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goosemods ⛸️ ruby oberholtzer
But hearts are breaking, and wars are raging on
And I have taken my glasses off
You got me nervous
I’m right at the end of my rope
A half-empty girl
Don’t make me laugh, I’ll choke
GENERAL
NAME: Ruby Patience Oberholtzer
NICKNAMES: She'll only tolerate nicknames or pet names if you're very close to her.
AGE/DOB/ZODIAC: 16 / February 7 / Aquarius
BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Female / she/her
SEXUALITY: Love 'em and leave 'em.
HOMETOWN: Toronto, Ontario, Canada, but she spends several months in Montreal, QC, every year training as a figure skater. Or she used to, before Gooseberry.
CONCEPT: Haughty ice princess leaves the rink and learns to dance with others.
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE:
- All confidence. Looks taller than she actually is. Long-limbed and slim, but muscular too, from a lifetime of ballet and figure skating. She's very proud of how strong her body is. Every bruise and scrape was hard-earned.
- Tends to dress rather flashy. Enjoys drawing attention, even while pretending she doesn't care what anyone else thinks. Big earrings, multiple jangly bracelets, studded heels, brightly coloured tights with her school uniform. She's partial to solid red tights, as a nod to her name.
- Very particular about her makeup. At Gooseberry, her look leans more to a fresh-faced "no makeup" look, but don't be fooled, there were no less than seven meticulously applied products happening here. The type of girl who will wipe it off and start over if her eyeliner is anything less than flawless.
- Big curly mane of hair. There was a long period in Ruby's life when she always kept her hair tightly braided, or subjected to straightening potions and styled in an updo that doesn't budge an inch. Fuck that now. Since coming to Gooseberry, she's literally let her hair down. She enjoys how showy it is.
- Brown eyes. Often looks bored or disinterested.
- High, girlish voice.
HEIGHT:
PB: Paulina Singer
PERSONALITY
LIKES: ice skating, dancing, hip hop music, winter, adrenaline-fuelled sports, keeping her busy by exhausting herself, the streets of Montreal, showy jewelry and clothing, eating hearty food cooked by other people, pineapple on pizza, attention from pretty girls, her little brother, and Spencer
DISLIKES: summer, smoggy modern cities, small talk, people who are nice for the sake of being nice, people who can't sit silent, two-faced people, unambitious people, most people honestly, her growing height, painting her nails (which she's usually forced to do before a competition)
PERSONALITY:
Sometimes the only thing Ruby thinks she has in common with Ribbonfin is also being a cold-blooded creature. Despite her notoriously close-knit classmates, Ruby preferred to stay on the outside of things, actively rebuffing anyone's attempts to socialize with her. She seemed perfectly content to do everything by herself, and never hid, with her words or facial expressions, when she found someone tedious or irritating. Her whole life, people have always said the same thing about her: Ruby Oberholtzer doesn't like anyone. Ruby Oberholtzer thinks she's better than everyone else.
And why not? Since the day she was born, she's been told she's perfect. She's graceful and strong, quick and clever, talented at nearly anything she's tried her hand at. She is her wealthy parents' eldest child and only daughter, and could always get what she wanted so long as it had a price tag. She never even had an ugly duckling stage of puberty. Ruby Oberholtzer always impresses, and she has a wall of trophies and medals to prove it. She works damn hard for what she's achieved. When she's got a goal, she puts her all into it. No obstacle is too big to hurdle. If an hour of practice is called for, she'll do three. If people call her arrogant, Ruby feels like she earned it. She's bled and broken bones for her talents. She's skated right by a normal childhood in favour of fame and glory.
Maybe sometimes she feels like she's missing something. Sometimes this thing possesses her and makes her want to toss everything out and start over. Boredom. Ennui, even. A pervasive lack of attachment afflicts more than just her social life. Activities she enjoyed one day suddenly become uninteresting and tedious a month later, and she'll jump to something else with only the slightest twinge of regret. Sometimes it scares her how easily she gets bored. She can spend two years passionately learning everything there is, putting in hours and hours of work, then... drop it, just like that. Figure skating is the first thing in Ruby's life that grabbed her and wouldn't let her go, and she's very afraid of losing that. The fact that her career is stagnating while she's at boarding school freaks her out, but even worse is the fear that she's not good enough to make it professionally.
Ruby doesn't often fall in love with anyone or anything (whether in a platonic or romantic way), so when she's got that feeling, it's everything to her. Ruby is bad at moderation. She has two speeds: all or nothing. If she can't muster more than ambivalence towards you, she doesn't think of you at all. She can be cold and dismissive, and often downright rude. But if she truly cares about you, she's on your side 100%, even when you're blatantly wrong. She'll do anything for you, even if it costs her, even if you didn't ask her to do it. She obsesses over even the smallest slights from someone she cares likes, and can quickly lose all that hard-won composure and get obsessive about getting back in their good graces. Whether she likes or doesn't like you, Ruby has a tendency to steamroll people. But at least when someone isn't close to her heart, she still gets to feel in control.
So she keeps a wall between her and her emotions. Better to stay above the drama and mess of high school. Ruby enjoys indulging as much as the next teenager, but she's always crystal clear on what anything means. She doesn't "date." She doesn't do feelings. She'll get drunk, but only to a point. She's not letting anyone walk her sloppy self back home. It's not a modus operandi that makes a lot of friends, and for her second year at Gooseberry, Ruby is realizing that maybe she needs to... try. Last year, she believed that everyone already had their freshman year cliques, and that she'd be gone by June, making friendships pointless. She's not quite convinced that making friends with the entire junior class is in the cards for her, but maybe she'd like to belong at this school. Just a little.
⊕ calm, controlled, confident, driven, intensely hard-working, direct, honest, loyal to a fault
⊖ cold, dismissive, easily bored, bad at moderation, careless with other people's feelings, steamrolls over other people
SKILLS
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English (fluent), French (fluent). She went to a bilingual wizarding school and had bilingual tutors growing up. She also knows a smattering of Russian, from a skating coach, but wouldn't call herself fluent.
PATRONUS: She can't cast one yet, but she knows it's some kind of bird.
SKILLS:
★★★★ Figure Skating. Ruby isn't arrogant enough to call herself a pro skater, but she was on the competition circuit and medalled enough times to be considered highly promising. She's been skating since the single digit ages, and can pull off an impressive array of spins and jumps (and lifts and throws, with her partner). Her career is technically on hold right now, but Ruby practices vigorously during breaks and during winter months when the lake is cold enough to skate on. As a technical skater, she's excellent; as far as conveying emotion goes, she... struggles.
★★★☆ Dancing. Ruby's experimented with several dance styles, and has received formal lessons in ballet, tap, swing, and Latin. She's a bit rough at these, after spending a few years prioritizing figure skating over anything else, but she can manage during school dances. She's much better at hip hop dance styles, as she picked it up more recently, and has been practicing at Barre when the lake isn't frozen.
★★★☆ General athleticism. Ruby takes well to sports and anything that requires physical discipline. She joined the cheer squad this year for something to do, and ended up really enjoying it. Cheerleading pretty much slots into her strengths (dancing, getting thrown into the air), and her roommate is the cheer captain, which is convenient for remembering practices.
★☆☆☆ Cooking/Cleaning. Ruby has never in her life had to cook or clean for herself. She's quick to say she's very good at eating, though, and will happily devour food other people cook. Gotta keep the energy up for skating. A handful of times in her life, Spencer forced her to chop vegetables while cooking dinner, hence the one star.
☆☆☆☆ Music. Ruby also received lessons in various instruments, including piano, guitar, violin and voice. The only thing she's retained is a good sense of rhythm. Despite once being very good at piano, she no longer knows how to play any songs. As a singer, she's merely competent.
HISTORY
FAMILY MEMBERS:
— Perseus Oberholtzer, father. Pureblood. CEO of Oberholtzer Shoe Company.
— Camille Oberholtzer (née Pelletier), mother. Halfblood. Lead Designer of Oberholtzer Shoe Company.
— Jasper Oberholtzer, brother. Halfblood. Age 14.
HISTORY:
FAMILY HISTORY & EARLY CHILDHOOD. For several generations, the Oberholtzers made magical shoes. Charms kept shoes warm and comfortable in Ontario winters, and they had a reputation for well-made but utilitarian-looking shoes until a young designer rose up the ranks. Camille Pelletier's shoes were not only more fashionable, she pushed the company to develop charms for different types of shoes and environments. When she married the CEO's handsome youngest son, Perseus, it was lauded as a great love story. The truth was more practical. Marrying Perseus won Camille a permanent foothold in the family business. With the popular, genius Camille in his corner, Perseus successfully maneuvered his way into becoming the company's next CEO.
It wasn't a loveless marriage, but neither Perseus nor Camille had been looking for a love match. Friendship and mutual respect carried them through at least two decades and two children: Ruby, a girl, and Jasper, a boy, born two years after Ruby. Ruby's father, a bit on the old-fashioned side, favoured Jasper as his heir. Ruby's mother insisted on nothing except that her children do what they loved—and be the best at it.
For Ruby, this was easy. By age 5, she was taking ballet and piano lessons, and was praised by her teachers as a bright, even-tempered child. Jasper was the polar opposite: by the time he entered school, he had a reputation for oversensitivity and emotional fits, and excelled at nothing. Their parents were by turns concerned and exasperated by their son's deep anxiety and inability to grasp math or ice hockey. Ruby tried her best to help him, but often these sessions would end with their parents commenting, "See, it's so easy for Ruby. I don't understand what the problem is."
One such occasion resulted in Jasper declaring, through tears, that he was quitting the youth hockey league. As their parents started in on Jasper ("don't be ridiculous, we spent a lot of money so you could play" "you're just saying that because you're throwing a temper tantrum"), Ruby stood up and said she was also quitting—piano and ballet, that is. This rocked their parents more. Ruby was like them: not prone to impulsive decisions, and never saying anything unless she meant it. But it made no sense. Not yet 10 years old, she was already praised as "driven" and "promising" by her instructors. Yet Ruby held her ground. In the months of arguments afterwards, she became the focus of all of her parents' consternation, and no one came down on Jasper about hockey anymore.
FIGURE SKATING. Piano wasn't a great loss, but Ruby had loved ballet. Or so she'd thought. Quitting turned out to be no big deal at all. She started tap lessons, throwing herself into it with all the passion she'd brought to ballet, and abruptly quit four months later when her mother was pushing to design a line of Oberholtzer tap shoes. On it went, one hobby after another. Gymnastics, art lessons, guitar, every manner of sports. Despite occasional griping, money wasn't an issue for the Oberholtzers. "She's trying to find her passion," her father reasoned, making excuses he'd never make for Jasper. Ruby's brother remained the disappointing black sheep, but at least he stuck it out.
Ruby went with Jasper to all of his hockey practices, and enjoyed skating when the ice was free. A coach noticed the little girl imitating the spins of the older skaters. She tried, then fell, then got up again, over and over, ignoring her bruises. He asked Ruby if she wanted figure skating lessons. Maybe her father hadn't been wrong after all. Maybe Ruby really was looking for her passion, because this... this was different from anything else she'd experienced before. Learning to spin at rapid speeds, to jump into the supported by only two thin blades of metal—it was exhilarating. Unsurprisingly, Ruby got good at it, not the least because her parents put down the money for a private instructor. She got so good, so quickly, that her coach started hunting for a skating partner.
There was no shortage of talented young skaters at the rink, but Ruby alienated all of them, one by one. She was an intense perfectionist who rarely forgave mistakes, and held others to impossibly high standards. She preferred working to socializing, and became quickly bored with small talk or parties, never bothering to hide it. She developed a reputation for being a self-centered snob. The only time Ruby ever softened was around Jasper, who was slightly irritated that he'd been skating since he was 5 and his golden child older sister managed to outshine him within months, but... oh well. He was used to that.
FINDING A SKATING PARTNER. Ruby spent her hours at the rink practicing and only talking to her coach and her family, and never seemed even slightly perturbed about not having any friends. She didn't even bother to remember the names of the other regulars, but one person remembered her: a boy her age, whose grandparents had signed him up to play hockey. Spencer Sweet was undeterred by Ruby's icy attitude. He struck up a conversation with her, and then again the next week. Inexplicably, he knew the choreography and timing of the routine she was practicing, and called her out on mixing up the steps. Offended, Ruby challenged him to do it. Spencer got out on the ice, went for a sit spin, and fell hard on his ass. Then he got up, laughing, and asked her to show him how.
Over the next month, Spencer learned quickly, with a dogged determination Ruby recognized. Ruby had found her partner, and she charged straight ahead in making it happen. First was convincing her parents to pay for an additional person to attend her skating lessons, next was making sure Spencer got new skates and equipment. Despite Ruby's steamrolling—she didn't exactly give Spencer a head's up before laying out her entire "you should skate with me" plan—the two children clicked well both on and off the ice. They progressed to national competition programs in their age category, winning medals. Both of them moved to Montreal for half the year, where a new coach would guide them as budding pro athletes, and they'd be homeschooled so as not to interfere with their rigorous training schedules.
FIRST LOVE. In Montreal, Ruby and Spencer were housed with other young skaters. As with home, Ruby failed to endear herself to many, but there was one girl, Elodie, only a year older. Elodie's skating partner, Bryce, was now 16 and had little desire to socialize with "little kids," which left Elodie in Ruby and Spencer's company more often than not. When she learned that Ruby used to dance, she was eager to share some moves. But where Ruby had learned in mostly formal classrooms, Elodie loved hip hop and modern dance. Yet Ruby picked it up quickly, finding she loved it as well, and the two girls bonded.
It was Spencer who noticed first that Ruby had fallen for Elodie. Ruby might have died oblivious had he not gently teased her about it, but once Ruby knew, she set about making it happen. During one movie night in front of the couch, Ruby leaned in for a kiss. Elodie kissed her back. Elodie also made her promise not to tell anyone, and they happily snuck around for a few months before Bryce accidentally walked in on the two girls kissing... and blew his lid. In panic and screaming afterwards, Elodie insisted that it was nothing, that Ruby had a gross, confused crush and had forced herself on Elodie, while Spencer ran in and separated Ruby from the others. Elodie stuck to her story, and kept her distance from Ruby from then on. Ruby, 14 years old at this time, only understood that her heart was broken.
But she pushed it all down. What else was there to do? They had practice and competitions, and Elodie wouldn't even look at her anymore. Bryce then spread malicious rumours about Ruby, and went as far as to throw jeering, perverted comments at her while backstage during a competition, while Elodie watched in silence. Spencer rushed to his partner's defense, resulting in a fist fight that Bryce bloodied and badly beaten. What Ruby remembers most vividly is how she did absolutely nothing to hold back Spencer or try to pull him off. In the moment, she'd only felt a kind of relief, like all the fury and hurt she was feeling was finally made manifest.
GOOSEBERRY HIGH. The Oberholtzers intervened to protect Spencer from getting charged with assault, but it wasn't enough to stop Spencer's family from shipping him off to boarding school. An excellent boarding school, by all reports, but Gooseberry High didn't have a skating rink. It didn't have Ruby, and the thought of continuing to train and compete without Spencer at her side rattled her. Knowing that it was putting her training on hold, she pleaded with her parents to enroll her into Gooseberry. Easily done.
Ruby expected that all the kids at this tiny high school would already be close-knit from freshman year, and also that she and Spencer would be back in Montreal after a year, after his grandparents let him off for good behavior. She passed an entire year with barely any friends, and only putting in the bare minimum in her classes and clubs. Meanwhile, Spencer flourished—so much so that he agreed to go back to Gooseberry for another year. Forest-kidnapping barely made a dent in Ruby's awareness next to a two year break from skating? Was he serious?
She could've gone back to Canada. But she was rusty on her skates, and she'd also shot up an unexpected four inches in height, going from the "gorilla and flea" ideal to... normal. Terrifyingly normal. And what was she going to do, find a new partner? Go solo? Ruby refused to admit that she was afraid, or having doubts. "As soon as that lake freezes, you owe me practice," she informed Spencer, and signed up for another year at Gooseberry.
SCHOOL
YEAR: Junior (Grade 11)
HOUSE: Ribbonfin
SORTING: Coppertale would've been the obvious pick, for that unshakeable confidence. Or Ebonhide, house of intensity and working too hard. But she was drawn to the fish in the cave, who spoke softly and calmly to her about the anger she'd buried inside. Ruby has the placid Ribbonfin temperament but not the softness, and considers a desire to sacrifice yourself for others to be a weakness. But maybe Ribbonfin can teach her to go about it all in healthier ways.
WAND: Sycamore, 11¾ inches, with core of banshee hair
FAMILIAR: A female emperor scorpion named Elodie. It was probably a mean impulse that drove her to name a venomous invertebrate after her ex-girlfriend, but Ruby takes very good care of her scorpion, and can sometimes be caught singing at Elodie as she feeds her mealworms.
CLASSES: (core) Charms, History of Magic, Outdoor Education, Potions, Transfiguration. (elective) Defense Against the Dark Arts, Magizoology.
ADVANCED STUDY: Animagus Studies (king vulture). The class piqued Ruby's curiosity last year when she joined the Patronus lessons and cast a vaguely birdlike silver shape. She's wondered ever since how she might be able to use a beautiful, graceful bird form in her dance routines. (Sadly, not in her skating routines, since she's still competing with Muggles.) At this point, Ruby doesn't know exactly what form she'll take as an Animagus, but she's been working diligently in the class in hopes of achieving it this year, in case she really doesn't come back next year.
SENIOR PROJECT: Ruby honestly didn't think she'd stay at this school long enough to become a senior. She's... still not counting on it.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: Classic example of student who works hard for classes they care about and doesn't for classes they don't care about. Ruby is bright but seriously lacks motivation; she's never seen her future as depending on her report cards so she's really stopped putting in the effort. She skates by with a B average, and is strongest in classes that don't really have variable interpretation or wiggle room. (She took Wizard Lit last year and promptly dropped it for Magizoology this year.) For Ruby, that's Transfiguration and Outdoor Ed. She's doing alright in Charms, Potions and DADA. She's not a fan of History, and often dashes out her essays the night before.
EXTRACURRICULARS: Ribbonfin Cheer. Archery, Boating, Duelling/Fencing, Equestrian, Outdoor Exploration. She has no particular loyalty to any of these clubs except Cheer, and will often blow them off if she's not in the mood.