Luke Merryweather

[Luke Merryweather]

[atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 460px; background-image: url(http://i44.tinypic.com/34fb0ns.jpg);-moz-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 0px 0px 0px 0px; border: 4px ridge #7a9aa9, bTable][tr][cs=2] lucas john merryweather. twenty-nine. business owner. ben whishaw.
[rs=2]	luke merryweather was born the third and final child of francesca and john merryweather on the twelfth of october. he arrived in life the way he would be arriving to appointments the rest of his life - a little bit late, and with plenty of noise. a healthy screaming could be heard from the second he emerged into the world, and luke lived up to that noisy promise throughout his younger years. he had two older siblings, a brother and a sister, but his parents both worked full-time and he was regularly left in the care of a next-door neighbour who had a child just a little older than luke. his siblings by the time he was able to talk were both away at boarding school, and so luke barely knew them at all. desperate for attention from his parents, luke was always too good to misbehave so he sought it in other ways - mostly by being as prodigious as possible from an early age. obviously, this wasn't much beyond walking and talking a little earlier than average, but once he started attending muggle nursery school he was regularly praised by his teachers for his good behaviour and quiet confidence. luke was never the loudest child on the playground, nor the most energetic - however, he was a very cute child and was often picked up and cuddled by the teachers when they were waiting for his parents (always late) to come and fetch him. he was surprised that the adults he got to know outside of his parents returned love so readily - he was used to being ignored most of the time - and so he tended to overcompensate in return and was amazed when, for example, the parents of friends or the teachers and their helpers would return a hug when he gave it and happily talk to him even when he wasn't making any sense. as he grew older, luke's personality started to evolve more from the quiet, snuggly young boy that he had been into a more confident child. he never really got over his love of physical affection - he would hug his friends a lot and was always the first to hold hands when they were told to get into pairs to walk places with school - but he was lucky to be surrounded with an exceptionally friendly group of classmates and so the affection he displayed was always returned. they pretty much made up the love he didn't receive from his parents, and so luke was a very content child. taken away from his friends at his prep school aged seven, as his siblings had been, luke was sent to a prestigious boarding school in oxfordshire. he was very young to board, and the other boarders his age were mostly foreigners who spoke little english. nonetheless, luke had an absolutely marvellous time. he made friends with most people there, including the teachers, and actually had far more attention showered on him than he did at home, so he barely missed it at all. he had - and would continue to have his entire life - a very hapless, adorable charm about him that gave him the air that life was slightly too much, but a massive adventure all the same. he showed his first signs of magic aged eight, when he made a hockey ball shoot straight through the back of the goal and into a next-door field where it hit a rather surprised cow. fortunately, there was a student in his year with an older brother who had just graduated hogwarts watching from the sidelines, and this boy hastily gathered luke up under the pretext of asking him about a birthday present for his brother, whom luke was friends with. the boy, andrew, explained to luke what his parents had only told him snippets about. of course he knew he was magical, and had the vague idea that he'd be heading off to a school up north when he was eleven and his letter arrived. andrew, however, spent almost two hours telling luke everything about the wizarding world that he could think of. luke, entranced, understood that it was imperative that he didn't show his magic to his muggle classmates. he couldn't resist, however, sneaking to quiet corners of the school grounds from that point onwards to see what he could do. obviously, with no wand or training, it was limited, but he got rather proficient at conjuring up little coloured lights to float around himself. he also, once, managed to stop it raining when the cricket match he was due to play in was threatening to be cancelled. three years passed this way. luke was content at school, a good student who was popular amongst his peers for his cheerful demeanour, confidence, and willingness to be friends with anybody. on his eleventh birthday, however, luke received a letter than had been sent to him via the muggle post. he ran all the way up to his (currently empty) dorm and ripped it open. he devoured it all the way through, and then rushed downstairs to be allowed to ring his parents - something he had rarely requested before. the matron he asked was happy to let him - she was fond of the boy, as all the staff were - and once she'd left the room luke got his mother on the phone and garbled about having got his letter and being excited and much, much more. his mother, for once, displayed real enthusiasm, and during the christmas holidays, a period luke would normally spend with his grandparents while his siblings were with uncles and aunts, she and his father took him to diagon alley to purchase the first of his school supplies. luke had been there with them once or twice over the holidays in the past, but now he simply lapped it all up, staring around at everything like a puppy placed in a roomful of squeaky toys. his final terms at muggle school couldn't pass quickly enough. although sad to be leaving his friends and teachers, luke was too excited about going to hogwarts to be especially upset. when the last day of term came, luke shot off home and spent the rest of the summer racing around in delight, generally getting under everybody's feet and managing to plead his way to diagon alley twice more. even his disinterested parents were not impervious to his charms when he turned his specially-perfected puppy-dog eyes on them. finally september first rolled around and luke was onto the train with barely a pause for breath, only stopping to say a brief goodbye to his parents. he found himself in a compartment and was soon joined by a blonde girl his own age who introduced herself as elsie. luke took an instant liking to her and, with his by-now habitual confidence and charm, quickly made friends with her and the other nervous first years that found their way into their compartment. most of their conversation concerned the upcoming sorting, and where they'd all end up. luke, knowing little about the four houses apart from that his parents had been gryffindors, his sister a ravenclaw, and his brother also a gryffindor, joined in the conversation eagerly, discussing the pros and cons of each. riding in the boats and then being lined up on the platform in front of the rest of the school has taken on a slightly dream-like quality for luke now. it all seemed to happen simultaneously so fast and so slowly. regardless, before too long he found himself standing waiting for the sorting. his friend elsie, her surname being higher alphabetically than his, went before him and was sorted into ravenclaw. luke was heartbroken - he knew for a fact he'd never get into ravenclaw, he was nowhere near academic enough. indeed, when his turn came, he was placed in gryffindor after a brief debate by the hat between that and hufflepuff. disappointed, luke went over to the red and gold table. he was soon cheered up enormously, however, by the friendly welcome from his new housemates, and that evening discovered that his dormmates were really quite awesome guys. even his older brother came to congratulate him - but luke, barely knowing him, was far more shy than he'd been around anybody else and his brother lost interest quickly and went away to find his friends. he settled in very quickly, establishing himself as one of the friendliest in the year, with time for anyone and a strangely helpless sort of air, like he was slightly bemused by everything life threw at him - which, of course, added to his innate charm. he was relatively easy to spot in a crowd, too, since he sported quite an unusually large amount of hair that seemed to defy gravity, and was most often to be found in the company of his very blonde best friend, elsie. the two sat together in most of their lessons, and in fact being in separate houses barely fazed them at all in the end, since they just hung out elsewhere instead. thus luke moved up in the school. he was quickly discovered, too, to have a stubborn streak a mile wide, and was often to be found in the centre of heated debates in the gryffindor common room about anything from whether the monarchy was outdated to the relative merits of the chudley cannons over the ludlow teucrians. making friends everywhere, regardless of age, luke had a very happy time at hogwarts. he spent the christmas and easter holidays there, happy regardless of how many students were around - he was on excellent terms with the staff, so could quite happily spend his time with the residential professors during the holidays if neither he nor they had anything else to do. he spent most of his summer holidays with various friends, especially elsie, and indeed saw his parents very little during his seven years at the school. his father, in fact, he never saw again after his second year, since the man took off without a word of explanation once luke's brother graduated from school, and none of the family have heard from him since. he made the quidditch team as chaser in his fourth year - he didn't have an especially athletic build, but he did have really phenomenal hand-eye coordination, which is why he'd often been picked at his muggle primary school for the sports teams. he still says that one of his proudest moments at hogwarts was gryffindor winning the quidditch cup in his fifth year. and, as school life went on, so did the social side of things. they started to grow up, little kids turning into teenagers and young men and women. luke had his first kiss at fourteen, his first drink at fifteen (he and elsie got spectacularly drunk on cocktails and still somehow managed to turn up to class the next morning despite hangovers the size of antarctica), and lost his virginity to a girlfriend of five months at sixteen. he had a few girlfriends during his time at school, but none were especially serious since he was useless at being in a relationship - forever forgetting birthdays or anniversaries or blowing the girl off in favour of hanging out with elsie or one of his other friends. luke graduated hogwarts with a sizeable group of friends, a spectacular charms newt result (he'd always had an odd affinity for the subject, and he was much more talented at it than any other), and very decent results in all his other subjects. he had worked very hard for his exams, despite appearing to do very little - he was determined not to let down the teachers who had been so kind to him his entire school career. upon leaving school, however, luke found himself a little lost - he wasn't really sure what to do with himself. knowing he didn't want to just go home again, he approached the hogwarts headmistress and requested help to apply to muggle universities. everything went well, and after an interview he was accepted to oxford, where he spent a wonderful three years reconnecting with his muggle roots (and one of his old primary school friends, who by total coincidence ended up in the same college as him), and at the end of his time there graduated with a 2-1 in anthropology and an even larger group of friends than before. he was yet again faced with the problem of being directionless, but this time decided to go out and get a job rather than heading back into school. he ended up giving tours in a museum in oxford, but was sacked before too long because he kept getting distracted whilst giving tours and ending up having conversations in the museum caf� with those on the tour he was meant to be leading rather than showing them the egyptian exhibits. deciding that the museum life was not for him, luke worked briefly in a pr firm and then in the ministry of magic, but it didn't take him long to realise this was not what he wanted to do with his life. the spark of inspiration actually came when he took elsie to visit his old muggle primary school. wandering past a lesson where the children were sitting and listening, enraptured, to a teacher who was old enough to have taught luke when he was there, luke realised in a flash that that was what he wanted to do - he wanted to be one of the people who had helped him grow up, shaped him, taught him to be the person he was today when his parents hadn't had the time. filled with new purpose, luke discovered that the position of charms professor at hogwarts was newly open. he knew he was young for the job, but he'd heard the headmistress was fond of mixing things up and going against the grain. he was duly invited for an interview and something must have gone right since he found himself sitting at the staff table staring down at all the students at the beginning of september. he felt back at home, suddenly - hogwarts was a place that had been his life seven years, and it was like... well, magic, being back there. his life only improved when his best friend turned up at hogwarts too. they'd stayed close this whole time, but since she had her amazing start at st mungo's and he'd been at hogwarts for two thirds of the year, it had been tough. now he got to hang out with her all the time, which he could only see as a positive. it didn't take long for him to find out, however, exactly how she'd ended up back at hogwarts. it took luke considerable willpower not to go and beat up mark dashwood on her behalf. instead he did his best to cheer her up, supplying her with endless chocolates and movie nights when he wasn't too swamped with marking. he wasn't sure he was doing the best job, but she seemed happy at hogwarts, and luke was secretly utterly thrilled they were back together. very content with his job, on good terms with his students, achieving high marks in newts and owls, luke's life was shaping up to be pretty perfect. however, all good things come to an end, as they say. one summer, luke was out with some muggle friends having a terrific night in a club in london - they'd all had far too much to drink since one of them was getting married and they'd decided to celebrate his stag do in style. luke found himself dancing in a club he didn't remember going to with an absolutely adorably pretty brunette. there was a vague unsettling feeling in his stomach that she was a little familiar, but with the amount he'd drunk his stomach was doing all sorts of odd things so he ignored it. a few fairly unclassy snogs later, luke's hands were all over her. she refused to go any further, and luke was so taken aback - he'd thought her much more drunk than even him - that he bought her a drink and chatted to her a little. he still doesn't remember what they talked about, but he hadn't met a girl who interested him quite so much in years. they parted as it got light in the morning, and luke went home, slept for the whole of the next day and night, and woke up the following morning with absolutely no recollection of the night at all. heading back off to school in tearing spirits, luke threw himself back into the hogwarts way of life with great joy. everything was going swimmingly in his life - the two dogs he'd acquired a couple of years previously from a rescue shelter seemed right at home both with him and the neighbour they lived with during the school year, his students were doing well, elsie seemed a little happier, and the new first years were looking to be a promisingly bright lot. what happened next came so out of the blue that luke still isn't entirely sure what happened. he was doing some marking late one night in his office, when there came a knock at his door and one of his sixth year students, gavriella spencer, came in. luke liked gavriella and thought her very bright and intriguing - however, he had noticed her wearing very short skirts for the last few weeks, and was beginning to fear that it was for his sake, since he saw her in the halls looking normal. he feared it not because gavriella was scary - quite the opposite, in fact. she was far too likeable and he was attempting to keep his distance. she first of all told him that she needed help with a spell. luke, uncomfortable, agreed to help her out. it wasn't long, however, before she was confessing that it wasn't really about the spell - she was the brunette he'd been with in the nightclub, and it appeared that while he had forgotten totally, she really hadn't. luke was horrorstruck - he knew exactly how much jeopardy this put his job in; not to mention he was terrified what it would do to her. he knew that this could only end badly for one or both of them. however, talking to, he realised he was still as hopelessly attracted to her as he had been that night back in london, and before he realised how stupid he was being he was already kissing her. luke was now presented with an impossible dilemma. it was entirely out of the question for him to get involved with a student. just plain stupid, irresponsible, not to mention an abuse of his position. however, he was also more strongly attracted to gavi than he had ever been to any woman in his entire life. he couldn't eat or sleep for want of her. he eventually decided to take things one day at a time and see what happened - and ended up giving in to his emotions and starting to see her properly. he loved spending time with her, but hated putting them both at risk and having to hide away. eventually, some months later, overcome with guilt and doubt, luke finished things with gavi. he wallowed for weeks afterwards, unable to face her. he had come to love her, really and truly, and still did so, desperately. he tried sleeping with other girls to take his mind off her, but it didn't help in the slightest. a while later, he ran into gavi again in diagon alley. he was so miserable without her that he once more let his heart rule his head and agreed to start seeing her again, unable to face not having her close. they kept the affair hidden very well - luke didn't think even elsie suspected anything, although she was distracted with her own problems at the time. as things steadied out again, luke began to think that the situation might be survivable. gavi was due to graduate at the end of the year - they could give it some time, and then they could go public with their relationship without either of them getting in trouble. there would probably be some disapproving looks, but that meant nothing to luke so long as he had gavriella with him. all those plans went down the toilet, however, when gavi got pregnant after one stupid night on new year's eve where they forgot to use protection. luke was completely desolate at first, convinced he'd ruined both of their lives. however, he quickly pulled himself together when he realised that gavi needed him to be strong in this situation. they agreed for her to lie about the pregnancy until the end of the summer term, at which point he handed in his notice to the headmistress with an apology, and gavi moved in with him. now, later in the summer, luke feels like his life is steadying again. he's set up a tutoring business for young magical children whose parents don't want them attending muggle school and had a fair few parents interested already, mostly those with older children that he taught at hogwarts. he's gone through all the stages of anxiety about his impending fatherhood, and now his excitement considerably outweighs his fear - although it's not gone entirely! he's had plenty of time to get his head sorted and he's realised that the positives of the situation are far greater than the negatives - he'll be home all year round with his dogs, he has a beautiful girlfriend, he'll soon have a son or daughter - something he's known he wanted since he left oxford university, he's got a promising business enterprise set up, he still has all his old friends, and he doesn't have the stress of keeping a huge part of his life hidden any more. in fact, the main stress he has right now is arguing about baby names with gavi, and wondering when will be the best time to pull out the engagement ring he's been carrying around in his pocket for a month now.
QUEEN ELISABETH I. EIGHTEEN AND THREE QUARTERS. two+ years roleplaying. GMT.

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