Nicknames: Jimmy. His mother’s lover in Italy renamed him “Geronimo”, which he hates.
Birthdate: 1st November, 1878
Current Age: 11 Years
Occupation: Messenger boy & mischief maker
Reputation: 5
A bastard of unknown parentage, James is also not the most well-behaved child.Residence: With his great grandmother in Pennyworth.
Hogwarts House: —
Wand: —
Blood Status: Halfblood
Social Class: Working
Family:
“Zeus” Selwyn | Father (unknown) | 18xx
Maia Fletcher | Mother | Halfblood | Uneducated | 1860-1886
Alessandro Fontana | Not-father | Halfblood | 18xx
Lorenzo Fontana | Half-brother | Halfblood | 1884
Saoirse “great-granny” Fletcher | Great-grandmother | 18xx
Appearance: Round-faced and rabbit-toothed, James is very punchable, especially with the shit-eating grin he usually sports. He has blue eyes, curly blond hair and a complexion never especially suited to the Italian climate in which he grew up, and he tends to get freckly in summer. He is 4’6” and scrappy, fairly strong for his age but still nimble in build. He is resolutely untidy in dress and delights in all kinds of disarray. He flushes beet red when he’s embarrassed or angry, and isn’t one for holding in his temper, either. He usually has cuts and grazes all over his knuckles and knees, but wouldn’t dream of crying over them - or crying over anything. He is right-handed.
History:
1878 | Maia Fletcher, a young Irishwoman whose remaining family had emigrated to Wales, is working on a farm in the Welsh countryside. She is pretty, poetic and simple, and only seventeen when she stumbles into the path of a wealthy gentleman. She doesn’t think to ask if he’s already married - he seems to be head over heels for her. Obviously, it doesn’t last, and it is only when she searches for him, heavily pregnant, that she realises who he actually is: the patriarch of a pureblood family, high in wizarding society. She doesn’t stand a chance.
He pays her off well enough for her troubles, small consolation that that is, but on the contingency that she leaves behind her family and takes the child out of the country. Not out of the countryside, but out of the country. Without the faintest idea where to go, Maia packs up and flees to Tuscany - chosen in a flight of something like fancy - and goes into labour, inconveniently, on a wagon ride as they travel to a town: her son, born bright-eyed and healthy, is named James.
1879 | Much as she has had romantic notions of Italy, work-wise it is hardly in a more prosperous position than Ireland was in her parents’ day, so she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Maia certainly likes Italian music, dances and the warm Mediterranean air, but hasn’t a great deal of skills to offer, being uneducated in most magic. She heads into the nearest town in northern Italy. Factory work proves too demanding with a young child she yearns to take better care of - especially a child prone to crawling off like James - so instead she learns the ropes of seamstressing in an Italian robe shop.
1883 | When James is still young, Maia meets an Italian wizard in town. They strike up an affair - he is unmarried at least, this time - and he seems to like her as much as she likes him. The only problem, the one small hitch to their happiness? He’s on the run from the law. An art thief and conman, Alessandro Fontana, never stays in one place long.
1884 | So Maia picks up and follows him across Italy region after region, subsisting on the money he makes (cheats) out of performing as a magician, because obviously magic tricks work better on muggles, even for the laziest sort of man. Now that they’re together, Alessandro is not quite as sweet to some-other-man’s foreign kid, and treats James (Alessandro refuses to use an English name, and re-christens him “Geronimo”) with a kind of casual cruelty - occasionally physical, but more often with jests and taunts that do not sit well with James or his mother. Whatever her young son thinks of the man, Maia isn’t much at liberty to say so, as she soon gives birth to another boy, Lorenzo.
1886 | Reluctant to repeat a situation all over again as a single mother but more sensible than she once was, Maia abandons Alessandro and their precarious lifestyle before he can abandon her. She plans to take both her boys with her, but Alessandro catches up to her and confronts her: so help him, he won’t let her leave with his son. He snatches Lorenzo and has disappeared before she can beg him to reconsider. Delirious with heartbreak, Maia gives up and decides to head back to Britain with James - she is sure “Zeus” won’t bother looking for her or his son after all these years. (She’ll be surprised if he remembers her.) So Maia finds a place to board in Hogsmeade and sets out to be a seamstress again... but she has brought something else with her from Italy, and it’s cholera. In a month, she dies.
His mother might be the only person in the world he cares about, but James is not left entirely alone, and is - reluctantly - taken under the wing of the lone relative of Maia’s that had settled nearby in Hogsmeade (and not overtly thought her a stain on the family). Maia’s grandmother is old, boring, doddery and possibly not-all-there, but that suits James excellently. This leaves him free to roam the world... well, roam the village... and get into unsupervised mischief with the kids in Hogsmeade and generally be the bane of everyone’s existence.
1887 | James doesn’t know how Great Granny Fletcher lives on her soup and her knitting in her house - nice enough, for the worst areas of Hogsmeade - old and lonely as she is, but he does notice money coming in from somewhere, because he’s not a total idiot. (What he doesn’t know is where it comes from, exactly: she tells him some jumbled-up mishmash about some distant relative or family friend (godfather?) who wants to take care of them.) Honestly, James is nine. He doesn’t give a rat’s arse.
Since then | James has got his own stash of cash to live on, anyway. As he tells his Great-Granny, he’s got a job as a delivery boy, a messenger running notes and packages for people for a couple knuts when they don’t have an owl handy, or handing out papers and leaflets on the street. He’s got a good memory for relaying things verbally, as well, James does. His knowledge of addresses also helps him in his other job - which is all top-secret, obviously - running scouting missions, errands and loitering in doorways for Hestia, the canny con-artist who works at the Hog’s Head and who is much nicer to him than Alessandro ever was. And she’s waaaaaay prettier, too.
He’s quite happy tearing away day after day around the streets of Hogsmeade, passing messages and learning things, and he’s no stranger to a bit of rough-and-tumble, either. Rich-relative-man might even pay his way through Hogwarts in September, apparently, if Great-Granny keeps scamming the fellow or whatever she’s doing to get that money off him. In the meantime, he’s got plenty of friends and enemies (and a weird friend-slash-enemy in one Billie Farrow - and his damned cat, too) and James considers himself more than a match for them all, thank you very much.
Personality: Bad-mannered but good at heart, James is always scrambling for a fight, both to defend people, stand up for things, and for the sheer fun of it. He likes to make bets and play games (and win!) and will not settle for losing, ever. He doesn’t have much patience for rich, prissy, well-behaved sorts or swots, but still he does like to know things, and will do his best to sound clever even when he’s entirely ignorant on a matter. He’s a fast-talker and a fast-mover and would rather die than sit still. He likes to poke fun at people and things and generally delights in mischief; he is conflicted on moral matters when it comes to criminal activities, but prefers to avoid thinking about those kind of contradictions, and just get on with things. Scrappy as hell.
Other:
— His education thus far has been entirely ad-hoc, but James does boast the ability to read and write and count, speaks some Italian, knows odds and ends about history and geography, and a few too many things about thievery.
— His first sign of magic was hovering a few feet off the ground.
— Grew up listening to his mother’s singing, so likes music. A mean whistler.
— He is a fast runner. The fastest in Hogsmeade! Billie Farrow can eat his dust, damn it.
Sample Roleplay Post:
Age: 24
