InsaneJournal

OOC:
Name: Kassieface.
Age: Legal.
Timezone: US Eastern
Experience: Lots and lots.
AIM/E-mail: hasn't changed in the past 12 hours.

IC:
Basics:
Full Name: Justin Edward Finch-Fletchley
Justin: From the Roman name Iustinus, which was derived from Iustus, meaning “just.” This was the name of several early saints including Justin Martyr, a Christian philosopher of 2nd century who was beheaded in Rome. It was also borne by two Byzantine emperors. As an English name, it has occasionally been used since the late Middle Ages, though it did not become common until the 20th century.

Edward: Means "rich guard", derived from the Old English elements ead "rich, blessed" and weard "guard". Saint Edward the Confessor was the king of England shortly before the Norman conquest. He was known as a just ruler, and because of his popularity this name remained in use after the conquest when most other Old English names were replaced by Norman ones. The 13th-century king Henry III named his son and successor after the saint, and seven subsequent kings of England were also named Edward. This is one of the few Old English names to be used throughout Europe (in various spellings).

Age/DOB: 24 / 13th October, 1979
Libra: the Scales of Justice. Keywords: "I BALANCE"

Libra is the seventh sign of the zodiac and governs the kidneys, lower back, and buttocks. Positive traits include a rational, logical mind, a fine sense of aesthetics, diplomatic aplomb, good taste, charm, skill with words, intelligence, an innate sense of fairness and justice, and exceptional beauty. Negative characteristics include indecisiveness, excessive dependence on other people, conformist tendencies, manic depression, extravagance, and manipulation.

Libras sorted into House Hufflepuff are some of the sweetest, most charming individuals you will ever meet. They work hard at their studies compared to other Libras (most Libras would rather coast on their strengths than apply themselves to all their subjects) and are often quite successful. Physically, however, they remain unathletic and lazy - the closest they'll ever get to a Quidditch match is the spectator's box, and that only if the weather is pleasant. Anything beautiful and harmonious appeals to the Hufflepuff Libra. Since potions and alchemy require an instinctive awareness of the harmony of ingredients, Hufflepuffs who are Libras display a surprising facility in these subjects. These wizards live to help other people, and to help their friends get along with each other; nothing hurts them more than to see people in distress or bickering with each other. Feuds and wars between wizards distress them. Equally distressing is the disharmony between Muggles and magic users. Many Hufflepuff Libras become Muggle specialists, hoping to bridge the gap between magical and non-magical.

Bloodline: Muggleborn
Occupation: shop boy, Flourish & Blott’s
Former House: Hufflepuff. A badger, badger, badger, badger…

Appearance:
PB: Ryan Donowho
Eyes/Hair: Brown, kind of large, though they usually only look half-awake / Brown, with sort of bronzey hints
Height/Weight: 5’11” (177.5 cm) / 140 pounds (10 stone)
General Appearance: The first thing most people notice about Justin is that he is skinny, skinny, skinny. This wasn’t always the case, actually. He spent all of his childhood and most of his adolescence rather on the chubby side and, when he went into Azkaban in August 1997, he was two inches shorter than he is now and weighed a good fifty, or so, pounds more; when he came out, he barely weighed 98 pounds, soaking wet, and spent his first three months free cooped up in St Mungo’s before his Healers decided that he was well enough to leave. He’s still rather underweight, albeit not too alarmingly so anymore. Just enough that putting on ten to fifteen pounds would do him a whole world of good; any time the subject comes up during his routine visits to St Mungo’s, he just argues that he’s better than he was, which is true, but his healers would still like it if he gained weight… they’re just slowly giving up on that, as he’s held 10 stone consistently for the past two years and doesn’t often have an appetite that’s conducive to gaining weight.

Overall, Justin tends to look either stoically resigned or like he just watched you drive a car over his favorite, sickly, three-legged puppy. After five years out of Azkaban, he’s not as prone to random, seemingly unprompted displays of negative emotion (e.g., breaking down sobbing for no apparent reason, sitting on the sofa in a fetal position with all the lights off, clinging to the nearest person and whimpering, etc.), but he generally doesn’t look in the least bit happy about anything. Admittedly, that has gotten better. Seeing him genuinely smile is mildly rare, but it still happens and he’s sort of learned to temper just how sad he looks into looking more tired than anything – which isn’t entirely off, really, since he usually is rather tired. Except when he's doing charity work; Justin absolutely lights up when he's doing charity work, and, if you see him in church, he usually has an exceedingly hopeful look on hisface.

He’s rather long in the face, literally as well as figuratively, and in the neck, and in the arms, legs – his body sort of looks elongated in general, which isn’t much helped by his low body mass. Blessed with his mother's good bone structure, he would likely look more aristocratic, if he weren't as thin as he is, but in lieu of that, he has an air of asceticism about him, that goes beyond just being thin and into his mildly distracted behaviours and facial appearance, his economy of words in speaking, his hair, his clothes, and everything else. His hair tends to attract comments in the vein of “Hooligan,” but he’s honestly not leaving it long to spite anybody; he just has very little interest in cutting it, or caring for it at all, given that his method of doing so is “wash, air-dry, let it do what it wants.” Mostly, all it does is hang there and occasionally get in his face.

Style of Dress: Casual’s a good way to describe it. He always looks clean and presentable, but there’s no real feeling in it and he tends not to care what he puts on with which, as long as no one hassles him about anything. Overwhelmingly, he dresses for comfort more than anything else; he figures that, since he has to wear clothes or people will get upset, he might as well not wear anything that’s particularly bothersome or requires much fussing or any of that. Despite being in the Wizarding world almost entirely full time – after all, his only surviving Muggle family is his eldest brother’s wife and his three nieces – he’s still at his most comfortable in jeans and t-shirts and, finally, after having to learn the hard way (read: a well-intentioned lecture from Zach) that his clothes from before Azkaban were too short in the legs and too big in the waist, he has clothes that fit decently and look nice. Are they special? Well, he doesn’t really know or care. But they keep him from dying of exposure, so, for that, he appreciates them.

Personality:
General Personality: There’s a very good reason why people say that any time in Azkaban will change a person, perhaps irreversibly: it does, and Justin makes this at best painfully obvious. Before going into prison, Justin was a fairly cheerful, if rather uppity, rather repressed, and rather fussy, sort of bloke. He defined the phrase “pleasantly plump,” in that he was both rather overweight and that he was just a really pleasant guy to spend time with: kind and sweet, genuinely friendly, dedicated to doing what was right, organized, generous, loving, loyal, a nearly perfect little gentleman with an undeniable diplomatic aplomb (hell, if a kid can make Zacharias Smith sound like less of a prat, he has to be some kind of diplomat), a peace-maker notable in a House typically associated with peace-makers, intrinsically fair, intelligent, and, true, he was a bit repressed, indecisive, a bit obsessive, a bit of a conformist, easily upset by both fighting and wrongdoing, too forgiving and sometimes too willing to bend over backwards for other people or in the name of keeping as many people as possible as happy as possible, but he was just a generally very good guy.

Don’t misunderstand the use of the past tense there: Justin is still a very good guy and most of the traits for which he was well-known before his one-year stint in Azkaban are still exceedingly prominent in him, almost to the point of being annoyingly so. He’s still a compulsive diplomat and will still function as Zach’s mouthpiece, taking the pains to rephrase whatever Zach wants to tell people and making it sound nicer, rather than letting Zach’s particular brand of honesty make people want to hurt him or other people. He’s still a true blue, loyal friend who will fight, to the death is necessary, to protect the people he calls part of his family; he sticks up for the proverbial little guy and believes in doing the right thing, occasionally to his detriment and often to the point of attracting the question of why he was a Hufflepuff, rather than a Gryffindor. He’s intuitive, socially, knowing what people need to hear and most often giving it to them, unless it directly contradicts his strong moral convictions to do so – and he does have strong moral convictions. Most often, his friends and surviving family will take precedence over his morals, but almost nothing else has that power, unless there’s a very good reason to do so.

But for all the things about him that are the same, Justin has been undeniably changed by prison: where he was cheerful before, he’s now fairly sedate and more than a little sad. It really isn’t easy, going from an environment where the hard things in your life – from how terrified and angry you were towards your grandmother’s dog, to watching your grandfather die trying to save the thing from getting hit by a car (only for both of them to die, after you wished the dog dead), to being the only one at your grandmother’s bedside when she died, to watching your older brother and his friends do wrong by everything you believed (and being the only one who seemed to think it was wrong when your brother got off), to watching most of your family be tortured and murdered by Death Eaters; all of your fears, traumas, insecurities, and everything else laid out bare before you and forced on you with the acute force of an ice pick to the temple – back into an environment wherein you were formerly repressed has been exceptionally difficult. Justin has yet to completely recover the sense of stiff-upper-lip repression he used to have and it’s very likely that he never will, just because, between all of the psychological after-effects he’s suffered in the fall-out from Azkaban… well, he’s taken them as well as he could, considering, but they’ve been really tough pills to swallow.

At first, shallow glances, it’s probably not that obvious that Justin is ridiculously traumatized, but that fact only takes about five minutes to come out in full force; hang around for those five minutes and it become obvious that, yes, he’s been through and suffered a lot, but also that he’s trying ridiculously hard to make this reality seem at least slightly less extreme than it is. Five years out of Azkaban, in his opinion, should be enough that he should be able to function normally, and he does function normally… just not in the same fashion that he used to. Even though denying this fact is pointless, he still tries; never mind that there have been a good deal of reasons, in recent memory, not to believe him – his physique, for one, is still scrawny where, for most of his first eighteen years, he was the complete opposite; he has gotten to the point that he smiles and laughs without forcing himself to do so, but it still occurs far less often than it used to, a fact that utterly displeases him; he’s suffered from nightmares, random mood crashes and crying jags, irrational fears, and flashback-esque jaunts of remembering something so strongly that it isn’t real. Initially, he had trouble regaining control of his magical abilities and he was only able to take his NEWTs in 2001, after regaining said control and learning the material he missed in prison.

He’s sedate and, despite being able now to spend decently long periods of time alone, he both can’t be trusted on his own for that long and he prefers to be with people – but he’s still nowhere near as gregarious as he used to be. He loves his three little nieces dearly, but most visits he has with them end with him on the verge of tears, convinced, to some degree, once more that the reason they don’t have a father is because he did something wrong in demanding his deserved place in the Wizarding world. This is all apparent if you talk to him for an hour; if you go on first glances alone, Justin probably seems like a little more than a quiet, somewhat skittish, polite, kind, and helpful young man with a rather contemplative nature and temperament. What he objects to vehemently is the notion that he’s repressed just because he’s admittedly a bit of a prude and is yet a virgin at 24: he’s been repressed, he was repressed for a great deal of his life, but, after Azkaban, this has been almost wholly in the past tense: you can’t come out of a year of having your neuroses laid bare and all your worst memories constantly at the front of your mind and ever really be repressed again.

That said, Justin really doesn’t mind that people assign to him a “contemplative temperament”: during his very Anglincan upbringing, he was raised with a deep respect for the contemplative life, the live lived by monks and scholars and other learned sorts; it just has never been the life that he would choose for himself, given the choice, and it goes back to his incredibly deep faith. Christianity has always been a large part of Justin’s life, and it has only gotten to be moreso since he’s gone through Azkaban: he puts his faith in God, he upholds the standards and traditions – you know, loving his neighbor, being a good person, helping the less fortunate, going to church and praying and taking his sacraments, trying to spread peace as much as he can – and what he hates the most about this ordeal with Azkaban is that his faith has never really been the same. This conclusion is entirely his own, but for some reason, he has a tendency to look back on the inarguable trauma of Azkaban and think that, since being trapped in a prison with Dementors was just an earthly suffering, he should be better and rise above it through his faith. Logically, Justin knows that this is crazy, that it’s not a failure on his part, and that God still loves him, but he still finds himself plagued by doubts and frustrations.

Back to the point, though, Christianity is why Justin has never been one to simply accept the contemplative life, or one to sit by and do nothing when he can be of use. He’s a hard and devoted worker and while he does unwaveringly believe in peace and tries to live the virtues (purity, temperance, faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice) and the characters enumerated in Matthew’s Beatitudes (poor in spirit, meek, merciful, seeking righteousness, pure of heart, peace-maker, persecuted for righteousness’s sake, unafraid of grieving or of comforting the grieving), he doesn’t see anywhere on these lists evidence that being a good Christian means sitting on his arse and praying while the world suffers. Words, in his estimation, are nice and pretty, and it’s good to believe in something beneficial, but none of that means as much as actions. Additionally, sure, he might not be perfect, but at least he’s trying and he does what he says by standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves or doing what’s right when others can’t or won’t. In prison, he often quoted the Beatitudes or other passages from Scripture to keep himself somewhat sane, but all it really did was give him something to occupy his time a little bit. Part of what was so difficult for him about sitting in Azkaban during the war was that it forced him into an inactive role while his friends were busy risking their lives, safeties, and well-beings to stand up and fight. Justin eventually stopped eating because he felt too helpless and the Dementors understandably didn’t make things any easier.

Hypocrisy is something that Justin finds unspeakably ugly in people and in the world, and, during the worst of his lows, he has trouble telling himself that being tossed in Azkaban the way that he was and, thus, not being able to fight did not make a hypocrite out of him. He’s accepted that he can’t change the behaviors exhibited in other people, but he endeavors not to be a hypocrite himself, mostly out of genuine conviction, though a small part of it can still be attributed to overcompensating for the presumed hypocrisy on his part. Even during the worst part of his recovery, he insisted on paraphrasing Zacharias’s words to other people so that no one would feel the pressing need to hurt anyone else. Even with how much he’s unquestionably suffered, he does charity work, both in the Muggle and magical worlds, because he refuses to let himself believe that his suffering is the worst in the world or that his suffering means that he can’t help someone else to improve their life.

This is very open-hearted of him, yes, but it could easily be said that Justin’s twin senses of fairness and justice, and his devotion to peace, honesty (if a more diplomatic honesty than Zach’s, in furthering of that devotion to peace), and to doing good works for others, are more acute than his sense of self-preservation. He got himself chucked into Azkaban because his senses of fairness and justice found him a big problem to have with Blood Purism, Purist philosophy, and simply allowing the self-entitled Purist twats he went to school with to act like they owned everything, just because they had wizards in the family for ages. Beyond just that, though, Justin has an unbelievable ability to be ridiculously hard on himself when he doesn’t deserve it, which motivated the hard work he was known for in school, but also has the side effect of him accidentally running himself ragged or, even worse, triggering one of his lovely post-traumatic freak-outs.

That’s really where Justin is his most difficult and complicated, his post-traumatic freak-outs: nominally, he knows that they happen and he acknowledges their debilitating nature, but he thinks that he should be stronger than he apparently, by his standards, is. His suffering isn’t that bad, compared to other people’s, and so it shouldn’t have such an effect on him. Generally, he’s quite a positive force in his own recovery, utterly refusing to just let his trauma own him, but there are times when he gets incredibly stupid about it, tries to do something he’s not ready for, and, as a consequence, ends up needing more help than he really wants to accept. As he will often tell his poor friends and Healers, Justin knows he’s only human; but he doesn’t think he can be blamed for wanting to rise above his inherently fallen nature and be something better.

Aspirations: Justin’s not a particularly ambitious person and, if you asked him, his major aspirations would be to be happy, to find someone to love and to love back, and to not come out of every meeting with his nieces and sister-in-law feeling like an utterly awful person who’s completely responsible for the deaths of most of his family. His major aspirations are thus: he’d like to have his faith the way he did before spending a year in Azkaban; he’d like to find something that he’s passionate about and that gives his life more shape and meaning than the “one day at a time” series of coincidences kind of life that he’s fallen into; and he’d like to be able to get a good night’s sleep without using the little light device that Ernie made him.

Fears: Being alone, large groups of people, complete darkness, bright lights, grime of any sort, Dementors, Fenrir Greyback, blood, being too cold, being too hot, being ill (specifically that the smallest illness will lead to some horrible illness if left untreated), disappointing his late grandmother, his nieces and sister-in-law (he loves them, but will go out of his way to avoid talking to them, because he inevitably comes out with his mood completely crashed, convinced that his family’s deaths were his fault), small children (they remind him of his nieces), feeling weak, deep stagnant water, crying in public, the thought that he’ll always be stuck in this really bothersome, “day-by-day” stasis without being able to get back more than a semblance of a normal life, the fact that his faith was so shaken by Azkaban and the fact that he hasn’t gotten it completely back yet

Quirks/Habits: Goes to church every Sunday, without fail, and shows up early, partly for the recitation of the rosary and partly so he and whoever’s coming with him can have the center of the third-row pew; absentmindedly hums to himself if he thinks it’s too quiet; lets his hair do what it will, but will tie it back with anything he can if it gets vexing; reads on the job, if the shift is slow; often licks, purses, applies chapstick to, or otherwise fusses with his lips; lightly shakes his head in order to wake himself up or bring himself back to reality; has to be coaxed into wearing socks, as he’s generally not fond of them.

History:
Parents’ Names: Lady Catherine Finch, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 56
Lord Edward Fletchley III, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 60

Grandparents’ Names: Lord Marcus Finch, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 84
Lady Agnes Finch, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 81
Lord Edward Fletchley II, died July 1989 from complications and internal hemorrhaging following being hit by a car, aged 77
Lady Mary Fletchley, died November 1990 from breast cancer, aged 76

Siblings’ Names: Edward Finch-Fletchley, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 34; widow, Victoria Finch-Fletchley, advertising executive, 39; children, Kayleigh Finch-Fletchley (6), Ruby Finch-Fletchley (7), Madeline Finch-Fletchley (8)

Georgina Finch-Fletchley, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 27

Louise Finch-Fletchley, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 25

Christopher Finch-Fletchley, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 22

Aunts, Uncles, & Cousins: The clan Finch-Fletchley is fairly legion, and Justin has very limited contact with most of his aunts, uncles, and cousins, mostly because the choice, to him, appears to be picking the magical world or an extended family that, while they don’t treat him like dirt, isn’t exactly the most open-minded and understanding bunch of people on the block. Additionally, being the family mistake has the rather questionable side effect of being considerably younger than most of his cousins, which makes relating to them difficult to borderline impossible and, all things considered, Justin really has better things to do. That being said, there are a couple of significant figures from the extended family:

Uncle George Fletchley, 56, Muggle: The Fletchley family mistake, George has always been the uncle with whom Justin has most identified; considerably younger than the other Fletchley siblings, he came of age during the middle of the burgeoning hippie movement, which he fell into hardcore when, immediately after finishing his education at Eton College, he expatriated to the States for a while. He went to more love ins than he cares to count, the Human Be-In in San Francisco, several other Be-Ins in Central Park, Woodstock, Altamont, and all of that fun stuff. He returned to England in April 1971, married once in 1976 to a girl who wound up leaving him for a politician, and hasn’t settled down since, aside from running a small, local produce and New Age mysticism shop in Glastonbury, Somerset. Legitimately one of Justin’s favorite members of the family, he was really more a father to his nephew than Edward III was, has been unbelievably important in the process of getting Justin back on his feet after Azkaban, and remains one of the biggest reasons why Glastonbury is one of Justin’s favorite places of day-trips.

Aunt Agatha Finch, died in a Death Eater attack, August 1997, aged 58: Mum’s uppity older sister and not always one of Justin’s favorite people in the world, Aunt Agatha was the sort of woman best described as… well. Let’s just say that calling her a harpy let loose from the deepest reaches of the lowest pit of the Inferno does a great injustice to all harpies let loose from etc., etc. The middle of the three Finch sisters, Agatha never married, devoting herself, instead, to being the resident Bible-thumping crazy, embracing the old Puritan traditions in extremo, putting the fear of God into boys who said “Hell,” girls who showed off their ankles, and anyone who took the Lord’s name in vain, and generally being bitchier than your average Church of England parishioner.

A wholly terrifying woman, she rather terrorized her nieces’ and nephews’ childhoods, taking specific interest in Justin because of the fact that her sister’s accidental pregnancy meant that, gasp shock and horrors, Catherine might actually have enjoyed sex with her husband, rather than simply laying back and thinking of England. What rampant sinning, oh bless her for having the fortitude and sense of justice to chastise the offspring caused by that abominable act of sexual enjoyment. For some backwards reason or other, she insisted on calling Justin her favourite nephew until her death, and, needless to say, she was just outraged when it turned out that her favourite nephew was a Wizard. She fought tooth and nail against him ever going to Hogwarts, but failed, and, really, is one of the major reasons why he’s so insistent about the fact that he belongs in the magical world just as much as any Pureblood. Hey, you’d fight for the right to belong too, if your crazy maiden aunt was telling you that they’d never accept or understand you.

Despite all of her rampant crazy, though, Aunt Aggie wasn’t completely horrible, and she did spoil Justin, if he behaved properly by her mildly ludicrous standards. Misguided, strict, and occasionally hypocritical though she was, she really did have a good heart and she honestly believed that she was doing the best thing for Justin by trying to oppose his going off to “that Hell-bound witchcraft school.” Once he finally stood up to her and told her that, no, he really wanted to go there and yes, he did believe that Jesus still loved him and yes, he could be a Wizard and a good Christian, she let up a bit, although she was never fully supportive of his choice to learn magic, especially after the incident with the Basilisk in his second year. She stopped complaining so much, though, and she showed her final show of love and support when she tried to fight back against the Snatchers who came for Justin in August 1997, a fight during which she gave Fenrir Greyback what-for with a chair, her handbag, and then her bare hands before eventually being mauled to death.

History - Birth to Age 10: Justin was an accident, but no one’s ever told him that. Catherine Finch and Edward Fletchley III were obnoxiously well-off members of minor English noble families and already had, to their names, an heir (Edward IV, although, technically, he was a first, given the hyphenation of his surname; born 1963), a spare (Christopher, born 1975), and two daughters for pairing off to acceptable young men (Georgina, born 1970; and Louise, born 1972). Apparently, despite their claims to have been quite happy with just the four, Catherine was laying back and thinking of England more often than she let on, it was more than likely that she got actual enjoyment out of it rather than simply having sex in order to have children, and, with both parents holding societal and Church of England-imposed anti-birth control stances, something was bound to happen sooner or later. And so it did. They named the result of this something Justin.

It was a fair, sunny day in October 1979 when the youngest of the clan Finch-Fletchley came along, pink, perfect, and welcomed into the world by every Finch or Fletchley who could get to Kent and Canterbury Hospital, and, progressively, by those who’d missed hanging around the waiting room during the actual birthing. Due to his mother’s age, Justin’s birth got a little complicated, but Catherine was a trooper and pulled through, even though the post-script to the blessed event was that several doctors told her to back off having any more children, lest she risk her health. Well, her thoughts on birth control aside, she was perfectly fine with this arrangement because now, in addition to having her heir, her spare, and her daughters, she had a perfectly precious youngest son to spoil.

And she did spoil him, albeit in a rather special, wholly uppercrust, minor nobility way – especially when young Justin seemed to have difficulty fighting off infection. As far as Mummy Dearest was concerned, her youngest deserved a special set of standards – he was adorable, after all, and sickly, and he was her precious baby; how could she hold him to the same standards as all of her other children – but for every time she tried to get him some special treat, or give him sweets before dinner, or take him on a day-trip he might not have completely deserved, there was Justin’s father. Edward III was hardly a cruel parent, and there was never any question that he loved any of his children, but he was rather distant and, from day one, he attempted to instill in Justin a sense of fairness, justice, and hard work. Just because they were wealthy, Edward reasoned, did not make them better people than anyone else; no person was inherently better than anyone else for any reason and the only people who thought so were so unsure of themselves that they felt the need to parade themselves around, trying to make people respect them. They really weren’t that terrifying, at the root of everything, and the best thing to do was to work hard, so as to avoid being like them, and to stand up to them.

This philosophy found anchors in the two greatest opposing figures of Justin’s young life, Uncle George and Aunt Agatha, the combined influence of whom somehow translated into Justin’s very faithful Christianity. George, having come of age during the hippie movement, was an advocate of equality, love, unity, togetherness, and the like; Agatha, being a wholly terrifying Bible-thumper, was an advocate of faith in Christ, rituals, quoting psalms for fun, and the like; and, Justin’s parents being busy people and his siblings being much older than he was, George and Agatha had ridiculous amounts of opportunity to come together and operate as Justin’s stand-in parents. And, of course, like good minor nobles, Edward III and Catherine wholly supported the Good Old Church of England, but, with them and Justin’s siblings, religion was more of a ceremonial thing, something that they did just because it was proper, expected, and traditional. Between George telling Justin to find something to believe in with all his being, and Agatha telling Justin that, whatever happened on this earth, faith in the Lord would help him to persevere, and both of them telling him that doing something without the proper conviction put behind it was borderline hypocrisy, Justin concluded that there was no point in participating in Church rituals without having faith – and, really, he didn’t want to be without faith. Maybe his parents and siblings didn’t really understand it, but Uncle George and Aunt Agatha wouldn’t have lied to him about faith and, really, it did make him feel better to believe in God, and Jesus, and the fundamental good of mankind, the universe, God’s Plan, etc.

Then there were Justin’s grandparents, with whom he was also incredibly close. What he got out of the four elderly people who seemed to like doting on him and taking him on special jaunts that his siblings weren’t invited to was a sense of family and everything that family meant. According to his grandparents, family was supposed to come before everything else. Friends could be integrated into the definition of family, but, ultimately, you were supposed to stick by your family, happen what may; families stood up for each other and themselves, families got their different members through the worst of the worst, and, whether in the best of times or the worst, families made sure not to attract any negative attention for each other, which they did by being fairly honest with one another but incredibly repressed with other people. “Stiff upper lip” was the law of Justin’s grandparents’ land and, unfortunately, he started taking a repressive attitude to everything.

Not coincidentally, this happened around the time strange things started occurring around him. Justin’s first sign of magic, at age six, was brushed off as in incredibly odd coincidence, attributed to the fact that big brother Christopher liked to tramp around the house like an elephant: Justin wanted a tin of biscuits that his mother had put up on a high shelf and, somehow, even though Christopher was nowhere near enough for the force of his tramping to make a difference, the tin of biscuits found its way off the shelf and into Justin’s lap without hurting him. The next time, Justin got all too annoyed with the clacking sound his primary school teacher’s heel shoes made on the floor and they broke. Then her next pair broke. Then the next pair broke. And so on and so forth until, after eight months of this, she gave up and switched to flat shoes. After that, a particularly obnoxious strand of Christmas lights shaped like clusters of jalapeño peppers – Uncle George’s desired contribution to the family Christmas tree – bothered Justin immensely and soon found themselves completely burned out, past the point of working. George tried plugging them into every electrical socket in the house and got absolutely nothing for his efforts.

Naturally, Justin was more than a bit weirded out by all of the strange things that seemed to be going on around him and maybe it was magic, maybe it was intuition, or maybe it was just paying attention enough to notice that all of these occurrences happened when he felt particularly strongly about something, but either way, Justin still suspected that the truth of these “accidents” was hardly so convenient. It was a perfectly correct conclusion, no matter what everyone else thought, but it was also an unfortunate one to reach, given the timing. …See, Grandmother Mary had this dog, a rather large Saint Bernard named Henry; he was a very sweet thing, really, but he and Justin Did Not Get Along. They never had, really, though Justin had learned to keep his feelings about Henry too himself, but, finally, after being left alone with Henry and Grandfather Edward for a day in July when he was nine, Justin found himself quite passionately wishing for the dog’s demise… which happened when, on an evening walk with Justin and Edward II, Henry bounded away into the path of an oncoming truck. Fearing for his beloved wife’s beloved dog, Edward II bounded after Henry; both of them were hit and, within the next week, both were dead.

Well, suffice to say, Justin didn’t handle this that well – how could he? The logic, in his mind, was that he was responsible for the deaths of someone he loved and a dog that he had rather hated but hadn’t really wanted to see dead, and that had marred him forever. He was as good as a murderer – but, since expressing these thoughts would have been Very, Very Bad, he kept them soundly to himself and just tried not to think about them. Thoughts couldn’t hurt you if you didn’t think about them, right? …Well, probably not so right, but it served Justin decently enough until his grandmother died of breast cancer only two weeks after Justin’s eleventh birthday; after that, the repressed feelings of being a murderer came bubbling back up, and were coupled with the unfortunate side effects of having been the only person in the room when Grandmother Mary died. Needless to say, it was not a happy time for Justin and, despite his attempts to maintain a stiff upper lip the way that his parents and grandparents had taught him to do. If not for his Aunt and Uncle and their varied forms of special influence (faith on her part and being a crying shoulder on his), Justin may not have made it to properly appreciate what happened shortly after that Christmas.

Apparently, Albus Dumbledore had a sense of tact when the mood suited him and, rather than sending someone to the family after Justin’s birthday or too soon after one of their matriarchs had just kicked off, he waited until Boxing Day, at which point the family home in Canterbury received a strange visitor. She was dressed all in tartan plaid, had square-frame glasses and her hair in a bun, and, according to her testimony, her name was Professor Minerva McGonagall, and she was employed as Deputy Headmistress for some place or other called Hogwarts, which was apparently a school somewhere. Well, that just sounded patently absurd to Justin. He had never heard of a hogwart, nor did he think that it sounded particularly pleasant. He further had never heard of anyone named Hogwart, and he rather suspected that that would not be an enjoyable name to have; why anyone would name a school after himself when his surname was Hogwart just… Justin couldn’t fathom it. Furthermore, witches and wizards were fairy tale creatures, like trolls, and goblins, and dragons, and elves, and all that other childish claptrap; Justin was a young man of eleven, thank this Professor Lady very much and he knew better than to believe in such things.

…Well, it wasn’t like he’d never been wrong before. According to Professor McGonagall, it was his choice whether he’d attend this Hogwarts place or not and, after her compelling, “Have you ever made things happen with no explanation? Have odd things happened around you and no one knew why they did?” and then showing off some Awesome Feats of Magic, Justin was more than ready to go running to this magical school to learn amazing feats of magic.

History - 11-18 (Hogwarts): Too bad he had to wait until September to go. Of course, his grandparents were a bit put out that Justin would be breaking the family legacy of going to Eton – and Aunt Agatha went positively mad about her favorite nephew being a freak and a Hell-bound WARLOCK… but Justin and his parents very soundly ignored Great Aunt Agatha and her dissenting opinion. Justin went to Hogwarts come September and, in addition to learning the magic, he found himself immersed in an entirely new culture that he needed to learn and adjust to – and not all of it was that positive with regards to its outlook on him. Also, it included mildly terrifying-looking horses that pulled the school carriages and apparently only Justin could see, as though he needed to feel any more like a stranger in a strange land. Following his Sorting ceremony, Justin found himself sorted into something called Hufflepuff, where promptly made several very good friends – Susan Bones, who’d been nice to him on the train; Hannah Abbott and Wayne Hopkins; and Ernie Macmillan and Zacharias Smith, two “Pureblood” boys (whatever “Pureblood” meant) who, unlike the other “Pureblood” boys, didn’t seem to think that Justin was worthless just because his parents weren’t Wizards.

That, really, was the hardest thing for Justin to adjust to about the Wizarding world: for one thing, the blood politics just made no sense whatsoever, if you looked at them logically, and, for another, Justin Finch-Fletchley took nothing lying down. As soon as he heard about blood-based prejudices, he was incredibly outspoken against them, holding to the thesis that, oh honestly, if he learned about Wizarding culture and assimilated himself into it, who cared that his family was all-Muggle or that he wanted to maintain his ties to some of his Muggle things and ways? Really, if one wanted to interpret it this way, he made himself a target for the Basilisk in his second year: aside from just being Muggleborn, he was an uppity, outspoken Muggleborn; any Dark Lord-supporting Purist would have seriously disapproved. Granted, Justin was hardly some put-upon saint about the whole thing: had he lasted long enough before getting Petrified, he would have been right there with Ernie in thinking that Harry Potter was the Heir of Slytherin – which, he will hold, was a bad conclusion, but not one that seemed unreasonable given the fact that he’d just turned thirteen and had had a big bloody snake apparently set on him – and his reaction to Harry’s display of speaking Parslemouth in the Dueling Club was anything but graceful. Many of his professors wished that he would have taken to his studies with the same kind of fervor, but he wasn’t a bad student. Actually, he was quite a good student, and he worked notoriously hard, but his heart clearly wasn't in it as often as his professors would have liked and he had the potential to be a fair bit better.

Justin’s third year was far from being his favorite; of course, he understood why the Dementors were a necessary evil, and he had things to take his mind off the fact that they were floating around the grounds, but the fact still remained that they were there and he rather didn’t like them. He hardly lost control of himself in the same fashion as some people when the Dementors came onto the Hogwarts Express… but you didn’t have early traumas like watching two of your grandparents die and deal with Dementors well. Aside from his belief in fairness and how it would have made him react, Justin was one of the few people who weren’t at all thrilled with the Hufflepuff victory over Gryffindor that year: yes, winning was nice, but not if they had to get Dementors involved and especially not if they made Harry faint. Despite that moment of being ostensibly pro-Harry, Justin’s tune apparently changed radically the next year, during the debate of “Who’s the real Hogwarts Champion?”, in which he vocally supported Cedric Diggory. It wasn’t anything against Harry, in his eyes, really; it was just that, regardless of what had happened, Cedric was supposed to be the Hogwarts Champion, not Harry, and the fact that Harry was competing too was grossly unfair.

Suffice to say, the sight of Harry returning with Cedric’s dead body was not one that Justin really needed. In fact, he thinks that he really could have gone his whole life without seeing that and been much happier for it – but he did see it and, after Dumbledore gave his moving eulogy for Cedric, Justin knew that he couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Regardless of how he felt about anyone else in the school, they were in this together now, if they really wanted to undo the Dark Lord’s hold on society – which, as a Muggleborn, Justin was pretty strongly in favor of, yes. His strong feelings on this aside, though, there was still the summer before his fifth year and things going on at home that he needed to worry about: namely, Justin’s middle brother, Christopher, and the serious consequences of his morally questionable behavior.

Christopher Finch-Fletchley had always been notoriously charismatic; from primary school onwards, he showed that, while not as talented at academics as either of his brothers, as ambitious as his older one, or as faithful and committed as the younger one, he was a smooth bastard. Even under the strict guidelines at Eton College, he managed to talk or brown-nose his way out of trouble and bad marks more times than anyone could count, and it was probably a shame he didn’t go to university, as he probably would have made a decent politician, with the right people behind him, giving him a platform and PR. Really, all he genuinely wanted to do with his life was have a good time – and he was very good at doing that. The one mistake he made, during the summer before Justin’s fifth year, was inviting Justin along on one of his “good times” in early July. While Christopher and his group of friends all got increasingly intoxicated, to the point that most of them only remember the lie that Christopher made up after the fact, but Justin only acted drunk, and he remembers everything: Christopher and two of his male friends raped one of their female friends; she was too drunk to remember who did or didn’t, and Christopher was sober enough to wear a condom, so the police service didn’t find his semen sample; his two friends went down in flames while he walked free. Because of the utter fit that Justin had about this, Christopher’s “official” version of the story (i.e.: the one told by all his friends who testified) left him out of everything, but it wasn’t something that Justin had an easy time just forgetting, partly for what is was and mostly because, throughout the whole ordeal, he did absolutely nothing to help the poor girl.

So, during his fifth year, when Umbridge’s particular form of educational terrorism had carried on long enough, Justin had extra motivation to run off and join Dumbledore’s Army. Umbridge was doing wrong by absolutely anyone’s standards and Justin wasn’t going to just stand by and allow her to do such, not when he had the ability to raise his voice and his wand against injustice. This worked out semi-decently for a while but, by the time his sixth year came around, and the Prophet finally bothered to report on the fact that the Wizarding world was going to Hell in a handbasket, Justin was feeling pressure from all sides to, for once in his life, just shut his face about Muggleborn rights and keep his head down. His friends told him to do so knowing full well what the Death Eaters were capable – especially after Susan’s aunt, Amelia, was murdered by the Purist terrorists – and his parents, grandparents, sisters, and eldest brother told him to do so based solely on what they gleaned from the Wizarding papers that Justin left out in the family’s Cambridge home. Aunt Agatha actually tried, once more, to keep him from going to school – given that she approved of his outspokenness, she wouldn’t simply tell him to shut up – and that just earned her his raised voice and a miniature lecture about how he belonged in the Wizarding world, doing what was right not just for him and his friends, but for everyone. In theory, the agreement was that he would get to go to school if he just kept his head down and his mouth shut about Muggleborn anything.

…Needless to say, he didn’t listen. He loved and respected his family a great deal, but, by his estimation, doing the overall thing mattered more than honoring a promise not to do the overall right thing. For sixth year, this worked out decently enough… then Dumbledore died. …Then Death Eaters took over the Ministry. When the Ministry fell to Voldemort and his cronies, Justin’s parents tried to talk him into going to the continent for a while, but, being a stubborn little thing, he refused, completely intent on going back to school. He was just Justin Finch-Fletchley, for God’s sake; yes, he was Muggleborn, and yes, he was painfully outspoken, but the Death Eaters weren’t seriously going to come after him, not when there were so many other, more high-profile Muggleborns to go after – Hermione Granger, for instance; she was a Muggleborn and one of Harry Potter’s best friends; of course they’d leave him alone to get her.

…Then the Snatchers came. As was annual custom, the clan Finch-Fletchley was having a little party before Justin went back to school and the only members not present were: Uncle George, who was stuck in Glastonbury for business reasons; Justin’s eldest brother’s wife, who had just had their third daughter and was staying with her sister; and her daughters, who were with their mother. Everything was going very well, despite the air of uneasiness that almost everyone had about the thought of Justin going back to school – but, in the middle of everything, Fenrir Greyback and the Death Eater, Thorfinn Rowle, broke down the door, charged in, and started leaving destruction in their wake. Neither of them was merciful; even though Rowle didn’t maul anyone like Greyback did, he made use of the Cruciatus, the Bone-Twisting Curse, and other forms of torment before using the Killing Curse as what was, in his words, a “last act of mercy.” Justin and Aunt Agatha fought the two of them the hardest and were, ultimately, the last ones standing against the Dark Lord’s servants – but Greyback finally got to Agatha, raping her as he mauled her to death, and Rowle Stunned Justin after “allowing” him to watch his aunt’s wretched final moments.

When Justin came to, he was in a cell in Azkaban prison, opposite a man around Uncle George’s age called Grady Bell, both of them having been chucked in there for the crime of being outspoken Muggleborns. For need of something to do and someone to talk to, the two started talking and hit it off fairly well: they had similar interests, ranging from Christianity to the Lord of the Rings series, and they both tried their best to stick it to the Dementors, Grady by forcing himself to think of his daughter, Katie, and be cheerful, and Justin by forcing himself to have faith. They were oppressed for now, yes, but there was a world and a life outside of this awful place, and it was worth fighting and staying alive for; some day, they’d get their deliverance and life would be so much the sweeter because they’d be able to stand for what was right. This, unfortunately, made them greater targets for the “wannabe Nazgul,” who were drawn to their hope, faith, and cheer; maybe it was helpful for the others in Azkaban – being in that hell-hole was never going to be fun, but with Justin and Grady distracting the spirit-suckers, it meant that the other prisoners got some kind of break – but it pretty well broke the two of them.

For Justin’s part, having to deal with all the memories that he just didn’t think about coming to the forefront of his mind 24/7 – since they even plagued him in his sleep – destroyed his perfectly practiced, stiff-upper-lip repression and his general method of dealing with things. His faith broke more times than he wants to count, when the suffering got to be enough that he found himself in the position of either questioning God or needing to admit that he was a bad person. Sometimes, he did the former, but, overwhelmingly, he did the latter; it all made perfect sense, to him: he’d wished Grandmother Mary’s dog dead, and that wish had killed the dog and Grandfather; Mary’s death hadn’t been his fault, but she’d spent most of her time dying grieving for her husband, and the fact that she couldn’t have died peacefully was Justin’s fault; aside from his uncle, his sister-in-law, and his nieces, his family was dead, he’d had to watch them die, and they would’ve been safe if he’d just kept his mouth shut and run for the continent, instead of trying to go back to school; now, for all he talked about faith, he was questioning God, which was Bad and Wrong; and, even worse, his friends were (he presumed) off fighting and risking their lives for the greater good while he was just rotting in a bloody cell.

Justin and Grady both stopped eating, eventually; because of his youth and the fact that he’d had more weight on him when he’d come into prison, Justin lasted longer, but that hardly helped matters. He was the only witness to Grady’s death and was given the dying wish of, “When you get out of here, boyo, find my Katie and tell her I’m proud of her.” Justin couldn’t even do anything to save the man who was one of the biggest reasons why he’d made it so long in prison, and the promise to find Katie Bell and fulfill her father’s dying wish couldn’t properly alleviate Grady’s suffering, not that anything could, in Azkaban.

It was at least a good two weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts and the Dark Lord’s final fall before everyone in the outside world was organized enough to get the Muggleborns out of Azkaban and the only way that anyone recognized Justin was by his testimony alone. He had lost nearly a hundred pounds, had been stricken ill with various illnesses, was going in and out of consciousness, and most of his speaking was actually half-hearted singing – the only question he managed to answer properly was “What is your name?” before slipping into alternating strains of songs he’d learned from his uncle, “The Sound of Silence” and “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables. If he'd been strong enough to stand, he might have been able to walk himself out, but, as it was, he wound up carried out by one of the Aurors sent to free the Muggleborns.

Needless to say, he got taken straight to St Mungo’s.

History - Since Leaving Hogwarts: Suffice to say, it hasn’t been easy to recover from being in Azkaban for that year. He spent his first three months of “freedom” holed up and almost completely confined to a hospital bed, not that he was really itching to move. Azkaban left him with a load of illnesses, but, even after his Healers diagnosed and fixed those up (which took a while, since they had to determine which symptoms were being caused by which illnesses), Justin was just tired. He had never really been renowned for having endless stores of energy, but his body and mind were completely exhausted from the ordeal of prison. Even starting to gain back the weight he lost didn’t do much for his energy levels. The physical recovery is actually over, for the most part – not that Justin had an easy time of it; after his energy levels finally started to recover on their own, and after his Healers fixed the infections and likewise he was suffering from, the primary concern was getting him up to a healthy weight again, which constantly ran into trouble with the fact that Justin’s appetite has never fully recovered. He was cooperative enough for a while, just because he hadn’t had proper food for nearly a year, but re-feeding was difficult, given how badly his body had forgotten to digest proper food, and, when he was released from St Mungo’s, he was still, technically, underweight. Nominally, trusting him to gain weight was beneficial for the mental and psychological recovery.

That’s where things have hit a huge snag, the mental and psychological recovery. During the first six months out of Azkaban, Justin’s meetings with his mental health Healer were fairly intense – at least two hours each and at least three meetings a week; when he was in St Mungo’s, they sometimes met six times a week, with Sundays off – but, even though he’s gotten better enough to only need one hour-and-a-half meeting a week, things were still debilitating. He’s gone through several periods of being a suicide risk – and was actually on legitimate suicide watch for a month of his stay in Mungo’s – he’s had nightmares, he’s developed claustrophobia, mild agoraphobia, an inability to be in complete darkness (by now, if he even has a bit of natural light, he’s mostly fine, but, at the beginning, he couldn’t sleep without having at least one light on), and a host of other problems. For a time, he was properly medicated for a time, to keep him from having panic attacks and to minimize how bad his flashbacks could be, but, by now, he’s insisted on not having the meds, but that stubbornness has worked both for him and against him. On one hand, it’s worked for him because he’s refused to stay sick and pitiful, but, on the other, his stubbornness has led him to overestimating how healed he is and accidentally setting himself back.

After being released from St Mungo’s, Justin stayed in Glastonbury with his uncle for a few months, trying to get all of his deceased family members’ wills and affairs in place, then trying to sell the family home, which George refused to let him do, even though he was set on not living there. He spent another few months in Zacharias Smith’s halfway house before moving into a flat with Wayne Hopkins; the idea of having a flatmate wasn’t particularly a bad one, but it wasn’t what Justin had been planning on; it was just a necessity because, unfortunately, his Healers didn’t think it was wise for him to live on his own. In order to pay his way for the flat – which, given all the money he’d inherited, wasn’t that necessary, but it was necessary enough, given Justin’s reluctance to touch the money he’d gotten because most of his family had died – he got a job at Flourish and Blott’s, which he still holds. He spent the first year or so trying to regain control of his magical abilities and having several spurts of accidental magic in the process, and, once he had that done, he had to relearn a bit and make up for the schooling he missed.

Justin took his NEWTs in 2001 and did quite alright on them, but still hasn’t left his book-shelving job. He splits his time between the magical and Muggle worlds, with most of his time being spent on the wand-waving, potions-brewing side of the fence. After being a veritable wreck about not being able to go to church at all for the year in Azkaban and several months, he’s at the point where he can go if someone accompanies him (usually Wayne does, though Justin’s succeeded in dragging some of his other friends before). Overall, Justin’s not really sure what he wants to do with his life, and he’s not exactly fond of this. He kind of thinks that maybe he’d like professional philanthropy or charity work or something of that nature, but the big problem with that is not knowing how to go about it; in between his working hours and free-time hours, he does a fair bit of volunteer work – from helping Zach run the halfway house to working with various Muggle and Wizarding charitable organizations to things with his church to just going around, knocking on doors, and trying to collect donations for various things – but, as far as organizing goes, he’s in the dark. His mental health isn’t perfect, but it’s rather getting there.

Really, though, he’d just like to have some more love in his life. He likes love.


Partner Section:
What Character is your "partner" applying for?: Wayne Hopkins, Susan Bones, Ernie Macmillan, Zacharias Smith, Katie Bell
What sort of relationship do the two characters have?/What sort of relationship WILL the two characters have?: Wayne: close friends/roommates eventually developing into romantic
Susan: close friends since the first train ride Hogwarts, practically siblings
Ernie: close friends, with Ernie often taking care of Justin and Justin trying not to be too ridiculously worrisome.
Zach: close friends, with Justin playing the diplomat to Zach’s blunt honesty, thus making Zach not sound like such an utter prat. Oh, and Zach tells Justin to dress nicer sometimes. Justin usually listens, then doesn’t do anything.
Katie: Well. It’s complicated. They don’t really know each other, but Justin was in the cell across from Katie’s dad and has a dying wish to attend to for him.

Relationship "Type": with Wayne, “The Adorable Woobies”; with Susan, “The Practically Siblings”; with Ernie, “Victim and Caregiver” (?); with Zach, “He’s My Mouthpiece” (?); with Katie, “The Dying Wish”

History Of the two characters: This applies for all of the above, really, except Katie: Justin was Sorted into Hufflepuff and immediately started making friends because, as a people person, he seriously doesn’t do well not having someone to cling to and call his friend. Susan was the first, as they met on the train and Susan adopted the lovable dork as a cute Muggleborn to show around and make look slightly less pitiful… not that it really worked, because he was perfectly in awe of everything ever at Hogwarts and it totally showed off his relative ignorance of what was going on, but hey. She tried. Justin roomed with Ernie, Zach, and Wayne and decided right off that they would all Be His Friends. Whether or not they really wanted to. Luckily, though, they wanted to and Justin found his niche with them as: a. the token Muggleborn, b. the cute, sensitive one, c. the one who made Zacharias sound like less of a complete and utter prat, and d. one of the kind of uptight, repressed ones. The most significant events were when he was Petrified by the Basilisk in second year and when he, Ernie, Susan, Hannah, and Zach represented for Puffy pride in Dumbledore’s Army. Hellz yeah. …Oh, and then there was the Azkaban thing. Where, you know, everyone else Fought The Power (except Zach, who had decent reasons for not Fighting The Power) and Justin rotted in a prison cell for the crime of being Muggleborn. That was pretty significant too.

As for Katie, well. They were both in the DA, but Katie was older, in a different House, and into different things than Justin, so they didn’t really know each other. Justin did, however, reside in the cell opposite Katie’s father, Grady Bell, in Azkaban and Grady’s dying wish was for Justin to tell Katie that her father was proud of her. And dying wishes are serious business.

Plans for the two characters: Justin and Wayne will hook up… eventually… after mutual getting over of things. And Justin will try to fulfill his part of Grady’s dying wish, but Katie will not make it easy for him.


PLAYLIST:
Cloudy Now :: Blackfield
Shalott :: Emilie Autumn
Hallelujah :: Allison Crowe
Light Up My Room :: Barenaked Ladies
Wicked Little Town :: Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Famous Blue Raincoat :: Leonard Cohen
The Sound of Silence :: Simon & Garfunkel
Record Year for Rainfall :: The Decemberists
Do You Hear the People Sing? :: Les Miserables OBCR