Congratulations Ash!
Your application for Theodore Nott has been accepted. As much as my inner government official is groaning and reaching for the headache potions already, I can’t wait to see what trouble this Unspeakable gets into.
Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!
OUT OF CHARACTER
NAME & PRONOUNS: ash & they/them
AGE: twenty six
TIMEZONE: est
ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m a front end dev for a virtual event platform who works between 5-7 days a week but I’m usually active after 6pm and on weekends. I have slow weeks when on lighter projects and busier weeks when we have a lot of shows.
ANYTHING ELSE: N/A on triggers. I’ve been roleplaying on tumblr for i think 14 years? Too long.
CHARACTER DETAILS
NAME: Theodore Cantankerus Nott
BIRTHDATE: July 7th, 1980
DEATHDATE: N/A
GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cismale, he/him. Theodore hasn’t given much thought to his sexuality, not even as far as labeling it. In the past, he’s found his attraction hasn’t been limited to one side of the gender spectrum. Currently, he’s entirely too busy to even sit for a moment and identify his years-long attraction to his current roommate. In the same manner, gender is never something he’s felt the need to question.
BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood
HOUSE ALUMNI: Slytherin
OCCUPATION: Unspeakable in the Death Department.
FACECLAIM: Woo Do-hwan
CHARACTER BACKGROUND
TW. Child Abuse, Neglect, Parental Death
POSTBELLUM
Theodore finds himself deeply in the middle of moving on. His own experiences with the second wizarding war left a sour taste in the wixen’s mouth and not just due to his father’s involvement. He watched various classmates suffer at the hands of the Dark Lord, familial pressure, and expectations. He noted no members of the high and mighty heroes seemed to think of the lowly slytherins. No hands were outstretched. No children saved from their situations. That was the heart of the issue. They were children then and aren’t now. How is he to trust that his generation will act any differently? Theodore has always preferred to be on the sidelines, to watch before acting, and to have his actions be as discreet and unnoticed as possible. Growing up, the lesson of fading into the background had been indoctrinated into him and that was a terrible thing to try to shake. Theodore’s never been a fighter. He’s always preferred to have knowledge on a situation before speaking.
Becoming an Unspeakable gave him a chance he never thought he would have to dedicate his life strictly to learning. With the dead coming back, Theodore hopes for his mother even though hope is something he has given up on a long time ago. Hope always leads to disappointment. Planning for the worst, however, leads to being pleasantly surprised by the results you receive. He doesn’t have many nightmares anymore. Any last trauma comes to him more in the form of a too quick touch or a raised voice sending his senses haywire. Lately, however, he swears he’s hearing his father’s voice in the midst of the Return’s camp. Seeing his face out of the corner of his eye. He knows the possibility of his father is high based on who has turned up so far. He does not wish for that day to ever come.
PERSONALITY
(+) Aware. Everyone had an opinion, a snap judgement they made based on your actions upon first interaction and rumors and gossip they had heard about you. Theodore is too aware of his own actions, his nature, and how he could be perceived due to his bloodline. He listens and watches while in the bowels of the Ministry.. He keeps an eye on the paper, aware of their sensationalized stories of the past. He stays aware when he locks himself in his and Draco’s two bedroom flat for the night, his house elf and cold ancestral home merely a thing of the past.
(+) Humble. It would be rare to hear Theodore speaking on his own accomplishments. When others bragged over NEWT results, family estates, or care packages while at school, Theodore stayed silent. In a post schooling life, he found he had nothing to brag over. His work is undiscussed, both by a willingness to keep to his own code of ethics and true inability to speak on it. Perhaps it is his conscience telling him karma was a tricky thing, the winds of fate often changed and were never certain. He is always aware that if he begins to celebrate his achievements, they could slip through his fingers before he had a chance to fully appreciate them.
(+) Skillful. When you spend most of the early years of your life hiding, there is no better place than a library and there is nowhere best to escape to than a book. At a young age, Theo’s mother Perdita exposed her son to learning. It became a joyous activity for the two of them. The dwindling vaults of the once great Nott family had no spare coin for a tutor for their only heir. Once it was just himself and his father in the house, Theo entertained himself with the curious collection of family heirlooms that littered the corridors of Nott Hall. He enjoys puzzles and figuring out just how magic is intertwined with a physical object. Nowadays, Theo spends his time pouring over books from Obscurus’ impressive collection while on his lunch break. He has enough puzzles to keep himself occupied for his lifetime.
(-) Cautious. It would be irresponsible to think the world was capable of change so quickly after the defeat of the Dark Lord. People didn’t change. Not unless they wanted to. Monetary repercussions, war reparations, were only likely to affect outward interest, not ideologies. Though perhaps that cautiousness had negatively affected Theo. He turned inward, the social progress he had made from fourteen to sixteen taking a turn when the Carrows took over the castle and his own father was broken out of Azkaban. He limited his social interactions severely, preferring to stick his nose in a book or have a quick intimate meeting over big social events and friendly gatherings and he still hasn’t grown out of that inclination. His social circle has been kept even as years passed and he enjoys a separation of the different areas of his life.
(-)Distractible. Wix alike were an issue. A pretty face, handsome smile, and a nice word easily swayed Theo’s attention. Always conscious, the tall boy doesn’t reveal or give much of himself. He does find he tolerates speaking to someone at length if they are intriguing when he would have otherwise ended a conversation. The same can be said for those with strong personalities. He finds himself getting caught up, steam rolled, instead of speaking up.
(-) Resentful. Theo often wondered how his life could have been different. What if his father had been captured after Voldemort’s first fall? What if some member of upper society took a moment to investigate the reservedness of Perdita or young Theodore? What if a professor questioned why young Theodore always stayed at the castle and never went home for the Yuletide holidays? So many things in his life could have been different if someone had looked closely, but they weren’t. The Malfoys, Narcissa specifically, were his only saving grace throughout childhood but they still didn’t overstep and remove him from his home. His resentment is something Theodore tries to tamper down when he can, choosing to look at life positively. No one demanded his quiet in his flat. The heat works with no need for an illegal heating charm here or there. He knows where everything is in his small space, even with Draco living alongside him. He doesn’t need to hide his things for fear of retribution. There are no nights worrying over going hungry.
BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY
Theodore Cantankerus Nott was born the only child and heir to Cantankerus Nott and Perdita Nott (nee Travers) on a warm summer night in early July. Theo spent little time under the careful (and stern) thumb of his father before his mother’s death. His mother was a much gentler figure, helping Theo grow sweet and strong. Perdita taught her son all the names of the flowers, their uses, and any star he asked the name of. She introduced him to music, showing him the piano and allowing him to pick up the violin. Theo was content to forget his father’s presence when he could, though he never dared voice that state of mind to Perdita. As Theo approached his eighth birthday, he began to see his childhood might not be as normal as his peers. He and his mother rarely left the grounds of Nott Hall. The once great stately home had slowly fallen to a near-ruinous state over the years. There was no shopping done by Perdita, all taken care of by their two remaining house elves. No tea time or meetings for the boards of any councils. The one time his mother seemed to be able to leave was when she was on the arm of his father at a required event. Theo wasn’t permitted to have friends over though visits to other sons of great houses were heavily encouraged the closer Hogwarts grew. He noticed the blatant way his peers’ parents showed affection. The boys his age never shied away from their father, some even spoke back with no fear of punishment.
Theo had stayed the sweet boy his mother had encouraged. Though his own father grew concerned about what was keeping the young boy soft. It didn’t help that Perdita’s health had begun to deteriorate ever since her birthday. Her walks around the garden with her son proving to be a bit too much for her. That duty had been given to the house elf, Dandy. Though she still wore the bracelet his father had gifted her every day. On the eve of his eighth birthday, his mother was trapped on the third floor of their home in her bedroom. There were no healers in and out of the grounds. Eight year old Theo took to hiding in the library, reading every book he could. He knew there must be something his parents were overlooking. They just weren’t trying hard enough. If healers could fix this, but weren’t allowed on the ground, he would. But his research proved naught and Perdita passed just before Christmas day, leaving Theo in his father’s sole care.
There were no kind words for the severe kind of man his father was. Piano lessons stopped as there was no one to teach him. Theo found himself with more alone time than he had ever had before as his father wasn’t a man you would like to find yourself around for any period of time. The exception was meals, when the youngest Nott and the eldest were forced to interact. His father often deemed these mealtimes lecture times as well, spouting off ideals Theodore never would have heard from his mother’s mouth.
HISTORY
When his first year arrived, Theodore understood the extent of what his mother had shielded him from. In the few years of them being the sole occupants of their home, his father’s once rare cases of corporal punishment had become a near daily occurrence. He had learned many times since gaining a wand that healing was an unacceptable action to take but his father had no issue with glamours. A word of what occurred at home wasn’t appropriate conversation. Familial business stayed such, without outside input or scorn.
It took Theo many years to come out of his proverbial shell. He thinks without Malfoy Manor as a place to escape to on school breaks and summer weekends, he may have not turned out the same. As his father’s attention turned away from his son and to the Dark Lord’s return, Theo felt almost free. That freedom didn’t occur until the Battle at the Department of Mysteries. The ministry had no issue arresting his father and not looking into whether young Theodore Nott would have any sort of adult supervision the summer before his sixth year. Why would they need to? Families like his never suffered.
Theodore didn’t participate in the Battle of Hogwarts, too fearful someone would take one look at him and make the sort of assumptions that ended with him being written about as another young death eater killed in the skirmish. He hoped to whatever ruled the skies and stars that his father didn’t survive, feeling guilty immediately that he had even had that sort of thought. It was safer than assuming his father was imprisoned. His father had escaped once before with no issue and there was no doubt in the youngest Nott’s mind that his old man could do it again. Fortunately, his wish came true.
Four years post Battle, Theodore has created a separate life for himself than the one originally laid out and it’s all thanks to the Department of Mysteries. The week after his father’s death, Theo returned home. He allowed himself only a week to mourn a man he knew in his heart he absolutely despised. Before the week was out, the long quiet house was filled with voices. Strangers were sitting in the abandoned sitting room. They had a proposition, a job offer, and no answers for how they had gotten through the wards of his home. Today, he has just about moved up to a fully-fledged unspeakable in the death division. The challenge of the Returned lays ahead.
His ancestral home of Nott Hall lays virtually abandoned. Only the blood wards stopped the acquisition of the property from anyone who strolled upon it. He still has some duties, as the remaining and only Nott, to attend to. Meager reparations paid to the Ministry dried up the last of the Nott vaults, leading Theo to have to acquire a small flat that he shares with Draco. It’s not fancy by any means, nothing like the tall ceiling rooms they both grew up in and without any house elves, but it’s theirs. His first purchases for himself, the sofa and his bed, are by far his favorite things in the whole flat.
OOC EXPLORATION
WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?
Please you know. I hate it here.
ANYTHING ELSE?
https://www.pinterest.com/securemal/priori-reverte-theodore-theo-nott/
EXTRA FOR NON-BIO CHARACTERS
CHARACTER CONTRIBUTION
I truly love the idea of bringing in an Unspeakable to this world. It’s curious how they are the ones who made, and possibly caused, the discovery of the Returned but know so very little. Their, and Theo’s, entire worth is built on knowledge but they’re diving into the utter unknown and there are so many factors to consider about how this could end up. We don’t even know if the Returned can sustain themselves indefinitely. You’ve built a lovely playground for us, Emmy, and I’m too excited to play in it. But also I love Theodore Nott. Cursed Child did him dirty okay.
PRESENT
It was another night of waiting. The wooden small chair the Unspeakables were given wasn’t comfortable despite the many cushioning charms Theo’s co-workers had applied to it. He supposed that was the point. Most of the death division were working double or triple shifts. They had allocated reserve Unspeakables from both the time and love divisions and, still, they were understaffed. Their stock of pepper up potions should have run dry some time ago but the healers had been called in as well. No amount of pepper ups made this task any easier.
The coffee in his hand was lukewarm and Theo’s eyes were drooping. Slowly closing as his head fell forward until he caught himself. The curtain was moving. He could see it and he could have sworn he heard the now familiar sounds of confusion and anger at how the next unfortunate soul had ended up in the windowless chamber but he was wrong. The curtain always moved and Theodore always heard the whispers. It had taken quite a lot of restraint the first time he had been granted access to this room years ago but he kept his distance as the object called out to him. It was no different than the cursed books and painting and vases in his own home and Theo learned long ago that anything calling out for you was not a good sign. It only led to death. All things did in the world but especially here. Purposefully here. He wasn’t going to end up like his mother, touching something that didn’t belong to him and paying the price for it.