Rhys Hughes — First Year — Gryffindor

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—PROFILE—

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『 Appearance 』

Like a sapling, Rhys is a tall, weedy lad with more strength and flexibility than one might expect from those lanky arms and that long, ambling, bordering on awkward gait. Years spent outside have littered his nose with freckles and his body a number of superficial scars. The skin on his upper right arm leading into his shoulder bears a particularly nasty scar that he’s careful to keep covered, an unintentional present from and a permanent reminder of what he is and always will be from his mother. His hair and eyes are the precise shade of freshly watered dirt. He’s got a quick smile but his eyes are often narrowed, which could give the vague impression of haughty or unfriendly as he refuses to admit he might ever need glasses. Almost perpetually disheveled, it appears as if he couldn’t care less about his appearance, though sometimes the disarray is a little too casual to be fully believed.

『 Personality 』

For someone who feels unequivocally stuck, Rhys is like the wind, different from one moment to the next. He’s moody and mercurial, and that lack of inner equilibrium, that state of constant flux, has left him with an indistinct disconnect that he’s determined to overcome. He’s desperate to prove himself in whichever endeavour he chooses, friendships, sports, lessons, and whatever uncertainty develops along the way he attempts to sideline until later, often without success.

For Rhys, context is everything; it colours his thoughts and determines his reaction to them. He’s hyper-aware of himself at all times and, while he longs to get lost in physicality or indifference, this boy’s mental processes have a tendency to self-sabotage and he’s long since perfected the Art of the Brood. Ultimately, he’s a kid who puts a lot of pressure on himself. He’s got a surplus of passion he doesn’t know what to do with and an incredible drive, almost to the point of hardheadedness, though rarely with consistent direction. He has a tendency to be plain speaking and honest with others, although unsurprisingly isn’t always able to extend the same courtesy to himself. Beneath all that fast swirl of emotion, he’s rigidly, painfully sensitive, and he longs to prove to everyone that he’s in fact solid, strong, and capable of success. Most of all to himself.

『 Background 』

Born to a muggle father who inherited the family farm and a witch mother descending from a line of powerful wizards, the one thing that Rhys’ parents have in common is their complete lack of success. His father, Desmond Hughes, has never been able to restore the farm to the well-oiled machine his own father perfected over 50 years before, and his mother, Alleira Hartwick, never managed to meet the expectations or master the potential that seemed so easy for her own more magically-gifted siblings.

Had his mother's last year of schooling gone differently, in any other direction but down the dark, unalterably linear path it went, she might have had an easier time. Up until she was sixteen there still existed the possibility that maybe, despite performing at a level both unprecedented and unappreciated amongst witches and wizards as undeniably talented as her family, Alleira might have known a reluctant acceptance amongst them simply because of her blood connection. She lacked the fortitude, the compunction, the finesse of the others, but she was unquestionably dedicated, and a Hartwick never secedes. It was their blood in her black sheep veins, after all, and she could rely on the purity of that, if nothing else.

But by her seventh year even that was tainted.

Even in the magical community, even amongst one's own family, there is little space and even less acceptance for savagery, as docile as its host may be or as dormant as the Wolfsbane potion kept it. There lay a potential Alleira's family never wanted her to reach. It was one thing to have a weak witch in the family, a painful bruise that never quite healed, but an entirely different creature when that witch's bones broke, reformed, her face contorted, stretched, teeth grew, fingers burst and lengthened with claws without deviation, without fail, and without hope every full moon.

Upon graduation from Hogwarts — after being nowhere near the rank of Head Girl — she returned to the family home in Wales and the deeply-ingrained disappointment of her father waiting there. All but a month later and she'd absconded with the muggle boy she’d known ever since childhood. As far as most of her family is concerned, she's disappeared and they're grateful for it. Alleira took her secrets and the family's shame with her. If Desmond was shocked to discover his new wife was actually a witch, unlike any other woman he'd ever met, it was nothing compared to the earth-shaking revelation that she was also a werewolf.

The fact that Desmond didn't — and doesn't — fully understand or accept magic's presence in their lives, doesn't like that it simplifies and nullifies his arduous efforts as if he doesn't exist, as if his own line of hard-working men can be simply severed, does not appear to be enough to drive Alleira away. The fact that Desmond neither wants to bridge the divide between magical and muggle worlds, nor honestly broach the subject of lycanthropy with his wife, is eclipsed by the fact that he didn't leave. Not when he first found out, and not since. There's a frail distrust, a lack of inherent understanding of each other, but whatever breaks have occurred in the marriage have healed with the love they've grown and forged and clung to all this time.

Located some 30 kilometres outside of Cardiff, in relative isolation from both the muggle and wizarding worlds, Des and Eira have built a relatively happy, if rather tumultuous home on the sleepy little sheep farm. Here, Rhys has always been a bit of a loner, though not necessarily by choice. With a much older sister and brother and two much younger sisters, his middle child syndrome has only worsened the older he’s gotten and the more emphasis Desmond has put on him committing to his role on the farm and the less Eira wanted to admit that each of their children has more magical talent than she ever possessed.

When his letter arrived, the house erupted into chaos.

It might not have been the heated shouting match that it devolved into, or the slamming of doors, or his mother so grey and guilty she looked sick if it wasn't for what happened the year before, just a few weeks after Rhys' tenth birthday.

Naturally, Eira's condition warranted precautions, garnered curiosity from her children. Once they were old enough to fathom what exactly was meant by werewolf and could understand why, like their magical abilities, it was something to keep close and keep absolutely secret, they became a part of that secret. Another ring of complicity around that unfortunate but otherwise managed condition. It was through an unfortunate twist of fate, an oversight on both his parents' parts when he'd been out, sleepwalking, and his mother transformed, surprised, that Rhys was drawn into the very heart of that sphere, sucked in as boy and spat out a beast himself.

The trauma of infection is one each lycanthrope knows well. Most people, most children, who become afflicted neither know their attacker, nor endure the consequences of seeing them again. A small and pitiful blessing that does little to ease the curse. For Rhys, he not only saw his mother every day, lived under the same roof, but loved her all the same. The monthly transformations take their tolls, and they are something Rhys still struggles to understand, balance, cope with, but he's doing better than anyone could have guessed.

The letter on the other hand, and the worry of sending a son with such an affliction, the duality of savagery and vulnerability going with him, was what brought decades worth of horror and frustration to the surface. Combined with the fact that Rhys would be following his elder siblings’ paths to Hogwarts of all places to become a wizard and the letter seemed to exacerbate existing tensions in the family over the appropriate role magic should play in their lives. Desmond’s inability to keep the farm fully afloat on his own without magical assistance or less than legitimate enterprises had spurred Eira into using her few talents sparingly and covertly, resulting in an upbringing that has been tinged with and hinted at by magic but without a clear sense of its true nature and potential. They have both made their loud, opposing stances known to him, made their worries take center stage, and Rhys has been suspended between them so long he’s just desperate for something new.

As for his Rhys, he’s not entirely sure what to expect of this new school or himself. What he has seen from his older siblings, accomplished witch and wizard in their own rights that they are, has intrigued and excited him more than he’d like to admit, though he has little idea how exactly it will pan out for him or what he is truly capable of after being another set of hands on a muggle farm his whole life. He’s eager-- too eager-- to explore who he really is and what he can actually do.

But there's war in his veins.

Not only is there greatness in his blood, wizards and witches of great renown and ripples throughout history, but piddling mediocrity too, and now, with a wolfish tinge, a hungering ulterior nature pulsing just beneath his skin, he’s secretly terrified to find out which one will win.

『 First Instance of Magic 』

At around age three, Rhys was in the sheep paddock shadowing his father, who was checking the new lambs. After some (mostly) good-natured teasing from the three year old, the ram, Rambo, instituted some unheeded warnings before charging at Rhys, only to be deflected away and up into the open second floor window of their house and onto his sister's bed.

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