Kate Sullivan

Played by Megan Boone (link)
DESCRIPTION:Most of the time Kate looks pretty professional. It’s the only way to be taken seriously in business. And she has a great poker face to match. Off the clock though (or with clients who have become actual friends) she has no trouble dressing down and her expression relaxes considerably into something warmer. It’s fairly common for there to be a teasing twinkle in her eyes. Shoes drive her crazy, and she kicks them off whenever she can in favor of slippers or her socks. She has a habit of talking quietly to herself when she gets really into her work. Sometimes in Japanese if she’s really not paying attention. And she prefers eating with chopsticks when she can, something that may stick out a bit. While she likes the way her hair looks long, she’s always pushing it out of her face. It’s gotten to the point that she does it without thinking even if her hair’s already out of the way. She also picked up a few unconscious habits from her bodyguard during her teenage years, things like always noting where the exits are and never standing with her back to a door. But there’s a confidence to her stance that says she can handle herself and she knows it.




POSITIVE TRAITS: fiercely loyal, good business sense, strong moral compass, doesn’t quit, adventurous, smart, competitive, genuinely cares about the clients she represents, independent, bold, knows how to have fun (and drag her friends with her)
NEGATIVE TRAITS: slow to truly let people in despite appearing friendly, can be manipulative if she deems it necessary, holds grudges, stubborn, sometimes rather cynical, rebellious streak, hard on herself, tendency to carry work into her personal life, would cross lines she knows she shouldn’t for the people she cares about, severely conflicted about her relationship with her father, can be coldly calculating if pushed too far
LIKES: Japanese food, Quidditch, friendly banter/competition, singing around the house, going out with her friends, green tea, being inside during a rainstorm
DISLIKES: beer (she’s a wine girl), sexism, wearing shoes (she kicks them off whenever possible), people who are out only for themselves, being lied to, fairy tales (they just seem fake), having assumptions made about her because of her father
HOBBIES: Muggle martial arts, keeping her Japanese sharp, Sudoku puzzles

GENERAL PERSONALITY: At first glance, Kate seems pretty extroverted. She has a bright smile and a loud laugh and no problem making a fool of herself for the fun of it. If Kate’s having a good time, it’s a fairly safe bet everyone around her will be too. But few people make it past that surface level to the big heart and emotional conflict beneath. Kate tends to keep that side of herself hidden, reserving her deepest thoughts and concerns for only her closest friends. She genuinely cares about the people in her life and will gladly to anything to help them. But don’t think that makes her a pushover. Kate can be quite the spitfire when necessary. She has a strong head for business and the stubbornness to back it up. Anyone who tries to take advantage of her will quickly find themselves getting outplayed, whether it be at work or out in the street. She knows what she wants and has the drive to go after it. But she also has a strong moral compass that keeps her using her powers for good. Well, most of the time. She’s not the most forgiving person ever. Betray her trust or hurt someone she cares about and Kate can turn downright dangerous. She gets that from her father. Speaking of which. Kate’s pretty conflicted about that particular parent, and that can lead to cynicism or second guessing herself. But most of the time she’s a strong and independent lioness who just wants to do right by her clients and have some fun along the way. Her loyalty makes her the sort of person you want in your corner, whether it’s as a manager or as a friend. Just don’t compare her to her father. There’s a reason she uses her mother’s last name.




Parents: James Lockwood (businessman) and Emily Sullivan (deceased)
Siblings: n/a
Partner: n/a
Children: n/a
Other Family: none of note

Character History: James was born to a middle-class shopkeeper who sold potion ingredients. The family did well enough, and it was simply assumed that James would one day inherit the family business just as he had inherited his father’s talent for plants and potions. But James also possessed one thing his tradesman father did not – a sharp mind. In particular he had an uncanny knack for reading people, for determining what they wanted and how they would react in a given situation. It enabled him to more or less stay one step ahead of those around him.

His sorting into Slytherin house provided a prime use for that ability. The Lockwood family, while far from pure, had a strong enough magical ancestry to make young James a suitable lackey for his well-to-do housemates. A role James happily played. He cultivated all manner of relationships with his peers, and by the time he graduated he had connections with not only the future elite but also the future citizens of the underworld. Those connections were carefully leveraged to begin expanding the family business. The scope of ingredients they could provide widened with each year. Slowly the trade shifted from simply providing potion ingredients to being connoisseurs of the rare. That led to trafficking in illegal plants and animals, which led to smuggling highly dangerous magically artifacts, which led to bounty hunting, which led to making people vanish, and before long James Lockwood had himself quite well established in the shadier realm of the business world. If something needed to be procured or disappeared, legally or otherwise, James Lockwood was the man to get it done.

It was at a social function hosted by a regular client that he ran into Emily Sullivan, a sweet Hufflepuff girl he had dated during his Hogwarts days. The two had lost touch after graduating. Emily was now an overworked healer who had saved the life of a relative of their host for the evening. The two friends caught up over drinks, which resulted in a one night stand. Despite their attraction, both agreed in the morning it had been a mistake. Their circles simply didn’t intersect anymore. But a few weeks later, Emily discovered she was pregnant. She reached out to James to see if he had any interest in their child. He didn’t. But out of respect for his former relationship with Emily, he offered to help her out with some of her current payments plus the promise of child support. It wasn’t like he would miss the money. Nine months later little Katelyn entered the world. And that was where James’ plan derailed completely. From the moment he saw his daughter, he was completely smitten.

That made life infinitely more complicated. James had made some enemies over the years, and while a combination of bribery and threats kept most of them at bay, Emily didn’t want his life hurting their little girl. A sentiment James agreed with wholeheartedly. He did his best to separate the two halves of his life, setting up Emily with a house and decent income in a smaller city where she could work as a healer without drawing much attention. To most of the world she appeared to be a normal single mother. James visited often, using the floo network or apparition to keep his after-dark visits secret. He doted on his baby daughter, a fact that further endeared him to Emily. There was even a hint of genuine romance growing between them.

But the wizarding world was erupting into all-out war, and James had subtly thrown in his lot with the Death Eaters as the most lucrative side. It was a decision Emily strongly opposed, both for ethical reasons and for the danger it placed their daughter in. In an effort to protect little Katelyn, James sent her and Emily away to Japan to a well-to-do magical family he had forged a strong business relationship with (both above board and below it). The Kisaragi family helped Emily and Katelyn settle into their new home and kept close watch over them. James visited as often as he could, and Kate grew up eagerly looking forward to those trips when her father would bring her toys and play games and read her books. It was he who first introduced her to flying. Some of her best memories consisted of sitting atop her child’s broom in the large gardens of their home catching a quaffle thrown by her father. Behind closed doors, James and Emily had more than a few arguments about his business and its part in the ongoing war. But little Katelyn was completely oblivious to any of the dangers of the outside world.

The Kisaragis had a daughter, Yuko, who was a year older than Kate, and the two girls quickly became best friends, having all sorts of pretend adventures in the safety of the Kisaragi home. When Yuko was seven, she became a day student at Mahoutokoro, the Japanese magical school. Kate, who had recently begun showing signs of her own magical ability, was completely enamored by tales of the school. James and Emily had originally intended for their daughter to simply wait until she was old enough to attend Hogwarts. But seeing the hold the school had over her daughter, Emily decided Kate needed to be with other children besides the handful of high society offspring she was allowed to interact with. James and the Kisaragi clan pulled some strings to get young Katelyn accepted. She had been a happy child before, but surrounded by children her own age and a challenging academic curriculum, she began to truly thrive. The school instilled Kate with a fierce work ethic that would serve her well the rest of her life. It also caused her to fall heads over heels in love with Quidditch.

War in England ended shortly after, but Emily and Kate remained in Japan for a little longer to give the country time to sort itself out. (And to see if James’ transactions with Death Eaters would come back to bite him.) When Kate was ten, they finally moved back to England so she could attend her parents’ school. Katelyn was heartbroken to leave the only home she could truly remember. She and Yuko stayed in touch for some time via letters, but eventually the girls lost touch. Back in England, there was little point in James hiding who Kate was. Word had gotten out that he had a daughter, and he decided it would be safer to keep the girl close where he could make clear she and her mother were under his protection. While he did manage to keep them safe, publicly claiming Katelyn as his own made her even more of an oddity when she started at Hogwarts. Not only did she behave more as a Japanese student than English one but she also didn’t fit the usual social ladder. She was too unknown for the rich students and too connected for the rest. Thankfully, that awkwardness didn’t last terribly long. Kate was a vibrant and adventurous girl who soon began a rather rapid rise to popularity among first her Gryffindor housemates and then the rest of her peers. But by that point she had already hidden much of her true thoughts and feelings away in order to fit in. Despite having a wide circle of friends, there were only a small handful she truly let in beyond surface level.

Her early years at Mahoutokoro had given Kate a leg up on many of her peers. She had a head start in magical learning plus a fierce Japanese work ethic, and that put her near the top of most of her classes. She also proved herself to be quite a force to be reckoned with at Quidditch, becoming a substitute chaser in her second year and then a full team member in her third. Her home life was also quite good. She was the center of Emily’s world, although her mother took care not to spoil her. They lived moderately, not taking any more of James’ money than they needed. In many ways they were a normal single mother raising her daughter. And they were genuinely happy. Although the constant interjection of James complicated things somewhat. It was clear he loved Katelyn, and she returned his affections. But Hogwarts began to slowly open her eyes. There were rumors from some of the better connected students that there might be more to her father’s lucrative import and export business than met the eye. Kate was also far too smart to miss the bodyguards lingering on the edges of her life, which apparently was not normal. Kate’s growing suspicions created some tension between herself and James as she got further into her teenage years. It even resulted in a few fights as Kate began asking questions James refused to answer.

Things smoothed out a bit when Kate graduated. She took a spot as a reserve chaser for Puddlemere United just for the fun of it. Her father also offered to bring her into the business (the legal side) as a sort of assistant, and Kate, more out of curiosity than any actual interest, agreed. It didn’t take long to see she was a natural. Not only did she have the instincts for business, she actually enjoyed it. And as far as she could tell her father’s business was more or less what he claimed it to be. Father and daughter began growing closer as James drew her farther into managing the company with him. That bond only increased as Emily became ill with an unidentifiable disease. No amount of magical treatment seemed to help. She grew increasingly sicker, and within a year she was gone. Her loss rocked twenty-two-year-old Kate as well as James, who had genuinely loved the mother of his child.

But while the loss briefly made Katelyn closer to her father than ever, the bond didn’t last. It was around that time that Kate started picking up on little pieces she wasn’t supposed to in her father’s business. That sparked some covert digging, and eventually she found proof not only of the illicit activities she had long suspected but also that her father had actually helped Death Eaters during the war. After a great deal of agonizing, she finally decided to destroy the evidence she had found to protect her father. But she couldn’t forgive him for the things he had done or for the position she felt he had put her in. She informed him in no uncertain terms she wanted to cut ties with him. In an effort to keep his daughter in his life, James revealed a secret – Yuko Kisaragi had fled Japan with her husband and young son to get away from her family. And James had anonymously helped them get into England to start over. Seeing the help he had given to Yuko merely for being friends with his daughter was enough to convince Kate not to completely carve her father out of her life. But she did quit the family business to strike out on her own, refusing to take financial help from him in the process.

There wasn’t time to mend their relationship because war was rapidly returning. James knew the only way to stay ahead of it would be to get involved on his own terms, so he asked Kate to return to Japan where she would hopefully be safe. At first she protested fiercely. She was a Gryffindor with no intention of running just to save her own skin. But some part of her still missed the country of her early childhood. Finally she agreed to leave England on one condition – that her father promise to protect both Kate’s best friend and the young Kisaragi family. James agreed, and Kate left the country within days, flanked by one of her fathers most trusted associates who would had often served as her protector.

Japan was much how Kate remembered it, but it no longer fit her the way it once had. She did manage to reconnect with some of her early schoolmates though. One of them played seeker for a professional team and helped Kate get a job as an assistant to a manager responsible for several of the pro players. He was a hard boss, but he quickly came to respect both Kate’s passion for the sport and her talent for business. Before long Kate had gone from his assistant to his apprentice. By the time the war ended two years later, he had taught her nearly everything he knew about the field.

Kate stuck around for a few more months to give the dust in England time to settle before heading back. (And to see if her new romance with a Japanese chaser would go anywhere. It didn’t, although that might have been Kate’s fault.) This time she was determined to make her own way as a Quidditch manager. It just so happened that a manager she was familiar with from her days as a Puddlemere reserve player was on the cusp of retirement, and he took Kate on for a few months before passing off most of his clients to her. It didn’t take Kate long to build herself a reputation as a tough businesswoman who fought for the best interests of her clients. Now a few years into it she mostly represents Puddlemere United players out of loyalty to her old team, although she wouldn’t be against working with another team’s player under the right circumstances. She tends to keep her list small, which the job’s solid salary thankfully allows for. But she takes the time to build a solid relationship with each of them. Something that can occasionally blur the lines between her professional and personal life.

Things with her father are still highly complicated. The fall of Voldemort has taken Death Eaters off his client list (unless he’s secretly disappearing them), but he still dabbles in less than legal business ventures. Kate has a hard time reconciling that with her own moral code. She has, however, reconnected with her old friend Yuko, and as thanks for giving her that friendship back she maintains civil communication with her father. If he wants anything beyond that though, he’s going to have to fight hard to earn it.




Wand: Ash, dragon heartstring, 10 2/3 inches, solid
Former House: Gryffindor
Affiliation: Neutral
Amortentia: cherry blossoms (reminds her of her childhood), green tea brewing (she finds it calming), the ocean (something about it has always captivated her)
Magical Abilities: Does being really good with chopsticks count?