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

Full Character Name: Ignatius N. Hallows
Character Birthday & Age: May 19, age: 23
City & Country of Birth: London, UK
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Hogwarts (Hufflepuff)
Job/Position: Trainee Auror (If possible)

Wand:
6 1/3 inches, brittle Blackthorn wand with a Phoenix Feather core. This wand has been passed down the family, from his deceased mother to himself. The original creator of the wand is uncertain, although there is a belief that an ancestor created the wand. This may have been false rumor within the family.

Physical Description:
Caught in the genetic mix that one might call "ordinary", the boy stands at 5'9'' with shaggy dark hair. Naturally, his hair is quite curly and shaggy but he tries to keep it maintained and professional for his line of work. The boy himself is often not clean shaven, with some stubble around the jaw.

Over all, he appears to be average with muscles that are not clearly definable. His dress sense is quite dull, dressing mostly in dark greys and browns when he is not working. His clothes are usually a size too big for him, giving him some bagginess and room within them.

Unlike some other wizards, he prefers to wear muggle clothing and finds them a lot more comfortable and ordinary to wear. If he is seen in colors, it is primarily orange or red in tone - warm colors.

Personality Description:
As his wand might suggest, the boy is not quite as confident as he could be. He keeps to himself and keeps his voice quiet when speaking out loud, but tries to only speak when he is required. Ignatius has always struggled to maintain relationships with people, often making friends quickly with people but not knowing how to keep those friendships going over longer periods of time. He can be quite charming when he is playing a role, but loses that charm whenever he is off-the-clock.

The young man is quite lonely, mostly due to his shyness in approaching people - especially when he knows he can't maintain friendships very well. Ignatius can be sympathetic to people he knows but sometimes struggles to find the right emotion or response in complication scenarios.

When forced to confront people, situations or difficult emotions, Ignatius is prone to panic attacks and can shut down for a short period of time with anxiety and headaches. People close to him would know that the best way for him to calm down from these episodes of stress, anxiety and general panic, is to leave him be in a small enclosed space. The boy has often relied on closets or small rooms, with very little open space. For some unknown reason to the boy, the confinement is quite comforting to him and allows him to get through an episode quickly. After a few minutes, he returned to normal again.


History:
Ignatius was born in London to his Magical mother (Evangeline) and a Muggle Australian man she had fallen in love with, a man who had been traveling abroad and met her during his travels around the UK. The couples romance was quite shortly lived, as she fell ill when pregnant with her first child (Ignatius) and passed away when he was born. Not knowing how to contact any of her relatives, his father, John, decided to raise him by himself but decided to stay in the UK - lest her family find a way to contact him and meet their grandson.

Years passed before anyone from her family managed to find the pair in a small country town, and by this time the boy was almost 8 years old - almost time for him to begin his magical studies, which they insisted would take place exclusively at Hogwarts.

For the next few years, prior to his study at Hogwarts, he studied some basic magical history with his estranged mother's family. They were kind enough to the boy, but it had always felt impersonal to him. A distant compassion, one might associate with a favored object or asset - but not another person, especially not a family member.

He had been raised to take the good with the bad and he never made a fuss over the way they acted around him. Hearing the English accents around him, he developed a self-consciousness to his own foreign accent - having being raised by his Australian father, the accent rubbed off on him - and started to gradually speak less around his mother's family. The boy adopted a quiet, almost whispering, volume of voice as he reached the age of eleven and was being sent to Hogwarts School. His voice would remain quiet and hushed around the other students and professors for the duration of his stay in the magical school.

Upon his first night, Ignatius was sorted into Hufflepuff. He knew a little about the school, not enough to know of the full history each house possessed but enough for him to know that Hufflepuff was probably a good fit for him. After a few weeks in the house, he started to try and approach people to make friends. Much to his surprise, he managed to make a few close friends over his first few years at the school.

With each passing year, he struggled to make more friends and it became almost tedious for him to keep the connection alive with his close friends. The less he spoke, the more he felt like he had nothing of value to say. Some other students kept him around, enjoying the fact that he rarely spoke and was often well suited to listening more than anything else. His closest friend came in the form of a Slytherin girl who was one year his senior.

She was quite dominating in their friendship, but compassionate enough when he had something he wanted to talk about. Natasha, the older Slytherin student, would keep some of the more aggressive students away from him and protected him on more than one occasion. He didn't feel emasculated by these acts, instead accepting the kindness she was offering in her own way.

During his final year, with one of his only friends already a graduate, he focused on his studies and tried to make the best of his distant social life to boost his academic career. Finding success in a lot of theory work, he managed to achieve Exceeding Expectations in his final grades - although his combat abilities were acceptable, they were not his strongest area.

When he graduated the magical school, he decided that he would aim for a career within the Ministry of Magic - specifically, one working alongside the brave Aurors that he had come to idolize.

As a fresh adult in the world, he moved to London with his close friend Natasha and applied for the job he desperately sought. To no great surprise, he was not deemed appropriate for the role and was told to apply when he had a bit more life experience and some spine to back up his abilities.

Hardly discouraged by the rejection, the boy started to work for an old family friend who needed someone to carry around his bags and equipment as he explored some of the far reached of the magical world as he wrote textbooks on magical creatures. Ignatius followed him across the world for several years, learning about magical creatures and taking a fondness to the more humble lifestyles of creatures.

In the most recent year, he returned to the city with the aspiration to apply once more for the Auror's Office.

Describe your job duties and how you go about them:
Ignatius works for Law Enforcement, or rather he trains to become an Auror. His day to day life is mostly consumed with detailed training exercises and reading about Dark Creatures and Curses. His strengths lay very strongly in the theory side of his work, leaving him with little field experience but a measurable about of eagerness to learn more about survivability in the field and general tact when interviewing or questioning individuals.

As of the current day, his primary duty is training under the more experienced Aurors and attending the appropriate classes for his curriculum. Having spent some time away from the civilized world, he is still adjusting to the daily life and routine of his work.

Elaborate on your expertise in your field:
Within his Law Enforcement training, Ignatius has taken a particular fondness to the study of Dark Creatures - and appropriate methods of disposal and or understanding of them. Within his other classes, he has taken an interest in Curses and Countercurses as well as survival skills (such as stealth, tracking, etc) and information gathering. His expertise in combat is still a work in progress, leaving him a little bit behind the other Trainees in that regard. His focus remains on theory and knowledge more than aggressive practices.

Writing Sample:
The voice of his friend had become quite distant to his ears, despite her being in the room with him. She was speaking fast, complaining about something that had happened in her day. Ignatius was listening to her speak, but the faster and more energetically she spoke the more he felt himself drifting away from the conversation. The young man pulled his legs onto the chair he was sitting on, wrapping his arms around them and keeping his knees close to his chest.

Her voice drowned out some more, it sounded like she was in another room or speaking from behind some thick glass. In reality, she was not more than six steps away from the man but he was still fading away.

Panicked thoughts came to his mind quickly, a building anxiety that she would become angry with him if he lost track of the conversation too much. To the best of his ability, he tried harder to focus on the tone of his words. A little more. A little more, he told himself internally as he pushed himself to focus on her voice. The same voice he had been listening to for years, the voice that had shown him tolerance and patience through times when he was hardly present.

A few minutes rushed by, the voice coming in and out of focus as he tried to concentrate. Ignatius dug his fingernails into each other, pecking around the nail with a nervous tick and a weak amount of pain. He had been doing it for years, picking at his nails when he was nervous or biting them if he could do so without drawing too much attention to himself. As the voice stopped, he realized it was his turn to speak.

"That's quite shocking really," he started, desperately trying to connect the vague and absent dots of what the conversation has actually been about. With a curt smile, he added some more onto it "So what happened next, did they listen to you?"

After a brief pause, she continued to speak like she had never stopped for validation. With a bite to the inside of his lip, he focused on her next words and kept listening. She was quite predictable, always finding her way into the same situations - which usually involved her confronting people or correcting them on insignificant details. She enjoyed it, and Ignatius knew her too well. Well enough for him to guess the rest of the conversation.

Sum up your character in one paragraph:
Ignatius Hallows is a boy of mixed nationality that has always struggled to find 'his place' in the world. He has a very disconnected relationship with most people and tries to bury himself underneath his work, finding the ink and parchment of his life much less complicated than the people around him. Despite his flaws, he means well in what he does and tries to stay loyal and hardworking in his own way. He speaks with a mild, but recognisable, Australian accent.