Accepted! -- Sparky

Your Nickname: Andrew
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Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

Full Character Name: Nicholas Charles Mensforth
Character Birthday & Age: October 24th, 1994
City & Country of Birth: Hackney, Greater London, UK
Pureblood, Halfblood or Muggleborn: Halfblood
House & Year: Slytherin, 4th

Wand: Pale cypress wood with dark patches indicating the wood was charred prior to being shaped into a wand, twenty-eight centimeters in length; spiraled body, rigid bordering on inflexible; Dragon heartstring core. Equally apt for hexes and curses or protective magic, a little too serious-minded for charms.

Physical Description: A generation ago and an ocean away, people would've said Nick looked like he'd grow up to be the Marlboro man, built lean and wiry like a whip of stiff leather, braided thick and scuffed until all its sheen is gone. Between poverty, his nasty temper, and starting to nick smokes out of his father's pack when he was still young enough to think girls were gross, Nick had taken a lot more scuffing than most boys his age, and looked old for it, accordingly. His hollow cheeks and sunken eyes were those of someone older, just as his habit of restless movement, darting eyes and tapping feet, seemed more the mannerisms of a hungry animal than they seemed an adolescent's fidgeting. A shift of his eyes one way and Nick was a lost puppy, looking for affection and shelter from the rain; a shift the other way and he was a wild creature, a wolf abandoned by its pack.

Nick keeps his hair short and combed back in a futile effort to rein in its determined unruliness. Naturally a dark brown, he's been known to bleach it with something cheap, lime or peroxide, and use gel to hold it in place if he can afford to. When out of uniform, he dresses mostly in durable, low-cost clothes that he keeps as neat as he can to show an honest pride in his working class origins. Nick most often smiles wryly, with only the right side of his mouth, giving his smile -- regardless of whether it is to express thanks, compassion, or amusement -- the perpetual appearance of a sly grin. This is in part a subconscious copy of the weary, jaded expression his father passes off as a smile, in part a very conscious effort to avoid showing his teeth. Made crooked with a wipe gap in the front by nature, left that way by financial necessity, and stained by a mix of bad habits and apathy towards good ones, they were far from hideous, but easily unsightly enough to mortify a self-conscious teenager.

Whatever self-consciousness Nick felt about his teeth, about being too thin, being a little short, or having longer arms than he ought to, the constant darting of his eyes and the sad, lonesome look that sometimes crept into those eyes were the only outward signs of it, beyond his strange smile. Indeed, Nick's mannerisms suggest confidence, not self-consciousness -- countless hours spent learning to box with his father, the only shared activity which elicited any visible enthusiasm in the man, turned Nick's natural gate into a weaving swagger, and the same grin which hides his teeth makes even his shyest gestures seem jocular, even flippant.

Personality Description: Nick is, at his core, an introvert, naturally inclined to be reserved, but one would never guess it. In public, Nick wears the charming verbosity and ready wit of a wideboy like it was a favorite shirt, never without a quick quip to throw out about any subject. To his friends, he seems an archetypal clown, perhaps amused, but generally disinterested in the events around him. To authority figures, he is a well-intentioned, but misunderstood young man striving to surpass the dismal future most see for him. It isn't until one really gets to know him that they realize that all of Nick's outgoing personality, from the misunderstood angel routine he puts on to get out of trouble to the endless stream of clever remarks he has up his sleeves, is essentially a deflection, hiding the quiet, sensitive boy from the outside world. Nick has no idea how to address or deal with his emotions, so he just buries them beneath a charming facade in the hopes they're never uncovered. If you're quiet, people ask questions, but if you talk and talk, even about nothing, they never get the chance. It's just as well most people don't get the chance to ask questions, since asking the wrong ones might bring to light Nick's wild temper. Unlike a lot of the students sent to Hogwarts, Nick was no stranger to schoolyard brawls and, while he believes it's better to solve a problem with words, he sees no problem in solving a problem with his fists if a certain line is crossed – some people just aren't worth wasting words on.  Generally, the issue of his absent mother is one best avoided, and a certain degree of disdain for his poverty can exceed his tolerance.

History: Nick's parents had the kind of storybook romances that reminds you real life doesn't just end when the storybook does; he was a worker in the factory her father owned, she was a rich American girl, pretty in that particular way that seems unique to Americans, sloppy and a little uncouth, but all the prettier for it. They moved a record player into a shed by the factory where her father wouldn't look and eloped to a little church in Yorkshire a few years later. Aubrey and Declan Mensforth lived happily ever after until Nick was born and some switch flipped in Aubrey's head and she realized she was young and pretty in that messy American way, that she could be rich if she went crawling back to her father, and she had a life to live in Paris and Tokyo and not council flat in Hackney. Declan wasn't good enough for her and neither was the unnamed Nick. She left her books, poetry and old mysteries, and her records, old soul and Elvis Costello, and her husband and son. As though it were something she had meant to leave but mistakenly taken, she mailed back the factory o-ring that had been her wedding band in the same envelope as the divorce papers.

Nick grew up without knowing that his mother was a witch, which she had never mentioned and so Declan had never known. Tending to introversion, Nick grew up lonesome, with his father for a best friend, albeit a best friend who was away sixty, eighty hours each week to get them by – Declan would never stoop to asking Aubrey or her father for assistance. They were poor, but they got by without them and Declan's parenting instilled the same resistance in Nick when he was old enough to understand the option. If she thought she was too good for them, she wasn't good enough for them, and neither was her sodding money. As his school years went on, Nick grew more popular, beginning to grow the facade that now serves as his public personality, becoming a class clown behind the teacher's back, and a teacher's pet to her face. When the other boys made fun of him, Nick had something funnier and more cruel waiting for them and when that didn't work, he wasn't afraid to fight.

By the time Nick started to hit adolescence, the Owl's letter came as a welcome respite, at least in Declan's eyes. Nick was popular mostly among a crowd of outcasts who, for Declan's money, were better kids where it counted than the “good boys” who got into less trouble, but he still wasn't keen on Nick getting in trouble, even if he always managed to get out of it. A boarding school, on a full scholarship, could be a way to maybe see him do a little better than his old man. Not that Nick had ever been ashamed – he didn't get angry at the teasing because he was embarrassed, he got angry because he was proud. As for wizarding, Declan's only comment, as rich with dramatic irony as insight, was “Must be from your mother's side, always wondered if she was a witch.”

Nick generally did well in his first few years at Hogwarts, making good grades with little effort, and fitting in well enough by virtue of remaining likeable and inoffensive to most students. Some of the traditionalists of his house didn't take too kindly to the kind of difference he represented, but mostly left him alone after he seemed to hold his own in verbal sparring. He excelled particularly in his Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms courses, where his intelligence met with an actual interest in the material, making Nick an occasionally exceptional student. Transmutation, however, was a different story. While the class was interesting, and Nick was quite able, he did not enjoy the class and didn't hide his disdain for some assignments – when an rabbit was to be transmuted to slippers for the final, Nick managed to pass by un-transfiguring the other students' work, although he received the minimum passing grade for his insolence.

In his summers, Nick returns home to spend time with his oldest, best friend. Declan does his best to manage more time off during the recesses, and trains his son in boxing, a mutual interest and one of the few things about which Declan can bring himself to get excited, any more. While training has filled Nick out a little, and gives him an outlet for his temper during the summers, it makes his temper a little more worrisome when he's at school; without as much of an outlet, an incensed Nick is no longer a young boy scrapping, but an increasingly grown boy who knows more and more what he's doing. At the end of his third year, Nick learned that in his first fight at Hogwarts. Some Gryffindor, a year above him, who thought anyone in green was the same decided to take the piss out of him one day; Nick doesn't even remember what he said, just that it must have been the wrong thing to say. His quick tongue got him out of trouble, but he hasn't enjoyed the same kind of liberty he did in his earlier years, at least with some of the more law-and-order elements of the school's faculty – Nick may not have gotten in trouble, but the harsher sort of professor certainly sees him as being on a short list of someone who will.

Classes:

Core Classes Astronomy Charms Defense Against the Dark Arts Herbology History of Magic Potions Transfiguration No

Electives Study of Ancient Runes Arithmancy Care of Magical Creatures No No

How Do You Fit Into Your House?: Nick may not fit the typical image of a Slytherin, yet he is perfectly suited to their house traits – if anything, better suited than the prototypical Slytherin is. Nick is doubtlessly clever, intelligent and wily enough to succeed in school while using only the minimum effort. Compared to the rich, haughty, pureblood, Nick's path, through poverty and a muggle upbringing, has evinced a great deal more determination. Similarly, Nick's cleverness allows him to be resourceful without the resources on which most of his house depends; just as he's had to overcome more obstacles than many in his house, he's done so without the wealth, connections, or knowledge base many others rely upon to succeed. Most of all, though, Nick is ambitious. Of course, his ambitions are stranger than most – rather than hoping to become the Minister of Magic, he dreams of being a champion boxer, a famous “freelance” cursebreaker, or a rock musician who turns down the office of Poet Laureate. Yet, the many who seek greatness for its power and rewards are not truly ambitious, but greedy, while Nick sees greatness as its own reward, and so strives for greatness, regardless of its practical benefit. As for the rules, Nick's attitude fits perfectly, if one willfully misunderstands "certain" as "established beyond doubt." Besides, green is his favorite color.

Writing Sample:
“Oh, come off it,” Katie snapped, almost literally, drops of water shaking from the tips of her hair as she raised her head to turn her glare from the ground to him, where it belonged. “Go back to your posh boarding school, sooner the better.” From anyone else, he would've just pulled up his collar and acted like he hadn't heard it. Maybe he would've spat something of equal or greater vitriol back. “Return of the bloody prodigal, is it? I'm to just welcome you back like you were never gone, Nicky?”

Nick swept the forelock of his hair back and wiped the traces of rain that ran from it towards his eyes with his wrist and then his forearm, unconsciously blocking the anger in her eyes. “Katie,” he started, before all his clever words dried up in his mouth as though it were filled with ashes, like the time his father had almost caught him smoking and he'd tried to swallow his cigarette. “Katie,” he said again, as  though her name were one of the magic words they'd taught him, and if he repeated enough times, he would get the spell right and everything would be okay again.

“Don't Katie me,” she said, ire not diminished when Nick's arm returned to his side, “Every year, it's the same. You get to go off and put on your uniform, buckle your shoes, knot your tie, and we stay here, we get left, and then you come back acting the conquering hero, the boy we all missed so much, but where are we? Do you tell your posh little friends about us, do you talk to the pretty girls in their fancy clothes about me, the same old girl watching the same rain leak into the same flat?”

He thought she might be crying now, but he couldn't bear to look – instead, Nick's eyes stayed locked on the wall behind her, locked on the building that rose up from the stair-rail she leaned against, watching as it gradually grew darker, piece by piece, as the rain hit against more and more of the grey stones, watching the golden glow of the raindrops that ran from the spiraled fire escape against the jaundiced street lights. “You remember when we thought Tom new everything?” Nick said, “He was older than us and he had the confidence of a man twice as smart as he was.” Nick let his eyes dart down to her hair, but not below her bangs; he couldn't risk looking into her eyes, yet. “Then, one day, we sat over on the stairs, we looked up at your place, and we thought, 'Why is it that some bricks turn dark in the rain, but some of the others, what look the same when they're dry, stay pale however wet they get?' We looked at the wall for what felt like hours, so it was probably minutes, and we just couldn't figure it out, so we went to ask your brother. So, Tom, he looked all around in that big ego of his, and that probably did take hours, and, coming up truly empty, he said, 'I don't know.'” Nick finally let his eyes fall to her face. Katie was still scowling, but if she'd been crying, she'd stopped and let the rain hide it. “Still haven't figured it out, all these years,” he added, after a moment.

“There's a lot of things you still haven't figured out, Nicky,” Katie said, more softly, almost apologetically, as she let her glare go from Nick to the cigarette in her hand and then, as though she gave up on them both simultaneously, she flicked it away and went inside, leaving Nick alone with the wall again, wondering still why some bricks darkened in the rain and some stayed the same, which kind of stone he was, and if she was the same kind. He was still looking after it was too dark to see anything but the sickly yellow reflection of the street-light on the wet stone, staring at that the part of the blackness where he knew her window was when the CD in his stereo ran out of tracks and the sky ran out of rain.

Sum up your character in one paragraph: Raised by old records and older books, heist movies and boxing documentaries, Nick has become a defiantly self-reliant, but confused young man, more than able to carry himself, but increasingly unsure of just where he wants to go.