Leigh Nightray || First Year || Hufflepuff

Leigh was born and raised in West End of London, not having traveled out of the city much. His father works as a financial analyst while his mother, a witch, went ahead trying to open her own cafe for the muggles visiting London just a few streets away from their apartment. His mother, Emily, was born in a family of wizards. Graduate from Hogwarts and until then living in Scotland, she was fascinated by muggles and went on to live among them. After falling in love during a trip to London with a young man named George Nightray who was muggle, she married and started living in London with him. A few years later giving birth to her only son, Leigh. They had a comfortable lifestyle as a family with a reasonable income, living the non-magical way among other non-magical. Emily had no plans of using her magic or returning to the wizards world until her son started manifesting signs that he had inherited from her. After learning of the incident where Leigh sealed shut some other kids' mouth with magic while he was getting bullied, leading to the Ministry of Magic having to erase the event from the bullies' memories, she took notice of his heritage. Leigh was finally told by his mother, at the age of eight, about magic and the fact he was a half-blood wizard.
It was a lot to intake for a kid who thought himself normal among muggles. Or more like eccentric, quirky or even weird. Even as a young child he was rather calm and introverted, but it stood out like a sore thumb that he wasn't fitting in. Most likely inherited from his mother just like his magic and red hair, Leigh always had an avid affinity for knowledge. Perhaps because he lived like a muggle he didn't take interest in the same subject as his mother, instead, he felt strongly attracted to any living creature that is not human. His playmates in kindergarten up to his classmates couldn't comprehend the boy's fascination towards ants carrying bits of his lunch or a spider crawling on his hand. Even less why he was trying to draw them. He simply seemed like a weirdo, the fact he is shy and an introvert making him seem cold and somehow scary when added to his hobby. An artist at heart, Leigh loves drawing and always was pretty good at it for a boy his age.
That is the only thing different from his parents, none of them ever had any interest in art. Leigh on the other hand was basically born with a pencil in hand. His first crayons were the starting point of his hobby. Like for anyone it started with scribbles that looked like nothing to then learning to draw in between lines. Learning to do so quite quickly. That's when he first stood out for having talent in the rough. He simply had it in him. His curiosity towards animals and creepy crawlies came around the time he started kindergarten. His first drawing having been of a spider. It was the compliment of his parents that pushed him to draw even more spiders and then gradually he started getting curious about the bug he kept on drawing. In the end it resulted in years of drawings various creatures known to muggles till he was given by his mother a book about magical creatures. That was after learning she was a witch.
Somehow he hadn't been too surprised by that fact. For a 8 years old, he was quite perceptive and noticed some of his mother's quirky sides that wasn't common among muggles. Especially how she always seemed like she was observing and analyzing the non-magical's objects and traditions wherever they went.
It didn't take too long for Leigh to accidentally use magic again, a few months passing by in between the two occurrences. It was the start of March and like usual his mother had taken him with her to the little cafe she was running. Ever since the case with his bullies, she had been keeping a close eye on her son. The day was like any other day. After school Leigh went to the cafe, was made to do his homework and then help out with some small chores. Gladly doing them to help his mother still recovering from her illness. He was told it was nothing serious and his parents carefully hid from him the painful reality, always showing him warm smiles and keeping their worries for when he wasn't around. When Leigh and his mother made their way back home after closing the shop she allowed him to stay out a bit later to play outside, knowing he wouldn't go too far from home since he would plop down the moment he found something interesting to then draw it. What she didn't know was that a dog had run away from home, the owner still unknown, ending up on their street and catching Leigh off-guard while that one was tracing the shape of a leaf on paper. He had just enough time to try and sprint for his life, yelling his lungs out and being heard by his parents since the window of their apartment was open. Not the greatest idea on a chilly day of March, but his father had been dead set on changing their window net which had been ripped a bit by a neighboring cat that decided it was a good idea to do its claws on it. The sill of it large enough to comfortably fit that little rascal which visited the Nightrays often.
When his parents came out running, even more alarmed when they didn't hear any sound other than panicked barks after Leigh's yell, they were relieved and near an epilepsy crisis as they saw a dog inflate and start floating. After a bad fall and almost getting bitten, Leigh had accidentally used magic to protect himself. The rest went as most would expect. George learned that day about the fact his wife was in fact a witch and his son inherited magic from her. Which he took quite well, never speaking about it outside of home and loving them all the same. After the situation was defused, gladly with no one other than the three of them having seen what happened, life took back it's normal course. Leigh didn't use magic accidentally ever since and then started learning from his mother a lot of things he didn't know and being gifted her knowledge of the wizards world.
He fell in love with that world still unknown to him. He only ever heard of it from his mother's stories, but he was already feeling strongly attracted to it. It is likely that he'd grow up to detach himself from the muggle world, already looking up to Newton Scamander and his book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, showing great interest in the work of magizoologists.
It was pretty late in the evening on that day, Leigh already in bed flipping through pages of a large book about magical beasts while holding a flashlight, his attention turning towards his window after he heard the sound of knocking. It wasn't just any type of knock, he wasn't sure either of what it was. Maybe it could have been something dangerous, but curiosity and something else that he simply couldn't pin a word on made him get up and open it. The moment he opened it, an owl entered his room, holding a letter in its beak. This is how he got his acceptance letter to Hogwarts. The moment he opened the letter and knew of the content he had rushed to his parents' bedroom, waking them and being livelier than ever after learning he would go to the same school as his mother before. For him this was one of the best days of his life but also the scariest. He never was away from home for such a long time. The idea of going to Hogwarts was both terrifying and amazing, but he was ready for it.