Nicknames: Hade; tbd?
Birthdate: 18th February, 1863
Current Age: 31 years
Gender: Male
Occupation: Explorer & Naturalist
Reputation: 7
Recently divorced, and a known eccentric with some outlandish travels to his name. Famously once ate his boots to survive.Residence: Hellington Cross, a country manor house near Seething, Norfolk
Hogwarts House: Slytherin
Wand: Chestnut, 11 1/4”, phoenix feather, whippy.
Blood Status: Pureblood
Social Class: Upper
Family:
Atlas Nott | Grandfather | 1808 - 1870
Minerva Nott nee ___ | Grandmother | 1814
Hephaestus Nott | Father | 1836
--and extended family, including Hart & Lovegood cousins
Aurelia Nott née ____ | Mother | 1841
Livia ____ née Nott | Sister | 1865
-- and family
Titus Nott | Brother | 1870
Dido Nott | Sister | 1872
Cordelia Emsworth | Ex-wife | 1863
Oscar Emsworth | Ex father-in-law | 18xx
Magdalena Emsworth née - - - | Ex mother-in-law | 18xx
Cynthia Emsworth | Ex sister-in-law | 1867 | Beetle
Hadrian has a substantial menagerie of creatures, but most beloved amongst those are:
Nebuchadnezzar | Pet flying tiger
Ace, Atlas, and Boone | Stolen hounds
Appearance:
Hadrian stands at an average 5’8”, with a generally lean build that no concerted attempt to gain muscle much serves to change. He has delicate, ‘aristocratic’ features (so his mother always used to say, and so he now believes), including a narrow nose, grey eyes, and pale skin that always freckles and never tans. His hair is a medium brown, naturally a little wavy and sometimes groomed short, sometimes long, as with his facial hair: it is never high on his list of priorities. (Theoretical list of priorities. Hadrian doesn’t do lists, generally.) He can dress up for society and dress down for the wilderness, and is happily at home in either. His default expressions are carelessly cheerful, but his standard grins (boyish, impish, self-satisfied) can occasionally turn sneering. He carries himself with a carefree confidence, but at the same time is a relentless fidgeter and rarely finds any joy in sitting still. His wand hand is his left.History:
The Notts are a relatively typical traditional pureblood, upper class family – and in some ways, Hadrian is the typical firstborn son. He is welcomed to the world with great fanfare and pride; he is doted upon (by his nanny, as much as his parents), and becomes a little spoilt as a boy; he gets away with murder (not literally) and is only vaguely aware of the burden of expectations meant to settle on his shoulders one day. Because firstborn sons are generally meant to grow up into dutiful men, and step into the shoes their fathers expect them to, and Hadrian – well, to be honest, Hadrian never changed all that much from the boy.
If he is sad to leave his younger siblings behind at home, that is more than made up for by the opportunity to write home and tell them all about his adventures, as if he is the first eleven year old to ever experience Hogwarts. Other people miss their siblings more: Cordelia Emsworth, for instance. Hadrian, mostly unflappable, makes a point of finding the bright sides for her. But while she is sorted into Gryffindor, he is sent off to Slytherin.
Of course that doesn’t stop them from becoming good friends. Hogwarts expands his worldview in plenty of ways. By third year, he adds Care of Magical Creatures, Ancient Studies and Earth Magic, and decides he is interested in everything out there, at how odd and grand and weird the world is. By sixth year, he keeps Astronomy, Care of Magical Creatures, Charms, Herbology (especially for Cordelia, though he doesn’t say as much), Potions and adds Alchemy to the mix, because Alchemy seems elite and obscure and exciting. Hadrian’s father is currently under the impression his son will be following in his footsteps into an illustrious Ministry career. Hadrian innocently never corrects the poor old fellow’s delusion.
Upon graduating Hogwarts and a first few months of a Grand Tour, Hadrian has decent grades and some wild ideas about what he wants. He returns and announces to his mother that he is engaged to Miss Emsworth (they are dubious: because the Emsworths are eccentrics and halfbloods and Miss Emsworth is studying Herbology; but mostly because Hadrian is far too young to be making big decisions like this, decisions they had been intending on making for him, because this upsets their own plans for his life as the heir. Quite dramatically.)
But things go from bad to worse when Hadrian announces to his father that he is going to make a career out of exploration, never mind if he’s throwing away a future Wizengamot seat with his name on it. He’s going to make his name in other ways. He’s going to become renowned for actually doing things no one has done, setting foot in places no on has ever seen, learning things no one has before, discovering plants and creatures no one has ever seen. Just think of all the things that he could put the Nott name to this way!His father almost certainly has opinions on this, but unfortunately/conveniently he has a heart attack before he can fully express any of them, and his health declines swiftly from there. Hadrian capitalises on this moment of weakness, and runs. Fortunately for Hadrian, his mother is his biggest fan, and has no backbone of her own to speak of: so when he leaves them shortly thereafter to travel the world with Cordelia and her father, she never complains to him beyond the lamentations of but darling, whatever will I do without you?
And Hadrian is too busy to feel remotely guilty, when he is living a life some people only dream of. He and Delia marry in 1883, and while she is the better botanical scholar between them, he is of some help. He stumbles upon new specimens by accident, and if it is not advisable to differentiate rare lesser-known plant specimens by tasting them, it hasn’t killed Hadrian yet. He’s had to be rushed to a healer a few times, but it’s all been fine and dandy in the end.
Travelling over land and sea, they romp through the far regions of the world on proper expeditions of their own, and while Delia studies and presses plant samples, Hadrian battles with boars and lions, moths and seagulls; survives their ship being looted by hiding, cleverly, in a barrel of fish; haggles with merchants for flying carpets and exotic pets, and gets struck by poison darts as he flees from some foreign sacred grounds with valuable new specimens. Once, a trip goes awry and he is separated from Delia and the rest of their expedition caravan. Wounded and wandless and stranded and starving in the desert, Hadrian eventually does what all the best (worst) explorers do, and boils his boots for food. Eventually he stumbles upon an oasis, regains his strength, and makes it back to Delia. And their strange nomadic life continues on, undeterred. Delia writes her field journals; he writes their (his) memoirs, and sends them back to be edited and published in hopes of securing his fame.Maybe fame isn’t his only goal, and he is also striving for a life that is free and is fun. But there have been dismal moments, too – Delia’s miscarriage; a few disasters; some disagreements. It’s not all perfect – not least because since 1885, Cordelia’s sister Cynthia has been tagging along with them. Hadrian agreed to this, once – but he never expected the situation to last forever. And he likes Cynthia sometimes – she is good at the secretarial organising of their collections, note-taking and suchlike; and when Delia had miscarried, Hadrian was endlessly grateful for Cynthia, who brought the fun – but she is also a pain at least half the time, and Hadrian begins to think she’s really just in the way. She and Delia are almost too close: sometimes, when they are sleeping under canvas, removed from all the world, and he can hear the pair of them staying up late and talking half the night, Hadrian considers that maybe he’s the third wheel here.
So, yes, in 1892, he upsets the wrong wizard in India. It happens. And, yes, it’s half his fault Cynthia gets cursed to beetle-dom. But it’s not his fault he and Cynthia were in the midst of a spat there to begin with. And it’s not his fault he doesn’t know how to break the curse and turn her back. And, so, yes, maybe saying things like maybe this wouldn’t have happened if she had just gone home isn’t generally helpful – but Delia has blamed him from the moment it happened, and they’re not getting anywhere closer to forgiveness. And guess what? If there’s an ultimatum in the moment, Delia chooses her sister once again.
Delia even takes the dogs in the divorce, which, frankly, is unforgivable to Hadrian. Bitterly, he heads home – and because he hasn’t warned anyone he is coming, he gets caught in the Nott grounds as a trespasser and threatened with arrest before Mummy comes along to save him from the staff and smooth things over with his father (yes, he’s her son; yes, he has her invitation to come home).
So he starts getting his life together back in the house in the country where his family still resides. Including bringing back his half of the specimen collection and living menagerie of impractical pets (his father is appalled; his long-suffering, sensible younger brother Titus is also a little appalled; his younger sister Dido is a delight, and is helping him organise the collection; his mother still thinks he’s a delight, whatever he does), and also getting aggressively into taxidermy as a hobby, as any recent divorcée is wont to do. When he’s gathered himself, he’ll go back out on expeditions and discover things – on his own, this time. Maybe in the Arctic. Who knows.
Hadrian is not oblivious to the fact that Cordelia is also back in the country, but he can fight over their home territory as well as anywhere. And he wants his bloody dogs back.
Personality: I don’t know how to put this guy in words yet except to say the sheer scale of his delusional self-belief cannot be adequately contained in this box.
Other: —
Sample Roleplay Post:
Age: 29
set by bee!
