LEANDER PARRISH
SIXTH
HALF-BLOOD
RAVENCLAW
Jon Parrish and Olive Sinclair were both raised and indoctrinated to believe that werewolves were a blight on society and unfit to live amongst the Wizarding community or around humans at all. The Parrish family was amongst a few Wizarding families who shared a highly specific and dangerous hobby - werewolf hunting. When Jon and Olive graduated Hogwarts, they were arranged to be married. Bound by honor and duty (and a shared love of hunting) Olive took the Parrish name and the two became a most fearsome hunting duo. They two could not sit by as the Wizarding World faced increasing attacks from werewolves on innocent wizards and muggles alike. Olive and Jon were among the few who pushed for more and frequent hunts, increasing the frequency from once or twice a year to almost monthly by the time that Olive grew pregnant with the couple’s first child.
The Parrish family wears their scars proudly, as trophies of a hunt well done. It pained Olive to give up hunting, even for a short while, but the whole family agreed that their family needed heirs. Olive gave birth to two sons: Hudson and Leander, but was always up fighting as soon as she was give a clean bill of health after the births.
Hudson and Leander were three years apart in age, but light years away in personality. There have been many times in Leander’s life when he wondered if he truly belonged in his family. Everyone in his family possessed a ruthlessness and a drive that he just didn’t. Even as a young child he was always more content with reading or quiet activities rather than join in with his brother and cousins rough-housing. Not that Leander never played with them. On the contrary, he possessed an exorbitant amount of hero worship for his older brother and cousins which meant he tried his hardest to fit in and play with them. Though he always did enjoy his books more. The Parrish house was always a revolving door of family members. Aunts, Uncles, and cousins were always over visiting which meant that Leander seldom had a shortage of people to play with. He especially loved when his cousins would spend the night over at their house when their parents would go out on camping trips. One adult or older cousin would stay behind with all of the younger children. It was always changing and it kept Leander’s life interesting and exciting.
When Leander was six, his world was tilted on its axis. One evening he hadn’t been able to sleep, and was wandering around his house. His cousins were asleep upstairs after another fun sleepover night when he heard a commotion coming from the basement. The door to the basement was usually locked and the secrets that it held were things that he’d “learn about when he was older”. This evening the door had been left ajar and he heard the voices of his parents and grandfather drifting up from below. What six year old could resist? For the rest of his life, Leander would wish that he could go back in time. Back to that moment that he began down the stairs and stop it. He wished that he could go back to the childhood where his family secrets stayed buried there under the house. That evening he learned a secret that all Parrish children learned at 10 years old. He finally learned why all of the Parrish children begun stamina and strength training at age 7 and combat training at 9. He saw the family’s trophy room, lined with the heads of their conquests, of the werewolves that they had killed. The most shocking thing that evening to little Leander was the dead body lying on a table, with his family standing around each other congratulating each other on a hunt well done. Leander was paralyzed, frozen in fear on the stairs until he was spotted.
Not too long after that, Leander and Hudson were sat down and told the dark and dangerous secrets of the Parrish family. Leander was 6, too young for that knowledge, and Hudson was 9, only a year before he would have been told anyways. Hudson, who had already begun combat training, was indoctrinated into the Parrish’s views of werewolves being horrible monsters that needed to be eradicated. Leander was too soft for all of this. He was the child that cried for the small rodents that they fed their owls. Leander didn’t see the heads in the basement as proof of the family’s good deeds for this world, he saw it as needless killing of animals that had their own thoughts and feelings. His knowledge was still warped by his family though, and even to this day Leander has difficulty seeing werewolves as people, but that doesn’t mean that they should be eradicated for merely existing.
When a Parrish child was 10, if they showed enough promise in their training, were allowed to attend their family’s monthly “camping trips”. On a child’s first hunting trips, they were allowed to watch the proceedings from a safe distance, guarded by more experienced family members every month. By age 11 they are expected to be able to help participate in the hunt rather than observing, and on the full moon closest to their 17th birthday they are expected to make their first solo kill. The scars that the family gained from these hunts were worn like badges of honor, proof that their family was contributing to this world. Even if the secret had to be carried with them to the grave. Leander seldom attended these hunts, feigning illness and volunteering to babysit the younger children as often as he could. Leander’s disdain for the family business was on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis. Everyone knew that Leander was not cut out for their way of life, but refused to acknowledge it. It was the white elephant in the room, and the family allowed him to take up the job of babysitter. They used to rotate, all hating to be left behind and held back from the hunt, so many jumped at the chance to leave their nephew behind and attend the hunt.
Leander packed up his room the moment that he received his Hogwarts letter. The call of Hogwarts was that of safety. A place where he could get away from the family business and be the person that he wanted to be without his family pressuring him to participate. There are still occasions where his brother would come barging into his dorm, pulling him out of bed and dragging him along on the family hunts. The Parrish’s knew passageways to sneak out of the castle and return before they were noted to be out of bed. The Slytherins never asked questions, so Hudson was able to move around with confidence. It was during these times that Leander wished that he had somehow managed to convince the Sorting Hat to put him into Gryffindor instead of Ravenclaw. At least then he would be protected from his brother dragging him off to hunts behind a password protected portrait not just a riddle that other students can answer as well. Nothing made Leander happier than when his brother graduated from Hogwarts and he was finally out from under the immediate watchful eye of his family.
Leander is one of the more powerful magic wielders in his family, and an adept dueler as well. Despite his absence on most hunts, his family still trained him along side of his brother and cousins. In order to not draw even more attention to himself in his family politics, he dutifully trained harder and longer than everyone else. He goes along with most things that his family tells him, not making waves to try to keep their gaze off of him for as long as he could imagine. When he trained he imagines that he was training to fight his family instead of the werewolves they were training him to fight against. Leander rarely showcases his talents at dueling, but rumours still circulate Hogwarts from the few times that he has attended and participated in duels around the school. The common consensus is not to mess with Leander, because despite his quiet demeanor lurks a fierce and powerful dueler. Leander does his best to reject these rumours. He might be quiet, but is the type of person to have a smile for everyone. Making friends and hanging out with people he cares about are very important to him. His friends receive the love that he stopped giving to his family when he was young, to a point where he might smother his friends with his love.
Starting in Leander’s 4th year, the first year his brother was not attending Hogwarts, he flourished. It was the first time that he had been truly free from the gaze of a family member, and now more free from the reach of his family than he ever had been. Leander still avoided the limelight, but smiled more and found that it was easier to have friends. He wasn’t worried about looking over his shoulder or having his brother remind him of his duties to his family.
It was in this time that Leander found the time to explore his gender and sexuality to find that they are not so easily contained into a box. He is not so fond of labels, but knows that the way that he relates to his gender is not the same way that other might. He identifies as genderfluid, somewhere in flux between male and female. He does not mind being called by male pronouns or by male identifiers, however he knows that the truth is somewhere slightly off center from male. Hogwarts is a more accepting place, and he found little resistance to his identification as genderfluid. For this he is thankful as he knows that his family would never find this acceptable.
This summer Leander will turn seventeen. Most wix eagerly await the day that the Trace is no longer in effect and they are considered adults in the Wizarding world, but Leander is dreading it. For a Parrish child, seventeen marks your first solos kill, the first time that they are expected to find, track, and kill a werewolf with minimal help from the members of the hunt. Leander has managed to avoid killing at all, and merely watches on the hunts that he is forced on. He knows though that this is one thing that his family will not let him avoid. To be a Parrish you must kill, so Leander would at the very least be forced to cut all ties with his family and never see them again. That is assuming that the family will be merciful, though with the collective ruthlessness of the family Leander wonders if he would be allowed to leave, or if they would eliminate him like the werewolves that they hunt for disgracing the family name.
BIRTHDAY: august 25th.
FACECLAIM: Jacob Artist.
WAND: 12 ½ ”, birch & phoenix feather.
POSITION: n/a.
CONNECTIONS: Leander is a distant cousin of Arden Sinclair.
