 |
|
|---|---|
| Full Name | Graham Uther Pritchard |
| Avatar | Damon Albarn |
| Sex | Male |
| Birthdate | February 13, 1983 |
| Blood Status | Pureblood |
| Occupation | Editor of the Yorkshire Call, ex-WAF |
| Wand | 10" wormwood, dragonfang core |
| Alumni | Slytherin |
| Affiliation | York |
| Player | Gwen |
| Journal | boxofstars |
—
"When there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire."
Home Life
Fiance: Ashley Folliot-Brown
Mother: Leda Cauldwell Pritchard
Father: Tristram Pritchard
Siblings: Older brother (by 4 years), Roland. While his best friend, Theodore Nott, isn't technically a sibling, their relationship is closer than many brothers' are.
Other Family: Is a distant cousin to Owen Cauldwell. Maternal grandmother, Mirele Levy-Cauldwell. Also has a cousin named Ceridwen (Ceri), whose whereabouts are unknown.
Home: Living in Askham Bryan, the Borderlands.
Finances: Currently is doing better than average by York standards. Most of his resources go back into financing his newspaper, however.
Personal Life
Political Views: Pritchard spent his formative years out of politics, simply focused on keeping his head down and out of the way of the Death Eaters at first, the Revers second. He was a good military commander, doing as he was told. Currently, he tends to be somewhat liberal, for a pureblood, bucking legal authority and strongly anti-military/anti-police, despite the fact that this isn't advertised in depth. A strong theme of this runs through the Call, however, echoed by his star reporters.
It remains to be seen how this may change. Despite his cynicism regarding politics, Graham does have an idealist streak ripe for exploitation by the right people.
Religious Views: Graham is decidedly an atheist, if he is anything at all. The following in-character quote sums up his belief structure fairly well:
"And if time itself has dimension, if it is space in any sense of the word, be that in physical or mental quality, then it is entirely possible that it changes throughout your life. That, like air, it expands and contracts. The space that you fill as a child is small - your fluidity of thought more prone to yield than to break - and so, too, is your conceptualization of time. The hours are long because they are so much larger than you are. They drag by because they carry you with them, because you have no sense of control or purpose. But children don't need purpose - that's the framework adulthood imposes. The rapidity of time comes from our engagement with it, a constant need to fill hours - that if we can only fill our days with the content of our daydreams, that we haven't truly lived. As if thoughts have no point or purpose unless they are made physical, teach a lesson, do something with some sense of greater Meaning. And we never stop to realize, we never understand that the beauty of our thoughts do not have to be what we do with them. The beauty of thought is that it exists - that people can have such amazing brains, that there is so much difference between them. Diversity is the closest proof of God that I will accept.
'I once wrote about the existence, or absence, of God. I haven't believed in God for years but it wasn't always that way. I wanted to believe so badly that God could not exist because I did not want retribution from a higher power for the things that I have done. I wanted to feel nothing at the end of this, nothing but unconsciousness. I wanted to stop my mind. I wanted to stop the understanding and the consciousness of my own actions, the reality presented to me and the consequence of choice. Blackness has always been my interpretation of nirvana. The human mind cannot be at peace unless it is at an end."
Marital status: Engaged to Ashley Folliot-Brown
Strengths: Easily amused. Strong knowledge of muggle world. Adaptive. Doesn't easily show anger or distress. Cheerful (since I suppose this has to be a strength). Pragmatic, intelligent, well-read (wizarding literature and history- extremely erratic on the rest of it), quick thinker.
Weaknesses: Cheerful, particularly in the morning (to me, this is a SERIOUS character flaw), sadistic, dogged to the point of occasional obsession, resolute smoker, hates birds, despises romance and "trite shows of sentimentality", holds a grudge, slightly paranoid, amnesiac, will not eat unless absolutely necessary (borderline anorexic).
Boggart: Generally a representation of anarchy.
Patronus: He has never successfully cast one.
Mirror of Erised: Himself in the open sky on Cormorant.
Amortentia Potion: lavender, grass in summer, salt
Quirks: Loved the Arthurian stories growing up- his favorite character was Mordred. Will often head for open space when feeling threatened. Hates interrogations because he often feels that he could easily cross the line and abuse his power (this is something, however, that he keeps VERY secret). His broom during the war was called the "Cormorant" and was painted black. Keeps the honors received during his military service in the bottom drawer of his dresser and doesn't show them to people. Plays street music similar to Stomp. Likes to build things, particularly small things. Loves "aeroplanes" and has wildly inaccurate sketches of them all over the walls of his flat. Loves the city and everything about it. Wields terms of respect like a club. Extremely polite to people he despises. Never without a cup of coffee or a cigarette in his hand, except perhaps at a crime scene, when he has BOTH. He likes laws, even though he isn't the best about following them.
Fears and Philias: Of all things, what Graham fears most is a breakdown of order. With that, he also fears political instability. He remembers the war well and to him, the best thing that it accomplished was returning the world to a natural order of things. While he fought on the Light side during the war, some of his views were close to those espoused by the Dark. Graham was truly fighting to maintain the status quo - to see it swing too far on either side is something that frightens him. Watching the world change as dramatically and drastically as it has since the Summer of Rage has bothered him.
Graham is also extremely claustrophobic and an acrophile.
Aesthetics
Appearance: 5'11", wiry build and somewhat bony, particularly around the wrists. Hair is about the color of rust- some consider it red, other light brown or dark blond but it soaks up sunlight, typically turning redder and darker in the winter months and bleaching out in the sunlight. His eyes are blue but typically hidden behind the glasses that he continually wears, bad sight a result of head injuries. On bright days, he always swaps the glasses for shades. His nose has been broken and still shows the signs of bad healing with a slight crook to it. Graham is attractive but not overwhelmingly so. Most of his appeal is in his energy and confident exterior.
Style of dress: Graham still feels most comfortable in the RWAF uniform and his clothing choices still reflect this. He tends to wear greys and blues with heavy pairs of boots, t-shirts and fitted trousers. His most prized possession is an old flight jacket given to him by an old muggle he met during the war. Although it's quite a bit too large for him, he wears it regardless. The two things he's consistently not without, however, are his glasses and his wristwatch, both small items of which he is quite fond and considers necessary to his existence.
First Impression: People generally think of Graham either as extremely confident or downright cocky when they first notice him.
History
Graham was born the second son to Leda Cauldwell-Pritchard, a Slytherin, and Tristram Pritchard, Hufflepuff, both wizards who had not succumbed to the pressures of their peers during the first war with Voldemort but instead, remained outside the conflict. His mother, Leda, was half-blood and always extremely conscious of the fact. If anything, Leda swung towards the conservative side of the spectrum in an attempt to shield her own impurity of lineage in comparison to the long family tree of the Pritchards. The Pritchard family, however, was never extremely high-ranking but rather, had a history of humble nature and civil service.
As a result, Graham grew up hearing little talk of many of the principals of the first war with Voldemort. While the names of the Potters and Malfoys were mentioned, it wasn't something that the Pritchards much cared about. Graham was more interested in his brother's stories and in climbing trees than in thinking about anything like politics. His one true dream was to go to Hogwarts, get sorted into Slytherin and play Quidditch so that he could become a famous Seeker. His childhood was so blissfully happy as to be abnormal and he grew up confident and secure, spoiled by parents and brother alike. During these years, however, his mother made deliberate efforts to secure the position of her family in the social order, integrating herself with others from pureblood families.
Upon his arrival at Hogwarts, Graham was sorted into Slytherin house without question. However, he entered a house dominated by the interests of pureblooded children of Death Eaters and he quickly grew adept at managing to juggle both his family's pro-Ministry beliefs and the pressures of the other students by feigning apathy. He had always been a naturally shy, sweet child and he tried to preserve that by hiding himself behind walls of his own making. Always an avid reader to begin with, he often deflected the questions of others by shoving his nose into a history text or provoking a discussion so esoteric or philosophical that it would bore the listener. He became a master of talking in circles during those years, a skill that would prove useful in the years after the war. The only members of his house that he had much respect for were Theodore Nott and Malcolm Baddock, the two Slytherins among the only students that he opened his mouth to speak to.
The political games that the other students were involved in resulted in his remaining off the Quidditch pitch. He simply didn't trust the rest of the team not to make an attempt at injuring him while he was on it. A residual distrust and irritation for political pandering has remained as a result, clinging to him long after those years have gone.
His favorite teachers in school were those that were practical and to the point. He enjoyed McGonagall's classes but often felt that Snape veered too far offcourse in attacking other students in the class, although he didn't care enough to say so. This was compounded by a natural inability at Potions that came close to Longbottom's. His problems in classes only intensified during his third year when the Carrows and other Death Eaters took control of the school. Pritchard didn't have the protection of the DA but neither did he fit in with the other Slytherins. He became progressively more withdrawn, now not into the pages of books but to a broom. He developed a love of flight, if only because it kept him from Hogwarts. What started as escape, however, became genuine passion and even after normalcy had returned, Graham kept his love for the skies.
His natural talents were those of a historian but Graham still wanted to fly. So, he had the opportunity to continue on with school and take his NEWTS, in a mixture of childhood dream and misguided patriotism, Pritchard signed up to join the Wizarding Air Force instead, something that angered his parents but that they couldn't stop him from doing. This was a great disappointment to his professors. Pritchard had a brilliant mind - one, it seemed, he wanted to waste in military service.
He joined the WAF in 1999 and spent a year in training. At this point, the WAF was without purpose, having been formed to cope with a war that was long over. As a result, few citizens with other prospects wanted to join the flying corps. During the War with Voldemort, due to the vulnerability of a moving force and the inability to cast consistent wards, casualties had been high. The WAF was viewed with disdain by most pureblood wizards, the Pritchards among them. However, it was where Graham wanted to be and the happiest day of his life was the first day that his unit, the 3rd LFC (London Flying Corps) went into the air.
His expectations about military glory were unrealistic and largely unrealized for the first part of his service. Wizarding Britain's involvement with overseas affairs had waned during the Second War and they had developed an attitude of protectionism. Still he kept on with the LFC, believing that eventually his service might do some good. It finally did, in 2002, when the LFC was assigned to assist with wizarding civil conflicts in Sierra Leone, an area that had tried to take advantage of the instability in England to break free of wizarding economic interests. The Ministry had great interest in maintaining connections to Sierra Leone, both for its diamond trade and for the high number of magical substances being exported from the region. Despite its neo-isolationist attitude, trade involvement in Leone was too important to allow ties to disintegrate.
His unit wasn't supposed to see combat initially but act as a scouting unit for the ground forces. This abruptly changed about a month after Graham was sent into the field when the 3rd was ambushed. They managed to fight off most of their opponents and their effectiveness was noted by the Ministry. After that point, the unit became a part of the offensive against the rebels, a wizarding group known as the Revolutionary Wizarding Front (Revers). Six months passed and he became a hardened veteran of the war, watching as most of his unit fell due to the high cost borne by the flyers. It was mainly his ties to home and letters exchanged with his best friend that kept his spirits high during this time. Pritchard believed that they would win the war eventually - it seemed to him that the differences in technology were simply too overwhelming for the rebels to hold out indefinitely.
In 2001, however, the Revers unleashed a new aspect that the 3rd LFC couldn't deal with - Impundulu. The impundulu, or "lightning bird," was a creature with the form of a black and white bird, the size of a human that could summon thunder and lightning with its wings and talons. It also had an insatiable appetite for blood. The witches of Sierra Leone kept them as servants to attack their enemies. It was those witches that flew on English troops, attacking the flyers and knocking them from the sky.
The first battle resulted in the death or capture of most of the unit, Graham among them. He was taken to an internment camp for prisoners of war. It was sixteen months before Graham was freed and that was mainly through the money and influence held by his parents. Not long after they had expended that effort, the conflict in Sierra Leone came to its end.
The conflict, in the wake of the Second War, was not viewed as traumatic for its participants as it actually was in reality. The war with Voldemort had the advantage of being spoken of, monitored by the public eye - few wizards even realize there was a serious conflict in the Sierra Leone and that wizarding lives were lost. As a consequence of that lack of coverage, the wizards who were taken were often subjected to treatment that was extremely brutal. Likewise, no retribution was ever had by Graham or any of the others in the POW camps - no criminals were put to trial. The war simply ended in 2004 when Sierra Leone pledged to uphold the trade restrictions placed on them by the British Ministry.
Graham's service and internment earned him several medals as well as political influence. He was quietly discharged, as were the others who had spent time in the camps, and sent home to recover. No official acknowledge of mental distress was made by the Ministry publicly - what happened was a poor reflection on the country. Because of that, it was preferable that the flyers, and in fact the entirety of the corps, be kept from the spotlight.
When Pritchard returned home, his family did not understand how to deal with the complete reversal in his personality, nor what he tried to tell them about his experiences. Whenever Graham opened his mouth to speak, his parents simply left the room or changed the subject. His brother, who had taken up quietly drinking when news of Graham's internment had been announced, simply slid further down into the bottle. No help was offered - instead, Leda Pritchard's solution to the problem of her son was to keep him at home where he couldn't get "overexcited" and to begin seeking out potential alliances for the family. Roland was beyond marriage - she believed that a decent woman could straighten Graham out. The family, to help their youngest child heal, simply chose not to speak of what had happened any longer. It became as if Graham had never joined the military - all references to the subject were met with quiet disdain.
But Graham's personality was swinging wild and, no longer the person he'd been, he only lasted a few months before telling his parents that he wasn't going to stay. He loved them still but he knew that he couldn't make a life with anyone. He went to the other extreme, becoming brutal in his affairs (if they could even be called that) and sharp and sarcastic, rather than the shy person that everyone had once associated with him. He'd built himself a construct during the internment - rather than shedding that persona, he became it.
He moved to Bruntscar, a wizarding village at the foot of Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales, not certain of who or what he wanted to be. It was a place to breathe at the time, nothing more.
Graham couldn't last a full month without occupation. He tried to get into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement but a combination of the ministry's shame over his imprisonment and concerns for his instability politely kept him out of either Auror or Hitwizard units, despite a proclivity towards the work.
He decided then to go to Belgium to visit his grandmother on his mother's side. He remembered her dimly as a child, a muggle woman with numbers on her wrist that he didn't understand at the time. It was something that, surprisingly, Leda didn't disapprove of - it served a number of purposes, not the least of which was removing her problematic son from the country.
His grandmother lived six months longer before her death and in that time, Graham learned a number of things about the life that she had had as a child. Among those things were the small fortunes that her family had possessed and he went to France to try and locate those items. He spent a period of a few years doing so before returning back to England to make a go of it.
It wasn't long after his return that the Summer of Rage hit the country. He hadn't told his family or friends yet that he was back, preferring to spend some time alone before he announced it to the world. He purchased a small cottage in Northumberland and began to write.
Then the bombs hit.
At first, Graham started sending Owls. After a while, it felt more as if he was sacrificing them and so, he stopped, writing and working in his small area. Then he decided to strike out with his broom and fly across the countryside to find people.
Military Honors Received
Artemisia Cross: for valour "in the face of the enemy".
Distinguished Flying Cross: for "an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying in active operations against the enemy"
Distinguished Service Order: for "service and leadership under fire"
Current Activities
Other Images:
|
Timeline: Series 1
Place notable information here.
Timeline: Overall
((In progress))
1999: The British Ministry of Magic agrees to support and defend the Gakatsla Ministry in Sierra Leone. A small detachment of troops is sent to West Africa.
2000: The Third London Flying Corps (3rd LFC), a branch of the British Wizarding Air Force (WAF), is ambushed in the field. This reveals the advantages possessed by a mobile air force and results in the majority of British strategy focusing on an airpower-driven campaign, rather than ground tactics, something hitherto unpracticed on a large scale during wartime.
2001: The Revers unleash Impundulu on the 3rd LFC in a dramatic battle that results in the death or capture of most of the unit, Graham Pritchard among them. The soldiers placed in Rever imprisonment do not have the protection granted to prisoners of war because of Britain's refusal to formally declare the conflict.
2002: Depleted of resources, Rever leader Bankole Idrassa is finally captured by Gakatsla soldiers and executed. Despite the fact that the Revers were still functioning, trade rights were largely restored and Britain made a complete withdrawal of forces after the return of several prisoners. Retaliation against Rever soldiers is still being performed and the Ministry in Kemena has increased brutal actions and imposed harsher social conditions since the pullout of the British Aurors.
2002: Leda Pritchard ransoms her son from the Revers shortly before Idrassa is captured. He is taken home and kept locked up until his physical body heals.
2003: Graham goes to France to live with his maternal grandmother, Mirele Levy-Cauldwell. He goes searching for her past.
- This is either the first time Nic and Graham meet, or the first time Graham remembers meeting Nic.
2004: Graham goes back to Sierra Leone the second time, encounters Suah, a warlord.
- Something happens here that causes Nic to save Graham's life (event as yet unknown) and call down the wrath of Suah on both of them.
-The war actually ends in this year.
- 2005: Nic moves to York and buys the White Boar for reasons unexplained as yet.
2007: Graham goes back to England at this point. Before then, he's probably living in Africa.
- 2009: Nic and Graham find out they're both in York.
