In-Character
Full Name: Sorley FinnNicknames: Finn. Always Finn by ideally everyone. (unless he’s drunk and then its Fionn Fionnlagh)
Birthdate: August 25th, 1864
Current Age: 30 Years
Gender: Male, perceived male
Occupation: Mediwizard
Reputation: 7 - disowned by muggle family, general oddness
Residence: London
Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff
Wand: Hawthorn, 9 1/2 inches, Griffin Feather, reasonably pliant
Blood Status: Muggleborn
Social Class: Working Class
Appearance: Finn has a remarkably boyish look to him and is often taken to be younger than he is. Large brown eyes, a pointed jawline, and a mop of curly brown hair lend him an almost elfin air. His youthful features are soft but expressive and can swing from pensive to delight in an instant. He is technically ambidextrous but only naturally uses his left hand when he’s distracted or eating so you’re almost guaranteed to bump elbows if you eat next to him. He wears gloves constantly when not at home and will always choose muggle attire when given an option. He is almost never without something to scribble notes in and has an impressive collection of hand-woven scarves and caps that he rotates through constantly.
History: 1864: Finn is born into a sizable itinerant community. Known as Irish Travellers in polite society and by worse terms in less gracious circles; they called themselves Pavee. He grows up speaking both Gaelic and Shelta but would eventually add English and a few Romani words to the mix.
1869: Partly due to their nomadic lifestyle, partly because they were often shunned by settled society, Finn is educated with other children within the community instead of in a school.
1872: While their caravan is camped outside London for the winter Finn contracts ‘Vanishing Sickness’ presumably from the hidden magical population in the city. He spends a week in panic, watching various parts of his body vanish only to reappear every time he tries to show an adult. Eventually someone in the magical community gets wind and whisks him off to St. Mungos. He learns lots of things during that stay like the word ‘muggle’ and that Vanishing Sickness is extremely contagious but only if you’re a wizard. Which apparently he is.
It's a jarring way to learn he's a muggleborn wizard but even worse is learning there is an entire world of unknown illnesses that he, specifically, could contract that the rest of his community could not. This only exacerbates the trauma of having no one believe he was sick except strangers from a world none of them knew existed.
As an adult Finn would grow to assume most around him were Oblivated to some degree. There were very few questions asked when he returned from the magic hospital with strict instructions to keep the whole thing a secret.
1875: Finn takes all 3 years between his trip to St. Mungos and his invitation to Hogwarts to psych himself into going. While everything in him fought against leaving his tight-knit, insular community he found great zeal in the idea that if he went to this strange school he might learn about magical illnesses so that they could never take him by surprise again. His parents were equally hesitant to let him go.
Hogwarts was a tough adjustment but communal living was too strongly ingrained in him for him to keep a distance from his schoolmates for too long.
1877: The summer after his 2nd year Finn goes home to find the effects of the Queen’s crusade against magic had reached his community. His magical status was technically a secret but his habit of disappearing for most of the year had him teetering on the edge of pariah status anyway. The Ministry of Magic would eventually tidy everything up but it would not be in time to save Finn from being disowned and outcast. He is sent to live with distant relations.
Thanks to a partial scholarship, his new guardians, and his own meager contributions from summer work he is able to return to Hogwarts. His teachers had long taken note of his interest in magical maladies and helped steer him towards classes that could support a career as healer, hoping to at least give him a constructive outlet for his fixation.
1880: Finn gets his OWLs and leaves Hogwarts. He holds no delusions about continuing on to NEWTS or becoming a healer. Frankly, the money for tuition is just not there and he’s tired of spending his summers working 15 hours a day trying to keep going.
Instead, he takes a job as a mediwizard and it comes as a surprise to literally no one that he is drawn to the Magical Bugs department. His actual duties were quite separate but there were always opportunities to ingratiate himself to and learn from the healers.
1882: What was a pressing interest as a boy has only intensified with his immersion in the medical field. To him there is no distinction between professional curiosity and abject obsession. He is constantly exposed to illnesses, both in theory and practice. The more he consumes the more his anxieties consume him, culminating in an episode so severe he locks himself in his room for 3 days, convinced he had spattergroit.
1884: The Laughing Plague strikes Hogsmeade like all of his worst fears incarnate. He could feel the gaze of those around him, waiting for him to fall apart and yet for once in his life he felt little more alarm than the average wizard. By virtue of living in London and being a muggleborn, he never catches the plague himself and gets vaccinated against it as soon as possible. Finn loves vaccines!
Despite his unexpected fortitude in the face of an actual magical epidemic, it is an incredibly taxing summer with its numerous catastrophes. He develops a fatigue that no amount of sleep seems to fix and it becomes his Symptom of Note for the next several months. His books offer an endless number of maladies that were likely the cause.
With the unique position of being Lower Class with medical training Finn often gets visits from those who can’t afford a trip to the Hospital. In October he received one such visit from a close friend. While seeing to a wound that had been left to fester he couldn’t help but put together the clues with the context and figure out that Keiran was not being entirely truthful about how he got the wound. Finn spends several months afterwards trying to write it off as a delusion but eventually it becomes impossible to ignore the number of times his friend looks haggard after every full moon.
Also that year, Finn experiences Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. Put on by an American friend, he goes in wondering if it was some sort of sacrificial celebration and comes out thinking Americans are a tad too fond of gourds. But at least there was pie!
1885: The Revs host a remarkably successful Blood Equality celebration in Diagon Alley and it goes a long way to restoring Finn’s faith in humanity.
1888: In September Finn receives an anonymous letter infused with Amortentia that leads him and the person with corresponding letter on a short but whirlwind romance.
1890: Trying to reduce the number of people that come to his door or corner him at pubs, Finn starts making regular trips to Pennyworth and impoverished pockets of London’s magical community to offer whatever medical help his professional (mediwizard) and personal (obsessive research) knowledge can manage. He refuses to let anyone call them ‘clinics’ because he suspects someone somewhere would take issue and try to put a stop to it. The treatments are often more outdated, offbeat, or inventive than one might get from a proper healer but the people he helps can’t afford a proper healer and know what they are signing up for.
Sometimes he’s even brought to see muggles by a neighborly witch or wizard for simple fevers, coughs, and the like. With complete discretion of course. Muggle remedies were never his focus but he found it funny how closely muggle apothecaries sometimes ran to magic.
Keeping busy helps keep his mind clear and he ends up with a wide collection of friends and various bits-and-bobs people give him in exchange.
1894: Finn turns 30 but doesn’t feel like it. He’s not convinced he seems like it either. He’s not married, he doesn't have kids, and has nothing in the works to change it. A small part of him feels too young and too tired for all that. If he hadn’t experienced an actual time loop earlier in the year to know what they actually feel like he might be tempted to think there was something strange going on.
Personality: He is usually lighthearted and jovial if not a little eccentric. He is among the first to join in at the slightest hint of group singing and thinks food tastes better when shared. He drinks socially and often, leaving him with a pretty high tolerance for alcohol. He does not like being alone for extended periods of time and is absolutely not above showing up on a friend’s doorstep just to have some company.
Finn is susceptible to anxiety. This most notably began with magical illnesses and contagions, which has previously spiraled into severe episodes that impede and interfere with his normal life. It can sometimes bleed into other areas of his life as well. He "deals" with this by keeping busy and doing an unhealthy amount of research on all things medical, but especially whatever his current maladious fixation is.
Out-of-Character
Name: FawkesAge: 30's
Contact: PM Jack Dorset
