(no subject)
character name: Jasper Heathcliff St John. Obviously his parents had something of a literary fetish, though why they thought he would take to being named “Jasper,” he doesn’t know. They didn’t even leave him with any nice alternatives, considering the embarrassing “Heathcliff” as a middle name and religious and unegalitarian “St John.” Most people at Hogwarts unfortunately call him Jasper, but if prompted, he’ll introduce himself as “John.” An every-man sort of name.
age and birthday: September 9, 2004. 17.
bloodline: Muggleborn.
home residence: Aberdeen, Scotland.
house and year: Gryffindor seventh year.
current classes: History of Magic, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts.
sexuality: Heterosexual. Mildly interested in the opposite sex. Right now the only girl who meets his qualifications for a “life partner,” that is, to be aware of the plight of the proletariat, is his comrade Jane Lovett, and… ahem. He thinks they’re better off as comrades, really, and he’s sure she’d agree. Therefore, any attraction he feels to the ignorant girls, he attempts to dismiss.
appearance: For someone who claims he’s going to change the world, Jasper St John doesn’t have a very commanding appearance. In fact, he’s somewhat awkward. At almost eighteen years of age and being something of a late bloomer, he hasn’t quite grown into his body yet. He’s very tall and long-limbed and hasn’t gotten used to his height; he tends to slouch and hold himself awkwardly. His overall appearance is plain, as he has light brown hair, brown eyes, and an unremarkable face.
Even as a teenager, Jasper looks like the stereotype of a disheveled professor. His shirttails are often untucked, his buttons done up the wrong way, or his socks unmatching. At home, his mother takes care that he’s properly dressed before he leaves the house, but at Hogwarts, he doesn’t have this luxury, and he’s often embarrassed by the state of his clothes by other people pointing out his wrinkled shirts or mismatched socks over breakfast. A close observer would see that, despite his proletariat leanings, he dresses in well-made clothing and is generally well taken care of. Thankfully, he was raised in Scotland and speaks with a Scottish accent rather than a posh one, and therefore can somewhat conceal his upper-middle class upbringing.
Often lost in thought, Jasper usually has a look of deep contemplation on his face. Sometimes, this daydreamy expression will turn into one of frustration as he struggles to wind his mind around a particularly difficult concept or encounters a thought he doesn’t like. He’s not very good at hiding his emotions - they show quite plainly on his face, whether they be looks of happiness, disgust, or anger.
played by: Jon Foster (http://web2.seventymm.com/images/ActorImage/122984.jpg this is the best I can do for an image so far - I’ll try to find you another)
descriptive personality: Jasper St. John is a revolution. No, really! He is! The truth is, though, he was a much more likeable person before he discovered Karl Marx. If anyone pointed this out to him, he’d deny it, but the fact of the matter is that, since he found his true calling in the revolution of the proletariat, Jasper isn’t a very enjoyable person to spend time with, unless, of course, you happen to share his opinions on class and blood purity. When it comes to these two topics, he’s aggressive, arrogant, and hateful. If anyone says something that he thinks his classist, or a put-down to his Muggle background, he’ll react angrily, accusing them of prejudice and oppression. Jasper sees almost every occasion as an opportunity to express his views and hopefully win people over to the proletariat’s side. The trouble is, even if he is making a good point, he’s so belligerent that his constant posturing is a total turn-off.
Despite this, Jasper very rarely means to be irritating and belligerent. He talks about the violent overthrow of the oppressive pureblooded bourgeoisie, but the reason that he does so is because he believes in very noble ideas that are characteristic of Gryffindor - social equality, ending injustice, and freedom and prosperity for all. Jasper’s life philosophy is grounded in the idea that each person is born equal and deserves equal opportunities in life. He sees class and blood purity as constructs used to keep a few “elite” people in power, and that destroying the “elite” will leave everyone equal and there will be no more oppression, injustice, and class warfare. His intentions are good, but Jasper is so radical that he forgets exactly what his intentions are in justifying any means of achieving them. And the truth is, though he cares for humanity and the “little people,” Jasper tends to think of things on a grand, sweeping scale, and he sees the community as a whole as more important than the individual. The individual, Jasper believes, may, can, nay, should be sacrificed for the good of humanity.
Jasper feels a lot of anger and aggression without quite realizing that he has pent up rage and frustration inside of him. This likely comes from his upbringing; though he didn’t grow up in poverty in a council flat, both of his parents ignored him, treating him more as a nuisance than a child who was loved. In primary school, he, being a wizard without realizing it, was the “weird kid,” the “nerdy kid,” and was often ostracized if not teased. Upon arriving at Hogwarts, where he thought he would be at home, he discovered that he was at the bottom of the social pecking order again, being a “Muggleborn.” Even though he claimed to accept his Muggle parentage still seemed to treat him more as an anomaly than a person. All of these experiences have led to Jasper feeling cheated of something he deserves - he has a sense of entitlement, and perhaps his radical communism comes from a desire to see all those he believes did him an injustice lowered to where he is. His motives are a mix of compassionate humanism and self-interest, though he doesn’t realize the self-interest part of the equation and would deny it if accused of such. He thinks of himself as a reasonable person.
For a Gryffindor, Jasper comes off as rather serious and dour. His nobleness and recklessness certainly expresses itself in ways other than being loud and obnoxious - it all comes out with a political bent. If you didn’t know better, you’d say that there was something almost Ravenclawish about him, since he always seems to be quoting a book or wrapped up in his schoolwork. But he’s really not interested in learning unless it’s specifically related to communism. He also might seem like a Hufflepuff or a Slytherin upon closer examination - he’s extremely hardworking and also quite ambitious. However, all of these qualities which might have put him in other houses place him in Gryffindor because he focuses them solely on his “noble causes” and justness.
Despite all this, Jasper isn’t without a sense of humour. He’s not against making jokes at the bourgeoisie’s expense, and is particularly fond of Monty Python. Especially the “Upper Class Twit of the Year” sketch. His jokes tend to be of the nerdy variety rather than pranks or silliness, but he does have a sense of humour, thank you! He even
family:
father: Richard St John, 53, barrister, Muggle.
mother: Renee Halverton (née Penton, formerly St John), 48, professor of English at the University of Aberdeen, Muggle.
step-father: George Halverton, 49, chemist, Muggle.
step-sister: Helen Halverton, 16, Muggle.
With half of all marriage ending in divorce these days, Jasper sees his parents’ lack of marital commitment as more of a statistic than a personal tragedy. His parents split when he was relatively young - seven, in fact - and his father didn’t go out of his way to fight for custody of him. He sees his father twice a year, once in the summer and once over Christmas, usually for only a few days at a time, and they’re both perfectly fine with this arrangement. Richard St John would probably like to forget that he’s a father most of the time, and Jasper doesn’t take much pride in the fact that his biological father, although a successful barrister, is something of an irresponsible alcoholic.
The rest of the year, Jasper lives with his mother, a professor of English who seems more than glad to have him out of her hair while he’s away at Hogwarts. Not to say that she’s unloving, but she finds motherhood somewhat taxing and much prefers grown-up, independent Jasper to the Jasper who needed her constant attention. When he was twelve, she married for the second time, a chemist (that’s what Americans would call a pharmacist, not one who studies chemistry) called George Halverton. George has tried to be more of a father figure to Jasper than Richard St John has, and, in all honesty, Jasper would probably go to his step-father before either of his biological parents if he had a serious problem. George was a widower who had a daughter one year Jasper’s junior, Helen.
Jasper and Helen’s relationship was initially somewhat antagonistic, though mostly from her end, as she resented Renee for replacing her dead mother. They get along better now that they’ve had to put up with each other for five years, though they couldn’t really be called close. Being a Muggle, she lives in Aberdeen and is currently studying A-levels at a local college.
detailed history: For Richard St John and Renee Penton, getting married seemed like a logical choice. In 2001, both were getting older (she being 27 and he being 33). Both of their lives had stabilized in terms of career and ambitions, Renee having a tenure track position at the University of Aberdeen and Richard working as a law consultant. They didn’t have a loveless relationship, either. They did care for each other and seemed very compatible. Both reserved, intellectual, and logical, they seemed like a perfect match. They agreed on almost everything, they took pleasure in each other’s company and while their relationship was more intellectual than passionate, it just seemed like a good idea for the two of them to settle down, and after four years of dating, who better than with each other?
Unfortunately, there are always things that you don’t know about a person until you’ve lived with them, and following their extravagant honeymoon to Fiji, they settled into a nice, semi-detatched home in Aberdeen and discovered that… well, they possibly weren’t really all that compatible. Richard left the cap off of the toothpaste. Renee was a terrible cook. She was a nag. He didn’t help enough with the chores around the house. That’s not to say that they argued incessantly, or that they knew then that their marriage was headed downhill. But the honeymoon was certainly over, and the wedded bliss didn’t last very long. They settled into a routine of working, reading, and mostly ignoring each other. Things weren’t bad, but they didn’t spend much time together as a couple.
After they’d been married for about a year and a half, Renee discovered that she’d accidentally become pregnant. They weren’t sure of exactly how it happened - perhaps a forgotten or ineffective pill, but the reality was there. The couple was rather displeased with the news, as a baby would disrupt their self-absorbed, quiet, intellectual lives. Parenting had never been on either of their to-do lists. The following nine months were grumpy and argumentative. Pregnancy put Renee in a bad mood, and Richard was hardly looking forward to a wailing baby who needed constant attention. Nevertheless, they both beamed in the photographs taken at Jasper Heathcliff St John’s birth on September 9, 2004.
Jasper’s mother was the one responsible for most of his absolutely reprehensible name. She actually wanted his first name to be Heathcliff, but for some reason, she and his father thought that “Jasper” was more normal. Richard didn’t play much part in the naming process, except to say that he thought that the Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights was a ponce. She returned to work when Jasper was three months old, leaving him in the care of a babysitter most of the time. Not, of course, that, as an infant, that he realized he was being fairly neglected by his parents.
The formative years of his life were normal, though perhaps loveless by some people’s standards. His father was a distant figure who worked eighty hour works, attempting to get ahead in his law firm. His mother did seem to love him, though she didn’t really interpret “love” as something that required a great deal of her time and effort. She didn’t very often read to Jasper, or play with him. Love, in her book, was shown well enough through doing his laundry, feeding him, and giving him an occasional hug.
In the meantime, it wasn’t exactly as though his parents’ relationship was falling apart, so much as that Richard and Renee were realizing that they just weren’t interested in being married to each other anymore. They tried to make things work for the sake of the child they’d never wanted, but neither of them were really motivated. Their marriage finally came to an end when Richard discovered that Renee was somehow, between taking care of Jasper and working full time, managing to have a casual extramarital affair with one of her colleagues. Disgusted, he filed for divorce. As he was only seven at the time, Jasper doesn’t remember this significant detail, which is probably for the better. His father moved to London - better job prospects - and he stayed with his mother in Aberdeen, traveling south twice a year to awkwardly visit is father.
From the time he was very young, Jasper had always been a somewhat unusual child. He was quiet and reserved, which, considering his parents’ personalities, wasn’t really that strange, but he also just had something weird about him. He could move things without touching them, when he was angry, large objects had a tendency to fall over. And it wasn’t just that - he gave off a weird vibe. His mother tried to ignore it, but the children he went to primary school picked up on it immediately, and he had relatively few friends growing up. He was solitary and has grown, somewhat, to like it that way.
An explanation came for his “weirdness” when he turned eleven - he was a wizard. A funny man in long robes who introduced himself as Byron Quince even came to the house to explain everything to Jasper and his mother, hand them his acceptance letter in person, and turn his mother’s best tea set into a family of mice, nearly giving her a heart attack. Excited to learn that he had magical powers, Jasper began to anticipate his arrival at Hogwarts. He especially took to Professor Quince, who helped integrate him to the magical world.
Jasper was almost twelve years old when he packed up his things, got on the Hogwarts Express, and arrived at the castle. Needless to say, he was overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the magical world. Not really knowing what any of it meant, he stumbled before the whole school, sat down on a stool, pulled the Sorting Hat over his head, and was placed, after much deliberation, in Gryffindor. Jasper didn’t exactly make friends quickly. He got along with his fellow Gryffindors, but he noticed that he was very aware of the fact that while he wasn’t quite like the “Muggles” he had grown up with, he wasn’t quite like the wizards, either. He was also in a dormitory with James Potter, who drew attention for reasons Jasper then didn’t completely understand.
Nevertheless, Jasper liked Hogwarts enough. He particularly focused on his studies, hoping to become one of the best students in his year. As far as natural abilities go, Jasper’s only a hair above average, but he works hard and manages to do well in his courses, though “best in his year” is certainly an exaggeration. His first year’s correspondence with his mother revealed that she was planning on getting married to a man she’d been dating for quite some time (not that Jasper paid much attention to his mother’s boyfriends), George Halverton. The summer before his second year, Jasper acquired a new step-father and step-sister, Helen, a year his junior.
Whereas Jasper had never gotten along swimmingly with his biological father, who mostly ignored him, he took to George, who focused on making his twelve-year-old step-son like him, immediately, and since then, George has been a father figure to him. The transition between the families went easily in that respect, though Jasper and his step-sister, Helen, have always had a somewhat rocky relationship, as Helen resented Renee for replacing her mother and Jasper by extension. This lessened over the years, but the summer of 2017 was certainly filled with squabbling between the two of them. By now, their relationship has turned to something of a more sarcastic arguing - Helen can’t help but rag on Jasper for his (somewhat silly) communist opinions. They even snogged - once! And they’re not actually related! - because she claimed that she wanted to get him to shut up about the proletariat during his winter holiday sixth year.
Jasper’s fifth year at Hogwarts was a significant one for him - he was appointed prefect (sadly, he takes this leadership within the bourgeois institution only because he knows that his fellow seventh year Gryffindor males would be even worse at it than he is), and he discovered Karl Marx. Since then, he’s been ranting about the bourgeoisie and attempting to take house points for “capitalist materialism” to anyone who will listen.
A significant childhood memory: Jasper will tell anyone who listens about the first time that he realized distinctions of class, and how much it damaged him. He claims that he was nine years old and visiting London in December for his semi-annual bonding with his biological father. They were walking down a street near his father’s home when they stumbled upon a woman, dressed only in a trash bag, picking cigarette butts up off of the ground. It was at this moment, Jasper claims he realized that there were people less fortunate than himself who needed to be helped.
Of course, Jasper didn’t really have any big realizations about class at the age of nine. He just places this realization on this moment because it does stand out quite distinctly in his memory.