Hogwarts School: A Harry Potter RPG

THE BASICS
Name: David Rathburne

Former Character's Name (if you had one): Esme Faracy, Ellerie Saint Auxpris, etc.


CHARACTER DETAILS
House Request:Slytherin. Not only were his parents Slytherin graduates, but David possesses the same cunning streak that runs through most of his family - he only sees the end, never the means. If given a choice, David would choose Slytherin without a second thought - it's his heritage, and he strives to live up to that.

Year: 
1, 2

Bloodline:
Pureblood

Magical Strength (pick one):
Divination

Magical Weakness (pick one):
Conjuring & Summoning

Biography:
I live by five simple rules.

∙∙∙ Don't look back.
The street was crowded, red paper lanterns hanging between the towering buildings. Geometry said there was no way they were possibly upright, for the streets were winding and narrow, and the area of the ground was not enough to sustain such infrastructure. Sheets billowed through open windows, white in the equatorial sun, and David placed one foot in front of the other.

It was the easiest thing to do.

If the street was loud, he did not notice, for the cacophony of voices swelled in the open marketplace and made all of their efforts into a simple buzz that neither inhibited nor inhabited his thoughts. His gaze, sky blue, was steady as he walked for David knew what he had to do and was a man of action, of presence.

The first time walking away had hurt, because he hadn't expected it and hadn't understood it when it came. Auster's arms had tugged around his torso, wrenching and tearing as they left the seaside villa, the radiant blue and white of Santorini. It was time to go, an arbitrary designation for something that was keenly subjective, and David had only fought once. Every step made it easier, every incident became more natural. There was no rhyme or reason to leaving, but there were precursors. He knew the twist of anticipation in his stomach as he entered school that morning, the ready grin that sprung to his features as he caught her eye. It was enough; it was time to go.

David turned the corner, his sandals catching on the clay steps, and trotted into the dark foyer. The lanky silhouette of his father folded over the kitchen table as he turned a corner, plunging further into the cool confines of the shaded home. Auster looked up, and David knew.

It was just the first time that he was the one to decide.

∙∙∙ Attachments make for poor traveling companions.
Imogen was a fading memory, a glimpse through a summer breeze or distant laughter in a candy shop. David remembered little of her outside of what he thought he knew, though he had read enough studies to know that childhood amnesia had likely wiped any real memory of his mother before she had the chance to persist in his thoughts.

It helped that Auster refused to speak of her, and that they carried no photographs of the blonde woman with them. There was no room, not in their fleeting mindsets nor their canvas duffels, for emotions or intimacy. They were the few, the proud, the Rathburne men and the affairs of London nor England as a whole concerned them. What was the Ministry in comparison to the great expanse of the Sahara?

Nothing.

Spread out on the bench, David turned to stare out the window of the train as it went flying past. The tracks were old, the cars older still, and the planks stretching beneath him were worn from sun and heat, splintering at the edges. It didn't matter. He wasn't attached.

∙∙∙ Stay honest.
They weren't the best men, but they were men, and Auster insisted that they live by a code of honor. The fun of it was that they were able to decide what code.

It evolved alongside them, and they added rules as they went and only after much deliberation: the necessity to eat one proper meal a day, the importance of always wearing clean socks, their agreement to travel light, that either could call the moment to leave. It was an equal partnership as much as it was not, for Auster made the first rules and David complied; he had to earn the right to make rules. He had to prove that he was a man.

"Don't you like it?" The waitress asked, her red uniform inflicting retinal strain against the teal booths of the diner. David looked down at his plate, blue eyes scanning the soggy mess for some hint of beef stroganoff. In a good-faith effort, he even picked up his fork and pushed weakly at the burnt edge.

"Well?" She prompted.

Auster had not looked up from his newspaper, the words made translucent as the Arizona sun hit them. David swallowed, the movement rippling his jaw, tugging at his throat. Glancing wearily upward, he cocked his head guiltily.

"I've had better?"

Mercifully, Auster suppressed his laughter until she was gone.


∙∙∙ There is no present without the past.
Roman Bryant was a familiar face in the way that London was a familiar city, in the same way that Agnes' was his sister. They persisted only in his memory, for the man David encountered at the holiday party had been his father once, for the city in which they spent Christmas had been home for his first years on earth, for the taffeta-covered pouf of a girl was his sister, if only by half, but they did not truly exist beyond the confines of London.

He could remember the townhouse in Belgravia only because he had been told of it, of the winding staircases and his baby-blue nursery. He remembered the nursemaid only because she came up to him on the street one December morning, pinching his cheeks and remarking on his light blue eyes and how they were just like his mother's. David knew the way only because he went there on the third day of January, every January, because Auster was nowhere to be found and David knew no one would look for him there..

It was easy to see that they were broken, the Rathburne men. It was unsurprising that they were at a loss, for they traveled only with each other and recognized no other family, knew no other connections. They lived well and disappeared in the night, ate extravagantly and traveled with only the necessities, they did the best that they could according to the hushed whispers of his grandmother.

David tolerated it with an easy grace, for Katherine Saint Auxpris had never understood Auster Rathburne and hardly knew David. They were broken, but they lived in spite of it.

∙∙∙ The sun also rises.
He made no apologies and he said no goodbyes. It was easy to connect, a smile on the playground, a light conversation in the marketplace, and David was a social creature - he enjoyed company, presence, crowds. Never had he felt so at home as he did in the center of the throng of Delhi, the swaying masses crowding Dusseldorf, save when he was boarding a train or a Muggle airplane, stepping into an enchanted fireplace or suspended in the moment between taking off and landing.

Time-travelers, they took off in the middle of the afternoon and landed in the early dawn of the morning on a foreign coastline, in a new village. Away from the cold London winter, David's skin browned, his smile whitened, he learned to play Quodpot alongside Quidditch. Sometimes they stayed for a month, sometimes longer, sometimes barely a week passed before Auster was restless or David discontent.

Hogwarts brought everything to a halt, tire wheels screeching as Auster swerved the car in surprise.

"You what?"

A grin formed, cat-like, on David's mouth and vanished in the next instant. The parchment had been stuffed into his book bag, covered with badges and pins, held together by safety clips and a frayed length of rope.

"They say I have to report on Monday."

The wind fluttered his father's white shirt, ruffled through David's hair, and he looked sideways to the older man for a moment before glancing away. Beyond the four walls of the black convertible, thistle and tall grass gathered on the roadside, the sun setting violet against the French countryside. David inhaled and smelled lavender.

A chuckle fell from Auster and caught him by surprise, his head whipping to look at his father. Auster's smile lit up his face, caught the fine lines by his eyes and the low curve of his lip, accentuating the strong line of his jaw. It exploded into a laugh the next moment, the car accelerating on the narrow road.

"Well." Auster began, the laughter evident in his voice. "Shit."

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Please include these sections if they are not addressed in your biography.

Personality:
David is highly moral, but only responds to his own code of ethics - his judgment is the only judgment that he cares for, and this is evident in most of his interactions. Outside of his father, he has no deep personal connections, and though David is adept at making friends, he does not know how to keep one. By virtue of his quasi-nomadic lifestyle, David is somewhat shallow and over-confident, though he has a great deal of insecurity lurking beneath the surface.

Appearance:
Tall for his age, David reaches just over five feet tall. He has his father's strong jaw and easy smile, as well as the beginnings of his distinctive nose. As a child, his hair was a sandy blonde that has since darkened into a nondescript brown, leaving the only remnant of his mother his blue eyes, framed in girlishly long lashes. We don't talk about that.

SAMPLE ROLEPLAY
You come across one of these three posts on the site. Please reply to one only as your character would.
*** Remember, you can only roleplay your own character's actions, not James' or Astrid's.

Option I:

Quidditch, Quodpot, Shuntbums, Swivenhodge, it was all the same and David had tried them each once. His current favorite was a straight race, likely because Auster had taken him to a winged horse race right before putting him on the Hogwarts Express. They had an agreement - a man's agreement, even, for Auster had given his word and David shook his hand as a last goodbye - if Hogwarts didn't work, he didn't have to stay. There were other options.

Still, David wasn't the sort to ignore an opportunity, and seemed to be taking the adjustment in stride. There were no photographs of his father walking the same halls, and though he dared not open a yearbook, David explored the halls of Hogwarts with fresh eyes - it was a world that he had not seen before.

Content to explore on his own, David diverged from the group heading to dinner and veered down a side corridor for no particular reason. His legs were long from a sudden growth spurt over the summer, sore and tense from too much stretching and too little movement, and he canvassed the way faster than he'd anticipated. The corridor curved, spat him out exactly where he had started.

Fantastic.

"WHAT!"

Looking up from picking a piece of lint off of his sweater, David raised his eyebrows in surprise. Who in--

"Haven't you ever seen a loser before?"

Well, ye--

"Why don't you just take a picture?"

Maybe he would write Auster that night. Aside from the food being rubbish, most of the school was bloody insane.

Annoyance capturing his features, knitting his brow and pursing his mouth, David blinked and regarded the boy with a dull stare. He wasn't accustomed to confrontations, though the prospect of one set his heart racing.

"Don't worry." He reassured, monotone. Oaf.

A well-placed shrug carried the thought. "There are plenty of career options for failures. Just look at the… Hufflemuffs."

Or whatever.