Erast Yan | First Year

In repose, Erast Yan paints the visage of a winter fae. Umber brown locks frame the softness of his cheeks, casting an air of youthful innocence on a melancholic face. If one were to meet his gaze, those gunmetal blue eyes would pierce deep into their hearts with an inexplicable chill.

However, like the coming of spring, with just a hint of joy, biting cold transforms into playful warmth. Loved ones are often met with his signature fox-like smile on those cupid’s bow lips and an adorable scrunch of his nose when excitement overtakes him, with not a hint of ice in sight.

At first glance, one may perceive Erast to be a melancholic boy surrounded by a frigid air of winter from his stoic expression and silence. An isolated childhood has impressed a strain upon the boy’s communication and socialisation skills, leaving him unfamiliar with the concept of peer-interaction. Yet, this illusion of coldness quickly shatters at glimpses of the night sky and constellations, or the sight of a cherished loved one. What was once a gloomy winter would be swept away by the mellow warmth of a gentle smile and a calming voice, and melodious words would eagerly lead listeners by the hand down the rabbit hole that he had created in a span of minutes. The bright presence of his younger sisters has also ingrained a caregiver’s mentality into Erast. Often seen offering a helping hand to every trivial matter, it is not unusual for many to feel put off by his seemingly compulsive urge to fret over others.

Born the first child and only son to the infamous pureblood lineages of the Yan Clan and House Ostrovsky in Macau (SAR), China, the shackles of his blood and ancestry bound him since childhood. The union of the two bloodlines by his mother, Avreliya Ostrovsky (Аврелия Островский), and his father, Yan Jin-kai (嫣锦凯), had been one of the most controversial within the pureblood wizarding communities. The disparities were scandalous.

The elusive Yan Clan’s bloodline extends centuries back to the Ming Dynasty in China. Notorious for its global trading empire and alleged ties in the underworld, the legacy of Yan Clan was one of Wizard Asia’s signature “rags to riches” tales. In stark contrast, House Ostrovsky, once famed for their achievements in the expert study of astronomy, is the laughing stock of Wizard Russia. Disgraced and shunned by Russian wizarding society following a disastrous scandal, the family now scrambles to maintain the last of their honour. A marriage between the two families would have been nothing short of disadvantageous for the Yan Clan, something that could erode the main family’s legitimacy beyond repair. Yet, when Avreliya fled from Russia to profess her enduring love for Jin-Kai, the Yan patriarch shocked the world and the clan by discarding propriety and tying the knot with his true love without hesitation.

It was a romance made for fairytales, borne of a rare and genuine love that defied hierarchy and distance. Yet, raised in a household formed from such affection, Erast grew up starved for it. The reason? He was born wrong.

The Yan Clan was renowned for their incredible metamorphmagus talents in their female offspring. For generations, the clan has treasured and celebrated the birth of metamorphmagus daughters. As the head of the main family, it was only natural for Erast’s father to desire a metamorphmagus daughter for his eldest child and heir. That wish was partially granted: Erast was a metamorphmagus, but a male one. There were no male metamorphmagi in the clan. His existence was unnatural, taboo even.

The aftermath of his parents’ controversial marriage had stirred enough opposition from the Yan Clan elders and re-awakened the threat of power-hungry rivals as is. In such a hostile and volatile environment, news of Erast's existence would be nothing short of disastrous to his father's tireless efforts to secure his position. It would have been a fatal blow to the main family's legitimacy. Thus, for the first six years of his life in Macau, Erast was raised as the family's most guarded secret.

Due to the concealment of his existence, Erast found his world beginning and ending at the walls of the estate, with only his family, a half-blood governess, and the household servants bearing witness to his existence. A solitary childhood, soothed only by the occasional smothering bursts of love from his mother and constant presence of his younger sisters.

Erast’s mother does everything in her power to conceal the disappointment of his father, to steer the boy’s attention far away from it, but Erast isn't blind. From deferring the task of naming him at his birth to his mother to his blatant reluctance to be near him, his father's feelings towards him can't be clearer.

In the shadows of the estate, Erast received an heir’s education, studying the six arts (六藝), standard elementary-level subjects such as mathematics, and estate management affairs as the eldest child. After all, even a hidden heir has to be a competent one. As a young child, under the strict guidance and care of his governess, Zhang Yue-Lian (张月莲), Erast worked relentlessly to be deserving of his father's recognition and the title of heir, hoping that one day, his efforts would be rewarded. After all, most fairytale protagonists that he read about were rewarded for hard work. That's what's fair, right?

The day that his youngest sister was born, that hope shrivelled. Erast was six at the time, and unlike him, she was born right: a metamorphmagus daughter. That changed everything. She was the final piece that silenced the doubts of the clan elders and distant branch families, solidifying his father's legitimacy as a worthy head of the main family able to protect the ancestral gift. She became the family treasure, the clan's hope for a new golden age, and him, an heir in none but title. Whatever diligence he had eroded quickly into frustration.

With newfound stability for the family name came flaming ambition: Less than a year after his youngest sister's birth, Erast's father obtained the clan elders’ approval and relocated the family to Britain in a daring bid to expand the clan's influence. This temporary peace would soon be shattered, as talks of sending Erast to his estranged relatives, the Ostrovskys, in Russia, began. The idea would have become a reality, had his magic not manifested so violently and frightened his mother so deeply the day that he was set to depart. The years that followed felt like a curse wrapped in a blessing’s drapes, for little changed apart from his parents’ growing adoration of his youngest sister.

In Britain, Erast begrudgingly continued studying under the tutelage of his governess, who had grown fond of him and decided to follow the family abroad. Her care and guidance steered him away from total abandonment of his studies out of spite, encouraging him to channel his energy elsewhere, specifically his greatest passion: Astronomy. Years of loneliness drove him to find friends in the stars and night sky, which his mother taught him to navigate as a child. Stargazing in the attic became a nightly affair, an effective incentive to complete his studies to exchange textbooks for star maps. He adored the constellations and lone stars, murmuring his secrets to them and reading them his favourite fairytales as if they could hear him from the skies above. After all, the view through the telescope made his tiny world so much bigger. However, it didn't change how life crawled in a bore. Study, entertain his sisters, eat, star-gaze, sleep: The routine was infuriating, painful even.

The dreadful routine seemed as if it would last forever, until a foreign owl landed in front of Erast’s mess of star maps with a damp delivery in its beak. Fate seemed to have finally taken pity on him, because with that snow-soaked Hogwarts acceptance letter, the world gifted him a ticket to freedom.

Two years after relocating to Kent, England, his parents grew concerned for his lack of magical manifestation. They began discussing plans to relocate him to Russia to be under the care of his maternal grandparents. On the surface, the decision explained that after he manifested magic, he would be able to attend Koldovstoretz instead, just like his paternal aunt and mother had. To an 8-year-old Erast, who had grown fatigued of listening to his parents' every instruction, the decision just sounded like a lazy excuse to discard him, sending him away to a land that he had never set foot in.

Years of obedience and obligation already weighed heavily on the eight-year-old boy. Why should he be sent away, but not his sisters? Was he truly so different? Being told to crush his only wish and desire, of a life of freedom away from being a son with his family name at Hogwarts, had been his last straw. He snapped. He burst into an outrage for the first time in his life, and an ugly quarrel swept the dining room. The indignation and fury engulfed his mind, burning and blurring his rational mind. Words didn't feel real, nothing did behind tears, until the silky touch of gloved hands tightly cupping both his cheeks yanked him back to reality.

What greeted him was a terrible mess– sharp grunts from a silver cabinet that imploded, echoing through the silent room, the clatter of shattered porcelain china down onto the marble floors, and, more importantly, the tearful assurances of his mother. As everything fell apart, for the first time in ages, Erast felt contentment.