Leon Samuel HalloranCharacter Birthday & Age: 25th December 1966, 52 years old in 2018.
City & Country of Birth: Arizona, USA.
Blood Purity: Halfblood
Alma Mater: Black Grackle Commune
Job/Position: Head Obliviator, Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.
Wand: 11 inch pine wood with Jackalope Antler core. Inherited. An excellent wand for non-verbal magic and creative casting, strongly bonded with its master.
Physical Description: Leon Halloran is barely six foot tall - shorter, really, because he stoops, and does not give the impression of a tall man. When the weather is especially damp he uses a cane to walk as the result of a weak right knee, problematic since a three year hitchhiking stint as a young man.
His looks are distinctive. Not bad looking but unpleasant. Smiling, unfortunately, only exacerbates the effect. Leon does the best with what he has: he wears his thick hair neatly combed or fashionably styled, depending on the occasion. His clothes are almost always of muggle cut and fashion, and only of the best quality. He likes to add his own flair at times - a flower pinned to his collar, an eccentric brooch, an unnecessary monocle.
Leon carries himself confidently, a man who has nothing to prove to anyone (except himself) and who has gotten his way through hook or by crook. His mannerisms are leisurely: he is in no hurry. Patience is a virtue to be broken by worthy aims...
Personality Description: Friends of Leon know him to be dry and witty, and happy to challenge accepted norms in conversation. He is in the habit of proposing bizarre hypothetical situations at dinner parties - and watching the fireworks as other guests go off on their own tangents and ideas. His belief is that people are capable of radical ideas if pushed into the right corner. Sometimes he pushes too hard.
In smaller groups and conversations, Leon is fairly peaceable and complimentary. He is the kind of person you can sit with in silence to enjoy a drink or watch the rain. He likes to talk about art and Herbology, and can easily be baited into telling stories of his younger years or past careers. His style of flirting is blunt and direct. It might not work for others but it works for him.
Professionally, Leon knows his craft well. He can have eccentric or unusual ideas about how to solve problems but his delivery is straight. He's been at this long enough not to hesitate at everyday catastrophes. His attitude to his superiors and colleagues is respectful, if not indifferent. He has a tendency to look as if he isn't paying attention - but assuredly, he is. Those working under him will find a reliable mentor who doesn't beat around the bush, and who encourages learning in challenging situations.
Leon can be very charming when he wants to be, in the unexpected way of those predisposed to being perceived as grumpy or taciturn. There is a vaguely menacing air about him - the impression that he might be very dangerous if incited to fury. An accurate impression.
History: Leon Samuel Halloran was born the youngest of six children on Christmas Day in the Black Grackle Commune in Arizona, USA. The Commune consists largely muggleborn wixes who decided to form their own community out in the Arizonian desert - centred at a small oasis. At the time of Leon's birth, they were a hundred odd wixes strong.
His parents were Arizonian-born wizard James Halloran and Irish-American witch Muriel Kelly. Both were muggleborns who attended Ilvermony, and who wanted to start a magical family in a community that outright rejected Purity ideology. They joined the community long before having kids, at the invitation of its founder, Garcia Soto.
CHILDHOODLeon was the youngest of one of the Commune's biggest families and was generally dotted upon as a little boy. He was extremely bright - almost too bright, with an excess of energy, but luckily for him Black Grackle believed in the raising of its children as a community. There was never a lack of entertainment or erudition to be found.
He was known to devise and play games, and enjoyed reading. Leon often volunteered to follow older wixes on their trips away from the Commune, where they would leave him in bookshops or libraries.
EDUCATIONEducation at Black Grackle is certified by
CAWW's board of Independent Educational Institutions. Here, separated more by ability than age, young wixes learn the usual subjects: Charms, Defence, Transfiguration, Astronomy, Potions and Flying. Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology form a single subject called Ecology, in which their efforts are mostly focused on desert plants, creatures, and how to live in harmony with nature. Students also learn Elemental Magic, where they are taught magic with a special emphasis on how to manipulate their base environment.
In addition to these are informal, unstructured lessons in music and art. All subjects are optional except for Charms, Ecology and Muggle Studies. Black Grackle preached notions of cooperation with Nomaj culture. It was mandatory for everyone in the community to fall into line with this belief.
Leon got along very well in this makeshift school, a gazebo-style compound within the boundaries of the Commune. Educational trips were frequent and no uniform was required. Although he was always at the top of his group - and could have 'graduated' early, Black Grackle believed in keeping its youth in Education until they turned seventeen.
Bored of regular subjects by fifteen, Leon was tutored in Occlumency by the Commune leader - with whom he also had a secret physical dalliance until his education was complete.
HITCH-HIKING (1983 onwards)Like many others who grew up in Black Grackle, Leon and a group of recently graduated boys decided to leave the Commune. There was no pressure to stay - the community of Black Grackle believed that most who left would eventually return. They were right, even though Leon was not destined to be one of those prodigal sons.
This breakaway group of young men spent the next three years as muggle hitch-hikers. They would move from west to east coast: town to town, picking up muggle jobs and discovering the little hidden wizarding towns along the way.
More often than not, Leon's "profession" at the time was as a gardener or Herbologist. Initially as an additional hand on the gardens of opulent muggle estates... then, as he picked up skills and knowledge, he was able to develop a green thumb. His longest stint was as a Herbologist at the country estate for a wealthy wizarding family, where he fell in love with the estate owner's wife. A short-lived affair that ended with Leon leaving the state and travelling north to New York.
GREY CITY, GREEN FINGERS (1986 onwards)At the fresh age of about twenty, Leon joined a magical floristry and landscaping establishment in the city. He worked in a Greenhouse developing hybrid plants and decorating the homes of wealthy American wixes. Leon had a good eye and nurtured an aesthetic that married nature with architecture.
It became known as the Leon Halloran Treatment. By the time he was in his late 20s, Leon was considered a visionary artist. He was featured in wizarding magazines, invited to trendy parties, meeting all the right people. Leon also started dating an influential fashion designer wizard but the pair eventually broke it off due to irreconcilable differences.
The differences being that the arts and fashion scenes in which he found himself were dominated by wealthy or pureblood wixes. They overlooked Leon's strange origins and Nomaj-born parents in the way all powerful people ignore the distasteful histories of true talent. Leon didn't like any part of him being ignored or overlooked, especially when it involved blatant hypocrisy. They made their homes and livelihood in the nooks and crannies of Nomaj cities, even sourced Nomaj trends, but looked down their nose at the magicless.
And he was getting bored anyway. Leon made a radical career move at 30 years old - he applied to work at
Eldritch & Profane.
MR MYSTERIOUS (1996 onwards)Leon Halloran submitted an unusual resume to Mysteries, and came across as outrageously arrogant at his interview. But lucky him... the new Head of Eldritch and Profane,
Yavin Morgenthau, loved anything and anyone unusual.
His first posting was in Experimental Herbology, where he specialised in developing strange new plants with specific purposes. It wasn't long before he started branching out into Mind Magic, learning Legilimency and the art of Obliviation.
Leon quickly became good friends with Yavin. The pair were often seen leaving CAWW together, talking in hushed tones or heading down to their preferred haunt - a late night Jazz bar, where they had a regular table in the quietest corner. They argued constantly and were always happy to drop the subject of conflict after exhausting it entirely.
It was a blow to Leon when Yavin decided to leave New York for London, although he respected the decision. Leon continued on in Mysteries and then moved to the Federal Bureau of Covert Vigilance and No-Maj Obliviation, as he was approaching his 40s.
TWO SIDES OF ONE COIN (2004 onwards)First as an Obliviator and then as Head Obliviator. Leon was an efficient Obliviator - he was, in fact, still doing odd jobs for Eldritch & Profane, off the books. Many were surprised by his change in career... until they remembered this wasn't the first time he had switched directions.
His reputation as an Obliviator was surprisingly straightforward. He was known for his ingenious, practical methods of concealing magical affairs from Muggles. Leon knew Nomaj culture through and through; here, his upbringing in Black Grackle was invaluable.
In his social life, he had few close friends but many acquaintances. Leon dated Nomaj and wixes alike. He especially enjoyed brief flings with younger men, and affairs with married women. These were kept very separate from his professional life.
Unbeknownst to CAWW, Leon started playing chess on both sides of the board after making Head Obliviator. He masqueraded as an Obliviator while plotting magical disturbances in Nomaj locations, trying to reveal and conceal wizarding society all at once. To him this was all a game. Year after year after year...
Until the game got boring.
CHANGE OF AIR (2012)Too clever and restless, Leon chose to apply to a post in the British Ministry after he was informed by one of his brief flings, an English tourist, of a European movement called The
Futurists - a movement of wixes who believed in aesthetic and ideological cohesion between the Wizarding and Nomaj world.
He was able to quickly ingratiate himself to the Futurists movement, and was partly responsible for the infamous
Halloween Breach in 2012.
Describe your job duties and how you go about them: As Head Obliviator, Leon oversees the dispatch and organisation of Obliviators in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. He reviews performances and writes reports of all missions in the field. For big missions involving bigger groups of Obliviators, he devises a game plan.
Leon is also an active Obliviator. He answers to Department Head, Quill Som.
Elaborate on your expertise in your field: Leon has eight years experience of being an Obliviator, four of those years as Head Obliviator in CAWW. He also has almost ten years of experience with Eldritch & Profane.
Sum up your character in one paragraph: Leon Halloran is Head Obliviator, and secretly an extreme Futurist. He believes that the only way for muggles and wixes to integrate is with immediacy; the fallout or collateral of such an event is, in his eyes, a price worth paying. But he is a patient man, waiting for an opportune moment. In his social life he is forward and direct, capable of politeness but not really one for niceties. Those working with or under him will find that Leon is quite competent but prone to talking to himself. He can be intimidating in his own way - odds are, though, he will just ignore you if you aren't worth his time.
Leon Halloran: Head Obliviator