Your Nickname: Kit
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Are you over thirteen? Yes
How did you find us and decide to write with us? RPG Directory
If you have written other characters here: Yes
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Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Secondary
(https://absitomen.com/aoimages/kit/jules/jules-id.png)
Full Character Name: Amos Julian Ellis Abbott (nee Shufflebottom, he took his wife's name)
Character Birthday & Age: 28th May, 1972 - 39 (40 in May 2012)
City & Country of Birth: Godric's Hollow, England
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts, Hufflepuff, graduated 1990
Job/Position: Unspeakable (on loan from Spirit Division)
Wand: Willow, 12 and 1/4 inches, unicorn tail hair
Physical Description:
Jules considers himself nothing special in the looks. He had a mane of ginger-blonde hair which he neglects to get cut in a timely manner. To match, he toys with growing a beard as he believes it makes him more wizardy. Long hair, long beard, and tops it off with a hat. One day he aspires to be a white-haired wizard with tiny silver spectacles on his nose.
Day to day, Jules does sport a more traditional look in the way he dresses. Fuelled by a lifelong insecurity that he is not worthy of belonging. He dresses in robes like the other unspeakables. A good de-creaser charm also lets robes hide a multitude of fashion sins. His kids think he could have better fashion sense, especially as they are more intrigued by the muggle world.
At five nine Jules acts as if he is a short wizard, but in truth he’s just rather compact. He was slim as a child but filled out at Hogwarts. He prides himself on strong arms from lifting his three daughters as children, and does not shy away from playing social quidditch, walking, or scrambling over the Cornish coast. He has taken up surfing with Heather, loudly whooping every time he manages to get stood up.
His accent is influenced by his Godric’s Hollow childhood, and Jules happily switches his style depending on his audience. He can go full London east-end if he pretends to be selling the Daily Prophet again in the Ministry atrium, or tease his daughters silly for their overuse of like or more muggle slang like innit, but he can put on a convincing impression of a pureblood pinstripe Ministry sort if he thinks it's needed, and his professional writing certainly can portray an entirely different person to the one who turns up, according to others.
Personality Description:
Jules is a busy wizard. Always keen to take on a project, though finishing them is not necessarily his strong suit. Deadlines are motivators, though can sometimes be bent and broken. Multi-tasking is second nature, and magic only facilitates.
He is likeable, chatty and sociable. Perhaps too chatty sometimes. Especially given some of his jobs. Jules can always think of something to say, and is rarely lost for words. Sometimes he speaks on behalf of others, meaning well, but can make things worse by muddying waters or putting words in their mouths.
Jules is keen to learn from others, from books, from life. As a teenager he would be found sitting with the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors and with his hand up in lessons. His notes would be spilling off the desk, or crammed in the margins of his textbooks.
As a husband he is honest to a fault. Guilty of oversharing. As a father he is eager, playful and cycles from wanting to be their best friend and never a disciplinarian.
Both in work and in his life plans, Jules is known to bite off more than he can sensibly chew, and often suffers from self-inflicted headaches.
For other hobbies, Jules enjoys watching quidditch with his wife, going to see their favourite bands, and playing exploding snap.
History:
Content warning: family neglect, though not in detail
The Shufflebottom family are a lower-class wizarding family who have lived in Godric's Hollow for generations. In 1972 the family occupied a rambling farmhouse with land at one end of the village, which was also home to all manner of magical and not so magical animals.
Jules, or rather Amos as he was born, is the youngest of five siblings spanning two decades. His arrival in 1972 was somewhat unplanned. With four children to feed and a very limited income, he would become 'a burden'. His mother was already unwell and became bedridden following his arrival, which was no fault of a babe yet to speak, but he personified an unwanted upset to family life.
Life was difficult, but the siblings did their best to make do with their lot. One by one the older siblings headed off to Hogwarts. Each of them in hand-me-down robes from families in the village or third-hand shops. Their mother would do her best to darn them by magic in her bed which Jules had never known her ever leave. The blessing of their departure on the first of September meant that there would be fewer mouths to feed, but the chores fell to the younger ones.
But as the younger siblings waited their turn to go to school, the eldest finished. By the time Amos was seven, two of his brothers had taken their OWLS and returned home, done with five years of magical education. With their age came responsibility for their younger siblings as their father became increasingly absent, and their mother increasingly ill.
By the time the celebrations of October 31st, 1981 arrived, Amos was already keen to head off to Hogwarts, his time approaching. He sought new horizons than the farm and the village. That summer his older brother Norman passed more exams than any of the others and declared he would be returning to Hogwarts for a sixth year, unheard of in the house. The eldest brothers were already of age and several years past. Breeding and dealing with creatures as their father had taught them.
At Christmas 1982, their mother passed away. Their father left, moving to Dundee as far as they knew, to live with a witch he had been courting for a long while. Devastated, Willy and his older brother took charge of the farm and their younger siblings, and Norman vowed not to return to Hogwarts after all.
Sept 1983, Hogwarts
11 year old Amos Shufflebottom nearly missed the train and arrived at Hogwarts in far-too-big robes, third hand, missing half his first year textbooks. Despite this he was overjoyed to be there, and away from the farm.
His teachers were well used to the Shufflebottoms barely having two knuts to rub together. Old copies of books were found and his robes mysteriously altered themselves in the wash. The staff did not expect Amos to amount to much more than the four who came before him. But unlike all but Norman, Amos showed genuine interest in his studies. Unfortunately he also showed great interest in trouble beyond his years, lacking even questionable paternal input for some years as a child.
At Christmas, his grown up siblings sent instructions for him to stay at school, while his older school age siblings returned to Godric's Hollow without him. Absence had not made the heart grow fonder, and their littlest sibling who had turned their mother to an invalid was made to feel a burden.
Unwelcome Home
That summer, when he finally returned home, the siblings squabbled over what little there was to eat on their dwindling income. It was not unusual to have strange wizards calling late at night, or worse, the Department of Law Enforcement coming by to ask questions. With his siblings fighting and no proper parental figure in sight, Amos made the bold decision he was better off running away. He was picked up by the Knight Bus, but a wise conductor deposited the boy on another Godric's Hollow doorstep without charge.
Emma Glass was 27, and a midwife for St Mungo's. Godric's Hollow was both her home and also part of her patch. She knew of the Shufflebottoms, everyone in the village did, and their problems.
She had not planned to gain a pre-teenage guest in the Hogwarts holidays, but the youngest Shufflebottom child found his way back to her doorstep whenever things in the crumbling farmhouse became unbearable. His older siblings were stubborn and resistant to any help which involved other adults, such was their dysfunction. They closed ranks, but firmly ostracised their youngest brother. Emma relented in the short term, but the arrangement became long term.
Growing Up
It would be wrong to say that it was smooth sailing from there, as Jules grew up to be awkward, occasionally difficult and muddled as he made his way through teenage years. He kept a correspondence with Emma as his foster mother during term and tried to keep his nose out of trouble.
His Professors eventually saw the potential in him that they had only otherwise seen in his older brother Norman. As he gained a wider group of friends and got over his worries that people did want him around he found confidence and his voice. Though he still wrote home to Emma to ask how on earth he was meant to talk to girls and not just make friends with them.
He sat his OWLS, excelling in astronomy, charms, care of magical creatures, history, runes and transfiguration which he took on to NEWTs. He subbed in on the Hufflepuff team as a keeper. He warbelled with the Choir and tried his hand at the Hogwarts Players. He had his arse handed to him at the duelling club. He still wore second hand robes, lacked some social graces and always needed a decent haircut, but he was thriving at last. Amos didn't want Hogwarts to end, but it had to in the summer of 1990.
Romance
Daisy Abbott was the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain. In high spirits Professor Sprout declared her the best chaser they'd had in years. Daisy and Amos kissed for the first time under the stands after practice in seventh year. He thought he might float up without a broom after.
In her final term at Hogwarts Daisy was scouted to play professionally. Amos tailed her everywhere. Devoted, and besotted. The pair of them had their ups and downs, but went through thick and thin. Daisy was up early to train, and played all over the country. Meanwhile Amos, or rather Jules as he was known post-Hogwarts, was from job to job, project to project.
Adult Life - Changing his Name, Starting a Family
Neither of them had felt ready to settle down and start a family, or even marry. Not for a long while. Daisy's career properly took off. Then in the summer season of 1994 she was benched, not for her performance, but for the surprise that she was expecting. It was a shock, but Jules was determined their child would feel loved and wanted despite the lack of planning. Heather was born that November, and became their world.
While resting up Daisy and Jules finally got their act together and agreed to marry. They tied the knot in 1995. He took her name, keen to be rid of his, and from then on went by Jules Abbott.
Second War
The years that followed were some of the darkest. The Abbott family banded together. Keeping their fingers crossed their pure-blood listing would keep them safe. Daisy used her skill on a broom to ferry muggle-borns to hiding undercover. Jules did everything he could to help and allow them to survive.
Jules had gone through half a dozen jobs after leaving Hogwarts. Amongst others, he tried his hand as a wizarding fisherman (he got sea sick), a broom repairer (dull, everyone wanted him to tune their broom for free), menagerie assistant (far too like growing up on the farm), cook (no fun when you weren't cooking for yourself).
He took the job of Daily Prophet salesman in the Ministry in the new year of 1998. It paid pittance, but in Voldemort times, you couldn't be picky. Most usefully he was a set of eyes and ears and passed on information to the resistance.
After the War
The moment Voldemort fell, Jules grabbed a job as a portkey registry assistant in the Department of Transport. It was so easy his mind wandered, and his manager disapproved of his outlandish object choices. He reasoned that Voldemort was gone so they needed to live a little, and promptly charmed a stuffed pheasant and a cocktail shaker.
Six months later he had an intriguing conversation in a pub about ghosts with a friend of a friend from Level Four. He was recruiting for the Spirit Division, who were often overlooked by applicants. They needed more wands to relocate troublesome ghosts, which was grimly on the rise since the war.
Jules and Daisy needed some extra money as Daisy was expecting again at long last. Jules joined the team and quickly learned the ropes, both in how to navigate a conversation with the undead, and also in how to trap the ones who refused to see reason while he could literally see through them...
Ivy, their second child, was born in July 2000. The couple had moved to Tinworth in Cornwall where Daisy's parents were, and the girls were back and forth between parents and grandparents throughout their childhood. Cassia was born a year or so later, where they called it a day with three. Jules prepared himself for being firmly outnumbered as a wizard.
While the family grew, so did his proficiency with Spirit Division. He had found his niche of sorts, and his talent had come to the attention of some outside it, and on another floor entirely. Jules was excited to accept secondment to Level 9. It was a world he had only ever fantasised about, and he'd never seen himself worthy. He thought everyone on Nine was elite. But one secondment led to another, and another... Every time he was due to return to the relative mundanity of relocating spooks the unspeakables would offer him another project, and on that money, Jules was never going to turn them down (even if the Head Unspeakables had been a bit crackpot in the last few years.)
Jules doesn't really speak about what happens on Level 9. He occasionally drops in wild claims like 'I got lost for four days in the labyrinth!', 'I'm only in it for the pension' and 'the things I saw... they'll need to pay me off.'
But in reality, he has worked on several projects investigating the veil between life and death, the possibility of resurrection or immortality. Then on souls and pentrals. So for the past two or three years, he has ended up working with the dementor investigation that fellow Spirit Division member, Alberic Grimm once headed.
Describe your job duties and how you go about them:
Jules conducts experiments on and monitors the dementor held in the labyrinth. He has dubbed this particular dementor 'Sunshine'. The experiments include the possibility that souls could be extracted and restored from it, what with the increase in pentral activity and understanding. Jules has always got three lines of investigation on the go, and isn't the best at concluding one before pursuing another.
Elaborate on your expertise in your field:
Jules has worked on several unspeakable projects investigating the veil between life and death, the possibility of resurrection or immortality. His first project was learning on the job and before that his duties for Spirit Division were mostly monitoring new ghosts and relocating their hauntings if they proved to be troublesome. He has training in related magic, including souls.
Writing Sample:
Sum up your character in one paragraph:
Jules is a chatty, social wizard who always has several projects on the go. He is married to Daisy, an international quidditch coach, and has three daughters. It feels like he’s had every job under the sun, ending up in Spirit Division relocating spooks. But for a while now he’s been attached to Level 9 studying dementors. He spends his downtime in Tinworth, Cornwall, where his wife’s family still live.
(https://absitomen.com/aoimages/kit/jules/tim-minchin.jpg)
T H R E A D S
24 Mar - A Teensy-Weensy Favour [Jules to Heather (https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=21187.msg195603#msg195603)
24 Mar - Worth a Shot (or Three) (https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=21201)
8 Aug - Thus Spake the Unspeakables (https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=21320)
13 Aug - Bottled Up (https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=21365)