Alistair is a man whose entire appearance is striking. Most people have some physical feature that people notice first - their hair, their eyes, their height; but in his case, it's his entirely that stands out. It's his appearance as a whole that causes tilted heads, that spawns laughter and confusion.

Alistair is pretty. Beautiful, even. His hair is an almost white-blonde; his eyes are thickly lash'd and a silvery blue, and his skin is a fine alabaster. His hair is worn long, at times almost to his waist, and his body is slim and long limb'd. His lips are full, his eyes large, his complexion delicate...

I could go on for hours, but the point of it is: Alistair looks like a girl, to the point of being regularly mistaken for one. And not just mistaken for a woman, but mistaken for an attractive one.

No, really.

None of those brings him much pleasure, and yet he makes no steps to make his appearance more masculine, mostly due to not really caring too much (and sometimes enjoying the looks of horror). Beyond his girlish appearance, if one speaks frankly, he's short - a mere 5'6 - and very much on the skinny side. During bad months his ribs are obvious when his shirt's off, and he's not much thicker than that most of the time. His hands are thin and long-fingered, but stained and slightly discolored due to his work. His long blonde hair is frequently greasy or frizzy, and he has two small moles just above his lip, on the left side of his face.

His body language and clothing sometimes help to dispel the gender mistakes, if only because they disincline anyone from speaking with him. He frequently scowls, glares or looks unhappy, and sits with his shoulders and back hunched, his long hair hanging like a curtain. His clothes are old-fashioned and often in some disrepair, and most are a few sizes too large.

He's crossdressed only once - okay, twice; three times if you count - well, it doesn't matter how many times he's crossdressed. What matters, frankly, is that while he does not regularly crossdress, all of his neighbors assume he does. The fact he's rarely seen outside his shop, and from the back resembles many of the girls in the area, is no aid to quelling these rumors. The fact he's willing to do so for laughs is an even worse factor.


Alistair is many things, but he can perhaps best summed by a single word; 'jerk'. He's disagreeable, sour, misanthropic and otherwise unpleasant to be around, 99% of the time.

First and foremost, Alistair is not what one would describe as a people person. That doesn't mean he won't talk to people; but he tends not to worry what others think of him, nor does he often seek out conversation. He tends towards the cynical side of things, and has no fear of speaking his mind, should someone give him the opportunity to snark. He loves to snark - call it making himself feel superior (and he does feel superior when he gets someone's goat) or what you will, but he takes incredible satisfaction in biting, blunt sarcasm.

To friends - the few he has - he is...well, much the same. He is much more civil to them, on the whole, and can be supportive but, overall, his friends are best described as 'the people he hates the least'. Still, he does actually like them - in the sense he will listen to their advice and will enjoy time spent with them. He'll even snark at them a bit less harshly. Unless they deserve it.

He does have issues with making new friends, however. His social circle is quite small, and the fact that he often becomes obsessed with his current creation or his theories and locks himself away for weeks does not help this. He tends to be short tempered when he does this - even more than normal - and so often drives off customers and staff. He's a perfectionist and tends to throw away anything that isn't right, even if to outside eyes there's no issue with it.

He's a very intelligent man and learns quickly, but can often decide information is unimportant and discard it. He's a good listener, in the sense he can be appearing to be dismissive but then divulge the full history of a conversation - and he can give blunt and frank advice if asked. He will defend a friend if they need it, and does have a moral line that he will not cross. He will sometimes apologize for his actions, if he comes to the conclusion they were un-warranted. But on the whole - well, yeah. Prick.

In terms of wizarding traditions, honestly, he doesn't really care either way and tends to only let his opinion on the matter be known if it effect him personally somehow. Still, he's no fondness for muggles and muggleborns, and tends to sneer at them...more than he sneers at everyone else, anyway.

Alistair's greatest passion is his work, and this can lead to many issues; he'll forgo money, sleep, food and even a roof over his head to perfect his latest creation, and can go to drastic lengths to secure the proper ingredients. The more exotic the ingredients the better, which often leads to him falling into crime. He's been called a mad artist, and it's an accurate description - 'blood of the virgin' is not an ingredient he's shirk from if the challenge is good enough.


The Greys are a long-lived wizarding line - who survived via marrying practically, but not traditionally. Related distantly to the Blacks (but then who isn't) their line is quite mixed; Alistair is pureblood only by two generations and some luck. They aren't - or rather, weren't - rich by any means, and when his father was done their Gringotts vault is, literally, empty. Alistair is the last of them, and his vault isn't empty - but the sock he keeps his galleons in tends to get misplaced.

Alistair was born above the shop he now owns to Jeralt Grey and his new wife, Harriet. When Alistair was born his father was 58 and his mother 45 - his father having remarried after his first wife passed away, the first lady having never been able to carry a child to term.

The family life was...well, it could have been worse. Harriet was often in ill health and spent most of her days asleep or reading in the shop's large living areas, and Jeralt spent his days crafting potions, running the shop or gambling. Alistair learned how to assist his father at a young age, largely due to this being an easy way for his father to care for the boy. He also learned how to play cards.

At the tender age of 11, he headed off for Hogwarts. Alistair was - to the surprise of no one - sorted into Slytherin and he did averagely there. His rather abrasive nature didn't earn him friends, but thankfully his 'angry loner' persona didn't earn him many enemies, either. He spent most of his first year sneering at most other people and realizing most of the people in his classes were idiots. (Except for him, of course)

Most, but not all. He did develop a friend-like relationship with another boy in his year: Landis Morgan. The two shared a love of potions, a snarky disposition and a high and mighty sort of intelligence. Alistair ended up somewhat in Morgan's social circle, though his standoffishness made it difficuly for him to fully join it, as did his tendency to tell Morgan's older cousin to shove off.

Alistair had an affinity for Potions - and not much else, as he found out. While his natural intelligence let him pass most classes with some hurried studying, he struggled in his wandwork every year he was at Hogwarts. He did manage to pass his classes with struggle, and never got shining grades in any of them. While in later years he's found the Dark Arts are much easier to cast than he assumed, his school years were a constant pain.

His many of his early school years were, of course, rather rudely interrupted; there was the whole matter of Death Eaters taking over the school and all the other misadventures he could have done without. To Alistair, this was more often an elaborate pain in the arse, at first; up until a teacher hit him with an Unforgivable for "lip". After that, Alistair hated it. On the outside, of course, he acted unfazed; but he missed slacking in his courses, and his difficulties with wandwork did not help his case against the teachers, who didn't take well to the thin boy brooding in the back of the classroom.

When the battle commenced, he was one of the first to want to flee, and gladly took off with the rest of the Slytherin students. He was rather annoyed to find most of the people he knew returning, but he stayed behind, and only crept back to the castle in the morning after the fighting had died down. While to most he treated this as nothing more than an annoying interruption, he was in fact quite glad at the return to peace.

His final years at Hogwarts weren't exactly uneventful. His mother contacted him in Janurary of 2000 with the news of his father's death; apparently he'd inhaled an experimental potion and walked off the roof to play with the fairies. Alistair was saddened, but overall found the death somewhat unsurprising. His father had never been one for safety measures, as the man's lack of eyebrows often attested. It wasn't the first time he'd had a bad accident in the lab, but was also obviously the last.

He graduated with a measly 5 NEWTs (Potions, Herbology, DADA, Divination and CMOC) and returned home to find his mother badly off. She expected him to take over the shop, and he did; but not before having her sent to reside permanently in a nice country estate with friends, where she'd be cared for and out of his hair.

The shop was a mess. His father's death and resultant neglect had caused many of the ingedients to go bad, and the accident that had surrounded Jeralt with flying pixies had also caused the floor to rot out of the brewery, meaning it had to be replaced. This was a massive financial drain on a limited (or, more accurately, a nonexistant) reserve, and so he had to take out loans he wasn't sure he could repay.

Alistair has done his best to run the shop since and has succeeded...in keeping it open, anyway. His own sour attitude drives away customers and staff, his low income means he can't pay what staff will put up with him, and his willingness to try challenging ingredients or potions for low profits doesn't help.

He's therefore fallen in with some rather nasty people, as he's learned to refine Runespoor venom. He's also rather adept at adapting old potions and drugs, and of course, there are plenty who find the large manmade caves below his shop useful. Alistair doesn't worry - or, more accurately, care - what these are then used to do (unless people ruin his potions or ingredients while in the caves, of course). He enjoys the challege of creation, and he enjoys being able to eat.


Φ JOB DUTIES
Alistair runs the Grey's potion shop on his own, both as shopkeep and brewer. He makes the vast majority of the potions he sells, and has a natural talent for it, especially with potions of a medications' nature. Unfortunetly his shop is often in dire straits, requiring him to look for loans, handouts or go without food. He usually does the later, as he's too proud to bed unless he has to.

Φ EXPERTISE
He's kept the shop barely open since he was 18; his natural knack for Alchemy has helped him a great deal. While he has yet to develop a compltely new potion (not for lack of trying, mind you) he has instead found ways to brew several potions and either remove their side effects altogether, or simply make them less severe.

Φ SUMMARY
Sour, feminine fellow with a genius for potioneering often undercut by his insufferable attitude and over eagerness.

Character Name: Alistair Grey
Link to Application: Here

Sections Changed:

• Job: Alchemist -> Hogwarts Caretaker
• Personality: Adding a paragraph (italics) and making some minor changes in wording.
• History: Adding paragraphs (italics) on how he became Caretaker.
• Job Duties:[/b] Switching these to those of the Caretaker.

Adding the following New Sections:
What type of Criminal are they?   
What Alliance/Political faction do their loyalties lie? (If any.)   
Have they committed any previous crimes?   
If Yes, what were they and were they convicted?   
What crimes might they commit in the future?   
Are they currently wanted by the Ministry of Magic?

Requested Changes:

Φ JOB
            Hogwarts Caretaker

Φ CRIMINAL TYPE
            Thug
            Illegal Brewer
            Dark Artist

Φ ALLIENCE
            Vedir Prideaux (overall)
            Landis Morgan (directly)

Φ PREVIOUS CRIMES
            Aug. 12th, 2009 - Attacked and stole memories from Patricia Pienas
            Illegal smuggling, use of Dark Arts and Dark Ingredients in Potions

Φ FUTURE CRIMES
            Murder, Assault, Theft, use of the Unforgiveables

Φ WANTED STATUS
            Not caught or convicted for his current record (yet)

Personality
 
[. . .]

First and foremost, Alistair is not what one would describe as a people person. That doesn't mean he won't talk to people; but he tends not to worry what others think of him, nor does he often seek out conversation. He tends towards the cynical side of things, and has no fear of speaking his mind, should someone give him the opportunity to snark. He loves to snark - call it making himself feel superior (and he does feel superior when he gets someone's goat) or what you will, but he takes incredible satisfaction in biting, blunt sarcasm.

He's learned over his lifetime - mostly via series of hard knocks - to turn this off when appropriate. While he's no ice king, Alistair can keep his comments to himself and act respectably enough to be considered professional. This act is certainly not disrespectful in itself, but Alistair has a hard time fully disguising his emotions, especially when angry. Thus, while he can be quite passably professional, if upset he tends to stutter and steam even as he tries not to express his true opinion. Replies come through gritted teeth and hands fist at side; that kind of thing.

[. . .]


History
 
[. . .]

He's therefore fallen in with some rather nasty people, as he's learned to refine Runespoor venom. He's also rather adept at adapting old potions and drugs, and of course, there are plenty who find the large manmade caves below his shop useful. Alistair doesn't worry - or, more accurately, care - what these are then used to do (unless people ruin his potions or ingredients while in the caves, of course).

In August of 2009, he followed a hunch and committed several rather badly pulled off crimes - attacking several people in the Diagon area, he extracted memories and used them in his experimental recreations of the drug Muse. Unfortunately, it was during one of these tests something when spectacularly wrong - so wrong that his shop is now quite in ruins, and he has no where near the money to repair it.

With little left to do, he turned to his employer, Vedir Prideaux, who found a new job for him. Prideaux also offered to repair the shop. Alistair, being far too aware of Prideaux's love of strings, chose to take the job instead.

He was therefore moved to being Hogwart's Caretaker, courtesy of his boss's position on the Board of Governors. Grey has yet to thank his employer for this, though it is technically a step up in the world...if he wasn't supposed to be using his position to support the ambitions of several other people.

Φ JOB DUTIES
As Hogwart's Caretaker, Alistair oversees the maintenance and some aspects of the castle's security. He patrols the halls at night to catch curfew breakers, and if he finds them, drags them to a professor.

He is also in charge of maintaining the castle's enchantments, dealing with arguing paints or troublesome ghosts, and general upkeep. If someone spills dangerous chemicals, he cleans it up; if a student makes all the staircases swing to the wrong landings, he has to fix it.

Why do you wish to change these area(s): Technically this is more accurately a Career Change request, but some edits to his personality were required for it to make sense. Being moved for plot reasons.
Other RPed Characters this may affect: No one directly.