(no subject)
Godfrey Abraxas Yaxley
41, born 22 October 1955
Formerly of Ravenclaw
Personality
Godfrey always had an odd personality, even from childhood. He was very clingy toward both certain people and certain objects, keeping things around as keepsakes that he claimed would be beneficial later on and wanting to be around people even when he didn’t talk to them. He was quiet, though if you happened to spark the right conversation with him he could talk for hours on end; it was usually just difficult to find things he liked to talk about. He preferred not to make friends, as friends could betray you as easily as they could befriend you, and he much preferred to control how much pain he exposed himself to. Along those lines, he also had an odd fascination with pain, though with his own and not that of other peoples’s. He was always studying how to create pain, and how to avoid pain-or ease it-and his quest for learning about those things led him to a liking of research in other subjects as well. Pain research led him to the Dark Arts and the Dark Arts eventually led him to Voldemort. He did as much research as he could, but never found himself finding the reasons behind Voldemort’s lust for power. Guesses and assumptions led him to believe that Voldemort was simply a man in pain, which made Yaxley want to get close to him and find the reasons why.
His personality is much the same in his older years as it was in his younger years, save that he is a bit more open with people, instead of trying to stay away from them, he opts to begin conversations and interacts more easily with them. Because of his yearning for books and reading as a child, he had come to respect language as a whole, and had studied them as well, becoming fluent in Italian, French, Spanish and Greek, as well as having a decent knowledge of Russian and German and just a smidge of Farsi. Out of them all, he prefered the Italian and Spanish.
Godfrey holds the outward appearance of being a sophisticated, well-bred man, and he likes to uphold the illusion. Underneath it all, though, he is a twisted sado-masochist who enjoys torturing people just to study their pain. He is a great deceiver, as he is able to charm people into thinking he is polite and well-mannered, and while he speaks sweetly to those who will listen, in his mind he is thinking about how spectacular they would scream if he tried to peel the flesh from their noses.
Physical Description
Godfrey Yaxley was a tall child, being one of the taller children of Hogwarts, and then growing to be among the tall men of the Wizarding World, standing at a proud 6’1”. As a child, his mother used to comb his blonde hair back, sleek and flat against his head, as she had said a young Malfoy should look. She had always claimed that she had had a passionate affair with a Malfoy, and that Godfrey was the result of it, but as he grew older he began to believe it less as his features grew in and he became more like the father that his mother claimed wasn’t his and less like the man he had always gazed at from afar.
The blonde hair of his youth faded into a mousy brown as he grew older, deepening to a muddle of brown and grey as he passed into his forties. His sharp brown eyes remained ever as sharp through his years, and his hair he kept at shoulder length, preferring it to hang loose and well-kept instead of the slicked back look of his younger years. He stands straight and tall, though he walks with a cane as he acquired a limp when he cut a ligament in his leg while experimenting with spells back when he was 27. His features have changed quite a bit, as his constant experimentation with inflicting pain upon himself has created numerous scars all over his body, including his face, though he attempted removal of those as quickly as possible. Still, after numerous aberrations and scar removals, his face has become quite more worn than a normal aging process would create, and so he looks much older than his years.
Personal History
Born on a cold evening in October, the 22nd to be precise, Godfrey Abraxas Yaxley was born to Margaret Elaine and Ainsworth Godfrey Yaxley, who did not love each other, but were bound by an arranged marriage. They were of a decent upbringing, self-proclaimed purebloods and not bad off as far as money was concerned, though no one ever knew how the Yaxleys kept their money, as both of them seemed to spend it almost as fast as they could, yet as far as anyone could tell, neither of them worked. What they didn’t know was that Ainsworth Yaxley held a job in the Muggle world as the manager of a publishing company, a job that allowed him to show up a few times a week, make sure things were running smoothly, and then take the rest of his time to do what he pleased, and what he did in his spare time was often very pleasing to him indeed. Margaret Elaine, on the other hand, was known in the Muggle world as a female escort, and she made quite a sum doing it. Still, hiding their lives from the Wizarding World was hard on her, and she began trying to filter herself back into the Wizarding World in the only way she knew how: she slept her way into it. Margaret, or Maggie as many of her men knew her, pretty soon became known as the local whore, though only behind closed doors as gossip wasn’t something people shouted about in the streets. Soon, Maggie became pregnant, and though she claimed the baby to be a love child of a tryst with a Malfoy, no one paid her any mind, as they believed she probably didn’t even know who the father was.
Eventually, Margaret lost her job in the Muggle world because she often never showed up when she was supposed to, Ainsworth moved them permanently into the Wizarding World and out of the Muggle world, where he earned a job in Flourish & Blott’s as a clerk. Margaret remained at home to care for Godfrey, who she had given the middle name of Abraxas, defying Ainsworth’s wishes for the boy’s middle name to be named after him. Still, Margaret fawned over her only son when she could, always whispering to him and telling him that one day he would be great, and one day he would finally be accepted by his real father. She raised the boy in ways that she believed a Malfoy should be raised, with pricey toys and the best things whenever he wanted them. Always, she spend money that Ainsworth worked so hard to earn. But unbeknownst to him, she had returned to her harlot ways and had begun sleeping with men for money, leaving little Godfrey with a nanny during the day, returning for him at sunset, knowing that she would still have time before Ainsworth returned home, as he always worked long hours now that he held a job that didn’t pay him nearly as much as it had before. Still, they upheld the pretense that they lived happily.
It wasn’t until Godfrey’s seventh birthday that he had shown any signs of magic. His parents had been arguing over whose gift he should open first when suddenly both gifts erupted in flames, both gifts which had been sitting right in front of the boy. They were able to heal him, of course, but at the young age of seven, Godfrey had felt something he had never really felt before: relief from the pain he felt inside. The burn on his hands had temporarily relieved the (figurative) burns on his heart, and he wanted more. He soon began to play with fire, burning his fingers and then wondering at how the dull ache in his heart subsided when the throbbing in his fingers began.
Over the years, he began experimenting more with other things, needles, scissors, knives, pricking himself, cutting pieces of his skin, experimenting with the pain. Eventually, his letter from Hogwarts came, and his parents were thrilled; Godfrey was ecstatic.
During the Sorting Ceremony, he was sorted into Ravenclaw, a surprise, as both of his parents had been Slytherins, as were all the Malfoys. Still, he was unphased, and entered into the school with a new look on life. He had also heard Hogwarts had an extensive library, and so he made quick use of that in his desire to expand his knowledge on why his physical pain hurt so much less than his emotional pain.
There was little that went on during his years at Hogwarts, and Godfrey developed intense magical skill, being especially adept at nonverbal spells and healing spells, though no one could figure out why. What they also couldn’t figure out, is why Godfrey seemed to get cut up all the time. Even being on the quidditch team after his third year, they couldn’t understand why he seemed to get so many bumps and bruises, as he was a beater and most often didn’t let the bludgers hit him but sent them off towards the other players. Still, Godfrey passed through his OWLs and NEWTs with decent scores, earning himself eight OWLs and six NEWTs, with high scores in Charms, DADA, and Potions. His scores were good enough to get him a job at St. Mungo’s, where he studied the mentally ill patients, as well as some of those who were just in temporarily. He remained at St. Mungo’s over the years, progressing as a Healer and also developing his skills in nonverbal magic. By this time in his life, he was also dipping into the Dark Arts, and had become ever fanatic over the Imperius Curse. He eventually learned to cast it nonverbally, which made for some fantastic research at the hospital, though he had to be careful not to go overboard with his experimentation there.
On his thirty fifth birthday, Yaxley showed up at his flat to an owl that regretfully informed him that his parents had both committed suicide, his mother having hanged herself, his father having stabbed himself to death. Yaxley showed no remorse, as his parents had practically disowned him when he had been sorted into Ravenclaw, and barely spoke to him during the holidays when he had returned home to them. Over the course of his seven years at Hogwarts, Godfrey learned that family wasn’t just blood and a name. He had made a few friends there, and while he lost contact with them for a little while, he would learn that later on, it was only because most of them had become a part of something greater, while he had shut himself away in his lab, focusing solely on his experiments. Rumours later rose saying that Yaxley had murdered his parents, though no evidence was found against him, and so he was never convicted of it, though few were adamant that he had done it.
His experiments were what he lived for. During the first war, he used Voldemort’s reign of power as a cover for his experiments. The constant Muggle disappearances, and even some witch and wizard disappearances, were perfect for his research, as he would often abduct someone and put them under the Imperius Curse and then make them torture themselves, cutting off flesh or even the simple tasks of running themselves into brick walls. That was also when he first became interested in the Dark Lord. Here was a man who seemed to hate and despise people, pushing them away so that emotional connection was impossible. Yaxley believed it to be something similar to what he felt, though instead of causing himself physical pain, the Dark Lord used power and control to push the thoughts away. But it was too late to join Voldemort’s side, as he was suddenly vanquished, and everyone believe him to be gone.
After that, Yaxley returned to his simple life, working at the Hospital for Magical Maladies and continuing his research on pain development. He learned much about pain over the years, discovering now, in his later years, that he much preferred to experiment on others instead of on himself. He soon began to wonder how he could get more people to research. He began searching around for people to talk to, and eventually met up with one of the Death Eaters. His initiation into the group began with a simple task, dispose of Broderick Bode. He did so, and was marked by the Dark Lord himself, though it wasn’t enough to allow him to be trusted to go along on the mission to the Department of Mysteries later that year. Still, he preferred being hidden away in St. Mungo’s, still able to carry on with his research, and with no one knowing that he had become an enemy. He remains there to this day, keeping an ear open for information that would be useful to Voldemort, and for people he could whisk away to his “lab” where he would use them for research.