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Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary
Salvador Fernández Falcón
Character Birthday & Age: 10th December 1974, 37 years old
City & Country of Birth: Miami, Florida. USA.
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Ilvermony School of Witchcraft & Wizardry
Job/Position: Restauranteur and Entrepreneur
Wand: 11 inch red oak, pliable with knotty handle. Curupira core. A good wand, suited to his talent and unpredictability in a duel.
Physical Description: From afar, Salvador can be perceived as a wizard of slightly stocky build - at 5'9'' he is far from the tallest man in the room, though the way he carries himself gives him an impression of power and height. He is blessed with good looks from both sides of his Cuban-Guatemalan parentage. Thick dark hair and golden, tan skin.
Sal wears his curls short, combed to the side. His five o'clock shadow seems eternal. He would like to sport a beard but it tends to grow out peppered if left to its own devices. His eyes are dark and intense, always giving one the impression of someone deep in thought.
His sense of style varies. Salvador is most comfortable in jumpers or t-shirts with jeans, not really a fan of stiff button-ups and formal robes if he can help it. He might throw on a blazer or an over shirt to smarten himself up, and invests in only the best shoes and boots. At Calaveras, he'll wear a suit with a dark t-shirt underneath. A good watch is a must, in addition to rings and the odd leather bracelet.
The wizard has a couple of three piece suits for occasions, and cuts a fine figure in them - but never in a conventional sense. There is always something out of place. A button gone astray or a collar not quite straight, often being fixed by friends and flirts.
Salvador's mannerisms are careless but exhibit the grace of strong men who have learned to be careful, gentle. His smiles are boyish, and his scowls threatening. He is in the bad habit of biting his nails when he is thinking.
Personality Description: People tend to like Salvador when they first meet him, he emanates the easygoing enthusiasm of a person who has both realised and contextualised his passions. He has mastered his game face. To the perceptive, he might come across as overpowering or as being able to strong-arm a conversation without resorting to actual threats. There's a hint of danger in him; not that he is necessarily dangerous (which he can be) but that he is accustomed to dangerous circumstances.
At his best, Salvador resembles his boyish youth. Happy to talk about nearly anything and learn from strangers. He has an old fashioned moral code - opens door for women, pays for dates, courteous. This also leads him to treat them as if they were children, almost. Sal has a habit of excluding women from 'serious' conversations. Unless, of course, it's in business; he knows not to underestimate them in his work and views such women as almost a different species from the kind of witch he might date or respect.
At his worst, Sal is ruthless. He believes himself to have led a rough life and that his number one priority is his own safety and comfort. It doesn't matter if other people get hurt - as long as he's fine, and as long as the people he loves are fine... well, never mind the world. He can't solve everyone's problems, can he?
Salvador has cultivated a sense of good taste over the years. He understands good furniture, food, music. He likes to surround himself with these things as if they can protect him. But one need only step into his austere bedroom to know that, at his heart, he is a simple man.
History: Salvador Fernández Falcón was born at a small wizarding clinic in Liberty City, Miami. He was the only son to his widowed mother, Seleste, who was herself a Mediwitch.
CHILDHOOD (1974 - 1985)Seleste and her son lived in a small two-storey building in a rough part of town. They shared the home with two other small families, in addition to a regular flow of transients. The derelict house belonged to Seleste but she rented it out for cheap to the families, and gave free boarding to ex-convicts and former potion addicts trying to get back on their feet. Money was always scarce but generosity prevailed in their community, largely Cuban and Chinese immigrants.
Sal was never alone, growing up. He had no siblings but there was always company in the children of the other families as well as those passing through. One of the parents' was a teacher who would get the kids together every day for little lessons in preparation for wizarding school.
When he was old enough to run around by himself, about five or six, he started running errands for money. There were only two birds in the house, to run messages and packages, so Salvador would offer his bicycle services around the neighbourhood. He carried love letters, gifts, groceries. His was a face familiar to most in Liberty City - always chatty and cheerful, the loved son of a good woman.
When he turned eight, he was asked by his neighbour Diego to run errands for a Cuban American Deli in Wynwood, a much nicer part of wizarding Miami. Diego knew the owner and he knew Sal could never expect an allowance from his mother. The job was Salvador's introduction to the restaurant business.
By the time he turned eleven, he was helping around in the Deli kitchen and running messages for some of the city's small time criminal organisations. His mother forbade him from joining the other kids, who picked nomaj pockets and collected money for protection rackets - though Sal did learn a few tricks from them.
ILVERMONY (1985 - 1992)Going away to school widened Salvador's horizons. He had only known pockets of Miami before he was sent off to study, and he truly enjoyed his time as a student.
His teachers considered him rough but talented - only in need of a little polishing. Sal made friends easily; never the popular ones, or the elite, but his friends were often from diverse walks of life. Many of them, like him, were Quodpot players and sportsmen. He never visited them during summer holidays, though. The holidays were for going back home to his mother and helping her make ends meet.
As a teenager he worked summers at the Deli, and then trained as a cook at one of the proper restaurants in the area. Salvador remembers those hot days with fondness. He would rise at noon to work the busy afternoon shifts well into the evening. Then, at night, always, the kitchen staff would open up the back doors on to the dingy alleyways and light it up with magical orbs. There would be ice cold beer and old men singing over Cuban guitars, and sandwiches he would whip up himself using what leftovers they had. Stories told.
Sometimes, there was dancing - at other times, duelling, with jeers and cheers and another beer for the losers and winners.
Salvador rarely shared these memories with Ilvermony classmates. As far as he was concerned, the school existed in a different world - and he was a different person there. He was more forward and visibly disciplined, more studious and contained, less joyous. Nobody really knew him but they all got along with him, which was enough.
He graduated with good marks in Defences, Potions, Transfiguration and Charms.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1993 - 2001)After Sal's last year at Ilvermony, his mother married a Healer who worked at the larger wizarding hospital in Miami. His name was Fredrick, and he didn't much like his grown stepson. The two men didn't get along - and rather than jeopardise his mother's happiness, as well as her newfound financial stability, Salvador decided to move away from home.
He used his restaurant connections to find a job as a cook at a Cuban place opening in New York, and found himself in the big apple not more than a couple of months later. Here, he shared a big warehouse apartment with four other people; two witches and two wizards. One of the group was rich... and generous. She paid for nights out and even for brief group holidays to Europe - Barcelona, Lisbon, Paris, Milan. Sal soaked it all up.
The world was growing bigger and bigger, and he was growing along with it.
Unfortunately, the restaurant he was working at went under after a few months. Sal switched over to working security at wizarding night clubs - and this was his life for the next three years. When he needed the extra money, he would take on shifts at Cuban delis in Brooklyn. Life was alright; he had never expected very much from it besides making ends meet.
Still. A wizard could dream of opening his own restaurant. Not the regular kind - the kind with live music, glamorous charms, with the culture of his upbringing adoring every inch of the space. Good food, really good food. And he'd hire Cubans, give jobs to people who really needed it.
Sal talked about his dreams, loudly, wherever he worked. He moved from one night club to another until he found himself working at some of the fanciest spots in town. This was when one of the club's regulars, making small talk one night, got to hear about Salvador's dreams. He put him in touch with a friend - someone who turned out to be the Head of a department at MACUSA.
Pureblood, filthy rich and almost certainly corrupt. Ephram Aylesbrook would never have given Sal a second look if he hadn't been referred. The two were extremely different people - Aylesbrook was a British transplant, three generations on, with a taste for luxury. He wasn't a man of much imagination but he knew how to recognise it. And he recognised it in Salvador.
It was a dream come true. "Wynwood" - named after the wizarding area in Miami where he worked his first job as cook - started out as a narrow two floor restaurant in wizarding Bronx. Sal tried to make it as true to his vision as he could; and more importantly, the food was excellent. He was able to bring to life the parts of himself and his upbringing that he had repressed. The colours, decor, even the old latin men singing their hearts out while diners trickled in to discover the latest hot spot in town. Wynwood took off soaring.
But in this town, you don't get something for nothing. Salvador started to notice that Aylesbrook would sometimes bring his friends in for dinner; they would book upstairs, spend hours eating and talking, drinking and playing cards. He would come to recognise these friends as celebrities, crime lords, loan sharks. They were making rotten deals with Aylesbrook.
Upon bringing this up with his generous investor, Salvador was told that he would get a cut of each deal if he didn't cause a fuss - more than that, Aylesbrook would introduce him to powerful people in the city.
It wasn't technically criminal, or so Sal told himself. He knew that Aylesbrook could ruin his good fortune as easily as he had raised it - and would it be so bad, to get a cut? To use that money to do some good?
Wheeling and dealing turned out to be something Salvador excelled at. He was clever with money, clever enough not to share all his details with Aylesbrook. It only took him a couple of years to raise the funds to buy up a Latin night club in Brooklyn, and change it up to something more glamorous and entertaining. Just like Wynwood, it became a hit. Sal knew what people wanted and he knew how to deliver.
Shortly after he got his start as an entrepreneur, he learned that his mother had passed away in Miami. Sal went back to sort her affairs and patch things up with his stepfather, stoic.
HIGHEST OF HIGHS (2002 - 2008)The sobering events of 9/11 had brought the community together. That was what Salvador considered the people who worked for him - from the potwash to the waiter to the bartender and maitre'd. They were a part of his community, most of them immigrants, and in the face of gloom they did what he knew how to do best. He threw parties.
That was one of his many secrets in business: people wanted to see joy and colour, in times of desperation or pain. They wanted what they didn't have in their lives; the concept was so simple and profitable, he even bought over a couple of muggle places to rake in side profit.
But it was at one of the Wynwood events that Salvador met Sabrina Ortega. Sabrina was Aylesbrook's god-daughter, an orphaned Spanish-English witch educated at Beauxbatons. She was pretty and clever and vivacious. She was also terribly sheltered, unaware of her godfather's corruption and the world he lived in.
Sabrina was hardly 21 years old when she married Sal, who was nearly thirty at the time. The witch had just come into a great inheritance, a fact that had made her one of New York's most desirable bachelorettes. Salvador adored Sabrina. Her naivety reminded him of simpler times. The couple had a glamorous wedding, the kind with dancing and drinks that spilled out of the restaurant and on to the streets. Their first year of marriage was bliss.
Her naivety did not last. Encouraged by Aylesbrook, she fell into a luxury-minded crowd, the socialite wives and daughters of rich men. It was all so excitingly new to her; the drugs, dancing, lavish displays of wealth. Sal and Sabrina started arguing more and more, even in public - at his own restaurants. Sometimes they fought about how busy he was and how he neglected her; other times, about her reluctance to have children. Too much of luxury and drugs had made her venomous, petulant.
She had gotten hooked on stimulant potions, the kind that were too strong to be legally sold - the kind that sent Sabrina and her new friends into a spiral of reckless enjoyment. Salvador wasn’t a controlling man; he found it hard to moderate her behaviour and a part of him believed that she would eventually grow bored of the lifestyle. He had grown up around addicts and, as an adult, took nothing stronger than Cuban beer or the odd joint of gillyweed.
They were five years married when Sabrina overdosed on the latest stimulant making rounds in the night clubs. Sal had returned to their penthouse apartment late one evening to find her friends frantically trying to revive her.
TURNING TIDES (2008 - 2012)It did not take long after Sabrina’s funeral for things to go sour. Sabrina’s godfather cut off ties - amicably, but with an understanding that they could no longer do business together.
The wizarding tabloids speculated on his relationship with his late wife, many of them blaming him for her death and some even accusing him of intentionally orchestrating it. His high flying business friends were sympathetic but distant; not real friends. The only ones who offered real sympathy to him were those who worked at Wynwood.
They sent him food, called on his apartment, tore up tabloid papers and encouraged him to make positive changes in his life. Salvador grappled with grief, an emotion he could never quite get a hold on since his mother's death.
There was some loss of business at the restaurant but they were still making good money - as were his other businesses, which were not publicly connected to Wynwood anyway. Salvador realised that his presence in New York only served to harm his material interests.
He returned to Miami at first, opening up a second Wynwood restaurant in Liberty City. Sal only stayed on a couple of years here - he was relieved to find old friends still around but the memories of his mother pained him. He lived between the two cities after that, constantly travelling and drowning himself in work. Nothing made him happy anymore.
The decision to move to Britain surprised almost everyone. Salvador had only visited Europe a handful of times with Sabrina - who had distant family there - and didn't know many connections. That was the driving force behind it all.
A fresh start.
Describe your job duties and how you go about them: Salvador has bought over
Calaveras on Diagon Alley with the aim to revamp the entire place, lending it his own flair.
Far from being a pub and speakeasy, he intends for Calaveras to be a proper sit down restaurant with dancing hours later, and a live Cuban American band imported from the good U.S. of A. He maintains the back dining rooms for business meetings.
Salvador wakes late every day and goes down to the restaurant, currently under renovation, to supervise and check in with the staff. When Calaveras re-opens, Sal will continue to do this but will probably linger on until the evening to ensure the transition from dining hours to dancing hours. His life could easily be one of leisure but he does spend a lot of time ensuring the restaurant is up to snuff.
He likes to sit at a table by the bar - which is where diners are directed to wait, while their table is prepared - and read the papers. Sal considers it part of the job to know what is going on in London and how to best appeal to his new market.
Elaborate on your expertise in your field: Salvador Falcón worked as a restauranteur and enter entrepreneur for around ten years in New York, as seen in his History.
Writing Sample: N/ASum up your character in one paragraph: Salvador Falcón is a Cuban American restauranteur who has recently bought over and revamped Calaveras, on Diagon Alley. He's a good looking man with threatening charm and a moral compass that points in all kinds of directions. Sal made his fortune in New York but chose to move to London to escape the tabloids and rumours that he had been responsible for his late wife's death.
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