Character Name: Gabriel Battersea
Previous and/or Current Characters: Many, many previous, including this one played as a student. Current student is Justin Prescott.
Character Age: 32
Character Education: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy, Studying from extensive Battersea family archives and tutoring from experienced family members.
Strengths and Weaknesses: Magically, Gabe's strength is in casting charms. While he may fail at one when trying to cast it for the first time, it only takes him usually one more attempt before succeeding at it. His magical weakness is Divination. There is hardly a single aspect of the subject that Gabe can perform well, if at all and he struggles to accomplish even the simplest of Divination activities.
In an overall sense, his strength is his ability to learn. Gabe loves learning anything and everything and loves the research aspect of it. He would also gladly help anyone in their pursuit of knowledge, believing that it's meant to be shared. His weakness, is that in his several years of study, he has been away from people and so has such feels a little bit uncomfortable and awkward around them, unsure of how to initiate conversations.
Physical Description: Gabe stands at an average height of about 5 foot 10 inches. He has well groomed brown hair and blue eyes. He keeps himself very straight and proper, in the tradition of his family. He also keeps a short, neatly trimmed and proper beard at times.
Personality: Gabe is a bit of a mix personality wise. He is a little slow to get into social situations because of his having been withdrawn from people for a bit, but he is incredibly generous, warm and caring. He is also fiercely loyal to and protective of his friends but especially his family. He would do anything to help out any of them. He also takes misdeeds against them very personally, and is very slow to forgive those.
Hopes and Dreams: Gabe's hopes and dreams are to serve his family proud. He doesn't know for sure if the role of being in charge of the whole family will ever fall on his shoulders, but Gabe wants to prepare himself just in case. To do this, he wants to learn as much as he can about all varieties and subjects and collect experience in different areas of learning so that if asked about it in future, he can speak with experience.
Biography: The life story of one Gabriel Caleb Battersea began on March 21, 1940. He was the first child born to Peter and Julianne Battersea.
Being the first child, he was more privy to have had a lot of time spent with him for that first year at least, before Lexi came along, and then another younger brother a year after that, Keller.
His mother started to bring Gabe on some of her expeditions when he reached age 5. So he had about a year before Lexi started coming too. During that year, he was taught how to be curious about his surroundings, how to seek new things about the surroundings. When Lexi started coming along, Gabe tried to help his mom show her what he found interesting, but Lexi didnt seem interested in the same things, in fact she seemed fascinated by other things that sometimes Gabe would share an interest in, but more often then not, he was drawn to some other aspect of wherever they were.
Gabe was always on the move, he was a very active little boy, always exploring, always turning over every big rock to see what new creatures lived in the area, what new fauna grew there, and everything he could about the place. As a result, he often ended up with plenty of creature bites, or different illnesses.
As he got a little older, he began to become a little more cautious in his curiousity, but he still got bites and sicknesses though. Gabe was a lot like his mother in many ways, having spent many hours of his childhood with her, however a small part of his dad did rub off on him. He loved to learn, and in that way he was like his brother. While his brother loved his books, Gabe did read them, just not with quite as much zest. He would briefly glance through his books to look up something new he found, but for the most part, he preferred his hands on learning.
Just before his eleventh birthday, Julianne took the kids out again, so Gabe could get one last expedition experience before he was to start Hogwarts. When they were at their destination though, the Easter Islands, Gabe in his typical curious nature went off for on his own a little ways. He found a small lake, and was fascinated by something he saw in the bottom. Well, being Gabe, he didnt really think much about any risks of what might have been in the water, he just dove right in to investigate.
He had his eyes set on the object that had caught his attention, and he was swimming towards it. He didnt realize it was an ancient artifact though, with protection wards and spells around it. One that muggles were generally repelled from, and that Gabe was not only because of his magic in his blood. The fact that his mother was a witch archeologist, they did come across things that were well, magical. This was one of those things, unfortunately for Gabe, he found that out too late.
When he had reached out to touch the thing in front of him, a strong shock went through his system, it had done something to him. All Gabe knew was that it hurt, ALOT. With great effort, he forced himself to the surface, and then to the shore, using only his one hand as his other hurt too much. He emerged from the water, and ran to find his mother. As he reached her, he noticed he was starting to feel really faint, and passed out just as he came into her line of sight.
Several weeks later, Gabe woke up in St. Mungo's. He was told he had come into contact with an incredibly strong set of interwoven protection wards, and was lucky he had been so close to his mother who had apparated him to the hospital, then returned for her other two children while the doctors took care of Gabe. He even later learned that several of the wards that had been interwoven to create the entire ward itself were not generally used, because they caused great physical harm to anyone who actually came into contact with them, and without the treatment he had received from St. Mungo's as quickly as he had received it, he might not have survived.
Gabe also learned he had missed the date for entering Hogwarts, but because his mom had sent a letter to the school explaining the circumstance, he was told he could enter the next year, the same year as his little sister.
That next year came, and Gabe boarded the train with Lexi, was sorted into Gryffindor house and started attending his classes.
Gabe seemed to excel in his Summoning/Conjuring, something he had in common with his sister and his grandmother. He just couldnt grasp Divination though, that was one area that seemed beyond him. He loved school. Although he had been sorted a Gryffindor, he still held a love of learning that his Ravenclaw sorted family of past had held. Whether it was because of his family heritage or simply his state of mind, learning was a passion for Gabe.
When he graduated and was granted access to the family archives, Gabe immersed himself in there. He spent days, even weeks in there researching and learning everything he could try to. He was in there every spare moment he had. The only time he wasn't to be found there was when he was in his Gran's bookstore.
He did this for several years, and while he had not gotten through everything there, he had made quite some head way. He realized though he was missing out on getting real world experience and interaction, and with the role he had to look forward to later on in life, he knew he would need this experience. He also was able to realize that getting a good collection of different types of experiences would be useful as well.
The first taste of the real world he had, was to meet a young girl while helping in Gran's bookstore one day. She was absolutely made for him it seemed. She was a graduated Ravenclaw who loved books and learning as much as he did, her name was Aurora Mesochik. The bonus, at least for his family's long line was that she was a pureblood. So he proposed to her, and married her not very long after meeting. Despite the fact it was only a brief window of time of courting her, Gabe was very comfortable that he had found the right woman in her.
He wasn't sure what other experiences he wanted, and so this was something he had sat down to examine. There were so many ministry workers in the family, in various departments but still within the ministry; if he wanted to learn about that he only needed to ask. His mother had her own branch, as did several other members. There was a career line that Gabe knew members of the family had gone down, but only a few and that was medicine. So, Gabe spent another bit of time researching all he could on this subject; spells, herbs, potions, anything he could find.
He had tried a couple years ago to fill a position at the castle but was not accepted. This didn't bother him, and in fact proved to be a good thing. Around the same time, on August 26, his wife Aurora gave birth to a lovely set of twin boys that were named Blyth Amergin and Mikael Austeyn. Gabe's focus then became a little torn though, for he wanted to be near his family as much as possible, but also wanted to be able to continue his research. Aurora hadn't minded too much before, but now that there were kids involved, he didn't feel right. There was a simple solution though. Gabe moved his family to Battersea castle, and so was able to do both things he wanted.
A few years later, when the twins were almost three, Gabe saw another posting for the position he wanted. He had done more research on the subject and so decided to attempt his hand once more at the position and sent in an application.
Roleplaying: Gabe had never really had a chance to be taught by Einar, but like he'd had for all his professors, he'd had a great respect for the man. Not that he had the particular experience of running the entire operations of the castle, Gabe could still figure that it was quite the job and he did not envy the man. He was however very grateful to the man for taking some time out of his day to meet with him for this interview.
As it was always Gabe's intent to try and make a good impression, he had arrived several minutes early and was directed to the Headmaster's office. The headmaster was not there yet and so Gabe took a seat to wait. A moment later, a house elf popped into the room right in front of the desk, grabbed the bowl of lakrits and emptied the contents into a little bag it held. He turned around and eyed Gabe, clearly not expecting to see anyone there. Because Gabe was there though, the elf felt compelled to explain his presence.
"I has made a mistake, this bowl of candy is not good no more, and I need to get fresh ones for the headmaster so he is liking his candy more. I was thinking I had time since the headmaster is dealing with a problem. Please don't tell the headmaster, I is going to be right back"
With that, the elf disappeared. It also happened that it was at that moment the headmaster returned. Gabe watched as the smile he had entered with turned into a scowl as he spotted the empty bowl. When the man asked where the lakrits had gone, Gabe stood up and looked at him.
He tried to make himself as intelligible as possible, but since he had been living solely in Scotland since his graduation from Hogwarts and having not really left except for a few short and quick trips the past number of years, Gabe had a developed pretty thick scottish accent, much thicker than in his school days.
"An elf cam an' said 'at th' candies hud gain bad an' 'at they waur gettin' new ones. he jist left an' said he woods be reit back."
