Post by Dhruv Cornfoot on Aug 20, 2012 14:09:43 GMT -5
| [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] peter owen herriot. seventeen. gryffindor. colin morgan. | |
[rs=2] | peter owen herriot was born to annie and william herriot on the 5th of july 2007. he was the second child, coming eight whole years after his sister jemima. his parents had been trying for a second child for incredibly long, and they were overjoyed when he finally arrived. his parents didn’t come from particularly high-class stock, either of them. his father, william herriot, was a muggle, who owned a small pharmaceutical store in london, while his mother, annie james, was a witch who was the only magical one in her family – neither her elder sister, billie, nor any of her aunts or uncles seemed to have the gene. they were a typical middle-class english family – though annie had informed her husband about her being magic, and jemima had already begun to show signs of it. they had got married at a relatively young age – annie was barely twenty, while william was twenty-two. their parents had arranged the match, and while they only vaguely knew each other when they got married, they slowly grew to become very fond of each other, and eventually they finally fell in love. however they had had jemima fairly early in their marriage, and she grew up happy and oblivious to any disturbances. the reason annie's parents had arranged her marriage was not much of a mystery. a few years prior, her elder sister billie had run off and got hitched to some french or australian bloke called milton devereux for reasons no one could understand. (billie did tell annie about their shotgun wedding later, though.) honestly, annie had despised milton ever since she first laid eyes on him. she hated the way he looked at their family with an upturned nose and condescending manners. she was one of billie's closest confidantes, and so knew the story behind hers and milton's wedding. though her parents did secretly appreciate the fact that billie had married such a rich man, they suspected he was being unfaithful to her (it was anybody's guess, really, since he spent so much time away from home and he had made no secret about his distaste for billie and her family). they wanted annie to marry, in their own words, a 'good, honest bloke with a sound mind'. they made a match for annie with william herriot, the son of one of the james' acquaintances in london who seemed set to take up his father's business. they appreciated his straightforwardness and the fact that he had a steady job. he was also surprisingly accepting of annie's magical abilities - of course, her parents hadn't said a word to his, but she came clean to him a few weeks after marriage. he wasn't scared, or angry; he was incredibly calm about the whole thing, and in fact seemed happy that his children would grow up to be witches and wizards. a few years passed and jemima had started growing older, so the herriots decided to try for another baby. however, at first, annie wasn't able to get pregnant. she visited a doctor promptly, scared that there was something wrong with either her or william. however, she was assured that they were both perfectly healthy. however, it would be a little over two years since they started trying for a second child, before annie fell pregnant with peter. nine months and a relatively uneventful pregnancy later, peter came into the world, screaming at the top of his lungs as everyone would later tell him. jemima was the first to see him - she pushed even her father aside and rushed to hold peter, excited that she finally had a baby brother to play with. it was said that peter would never be silent, unless jemima was holding him, feeding him, playing with him or some combination of the three. despite the age difference, the two grew up incredibly close, and are still close to this day. jemima is one of the only people who knows peter well. however, she tends to dote on him and occasionally talk to him as if he were still a baby, which winds him up to no end. after peter turned about three, william began to take him to his store for the day while he worked. he enjoyed it a lot there, mostly just fetching things for his father from the shelves and store cupboard. he closely watched his father dealing with customers, and gained a good sense of business and an incredible ability to bargain. even now, he's notorious for hardly ever buying an item at its given price. he will bargain long and hard with the shopkeeper, often tiring them and irritating them. he's gotten kicked out of innumerable stores due to his absolute refusal to pay anything more than seventy-five per cent the marked price. the reason he does this is because he was taught that rarely are products actually worth their marked price. however, he never bargains on things like medicines, knowing that they are fully worth their prices. he began to get curious about his father's job soon enough, and asked him one day how medicines were made. his father waved him off with a reply of 'they mix many things together' or something similar. taking those words to heart, he soon started raiding his mother's kitchen shelves and mixing up various food ingredients. he then offered it to the rest of the family, announcing that he'd made 'medicine like the ones daddy sells'. to be polite, jemima had tasted a little bit of his first concoction, but had spit it out almost immediately. she told him it was nice, though, and pretended to like it while forcing herself to drink the entire cup. however, the habit didn't stay for long, as he learned that what he was making wasn't medicinal at all and simply tasted terrible. he then turned his attention to recipes, helping his mother out in the kitchen. he was incredibly curious about how things mixed together and how the results often turned out quite different from the ingredients themselves. he was teased a lot for this supposedly 'girly' habit, but he's still quite fond of cooking. the curiosity has spilled over into brewing potions as well, and he likes the subject a lot. in fact, it was the only owl he got an o on - the rest were either e's, a's or p's. when peter had just turned four, jemima received her hogwarts letter. it didn't come as much of a surprise to anyone, really, and she was incredibly excited to go. peter went shopping with her, and he was quite taken with diagon alley and the sights, sounds and smells there. he knew that he'd only see her two months in a year now, though, and so he was very upset. he wanted to make sure that their last two months together were the best they ever had. however, his plans were spoilt by lucette and xavier moving in. the herriots' cousins on their maternal side, the devereux's, had come to live in the cotswolds, near their village. peter had absolutely no interest in them, seeing as they were quite a bit older than him, but annie forced jemima to go and 'make them feel welcome'. she returned half an hour later, fuming about 'those uppity bastards'. peter asked her what the matter was, and only got a rather unintelligible reply, most of which was cursing (the likes of which would probably get her thrown out of the house if their parents heard). he got the gist of it, though. the whole family wasn't there, just milton and the two middle kids xavier and lucette, and most of the village kids had already shunned them due to their uppity attitudes and their looking down on them. despite that, jemima still tried talking to them, but was met with cold replies and snubs. she was infuriated by this, but wasn't deterred. she went on trying to be friendly to them, though every time they snubbed her she grew less enthusiastic about it. finally she gave it up, and asked peter to try to talk to them - maybe one of them had a soft spot for children? unfortunately, lucette and xavier snubbed peter even more than they had jemima, and he resents the entire family to this day. once jemima left for hogwarts, the house was quite lonely. peter did spend time at his father's shop, or helping his mother out in the kitchen, or playing with the village boys, but he wanted a constant companion, someone other than his parents. eventually, after much begging, annie and william got peter a baby turtle for his fifth birthday. he called the turtle 'rex' because as small as it was, it was quite fierce and scrabbled and splashed about in the water. he took great care of it, and he was quite inseparable from it in his growing years. the rest of his childhood years passed without much event - he did get enrolled in a muggle primary school though, but routinely caused a lot of trouble there, and his parents often had to be called over to the school because he wasn't behaving. he had plenty of friends there, and slowly began to feel jemima's absence less and less. he did still miss her though - he routinely wrote to her and got regular replies back too, though he didn't understand much of the things she wrote about in later years, like crushes. there was one letter that did catch his attention though - it was jemima's second year, and their cousin lucette had just started schooling. jemima had been snubbed yet again by her when she tried to help lucette settle down, and she was furious. she told him that she was never talking to any of the devereux's again, and he would do well to do the same as her. he agreed readily, though at this point he hadn't met any of his maternal cousins other than lucette and xavier. he finally got his hogwarts letter a year after jemima had graduated from hogwarts, and he was incredibly excited to go. his mother told him that the youngest devereux cousin, camille, was going to be in the same year as him. he was not at all impressed by this piece of news, resolving to avoid her at all times. in all probability, she was just as uppity and obnoxious as her two elder siblings. if he ever talked to her, it would either be to mock her or take her down a few pegs. however, his mother also told him to either be nice to her or ignore her completely, whichever was easier to do. he agreed, deciding to ignore her, because he didn't really want to go out of his way to be nice to someone he couldn't care less about. when the time finally came for him to board the train, he didn't cry at all, very happy to be finally going to hogwarts. he made some friends who were also first years, chatted happily to them and discussed what houses they thought they would be in with them. peter wanted to be in either gryffindor or hufflepuff - he knew he wasn't quite smart enough to be in ravenclaw, and definitely didn't want to be in slytherin, as he'd heard that slytherin was the 'bad guys' house. he caught a few glimpses of his cousin, camille, while he was dashing between carriages. she didn't look like a bad kid, though - quite quiet and elegant. he supposed she'd be different when he talked to her in person, though, so he definitely resolved to avoid her from then on. when he finally reached hogwarts and was standing in line for the sorting, he spotted camille standing a few spaces ahead of him. he was waiting to see which house she got sorted into, so if the hat suggested that house to him he could quite firmly turn it down. he watched her closely during her sorting, and when she ended up in hufflepuff, he was quite surprised. maybe she was different from her siblings? just in case, though, when his sorting came around, the hat was deliberating whether to put him in gryffindor or hufflepuff. he begged to it, 'not hufflepuff, please!' and the hat promptly called out 'gryffindor!' as he walked to the red and gold table, he couldn't help but feel a bit pleased with himself. his mother had been a gryffindor, too, and he was more than happy that he ended up in her ex-house. he quickly began to settle down into his new house, making friends with almost all his house mates and most of his year mates as well. he was rather notorious for mischief, however - he routinely skipped class, mouthed off to teachers and got detention far too often. this went on for about half a year until he received a stern letter from his mother, which demanded that his mischief be stopped or else. he tried to control his behaviour from then on, in the fear of being sent a howler. however, he still did get detention very frequently. meanwhile, he went on observing camille from afar, monitoring her behaviour and the way she talked, how she responded in class and who her friends were. his dorm-mates often ribbed him about his supposedly creepy obsession with his cousin, and called it 'cousincest'. he didn't know what that meant - cousin-incest? in any case, he didn't know if camille knew she was being observed or not, and whether or not it was 'creepy', but he laid off on the observation and almost completely forgot about her, except when he spotted her a few times in class. in around his third year, he began to notice girls as more than just friends. his first crush was on a very pretty girl in ravenclaw, who he'd only seen from afar. he never told her about it, and got over it in good time. he also had his first taste of firewhiskey around this time, and became very fond of alcohol. he didn't mention any of this in his weekly letters to his mother and sister, who had now got a steady job. he lost his virginity around fifth year, at a party he had attended. he was incredibly drunk and didn't at all remember any details of it. however, he woke up the next morning, to see one of his closest friends lying next to him. he was incredibly mortified, and asked her whether they could still remain friends or not. she agreed, and they are still quite close to this day. though he wasn't an exceptional student, he was good enough to get by with pass marks in his owls. he scored an o in potions, e's in charms and transfiguration, a p in herbology and a's in all the rest. he continued on to sixth year, having dropped a few subjects. he'd decided by now that he wanted to either work in an apothecary or own one. he was very interested in potions and what they did, and decided to apply it in his career as well. sixth year was quite idyllic, though classes did get rather tough. he started sleeping around a bit more, and generally had a good time. he didn't work particularly hard in class and his homework was often unfinished, but he studied quite hard for exams and ended up with fairly decent marks. now he's going into seventh year and a bit nervous for his newts - he doesn't want to fail any of them. as for his personality, he's very charismatic and charming, which helps him pick up girls easily, as well as making friends. he's rather lazy, though, and hardly ever finishes homework - or, if he does, does it the day before it's due for submission. he's quite forgetful as well, often forgetting about homework or the favours he's promised people to do. one thing he absolutely can't control is his smart mouth. if he sees an opportunity to make a snarky comment anywhere, even in class, he will make it, no questions asked. this has landed him in detention more times than he can count over the years. his fascination for mixing and brewing things has continued into his teenage years. he still loves potions and got an o in its owl, as mentioned earlier. sometimes, when he's free and sure that no one will question him or where he's going, he goes down to the kitchens to help the house-elves to cook. it's a rather embarrassing habit, considering that no other boy he knows can cook, so he keeps it a secret from his friends. cheerio! |
kitty. fourteen. one and a half years. arabian gulf. |
exempt?
