Hashtag
Shufflebottom



Model: Jameson Blake
Post Color: #007FFF

[ Basics ]

Name: Hashtag Shufflebottom
Nickname: Tag
Birthday: September 22, 2084
Year: Third (but his FIRST at Hogwarts)
House: Ravenclaw
Strongest Subjects: DADA, Care of Magical Creatures
Weakest Subjects: Any that require too much assigned reading
Wand: 11 ¼ inches of balanced Holly with a Hippogriff Feather core (a lucky wand; protects against lightning strikes)
Lives: Lancaster, Lancashire, England
Heritage: Muggleborn...?

[ Appearance ]

Hair color: Black
Eyes: Black
Height: 5'5"
Build: Athletic
Other: Cuter than your boyfriend

[ Personality ]

Traits: active, strong, curious, prideful, independent, resentful, determined, headstrong, stubborn, effortlessly intelligent, fiercely loyal and protective of those select few who have earned his trust
Interests: physical activity, creatures, casting spells, flying, taking risks, pushing boundaries, plants, avoiding mushy-gushy emotions, people thinking he's cool, not letting people realize he can't read well
Miscellaneous: won't go out of his way to talk to you, trying very hard to seem dark and mysterious, may or may not be having a mid-puberty crisis over figuring out who he is and where he fits in with his peers

[ Life at Home™ ]

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The youngest child of six, Tag was raised by his single father and older siblings. His mother is gone and he doesn't want to talk about her.

Tag was born into a Muggle farming family where agriculture and poultry were the names of the game. While his father did the heaviest work, some of Tag's earliest memories are of his siblings complaining about having to help and being put to work. As soon as he was old enough, the family had a seventh pair of hands to help around the farm. As such, he was "home-schooled" by his father along with his siblings. However, the bulk of his schooling was conducted via audio books since his father was busy juggling the farm and six kids. They watched videos to learn about geography, geometry, history, and art. It was the same materials that his older siblings had used to learn, and it was determined that they turned out just fine, so surely this method of instruction was fool-proof, right?

Listen, Tag is clever. He's witty, he's curious, he's self-sufficient. He will be the first to assert that he can do anything, so long as he's given the proper tools. In this case, he wasn't, and Tag never learned how to read.

His innate intelligence has always shined brightly. He could recite any concept back to his father after either listening to the audio reading of a textbook or watching any educational video in length. His ability to solve those geometry problems came as easily for him as breathing. But, until the age of 11, Tag had never even tried to sit down and read a book, not when he could be "studying" while listening to his audio books through his headphones while getting farm work done. It fed his ever-hungry mind. It was entertainment. It was an excuse to tune out his siblings or his father's barking of orders. He had never needed to read when the audio books were his escape.

Needless to say, his Hogwarts acceptance came as a surprise. To his knowledge, no one in his family had ever been magical. He didn't even know he was magical. Sure, he was quicker and more efficient at getting his field work done than his older siblings who were generally bigger and stronger than him, but he never gave it much thought - he just assumed he was a naturally hard worker and things came easily for him. He couldn't have known...

His family did not react well, to say the least. His siblings complained that he was getting out of farm work, claimed that he probably wasn't even magical at all, and how would they even be able to afford it? Nearly a year after he received his letter (and was sternly informed he would not be going), his father took him aside and told him he was being sent to live with his mother's sister on the first of September 2096 without a concrete explanation. The provided reason was, in his father's words, "You will be better off there."

[ Life Not at Home™ ]

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For starters, he knew his aunt existed, but he had never even met her until the day he arrived on the doorstep of her tiny cottage, his worldly belongings in tow. His first impression was that she was beautiful, she was friendly, she was warm-- but best of all, he quickly realized she was magical. Magic, just like him! It dawned on him that he wasn't being exiled from his family. That maybe, just maybe, his father really did think he would be better off here. With someone like him.

And so began his new home-schooling. But this time, it didn't include Muggle videos and audio recordings. There were books, real books. Pages and pages of parchment to sift through. Diagrams, new languages, incantations that didn't even feel remotely normal rolling off the tongue. It was unlike anything he had ever studied before. Fortunately, he had a "teacher" who gave him individual attention, who not only instructed him on the ways of magic, but helped him improve the basic skills he was lacking, too. She worked with him on reading, on spelling, on correct punctuation. They read aloud together, they dissected words and sentences and successfully boosted him to the expected reading level of a 9-year-old. Sure, he was four years behind at the age of 13, but progress was progress.

Finally, after two years of homeschooling from his very cool ("and very single, gentlemen!" he shouts into the void) aunt, it was decided that he should be around people his own age. The invitation to Hogwarts still stood, and September 2098 could not come quickly enough. He was finally going to get to be a normal kid and could be anyone he wanted to be.