunderbird, the second verse went same as the first: social success eluded her while she excelled academically. It wasn’t until Nia found the music room that she started to feel as though she belonged. Nia took to music naturally, picking up theory and a variety of instruments with ease. She found like minded children in choir and band. Her parents were thrilled to learn that their daughter was finally finding her footing socially. Nia became involved in organizing a number of music-related events at her school. With academic achievement, extracurricular initiative and a gift for music under her belt, it was no surprise when Gooseberry took an interest. But that wouldn’t be for another year.

The summer before Antonia’s third year at Ilvermorny, her mother collapsed in the flower shop.

Cancer.

From there out, it seemed that the Papadakis luck had run out. A long string of hospital stays and bad prognoses followed. Bills mounted. The flower shop closed. Nia’s father struggled to support his family while seeing to his wife as she wasted away. Antonia watched the illness destroy both her parents. She was not properly equipped to cope. So she didn’t. She sought escape. When the opportunity to go to Gooseberry presented itself, she pushed for it. Hard.

It didn’t immediately compute to Nia that she’d be abandoning her family or leaving her hard earned Ilvermorny friends behind. She was mostly interested in getting away; lured by the idea of adventure and new opportunities and refuge from the illness. At first, attendance was out of the question. The family was financially unstable to begin with and with the medical bills, there was no way they could afford to send their daughter to a ritzy mountain school. But Gooseberry promised scholarship funding and great opportunities for Antonia.

Vassilis was against it, but Uma insisted that her daughter go, to live and to shine. It was almost a relief. Gooseberry was an escape at first. A gasp of normalcy in a life otherwise falling apart. But fresh air and two thousand miles didn’t stop the owls from bringing bad news. More than once, Nia was excused from her freshman classes for what her family was sure would be the end. Each time she’d return after a few days and try to pretend as though everything was fine. That she kept her grades up was testament to Nia’s ability to compartmentalize. She invested every moment of spare time in extracurriculars to distract herself. Overachieving became a coping mechanism. She went home at the end of the year exhausted and unsure of what the future would hold.

Uma passed in late June. A hot, hazy morning. Like the last three before it. Healers and no-maj physicians had done everything they could. There were fresh lilacs in a vase by the bed. From the hospital room window, Nia could see the ambulance bay and the heat shimmering off the asphalt. Everything else – the rest of the summer – was a blur.

Her mother was gone. Nia knows that she lived those last three months in Detroit. She knows that she and her father survived by the grace of family and friends. She knows that at some point an owl had to have arrived with a letter congratulating her on both the renewal of her scholarship and promise of a Prefect badge. She doesn’t remember any of it. What she does have are vague recollections of fights with her father – over whether or not she would return to Gooseberry (though she couldn’t tell you who was arguing which side) – and crying fits and strange dreams about her mother.

Vas had to practically shove his daughter out the door to get her to go to school that September. Sending Nia off to boarding school so soon after losing her mother was probably not the best idea for either of them, but that’s how it went. Nia arrived at Gooseberry for her sophomore year emotionally adrift and saddled with the responsibility of Prefecting. Ms. Rhee kept a close eye on her to ensure that she wasn’t overwhelmed. The support helped.

In prefecting, Nia found structure and simplicity and new distractions from her problems. Placing her in a position of authority forced Nia to cope with her social difficulties – if not her personal feelings. It made her more outgoing, more empathetic (but not by much, let’s be real) and more confident. Where other children in her position may have fallen apart, Antonia thrived. It turned out to be a saving grace, which is perhaps why being a prefect is so important to her.

With guidance from Gooseberry’s faculty, Antonia found some semblance of balance. She pared down her extracurriculars, selected a challenging but not overwhelming schedule and threw herself into school. It was not smooth sailing, however. After winter break, she returned to Gooseberry anxious about money. There was a long period where she wrestled with dropping music, entirely – part of the reason she had a scholarship to begin with – in favor of something more practical. Something that would pay the bills someday. Ms. Thrussell did her best to put those concerns to bed and keep a talented student around, but her efforts only went so far. While Nia did not abandon the music room, she did refocus her attention on more concrete efforts – Charms and Potions and Transfiguration. Antonia finished out the roller coaster of her sophomore year and returned home to Detroit.

Summer at home was difficult. She and her father saw each other very little (he was always working) and spoke even less. If she were perhaps a bit older and a bit wiser, Nia may have been able to do something with the fact that she could see her father was suffering. But, being a fifteen-year-old, Nia could do little but make pipe dream plans to get rich and take care of her father and eagerly anticipate September. Escape and refuge.

She’s spent her junior year thus far playing at being Robocop. Herding freshmen, sneaking off to the music room and attempting to figure out what this great super lucrative job she’s going to get right out of school is going to be.