Absit Omen RPG

Harold's smiled dug deeper into his cheek as the prefect snapped at him and turned his back on both Slytherins. With his exit and final request Harold looked back down at Kyson.

"I think that's one the most Ravenclaw way I've heard someone tell me to keep a low profile."

Then, there was a thump on the door behind him and some low murmurs and sighs began to fade into hearing.

The Knight sibling pulled himself off the door, picked up his bag, pulled out his school robe, and kept his gaze anywhere except on the compartment door.
 
"So uh… all fixed up? Let's leave them to it yeah? Wouldn't want to be late," Harold patted Kyson on the shoulder and turned him away from the direction of the prefect's exit and towards an exit on the opposite car door, "We can catch up in a different train car, or on the carriages."

Harold grimaced as Kyson was reprimanded and decided to just get to work. The girls were way out in front of him, and he was fairly positive his potion couldn't hold a candle to either of theirs, but he would try. Afterall, him and Kyson were in the same boat, they only needed to pass the class for their goals, not be brilliant cooks or potioneers.

The Knight twin quickly added some color to his pictoral notes, so he knew what colors the potions was suppose to change, and then pulled out his wand to crystallize the castor oil. Finally he got to work on his brew, going slow and focusing as best he could on the colors and his technique.

He was about halfway through the brew when he took a peek at everyone else's progress. Foley and Little-miss-biscuits looked like they were pretty much done and Kyson--had he added accelerant?!

"You're mental," he said to Kyson with a mix of awe and worry. He checked his potion again and then added, with a bit more urgency, "Can you keep up with that brew, mate?"

After exhausting all of the easier cursebreaking tricks he'd read about, Harold had tried ordering some more difficult cursebreaker puzzles in the mail from some Hogsmeade joke shops. Unfortunately, he had managed to exhaust those as wells. More unfortunately, Foley had caught on to what he was doing and offered to "help" with that ghost of a smile that he might have thought was cute and mysterious if he hadn't ever been on the nasty end of several of her curses. Her being disproportionately nicer to his twin also possibly had something to do with it.

But idle hands made for a devil's plaything and Harold supposed he was overdue for her to finally show up. So the messy-haired Knight sibling barely hesitated take her up on the offer.

Now he was tucked away in some empty dungeon classroom and staring down several of his re-cursed practice items and scribbles of parchment notes by some ominously flickering lamplight. After a moment, he finally picked an item and used his wand to trace some runes around it in the light. But then the runes were pulled out of his control and began to merge, crackle and spark.

Harold ducked under a table just as the magic fired at his inkwell, spilling its contents as it flew out the classroom door and crashed into something.

• "Whomping willows!

Harold quietly groaned from his hiding spot as his classmate continued to yell, but, as his classmate's footsteps grew closer and he kept making more demands, Harold finally spoke up.

"Nobody and nothing!" Came his sarcastic drawl. With wand still gripped in his hand he poked his head out the door and hissed, "Why are you even down here? Go do whatever, or whoever, elsewhere, mate."

At Kyson's reply, Harold played along by with a sudden, exaggerated gesture to cover his mouth, as if in faux-scandal, before turning back towards the prefect.

Harold curled his hand into a fist and tucked it under his chin as he looked back at the Ravenclaw with a more furrowed and serious expression, "No, of course not,"  he said with a low, reverent tone. Then he turned a smile back to Kyson and bopped  the other Slytherin's shoulder with his fist and a more teasing tone, "Not on the first night back!"

As the offer was given to fix Kyson's lips, Harold crossed his arms leaned back against the train compartment door so that the two room for magic as he continued talking with the same tone, "Of course not, Kyson doesn't start fights." That of course, didn't mean that Cavanaugh didn't end fights, or even bait the fight to begin with. In fact, whether Harold's statement was completely true was probably a matter of interpretation.

Harold would have probably tried will things to undo themselves a little longer if he hadn't been nudged. The younger Knight startled and looked at Kyson before he gave his housemate a smirk, "Are you becoming a Shakespearean romantic on me, Kyson?"

Then Harold quickly hopped and collected his own ingredients before returning back to his table, "But with Storm as the Head Deputy? Let's not chance it."

"When I was younger I was a pill about taking castor oil, so my mum would cool it down and it wouldn't taste so bad. Maybe we can just crystallize it or the extract before adding it to the potion? Or crush the twigs a bit before adding them?" Harold turned to Kyson and shrugged as he started to get to work on his potion.

As the professor paused and turned to cast the instructions on the board, Harold whipped out his quill and parchment and glanced towards the Hufflepuff table as he quietly said, "I'm sure if you work hard, like a proper 'puff, it'll smell different in a week." 

Harold then rewrote the instructions as pictoral instructions, stood up to get his things sorted, and then froze at the sight of the professor drinking one of the vials.

With brows high on his forehead and his jaw recovered from the floor he added, "Merlin-you'll have a healthy infatuation with yourself, right? Please?" And Harold continued to remain frozen to the spot, as if staring would somehow undo what had just happened.

Ignoring the prefect's lack of amusement, Harold crossed his arms and nodded in agreement as Kyson asked how the kids would learn. Then he shook his head with an exaggerated frown as Kyson went through the other questions. Of course, when Kyson asked him what the 'bloody hell' he had been doing his frown skewed into a more genuine one.

Once they were in their dorms, he maybe might try and outline when to be nosy and when not to be nosy, where this moment was an example of the latter.

But when the Ravenclaw gave his input, Harold's frown turned into a smirk and he raised a suggestive brow towards the prefect before turning back to Kyson with a little too much mirth in his voice, "Hear that mate? You're not prefect-accredited." Harold shamelessly gestured towards the prefect-in-question and then continued without clarifying what he was insinuating, "Didn't even get threatened with detention! For shame. Best go find yourself a prefect and work on that before we start sharing lesson plans."

While Harold how absolutely no clue how his brother's friends felt about sexuality and romance, the Slytherin was fairly certain that he-who-was-not-named-Kevin was on some sort of spectrum of 'uncomfortable with most of it.'

Harold was relieved they weren't diving into making potions right away. This was going to one of the more difficult NEWT classes for him, so he gingerly opened the vial and then began to take a few snuffs of the spiraling steam.

He first caught the eerie smell still, damp scent of rocky earth, and then he had to move the vial away as he was overcome by the heavy, blanketing scent of leaves hiding a whiff of thorny wood. Once he pulled the vial back for another snuff, he smelled tough, worn and scaly leather.

Harold gave an approving nod, "A cave, a hawthorn tree, and dragon-hide boots." The Slytherin then carefully placed the vial back on the table and pusged it far away from him.

The taller Slytherin snorted at Kyson, "Surprisingly, brothers aren't always all they're cracked up to be."

When Cavanaugh stood up to loudly inspect his scratch marks, Harold leaned away from his housemate and poked a finger at Kyson's forehead--hopefully to push him away from his personal space. Sadly, his housemate's outburst attracted the attention of a prefect.

Rather than just stand there for the scolding, Harold turned back towards his rain-splattered reflection and ran his fingers through his hair once more, "Ah Kevin, I assure you it was strictly educational-" The Slytherin then spun around with a casual, business demeanor, "-Completely safe for 3rd years, and older, to walk in on with only mild embarassment or loss of innocence." Well... at least it was when he left the compartment.

As the rain continue to pelt the window pane, Harold caught sight of the shorter, smirking reflection sidle up next to his and raised his brows in recognition.

"Most likely not the same thing that split your lip," he rubbed his neck again and turned an inquisitive smirk towards Kyson, "A cat who can't cut her claws?" Harold refrained from mentioning that the Slytherin boy also had a hand in him trying to fix his appearance--an open secret rarely shared outside his housemates so that he had one less thing for his parents to nag him about.

 As the Hogwarts Express journeyed beneath a stormy night sky, the train’s corridors were filled with the sounds of water pelting and splashing against windows panes while the muffled sounds of grinding wheels hummed through the floors. The sounds were only disrupted by one of the shaded compartment doors sliding open to reveal one of the Knight twins standing there, holding a bag by his side and wearing his un-tucked school shirt and trousers, looking back and saying, “And get your robes on, so you don’t get wet.”


Harold then stepped into the hallway and promptly slid the door shut before the giggling Gryffindor and breathless Slytherin could give him a smartass remark about it being ‘too late’.


Honestly, he didn’t think his trip back to Hogwarts would start with him asking two dating fifth years, to “not argue about quidditch where the rest of us are trying to walk?” He ended up herding the violent couple into a compartment and then, because the Slytherin was one of the overly-informed nosey types, he asked him for dating advice. Ugh. So “You should let her lead” quickly escalated into “Shit--cast a silencing charm first,” “No, do it like this,” “Ask first,” and “Is there a reason I’m still here?”


Now Harold standing in the corridor, rubbing some nail marks on the back of his neck, fussing with his hair and inspecting his reflection as he faced the waterlogged window with the type of soft and thoughtful expression that often got him mistaken for his twin.


Of course, with him wrapped up in his appearance, he wasn’t paying any attention to whether anyone else was in the corridor with him.

 

Your Nickname: Zayzie
Have you read and do you agree to the Code of Conduct?: Yes
Are you over thirteen? Yes
How did you find us and decide to write with us? Friend
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: In the past: Torquil Foley, Erik Collins, Azize Mulogo, Rubeus Hagrid, Naila Ferrari, Delilah Foley, Nathan Whitman,  Ananke Cosmos, Naomi Foley, Adric Foley
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

Full Character Name: Harold Knight
Character Birthday & Age: December 31, 1994 (16)
City & Country of Birth: Kilburn, Derbyshire, England
Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn: Pureblood
House & Year: Slytherin 6th

Wand: 8 ¾” bendy blackthorn,  Ashwinder Ash core (a twin of the core in Blake’s wand), knobby shaft

Physical Description:
With a perfect posture and his short hair messily styled up and away from his face, Harold stands at about 5’9”.  He’s bulked up over the years and, with is narrow and thin-lipped scorn, he likes to try and seem bigger than he actually is. He also spends a ridiculous amount of time in the morning to find the perfect balance between being presentable and looking like he just woke up, mostly to try and differentiate himself from his twin (though that’s recently become harder and harder to pull off)

Personality Description:
Harold is a notorious slacker who does the bare minimum to get by, though not out of choice (like a twin brother who shall not be named), but because he’s burned out by pureblood obligations. The younger Knight twin is exhausted from family rivalries, tired of social expectations, and dejected from having to be constantly on guard.

Rather than open up to others about his problems, Harold prefers to find ways to distract himself. When pureblood social norms dictate he should be bothered (when he’s truly unbothered), he’ll put on some rich, pureblood boy melodramatics that can easily devolve into startlingly self-aware deadpan snark. When he’s actually bothered, Harold will stay uncharacteristically quiet and keep to himself, resolve something with fists or a wand, resolve tension with a fair-weather fling, or lend an ear to other people’s problems.

Harold’s habit of distracting himself with other people’s problems has actually made him good at managing and juggling his peers’ social baggage. As a result, he’ll happily act out and put all the attention onto himself to give others time to collect themselves. However, there are days where Harold just wants to run away from everything (sitting in class, sitting and listening to purebloods, etc) and just start doing things.


History:
Harold is the fourth Knight kid, coming into the world right after his brother Blake, a trend that would later follow the Knight twins into every other aspect of their lives. While Blake excelled at sitting down and working during homeschool, Harold preferred to learn things on-the-go. After lessons, he’d ask Blake to give him a quick rundown of what they learned and then he’d try and turn it into a game or apply it to some sort of outdoor activity. Together, they developed a type of feedback loop that allowed them to accomplish whatever they set their minds to.

But, with their parents’ wanting to instill the boys with rugged individualism and their other siblings fueling rivalries, the two were quickly torn apart.

Harold was often told to stop “distracting” Blake while Blake was told to stop “helping” Harold with school thing and so the younger twin fell behind, the older one got ahead, and they ended up spending less time together. When Harold was out roaming around he would also get dragged into his older brothers’ fights and had to learn, through trial and error, how to hold his own against them.

Often feeling lonely and rejected, Harold would indulge in melodramatics and try to steal away some of his parents’ attention. When he found out Blake liked to hide away and secretly preoccupy himself with muggle stuff, Harold decided that Blake’s absence gave him a chance to get more attention from his parents, allowing him to easily escalate his dramatics. Harold would never admit that he only did this to cover for Blake whenever the older twin was about to get caught.

When it came time to attend Hogwarts, Harold was not at all surprised that Blake ended up in Ravenclaw, though he did try and act the part. However, he was surprised that he got into Slytherin because he thought he acted more like a Gryffindor growing up. He vaguely recalls the hat saying something about cunning, kinship, and untapped ambition, though he can’t remember the specifics (though he does remember thinking the hat had gone mad). If anyone ever asked, he’d just say it runs in the family.

Throughout his school career Harold did the bare minimum to get by, occupying his spare time with sports, games, pureblood social expectations, newborn rivalries, and slacking off. However, when Blake started slacking off as well, he started to catch some flack for it. His parents started to subtly blame him for it and to try and get him to clean up his act in hopes that Blake may follow suit. Harold tried, even though he knew he wasn’t Blake—he knew that he could never BE Blake, no matter how much they looked alike—but he tried.

Somehow, Harold managed to get high enough OWLs to continue on with NEWTs while also clumsily juggling every other pureblood obligation thrown at him. It’s exhausted him, but he’s relieved he can have a lighter class load and plans to throw all his pent-up emotions into quidditch. He just hopes he can have some spare time to just slack off and ignore all the frustration he feels towards his twin.


Classes:

Core Classes No Charms Defense Against the Dark Arts No No Potions Transfiguration No

Electives Study of Ancient Runes Arithmancy No No No

How Do You Fit Into Your House?:
Despite what Harold thinks about himself, or how he acts, he knows how to study and juggle social dynamics so that he can play whatever role his family or friends give him. He has a social cunning that he uses as a means of self-preservation, trying to stay sane long enough until he has the freedom to chase his own ambitions (or at least figure out what they are).

Writing Sample:


Sum up your character in one paragraph:
A laid-back slacker who enjoys sports and games, especially when they require lest sitting around and more movement or brute force. He does the bare minimum to get by in class, though doesn’t always succeed. It’s sometimes hard to tell him apart from his brother, and nearly impossible when Blake is pretending to be him to sneak into the Slytherin common room. Also, while Harold has many of his own unresolved frustrations and anxieties, he prefers to manage other people’s issues, in an effort to distract from his own.