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Character
Name: Rufus Alexandre Harper
Gender: Male
Date of birth: August 22, 1981 (21)
House/Year: Slytherin, 1992-2000. Rufus did not attend Hogwarts for the 1997-1998 academic year.
Blood status: Pureblood, with decided Muggle sympathising tendencies.
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Suggested livejournal username: toharponaboutit
PB/Avatar: Stas Svetlichnyy
Physical characteristics:
Rufus is ridiculously pretty. Almost too pretty to be male, and he does indeed get hit on quite regularly by fellow members of the less-fair sex, an occurance that irks him more than he would care to let on. He is also thin, despite shoveling almost enough food into his mouth to have put Crabbe or Goyle to shame (not that he mirrors or seeks out such unrefined dining companions, he says). In short, if you are female, you may be jealous of him, but not necessarily want to date him. Too bad, he says. He's not giving you any choice in the matter. But that's another application section.
He possesses longish and artfully floppy hair of an ambiguous colour not quite blond or brown (his sexuality, he says, is decided not ambiguous - despite rumours certain jealous meanies have spread to the contrary!). That said hair is naturally artfully floppy is just as well, because Rufus never does a single thing to it. This would require standing still for more than two minutes, something that he's physically incapable of. If it needed to be feed and watered three times a day, the poor thing would have died of neglect and starvation by now. But in spite of the lack of attention paid to it, it by and large behaves itself.
The rest of his features reel off like something out of a modelling agency's checklist: prominent and angled cheekbones, pouty pink lips, and a nose elegantly pointed at the tip. Of course, male models or those who could pass for one tend to err on the effeminate side, and Rufus is no exception. Having figured out early on that he has virtually no masculinity to speak of and than one cannot defend what was never there in the first place, he seems to have decided to behave as flamboyant as possible - perhaps as a ploy or pre-emptive strike against those who may seek to undermine it.
History:
Family
A direct descendent of the more infamous than famous Monsieur Malecrit, Rufus was born out of wedlock to a Veela mother and eventually adopted by a lovely family, the father who is perfectly charming in spite of a habit of sprouting more hair than usual when the moon is at its zenith. Well, that is a lie, but aren't things more interesting that way? Do you want to know the truth or would you rather be entertained? Oh, very well then.
Rufus's actual backstory is not quite as bizarre, but certainly not dull. He was born in Paris to an anglophone father (Isaiah Harper - who not only isn't a werewolf but went prematurely bald) and a francophone mother (Isilde DuBois). Isaiah is a professional writer who, eschewing the wizarding literature of his native England as being too staid, conventional and "reeking of odious mothballs, weekly baths and dull soggy grey tea that plague the inhabitants of that wet and equally grey nation," took off for the continent in the 70's. There he became something of a cult figure for the French literature renaissance, and while he has never been a household name, his is one that is often cited by other authors as being an influence. He also met Isilde there, which is how Rufus comes into this story. At the time a model and sometimes singer with more talent than she is given credit for, the eighteen year old met the not quite so youthful Isaiah at a hip party in the Chemin des Batons, the Parisian equivalent of Diagon Alley. They hit it off right away, and Isilde gave up her somewhat professions for her most successful career to date, that of being a full-time muse.
Within the next few years, three bestsellers were written and four enfants produced, the youngest of who was one Rufus Alexandre Harper. Rufus would like you to know that his middle name is taken from one of Isaiah's favourite Muggle ecrivains, Alexandre Dumas, the author of Les Trois Musketeers, or The Three Musketeers if you hail from this side of the channel. He thinks that random factoids such as these develop character, or at least the description of it. Which is much the same thing in fiction. Or at least may as well be. Moving on, Rufus was the baby of the family in every sense of the word, being doted on by his three elder sisters and both parents whenever their various projects allowed. Their own names are Bronte Dorothee, Austen Isidore and Elliot Adrienne. Again, he thinks this signifies something. The only thing it irrefutably signifies is that his parents liked to name their progeny after famous writers.
As the children grew up, the Harpers settled into a sort of functionally dysfunctional routine, in which the parents led lives of their own and the raising of the children fell to the eldest, Bronte. The discipline that both parents use to throw themselves into their respective projects does not transcend to their children, and the children were left to fend for themselves in many ways. It wasn't that they were neglected, but that disclipine was severely lacking. Therefore it was up to Bronte to pick up on the slack. Perhaps out of necessity, she developed a significantly wider practical streak than what resided in the Harper children's artistic parents. As she is the type of individual who cannot stand to be idle and now has a brood of her own, she did not mind being the surrogate parent to her younger siblings too much - at least not at the time as she did not know any other reality. These days her relationship with Isaiah and Isilde is somewhat strained, though she remains close to Rufus and her sisters. As an understandable consequence of this upbringing, Rufus loves his parents, but considers Bronte to be his first port of call during times of trouble.
When Monsieur and Madame Harper were about, they still neglected to fulfill a traditional parenting role. While Rufus would accurately consider himself to be close to his parents, the truth is that they have a dynamic closer to that of fun babysitter or older sibling, or of a particularly irresponsible aunt or uncle. Had he been born the first and saddled with the duties that Bronte was laden with, he might have emerged a very different individual. However, he wasn't, and has for the most part so far made his rather carefree way through life.
Early Hogwarts years
When of the right age the three Harper sisters attended Beauxbatons, but their younger brother did not follow suit. While fluent in the language in a spoken sense and able to read easily, Rufus struggled with the writing mechanics of French. As rhetoric and the written world are emphasized heavily in the Gallic educational system, his tutors were concerned that he would be disadvantaged if sent to the more local wizarding school. Ergo when his letter arrived a scant few days before the term was due to start, Rufus was packed off to Britain to board the Hogwarts Express. With his intelligence and obvious curiosity, he would have made a likely Ravenclaw. However, everyone was surprised when he Sorted Slytherin - except for Rufus himself who, being new to Britain, had little background knowledge of house biases and stereotypes.
Rufus's first few years in Slytherin weren't as bad as what they could have been, given how against type he was. Being tall for his age and more self-confident and expressive than the average bully target helped a lot, and there were a few more senior students (such as Warrington) who kept an eye out for the boy, realising that he was a decent enough sort. Neither did he provoke the likes of Miles Bletchley and Draco Malfoy, which similarly spared him from trouble. With his focus on the positive, he also beared no bias towards those traditional enemy stalwarts, the Gryffindors, but was savvy enough to realise that with the suspicious combination of both his bloodline and his house against him, few would be particularly open towards his befriending them, as there are of course seldom situations where bias exists only on one side, and the Gryffindors can be as judgemental of their Slytherin counterparts as the reputed blood purists can be of them. However his natural friendliness managed to find homes within some of the more neutral houses, such as Ravenclaw. Once he was familiar enough to the school to have befriended classmates in other quarters of the school, he started to spend most of his time outside of the dungeons and used his common room and dormitories primarily for sleep and (less so) study.
He also found that the awkwardness in which he expressed himself via the quill in French did not traverse to English, and that he in fact was quite gifted when it came to a turn of phrase. His own house head naturally took no notice of this, but the talent was uncovered by Flitwick after he had turned in his first homework scroll, and the Charms professor encouraged Rufus to develop his skill. Rufus at first was reluctant to share his work with anyone else, even to write for his own pleasure, viewing it as his father's craft, but once he came to develop his own voice, those cares largely fell away. That Isaiah writes historical fiction (unlike Rufus's work, which is largely set in the present day) and plies his trade in French (being a language most Englishmen are not literate in, and therefore are incapable of making comparisons) also eases the feeling of pressure. Flitwick also introduced him to Sylvie Fawcett, another Hogwarts student of partial French parentage who was also fluent in that language. The pair got along well enough, but once her younger sister started at the school, Sylvie was careful to look around before conversing with her in French, the language being a tool she used to give them some privacy and discuss sisterly matters.
The war and later Hogwarts years
The first hint of trouble came during Rufus's fourth year, where Umbridge was appointed High Inquisitor and given the new Defense Against the Dark Arts post. While her blood bias wasn't as prominent then as it would be in later years, there were certainly students she favoured above others, and some of Rufus's housemates joined the Inquisitorial Squad. Rufus himself wasn't directly involved, but being someone who focuses on the positive (and sometimes is aware that he is making a choice to do so) doesn't necessarily mean that he was oblivious. He was all too aware that something was going on, though he did his best to ignore it. The difference between this year and his sixth, was that he could still bury his head in the sand. Two years later, that option would be taken away from him - had he remained at Hogwarts. His fifth year passed relatively uneventfully. Snape, scathingly recommending that he "do something, for Salazar's sake" with all his excess energy, recommended that he try out for the house Quidditch team. He fared decently as a replacement Seeker and Chaser, but quickly found himself bored with the monotony and routine of training. At the end of the season he asked to quit and the captain, frustrated with his frequent tardiness to practice, did not protest.
As a more colourful and exhuberant Slytherin personality than the likes of Crabbe and Goyle, and certainly not one to slot neatly into any sort of blood elitist mould, Rufus's sixth year in Hogwarts would have been a trial indeed. However, he was back in France for the summer and it was an easy decision for his parents to keep him there. To avoid British authorities seeking out their son, the Harpers moved away from the cluttered and catastrophic old house they had lived in for decades. Since Bronte had married a Muggleborn, they used her expertise of Muggle society and relocated away from the countryside to a noisy Paris banlieue. Where better to hide than among so many people, after all? The family never quite got the hang of passing themselves off as Muggles, but they were astute enough not to use any magic in the location, and any eccentricities witnessed by nosy neighbours were put down to them being "artistic sorts."
In spite of (or perhaps due to) events, the family strived for a sense of normalcy, his parents for the first time doing something close to actual parenting, instead of acting more like their son's friend. The family pulled together quite nicely. Rufus was tutored by his mother in the mornings, and in the afternoons was free to do as he pleased, which was usually writing. France was thankfully not as constrained by the war elsewhere and the prejudices that accompanied it, but Rufus still had his Hogwarts friends to consider. He couldn't answer any of their owls as mail to the school was being checked, and likewise the few who knew where he was located couldn't owl him as it would similarly give away his whereabouts.
Post-war and present day
After the war, Rufus returned to Britain and to the school, where he was a year older than most of his classmates, but also some kinship with those of a similar situation. For the first time, he was able to make concrete friends outside of his own house. Upon graduating from Hogwarts, he returned to France. There he worked a collection of odd jobs, including one in a bakery. Which may explain why he can whip up a decent batch of muffins, yet - paradoxically - will all but burn water if entrusted to do anything upon a stovetop, ie. actual cooking. In November 2001 he returned to England in order to improve on his career as a writer (cough) and lived for a while in an elderly grandmother's attic, until she passed away and her son sold the property out from under him. He stayed in a room above the Hog's Head until he found his present lodging, a ground floor flat with the equally colourful Sylvie.
While it's far from the conventional sense, Rufus does have a burning ambition - of a sort. However, because it is Rufus, it's hardly one that will ever be realised. He knows it's a grand scheme, but his ambition is to write stories that are universal in nature, that may be enjoyed by wizards and Muggles alike, and perhaps, in a small way, may even serve in bringing the two worlds closer together. The way to a unified society is obvious to him. We write books about ourselves, and would Muggles really feel threatened by an individual such as Harry Potter after reading about how he was a hero? Wizards should therefore write about their world as if its fiction, familiarising Muggle readers with it in that vein, so that if a day comes when it finally reveals itself, it is not greeted with two much calamity. He believes that too little is said of the relations between individuals in the Muggle and magical worlds, and that halfbloods are the underused narrators of both. Which is why the protagonists in his stories usually have one Muggle parent. A Muggleborn would make more sense, as they are more directly linked to the Muggle world, but something about an individual being part Muggle and part wizard and therefore a unification of both environments appeals to Rufus's sense of romanticism.
Presently however Rufus writes with the wizarding community in mind, not being familiar enough with Muggles (beyond their literature) to blend in adequately seamlessly to pitch his words to the non-magical populace (plus there's the none-too-small manner of the Statute of Secrecy to consider). His current work-in-progress is a novella about a separated couple - one magical, one Muggle - meeting for coffee and interceded with flashbacks of when they were together, hinting at what led them to break up a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On the surface it is a romance, but layered underneath is a commentary on magical and Muggle relations and the differences between the two societies, though with the message that we are more alike than divergeant. Or so he hopes.
Current employment status:
Since Stan threw his lot in with the Death Eaters, the Knight Bus had hired a few conductors, but none of them had lasted for particularly long - possibly because not too many people long to revisit the contents of their dinner due to some particularly haphazard driving. And then along came Rufus. With his ability to stomach almost anything (literally!), he managed to go the distance (also literally!) and has been escorting elderly wizards to their seats and handing out hot chocolate for almost eight months now. This nocturnal work schedule suits him as he writes best in the wee hours, and has started to base his minor characters off some of the more colourful regulars. During moments of downtime, he can be spotted leaning against a pole and jotting down notes, seemingly oblivious to the churning motions of the bus and the passengers' stomachs.
Personality:
The first thing Rufus gets asked is typically, "Are you sure you're a Slytherin?" This is closely followed by, "Are you sure you're not gay?" The answer to the former would be a "Yes" and to the latter, a chirpy yet emphatic "Of course! Sorry to disappoint you, cupcake."
A Slytherin dreamer? It appears to be an oxymoron, and yet in Rufus's case is closer to a tautology. Behind great dreams often likes the goal to see them realised, and so Rufus as a first year found himself sharing a common room with seemingly unlikely housemates such as Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle - to name only three.
He wants to revolutionise the world of fiction. What is that if not ambitious? Particularly when one considers the tripe he wrote as a fourth year, he adds with a shudder.
And for better or worse, Rufus seems to have taken his having being Sorted into such an odd fit for his temperament and habits as proof that said ambitions are destined to be realised. Fortunately these days his writing is a great deal better than what it was at the age of fourteen.
Rufus likes to talk. A lot. In case you haven't noticed. And if he wants a conversation, he will get one. Whether the recipient is a willing participant or not. An individual of many talents, he claims, he is even capable of talking in monologue, or answering for you if you do not respond. Unless you want to be credited with deflowing Goyle during fifth year, he suggests you start answering for yourself.
And while it is impossible for an individual to be allergic to time alone, he may as well be. If you are a flatmate and at a loose end on a Friday night, you will enjoy his company. Very much so. It is only when you're in the mood to be left alone that it becomes a problem. Because while Rufus respects it in theory, he doesn't really get privacy. He doesn't mind starting conversations with strangers about the exact nature of his relationship with his father, and since he doesn't judge, therefore you shouldn't either.
He wants to know each every single last thing about you. And he simply cannot understand why you wouldn't feel the same way. If so, then why not? Is there a reason why you won't ever discuss what it was like for you as a five year old? Just what are you hiding? You can tell him! It's okay! The only exception to this rule is when he's writing, and in that case, knock before entering, and do not knock or enter at all. Rufus's harassment of his housemates is therefore proportional to his writer's blocks.
As a flatmate, Rufus is not the most reliable of fellows, but neither is he the most antagonistic. If you do not particularly mind a coinhabitant who you will have to remind to pay his share of the rent, you will likely be able to tolerate him. Plus if he likes you and finds you interesting (which he does the majority of people), he may even base a character off you. Which is rather flattering - or perhaps not.
The one thing in the world Rufus despises is boredom. If you can keep him from it, he loves you more than life. If not, well then, he is determined to save you from yourself!
Samples
First person entry: [TBA: I have one but it's a sekrit!]