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Edwina Espis was born to the nouveau riche Espis family in 1929. Her father, Clovis, had been something of a genius with charms and Muggle mechanics, and armed with this and her own keen business sense, Ed's mother Idunn had made the family a fortune in profits during the First World War, manufacturing magically-enhanced armaments. However, the Austrian-born Idunn had stayed in contact with her rather well-off family (who had sent her to Hogwarts due to Durmstrang's distastefully Dark-Arts-heavy curriculum, not considering it suitable for a young girl to learn such spells) and so the new company, Espis Arms, sold to the Muggles on both sides during the war.

When the war was over, the Espises were rich, but they had traded their good name for their fortune; the pureblood elite disliked them because they had grown wealthy too quickly and lacked taste or worthiness, patriots despised them for their treachery, magical isolationists felt they had broken the Statute of Secrecy, and almost all of those with Muggle heritage knew someone who had been killed or wounded in the Great War. Clovis Espis had never been very friendly with his brother Thelonious, and Idunn's refusal to share their money with him didn't help matters.

By the time Ed was born, things had calmed down some, and the Espises were making steady profits in sales to organized crime lords. It came as a bit of a shock to her parents when she was Sorted into Hufflepuff - after all, her father had been a Ravenclaw, her mother a Slytherin, and Ed had always been a reclusive, bookish girl despite the parties regularly held at the mansion.

In school, Ed proved worthy of Hufflepuff, however - she was at the top of every class not simply because she was bright, but because of her devotion to schoolwork. She didn't make many friends, though - her classmates weren't really sure what to make of her, and she was far more used to adults than children her own age. For a few years she considered Slytherin yearmate Audra Young to be her best (and really, only) friend, but in her third year, after a rather nasty argument involving her very obvious crush on Tom Riddle, Ed realized that Audra was really just using her to do better in classes, and decided that the best solution to such treachery was simply to have no friends at all.

Ed finished Hogwarts at the top of her class in every subject but Arithmancy - she was second only to Augustus Rookwood, who she regularly accused of cheating - and entered the Department of Mysteries. Early on she had hoped to specialize in Logic and Emotion, and learned some basic Occlumency, but upon witnessing firsthand the dangers of pure Emotions, Ed switched to Good and Evil, and from then on attempted to be as objective and emotionless as possible.

It was at about this time that her father caught a case of dragon pox. Usually it would have been cured easily, but the Healers of St. Mungo's refused to treat Clovis Espis, and Ed's mother fell ill as well. Ed had been too wrapped up in her work to open the owls she'd recieved from them, and by the time she realized what had happened, the uncontrollable fire-breathing symptoms of the disease had progressed too much to be healed. Ed simply paid some workmen to repair the damage done to the mansion and returned to work, thinking that if she went to the funeral she would relapse into emotional expression.

As the years wore on, Ed gradually became one of the best Unspeakables in the Department, and was eventually appointed Head of Good and Evil. She saw it as an opportunity to settle a question she'd always wondered about - was it possible to create a creature without any Evil present? As the Ministry started to have problems with a group calling themselves the "Death Eaters," Ed pushed her project through, calling it a weapon against the Death Eaters' mysterious leader, Lord Voldemort. And thus, Project Avatar was born.

The Avatars - the creatures composed of pure Good - were originally four-legged beasts, but it was determined that humanoid form was the most stable and convenient form, and it was decided that it would be singularly off-putting to their intended targets if they looked like teenage girls. They had extremely powerful wandless magic and could resist even the Darkest of spells. The only things that could counter them were their Evil counterparts, the Anti-Avatars, of which very few were made, and strictly for experimental purposes.

Then Amelia Bones, alerted to the danger by her boyfriend, an Unspeakable, cut Avatar's funding in half, and Ed made a deal with Voldemort to make up for the lost money. She later realized that it wasn't really a very bright idea, and became increasingly paranoid, especially when she realized Voldemort might try to kill her after he'd obtained all the information he thought she needed. Having safeguarded herself before by purposely making herself into an Avatar temporarily, Ed stayed an Avatar for a long period of time. Finally, at the annual New Year's Ball she realized that one of the Department's trainees had been transformed temporarily into an Anti-Avatar, and correctly deduced that it was the work of Amelia Bones.

Then, of course, she stopped thinking sensibly and decided to kill her. Remarkably, Amelia managed to contain her, with Broderick Bode's assistance, and Ed was tried, convicted of attempted murder, and sent to Azkaban for seven years.

After her sentence was up, in 1984, Amelia Bones (who had by then been appointed Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement) sent her back in time to monitor Death Eater activity in the Department of Mysteries, with special papers stating that she was not an Azkaban escapee. While the general public was told she was released early for good behavior, most of the Department knows that time travel was involved.

Ed is currently trying to recover from seven years of being fed on by Dementors, and has finally given up on her experiment of complete emotional detachment. She regrets having tried to kill anyone and one of her greatest fears is being sent back to Azkaban. She is adjusting slowly to actually going home on weekends, to sleeping, to regular emotions, and to normal human interaction. She is very proud to have two whole friends - Genoa Alden of Luck and Fate, and visiting German Love expert Gunnar Hitzig. She prefers tea but can't survive without coffee, and does not enjoy Bridge.