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Your Nickname: Andrew
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? Other
If you have written other characters here: Yes
If Yes, list them all: Nick Mensforth
Is this a Primary or Secondary Character?: Primary

Full Character Name: Greg Randolf Cassidy
Character Birthday & Age: October 18, 1971; age 38
City & Country of Birth: Greater London, UK
Blood Purity: Muggleborn
Alma Mater: Hogwarts, Hufflepuff house

Cover Job (If any): Auror
Type of Criminal: Various: "Dirty Cop"/Corrupt Auror
Allegiances / Loyalties / Political Faction: None; anti-WBA

Have they committed any previous crimes?: Yes
If yes, what were they and were they convicted?: It's difficult to delineate where Cassidy's own crimes end and those to which he has merely turned a blind eye begin. It is, after all, his business to allow those who pay him to go about their business unhindered. Sometimes, this is nothing more than saying a suspect checked out clean when they didn't, saying they got away. Sometimes, it's a lot more, faking death with polyjuice potions, removing rivals, legally or otherwise, even using his badge to ensure a smuggled shipment isn't questioned. Greg's never been convicted and, for the most part, hasn't even been suspected. Thanks to a reputation as a stern, even merciless auror -- a relic of the war and its mentality -- the only formal investigations into his conduct deal with his "overzealous," even brutal law enforcement.

What crimes might you commit in the future?  Discuss all possible: Given his "second job," Cassidy might aid in the commission of nearly any crime; his two rules are that children are to be left alone and that he won't deal with Death Eaters or their ilk. The latter presages the crimes Greg, himself, is likely to commit. In his eyes, wearing a dark mark carries a death sentence. If he comes across a former Death Eater outside the line of duty, he'll remember their face and find them, in him. If he comes across one on a case, well . . . there will be signs  of a struggle, clear evidence that Greg had to defend himself, that he was, as always, only doing what had to be done.
Are you currently under pursuit by the Ministry of Magic?: No

Wand: 7 inches, with a core of runespoor fang and crooked body of pliable yew wood. It's able enough for most tasks, but it hardly takes an expert in Wand Lore to realize its predisposition is to hexes and curses, as would befit a wand won from a Death Eater. During the war, Greg found himself outnumbered in a skirmish against the Death Eaters. He managed to dispatch all but the last before a particularly well-aimed curse shattered his wand; anger replacing his fatigue, Cassidy managed to eke out a narrow, miraculous victory with only wandless casting, thanks to a few clever tricks using simple spells. Respecting his skill and cunning more than it had its past master's straight-forward brutishness, the wand chose Greg as its new master and has been loyal and reliable since.

Physical Description: Greg Cassidy is the essence of disheveled class, never quite shaved, any beard his stubble grows into never quite groomed, hair never quite in place, clothes stylish but perpetually rumpled. Even his mannerisms mix authority and charisma with an easygoing sloppiness such that he always seems to be half stumbling. His features are best described as adequately handsome in a quotidian sort of way, with messy hair ending at high cheekbones which lead into a gently curved jaw. He has the cherubic smile of a much younger man; it's a warm, reassuring smile that often looks as though it's about to open into laughter.

Personality Description: In many ways, it's as though there are two Greg Cassidys, the one everyone sees, day-to-day, and the other man who shares his body, who only appears when he's angry or pressured. The first Greg Cassidy is the sort of man you'd expect from Hufflepuff house, gregarious and good-natured, if perhaps a bit strange, well-spoken with a tendency to stutter if he's flustered, a little distracted unless something demands his full attention, but a dedicated and relentless worker despite all appearances. He's the sort of auror who doesn't dump his paperwork on trainees; if he sends out a trainee to fetch him coffee, he insists on paying for theirs. If he brings in a criminal, he uses all his authority to advocate for rehabilitative, rather than punitive, measures.  Well, usually. There are some things Greg Cassidy cannot abide.

It is in the face of these things -- Death Eaters, those who harm children, or red tape getting in the way of either one's destruction -- that the other Greg Cassidy appears. The angry Cassidy is the sort of man one might expect to have been expelled, perhaps from Slytherin or Durmstrang. The strange tendencies which once seemed quirky are suddenly menacing, shifting abruptly from eccentricity into madness. Few who know only the everyday Greg would imagine that he amassed one of the highest, if not the highest, body counts in the Second Wizarding War, dispatching every Death Eater he could manage with merciless, even vicious efficiency. Few who have seen the angry Cassidy would doubt the figures for a moment.

It is the combination of the two sides of his personality which have allowed Greg Cassidy to avoid arrest as he has. Simply put, Greg is very, very good at his job. Few have managed to combat the WBA and their ilk with his efficacy, because few can manage to strike the level of fear he does into their hearts. Conversely, his treatment of most other prisoners is often cited as exemplary and humane. Thanks to the former, none expect that Greg's "humane" tendencies go so far as to actively aid criminals for pay; thanks to the latter, he is quickly able to assuage any doubts as to the necessity of his more "zealous" enforcement.

In a way, neither Greg is the real one, though; the real Greg Cassidy isn't a happy or angry figure, but a sad one. Greg Cassidy brims with kindness or fights like hell to hide the fact that, deep down, he has given up. Once, he believed in right and wrong, simply and earnestly. Then, after a time, he still believed in right and wrong, but saw that what was legal was not always right, what was criminal was not always wrong. He went on that way for a long time, until he began to think, more and more, that there was plenty of wrong in the world, but he didn't really believe in right, any more. He started taking bribes when he stopped believing that there was right. Now, he doesn't even believe in wrong, at least not the way he used to. The happy Greg is kind out of a dismal pity for the misery the naive world will find when they open their eyes; the angry Greg fights with increasing fury for what he used to believe in because he simply doesn't know what else to do. For all the goodness he normally displays, or all the cruelty that can be provoked from him, until he learns to believe in something again, Greg Cassidy is as much a shell as a man.

History: Greg didn't learn about the wizarding world the way most muggleborn wizards do, an owl with a letter opening his eyes to a wondrous new world. He learned when a man in dark robes with a grim mask broke into his house and killed his sister. He was seven or eight, she was barely five, it was the height of the First Wizarding War, and Greg had been randomly chosen to send a message. Only, the assassin entered the wrong door first and, seeing a small child with short hair and masculine toys, killed Samantha instead of Greg. Once they learned what had happened, his father blamed his mother for encouraging Samantha's tomboyish habits. His mother blamed his father for failing to protect his children. In their hearts, they both couldn't help but blame Greg, though it wasn't his fault the way he was born or what others would do because of it, and they knew that. They tried to treat him normally, to never show the resentment they felt when the wizarding world was mentioned, but even a child not so perceptive as Greg would've seen what their eyes and voices tried to hide. Towards his later years in Hogwarts, Greg's father stopped even bothering to hide his disdain, though by then, Greg couldn't help but blame himself; he'd learned at sixteen that his first use of magic, the accidental eruption common to wizarding children, had been registered by one of Voldemort's agents monitoring underage casting at the ministry. Not only had the Death Eaters killed his sister looking for Greg, but they'd known to look for Greg because of something, however uncontrollable and inadvertent, that he had done. Of course, he also couldn't help but see blood on the hands of the ministry which, through corruption or incompetence, had as much blame in Samantha's death as he had, if not more. One could even say that Greg's eventual disillusionment was not because he lost faith in the ministry, but because he lost faith in it ever earning his forgiveness, let alone his trust.

By his graduation in 1991, Greg Cassidy was regarded as a model student and promising wizard, whose prominence in the dueling club indicated he would do well as Auror, his chosen career. At the end of his three-year training, increasingly public signs of Voldemort's return were appearing, despite the ministry's attempts to deny them. Cassidy almost lost his badge in his first year as an official Auror, siding too vocally with the dissident camp who believed Potter's story of Voldemort's return. Recalling his own circumstances, he began to set up a plan to defend muggles unaware of the conflict without breaking the secrecy of wizards. This marked the first instance of Greg's willingness to exploit many wizards' ignorance of muggle technology to his advantage as an Auror; while such methods were of little use in the war itself, they helped limit the war's spillover into the muggle world.

After arriving with the army of Aurors towards the end of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, he became a full-fledged combatant in the burgeoning war, his wrath earning both respect and fear from his fellow Aurors. Following the coup at the ministry, Greg went underground and renewed his efforts to protect the muggle world from Voldemort's army. Following the war, reports of his bravery during his time increased his notoriety considerably, those there are those who claim madness, rather than courage and selflessness, inspired his risky tactics. The truth, as always, is probably a mix of the two. Towards the end of the war, as a resistance became more crystallized, Greg would return from hiding to fight in the more major battles, notably distinguishing himself during the Battle of Hogwarts.

The ministry's actions immediately prior to the war and its takeover during the war shook and deeply cracked the foundations of Greg's respect for the law, but it was the years immediately following the war that truly shattered his opinion of it. Even if in his own, odd way, Greg Cassidy was a deeply, tenaciously fair-minded man, and he saw nothing fair about a lot of the criminals he was supposed to bring in going the same place as those who had collaborated with Voldemort. Honestly, given his childhood and what he'd seen in the war, Greg didn't see anything fair about Voldemort's collaborators going anywhere but their graves.

At first, it wasn't even his idea. He had a smuggler cornered in a room of crates, when a stray hex split one open to reveal wands inside it. The smuggler explained he was selling them to Goblins that hoped to learn wandlore and, as always, Greg was a fair-minded man. The ministry's attitude towards goblins was backwards and barbaric; he was breaking the law, but the law's prejudice was more wrong than he was. While Greg paused, truly uncertain of what to do, the smuggler mentioned he was paid in goblin gold, and paid handsomely. Greg could be paid handsomely, too. All he had to do was take a stunning spell, just one, it'd hardly hurt, and say the smuggler got away. Well, it would've been wrong to arrest him, anyhow, wouldn't it?

That was all it was, for a few years. Any Auror could let a few slip through the cracks, and Greg closed more cases than most. The first time it escalated was his idea. There was an organization, squibs dealing in contraband, who were and becoming increasingly violent in the face of their competition. They were lowlifes, but the kind of criminals hitwizards dealt with, well off the Auror RADAR if it weren't for the recent escalation. So, really, it was the group of former Death Eaters eating away at their territory causing the increased violence. Greg offered a deal; from now on, the squibs followed his rules and payed him a cut of their business, and he got rid of the Death Eaters.

Since then, Greg's played on both sides of the chess-board, a full-fledged criminal and a (sometimes begrudgingly) respected Auror. He's dedicated enough to work that he doesn't have too much of a personal life, a few pints at his local a couple times a week, a dwindling number of muggle concerts every year, and maybe even a few dates he's too polite to refuse, though no woman has struck him as being more worth his time than his work is. Mostly, he leads a calm life at home, playing cello or watching old movies while he bakes fanciful desserts to indulge a pervasive sweet tooth.

Writing Sample:

Sum up your character in one paragraph: Greg Cassidy is a strange set of contradictions; he's caring and gentle and ferocious and cruel, dedicated lawman and brilliant outlaw, a bitter old man and a perpetual child. At his most essential, he's been one of Thoreau's men who "lead lives of quiet desperation," since the end of the war, seeking something to bring peace to his desperation or something to end his quietude.