Application for Professors Geoffrey Sauveterre
Age: 36
Birthplace: Ste. Mere Eglise, Normandie
Education: Home school
Magical Levels:Geoff was home-schooled, a Sauveterre tradition, and Sauveterres are naturally weak at Divination because they deem it a useless subject. Plus, they barely have any foresight to save the family from ruin. Instead, they focus on Charms, because they find that it’s an important way of life for the French. Transfiguration is also encouraged. I’d thus like to request for levels:
C13D4T10S7
If not,
C11D5T9S7
Biography: He is given a watch for his sixteenth birthday.
It is given to him by a stray hand and a lilting smile – but before he can catch who it is, she is gone in a whirl of giggles. The watch is plain, old fashioned almost, and it pales in comparison to his others. The grey strap is worn and faded and he body itself is of old, tarnished silver.
When he returns from the village to the Sauveterre mansion, they throw a party for him – but amongst all the robes and books and playsets, he holds the watch securely in his hand.
~
He came into the wealthy world of the Sauveterres, June 14, 1937. A cause for celebration, they said, the first male heir to old Rene Sauveterre and his family! Village bells were rung. Countless numbers of relatives, bearing gifts and the like, arrived at the doorstep of the Savueterre mansion to wish the newborn well. Rene was much pleased, for it had taken him two wives to arrive at a male child (and it would take him two more for the child to grow up).
I will name him Geoffrey, says Rene. Polite applause meets his announcement, and the young ‘uns whisper amongst themselves – cousin Geoff, cousin Geoff to play!
Slowly the boy grows up. The boy is what they call him – Rene is not often around, and the wife is no mother.
Go out and play, boy, she would say, as if his fun and games were her entertainment. So he does. But when he looks back in, she is no longer watching him.
He has a normal childhood of hopes and dreams. But then the Germans come, loud and terrible, and little Geoff learns how to hate them. He is seven years old when the American soldiers fall into the town from the skies, and there are many bodies on the streets that night. Geoff watches them silently from his window, the fire burning bright. He is not afraid, he thinks, not afraid. He is a man.
Geoff is reared like a Sauveterre. Divination is not important, Rene says – it is the prediction of something that will never come true. Charms is far more practical. So Charms he engages in. He knows how to bow, how to wear fine clothes, how to dance. He learns horseback riding and fencing. He understands the difference between him and the rowdy village boys who play with muddy balls and have no understanding of a violin. He is above them.
The Sauveterres are a handsome family and Geoff has inherited the fair, raven hair from his birth mother, and the kindly grey eyes of his father. His features are muted, a good-looking face that grows on you rather than springs out immediately Nevertheless, he has collected his set of village girl fans, and walks around self-consciously as they follow him, tittering. Rene is amused by this, but he is quick to remind Geoff that a Sauveterre can never have a village girl for a wife.
Poor, innocent Geoffrey. Because until he turns sixteen, he believes Rene. Until he is given that watch, he sees a difference between him and the villagers. Because once he takes that watch from her, he finds himself in love.
What is love? The books he reads do not tell him, so Geoff observes instead, watches, understands. The way Rene looks at his mama’s portrait. The way the village boys claim ‘their girls’ and dance with them. Holding them close and tenderly. Love.
At last, he finds out her name. Marion. The daughter of the old crone who lives on the outskirts of the village. He sits in the bushes, waiting for her to come home. There – a peek at long golden hair, the flash of the brightest blue eyes – and Geoff realized that she is not pretty, as other people have been telling him – the daughter of a crone, they say, what do you expect?
But she is singing Frère Jacques as she walks down the path, and it is as if all the nightingales have given her their voices, all of the candy in the world their sweetness, and Geoff finally understands for himself what love is.
It must have cost her something dear to buy that watch, he thinks sternly, watching her disappear into the rickety old house. I will live up to her.
~
So he presents himself to her one summer’s day, and they begin an – affair, the dirty word is used. Rumors swirl, but Rene believes none. Until Geoff stands in front of him one fine day and begs to ask for the crone’s daughter’s hand in marriage.
An explosion. She is pureblooded, yes, Rene thunders, his eyes flashing, but she is a village girl! Poor, worthless, unfit for a Sauveterre! I forbid it!
Geoff slinks away, put out, but still determined. Behind him, his father watches him go, and mutters under his breath: forbid. Forbid. Village girl. Forbid –
~
And when they turn twenty, they run.
~
Baby Katherine is born on the way out of France, in a dark room with a single midwife bearing witness. She has a mother’s hair and the cornflower blue of her eyes, but she has the fine nose of her father and his clean, handsome features. Marion laughs – my baby is beautiful.
To Switzerland, then, and Geoff finds work teaching in a private wizarding school; charms (Rene had forced it upon him, but Geoff found he liked it) and a history of magic. Marion experimented. She had radical new ideas: what if,
what if?And Kat grows up, beautiful like they knew she would be.
And then –
His faithful silver watch smashes to the ground, May 7th, 1973: it slips out of his hands almost as if he had a will of its own and shatters on impact. Geoff is still picking up the shards of glass when the grave man on the porch rings the doorbell and shatters his heart. And these shards – he cannot pick them up.
Numbly, he puts the broken watch into his pocket and returns to France. Rene is old, older, but he waits, patiently, for the son he wronged to return. And now his eyes widen as Geoff steps into the room.
“Papa,” Geoff says quietly, his hand clutching the broken watch in his pocket, allowing the blood to flow from his fingers as freely as his tears – “I’m home.”
Strengths & Weaknesses:Strengths:
Reliable and dependable
Down to earth, stable
Understanding, perceiving
Meticulous, Mature
Able to empathize, cheer people up
Loyal
Intelligent
Charms
Weaknesses:
Smokes, though he knows its dangers
Cannot do anything impulsively
Slow to respond to changes
Zero self confidence
Dislikes offending others and thus does not speak up
Fear of heights
Naïve
Divination
Hopes & Dreams:He has big hopes for Katherine, going to Beauxbatons instead of being home schooled now. Deep down he yearns to find someone else to replace Marion, but his mind tells him that that is impossible. The only thing he wants to do now is to get Katherine to live up to the Sauveterre name, and provide for her as a father.
Subject Taught:Art History, Art
