#ooc: sitting in the background and sipping on tea as I catch up

[totally-not-peter-parker]

What on earth did I miss?

[alternislatronemhq]

Congrats, Niamh, you have been accepted to AL for the role of Ted Tonks (FC: Richard Madden). Ahh, I am so excited that we got both Ted and Andromeda, and played by such excellent writers! Ted is in such a hard place of having to choose between fighting for what he believes in and protecting his family, and I’m excited to see the way that you play that out as things begin to heat up again. Ted’s backstory is just truly heartbreaking and yet it’s so beautiful the way his relationship with Andromeda and Dora grounds him. I’m so excited to have you here! Please send in your blog (no sideblogs for first characters, please) in the next 24 hours and be sure to take a look at our new player checklist.Welcome home, we’re so excited to have you join the family!

OOC

name — niamh age — 18 pronouns — she/her timezone — gmt+1 activity level — i’m on lockdown atm with no major commitments until uni starts so i can be a solid 9/10 ! i’m always lurking and i tend to do replies as they come or when the dash is a bit more active

IC Overview

name — Edward ‘Ted’ Tonks age — 31, born 8th September 1955 gender — cis male sexuality — heterosexual

patronus — golden retriever

boggart — it used to be his mother, cold and alone without anyone, but it’s now changed to the lifeless forms of his wife and child

IC In Depth

personality traits —

STEADFAST : as an eastender, ted grew up keeping his friends close and everyone else at as far a distance as he could. there was a sort of code of honour around the council estates, and you stuck by your own, stayed wary of anyone who would have cause to harm you, and look after those who needed it. it was probably his easy loyalty that sorted him into hufflepuff, and it’s given freely and fiercely to those who prove they’re worthy of it.

ALTRUISTIC : as well as his loyalty, ted’s friendship and care were easy to come by for those who earned it. he likes to feel the upstairs rooms of his pub have become a bit of a home for waifs and strays. while he decided not to join the order himself, that doesn’t mean he won’t help out where he can, offering members the rooms to sleep in, hold meetings if needed, and he’s more than willing to help patch up wounds after hours if needed. he knows that it could be dangerous for his family, but as long as he keeps it quiet and discreet, he wants to offer help wherever he can, the consequences be damned.

BOISTEROUS : ted’s mum has always called him a ‘man’s man’, and while he doesn’t exactly like the sound of that, he’s known enough of them to know what she means. he’s loud, he’s always up for a laugh, but he can be quick to anger and slow to soothe when he wants to be, and that rowdiness can often be mistaken for immaturity, rather than the well meaning gregarious nature he tries to give off. while he knows more often than not he does come off that way, friendly and open and lively, it can also be seen as cockiness or overconfidence, and he’s not always the best at toning it down.

INSECURE : a muggleborn, born to a family barely surviving on the breadline, with a past that included a tendency for violence and petty crime. despite ted’s overwhelming sense of goodness, he believes that, some days, the badness and inferior background will one day catch up with him, and his life will fall down around his ears. in his mind, ted isn’t deserving of the life he has. sometimes, he feels like he isn’t enough for his wife, and never was, and that one day, especially now that narcissa is back in her life, andromeda will truly see what she’s been missing out on and leave him, realising that he’s just a nobody with a poor family with nothing to offer her or their daughter. and what will he be then? he knows the answer: a man with no place in the war and no place back in the muggle world with no place to go.

character biography — 

edward tonks took his first breath as the last of the summer winds blew through london. michael and maggie tonks wrapped their son in the only good blanket in the house, and a mere four hours after his birth, while he was sound asleep in a bedside drawer turned crib, the new parents were fixing the same leaking tap they were before their son decided to make an appearance. living in the east end of london meant that there were too many people, too many mouths to feed, but not enough money and not enough jobs. the tonks’s twenty year old council house was crumbling down around them, and ted’s parents job at the local biscuit factory meant that they were the lucky ones, and they seemed to be the only people in peckham who managed to hold down a steady job and keep their dingy dwellings.

ted was never at home much. one of his parents would work during the day while the other slept and this would swap during the night, so his time was much better spent outside. it’s not that his parents didn’t want him milling around the house, but rather that wherever ted decided to roam was never a quiet place for long. indeed it seemed that ted had the whole of london in the palm of his hand, and he intended to roam every alleyway and slip road, even if it was just to ensure his mum and dad got some rest.

ted was a good kid, truly he was. he was polite, and he never brought any trouble to his front doorstep, and he held open doors for people and helped anyone who needed it. yet despite this, his quasi-nomadic tendencies often offered a less than savoury pathway, and once ted took one wrong turn down it, it seemed he couldn’t get off it. he quickly turned to petty crime, yet he was never sure if it was out of necessity or boredom. he would pinch food from local shops at first, but then it turned to toys, sheets, soap and other things he could slip into one of his dad’s old jackets. he’d then trek the long walk to portobello road once a week to flog his wares. (the extra couple of pounds he made a week were stored in an old wine bottle his grandma had gifted them one christmas, and when it was filled it was left for his parents.) it was at the age of nine he witnessed his first fight, and he ran home soon afterwards. the image of the boys he looked up to, the misguided idols of his youth, bloodied and bruised scared him stiff, and the faint wail of police sirens was the final push to send him running. it dawned on him, under the scant safety of his rough duvet, that this was the way his life would go. he would loiter and steal his way through his teenage years, and if he was lucky, he’d spend adulthood behind bars instead of six feet under. the realisation lay heavy on his shoulders, and the first time he ever prayed the same way his mum did every night, he wished and wished for a way out, for some miracle to come to him to save him from the backstreets. this miracle came two weeks before his eleventh birthday, in the form of a tall man with a grey beard sitting on his couch, sipping cheap tea from a chipped mug and eating the good biscuits with the chocolate on that his mum saved for when the priest came round.

he hadn’t even batted an eyelid, and then ted found himself sat on the hogwarts express, in the first new uniform he had been bought since he was eight, fitting almost perfectly, but there was still some room for him to grow into his jumper. tears sprang into his eyes when he saw the castle, his new beginning, and he was quickly sorted into hufflepuff. within a few weeks, he had proudly garnered a reputation as being loud, happy-go-lucky, and in one rare slip up from one professor, ballsy. a small part of him knew it was too good to be true, but ted drowned it out with potions, gobstones, and pumpkin juice. that was, until, his third year, when his perfect illusion was shattered beyond compare. he was called out of his astrology lesson and was asked to make his way up to dumbledore’s office. when he got there, he found dumbledore, mcgonagall and his head of house, a mixture of pity and hurt present on their faces. when dumbledore stepped aside to reveal his parish priest, rosary beads in hand, dressed in black, he fell to the floor, tears streaming down his face, a scream caught in his throat. his father had been killed in an explosion at the factory, dumbledore explained, caused by faulty, cheap wires. his tears had just about dried when he got to his mother; the portkey from hogwarts didn’t reach his house quick enough in his opinion. for the first time in forever, ted was silent. he felt like a chunk of his heart had been wrenched from his chest, but he still couldn’t find an excuse for the feeling that something was wrong and that somebody wasn’t telling him something.

he returned to hogwarts sixth months later, and there was no denying that ted just wasn’t ted anymore. he didn’t want his grief to change him, and he let on that everything was fine, but his laughs were forced and the twinkle of amusement seldom lit up his blue eyes anymore. he was barely going through the motions, and his whole life was a dull cycle of eat, sleep, pretend, repeat. life got easier for ted. his grief, as grief does, faded from a sharp pain to a dull ache, and eventually, the light returned to his eyes and his days became a lot easier to get through, and meeting the love of his life helped him too, and his thoughts were then consumed with life after school, bringing andromeda home to meet his mum, maybe putting a ring on her finger one day.

he bought his pub when he was 20. an old friend of his dad’s had been selling it, right on the corner of diagon alley ( not that they knew that ) and ted had jumped at taking over as landlord, extending the back so half of the pub served exclusively muggles and the other half, heavily guarded by magic, served wizards and witches and wix. it’s funny, how he feels embarrassed about it still, at 31, feeling he should have a more noble profession to provide for his family, but he’s all but cut his shifts, leaving it in the capable hands of his staff, and it makes a steady income, enough and more for the three of them. still,  he thinks that sometimes his mum wished he had become a plumber or had some sort magical office job, but ted supposed he was never one for convention.

it wasn’t until his 25th birthday that his mother told him the truth. his mother, looking the strongest she had in months, relayed the events, her voice detached and unwavering, and as soon as the word mudblood left her lips, ted punched a hole in the kitchen wall. there was a war brewing, and the urge to fight had never been stronger in him, but he had a wife, a mother, a baby girl. if he was eighteen, he’d have his wand at the ready and blood already on his hands, but he wasn’t, and so he bit his tongue and clenched his fists and did what he had to do to keep his family safe. now that it seems voldemort is on the rise again, he doesn’t know if it’s going to be easier or harder to do the same again.

plot ideas —

i think it would be cool to explore ted’s restlessness about the war, especially with the person who’ll play andromeda, and how that paired with narcissa coming back into her life could place strain on their relationship! i’d also looooove to see how narcissa & lucius and ted get along when they’re forced to share space. alsohis dynamic with the order, how much he sympathises and wants to join and yet distance himself at the same time, i think that would be really interesting

extra — pinterest board here { x } !