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Name: Louis Alexander Gabriel Harper XVIII
Nicknames: If you call him “Louis,” “Lou,” or anything remotely related to the name “Louis,” he will kill you. He associates the name with his father and grandfather, whom he has minor issues with, and he explicitly prefers to go by Gabriel, or “Gabe” for very, very close friends. Even his father has finally cracked and started calling him Gabriel, mostly for the sake of saving everyone the confusion of having three living people in the family named Louis. The only thing keeping Gabe from changing his name legally is loyalty to his upbringing.

Nominal Significance: Well, the most notable aspect is that the name is a very, very old family name, saved for first sons of first sons and all that rubbish. “Louis” is of French and Germanic origin, meaning “famous warrior,” and hearkens back to the family’s French heritage, with the French tradition of having kings named Louis. “Alexander” comes from Alexander the Great in tradition, is of Greek origin, and means “defender of men.” Gabriel is a Biblical name of Hebrew origin, meaning “strong man of God”; in the Bible, Gabriel is the archangel of annunciation, most famous for telling Mary that she was pregnant with Jesus. Other appearances include announcing the birth of John to Zechariah, describing the End of Days to Daniel during his captivity in Babylon, and dictating the Qur’an to Mohammed.

Birthday: June 24th, 1981
Age: 18, almost 19
Sign: Cancer
Former House: Slytherin
Wand: Fourteen pliable inches of hickory, cored with three unicorn tail hairs.
Bloodline: Impeccably pure, with records going back for an utterly absurd length of time, even further back than the founding of Hogwarts. Although the records don’t quite go back this far, Gabriel’s family professes to have first originated in ancient Rome, amongst the nobility. The fact of the matter remains that, if they originated in Rome (very likely true), then they were probably plebeians or middle class instead of patricians, but you try telling them that. The bloodline spread from Rome to more western nations courtesy of the Roman army conquests, leaving relatives in England, Ireland, Germany, and France; the bloodline also went into Russia with the Byzantines, and relatives from every clan went into the New World at various points, putting some Harper extended family into America (mostly New York City, California, and Chicago). There have, in Gabe’s nineteen years, been three “family reunions” – one in London, one in Moscow, and one in New York – and, invariably, they are large and filled with utter snobbery.

Patronus: Gabe doesn’t really make a point of being around Dementors that often, or conjuring Patronuses for no real reason, but his Patronus consistently takes the form of a large crane. Traditionally, the crane symbolizes solitude, independence, important messages, communion, higher state of consciousness, wisdom, knowledge, vigilance, justice, and longevity, and, even though Gabe has given up believing in some of these things, he still hopes that they’ll protect him.

Boggart: For a very long time, Gabe’s Boggart looked like his mother, crying and otherwise visibly distraught, screaming and caterwauling at him because it was His Fault for upsetting her. Recently, though, it’s taken on the form of a small, black Pomeranian. This rubs him in quite the wrong way, since he considers it utterly feminine to be terrified of such a downright cute dog, but there’s logic to it. After school, Gabe spent a year in Paris, in which he studied philosophy and had an entirely questionable teacher-student relationship with his old private tutor, and he only ever met said tutor because his parents worried about how he mistreated his mum’s dog. Subconsciously, he sort of blames the dog for his most recent crushing disappointment, and associates it with the pain and emotions he doesn’t want to confront.

Mirror of Erised: Himself and the people he cares the most for (Gwen Rivers, his younger sister Cassiopeia, and his mum), together, somewhere peaceful and far away from war.

OWLs: Transfiguration: O
Charms: O
History of Magic: E
Potions: O
Arithmancy: O
Ancient Runes: O
Care of Magical Creatures: O
Astronomy: O
Herbology: O
Defense Against the Dark Arts: E

NEWTs: Herbology: O
Defense...: E
Charms: O
Transfiguration: E
CoMC: O
Potions: O
Arithmancy: O
Ancient Runes: O
Astronomy: O

Political View: Although he has a long history of being apolitical, witnessing his father's death has made Gabe more enthusiastic about what goes on in the world around him. He still isn't necessarily enthusiastic about most things, but he's a less wishy-washy Dark Side supporter than he has been. He's a staunch member of the Reactionary Federation, and he's looking, with the New Year, to become more involved in their activities.

Sexuality: To be completely honest, Gabe cares more about what someone’s pants look like than about getting into them. He’s not completely without lusts, desires, attractions, or any of that; he’s just almost completely without actual interest in anything actually happening between himself and someone else. As far as the attractions go, he’s rather ambiguous and can’t predict who’s going to catch his attention from one minute to the next. He’s fancied, dated, snogged, and slept with girls; he’s fancied, dated, snogged, and slept with boys; he’s fancied folks of the genderqueer persuasion; and, for all he knows, the next person he has any sort of spark for may, in fact, be a platypus. The chances of him actually fancying a platypus are thankfully so small that they’re utterly negligible, but he “keeps an open mind about possibility,” in his own words. That said, he is engaged to be married to Gwen and will have to have sex with her eventually.

The most recent cause for Gabe’s disinterest in love and sex comes back to an important point in his recent history, and why he’s been out of the country for a year. He’s spent the past year living in Paris with his former personal tutor (Daniel Vincent Bartlett), having an entirely questionable teacher-student affair while Gabe studied philosophy, poetry, and all the things that were dubbed “extracurricular,” ergo worthless, while he was in school. However, the circumstances under which Daniel first had to leave Gabe flared up again and, after a day of people-watching, poetry-writing, and general wandering around Paris, Gabe came home to find his stuff packed into a large trunk and a suitcase, which were left outside the actual flat. After an hour of trying to break the door down, break into the flat, and “just talk to Daniel,” Gabe got the hint and got on a northbound train, to where he could catch a boat across the English Channel. After a week back home, he talked his parents into getting him a flat in London, where he very swiftly relocated. Needless to say, after a year of being absorbed in NEWTs and his year abroad, Gabe is very much behind in What’s Been Going On in England for the past two years.

The closest Gabe comes to having a type is that he prefers that his partner be able to survive without him. While he does have proficiency with taking care of things, and secretly sort of likes doing so (hence his high marks in Herbology, Potions, and Magical Creatures), he has issues with getting attached to things and people, and the last thing he wants is to get very attached to someone and then watch them walk away. So, he figures, if he has a relationship with someone who’s visibly self-sufficient, he won’t get attached and, then, when the inevitable break-up comes, no one will really get hurt. He’ll never, ever admit it, but he is also incredibly fond of being taken care of.

Appearance: The easiest thing to say about Gabe’s appearance is that he definitely looks like a spoiled rich boy, which works out nicely, seeing as he is a spoiled rich boy. He stands about 5’11” when he isn’t slouching. However, he’s usually slumped over just enough, taking between half an inch and two inches off his height. He’s a little thinner than he should be, but not so much so that it’s really worth worrying about. All he really needs is someone to remind him to eat more often than he reminds himself to do so, which is about every three days or thereabouts (and it usually comes in the form of, “Have I eaten yet… since Monday?” which usually has the answer, “No.”). At any rate, he rather thinks the look works for him, even if it does give his mum reason to be maternal and, in his opinion, rather smothering. His face is on the long side and thin, with thin lips and a long, straight Romanesque nose to match. Usually, he wears his dark brown hair however it falls, though he’s been known to style it for one good reason or another; his eyes are green-brown and on the large side. His most defining trait, physically, is that he has rather large, but still very delicate, hands. Most of their size comes from how long the palms and fingers are; for an idea, he could, with a bit of difficulty, wrap his hands around a woman’s waist. She’d have to have a smallish waist, but he could still manage it. In terms of dress, Gabe universally prefers black to every other color and, even though he can dress up, he often prefers his clothes as simple as possible. It’s just infinitely easier that way.
PB: Rufus Wainwright
Photos: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight

Personality: The first thing everyone should remember before attempting to deal with Gabe is that he is one of the prickliest people that you will ever meet in your life. He keeps his speech short and to the point, he tries to keep his feelings out of anything and everything, and there is a very short list of people for whom he will act respectful. There’s an even shorter list of those for whom he’ll actually be nice, and, if you get this from him, do not cross him or he’ll take it away before you can say, “Merlin’s paisley pants.” Basically, talking to him is like talking to a living, breathing Ernest Hemingway novel: he’s short, to the point, and pretty obviously doesn’t want to deal with you. He has been known to spout flowery philosophy at points, and he’ll still be polite – his darling mum wouldn’t stand for her baby being impolite – just no more than he actually has to be.

Naturally, there’s a method to the prickliness. At the deepest core of his being, Gabe is a very needy person, which he neither likes nor wants to admit. It isn’t necessarily that he needs to feel loved and special; it’s worse. He needs human contact, period, all the time. With his dad always being at the office, his mum always being pregnant or preoccupied, his grandparents always being grumpy, and Daniel leaving him twice, Gabe has definitely felt the lack of strong interpersonal ties in his life and wants any attention he can get. Hopefully, it will be positive. And the situation gets worse still. See, Gave wants to be entirely self-sufficient and not to rely on anyone for anything, and his attempts tend to either fail and make people worry or work and drive him crazy. Someday he might grasp the concept that just saying that you don’t need people doesn’t make it true… but that’s unlikely. The way he sees it, people will say they love you, but then just run away, so distance is better than any other possible option. That way, at least, the eventual leaving doesn’t mean that much to anyone.

As a corollary to this neediness, once Gabe has assured himself that someone isn’t just going to abandon him, he utterly refuses to let them go. How can he just let someone important have the opportunity to ditch him? Once someone actually has Gabe’s friendship, he is theirs entirely, and he will do almost anything to make sure that they won’t leave him by the wayside. But, by the same time, he’s slow to forgive them if they do “leave him,” even if it wasn’t their fault or choice to do so. In his mind, leaving is leaving, no matter how you color it in, and anyone who tries to leave him must either have a very good reason or very good proof in their favor to get his trust back. And, at that, he’ll still make you do some work for it. He has an incredibly short list of Extra-Important People, which consists entirely of mum, Gwen, Daniel, and sometimes his sister, Cassiopeia, who will have to do less work, but still. At the heart of it all, he just wants people to be around, but doesn’t want to want them. So he goes about trying not to want them in the way that makes sense to him: being as distant as possible. To be fair, his unforgiving nature extends to everybody, which makes it slightly fairer?

Gabe also has issues dealing with emotions. Never having been raised with a functioning concept of what feelings are, how to express them, what is and isn’t okay, et cetera (or, basically, never having good parenting or Mister Rogers), the whole concept of “feelings” is very strange and foreign to him. There are some he can just go with, like peace, and happiness, and most “good” feelings that don’t require too much effort, but everything else has to be severely intellectualized before he can even think of dealing with it. When logic and reason fail him, he retreats to go be alone and take how he feels out on one or both of his musical instruments (piano and violin). And, when that doesn’t work… he gets really, really confused. Would it be better if he could, say, talk to someone? Yes, definitely, but that would require first trusting someone enough to do so. Which is very, very unlikely.

But, aside from being something of a mess, Gabe has redeeming qualities… some redeeming qualities. He is really loyal once someone makes it that far (meaning, his mum, his sister, Gwen, formerly Daniel, and possibly two or three others). The most predominant feeling he has for his family is a desire to live up to the name “Harper” while not actually living in their house, followed by very, very deep love. Not that he’ll readily admit to having the love to most people, but he does love them. Even his impossible to please father, shrew of a mother, cranky grandparents, and oft irritating siblings. To those that know him, he has a pretty good sense of humor, even if his jokes are mostly unintentional. He often starts group projects and, despite multitasking all the bloody time, he sees everything he starts through to the end, even to the point where any reasonable person would have given up and gone home for the night. This does lead to things like his coming off as a bossy prat on occasion, and the occasional fit of self-neglect in the interests of [insert project here]. Even though his self-understanding his rather lacking, he has uncanny insight into what makes people tick… and he usually applies this for less-than-admirable purposes, but, if he gets a laugh out of it (and possibly one of his Extra-Important People), he figures it’s okay.

…So he’s not so good for the morality, but he’s generally okay, in a broad sense. He just happens to be of the opinion that having a laugh at someone else’s expense isn’t always necessarily wrong… like with Marcus Flint, whom he laughs at, berates, and is otherwise cheeky with on a regular basis.

Likes: Peace and quiet, solitude, being one with a large crowd, the big city, the countryside, the forest, waterfalls, Asia, Asian food (and the Muggle carry-out system), poetry, baroque everything, flowery classical music, expressionism, Dada, modern art, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Anthony Burgess, museums, intellectual discourse, knives, exotic flowers, cats, strange fish and sea creatures, the theatre, the smell of cold things
Dislikes: Attachment, feelings (most notably, his own feelings, how trying to intellectualize them just makes him miserable, how he can’t just cut them out and get on with his life, how they fit with his long-established paradigm of what weakness is, how they’re illogical, et cetera), Paris, Plato’s Symposium (mostly for the extended discussion of pederasty, which he was just involved in)
Hobbies: Reading, writing, drawing, painting, philosophizing, people-watching, tending to the gardens, cooking, practicing his piano and/or violin, going to the theatre (or the opera, or lectures at some Muggle university, etc.)
Random Facts: He’s fluent in English, French, German, Greek (speaking and reading Modern, and reading Ancient), and Latin (only reading); he’s learning Russian, but was learning it more effectively when he still lived with Daniel. Reading translated versions of texts makes him queasy, almost to the point of actual physical illness. When he was but a wee lad, he thought that he had to be a vampire because of how badly he burnt in the sun; he was rather disappointed when he learned that he wasn’t.

Parents: Louis Alexander Gabriel Harper XVII (deceased) and Helena Harper (42).
Siblings: Edmund Harper (17, Slytherin 7th year), William Harper (15, Ravenclaw 5th year), Cassiopeia Harper (14, Ravenclaw 4th year), David Harper (12, Slytherin 2nd year), Edwin “Ned” Harper (10, unsorted as of yet), Nora Harper (8, unsorted as of yet), and Leonard Harper (5, unsorted).
Living Grandparents: Louis Alexander Gabriel Harper XVI (the last time Gabe asked Grandpa Louis how old he was, Gabe got whapped upside the head with a paperback book; at any rate, Grandpa Louis is 87 and still alive), Katherine Harper (79); mum’s parents have both passed on, and Louis and Katherine both live in the family home with mum, Gabe, and the siblings.
Relationship with Parents: Decent enough. He's adjusted to not having his father around, and he's slowly becoming less dependent on Mum, but it's still decent enough.
Relationship with Siblings: He doesn’t care much, really. His siblings all rather look up to him, and he sends them presents for their birthdays, but he doesn’t make too much effort to be their best friend, role model, or anything like that. It’s all rubbish to him.
Relationship with Grandparents: Grandpa doesn’t like his attitude and Grandma thinks he doesn’t eat enough; Gabe would really appreciate it if the two of them would kindly go die or something.
Overall: The Harper family is incredibly dysfunctional – even just with the current patriarch and matriarch, it’s nigh on impossible not to be – but, for what it’s worth, they function somehow or other. And Gabe really does love them; they’re just irritating sometimes.

History: Ostensibly, Gabe has had everything go very nicely for him in his almost 19 years; say that to him and he would agree on one level, but respectfully disagree on several others. For instance, his father has never been an easy man to deal with, but all in due time.

Louis Alexander Gabriel Harper XVIII was brought squalling into the world on a lovely day in late June, to an absent father and an absolutely ecstatic mother. Despite the family’s wealth, Louis XVII worked a nice, respectable, and very influential Ministry job – namely, serving as a member of the Wizengamot. And, what with all the nonsense from the war with Voldemort needing to be cleaned up, he was very, very busy, much too busy to be present for the birth of his first son, or even to visit his wife until the third day of her stay in St. Mungo’s. Luckily, though, she had her sister and Louis XVII’s parents to keep her and baby Gabriel company, and the lack of his presence allowed her to grow accustomed to calling their baby Gabriel instead of Louis. She’d respected her husband’s wishes enough to name little Gabe after his father; that was where her name-related obligations ended, and she liked Gabriel much better for her son’s name.

Things continued similarly from thence. Helena was a spitfire with old, Pureblood ways deeply ingrained into her beliefs, Louis XVII was frequently out of the house and vocalizing nothing short of Ministry propaganda, and young Gabriel grew incredibly used to having his mother pregnant. When hormones or sheer physical debility kept her from being a good mother, Gabriel spent time with his grandparents, which is how he learned that apathy is the best policy and where he met an evil little canine known as Ambrosine, whom he now unconsciously blames for a host of major upsets in his life.

Ambrosine was Grandma Katherine’s little black Pomeranian, and he was very much like his owner: elderly, spoiled, and very, very cranky. And, whenever he and Gabe were forced to spend time together, neither party enjoyed any of it. Additionally, and not to anyone’s benefit, there had been a distinct lack of, shall we say, morals in little Gabriel’s upbringing until this point. Sure, in his four and a half years he’d heard everything and nothing about how wonderful the Ministry was, and how being a Pureblood made him so much more special than everyone else, and how he was a very bright, gifted boy who would do very great things one day. …This was all well and good, save that it was only rarely punctuated with lessons about things like not hitting your little brother, not making noise when baby Cassiopeia was sleeping, and why not to kick a dog. So, one fine day, when Gabe considered that Ambrosine was being particularly vile, he gave the dog a swift kick… down a short flight of stairs.

Needless to say, this did not go over very well with Gabe’s parents, or with Grandma Katherine. Grandpa Louis thought it was hysterical and nothing less than what the dog deserved, but anytime he told Gabe that, he was promptly told to be quiet and sent to his room. Although Ambrosine survived his trip downstairs, Gabe’s incredibly permissive freedom did not. It was high time, Helena and Louis XVII decided, for their eldest son to get an education… from someone other than themselves.

Courtesy of the Bartletts, an old, Pureblood family come upon financial hard-times (which Louis XVII would not stop comparing to the ancient Roman Patrician families and their tendency to go broke), came one, Daniel Vincent Bartlett, second son, former Ravenclaw, and fresh Hogwarts graduate, just barely 18. More than willing, Daniel signed up to be Gabe’s live-in tutor… which rather quickly turned into being Gabe’s constant companion. After all, Grandpa and Grandma were cranky, mum was unpredictable even when she wasn’t pregnant, and dad was never around to have a say in anything beyond, “Not quite good enough,” so Daniel was clearly the best choice to hang around, especially since Gabe had to do so anyway. Past their thirteen-year age difference and the lessons in everything from history and foreign languages to piano, violin, and being a gentleman, Daniel and Gabe actually got to be good friends, and Gabe took a special sort of pride in how He Got A Tutor All To Himself whereas his siblings got stuck with sharing the same, elderly spinster.

And then came the time for Gabe to go off to school, which he was absolutely torn about. On the one hand, it was easily the best way to please his father; on the other, it meant leaving Daniel, and Gabe just didn’t want to do that. Aside from the obvious trouble of Daniel being Gabe’s best friend, Gabe was worrying himself sick about whether or not Daniel would be okay without him. Of course, an aspect of that was Gabe wanting to feel special and important to someone, but the worry wasn’t entirely misplaced either. For the past year, Daniel had been… well, different than he had been before. Subject to unpredictable moods, prone to rapid shifts between being entirely energetic and utterly incapable of doing anything, not sleeping for days and then collapsing for a day and a half – and the ostensibly worst part of it was that he wouldn’t talk to Gabe about it. He did talk to Helena and Louis XVII, though. While Gabe was off getting sorted into Slytherin, making good marks, and making friends with his roommates, Daniel was busy leaving the Harper home to deal with his own mental health.

Needless to say, when Gabe came home for Christmas to find that Daniel wasn’t there, the boy was crushed. However, he couldn’t just let his feelings get the best of him. He had siblings to set an example for, parents to please, essays to write, and other such things to do. There were outlets for emotions and times when it was acceptable to have them and, no matter how important Daniel was to him, he had to try to forget how he felt. What he couldn’t forget, he took out on his musical instruments; while he didn’t become a prodigy by any stretch of the imagination, he got incredibly good at what he wanted to do. This became his method for dealing with everything, and it didn’t often do him wrong.

School happened, which is really the only honest way to describe how Gabe took to school. Various things centered on Harry Potter happened and, after Gabe joined the Slytherin Quidditch Team in his second year, he really could have cared less, unless Potter was put out of commission. The Dementors present during that year were easily his least favorite aspect of the whole nonsense, as they brought to the foreground of his mind all sorts of unpleasant things that he didn’t want to deal with, but, at the end of everything, he just didn’t care that much about what happened. School was school, after all, and the point of it was to get an education and make a connection with some “friends.” And, really, outside of a handful of people (especially one, Gwen Rivers), Gabe saw no reason to really follow through on the latter. His studies were more important than everything else, anyway, since, at the end of the day, the only things his father saw from school were grades, and they needed to be good or else father would be displeased.

This policy served him well until his seventh year, when he was distinctly sans a Gwen and, indeed, anyone he really felt the need to be close with. As this forced Gabe to learn the hard way: taking your emotions out on a violin doesn’t always work. In a flight of what he now considers utter madness, he sent his owl, Nikolai, off with a rather length letter to try and find Daniel; much to his surprise, Nikolai succeeded. As it turned out, Daniel was in Paris, had been for some time, and, for whatever reason, had decided that it would be perfectly fine for Gabe to come stay with him for a little while.

And go stay with him Gabe did. After NEWTs and one week at home for his parents’ sake, Gabe left a note and skipped town to Paris, whereupon he promptly took up residence in Daniel’s flat in the Le Marais district. Originally, the two of them had intended just to share the living space, share whatever money they came by, and have a strictly student-teacher friendship as Gabe studied philosophy, literature, music, and all the other things he loved that were dubbed “extracurricular” at school. This didn’t play out as expected. After five weeks, a combination of Gabe’s year of irritating loneliness, Daniel’s mental health, and copious amounts of wine led to a completely unexpected kiss, which led to completely unexpected sex, which led to the two of them having sex frequently and acting like a couple, but not really talking about having a healthy relationship.

But all good things have to come to an end and, as they were nearing the one-year anniversary of Gabe coming to Paris, Daniel began to think he was going mad again, much to Gabe’s dismay. Psychologically speaking, what was happening was that Daniel was transitioning into one of Bipolar Disorder’s mixed states, which combined manic energy with feelings of depression. He began to express unreasonable feelings of guilt over everything he’d ever done, including and especially start a relationship with one of his students. Despite Gabe’s best efforts to talk him out of it, he came back to the flat one day in early June to find all his things packed into a trunk and a suitcase, sitting outside the door. Gabe spent an hour trying to undo the charm locks on the door, break the door down, and just get Daniel to talk to him, but it wasn’t any help. Too unfocused to Apparate, he took his stuff and headed for the nearest Metro station. Trying his hardest not to think or feel anything, Gabe got a train to the coast and then a ferry over to England and went home.

He didn’t stay at home long, though. Through use of strategic promises (like, that he’d maintain the house in Ireland) and rhetoric, he talked his parents into setting him up with a flat in London, where he could nominally work on all his own projects. He also, by request of his mother, sought out Marcus Flint and joined the Resistance Society. Presently, he’s been in England for a little over two weeks and in his flat for all of eight days. He has no idea what’s going to happen next, but he knows he has catching up to do.

History from Dissevered: Gabe lived on his own for a few months, helping the RF with various endeavors and taking his younger sister, Cassiopeia, until she went to school. He reconnected with his old best mate, Gwen, and started instructing Cassi to follow her example instead of his. In late July, he was one of the three RF members who, under the guidance of Bellatrix Lestrange, spread Dragon Pox in Muggle London, and, in August, he was injured fighting in the Battle of the Ministry; his father, on the other hand, was not so lucky and died. Shortly after his father’s funeral, his mother informed him that he needed to get married as soon as possible, so that he could take over as the head of the family. Once it became apparent that Mummy Dearest rather intended for him to marry one of his foreign cousins, Gabe turned to Gwen, figuring that, if he couldn’t be in love with the girl he married (which was unlikely even if she hadn’t been the particular cousin Mum was interested in, Katya), at least he could like her. Gabe and Gwen are now engaged to be married, and they plan on being engaged for a good, long while.

You
Name: Kassie
Email: duanya @ gmail . com
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