Post by BECCA on Feb 2, 2014 8:09:53 GMT -5
[presto]
nineteen
male
theatre technician & musician
muggleborn
heterosexual
xavier samuel
seth nicholas coleman wishart
 Christopher Wishart and Alice Coleman met whilst ringing in the millennium at the party of a mutual friend. Both had had quite a lot to drink, and shared their first kiss as the chimes of midnight rang out on the first of January 2000. At that time, Alice was in her final year of a degree at UCL, while Christopher was twenty six, and struggling to make his living as a playwright. The two exchanged telephone numbers, and met up for coffee a few days later. For the first few months that they dated, all Christopher knew about Alice’s family was that they lived in the countryside, in Norfolk. Although it was obvious from her cut-glass accent and expensive taste in both clothes and date venues (they stretched Christopher’s wallet at times) that her family was well-off, he didn’t realise quite how well-off until she invited him home for a weekend to meet her parents and he saw their large Georgian mansion set in acres of perfectly-kept parkland. The Colemans were not altogether happy about their daughter bringing home a left-wing-leaning penniless playwright. However, they loved Alice, and once they realised that she and Christopher were genuinely in love, they resigned themselves to it. It helped that about a year after he and Alice met, Christopher wrote and directed a play that turned into a huge success, setting his career onto an upward path and ending his immediate money worries. Christopher himself was an only child from an average middle-class family, whose parents adored Alice simply because he did. Alice was the oldest of two, having a younger sister, Tessa. Alice and Tessa had been close as children, but had little in common and had drifted apart as they got older. Alice and Christopher married in 2002. Sadly, their first attempt to have children ended with Alice having a miscarriage. This drove her and Tessa further apart, as Tessa was pregnant at the time, and shortly afterwards gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Of course, Alice did not blame her sister for any of it, but she found it hard to be around Tessa and the new baby. The next attempt was happier; Alice had a successful pregnancy, and Seth Nicholas Coleman Wishart entered the world in February 2005. By this time, Christopher’s career had taken off, and he was known among theatre circles as one of the most promising young directors and playwrights in London. He and Alice lived comfortably, and as his plays became more well known, the Colemans became happier to have him as a son-in-law. The Wisharts visited Norfolk quite frequently, and Seth knew and loved both sets of grandparents, who all doted on him. He also knew his cousins – Tessa and her husband had had another child when Seth was a year old, and a third when he was three – although he didn’t see them as often as his grandparents. When he was seven years old, Alice, who had struggled to conceive again, finally had another baby, Reuben. Seth was curious and a little cautious about his baby brother at first, but soon became fond of him, and the two got on as well as most brothers with a fairly sizeable age gap. Seth was in and out of theatres as soon as he could walk. His father was keen for him to get involved, and he started drama classes at the same time he started regular school. He enjoyed them, and was good enough at acting that he usually got lead roles in their little shows, although his passion was not quite as strong as his father could have hoped. Alice was slightly concerned that her son should not be pushed into something that was not his choice, and as he progressed through Primary School, she made sure he was exposed to other potential hobbies. Football Club did not go well, and Seth quickly declared that he was never going again. Music lessons were much more successful; Seth started learning the piano at the age of seven, and took to it with a natural talent. A year later, and he was requesting to take up guitar and singing as well, which his parents agreed willingly to. Although he continued attending and enjoying his youth drama group, Seth had found his passion in music. The problem of what he would do after Primary School was one that loomed fairly large over those years. His mother had been privately educated all the way through, but Seth attended an ordinary (though good, being in an affluent part of London) Primary School. His Coleman grandparents were keen for him to go to private school after the age of eleven. Alice would have acquiesced easily to this, as private schooling was normal to her, and they could easily afford it now that Christopher was becoming a well-known director. Christopher objected, however, as he felt that everyone should have the right to the same education, no matter how much money they had; the only exception he would consider to this would be if Seth went to a specialist Drama School, which was, as Alice pointed out, mildly hypocritical of him. However, this point was theoretical, since Seth stated quite categorically that he did not want to go to Drama School. An even larger concern, however, was that it was increasingly difficult for them to ignore that Seth was not quite a normal child. Odd things had always happened around him, and some of them were too odd to be dismissed as coincidence. One, in fact, happened on stage in front of 300 people; Seth had been forced into a costume he hated and had been sulking quietly all evening. On stage, just before he was due to come on, the set suddenly lifted itself and crashed over backwards. Of course, nobody but Alice and Christopher (who were in the audience) associated it with Seth, and it was put down to a strange gust of wind and the flats not being braced properly (an Assistant Stage Manager got the blame, despite swearing that he had not done it wrong). After that incident, Alice was always a little nervous about Seth’s performances. During a holiday to Norfolk one year, they managed to coincide with Tessa and her family, and gradually realised that Seth was not the only member of the family who made odd things happen; his youngest cousin, Adaline, was showing similar tendencies. Until then, Seth had never thought much about his littlest cousin, who was over three years younger than him and whom he had only met a handful of times. On that holiday, he befriended her, to the amusement of his other two cousins, feeling a strange sort of protectiveness over the little girl who could do the same things he could. Their grandparents remained unaware of any of it, both Tessa and Alice knowing by unspoken agreement that talking to the Colemans about supernatural powers would not go down well. However, for the first time in years, the two sisters found that they had something in common, and even began to bond again over their worries about their odd children. Nobody knew the reasons for it, though, until the summer after Seth turned eleven, and someone turned up from Hogwarts with a letter for him. He had at that point been signed up to attend the local Secondary School, to his Coleman grandparents’ disapproval, but the letter changed everything. Once convinced that it was all true, Christopher and Alice had a long talk, and Christopher acknowledged that this had to change his view on private schooling for Seth. Like Drama School, this was a special case, and unlike Drama School, Seth actually wanted to attend. To begin with he was dubious, saying firmly that he intended to be a musician, not a wizard. Once it was explained to him that he could in fact be both, learning to do magic began to appeal. And so Seth was off to Hogwarts, a little subdued by the fact that he was leaving his parents and his little brother behind, but still excited to see what his new world held (he had already seen and been bowled over by Diagon Alley). After being sorted into Gryffindor (which meant nothing to him as yet), Seth’s happy-go-lucky, slightly overdramatic outward persona came to the fore. Although not really as confident as he appeared, he had spent his life meeting new (and varied) people and taking part in performances, and got to know the others in his house easily. He has never liked prejudice or exclusivity, though, so his friendships also extended to those in other houses without a thought. He was a fun-loving boy, who always had a smile for everyone, and was capable of bringing our perfect manners when he wanted. His manners went down well with his teachers, of course, although this was balanced out by the fact that he was very lazy about everything he was not passionate about, which included most of his school work. He’d do it all in the end (usually) but it all tended to get done in a frantic rush at the last minute, and was quite frequently late. When it comes to something he loved, though, he has always worked obsessively, and has been known to stay up all night finishing a song or piece of music he’s working on. Seth believes in being passionate about things – he loves passion in other people, and sees nothing wrong with showing his own. The downside of this is that he has trouble fully understanding people who are not the same way, and sometimes sees people as dispassionate or boring simply because they don’t show their love for things or people. Although he loved to have fun, aside from his laziness he was not really that badly behaved or rebellious at school. His parents were quite relaxed about the sort of thing that might constitute a normal level of teenage rebellion, and as a result Seth never really felt the need to do most of them. He did find that he enjoyed parties and alcohol as he got older, and would usually be found in the middle of a party, making some sort of fool of himself. He didn’t actually need a drink in order to do that, but he always ended up drinking anyway; his tolerance wasn’t that good though, so he was usually the first to get drunk. He often regretted it the next day and swore never to drink again, but he never kept these resolutions. When it came to girls, though – or at least girls he liked as more than friends – he was quite shy and awkward, and had few real girlfriends. Underneath the party-boy image, he is thoughtful, kind-hearted and a little self-deprecating. When he was in his fourth year, his cousin Addie joined him at Hogwarts. Since Seth had gone away to school, the two families of cousins had seen more of each other in the holidays, and he and Addie had had several long conversations about Hogwarts and the magical world. Despite the fact that he was closer in age to Damian and Isabella, he came to consider Addie his closest cousin, simply because of what they had in common. His grandparents still had no idea, believing (and being very happy) that Christopher and Alice had simply changed their minds and sent their son to a good boarding school after all (the problem did not come up with Reuben, as thankfully Reuben decided he did want to go to Drama School). Once she joined him, they had even more in common, and frequently sought each other out during the holidays, to talk about the things they could talk about with nobody else. Two of Seth’s closest friends at school were James Potter and Fred Weasley (despite a period when Fred drifted away from them a little) and through them, he was vaguely aware of the rest of the Potter-Weasley clan. It was not until his sixth year, however, that he particularly noticed Rose Weasley, but during that year he developed a strong crush on her that refused quite to go away, however hard he ignored it or told himself that she’d never notice him. In fact, by half way through that year she had a boyfriend, and Seth gave up all hope and contented himself with simply watching from afar. The following year, though, she broke up with her boyfriend, and after a chance meeting, the two actually began to talk and become closer. Typically enough, Seth was somewhat awkward and hesitant, and it took a long time before he was convinced enough that she liked him for him to do anything about it. However, they had been officially together for almost a year now, and Seth has finally relaxed into the relationship and stopped worrying that she might be going to ditch him at any moment. Seth finished Hogwarts a year ago, with a decent if not sparkling set of NEWTs, and he lives with James and Fred (he felt slightly awkward having Rose over to begin with, but everyone seemed okay with it, and he’s made himself get used to it). He works mostly in the Muggle world though, as his father got him a job in a West End theatre, helping to manage the technical side of performances (he has left acting behind him). He enjoys this, despite the anti-social hours, but his real passion is still his music. He composes and writes songs, and plays gigs that come with an encouraging frequency. Addie is a fairly frequent visitor at his flat during the school holidays, and he still sees quite a lot of his family, being close with both his parents. All in all, life seems good and filled with possibilities. becca 25 gmt |
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