CHARACTER INFORMATIONCharacter Name: James Locke Singer
Gender: Male
Age: 32
Education: Hogwarts, Slytherin, Class of ‘58
Community Applying To: Elsewhere
Do you wish to be approved as a group with any other characters? If so who and for what IC reason?
James is William Lauria's uncle on his Mother's side.
Do you plan to have a connection to a particular existing place (example St Mungo's, Children's Home, the Ministry, Shrieking Shack) or to take over an existing shop in need of new management?
James works as an auror for the Ministry.
Biography: (300 words minimum.)
James can trace his family name back many hundreds of years. It is a fact of which he is immeasurably proud. His ancestors were once not only of the finest breeding, they were also incredibly wealthy and powerful. However their vast fortune has now been squandered, and their vast manor, the heart of their family, is now a ruinous draughty shell, echoing hollowly to the few remaining footsteps that pace its halls.
This crumbling monstrosity of a home is where James spent his childhood, chasing through the dusty, rubble strewn corridors of the abandoned east wing, sitting with his sister Jessika in the once decadent library that now smelt of damp and rotten books or kicking their old horse across the unkempt grounds.
His family clung to their twisted heritage like a drowning man to his last lungful of air. Their miserable poverty only served to make them more rabid in their obsession over blood, a trait that James and his elder sister Jessika embraced unquestioningly and wholeheartedly.
Whilst Jess distinguished herself intellectually, being sorted into Ravenclaw and becoming a renowned researcher in the Department of Mysteries, James found his talent in collecting favours and in blackmail. What he lacked in wits, he made up for in mean-spirited greed and plain maliciousness. He delighted in tormenting those ‘inferior’ denizens of Hogwarts, finding an outlet for his shame in his family’s destitution and becoming a notorious bully in his early years at the school. He soon learnt however, that manipulation was far more satisfying than overt brutality and became far more covert in his efforts.
His background meant that he had to find himself a job upon graduation, a demeaning necessity for one of his breeding I’m sure you’ll agree. James chose to enlist in auror training. He found that there was as much opportunity as ever in this line of work to broker and deal in favours, cutting deals and overlooking certain activities for the right price. He finds his work immensely satisfying and is particularly excited about the changes that are occurring within the Ministry, having being a member of the Order for many years.
Prideful, misogynistic and lacking in empathy, I am not painting a very pretty picture here. James has a few good points, though you would have to be a certain kind of person to encounter them. He is incredibly loyal to his family and to those he deems worth enough to be his friends. He can be quite charming when it suits him, especially to those who decide his pay cheque and to those women who deserve his attentions. He has also on one occassion shown mercy to a certain child, quite out of keeping with his usual character, an act which still troubles him in its implications. This story will be explored in the coming term.
ROLEPLAYReply as your character to the following:
It was impossible for Dianne to stay out of trouble. It wasn't that she was looking for trouble, it's just that trouble always managed to find her. Today she wished she could find something equally familiar but more comforting.
The five-year old girl hugged her puffskein closer to her and brushed her face in its soft fur for comfort. She had named him herself and he was always her special pet. No she was certain she had never gone down this side street before. Her anxiety increased every second as darkness fell as she walked down the road. A loud noise came to her left and she buried her face in her pet's fur completely. The scared girl bolted the opposite way slamming the both of them into the wall of the nearest building. Tottering back a few steps she found a door a few feet to her right and ran to open it. What light there was inside spilled out into the darkness and she spilled into the room.
Once in, she was caught between the impulse to curl her cloak up more tightly around her and loosen her grip on it. She wasn't alone anymore but she was now among strangers instead, which was nearly as terrifying. Her puffskein had recovered from the shock of the wall and now was purring contentedly as the girl hugged it, causing a mildly calming effect on the girl. Gathering her courage, she marched up to the nearest person, pulled on the nearest clothing hem and blurted out in a loud voice:
"I'm lost and it's dark and I wanted to know where I am but I'm not scared but I am worried that Sambundeakin is scared because he's little and needs something to eat and wants to go home."
She paused to draw a breath in her nearly never-ending sentence, "He misses my and his mommy."
To explain the scared girl held up the custard-colored puffskein. Sambundeakin the puffskein, however simply purred as if nothing on earth was wrong in the world.
Roleplay Response:
James sniffed and knocked back the last of his drink. It was as cold as hell outside and he wasn’t keen to return home any time soon, but the whiskey hadn’t done much to help this persistent rotten cold and he was becoming irritated at having to listen to that fool Gild rabbiting on to his newest audience of suckers. The crook paid well for James to overlook his dealings, but he still couldn’t stand the man.
A tug at the hem of his robes caused him to glance down. A child... he could barely hear what she was saying above the sudden clamour or raucous laughter coming from the card table. James sighed, slipped down from the stool and crouched down before the young girl.
“You’re lucky I’m here, this isn’t the kind of place you want to be wandering into Miss.” He used his helping the public, respectable auror voice, though there was a slight slur to its edge.
“Now say all that again...” Where were her parents? James glanced about quickly but there were the same old stinking grimy regulars scattered about the place, and this girl was rather too clean to belong to one of them.
