In-Character
Full Name: Elias Jasper GrimstoneNicknames: --
Birthdate: July 7th, 1859
Current Age: 28 Years
Occupation: Broommaker
Reputation: 9
Though generally respectable now, Elias' work did propel him from the working class, and an ill-advised romantic entanglement in his past once made him a topic of gossip.Residence: South-West Knightsway, Bartonburg, Hogsmeade
With 19th century broommaking still largely a cottage industry, the ground floor of the Grimstone house functions as his workshop, with separate doors to it and, up a flight of steps, to the house proper.Hogwarts House: Gryffindor
Wand: English oak, 13”, dragon heartstring, sturdy
Blood Status: Halfblood
Social Class: Born working class, rose to middle
Family:
Simon Grimstone | Father | 1834
A muggle, magic might have distanced him somewhat from his family over the years, but Elias and his father aren’t entirely different in character. Simon works hard, has a dry sense of humour and at heart, maybe he’s a romantic, but he can also be hot-headed and extremely obstinate.Lucille Grimstone, née ______ | Mother | 1837
Lucille has always had an adventurous spirit, though in practice it hasn’t carried her far. Fortunately, she is unafraid of hardship, with a bright demeanour and the resourcefulness to usually land on her feet.Ruth Lockhart, née Grimstone | Sister | 1862
Magnus Lockhart | Brother-in-law | 1862
-- Margaery Bess Lockhart | Niece | 1884
-- Calvin Elias Lockhart | Nephew | 1885
Anthony Grimstone | Brother | 1865
Appearance: Everyone in the family is on the tall side, but teenage Elias got a growth spurt and didn’t stop growing. 6’3” might make him look imposing - he is, at least, pretty instantly visible in a room - if he weren’t in a terrible habit of slouching as much as humanly possible. Spending most of his days hunched over in his workshop or in the air on a broom doesn’t help much either. He is right handed. He has blue eyes and sandy-brown hair, having darkened slowly over the years. On the rare occasion, he will smarten himself up and look half-decent, but can more commonly be found veering towards dishevelled, looking either as though he’s just gotten out of bed or just flown through a thicket. He tends to sport at least some stubble from never making time to shave, but it’s easy to tell when he gets too invested in his work: without intervention, he has been known to reach the state of ragged mess in rumpled three-day-old clothes. He’s been mistaken for a beggar in his own house before. He’s not proud.
History: July 1859 | Elias is born to Simon and Lucille Grimstone, who are living in Portsmouth. They fell in love and married young, still in their early twenties and neither very established. Lucille might have dreamt of travelling, but Simon, as his father had done before him, had already apprenticed in the local dockyards as a shipwright. It made sense to stay.
Portsmouth has been rapidly expanding year on year, so there is plenty of competition in the workforce; to make things worse, ship construction as an industry is changing fast. With ships beginning to be made from metal by new industrial processes, skilled labourers trained in old techniques like Simon suffer. There’s some trouble with the workers’ unions, and Simon struggles a little more to find the next job, and the next.
November 1862 | Ruth is born, a younger sister.
January 1865 | Now they have a little brother, too! Anthony is born. The family doesn’t have much, but they make ends meet as best they can. Lucille labours just as hard as Simon, when he has work, at seamstressing among other things, and Elias (and eventually Ruth and Tony) pull their weight however they can. They have loving parents, after all, so his childhood never seemed a bad one.
And Simon and Lucille seemed as in love as ever, despite their different worlds. Both of their families, however, are a little wary of the situation... and the strangeness of it eventually sinks in for Simon when his children begin to show signs of magic, revealing them to be like their mother. It’s another area of his life to which he feels removed, closed off; maybe it’s partly his fault, for magnifying the detachment.
September 1870 | His parents push for their children’s education whatever the cost, and so at last Elias is off - away from Portsmouth and the only world he’s ever known! - to Hogwarts. The Sorting Hat considers Hufflepuff for him, and Elias sees no problem with that but the next thing he knows, it has sent him off to Gryffindor. Making friends is easy enough, and even among all the lessons there is plenty of time for childish fun. However, the highlight of his whole first year put together is the flying. He rather wishes they had nothing but flying lessons, and takes out an old school broom from the broom cupboard regularly for extra practice.
1871 - 1872 | He tries out for the Quidditch team, and gets Chaser. Having gotten weirdly attached to the school broom he keeps using, when one of this year’s first years crashes and snaps it in two, Elias takes this as a personal tragedy. None of the other brooms feel quite right, and he spends much of the winter holidays holed away with Dad’s tools, trying his best to recreate it.
1872 - 1873 | Third year sees him add Earth Magic and Muggle Studies to his class list; he takes Art as well and finds he has a decent hand for sketching. Generally, when he applies himself - really puts in the effort - Elias is quite bright, pretty well-balanced in magical theory and in practice.
1873 - 1874 | But forget classes. He has his interests, and in pursuing those, Elias is obsessive. Quidditch is fun, but it’s not about the sport. Instead, Elias is up at the library at erratic hours, reading histories of brooms and looking up obscure charms and doing weird little experiments out on the grounds like levitating twigs, trying to figure out how this magic works, because obviously brooms are the coolest thing to exist ever and why on earth does no one else care enough about this?
1874 - 1875 | In his fifth year, Ruth joins him at Hogwarts and in Gryffindor. Her sorting probably makes sense, given how naturally they’ve always gotten along. Younger sister she might be, but at least she’s not annoying.
He knows how important exams will be for getting a stable job, so drops out of the Quidditch team for the year to study. Still, given his penchant for things that aren’t on the syllabus, some of his grades suffer from his lack of interest:
ASTRONOMY — AIn the summer, he acquires an apprenticeship with a broommaker he has been corresponding with on a professor’s recommendation. It is strange to be away from Portsmouth in summer. Elias keeps thinking of things he ought to tell his father about things he learns, given carpentry isn’t so dissimilar a trade, but he forgets to write much of it down in letters, and just sends home the little pay he makes.
CHARMS — O
DADA — E
EARTH MAGIC — E
MUGGLE STUDIES — E
HERBOLOGY — E
HISTORY OF MAGIC — D
POTIONS — A
TRANSFIGURATION — E
He hasn’t expected to continue on to do his NEWTs - not when Ruth is at Hogwarts now, and Tony still to have his chance - but his mentor assures the extra learning won’t be a waste, and his mother is certainly keen to give them all the world.
1875 - 1876 | So he stays on for NEWTs, whittling down his classload to Charms, Earth Magic, Herbology and Transfiguration. He returns to the Quidditch team as Chaser, but spends much of the rest of his time drawing out prototypes.
1876 - 1877 | Tony gets to come to school at last; he is sorted into Ravenclaw. He graduates in May, and NEWT results come out in summer:
CHARMS — ODespite the upheaval of 1877 between the muggle and magical worlds, the Grimstones remain innocuous enough in Portsmouth; once the fervour has died down, Elias returns to his apprenticeship full-time. Working with the broommaker (who does most of his trade from Diagon Alley), he starts filling orders for people - mostly no-name models, just doing custom designs or alterations.
EARTH MAGIC — O
HERBOLOGY — A
TRANSFIGURATION — A
Curious, Elias visits the newly established Hogsmeade a few times, and even attempts to fly from Hogsmeade back to London or Portsmouth, once or twice, but any broom he uses usually starts stuttering after a few hours of flying, like it’s getting worn out, and it isn’t nearly sturdy enough to fly as high as he needs for an extended period of time. He buckles down to investigate just how to make a more dependable broom model.
1879 | With a little more experience under his belt, by the time Elias is twenty he can build a broom from scratch. In between filling orders and learning, he has created a few distinct broom prototypes of his own. But the Oakshaft ‘79, as he christens it, is the one that really takes off.
Because it turns out it’s pretty good, and there’s a market for it, far beyond the sporting world: most of the brooms people have are no good for actual travelling. The Oakshaft is generally reviewed as sturdy and dependable, comfortable and quite handsome in design. After a couple of months, word spreads, and he is rushed off his feet with orders for it. What is sleep, again? The only way to get the work done is to leave the workshop where he’s apprenticing and set up his own, devoting all his hours to recreating the one model up to its commercial standard every time. It’s a learning curve, one he has to get to grips with on his feet, and Elias feels like he’s always improvising a little: but it continues selling well, and suddenly his name is known, as well as the Oakshaft’s; he’s a broom maker of his own merit.
It’s a lucky break if ever he’s heard of one, and the good publicity and orders flooding in have more drastic impacts yet. Financially, he abruptly has more money than he knows what to do with. It’s terrifying, really. Convinced that his luck will probably change, he doesn't go out of his way to spend it.
1880 | That said, the winds show no signs of changing, so Elias finally reasons he ought to take some practical measures. He moves shop up to Hogsmeade, with enough to actually set down a deposit on a house. It is unspoken but obvious that he won’t benefit from this alone: he sets aside a portion of his earnings for his parents, and realises that even if Tony doesn’t get a scholarship (though his brother is smart, and probably will) or their father finds himself out of work again, he can likely save enough to keep Tony in school or the family afloat.
With that in mind, Elias saves what he can and invests the rest of the capital back in the brooms so that he can keep up with commissions and expand his selection of broom models. By this point, the Grimstones have wealth and renown enough to be considered middle class, and although the area he’s living in is nicer than any of their old Portsmouth neighbourhoods, Elias is still working too hard to spend much time in middle class society. Adjusting to the different customs and increased formalities of the middle class world is a slow and alien process, but Elias is polite and amiable enough, and fortunately gets introduced around by some better-off business contacts.
1882 | Business is still booming, at least until that August, when a Bartonburg fire hits the Grimstone house and burns the place down, workshop and all. Having rescued what he can, he has still lost a lot and loses more in the time it takes to recover everything - and business has already been set back by his being absent on the Hogsmeade Trail earlier that year.
1883 | The fire did allow for the house to be rebuilt, which is a good opportunity to expand his workshop space and make sure there is enough space for Ruth and Tony to live at the place comfortably as well; Tony will be graduating this summer. In the meantime, Elias meets another Ravenclaw, one Evangeline Asperhand. She is witty and kind and free-spirited, and their relationship flourishes fast, though this is not the good thing it feels like: she is from the upper class and an old pureblood family, out of his league in every way.
Practicalities aren’t enough to stop them for the first moment, at least not until they get caught at the Hogwarts Coming Out Ball. Their naivety shows all the more clearly once she has graduated and her rebellions and public scandal face harsher consequences from her family; most of the shine wears off from any dreams they might’ve had for a future together. This is real life, after all, and the circumstances are too unforgiving.
1884 | Tony graduates his internship and becomes a Potion & Plant Poisoning healer. Ruth, now married to a quidditch player, Magnus Lockhart, gives birth to a girl, Margaery. In Elias’ peripheral vision - it’s in the papers, after all - Evangeline is married off to a suitable husband, and that’s the end of that.
1885 | Rue has another child, this time Calvin Elias. (Pay attention to the middle name, if you will.)
1886 | Elias, himself, has been focusing on his work, much the same as ever. Besides the Oakshaft, he has since branched out into Quidditch brooms (such as the Skyrocket of ‘83) and those built to tackle extreme weather (the Stormchaser, ‘84), and continues to make a wider range of high and low-end models, taking commissions of his own as well.
1887 | Keeping his head down and working is one thing, but Elias has much avoided romance in recent years. He’s met no end of people, but is still no closer to marriage - he’s not sure how keen he is to be married, but since he’s nearing thirty, it’s probably time to get a move on.
Personality: Elias credits his own path in life to his combination of inventiveness and hard-working determination, being unafraid to roll up his sleeves and tackle a problem. Though he can seem distant and absent-minded, when he cares about something, he is not only dependable, but will put his heart wholly into it with enthusiasm, perfectionism and true obsessiveness. Despite all this, he has a soft spot for childish fun; flying has always appealed to his inner adventurousness. A Gryffindor through and through, Elias is more prone to following his heart than his head, and can act rashly every once in a while. He’s no stickler for tradition, and doesn’t care to be the centre of society - and despite his general aura of awkwardness and tendency to get himself into scrapes, he can usually be counted on to be amiable and considerate and polite. (Though sometimes the Grimstone sarcasm slips through.)
Other:
— He usually stays relatively neutral in in the Quidditch world, making deals with certain teams only for the sake of business, but as a boy living in Portsmouth, the Wimbourne Wasps were his home team, and he’ll always have a soft spot for them.Sample Roleplay Post:
— Elias and animals have an... interesting relationship. (They don’t understand each other. At all.)
— His patronus is a flying squirrel.
He couldn't help but let out a yelp aloud at falling from the bench, jolted from that nap and suddenly sprawled on the path, bleary-eyed and all. Elias started again at the sight of what had prompted him to roll off: not a person at all, but a too-friendly fox, still looking dignified up on the bench.
Elias blinked, purely because this might have been an odd dream, and the fox was still looking at him. He had just glanced away for a second, shutting his eyes again to lament an uncomfortable stone or two digging into his back, but just as he tried to get up, paws thudded right onto his chest. Elias' head hit the ground again, eyes wide.
...Alright then.
"I washed just this morning, I'll have you know," Elias told the fox, who still seemed to be sniffing him with interest. He wasn't too perturbed by it - it was not so terrible as a suddenly-materialised lemur, after all - but, more strangely, it did not seem to be at all afraid of him! It had gotten darker around Elias, true, but surely the local foxes weren't so bold as to kick people off park benches before it was even night?
Still a little dazed, he shifted a bit against the floor, wondering whether the creature would at least let him sit up or whether he'd have to shove the thing off to get it to leave him alone.
Out-of-Character
Name: MJ
Age: 22
Contact: PM Elias, or ask for my skype!
look ANOTHER beautiful bee!set <3
![[Image: TrSGeWR.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/TrSGeWR.jpg)
