Penwick

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Backstory

Grindle Snips was an ambitious teen apprentice at a Muggle-adjacent salon in the 1890s. Convinced she could “revolutionize modern curlers,” she experimented with a volatile heating charm and a prototype iron, resulting in an explosive perming accident that left her spirit fused with the scent of lavender and burnt hair.

Her ghost drifted for decades until a former Headmaster of Penwick encountered her attempting to “rescue” his hairline. Amused and mildly terrified, he invited her spirit to the castle, where she immediately adopted the entire student population as her reluctant clientele.

Appearance

A semi-transparent teenage ghost with a permanently chaotic hairstyle: half over-permed curls, half scorched straight sections, as if caught mid-disaster forever. Her features are sharp and expressive, and her hair moves with exaggerated swoops whenever she’s emotional.
She wears an 1890s high-collared dress with puffed sleeves and a tied bodice.
Floating alongside her at all times is a hairbrush and giant pair of spectral scissors, which have terrified many students for decades.
Skin is medium-dark and softly glowing with bluish undertones. Her eyes are bright, expressive, and always scanning for “clients.”

Personality

Grindle is chaotic, excitable, dramatic, and snarky. She treats hair as a matter of life and death, and pathologically avoids hats, believing they “possess malicious spirits.”

Her voice is fast and breathy, and she radiates dramatic teen energy with frequent mood swings. She is high energy, pivots quickly, and doesn't have a long attention span. Grindle is filled to the brim with unearned confidence.

She is quite conceited and loves compliments more than the air she no longer needs. Grindle is very gullible, much to her demise. She acts impulsively but not maliciously, and is best described as "catastrophically overconfident".

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Where to find Grindle
Grindle roams the castle in patterns shaped entirely by perceived “hair emergencies.” She moves unpredictably, but the following locations are her most common haunts:

Main Corridors (Very Common)
She hovers along hallways in between class blocks, where she has the highest chance of spotting “clients, appearing behind students with a soft “Snip… snip… snip…”
The morning traffic to classes is when she's most active; bedhead enrages her.

Dorm Hallways and Common Rooms
Often found here late at night or in the early morning as she is sneaking in or out of a dorm for a midnight makeover.

Reflective Areas
Long gallery mirrors, bathroom entrances (she won’t enter), trophy cases, puddles of water on the ground. She argues with her reflection and critiques passing hairstyles as though judging a runway.
She holds “mandatory improvement sessions” for portrait residents of the castle. The portraits hate this.

Avoids:
Showers, greenhouses, kitchens during dishwashing, anything humid or with an abundance of water.

Abilities
Through the use of her brush and scissors, Grindle can temporarily alter hair color, curl, length, volume, texture, or shape. These changes last for 1 hour at minimum, 12 hours at most.
She cannot cut or alter anything other than hair or objects very similar (individual threads, feathers, etc).

RP Hooks
1. A classic Grindle makeover, whether asked for or not.
2. Grindle is easily bribed with flattery to avoid becoming her next “project.”
3. On occasion, she may do students a favor and do a special hairstyle before a date or performance.
4. Wearing a hat near her guarantees screaming, dramatic convulsions, as well as pleas and demands for immediate removal.

Sample Dialogue
“Sweetheart, that fringe is pleading for justice.”
“Hold still! This curl is a prophecy.”
“You cut your own hair? Bold. Incorrect, but bold.”
“Is that... IS THAT A HAT? Get that scalp prison away from me!”
“There! You look fabulous! …Temporarily!”
“Trust me. I died for this craft.”