Finally finished Joshua's character history for the next rank up.
Word count: 4644.
Born as summer had started to become autumn, Ginnifer Brennan grew up muggle, the daughter of a squib who had married into a muggle family after being cast out of his own. Though she, like her father, was not magical, but displayed a special kind of magic all her own. A noticeably talented artist from a young age, Gin grew up to be a beautiful young Irishwoman with a head full of dreams, a suitcase full of sketches and paint-speckled clothes, and a long, arduous journey to get to where she truly wanted to be. Working two jobs and going to art school, Ginnifer was waiting tables when she first met Caleb Whelan. For her, it was love at first sight. For him, she was easy, willing prey.
Eleven years her senior, Caleb was a relatively wealthy man with four children of his own. The oldest, Cadán, was only six years younger than Ginnifer. The younger three, Bran, Dunstan, and Ripley, were much younger- eight, five, and three respectively. With the exception of Cadán, Caleb's children took very well to Gin, viewing her like a mother. Everything was... weirdly perfect, but not perfect enough to cause alarm. A year into their relations and not so much as a step closer to her dream of becoming an artist, the news came that another of Ginnifer's dreams would be realized. When she informed Caleb that she was pregnant with what would be his fifth child, she was met with a happiness that she thought unusual for a man who was already raising four children of his own.
As the suspicious behavior continued, Ginnifer began to pay close attention to Caleb, Cadán and their patterns. It came as a violent shock to the young woman when she learned what secret her boyfriend had been keeping from her. He and his oldest three children were wizards, and not only that, they were werewolves. Now, any sensible woman would have brushed it off as nothing, as a possibility that she may have misheard. Ginnifer Brennan had been raised on stories of great magics, grew up an artist and a firm believer in dreams. It could easily be said that she was not a sensible woman. She believed every word, and somewhere within her, she realized that if she stayed, her unborn child would become a monster like the one Caleb spoke of to the boys. Further realization came when she realized that if what they were saying actually was true, as there was still the slight possibility that it wasn’t, Ripley would be next to join their ranks, and Ginnifer as well, if she were not disposed of. The danger only increased exponentially the longer that she stayed, but would it be more dangerous for her to leave?
It was a decision that she had to make. She had lived twenty years, she could indeed care less about her life. The life of a small child she cared about was in danger, along with the life of the unborn miracle child she was told she may never have. So, bravely and perhaps stupidly, she packed the few things she would need in a backpack, filled a suitcase with Ripley’s things, and took the toddler with her the first opportunity that arose. The young girl put up no fuss, as she viewed Ginnifer as her mother, and thus trusted her. The muggle woman took her car and fled for her life with Ripley, abandoning the car and finding a way to Dublin. She managed it, undetected, and a month before the baby was born, she moved Ripley and herself to Wexford.
That was where Joshua Asher Whelan was born, given his father’s surname and two biblical names as a sort of thank you for a safe journey, and in homage to Ginnifer’s return to her spiritual (but not religious) roots. While magic was a ‘sin’, and ‘a sign of the devil’s work on earth’, Ginnifer didn’t view her children’s mishaps as such. No, she viewed them as the gifts they were, rather than evidence of sin that others might. What her children had been given was truly a gift, and added to the gift that she was giving them through the arts.
Shortly after Joshua was born, Ginnifer moved the children to a bustling city in France. Though her constant moving about the country came across as paranoia to her family, she felt that if she and the children settled in one place for too long, Ripley and Joshua would fall back into their father's clutches. Joshua, a blond and happy child, grew alongside his big sister in the open and creative environment that his mother had made for them, both blissfully unaware of what would happen to them if -and when- Caleb came for their little family. So, Ginnifer worried in secret, and tried to give her two little children a happy home like the one that she had grown up in. This quiet life of a few months in one place and then a move to another continued until Joshua was five, and Ripley nearly nine. New from Northern Ireland reached Ginnifer by post, word from her father that her estranged mother had passed away en route to the hospital following a horrible accident with an animal in her care. As the oldest child, the burden of helping arrange funeral details fell on Gin's shoulders. Too distraught over her mother's death to clearly see the trap laid before her, Ginnifer packed her and the children's things, returning to Northern Ireland and unknowingly waling right into the belly of the beast.
She was solemnly welcomed home by her father, taken to her mother's property and given the arduous task of packing and cataloguing everything on the property, as he was still in too much shock to take care of his estranged wife's things himself. It seemed so heavy to Ginnifer to be staying in a dead woman's house and putting her life in boxes while you did so, but her children brightened the place with their childlike innocence and laughter. Alas, they were only present in the house for two whole days before the clan attacked. A group of four men -Caleb, Cadán, and two others- broke into the house in the dead of night and dragged Ginnifer and the children from the room that they shared.
The sight will forever stay in Joshua's mind. Held by his older brother's too-powerful arms, the five year old fought as his mother did, though only Ginnifer felt the repeated and violent blows that Caleb dealt to her. As his father prepared to deal the final blow, Joshua's cry made him stop. As punishment for this sign of weakness, Caleb forced Joshua to make the call to the authorities. He was audibly fed lines to speak to the dispatcher who had answered and explained that there was an injured woman in the sitting room of the house. He gave the address, and when the muggle on the other end of the line asked for Joshua's name, the adults ripped the phone out of the wall. The Whelan clan members were gone before the police even arrived on the scene.
Joshua, who had to be knocked out in order to be easily transported, awoke in a large manor. Tended to by a young woman who was most certainly not his mother, he continually asked for Ginnifer, desiring to know whether she was okay or not. He was never given an answer, and would not be until nine years later. He did learn where he was, and whom the property belonged to. The Whelan clan, an ancient family that he and his sister were now a part of. The place was not at all like the quaint places he had lived with his mother and sister. This place had a large field for a yard, and the other half of the property was covered in a small forest. It felt dark. Awful.
Evil
. Here, there were no monsters under the bed, because they lurked inside everybody in the house instead. Except for the children. He didn’t know what it meant at the time, but he began lessons with his cousins that were ‘
also too young to be bitten
’, whatever that was. They were all excited to learn how to do more maths and reading, but these were things that Joshua had already begun learning with his mum. Since he was so much more ahead of the others, he got to start learning about magic, and the clan’s supposedly
proud
history. Joshua just wanted his mother, and when he learned of the awful things that his new ‘family’ had done, he tried to run away.
Joshua continued to run even after being caught the first time. Stupidly, despite being locked in various cupboards and dark, dank spaces, he still continued trying to get back to his mother, without even knowing whether she was there or not. Within a year of his arrival, the urge to cry out to his mother was beaten out of him, as was his desire to run, though the idea of escaping to his freedom was a dream that helped the boy keep his head up. Then, their time came. Though, by the clan’s tradition, Ripley was late in getting the bite, it had been a year, and they’d been integrated enough to take the bite and join the clan’s hierarchy.
When asked, Joshua will say that while he hardly remembers the experience, compared to the others, the first time will always be the worst. The scars from the bite are still there, and sometimes when his fingers brush them, he can remember distinctly how it felt to have his father’s fangs dig into the meat and bone of his childish shoulder. It comes in flashes, but he remembers his bones cracking, and the burning that turned to numbness in wake of his body going into fight or flight mode.He remembers the itchiness of fur exploding out of his skin, and then, he remembers waking up covered in blood that was and wasn’t his. That morning was also when he learned his first lesson in being a true Whelan: you clean up the messes that you make. Nobody knows what happened during that full moon to make Joshua attack and kill his cousin. They simply watched him bury the body among the slight mounds along the forest’s edge, and then they never spoke of it again.
The first few months followed in a similar pattern of violence. The further that the full moons progressed from his first, the more that the young wizard was able to remember actual events, as opposed to the blurs of fur, blood, and fangs. Occasionally, an elder or two would join the new pups, teaching them how to fight, how to hunt, and how to look out for each other. Joshua liked these nights, but they were rare. Slowly, he learned the barriers of the land. Too close to the house, where the
breeders
and
younglings
were sheltered, and he’d feel the fiery pain of electricity coursing through his body. Leave the tall grass in the field and try toward the forest? Same result.
Joshua was a fast learner, however. He was able to join the adults in the forest after eight moons, sooner than any of the others his age. He was exceeding well beyond Caleb’s insane expectations, doing better than his brothers before him. The clan leader couldn’t be more pleased. The transformation steadily became second nature to the boy. Though he wouldn’t –and still will not—deny that the pain was great, it was certainly easier for him to go from boy to wolf. Due to being taught that it was actually okay for him to let go of the human who shouted at him with morals, it was harder for him to make the transition back from wolf to boy. As lessons teaching the Whelan children to become monsters like their parents progressed, Joshua became more of a wolf than a boy, a small wolf living in a boy’s skin. It terrified him, and made a span of three months difficult when he shifted, as he tried to teach himself to be human more than the adults teaching him allowed him to be. You see, the goal of breeding their children to be werewolves was to spread the disease as far as possible and build the numbers controlled by the clan. The children
had
to learn how to pass as human.
Passing was easy. Joshua just didn’t do the obviously wolfy things that he was used to doing, like commenting on the smells in the air that a normal person wouldn’t be able to smell, or roughhousing with his cousins. He smiled more, talked innocently, and acted sweet and helpful. He was often commended on the act, but it wasn’t so much an act as it was Joshua being himself. He’d learned early on that showing obvious emotions that weren’t anger, cruelty, or pleasure at hurting another was frowned upon, and so he taught himself how to don a mask of apathy to stay safe. That was his only choice, really. He did everything he could because he needed to survive, including continuing to read as much as he had.
While he was still with his mother, Ginnifer had read to him and Ripley more than once every day. The Whelan clan was more about cunning and street smarts than they were about book smarts and other intelligences, but they definitely didn’t lack in their library. There were books of all different subjects, magical and mundane, and in addition to this, Joshua found that the clan had a history of keeping extensive records through over a century’s worth of heavy journals. At first, his aim in spending countless hours in the library had been to attempt to find a possible cure for his disease. When he found that there was no known cure, he turned to the library for answers. Instead, he found that he had a particular penchant for reading. He scoured the shelves, learning from his ancestors’ own words about how the hierarchy of roles worked in the pack, how to be a better leader, and, from a surprisingly lighter member of the clan, that he had a propensity for art. Not only had he found ways to better himself beyond the others in terms of answering to what the pack demanded, he also found an ability that he could fall back on if he happened to get out. Caleb didn’t know of the boy’s ulterior motive for being in the library; simply the fact that Joshua was learning to be a leader and proving more intelligent than his siblings and cousins furthered his pride in the boy.
Growing in his intelligences, Joshua also grew at least a head above his peers, starting to become a little bit more handsome with each day that he grew. This worked to his advantage, and his father’s, as Joshua was brilliant at charming his way in and out of many a strained situation by the time he was eleven years old. Shortly after his eleventh birthday, Joshua received a letter from Hogwarts, and Caleb sent the response for acceptance. The young wizard couldn’t have been more pleased. Part of him hoped, though he couldn’t run away, that there might be some way that he could find his mother while away at school, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t get his hopes up. So in order to get through going to Hogwarts, he simply decided to see the school as another type of training. Techinically, it was training him to be a wizard, but it was also training in being a better human, and much more learning was to follow upon his arrival in Scotland.
The train ride in was interesting. His sister used some of the pocket money that they’d been given to get sweets to share, and in the compartment that he and Ripley were in, he also met Camilla Evergreen, who would become a lifelong friend. Both girls were in Hufflepuff, and as he felt safe with them, he hoped that he, too, would be placed in Hufflepuff.
When his name was called and the Hat placed upon his head, he had a discussion with the Hat. The Hat knew his name, could see his talents, his passions, and his
heart
. He knew what the different houses valued, and perhaps the Hat saw some sort of courage in him that would mean something one day, and with a yell, Joshua was placed in Gryffindor. It wasn’t nearly anything expected, but as he sat at the table, he found that the other, older Gryffindors welcomed him like a younger brother and decided that he wouldn’t mind joining the Lord and Lady Lions in their ranks. That night, he made his first friend in Matthias ‘Matty’ Hoffman, and they became inseparable, like brothers.
The first full day that Joshua spent at Hogwarts was not in classes, but actually in the Hospital Wing, answering numerous questions. Lycanthropy was feared, this was something that he had known from a young age, but the nurses seemed nice and genuinely interested in his well-being. Whatever they asked, he answered, and then he was given a quick look over so as to discern what marks he had, just in case he gained a new one from something that happened at school. They were more concerned with keeping him safe so that he could gain an education like the rest of the students at Hogwarts. It was there that he learned about the Wolfsbane potion, and what a blessing it could be. Though it was expensive, the school would help to foot the bill for the potion, as they knew well that Caleb Whelan did not appreciate the benefit of the potion that others did. They said that if Joshua was willing, they would provide. He jumped at the chance, and when the week leading up to the full moon came, Joshua was given a full goblet of potion a morning. The first time that he tried to take the potion, he nearly threw up. By the fifth morning, he was accustomed to it, and could take the potion without shuddering.
Since he'd learned to flip between the cold and aloof side that his father wanted to see and the sweet and funny side that was actually who he was, Joshua was able to figure out how to interact with others a lot easier than what his cousins were. The friends that he made were generally friends that he wanted to keep, so visualizing them like pack mates tended to help him keep them a bit. Much like he wanted to be loyal and useful to his pack, he wanted to be loyal and useful to his friends. This ended up getting him manipulated by older students and hurt as well, but one of the other lessons that his father taught him was that he shouldn't let others hurt him, and shouldn't let others have enough power over him to be able to hurt him. So, he didn't. He made himself a loyal, available friend, and he started standing up to those who bullied others. Despite having such a recognizable, and feared surname attached to his own, Joshua found that he had very little trouble making friends across years and houses.
He grew mentally as well as socially, and though he wasn't as great in classes as others, his plethora of self-taught and handy talents helped him along in school. Since Joshua wasn't used to accepting charity, and he was pretty talented when it came to potions, he struck out on his own and found the recipe for Wolfsbane. It took him a full three years, from third to sixth, to master it, but doing so allowed him to continue on the path he was on, which happened to be a path away from his family's designs. While he had some stability while he was shifted, without the potion, he was still a slave to the animal. Having his human mind while shifted made it a little easier for him to make the transition back from wolf to boy a little bit easier, and he came to rely on the potion as a lifeline to sanity.
Joshua and Ripley's potion taking went on until Joshua's fourth year, and Ripley's seventh and final year. Joshua had just turned fifteen, in the middle of spring term when Caleb somehow discovered that his youngest two children had disobeyed him. Tensions had already been high as Dunstan, the middle child, had disappeared without a trace a couple months before, the first of the children to openly defy one of Caleb's decrees. With Josh and Ripley taking the potion while still under his roof, and therefore also his rules, they had knowingly done something that he frowned upon. Frowned upon? Hm, no, too light a term, too much of an understatement. Caleb Whelan abhorred the use of Wolfsbane, called it a coward's out, and had expressly forbidden use by any of the Whelan clan's children. When Caleb commanded something, everybody listened, and God help you if you disobeyed, because nothing else would save your soul.
Joshua and his sister were far from stupid, despite neither being sorted into Ravenclaw. They were sent home after a message declaring a
family emergency
, and before they were, they were given enough time to confer and have a discussion about what they could do. Magically and physically, they would be outmatched, but they would do what they could. And so, like his mother had nearly sixteen years before, Joshua packed a bag of his things and his sister's things, took his sister and ran like the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels. Realistically, the irony of the simile was not lost on him, considering that he knew they would be snapping at his throat, and not his heels when they caught him. There was no if; they knew that they would be caught.
Two wizarding teenagers traveling to Northern Ireland went a little bit easier with help from the Knight Bus, but they only made it as far as a police station before they knew they were in trouble. While waiting to see if the officers could find or contact their mother, Caleb, Cadán, and Bran attacked the police station. Rather than sit idly, Joshua began casting barrier spells to help defend the muggles inside, and firing offensive spells right back. His sister joined him, but the building was crumbling by the time officials arrived. Joshua, his father, and his brothers were taken into custody until trial, and Ripley was taken to St. Mungo's to see if the damage from the spells that hit her could be reversed. Three muggles were dead, the rest Obliviated. Nobody told Joshua what happened to the families of the three who had been caught in the crossfire of Caleb's vendetta.
Joshua was kept apart from his father and brothers for his safety, and at the trial, the Wizengamot found the boy had fought back in self-defense. He was cleared of charges after speaking out against his father and brothers and confirming their various crimes, of which evasion of registry as a known werewolf, kidnapping, and murder were only a few. The three older men were sent to Azkaban, and Joshua, who had exposed himself as a werewolf in the process of his trial, was forced to register. He did so without even a thought to the contrary; he already obsessively took Wolfsbane, the registry was simply another necessary evil to keep himself and others safe. While the Ministry made contact with his mother, he was made a temporary ward of Hogwarts and given leave to return to school. People looked at him strangely for a while, but before too long, Joshua was back to spending time with his friends.
When the school year ended, he stayed at Hogwarts over the summer until one day in July, a Ministry official came into the Gryffindor tower accompanied by a professor. The official explained that he was the Auror who had been assigned to watch over Ginnifer for almost the last ten years. Apparently, her father's estranged family had heard the name Whelan and finally decided to protect their own, or something, he wasn't given all the specifics. As the wizard assigned to protect Ginnifer, the man was the only one who knew how to find where she lived, so he had to escort Joshua there.
All the way there, Joshua was terrified that his mother wouldn't recognize him, or that she wouldn't want him. What he was met with was instead the opposite. She immediately started to cry, but embraced him nonetheless. She told him that the tears were happy, something that confused the young man, because she never thought that she would be able to hold her son again, something that didn't confuse him at all. That first night was spent wide awake. Joshua told her that her fears had come to fruition, and that both he and Ripley had been turned, and Ginnifer informed him that though she hadn't wanted that life for him, she didn't love him any less. She had finally become an artist, as she'd dreamed she would, with gallery shows, and a decent client base, but something had been missing until Joshua came back into her life. She received clearance to go with Joshua to visit Ripley in the hospital, where she was staying in the Permanent Spell Damage ward after the fight with their father. Her childlike disposition didn't stop her from being responsible about being a werewolf, and she made sure to tell the healers attending to her for the long term that she was on a very strict schedule. Though guilty that he'd come out mostly unscathed, and was now happy at home with the mother they'd spent almost ten years dreaming of, he was still very proud of his sister. Ripley wasn't safe in the outside world anymore, and so she was content to see her family when they visited. Joshua and Ginnifer learned to cope with Ripley's condition together, because they were together again, a family, though as fragmented as they were.
Fifth year went rather well. Joshua became accustomed to his mother sending packages with baked goods and supplies to last from month to month, but also with her sending an extra package for Matty, who she met the same summer that Joshua came to live with her. Though the other boy wasn't her son, she saw that Josh treated him like a brother, and so she welcomed him to the family without a second thought, even opening her home and the guest bedroom to him during the summer.
News reached their happy little home when Joshua was in the middle of his sixth year that Caleb and Cadán had attempted an escape, and so both men went up for trial again after being captured by the Werewolf Capture Unit's wizards in one of their finer moments. Ginnifer went to the trial with Joshua, determined to see that their peace wouldn't be disrupted. She got her wish, as Caleb was given life in Azkaban, and Cadán was given the Dementor's Kiss, which Joshua had the unfortunate luck of explaining to his mother was a fate worse than death. However gruesome, the pair were relieved by the knowledge that they were at least marginally safer now, Joshua finally settled back into life with his mother and ready to jump into his final year at Hogwarts.