InsaneJournal

Terry Boot for salemmods

-- Out of Character Information Name: Brandi Email/AIM: brandied.plum @ gmail.com / brandied plum Timezone: Central Experience: NONE. EVER. AT ALL. WHAT IS THIS MALARKEY?! CDJ: zombiephile -- In Character Information Name: Terry Irving Boot Birthday & Age: 23 November, 1979; 31 Marital Status: Single Blood Status: Half-blood Sexuality: Straight Social Stereotype: The Work-a-Holic Spectral Specialist House & Alumni Year: Ravenclaw, 1991-1998 Residence: 7 Diggory Drive (C06) Career: Terry works as a Spectral Specialist for the Administration of Non-corporeal Human Rights (ANCHR) in the Spirit Division of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Basically, he talks to ghosts. He's a case-worker for the "Dead as a Doornail Division," dealing with the issues of those who have been dead for, in some cases, centuries upon centuries. He does actually care about doing what's best for the ghosts involved, but the main draw of his job is being able to talk to ghosts who lived a long time ago, about their lives and history and all that. It really is absolutely fascinating, and it's worth the headache he gets from the other aspect of his job (namely: frequently being at odds with just about everyone else except the ghosts). In addition to working for ANCHR, he is also a writer, having written and published a few histories and travel guides, based on information gleaned from his four and a half years of travel after Hogwarts. He still takes time off from work to travel and does research for future books in his spare time. Family: Son: Jaidhara Patil-Boot; half-blood; b. August/September [something], 2005 Baby-Mama: Parvati Patil; pureblood; Ravenclaw 1998; wedding planner Father: Edward Boot; half-blood; Hufflepuff 1968; herbologist Mother: Deborah Boot née Shimpling; pureblood; Ravenclaw 1973; potionere Sister: Thalia Boot; half-blood; Hufflepuff 1996 Brother: Tristan Boot; half-blood; Hufflepuff 2001 Brother: Tyler Boot; half-blood; Hufflepuff 2003 Uncle: Denton Shimpling; pureblood; Ravenclaw 1968; unspeakable Aunt: Wendy Shimpling; half-blood; Ravenclaw 1970; employee at the Museum of Magical History Cousin: Gemma Christine Shimpling; half-blood; Ravenclaw 2000; bookstore owner Cousin: Quinton Shimpling; half-blood; Ravenclaw 2003 Cousin: Logan Stebbins; half-blood; Hufflepuff 1999; hitwizard (share Boot great-grandparents) Personality: To call Terry a geek is to pretty much hit the nail right on the head. He is a geek, and it's something he's come to terms with over the years and completely accepts and owns up to. He is absolutely obsessed with both history and travel, they are his two biggest passions. If he could just travel forever and dig around in the history of places far away, he would be happy. History is something that has always fascinated him, and while he still dreams of one day teaching and showing kids how interesting history really is (instead of boring them to tears, as he saw of his classmates through years of history classes), he is absolutely in love with his job at the moment because it lets him talk history with those who have lived through it and seen it: ghosts. He is also very interested in sports, an interest he cultivated as a child to try to break out of being the geek who gets bullied. He doesn't play sports so much any more since the Battle of Hogwarts (though he wouldn't say no to kicking a football around a bit!), but he loves watching quidditch matches. His team has always been the Appleby Arrows, though since the Dunmoody Daredevils were founded, he's begun rooting for the home team. Terry might as well be married to his work, for how much he ever actually gets away from it. He frequently brings work home from the office to work on, and has been known to wake up in the middle of the night to write something down that he had just thought of (though it doesn't always make sense in the morning ...). He doesn't like being idle, so he switches that around into just throwing himself into his work. The main exception to this is when he has Jay staying at his house, then his son is his number one priority. So far, there hasn't been too much conflict between his work and his son, and Terry dreads the day when he might have to choose between the two. Just don't ask him about his social life, he doesn't have much of one and has to often be reminded to go out and socialise. Canon Information: Terry Boot was a Ravenclaw in the same year as the Trio. He was friends with roommates Michael Corner and Anthony Goldstein, and attended dueling club in second year. In fifth year, he joined Dumbledore's Army and was one of the DA members to come to Harry's aid when Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle tried to attack him (Harry) on the Hogwarts Express at the end of the year. He took NEWT-level potions in his sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. And near the end of his seventh year, he announced in the Great Hall at dinner that Harry, Ron, and Hermione had broken into Gringott's and escaped on a dragon. Later, when the trio came to the Room of Requirement before the Battle of Hogwarts, he shared some information on Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem. He also fought in the battle. Personal History: Terry is the second of four children, and eldest son, born to Edward and Deborah Boot, following Thalia and followed by Tristan and Tyler. It was Deborah's idea to give the kids all names that started with the same letter, and Edward's idea to go with T. Although Thalia called him weird for it, Terry enjoyed having that little bit of extra commonality with his siblings. But Terry always was a little bit weirder than his brothers and sister, just a little bit different from the rest of them. He loved to read, he just couldn't get enough of books. In fact, he learned to read right alongside Thalia, because he was jealous that she would get to do this and he couldn't. He would stay up for hours after bedtime, hiding under the covers with a torch and a book, just absorbing all the knowledge he could get. He was more interested in histories and biographies than fiction, but there are a few exceptions to that. He was particularly interested in far away places, so any fiction that involved somewhere far away or travel (something he desperately dreamed of one day doing) was of great interest to him. His childhood wasn't all books and geekiness. He was teased and bullied, and even beaten up, quite frequently as a young child, all because of being a bookish geek. He got into sports as a way of trying to shed the reputation of being Wussy Girl Terry. And, well, sports also helped him bulk up a bit (he was a bit on the small and skinny side as a kid) so that he could fight back from the beatings from his bullies. At the muggle primary school his parents sent him and his siblings to, he played football, but he also got into Quidditch, as any sports-interested young wizard would. Once he got to Hogwarts (where he was sorted into Ravenclaw), he was quick to make friends within his new house (particularly Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein, and Su Li), and he was immediately fascinated by his History of Magic class -- taught by an actual ghost! And, of course, there was Quidditch. He was a reserve Chaser for most of his time at Hogwarts, but he played starter on the team for his sixth and seventh years. In his fifth year, he joined Dumbledore's Army, and was one of the DA members to come to Harry's aid on the train at the end of the school year, when Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle tried to attack him. He used a spell on them that left them looking like giant slugs. In his seventh year, Terry rejoined the DA as it was re-formed in Harry, Ron, and Hermione's absence, to fight back against the Carrows and Snape. During the course of the year, he also began dating fellow DA member Parvati Patil. He fought in the Battle of Hogwarts at the start of May, and nearly died on the battlefield. He was in the midst of a duel with a Death Eater (more of a fistfight, really, as the Death Eater attacked with his fists after Terry disarmed him) when another Death Eater caught him from behind with some kind of dark magic curse that sliced up his upper back. They left him there to die, and he almost bled out before he was found and tended to. As the healers were working to stop the bleeding from the cuts on his back and get more blood into him (as the wounds were caused by dark magic, they couldn't be healed with magic), they overlooked damage done to his right ear during his fistfight. It wasn't until much later, when he was conscious and on the mend, that he realised he couldn't hear out of his right ear. The healers did what they could to repair the damage to his eardrum, but he never regained full hearing in that ear. After he had fully recovered, Terry still yearned to travel. For years, he, Anthony, and Su had planned to go on a great trip all over the world after finishing school. Terry's desire to get out and see the world conflicted with Parvati's desire to stay close to England after the war, and they ended up breaking up, though in an amicable fashion. Just over a year after the end of the war, Anthony, Su, and Terry left England to go on their trip all over the world. Terry had managed to convince the other two of the idea of going somewhere and just living and working there until they'd seen/learned everything they wanted and had made enough money to make it to the next destination. They traveled like this together for quite a while, though eventually both Anthony and Su returned to Britain to get back to their real lives. Terry himself traveled for years, finally coming back home in late 2003, four and a half years after he'd departed. Upon finally returning to England, Terry moved into a small, cramped flat in London and took the notes that he'd written over the course of the trip and started working on several books with them: insider travel guides to some of the places that he spent more time in (guides that would send you to the sorts of places to go that give you the real experience of the country or city, not just the tourist traps), as well as histories gathered from the stories of the natives. Once he published his first book in late 2004, he took the money from it and bought a house in Dunmoody, one of the historic Hogsmeade houses that had been moved over to Dunmoody by Elphias Doge, instead of being destroyed. He had specifically wanted one of those houses because of, well, the history. Shortly after moving into Dunmoody, he ran into ex-girlfriend Parvati. She insisted on going to The Local for some drinks and to catch up. They got drunk, one thing led to another, and one highly ineffective contraception potion later (apparently they don't work when combined with pain potions), Parvati was telling him that she was pregnant, and he was the father. Terry offered to do the right thing and marry her, but she politely turned him down. He asked to at least be involved in the child's life, and that Parvati did grant him. She invited him to all her prenatal appointments, and he got to be there when their son, Jaidhara Patil-Boot (Jay for short), was born. Terry and Parvati share custody of Jay. While he had saved a lot of money while traveling, due to a rather spartan lifestyle on the road and "roughing it" most of the time, he had a house to maintain and a son to help support, so Terry knew that he needed to set aside his writing / research / travel and get a "real" job. Ultimately, after a bit of a search, Terry got a job as a Spectral Specialist at the Ministry of Magic. Over the nearly five years that he's been there, he's worked his way up in the rankings, earning better cases to work on, with older ghosts. He's not sure if this is really what he wants to be doing for the rest of his career (in fact, he's pretty sure that being a Ministry employee is not how he wants to spend the rest of his career), but for now, it's a great job that pays the bills and gets him in contact with history straight from the horse's mouth. Played-By: Michael Vartan Quirks, Features, & Habits: He ALWAYS has a book on him. Always. Usually a history, but he does occasionally go wild and crazy and carry around a fiction, instead. Has a series of scars criss-crossing his upper back. He generally wears shirts that leave the scars covered, however. Because of the scars, he gets a bit grumpy sometimes when it's particularly cold, because the cold makes the scars ache. He can't hear very well out of his right ear, due to complications from an injury sustained during the Battle of Hogwarts. Over the years, it's become habit to incline his left ear towards someone talking to him. He has the words "semper perseverare" (always persevere) tattooed on the inside of his left wrist. He scratches the back of his neck when he's nervous. It's a subconscious tic, half the time he doesn't realise he's doing it. He still has his DA galleon, and he always keeps it in his pocket. He walks it across his fingers sometimes when he's thinking. He sleeps very lightly and is generally awake by five thirty am, no matter how late he got to sleep. He rereads The Hobbit and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy at least once every year. Please don't get him started on history, unless you're willing to sit through a lecture. Or unless you want a great way to distract him while you run away, or something. He takes really fast showers. He can be in and out in under five minutes. Anything longer, and he feels like he's just wasting water. RP Samples 1st Person Sample A journal entry from when I played him as an eighteen-year-old. 3rd Person Sample Andrea said she would vouch for me! But just in case: His duel narrative with Damien Selwyn (under the 1st horizontal line) and his logs with Su and Parvati (under the 3rd horizontal line and the fifth, respectively) during the Battle of Hogwarts. Note: If this is a reiteration of a character you’ve played before, feel free to link to existing samples. If a mod can vouch for you (or this is not your first character), the 3rd person sample is not required. Chances are we know you can write, so we’ll be more focused on your personality and history information more than anything. A 1st person will always be required. Additional OOC Questions Do you want your character to be directly affected by the overarching background New Salem plot or is this just a social character?: Sure! :) Are there any of your character's NPC family and friends you'd like to offer up as New Salem cannon fodder?: Have at them. Unless one of his siblings gets picked up, feel free to do what you want to them.