Post by MIHAI ROȘU on Mar 18, 2016 1:28:56 GMT
Mihai Cantemirești Roșu
Non-binary | Seventeen |
Romanian | Pansexual |
172 cm | 59 kg |
Half-Blood | |
personality
[attr="class","profileboxscroll"]Perhaps the obvious point to start with is his House. Mihai has no qualms about being sorted into House Rosier, a community which more or less suits him. Apparently a chipper and bright youth, Mihai tends to get along anyone who doesn’t bear him any resentment; he doesn’t typically act cold, unapproachable, or rude, though he does tend to be cautious when interacting with new people, always on guard for an off-hand comment related to his bloodline. Despite being congenial to most people, this hardly means that he considers them friends. Most of the people he encounters are to him more of a pastime and an amusement than something in which to truly invest his time, so he keeps only a small circle of friends that are close to him, few enough that he can count them on one hand. These are the only ones he would so much as consider sticking his neck out for.
Another quality the fountain was correct about is his work ethic. Mihai is a hard worker in all aspects of his studies that interest him (mostly practical magic), which unfortunately means the worst in the subjects that he doesn’t care for. Generally, the rule is that the more that he’s actually applying and doing, the more entertained he is and the more willing to do the work. It’s true that he might be a little lazy (often arriving late to class or handing in assignments past the due date), he’s also an intensely curious person. He has a desire to learn about different and unusual things, even if they might be useless skills, and for that he’s willing to work even if he grumbles about it from time to time. He has a particular interest in morbid things, and frequently references them to others as a fun fact–all the better if it makes someone squirm.
The next telling thing: his wand. It speaks strongly to his easygoing, mischievous nature, though it also reveals some inklings to what he’s like under that surface.
Deemed swishy, he shares his wand’s fickleness and changeability. Despite having some subjects he’s dedicated to, he also has many that he picks up briefly, leading to many little skills that he’s learnt over the years. He can also be moody from time to time–although he’s mostly nonchalant, there is the occasional touchy topic that can make him irritable and withdrawn. His allegiance to people can likewise be volatile; in contrast to the nature of his House, Mihai is calculating, and depending on his particular relationship to a person, could turn against them if need be. Depending on the specific circumstances, he might feel some shame or guilt for it, but with small matters he usually easily dismisses it.
This entails that he can be callous towards others, which is rather the downside to his airy personality. He can care sometimes care too little, alongside the lively and charming attitude that comes with owners of a pixie heart core. Aside from his outward qualities already detailed, he’s also hedonistic, attracted to simple pleasures whether they are physical or emotional. This is the reason for his whimsicality–he seeks to live well and enjoy life as much as he can when he can. He’s mischievous, enjoying teasing or pranking people for his own fun, though true to the pixie heart core he rarely means this in a harmful way. Despite the occasional callousness, he has a charming side too that makes him easy to get along with. He can read people well when he cares to do it, so he can appeal to them; sometimes this manifests in a more manipulative way as he tries to find ways to get what he wants.
The more lighthearted nature of the pixie heart core is contrasted with the unicorn heartstring. As stated, he has a tendency towards manipulation, and he’s otherwise quite cunning. An adept liar and strategist (in his less impulsive moments), he has a manner of talking himself out of trouble and getting his way. It’s only recently that he’s found more use for this skill than feigning sick or coming up with excuses, having used it to drag himself deeper into the more sinister side of his nature that was ultimately dredged up by the loss of his brother. A core that reflects his possessive and protective nature, he had never really been good at sharing or controlling instances of jealousy in the rare moments it arose, those traits nevertheless turned for the worse. The failure of not being able to protect his brother has been driving him towards revenge and obsession, pressed on by a feeling of obligation to atone.
These cores are bound together by hawthorn, a fitting wood for dualistic natures. Mihai was never naturally inclined towards darkness if something hadn’t driven him there, but given the reason to, he embraces it gladly to achieve his goals. That bitterness is something that warped his nature, no longer as carefree and cheerful as he had been. Although it’s certainly not feigned, he has largely prioritized the search for his brother for the things he once enjoyed, even embarking on a rather dangerous quest in hopes of success. Indeed, his attempt at a normally agreed-upon dark pursuit is driven by an intention that is otherwise good, if it weren’t simultaneously tainted by a self-destructive obsession. Seeking reconciliation, he nevertheless opts for the most dangerous and unpredictable undertaking, which has as much potential to heal as to destroy.
Another quality the fountain was correct about is his work ethic. Mihai is a hard worker in all aspects of his studies that interest him (mostly practical magic), which unfortunately means the worst in the subjects that he doesn’t care for. Generally, the rule is that the more that he’s actually applying and doing, the more entertained he is and the more willing to do the work. It’s true that he might be a little lazy (often arriving late to class or handing in assignments past the due date), he’s also an intensely curious person. He has a desire to learn about different and unusual things, even if they might be useless skills, and for that he’s willing to work even if he grumbles about it from time to time. He has a particular interest in morbid things, and frequently references them to others as a fun fact–all the better if it makes someone squirm.
The next telling thing: his wand. It speaks strongly to his easygoing, mischievous nature, though it also reveals some inklings to what he’s like under that surface.
Deemed swishy, he shares his wand’s fickleness and changeability. Despite having some subjects he’s dedicated to, he also has many that he picks up briefly, leading to many little skills that he’s learnt over the years. He can also be moody from time to time–although he’s mostly nonchalant, there is the occasional touchy topic that can make him irritable and withdrawn. His allegiance to people can likewise be volatile; in contrast to the nature of his House, Mihai is calculating, and depending on his particular relationship to a person, could turn against them if need be. Depending on the specific circumstances, he might feel some shame or guilt for it, but with small matters he usually easily dismisses it.
This entails that he can be callous towards others, which is rather the downside to his airy personality. He can care sometimes care too little, alongside the lively and charming attitude that comes with owners of a pixie heart core. Aside from his outward qualities already detailed, he’s also hedonistic, attracted to simple pleasures whether they are physical or emotional. This is the reason for his whimsicality–he seeks to live well and enjoy life as much as he can when he can. He’s mischievous, enjoying teasing or pranking people for his own fun, though true to the pixie heart core he rarely means this in a harmful way. Despite the occasional callousness, he has a charming side too that makes him easy to get along with. He can read people well when he cares to do it, so he can appeal to them; sometimes this manifests in a more manipulative way as he tries to find ways to get what he wants.
The more lighthearted nature of the pixie heart core is contrasted with the unicorn heartstring. As stated, he has a tendency towards manipulation, and he’s otherwise quite cunning. An adept liar and strategist (in his less impulsive moments), he has a manner of talking himself out of trouble and getting his way. It’s only recently that he’s found more use for this skill than feigning sick or coming up with excuses, having used it to drag himself deeper into the more sinister side of his nature that was ultimately dredged up by the loss of his brother. A core that reflects his possessive and protective nature, he had never really been good at sharing or controlling instances of jealousy in the rare moments it arose, those traits nevertheless turned for the worse. The failure of not being able to protect his brother has been driving him towards revenge and obsession, pressed on by a feeling of obligation to atone.
These cores are bound together by hawthorn, a fitting wood for dualistic natures. Mihai was never naturally inclined towards darkness if something hadn’t driven him there, but given the reason to, he embraces it gladly to achieve his goals. That bitterness is something that warped his nature, no longer as carefree and cheerful as he had been. Although it’s certainly not feigned, he has largely prioritized the search for his brother for the things he once enjoyed, even embarking on a rather dangerous quest in hopes of success. Indeed, his attempt at a normally agreed-upon dark pursuit is driven by an intention that is otherwise good, if it weren’t simultaneously tainted by a self-destructive obsession. Seeking reconciliation, he nevertheless opts for the most dangerous and unpredictable undertaking, which has as much potential to heal as to destroy.
history
[attr="class","profileboxscroll"]In front of the mirror, he likes to categorize his features. His mousy brown hair is unmistakably not his mother’s, and neither is his heart-shaped face. Ileana Roșu is severe, and gaunt, with dark hair like an oil slick. Her thin, drawn lips are dissimilar to his red ones, which are curled perpetually into a smirk at some unknown joke between the universe and himself. Looking at them, you might not think they were mother and child, but for a few telling traits. They are both exceptionally pale, with irises black enough (indeed, unsettling enough) that they seem to be all pupil, matched by the dark smudges beneath their eyes suggestive of sleepless nights. His favorite part is the teeth: two sharp pairs of canines that glint predatorily whenever he smiles, which is always. He often likes to say that he inherited them from his mother–oddly enough but truthful–and very few people can lay claim to such a thing. He also likes to say that he suffers from a mild affliction of vampirism.
Given a proper number, the mildness of the affliction is fifty percent, at least according to the math he’s done. Mother plus father equals him. A vampire and a human, from both of whom he’d theoretically inherited the same amount of genetic material, which would make him half vampire and half human. He’s not a scientist, but he thinks that’s how blood quantum works. So he’s roughly fifty percent a vampire, and he supposes he acts like it: more or less an aversion to sunlight and garlic, a taste for blood (though as far as he can tell, he doesn’t need it to survive), he certainly doesn’t need to be invited onto anyone’s property, and he looks pretty damn fine in front of a mirror. Some of these, of course, are folktales, passed and proliferated through years and borders, exaggerated into myth, though they still linger in people’s assumptions about him, about his family. He, his mother, his brother.
His father had never been in the picture. Mihai knew scant little about him, but didn’t really care to know more, since his family was all he could have wanted. They were perfect as they were, and it didn’t matter that Constantin Popa had packed his belongings and left during Ileana’s pregnancy. She never expounded much on that topic, though through the clues that Mihai picked up most of his life, he suspects that Constantin had fled because he’d learnt the truth of Ileana’s nature–both the magic and the vampirism–and had been unable to handle it. So he’d run. If he were to be honest, Mihai didn’t bear Constantin much of a grudge for that. As far as he was concerned, just he and his mother were fine on their own–they had no need for a cowardly father.
Born in Bucharest, Mihai lived with his mother in post-Communist Romania, a country still experiencing the convulsions of its recent history. Their family life was uneventful in comparison. Ileana was a dragonologist–no better country to be one, really–who had taken some time off from working in the field to write a comprehensive guide to dragons, and to take care of her young child. As a mother, she was strict, but loving, and she encouraged Mihai to excel in his early studies as well as physical fitness. To make sure that he would be ready when time came to attend Beauxbatons–her alma mater–she spoke to him in most parts Romanian, slightly less parts French, and even less parts English. Otherwise, she liked to regale him with stories of dragons and other excitements; whenever they visited the old Roșu estate near Drăguș, his family members liked to do the same.
Mihai’s early childhood was spent among the mostly-human denizens of Bucharest. Given it was the largest city in Romania, there were quite a few inhabitants that belonged to the magical community–some of whom he met whenever his mother required consultation on her book–though he never knew any peers. His school and his gymnastics training were all attended by muggles, he was fairly certain, and indeed he did not see a single face he recognized when time came to set foot in Beauxbatons. Not knowing any other magic practitioners his age did not particularly faze him; he made playmates well enough with his muggle classmates, who found his slightly unusual appearance a curiosity but nothing worth sacrificing a friendship over, as their parents all calmly assured them that strigoi were a thing of fiction. Of course, some children still firmly held onto the belief, which Mihai may or may not have done anything to encourage for his own amusement.
At eight years, another member entered their household. A younger brother. Feeling more comfortable with the idea of children, Ileana had decided to adopt a one year-old boy. It was a decision to which Mihai had agreed with equal amounts excitement and trepidation. He was excited to be an older brother, seeing it as his chance to have someone who would look up to him (and maybe do his bidding–just a little), but also nervous that it might change his relationship with his mother thereafter. As it turned out, he didn’t have anything to worry about.
Mihai wasn’t a great elder brother, but neither was he a bad one. Whenever he wasn’t on a playdate with his friends, he was willing to help around the house (not without some whining, though luckily, magic took care of most of the chores), and he kept baby Florin entertained. Mihai read to him, put him to sleep, made toys act out scenes and the flames in their fireplace dance with his blossoming magic skills. The brothers weren’t close enough in age to be good friends, but Mihai developed a certain affection for Florinel which only grew as the baby became a real part of their family.
Their time in the city was cut short two years later, when Ileana decided it was time to go back into field work. She had succeeded in publishing an extensively-researched volume on dragons, then taken a break for a year to pay full attention to her children, and that had been enough time for her. She had been invited by one of her colleagues to a research site at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, as the team wanted her expertise on what was a possible cross-breeding between a Romanian Longhorn and a Hungarian Horntail. Ileana accepted the invitation, and during the summer, settled herself and her children in a nearby town whose inhabitants were a mix of wizarding and muggle folk.
Mihai was devastated to abandon the city in which he’d grown up. At age ten, he had many friends that he had to leave behind, which he did so with very little grace. Indeed, he maintained that temper tantrum for awhile, acting moody and snappish towards his exasperated mother as he directed all of his familial energy towards Florinel. It was made no better by the fact that the children of the other dragonologists treated him oddly, with frowning faces and side-turned eyes. Without any school for him to get to know other (muggle) children, Mihai was left without playmates.
He dedicated ever more attention to his little brother, oftentimes taking Florinel outdoors to enjoy the countryside. The nature was one of the small elements of comfort he found somewhere he was out-of-place, somewhere he was lonely. The air was different, for one. There was more space to play, to experiment with his magic, and there was little crime and danger for Ileana to warn him about. Most of the time, she would let him and Florinel play outside unsupervised during the day, even venturing as far as the woods as long as they didn’t go in too deeply. The two children–one with a scarf wrapped around his head and neck, sporting a pair of ill-fitting sunglasses, and the other barely toddling after him–could often be seen just beyond the first line of trees.
One day, Mihai and Florinel found an injured bird in the grass. They brought it home, and Ileana healed it while proclaiming that it was likely a magpie. She instructed the siblings to leave it back where they found it in case the parents came back, but when that never happened, they brought it home once more, and this time, it stayed. Mihai named it Plăcintă (Pici for short), after the pastries that Ileana had brought home that day, and took to caring for it.
With Pici for company, and the continued company of Florinel, Mihai slowly began to settle into their surroundings. His mother–surely understanding the shock that the move must have been for Mihai–did her best to accommodate him as well. She made sure that Mihai had the technological luxuries he’d possessed in Bucharest (within reason) and allowed him to pursue muggle interests as much as magical ones. As though extending an olive branch, Ileana furthermore took to bringing him and Florinel along to a couple of her longer field expeditions, rather than leaving them at home with a caretaker.
Those outings ended when school started again, which was both better and worse. For better, because he got to know more kids his age, some of who were curious to make friends with the new arrival. Worse, because this time, some of Mihai’s classmates were from wizarding families, children of the dragonology researchers. The sidelong glances they’d give him in the classroom were the same as the ones they gave him when they passed each other on the streets, or sometimes at the research site. It was the first time he got into a fight. Philip, a boy his age from a notoriously conservative English family, caught him in the school hallway and slyly whispered an insult into his ear. Mihai, who had not so much raised a hand against another person before, did not hesitate to punch him in the face. Since both of them declined to inform their muggle teacher the cause of the fight, they were both suspended.
At home, Ileana sat him on their couch and fixed up his black eye, bloody nose, and bruised knuckles with a sad look in her eyes. She did not reprimand him for fighting, but simply entreated him to handle his conflicts with more thoughtfulness. Initially dismayed by this request, Mihai eventually decided that she was right. Once his suspension period was over, he strode up to his teacher and gleefully informed her that Philip had stolen a copy of their upcoming exam. Indeed, the teacher ended up finding said exam in the backpack of the most-certainly innocent schoolmate, who was utterly shocked and perplexed as to how it had come to his possession. Although Philip might have eventually gotten the idea, Mihai had long done his damage, and he wasn’t yet to receive his retribution.
Mihai breathed a sigh of relief when Philip left soon after, whisked away to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He himself had another year to kill before he could attend Beauxbatons, but it really felt like no time at all. He divided his attention between Florinel (now a very sweet and loving child of four), the one or two muggle friends he’d made, and helping his mother with her research. The summer before his enrollment, Ileana begged off the dragonology team for awhile and took her children on a months-long wand-searching tour of Eastern Europe. They ended up visiting a wandmaker in Bucharest, and requested him to recast the unicorn heartstring core of a cracked and rotting heirloom wand. After a few trials, the wandmaker decided to combine it with a rare core of pixie heart, and encased them both in hawthorn.
When the school year began, Mihai departed for France with teary good-byes, bids of good fortune, and promises to write (preferably through email, if he could get working network connection). It was the hardest to part from Florinel, who positively wailed when they left Mihai in the entrance hall of Beauxbatons Palace, but before long, Mihai had more than enough to think about. Placed in House Rosier after a slight vacillation, he was given a warm welcome and soon drawn into the thrall of socialization, orientation, and the beginning of classes. As he was apt at doing, he made friends rather quickly, but became especially close with a member of House Sureau, Snežana Knežević. They had the pleasure of meeting during a combined Potions class, in which they partnered and developed a chemistry that was rather explosive. The fact that both of them were delighted with this result, rather than guilty or rattled, only cemented their friendship.
His experiences, however, weren’t all good. Among the children of magical folk, he was hard-pressed to hide his bloodline. Some recognized the Roșu surname, others suspected the prominence of his canines and his pronounced aversion to garlic–mostly, people fell in both categories. Some of them didn’t care, but there were a minority that did (and really all that matters is that one of them cares enough). For the most part, Mihai had enough friends and friendly relations, and enough professors who cared to accommodate him, that the occasional harassment and slur didn’t conspicuously hinder him. What it did do was cause him to develop his own way to get back at his tormenters–if he did not simply engage them in a fistfight–ensuring that they ended up worse off than he. During that time, due to the amount of trouble he was involved in, he got to know the first-year counselor and deputy headmistress rather well: a Miss Nicoleta Cantacuzène-Deleanu, and as it were, he still isn’t sure whether she was ever trying to discourage him or not.
Despite the obstacles, Mihai tended to do well in his classes. He was a marvel with applied magic–rather less when it came to studied subjects–successful particularly in spell-casting, potions, and divination. He had a small circle of friends, as predicted by his House selection, though he mostly got along with anyone who wasn’t hostile to him for his bloodline. The person closest to him was Snežana, who he called Neșka, both of them bearing curious spirits that seemed drawn to creative and innovative pursuits. She was also at least just as enthusiastic as he was about the potential of learning about the Dark Arts, a forbidden magic that held a certain sort of charm over the heads of young and eager students. As twelve-year olds, they hardly meant any harm from it, driven by the spirit of inquiry, as it were.
Eventually, summer came, and Mihai closed off a successful first year with more good-byes, and good lucks, and promises to keep in touch. He was welcomed back into his mother’s arms and Florinel’s life, and he suspected that was how things would go for the next six years. School, home. Transitioning smoothly from one to the next, with time flowing as seamlessly as a river. He was mostly right about that. Second year came and went in very much the same way (he considered joining the Quidditch team, but was much more fond of performance than competition, so he joined the aerial performance troupe instead), and so did third year (that was the year Neșka lost her sister, and she had been inconsolable).
He’d almost made it to his fourth year, and he would. But God knows he wasn’t going to make it in one piece.
As the summer drew to a close and the wind took on a cooler edge, Mihai spent most of his time with his family, getting updated on dragons, listening to Florinel read, and writing back and forth with his friends. During an afternoon like any other, he was in the kitchen, laptop open and headphones slotted over his ears, and Florinel was in full view. He was playing outside, and Mihai had enchanted the back door to remain open so he could see his brother, and he was playing with a jumprope. He was trying to do double-jumps, he was counting the number of jumps he made, his hair fixed up in pigtails and bouncing with each hop. Mihai looked down to respond to the message his friend had left him, and–
And he was being knocked to the side with an arm around his neck, there was a snap and a moment of disorientation and when he felt the ground beneath his feet again, he was watching a snake of flames devour his house. It burned through the kitchen and emerged on the other side of the building, sighting them with an awareness that was living, and then it was barreling towards them. Even from the distance, Mihai could feel the heat of the approaching flames on his face–much hotter than any fire could possibly be–and it was scorching like the sun threatening to envelop him, but then his mother was pointing out a wand, her nails still digging hard into the side of his neck. He never heard what spell she uttered, but the being of flames was split down the middle by an invisible force, torn apart by a burst of wind. It shrunk to a small blaze, then to cinders, writhing in the grass.
He was screaming for Florin before even the embers died. He was nowhere. Not among scorched and ruined walls, not among blackened and indistinguishable pieces of furniture that he burned his hands on to get to the last place he’d seen Florinel, playing with his jumprope. All Mihai found was a blackened ring of grass around the place their walls once stood, marking out the ruins like a curse. No searching, no screaming, yielded any clues: if Florin was dead, if he was alive, if he’d been taken. There was nothing to say–the feelings couldn’t be put into words.
It destroyed them.
Mihai cast the first stone. He blamed her for not trying harder, for not having saved Florin first. She didn’t really care for Florin, he was the one who raised him, who kept him company when she was off on her job. She only adopted him so that she could feel better about herself, better about not having helped anyone in the eighties when things were at their worst. She shrugged her shoulders and allowed her children to raise themselves so she could indulge in her own pursuits. She never wanted him. She never cared. Was she even mourning? Was she even going to do anything to find Florin? Or was she just going to leave him for dead and go back to her job like nothing ever happened, because that’s what she always did, wasn’t it?
The words came in a storm, thoughtless and crude. He poured out his grief and rage like venom and spit it in her face, never thinking of how her expression crumpled, how she didn’t try to reason with him, he just thought of the barren earth where he’d last seen Florin make twenty-two jumps with his pigtails slipping out of their ties. It didn’t matter if it was unfair, or if he was lying–she was close and he was hurt and he needed someone to hurt more badly than he did.
The worst part was, he succeeded. The worst part was, she couldn’t hold him through it. The worst part was, he left before either of them were ready. If school hadn’t been right around the corner, perhaps they could have come to an understanding. Perhaps they could have forgiven one another, forgiven themselves, healed in some sort of way. But leaving was leaving; leaving was rupture. The opportunity passed, leaving in its wake a radio silence that consumed the words between them.
Ileana wrote to him perfunctorily. She updated him on the details of the investigation, and the rest he read in the papers. The crime was committed by two wizards and a witch–two of whom had been on Ileana’s research team–and there was an extensive debate on whether this had constituted a hate crime. Mihai didn’t need to know what the courts ruled to know the answer: one of the wizards was Philip’s father, and he’d seen the looks the others had thrown their family. The Fiendfyre they’d cast was in intent to kill, out of nothing but envy and hate. Ileana also wrote that she was trying to find Florin, that she was performing all the spells, hiring all the experts she could. She had no luck.
In a fit of obsession, Mihai plunged himself into his own search. Utilizing the Beauxbatons library, he looked for any spell, any potion, any divination that could help him find his little brother. He missed assignments, skipped classes, fell asleep over books. His social life suffered, and so did his grades, but Mihai had hardly a mind for that. Anything to find his Florin again, to ease his guilt over not watching him properly, for the chance to bring his little brother back and to fix everything that had broken apart in their family. The year passed in a blur of words, spells, futility.
When summer came, he didn’t go home. He requested special permission from the Headmistress–the same Nicoleta Cantacuzène-Deleanu who had welcomed his class of first years–to stay in Beauxbatons Palace. He explained that he wanted to continue using the library for help with his family issues; he wasn’t specific about which, but more than a quarter of the student body must have known by now, and certainly all the staff did too. What he did not tell her was that he didn’t know how he could possibly go home to his mother, after they parted ways like that.
To his surprise, she granted his request. He stayed in the dorms, spending summer much as he’d spent fall and winter and spring–until he got tired. Tired of relentlessly looking, searching for solutions that failed again and again, hoping there’d be one out there that would work, just work, and they could finally know. He started spending less time at the library, less time hunting for answers, more time sleeping away the tumult, and more time flying across the cliffs of the Pyrenees. For a long time, he hung there, at some midpoint between mourning and healing, until one incident pushed him all the way back to the beginning again.
At the beginning of fifth year, the culprits were convicted. They were found guilty of arson, careless use of dangerous magic, and attempted injury to persons, and were to serve four years in Nurmengrad, but nothing more. Basically a slap on the wrist for what was in actuality a hate crime, an attempted murder, and missing persons, but even then, the Roșus never saw justice anyway. The criminals promptly disappeared, and no amount of questioning friends or family revealed their location. Mihai received the news in his mother’s letter, and he clenched his fists hard enough to bleed. None of this was fair. They had caused his brother’s disappearance, put he and his mother through something indescribable, and ruined his family. They did not get to run.
Even as he rejoined his former social circles, he searched ever more desperately for a solution that would quell something, that would fix something deep inside him that was breaking. He didn’t know what that might be, but he hoped he might stumble across it somehow if he kept looking, if he never let that part of his past go until he had made peace with it… Somehow.
For that task, he approached the Headmistress. He needed a power that was more than what he could muster or even learn for himself, and she had the knowledge to supplement it, as the former Dark Arts professor for Durmstrang. He approached her with as much confidence as anxiousness, confiding in her that he had to know. A way to track lost people… and a way to fight them, if necessary. To his surprise, she agreed again. Thus began his unofficial tutelage with Headmistress Deleanu, and that is where he stands today, with a mentor that likes to see just how far she can make him go.
He has little objection to that. The boy who whined about bedtimes and school assignments has given way to one whose ambitions are deeply-rooted vengeance and grief, and who will throw himself into too-deep water to see his pathway through to the very end. The thing is, he doesn’t even know where it goes. He doesn’t know in which direction he’s heading and where he’ll end up, and if he had the sense to stop himself, perhaps he’ll realize the final stop might just cause more pain than good.
Given a proper number, the mildness of the affliction is fifty percent, at least according to the math he’s done. Mother plus father equals him. A vampire and a human, from both of whom he’d theoretically inherited the same amount of genetic material, which would make him half vampire and half human. He’s not a scientist, but he thinks that’s how blood quantum works. So he’s roughly fifty percent a vampire, and he supposes he acts like it: more or less an aversion to sunlight and garlic, a taste for blood (though as far as he can tell, he doesn’t need it to survive), he certainly doesn’t need to be invited onto anyone’s property, and he looks pretty damn fine in front of a mirror. Some of these, of course, are folktales, passed and proliferated through years and borders, exaggerated into myth, though they still linger in people’s assumptions about him, about his family. He, his mother, his brother.
His father had never been in the picture. Mihai knew scant little about him, but didn’t really care to know more, since his family was all he could have wanted. They were perfect as they were, and it didn’t matter that Constantin Popa had packed his belongings and left during Ileana’s pregnancy. She never expounded much on that topic, though through the clues that Mihai picked up most of his life, he suspects that Constantin had fled because he’d learnt the truth of Ileana’s nature–both the magic and the vampirism–and had been unable to handle it. So he’d run. If he were to be honest, Mihai didn’t bear Constantin much of a grudge for that. As far as he was concerned, just he and his mother were fine on their own–they had no need for a cowardly father.
Born in Bucharest, Mihai lived with his mother in post-Communist Romania, a country still experiencing the convulsions of its recent history. Their family life was uneventful in comparison. Ileana was a dragonologist–no better country to be one, really–who had taken some time off from working in the field to write a comprehensive guide to dragons, and to take care of her young child. As a mother, she was strict, but loving, and she encouraged Mihai to excel in his early studies as well as physical fitness. To make sure that he would be ready when time came to attend Beauxbatons–her alma mater–she spoke to him in most parts Romanian, slightly less parts French, and even less parts English. Otherwise, she liked to regale him with stories of dragons and other excitements; whenever they visited the old Roșu estate near Drăguș, his family members liked to do the same.
Mihai’s early childhood was spent among the mostly-human denizens of Bucharest. Given it was the largest city in Romania, there were quite a few inhabitants that belonged to the magical community–some of whom he met whenever his mother required consultation on her book–though he never knew any peers. His school and his gymnastics training were all attended by muggles, he was fairly certain, and indeed he did not see a single face he recognized when time came to set foot in Beauxbatons. Not knowing any other magic practitioners his age did not particularly faze him; he made playmates well enough with his muggle classmates, who found his slightly unusual appearance a curiosity but nothing worth sacrificing a friendship over, as their parents all calmly assured them that strigoi were a thing of fiction. Of course, some children still firmly held onto the belief, which Mihai may or may not have done anything to encourage for his own amusement.
At eight years, another member entered their household. A younger brother. Feeling more comfortable with the idea of children, Ileana had decided to adopt a one year-old boy. It was a decision to which Mihai had agreed with equal amounts excitement and trepidation. He was excited to be an older brother, seeing it as his chance to have someone who would look up to him (and maybe do his bidding–just a little), but also nervous that it might change his relationship with his mother thereafter. As it turned out, he didn’t have anything to worry about.
Mihai wasn’t a great elder brother, but neither was he a bad one. Whenever he wasn’t on a playdate with his friends, he was willing to help around the house (not without some whining, though luckily, magic took care of most of the chores), and he kept baby Florin entertained. Mihai read to him, put him to sleep, made toys act out scenes and the flames in their fireplace dance with his blossoming magic skills. The brothers weren’t close enough in age to be good friends, but Mihai developed a certain affection for Florinel which only grew as the baby became a real part of their family.
Their time in the city was cut short two years later, when Ileana decided it was time to go back into field work. She had succeeded in publishing an extensively-researched volume on dragons, then taken a break for a year to pay full attention to her children, and that had been enough time for her. She had been invited by one of her colleagues to a research site at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, as the team wanted her expertise on what was a possible cross-breeding between a Romanian Longhorn and a Hungarian Horntail. Ileana accepted the invitation, and during the summer, settled herself and her children in a nearby town whose inhabitants were a mix of wizarding and muggle folk.
Mihai was devastated to abandon the city in which he’d grown up. At age ten, he had many friends that he had to leave behind, which he did so with very little grace. Indeed, he maintained that temper tantrum for awhile, acting moody and snappish towards his exasperated mother as he directed all of his familial energy towards Florinel. It was made no better by the fact that the children of the other dragonologists treated him oddly, with frowning faces and side-turned eyes. Without any school for him to get to know other (muggle) children, Mihai was left without playmates.
He dedicated ever more attention to his little brother, oftentimes taking Florinel outdoors to enjoy the countryside. The nature was one of the small elements of comfort he found somewhere he was out-of-place, somewhere he was lonely. The air was different, for one. There was more space to play, to experiment with his magic, and there was little crime and danger for Ileana to warn him about. Most of the time, she would let him and Florinel play outside unsupervised during the day, even venturing as far as the woods as long as they didn’t go in too deeply. The two children–one with a scarf wrapped around his head and neck, sporting a pair of ill-fitting sunglasses, and the other barely toddling after him–could often be seen just beyond the first line of trees.
One day, Mihai and Florinel found an injured bird in the grass. They brought it home, and Ileana healed it while proclaiming that it was likely a magpie. She instructed the siblings to leave it back where they found it in case the parents came back, but when that never happened, they brought it home once more, and this time, it stayed. Mihai named it Plăcintă (Pici for short), after the pastries that Ileana had brought home that day, and took to caring for it.
With Pici for company, and the continued company of Florinel, Mihai slowly began to settle into their surroundings. His mother–surely understanding the shock that the move must have been for Mihai–did her best to accommodate him as well. She made sure that Mihai had the technological luxuries he’d possessed in Bucharest (within reason) and allowed him to pursue muggle interests as much as magical ones. As though extending an olive branch, Ileana furthermore took to bringing him and Florinel along to a couple of her longer field expeditions, rather than leaving them at home with a caretaker.
Those outings ended when school started again, which was both better and worse. For better, because he got to know more kids his age, some of who were curious to make friends with the new arrival. Worse, because this time, some of Mihai’s classmates were from wizarding families, children of the dragonology researchers. The sidelong glances they’d give him in the classroom were the same as the ones they gave him when they passed each other on the streets, or sometimes at the research site. It was the first time he got into a fight. Philip, a boy his age from a notoriously conservative English family, caught him in the school hallway and slyly whispered an insult into his ear. Mihai, who had not so much raised a hand against another person before, did not hesitate to punch him in the face. Since both of them declined to inform their muggle teacher the cause of the fight, they were both suspended.
At home, Ileana sat him on their couch and fixed up his black eye, bloody nose, and bruised knuckles with a sad look in her eyes. She did not reprimand him for fighting, but simply entreated him to handle his conflicts with more thoughtfulness. Initially dismayed by this request, Mihai eventually decided that she was right. Once his suspension period was over, he strode up to his teacher and gleefully informed her that Philip had stolen a copy of their upcoming exam. Indeed, the teacher ended up finding said exam in the backpack of the most-certainly innocent schoolmate, who was utterly shocked and perplexed as to how it had come to his possession. Although Philip might have eventually gotten the idea, Mihai had long done his damage, and he wasn’t yet to receive his retribution.
Mihai breathed a sigh of relief when Philip left soon after, whisked away to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He himself had another year to kill before he could attend Beauxbatons, but it really felt like no time at all. He divided his attention between Florinel (now a very sweet and loving child of four), the one or two muggle friends he’d made, and helping his mother with her research. The summer before his enrollment, Ileana begged off the dragonology team for awhile and took her children on a months-long wand-searching tour of Eastern Europe. They ended up visiting a wandmaker in Bucharest, and requested him to recast the unicorn heartstring core of a cracked and rotting heirloom wand. After a few trials, the wandmaker decided to combine it with a rare core of pixie heart, and encased them both in hawthorn.
When the school year began, Mihai departed for France with teary good-byes, bids of good fortune, and promises to write (preferably through email, if he could get working network connection). It was the hardest to part from Florinel, who positively wailed when they left Mihai in the entrance hall of Beauxbatons Palace, but before long, Mihai had more than enough to think about. Placed in House Rosier after a slight vacillation, he was given a warm welcome and soon drawn into the thrall of socialization, orientation, and the beginning of classes. As he was apt at doing, he made friends rather quickly, but became especially close with a member of House Sureau, Snežana Knežević. They had the pleasure of meeting during a combined Potions class, in which they partnered and developed a chemistry that was rather explosive. The fact that both of them were delighted with this result, rather than guilty or rattled, only cemented their friendship.
His experiences, however, weren’t all good. Among the children of magical folk, he was hard-pressed to hide his bloodline. Some recognized the Roșu surname, others suspected the prominence of his canines and his pronounced aversion to garlic–mostly, people fell in both categories. Some of them didn’t care, but there were a minority that did (and really all that matters is that one of them cares enough). For the most part, Mihai had enough friends and friendly relations, and enough professors who cared to accommodate him, that the occasional harassment and slur didn’t conspicuously hinder him. What it did do was cause him to develop his own way to get back at his tormenters–if he did not simply engage them in a fistfight–ensuring that they ended up worse off than he. During that time, due to the amount of trouble he was involved in, he got to know the first-year counselor and deputy headmistress rather well: a Miss Nicoleta Cantacuzène-Deleanu, and as it were, he still isn’t sure whether she was ever trying to discourage him or not.
Despite the obstacles, Mihai tended to do well in his classes. He was a marvel with applied magic–rather less when it came to studied subjects–successful particularly in spell-casting, potions, and divination. He had a small circle of friends, as predicted by his House selection, though he mostly got along with anyone who wasn’t hostile to him for his bloodline. The person closest to him was Snežana, who he called Neșka, both of them bearing curious spirits that seemed drawn to creative and innovative pursuits. She was also at least just as enthusiastic as he was about the potential of learning about the Dark Arts, a forbidden magic that held a certain sort of charm over the heads of young and eager students. As twelve-year olds, they hardly meant any harm from it, driven by the spirit of inquiry, as it were.
Eventually, summer came, and Mihai closed off a successful first year with more good-byes, and good lucks, and promises to keep in touch. He was welcomed back into his mother’s arms and Florinel’s life, and he suspected that was how things would go for the next six years. School, home. Transitioning smoothly from one to the next, with time flowing as seamlessly as a river. He was mostly right about that. Second year came and went in very much the same way (he considered joining the Quidditch team, but was much more fond of performance than competition, so he joined the aerial performance troupe instead), and so did third year (that was the year Neșka lost her sister, and she had been inconsolable).
He’d almost made it to his fourth year, and he would. But God knows he wasn’t going to make it in one piece.
As the summer drew to a close and the wind took on a cooler edge, Mihai spent most of his time with his family, getting updated on dragons, listening to Florinel read, and writing back and forth with his friends. During an afternoon like any other, he was in the kitchen, laptop open and headphones slotted over his ears, and Florinel was in full view. He was playing outside, and Mihai had enchanted the back door to remain open so he could see his brother, and he was playing with a jumprope. He was trying to do double-jumps, he was counting the number of jumps he made, his hair fixed up in pigtails and bouncing with each hop. Mihai looked down to respond to the message his friend had left him, and–
And he was being knocked to the side with an arm around his neck, there was a snap and a moment of disorientation and when he felt the ground beneath his feet again, he was watching a snake of flames devour his house. It burned through the kitchen and emerged on the other side of the building, sighting them with an awareness that was living, and then it was barreling towards them. Even from the distance, Mihai could feel the heat of the approaching flames on his face–much hotter than any fire could possibly be–and it was scorching like the sun threatening to envelop him, but then his mother was pointing out a wand, her nails still digging hard into the side of his neck. He never heard what spell she uttered, but the being of flames was split down the middle by an invisible force, torn apart by a burst of wind. It shrunk to a small blaze, then to cinders, writhing in the grass.
He was screaming for Florin before even the embers died. He was nowhere. Not among scorched and ruined walls, not among blackened and indistinguishable pieces of furniture that he burned his hands on to get to the last place he’d seen Florinel, playing with his jumprope. All Mihai found was a blackened ring of grass around the place their walls once stood, marking out the ruins like a curse. No searching, no screaming, yielded any clues: if Florin was dead, if he was alive, if he’d been taken. There was nothing to say–the feelings couldn’t be put into words.
It destroyed them.
Mihai cast the first stone. He blamed her for not trying harder, for not having saved Florin first. She didn’t really care for Florin, he was the one who raised him, who kept him company when she was off on her job. She only adopted him so that she could feel better about herself, better about not having helped anyone in the eighties when things were at their worst. She shrugged her shoulders and allowed her children to raise themselves so she could indulge in her own pursuits. She never wanted him. She never cared. Was she even mourning? Was she even going to do anything to find Florin? Or was she just going to leave him for dead and go back to her job like nothing ever happened, because that’s what she always did, wasn’t it?
The words came in a storm, thoughtless and crude. He poured out his grief and rage like venom and spit it in her face, never thinking of how her expression crumpled, how she didn’t try to reason with him, he just thought of the barren earth where he’d last seen Florin make twenty-two jumps with his pigtails slipping out of their ties. It didn’t matter if it was unfair, or if he was lying–she was close and he was hurt and he needed someone to hurt more badly than he did.
The worst part was, he succeeded. The worst part was, she couldn’t hold him through it. The worst part was, he left before either of them were ready. If school hadn’t been right around the corner, perhaps they could have come to an understanding. Perhaps they could have forgiven one another, forgiven themselves, healed in some sort of way. But leaving was leaving; leaving was rupture. The opportunity passed, leaving in its wake a radio silence that consumed the words between them.
Ileana wrote to him perfunctorily. She updated him on the details of the investigation, and the rest he read in the papers. The crime was committed by two wizards and a witch–two of whom had been on Ileana’s research team–and there was an extensive debate on whether this had constituted a hate crime. Mihai didn’t need to know what the courts ruled to know the answer: one of the wizards was Philip’s father, and he’d seen the looks the others had thrown their family. The Fiendfyre they’d cast was in intent to kill, out of nothing but envy and hate. Ileana also wrote that she was trying to find Florin, that she was performing all the spells, hiring all the experts she could. She had no luck.
In a fit of obsession, Mihai plunged himself into his own search. Utilizing the Beauxbatons library, he looked for any spell, any potion, any divination that could help him find his little brother. He missed assignments, skipped classes, fell asleep over books. His social life suffered, and so did his grades, but Mihai had hardly a mind for that. Anything to find his Florin again, to ease his guilt over not watching him properly, for the chance to bring his little brother back and to fix everything that had broken apart in their family. The year passed in a blur of words, spells, futility.
When summer came, he didn’t go home. He requested special permission from the Headmistress–the same Nicoleta Cantacuzène-Deleanu who had welcomed his class of first years–to stay in Beauxbatons Palace. He explained that he wanted to continue using the library for help with his family issues; he wasn’t specific about which, but more than a quarter of the student body must have known by now, and certainly all the staff did too. What he did not tell her was that he didn’t know how he could possibly go home to his mother, after they parted ways like that.
To his surprise, she granted his request. He stayed in the dorms, spending summer much as he’d spent fall and winter and spring–until he got tired. Tired of relentlessly looking, searching for solutions that failed again and again, hoping there’d be one out there that would work, just work, and they could finally know. He started spending less time at the library, less time hunting for answers, more time sleeping away the tumult, and more time flying across the cliffs of the Pyrenees. For a long time, he hung there, at some midpoint between mourning and healing, until one incident pushed him all the way back to the beginning again.
At the beginning of fifth year, the culprits were convicted. They were found guilty of arson, careless use of dangerous magic, and attempted injury to persons, and were to serve four years in Nurmengrad, but nothing more. Basically a slap on the wrist for what was in actuality a hate crime, an attempted murder, and missing persons, but even then, the Roșus never saw justice anyway. The criminals promptly disappeared, and no amount of questioning friends or family revealed their location. Mihai received the news in his mother’s letter, and he clenched his fists hard enough to bleed. None of this was fair. They had caused his brother’s disappearance, put he and his mother through something indescribable, and ruined his family. They did not get to run.
Even as he rejoined his former social circles, he searched ever more desperately for a solution that would quell something, that would fix something deep inside him that was breaking. He didn’t know what that might be, but he hoped he might stumble across it somehow if he kept looking, if he never let that part of his past go until he had made peace with it… Somehow.
For that task, he approached the Headmistress. He needed a power that was more than what he could muster or even learn for himself, and she had the knowledge to supplement it, as the former Dark Arts professor for Durmstrang. He approached her with as much confidence as anxiousness, confiding in her that he had to know. A way to track lost people… and a way to fight them, if necessary. To his surprise, she agreed again. Thus began his unofficial tutelage with Headmistress Deleanu, and that is where he stands today, with a mentor that likes to see just how far she can make him go.
He has little objection to that. The boy who whined about bedtimes and school assignments has given way to one whose ambitions are deeply-rooted vengeance and grief, and who will throw himself into too-deep water to see his pathway through to the very end. The thing is, he doesn’t even know where it goes. He doesn’t know in which direction he’s heading and where he’ll end up, and if he had the sense to stop himself, perhaps he’ll realize the final stop might just cause more pain than good.
rp sample
[attr="class","profileboxscroll"]Mihai had realized halfway through the day that perhaps sitting on the hotel balcony and smoking wasn't the most exemplary way to spend his free day in Warsaw. He wasn't anything close to a first-time tourist, having frequented the city several times in the past few decades or so, so he'd considered his slight indolence far from unforgivable. The only downside to it was that he was getting rather restless as well; one could only people-watch for so long before seeing tourists getting photobombed by pigeons and children throwing food onto the head of some unfortunate stranger got boring.
Idly, he reached out for the phone he'd left on the small glass table beside him, switching it on and taking another drag of his cigarette as he scrolled through recent notifications and messages. Aside from Feliks, he was fairly certain he had no other associates thereabouts, and he wasn't quite certain what sorts of plans the Pole had–knowing him, if he had nothing to do, he could usually be found with Toris or Elizaveta. But perhaps something like luck was on Mihai's side today, since it wasn't a few moments later when a new notification popped up along the top of his phone.
"'Gonna be at that totally cute cafe outside of that new spa in Warsaw!' #treatyoself," the message read, prefaced by Feliks' online handle. He considered the prospect for a couple minutes as he finished off his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the ashtray, stuffed his phone in his pocket, and stood and stretched. It wasn't a terrible day out–sunny and on the warmer side of cool, not like the burning summer afternoons which made him avoid the outdoors like there was a plague happening (even if that were the case, he supposed Poland would be the best place to be anyway). And if both of them were bored, it couldn't hurt to meet up somewhere for a coffee.
Within a few moments, after changing into an outfit that was less ratty, he was out on the streets of Warsaw. He remembered Feliks telling him about a new spa opening somewhere in the New Town, and he didn't think he'd been that way for awhile, at least not in long enough to see whatever new fixtures had opened up. It wasn't but about ten minutes away by taxi and he texted Feliks on the road, lest it look way too creepy that he just happened to show up at a café that was a little bit out of his way. 'slow day&the bosses don't need me. joining you.' With that he slipped the phone back in his pocket, and though he wasn't sure if Feliks responded, but the driver was pulling up to the curb pretty soon afterwards. There was just another block to walk from there, cutting down a narrow alleyway and turning onto a pedestrian lane.
It took a moment of scanning, but he eventually spotted Feliks sitting under an umbrella on the patio. Mihai stuffed a hand in his pocket and strolled over, clapping Feliks on the shoulder to get his attention. "Boo," he greeted, teeth bared in a smile. Seeing as the seat opposite of Feliks was empty, he took it as a good an indication as any that he was free to join and sat down, absently flicking through the menu of drinks at the center of the table. "I take it today has been equally boring for you?"
Idly, he reached out for the phone he'd left on the small glass table beside him, switching it on and taking another drag of his cigarette as he scrolled through recent notifications and messages. Aside from Feliks, he was fairly certain he had no other associates thereabouts, and he wasn't quite certain what sorts of plans the Pole had–knowing him, if he had nothing to do, he could usually be found with Toris or Elizaveta. But perhaps something like luck was on Mihai's side today, since it wasn't a few moments later when a new notification popped up along the top of his phone.
"'Gonna be at that totally cute cafe outside of that new spa in Warsaw!' #treatyoself," the message read, prefaced by Feliks' online handle. He considered the prospect for a couple minutes as he finished off his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the ashtray, stuffed his phone in his pocket, and stood and stretched. It wasn't a terrible day out–sunny and on the warmer side of cool, not like the burning summer afternoons which made him avoid the outdoors like there was a plague happening (even if that were the case, he supposed Poland would be the best place to be anyway). And if both of them were bored, it couldn't hurt to meet up somewhere for a coffee.
Within a few moments, after changing into an outfit that was less ratty, he was out on the streets of Warsaw. He remembered Feliks telling him about a new spa opening somewhere in the New Town, and he didn't think he'd been that way for awhile, at least not in long enough to see whatever new fixtures had opened up. It wasn't but about ten minutes away by taxi and he texted Feliks on the road, lest it look way too creepy that he just happened to show up at a café that was a little bit out of his way. 'slow day&the bosses don't need me. joining you.' With that he slipped the phone back in his pocket, and though he wasn't sure if Feliks responded, but the driver was pulling up to the curb pretty soon afterwards. There was just another block to walk from there, cutting down a narrow alleyway and turning onto a pedestrian lane.
It took a moment of scanning, but he eventually spotted Feliks sitting under an umbrella on the patio. Mihai stuffed a hand in his pocket and strolled over, clapping Feliks on the shoulder to get his attention. "Boo," he greeted, teeth bared in a smile. Seeing as the seat opposite of Feliks was empty, he took it as a good an indication as any that he was free to join and sat down, absently flicking through the menu of drinks at the center of the table. "I take it today has been equally boring for you?"
{from timeless nations}
additional details
[attr="class","profileboxscroll"]Gender. Mihai's pronouns are 'he' and 'him,' though he prefers feminine nouns and titles, such as 'witch,' 'miss,' or 'lady.' There are a few exceptions in family-related terms, and in the case of 'boy/girl' would prefer a gender-neutral substitute. May exchange uniforms depending on his mood a particular day or what is clean.
Vampirism. Inherited most of the physical traits, but does not need to consume blood to survive, although it makes for a tasty treat. Mild aversion to sunlight, definite aversion to garlic, bite marks from him don't heal.
Vampirism. Inherited most of the physical traits, but does not need to consume blood to survive, although it makes for a tasty treat. Mild aversion to sunlight, definite aversion to garlic, bite marks from him don't heal.
other
Wand | |
Pixie Heart/Unicorn Heartstring | Hawthorn |
Thirteen inches | Swishy |
Strongest Subject | Weakest Subject |
Charms | History of Magic |
Familiar | Patronus |
Eurasian Magpie | Eurasian Wolf |
on the tin | |
Worldie | |
width: 1px;[/newclass]
