Professor Marianne Violet Jones

Professor Jones story begins where most stories end, at her death. She died in 1902, but feeling her life was taken from her wrongfully, she clung to it, refusing to pass on, and became a ghost. Although she died in America she came to reside at Hogwarts, the number one most haunted place in England, and one of the top haunted locations on Earth.

The Wizarding world is very familiar with ghosts, being able to fully see the apparitions, unlike Muggles who can only feel their presence. Ghosts are imprints of a soul, shadows of a personality. They do not learn and change as living people do, but are forever stuck in whatever state death found them. Just as their transparent bodies are weak images of what they once were, so too their personalities are frail facsimiles, pale imitations going through the motions of a human soul but without the same strength of heart. Acting off instinct, these specters appear to have the same type of existence as the living, but they have chosen a simulacrum’s reality, a weak simulation of what they once had.

Most would find this ‘unlife’ a curse: never again knowing real passion or sadness or love, and indeed barely remembering what those emotions felt like, forced to relive the same flaws they had in life with no chance for redemption. But this ‘weak’ existence is far better than the alternative, for the alternative is to feel forever but never again be felt.

Unbeknownst to most wizards and witches, some ghosts are stronger, more than mere imprints. They are able to learn, change, adapt, remember, and feel just as the living do. Marianne is one of those ghosts. Although her body is non corporeal her soul is just as strong as the living’s and unlike other ghosts she learns and changes when needed, but most of all...she feels as strongly as any human soul.

After her death, she was surprised, expecting to ‘feel’ a lot different. But over time her excitement grew as she realized her newfound powers. Being much stronger than other ghosts, who can only partially rematerialize, she could, for short periods, make her whole body tangible. Despite this, she still had no sense of feeling, being able to touch but not feel the material world. What she lacked in physical feeling she more than made up for with emotions, and eventually she would learn the awful truth, her feelings were a curse.

For she remembered every good meal, every loving caress, every warm campfire, and those memories burned within her, knowing she would have them no more. She had all the sensations of the heart but none of the body, all the desire and passion for warmth, embrace, friendship, but no way to fulfill those dreams, a deeply feeling soul trapped forever in an unfeeling tomb. As her understanding of the situation grew, so did her horror, and before long she began researching methods of travel between the astral plane and the physical realm hoping to find a way back to the mortal world.

As months turned into years, she befriended students at the school. As years turned to decades, she felt pain as they each, one by one, left, never to return. But worst of all, she saw the horror of war visit Hogwarts, and watched children die at the hands of darkness, unable to do anything to help. Even her attempts to comfort the living were rejected; for who would find solace as deathly cold hands dried their tears? So she watched, alone, weeping in a prison of her own making. The pain in her soul tormented her, and she decided, on one of many lonely nights, she would do anything to be human once again, for she so desperately wanted to feel, and be felt once again.

## Personal Life

Marianne has decided to avoid personal attachments and generally tries to stay out of mortal affairs.

She loves country music.

She doesn’t like poltergeists.

Marianne was killed by the Killing curse.