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IC Information
Name: Terence Søren Dantalian Higgs
Former House: Slytherin, 1985 – 1992
Age: 27
Birthday: November 1st, 1973
PB Choice: Mathias Lauridsen

Wand: 13 ¼ inches of aspen, cored with the heartstrings of a Chinese Fireball; “Legend has it that the aspen was the only tree that did not bow in sorrow and respect when Jesus died on the cross. Because of its pride, its leaves were doomed to constant trembling. Another legend claims the aspen was the wood chosen for the cross, and when the tree learned how it was to be used, it began to tremble with horror and has never stopped.” The aspen is also associated with lamentations, sighing, fear, and scandal.
Bloodline: Pureblood
Family Members: Father: Patrick Higgs (55), former Slytherin; DE supportive head of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.

Mother: Astrid Higgs, nee Eliasen (50), didn’t attend Hogwarts; Pureblood Danish witch, currently in a Muggle insane asylum in her native Denmark (under the name of Helena Johansen), where she’s been since 1985; the story that the family tells everyone is that she died from a severe case of Dragon Pox, and there is an empty grave bearing her name in the family’s local cemetery, which Terence visits every Christmas, without fail.

Sisters: Myrrha Bole (29), former Slytherin, widow of Frederick Bole, currently kept in the same asylum as Astrid, under the name of Annabelle Johansen, where she has been since 1999 (the family tells everyone that she died from spell damage sustained during magical experimentation); Calliope Higgs (21), former Slytherin, stay-at-home aunt and subservient Pureblood witch.

Niece: Olivia Bole (2); since Frederick is dead and Myrrha is insane, custody of Olivia is mostly split between the two sides of her family; her primary residence is with the Higgses, though.

Brother in Law: Sebastian Bole (23)

Most other Purebloods have some sort of relation to Terence, either by blood or by marriage; the most notable of these is that his so-called best mate, Marcus Flint, is also his first cousin, on Patrick’s side of the family.

Owl/Pets/Familiars: Terence is the primary user of Malachai, the family Stygian Owl, but also cares for the family horses (including his mother’s old Abraxans and their offspring) and practically collects cats, which he says he does for Calliope, even though he takes care of the cats more often than she does. They have sixteen different cats prowling around the family home: a Turkish Van named Madeline; a smoke-shaded Persian named Ophelia; a “cow” patterned cat named Grushenka; a Russian Blue named Katerina; a Siamese named Alyosha; a “tuxedo” patterned cat named Ivan; a black and white Van pattern named Dimitri; a tortoiseshell and white patterned named Smerdyakov; a long-haired Calico named Zosima; a gray tortoiseshell named Simone; an albino Persian named Chloe; two Norwegian forest cats named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; a Siberian named Seneca; and twin silver-shaded British longhairs named Hamlet and Horatio. This rather lends the manor towards smelling like cats, if Terence and/or the House Elves fall down on tending to things. Ivan, Ophelia, Hamlet, and Rosencrantz are Terence’s personal favorites of the cat, and Rosencrantz is usually the one who intrudes on Terence’s space to make him take better care of himself.

Place of Birth/Current Residence: Terence was born in Manor on the Hill, the family home in Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria; he keeps a small flat in London, in case he ever needs it, but, more often than not, he lives at home, with his Father. Because of his position in the Ministry, Terence also travels a lot and, while he keeps no permanent residences in foreign countries, he is very familiar with both well-furnished hotels and the insides of foreign diplomats’ homes. He’s a lovely houseguest in foreign lands, albeit an awkward one; the thing is that he doesn’t enjoy feeling as though he’s imposing on anyone he needs to impress, or taking advantage of a diplomat’s kindness.

As such, and due to the influence of his mother (for whom English was a second language), Terence sees to it that he knows as many languages as possible; he’s fluent in English, Danish, French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Belgian, Swedish, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. Of the languages he speaks, he’s notably best in English, Danish, French, Russian, and German, in that order, and those are the languages he likes speaking best (his absolute favorite being German, for the sheer fact that it’s an amusing language). On his own time, he’s currently learning Romanian, Portuguese, and Japanese, and it’s long been an unstated ambition of his to, if he can’t speak every human language, then to be able to communicate with everyone he could potentially have dominion over at some point.

Patronus: Terence’s Patronus takes the shape of a large bobcat, which symbolizes, “Clear Vision in Dark Places, Vigilance, Suspicion, Seeking Ancient Mystical Mysteries, Ability to Live in Solitude, Ability to See Through Masks”
Boggart: Calliope, going insane the same way that Myrrha and Mother did.
Mirror of Erised: His family, united, sane, and in power. Occasionally, the Reactionary Federation gets to join them in this, but, ultimately, Terence’s family means more to him than his Federation and, while he’d sell most members of the Federation out in order to protect his own interests, he’d never betray his family.

Political View: Terence is a staunch Blood Purist, through and through; he firmly believes that Purebloods are superior to everyone else, and he doesn’t care who knows it. That said, he refuses to ally himself strictly with the Death Eaters, partly because he disapproves of the blatant nature of their tactics (and, on some level, fails to understand how someone as overtly evil as Lord Voldemort could have been a Slytherin when true evil requires class, grace, and finesse) but mostly because, though he is a Blood Purist, he believes more fervently in Wizard superiority over Muggles. He thinks that Mudbloods and other non-Purebloods should be denied some rights, as inferior specimens of Wizardkind, but he doesn’t fully support how the current regime treats them, on the grounds that the bloodline is being “cleansed” and “protected,” but nothing is being done about the real Muggles. In his ideal world, Wizards would have a mostly benevolent dictatorship (with the occasional stunt to enforce fear and keep the masses in line), Muggles would be enslaved, and breeding laws would be put in place to keep Mudbloods from polluting the Pure bloodlines. And, naturally, he would be the mostly benevolent dictator. So, all in all, he’s more Grindelwald than Voldemort, but, either way, he believes in ultimate Pureblood superiority, and that is both his major selling point to most of his recruits and what he plays up to curry favor from the Death Eaters into his corner.

Allegiance: With the aid of his enthusiastic, if somewhat slow, best mate, Terence founded and now leads the Reactionary Federation. Although he’s more the brains of the operation, Terence is hardly one to parasitize the RF by letting other people do all the work; maybe Marcus gets his hands dirty more often than Terence does, but Terence devises most of the plans, hands out assignments, moderates meetings, and has Fred Weasley on the list of casualties he was responsible for. If you want his opinion, he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms that he is the leader of the Federation, and that Marcus is the mascot. Additionally, he’s the one who’s responsible for keeping the RF members un-Marked, and he, personally, has no intention to ever join the Death Eaters. Although he’s allying himself with them, and although he agrees with them on several key points there are a few things that he can’t get on board with: first, he will never be Lord Voldemort’s man, and he has no intention of leading anyone to think that he is; second, their ideal society is not his, and he won’t actively pursue theirs as anything but the means to an end; and third, in all honesty, he finds the Dark Lord to be… somewhat hokey. Completely serious about everything he says, yes, but hokey nevertheless. Proper dominion over all life is not meant to be achieved through flashy displays of power, but through careful subterfuge, manipulation, and covering your tracks until the opportune moment to strike and seize control presents itself – and, just for the record, violent overthrows went out of style for a reason: because they don’t last. Terence believes that, Muggle or not, Machiavelli pretty much had the right idea in The Prince, and he doesn’t understand why so many people in the Wizarding world are so against just using some common bloody sense.

Sexuality: Predominantly heterosexual, but not closed to possibility. Honestly, though, sex is quite often the last thing on his mind; he has a Reaction to orchestrate, stooges to police, international affairs to see to for the Dark Lord, murders to choreograph so that they look accidental, and the Order to frame for anything bad that happens – he’s swamped. Eventually, he plans on picking a nice, Pureblood girl to marry, as per his duty as his family’s heir, but he’s putting it off for more important things than marriage and sex.

OWLs: Ancient Runes (O), Arithmancy (O), Astronomy (O), Care of Magical Creatures (O), Charms (O), Defense Against the Dark Arts (O), Divination (E), Herbology (O), History of Magic (O), Muggle Studies (E), Potions (O), Transfiguration (O)
NEWTs: Ancient Runes (O), Arithmancy (O), Astronomy (O), Charms (O), Defense Against the Dark Arts (O), Herbology (O), History of Magic (O), Muggle Studies (O), Potions (O), Transfiguration (O)

Personality: As far as the better part of the world is concerned, Terence Higgs is anything but someone you willingly want to spend time with. Sure, there are good things about him, but he’s extreme and intense enough that all of his strengths and strong points usually lead directly to his faults and failings. His intelligence, for example, leads right into his pretension: he is possessed of a dazzling intellect and he expects that everyone else will constantly be on the same page as he is; when they aren’t, he often sees little to no point in being gentle with them, or with sparing their feelings, and he will act as though everyone should be on the same level as he is. His ambition and persistence lead directly to his insistence on finishing everything he starts and his tendency towards self-neglect in the name of getting things done, no matter the cost, be it monetary, physical suffering, mental anguish, or even human life. His perfectionism produces brilliant results, but also drives him to punish himself, either by doing himself harm in order to get the results he wants, or by beating himself up mentally when he falls short of his own expectations.

The bottom line is that Terence is Intense. That is to say, “Intense, in Italics, with a capital I.” He rarely smiles, he laughs even less often, and, while he isn’t completely serious all the time, it’s incredibly hard to tell because his dry, facetious wit is so much like his normal voice. He demands nothing less than the best, he will settle for nothing less than the best, and, if anyone attempts to give him anything less than the best, they will regret it sorely. They may not regret it immediately, but they will regret it sooner or later, as Terence is not known for his forgiving nature and has been known to hold grudges well past their expiration dates. He is determined to always be on top and to always have the last laugh, and, because he’s so insistent on getting everything he wants, he is almost never defeated in being on top of everyone else. In the Reactionary Federation’s chain of command, he and Marcus as above everyone else, but, ultimately, Marcus answers to Terence; in name, Marcus is in charge of himself and his own actions, but Terence gives him the last word on most things. If something is going wrong, it’s a good idea not to take it to Terence: he firmly holds that nothing is distracting enough that you can’t work. After all, he’s pushed himself almost to the point of death before, and he’s still made it. He didn’t even alert people to the fact that it was a problem because of his belief in Sprezzatura – the art of making the difficult look easy and never letting people see you sweat.

It’s easy for people just to write Terence off as a power-tripping, perfectionist brat who didn’t get told “No” enough as a child. While this isn’t entirely wrong, it’s also a very shallow view of him. It’s very true that he’s a perfectionist, and he does very firmly believe that He Is Better Than You, and that, once they’d instilled the basic Pureblood beliefs in him, his parents were incredibly permissive with him, but there’s more to him than just the power-tripping, perfectionist brat who never got told “No.” The most prevalent aspect of his personality that goes in this vein is his desire to create a better world. As far as Terence is concerned, these are very dark days in which to live in the world; he’s held this position since the tender age of ten, and his life’s ambition has always been to make the world a better place. Unfortunately for the world, Terence’s definition of “better place” means Wizard dominance over Muggles, Pureblood superiority, and something not entirely unlike the combination of the Muggle Renaissance and the Victorian age. The one thing he wants to discourage in absolutely everyone, though, is the belief in any kind of God. Terence is a staunch atheist and has been since he was eleven; he doesn’t believe in God or in any set rules that govern the universe, excepting, perhaps, that the strong triumph and that every man chooses his fate; he may not be able to choose what befalls him, but, in choosing how he reacts to it, he chooses his fate. As such, he takes an active role in creating his better world: God’s not here, God won’t do it, and so men will have to make the world their own.

Although only his father, his younger sister, and Sebastian know about the truth of things, Terence is very much motivated by his mother and older sister’s insanity, and the family history of mental instability. As the family’s heir and the vanguard of a new epoch, Terence has high expectations of himself: he must be intelligent, capable, strong, stable, and countless other things. It’s the stable part that causes trouble, in Terence’s mind, because, contrary to what he wants, he isn’t perfectly stable. He’s nowhere near as bad as his mother and sister, partly because he won out in terms of brain chemistry and partly because he has more self-control – but, that aside, he isn’t perfectly stable. He’s always very tightly wound and he’s almost always anxious about something, usually his performance as a leader and whether or not his decisions will be the right ones; at his worst, he falls victims to panic attacks, which range from mild and ignorable to completely incapacitating, to life-threatening. His attacks get life-threatening because of a post-traumatic symptom of his mother’s attempt on his life: at the pinnacle of his panic, he literally ends up on his back, gasping for breath, and he needs a potion or mouth-to-mouth in order to stay alive. He’s very obsessive-compulsive, with his obsessions being cleanliness, order, perfection, and never being perfectly alone; his compulsions are cleaning, scrubbing his hands to often and for too long, constantly organizing things, showering, abusing the better nature of one, Sebastian Bole, and buying cats. They all make sense to most people, excepting how someone so solitary and private as Terence needs to have constant company. Ultimately, he believes that having people around will help protect him from going off the deep end, and so, even if it’s just a cat, his little niece, or Sebastian, he needs to have people around.

From a technical, diagnostic standpoint, Terence is also plagued by what the Muggle psychiatrists would call cyclothymia, a mild form of Bipolar Disorder, which afflicts his mother and sister. How it presents is in a semi-constant state of cycling between mania and depression. For the untrained eye, the temperament that Terence forces himself to have makes it next to impossible when Terence is in a high, a low, or in one of his incredibly rare neutral periods, but there are very subtle and very important differences. He’ll act like a prat regardless of how he’s feeling, but, if one is to look closely enough, one will notice changes in his demeanor during his different states. His highs are always sudden and have lasted, at most, for two and a half weeks; they’re characterized by a general tendency to enjoy socializing more, better enjoyment of most things, more energy, less need for sleep, mild satyriasis, mild visions of grandiosity, fidgeting, alternating bouts of more focus and less attention span, blunted affect, more drive to go after goal-oriented activities, and racing thoughts that are, for some reason, perfectly crafted. His lows usually last longer, at most a month, and are characterized by decreased or completely absent appetite, alternating bouts of insomnia and hypersomnia, nightmares, fatigue, a short temper, inappropriate negative emotions (predominantly guilt and worthlessness), mild suicidal ideation, and a loss of pleasure, no matter how much Pureblood hedonism he engages in. In the worst of his downs, he also ends up with cramps, unexplained muscle pain, and migraines. His neutral states are the closest anyone gets to seeing the real Terence Higgs, and are, in general, just him being a prat to everyone.

History: Patrick Higgs was a good, Pureblood boy; he was also rather atypical in the way that he chose to be a good, Pureblood boy. After leaving school, instead of proceeding directly into the Ministry and finding a bride, Patrick took several months to spend time with the Pureblood Wizarding elite of Denmark, where he met one, Astrid Eliasen, an exceptionally beautiful and exceptionally talented Pureblood witch with a more-than-approvable pedigree behind her name. They took to each other immediately and, by the time Patrick left to return to England that November, he had Astrid coming with him, with the intent of being his wife. They were married the following July in a traditionally lavish ceremony, and they promptly began having children. Truly a marriage for love instead of money, power, or influence, they only kept one thing from each other and, as such things tend to be, it was the most important thing they could have told each other: both had a long family history of mental instability. And, while Patrick had mostly been free of his family’s afflictions – true, he worried about keeping his father pleased, and, true, he often worried about his family past the point of reason, and, true, he did enjoy a good drink more than the average Wizard, but there wasn’t anything too terribly wrong with him – Astrid was not so lucky. She didn’t “trouble” Patrick with this knowledge because she thought she had her mind under control, and that was enough for her.

Terence was the second of Astrid and Patrick’s children, with a sister born on either side of him: Myrrha, the elder, and Calliope, the younger. The set-up was ideal: Terence would grow up to marry a nice, Pureblood girl and carry on the line, and Myrrha and Calliope would grow up to marry nice, Pureblood boys and carry on their lines. All of the Higgs children received some manner of special treatment from their parents – Myrrha and Calliope for their places in the birth order, and Terence for his special distinction as the heir – and so it was hard to pick one out as being more or less spoiled than the others, but all of them had their physical and material needs and desires met. For the most part, Astrid raised the children on her own, eschewing the assistance of House Elves and nannies whenever she could, while Patrick went into the Ministry and quickly rose through the ranks in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Astrid was always the more indulgent parent, and the one more likely to express her love, either physically or verbally. Patrick wasn’t particularly cold with the children, but he made it clear that they had high expectations to live up to, especially Terence. To say that Terence loved his family would have been quite the understatement: he adored his mother, and, from early on, he deemed himself his sisters’ keeper, without needing to be prompted to do so. And, as for his father, Terence idolized Patrick: his father was a great, upstanding man, the ideal model of everything a Pureblood man should be, and Terence wanted nothing more than to make his father proud, which, being an apt student, a voracious learner, and a devoted son and brother, he often did.

Things began to slowly change once Calliope was born, though. Although, on the surface, the Higgses were a picture-perfect Pureblood family, the family madness that Astrid had been repressing was getting worse. Her moods were often not subject to her own control, and the voices that she’d begun to hear after Terence’s birth were coming in louder and more frequently. From about the time Terence was seven, Myrrha was nine, and Calliope was two, there was a marked change in their mother’s demeanor. She was no less warm and loving, and she still taught them herself, but she was suddenly subject to flighty moods, mood swings, dangerous behavior (which she often locked herself in her room to prevent), and other things that she needed to excuse to her husband, who needed to excuse them to the children, who then excused them to everyone else. By the time Terence was eight, he’d mastered telling Mother and Father’s friends that, regrettably, Mother was feeling poorly, and she was incredibly sorry, but she simply couldn’t [insert activity here]. Could she come call on them at some other time? This skill came in handy when Myrrha went off to Hogwarts and couldn’t do the excusing. During the years before Terence followed her to school, he grew closer to and more protective of Calliope – after all, Father worked, Mother had her moods, and House Elves could do whatever you wanted them to, but they just weren’t the same as your big brother. He’d eventually come to find problems in all of her boyfriends and generally be an overprotective big brother, but, for the time being, he just wanted to make sure she was properly taken care of, as best he could.

Finally, when he was eleven, Terence got to go to Hogwarts for his first year. Despite parental reassurance that she’d be fine, he was apprehensive about leaving Calliope alone, and, while he didn’t instantly forget about his apprehension upon going to school, he did manage to find his place. He was sorted into Slytherin almost immediately, and he carved out a distinct niche. While he wasn’t ever the ringleader or a member of any gang, he was distinctly the outside consult for several: his intelligence was a valued trait and, even if he wasn’t as into having obnoxious, childish fun as the other boys, he certainly facilitated their ability to have theirs by giving them plans. Academically, he was the veritable star of his year, and, even if his professors didn’t always enjoy his attitude or were put off by how much of a little adult he fancied himself to be, they had to admit: he was talented. It could have been quite idyllic, had the Christmas hols not gone the way that they did.

Over those particular Christmas hols, all of Astrid’s attempts at controlling her mind finally failed and she snapped. She’d been staving off paranoid delusions for a little over eighteen months, and she finally succumbed to them. She wrote in a letter, which Patrick later hid from the children, that she “knew” about Patrick’s extramarital affairs, and she “knew” that, somehow, she’d given birth to the children of his philandering, and that the only way to undo his sins was what she planned to do. And what she planned to do was kill the entire family. On Christmas Eve, she knocked Patrick out with a sleeping potion and went to kill the children; since he was the heir and the one who looked the least like her, she went for Terence first. She woke him up, and then began to strangle him; she made him pass out, but, luckily for him, Myrrha used the ‘Life-Threatening Situations’ clause of the Degree of the Restriction of Underage Sorcery to cast Expelliarmus, thus saving her brother. She resuscitated him, and then managed to have the House Elves rouse their father, who proceeded to sedate Astrid. In the morning, they took her to a Muggle insane asylum in her native Denmark and had her committed under the name of Helena Johansen. They informed the public that she’d died of Dragon Pox, ran an obituary in the Daily Prophet, and had a small, private, closed-casket funeral; the grave is empty, but they still maintain this illusion.

Shortly after this incident was when Terence had his break with the idea of God: he’d never fully been on board with God (or any analogous construct of any other religion) before this, and he couldn’t imagine why so many people across the world put their faith in Him to explain everything. After his mother had tried to kill him, though, he closely examined as many claims about God as he could and, ultimately, came to the conclusion that there couldn’t be a God. There wasn’t any benevolent father figure looking out for everyone – with all of the unnecessary, pointless suffering that went on in the world, there couldn’t be any benevolent forces out there – and, since there wasn’t any God, there wasn’t any need for a Devil either. The afterlife presented some problems, with all the evidence Wizarding society had to support its existence, but Terence rationalized it thusly: if there wasn’t any God, then man was free to do whatever he pleased, so a place of reward or punishment after death made no sense and, like God and the Devil, couldn’t exist. After death, some remnants of human consciousness remained, in portraits or in ghosts, but portraits were merely imitations, and ghosts were just the lingering consciousnesses of people who were too strong or too attached to the world to let it go.

Although everything from this holiday and its after effects should have been wildly traumatizing, Terence knew full well that he couldn’t appear to be any different; he had to make the world think that his mother had died, not that she’d tried to kill him and been forced to live with Muggle scum. Because failure was not acceptable, Terence succeeded in doing this, primarily by throwing himself into work. Come second year, he had an even better way to distract himself from things he didn’t want to think about: in addition to throwing himself into his schoolwork, he joined the Slytherin Quidditch team as a reserve Chaser. He didn’t play that often, but he went to every practice and his dedication to the team paid off in getting promoted to starting Chaser for Slytherin’s last match that year. He played Chaser consistently until the second match of his fourth year, when he was called upon to fill in for the Slytherin team’s Seeker, who was out for the year due to utter idiocy on his point. They won the match, 380 to 20.

From that point on, Terence was Slytherin’s starting Seeker. Admittedly, he didn’t have the “ideal” build for it, taking after all the tall relatives on his father’s side of the family, but he was slim and he had the advantage of not being easily whipped around. That said, with the exception of Charlie Weasley, the other Seekers around that time were skinny and, what Terence had in skill, they had in speed, and both things are valuable to a Seeker. Charlie Weasley was the anomaly, but, as far as Terence’s Captain was concerned, Terence was walking a fine line between being sturdy and being a potential detriment to the team, and they couldn’t have any detriments to the team. They’d been winning the Quidditch Cup since the year before Terence’s first year. Playing Seeker had the unintended effect of thinning him out – more due to his Captain training him harder than the rest of the team, and his Captain practically breathing down his neck during meals; Myrrha, naturally, grew rather worried about that, but because he wouldn’t allow himself to fail, Terence went along with whatever his Captain said. It was easy enough to not eat while studying and, actually, Terence found that he preferred that course of things, since he was taking twelve OWL-level courses, a lot was required of him, and, because he’d set high expectations for himself, a lot was expected of him.

Fifth year changed everything again. First off, Terence became both Slytherin’s Prefect for his year, something that everyone had, for the most part, seen coming. Second, he was still taking all twelve OWL-level courses and, naturally, still over-performing in them. He went into everything thinking that he could handle it all and, for the most part, he did. But, as a consequence of everything he was doing, he lost sleep, he lost weight, and, eventually, the fear of failure got to be so great that he learned that, just because Mother was in the asylum, didn’t mean that what she’d done was entirely gone. About a week before his OWLs, Terence had his first panic attack. He was in the Common Room, studying. He’d gotten most of the way through the stack of work he had for the night, he hadn’t slept in three days, and, from nowhere, he was bombarded with a sense that nothing he was doing would be worth it because, inevitably, he’d still fail, and he’d let Father down, and everything would be ruined. The fears magnified, bringing physical symptoms with them – in a matter of minutes, he was hot, sweating, hyperventilating, nauseated, trembling all over, tense throughout his entire body, lightheaded, and crying, and none of the symptoms got any better. For five minutes, he thought, in addition to the certainty of failure going through his mind, that he was going crazy, and that his body wasn’t right with time and space – and then he started choking. At first, it was just spluttering for breath, but, soon enough, he’d slid out of his chair and was on the floor, gasping for breath and flashing back to when Astrid had tried to strangle him. Luckily, Myrrha had gotten out of bed to make him sleep, found him, and saved him again.

He made it through his fifth year without another incident – and got all twelve OWLs to show for it – but Myrrha was inhumanly worried about her baby brother now, even though her life was nothing but bliss, leading up to and following her marriage to Frederick Bole. At her insistence, Terence’s wedding gift to her was that he spent the summer doing absolutely nothing, save eating, sleeping, pleasure reading, and going to professional Quidditch matches, including that year’s Quidditch World Cup. This plan of attack certainly helped his nerves recover from everything he’d done to them, but, come autumn and come Quidditch practice, he felt like he was out of practice and so, naturally, when Slytherin wasn’t winning all of their matches by upwards of 300 points, he shouldered the blame himself. His marks were still fantastic, but his team wasn’t winning properly, and that was not okay. Although he made it through sixth year without incident, he was clearly not in the best of moods about everything, which made both of his sisters afraid that something else was going to happen. He spent the summer before his seventh year alternately studying for his NEWTs and training up for Quidditch, and he would have found time to balance Prefect duties, Quidditch Capitan duties, and his schoolwork, but he found himself promoted to Head Boy. While he wasn’t unappreciative, and while he didn’t initially think twice about being Head Boy, Quidditch Capitan, and the best student in his year, Myrrha and Calliope pleaded desperately about how he was going to kill himself, keeping up like this, and how he needed to give up one of the things on his list.

He gave up being Slytherin’s Quidditch Capitan, surrendering the title to Marcus Flint, a sixth-year Chaser who’d always been a good player before. So, with one less responsibility to worry about, Terence started his seventh year at Hogwarts, optimistic that it would be his best. As expected, Calliope got Sorted into Slytherin (though Terence couldn’t say that he approved of her company – between the social-climbing Pansy Parkinson, the veritable troll that was Millicent Bulstrode, and the catty sycophants, Tracey Davis, Gwen Rivers, and Daphne Greengrass, he just didn’t think she had anyone who could really deserve her friendship). And that was the high point of the year. From thence, everything started on a pretty quick downwards spiral. Although he didn’t have any more panic attacks, Terence was still bombarded by the feeling that he was doomed to failure, and wound up studying for most of the time he didn’t spend in class, policing the Prefects, or at Quidditch practice. After Slytherin lost their first match – on account of an idiot first-year choking on the Snitch – Terence tried to explain to Marcus that they needed more practice time; Marcus ignored him, and the team suffered for it in their very close loss to Ravenclaw. Everyone else on the team wasn’t too pleased with that, but Terence was absolutely livid – with one Beater, Derrick, for hitting a Bludger at him when he was going for the Snitch; with Marcus, for not listening to him when he’d said that they needed more practice; and with himself, for listening to Myrrha and Calliope and handing Captainship of the team over to a hubris-laden fool like Marcus Flint.

Needless to say, that didn’t help anything. Terence was already in a bit of a tailspin, but losing the opportunity for the Quidditch cup just made everything worse. Since he was without that extra responsibility, he pushed himself harder at school; he already wasn’t eating enough, but now he nearly stopped eating altogether – and probably would have stopped if Calliope and his brother-in-law, Sebastian Bole, hadn’t intervened on a semi-regular basis. His body got so used to not eating that, if he ate too much or the food was too rich, he’d end up vomiting, which wasn’t helped by all the stress he was putting on himself. He barely slept and, even as he began crumbling under the effects of sleep-deprivation, he pushed himself harder, convinced that he couldn’t show weakness or fail. Although he made it through his NEWTs and out-performed everyone else, he didn’t make it much longer; about an hour after he got out of his last exam, after having a deadened, flat affect and barely moving, let alone talking to anybody, Terence’s nerves finally caved under stress. He passed out in the Great Hall and had to be carried to the Hospital Wing, which wasn’t hard, given how thin he was. He spent two days in the Hospital Wing before his father stopped listening to his half-incoherent arguments and admitted him to Saint Mungo’s for three weeks, to recover from the physical stress. His mind bounced back quickly, but it took his body a little while longer to recuperate.

That August, Terence had recovered enough by his Healers’ and his father’s standards, though he thought he’d been fine about a week after getting out of school, and went on the professional Quidditch audition circuit. Several teams wanted to sign him, but he settled on playing for the Appleby Arrows. He got rather lucky, since the team was genuinely interested in his skill as a player and the old starting Seeker retired almost six months after he’d been signed, and he managed to get four years of play in before, in 1995, his father insisted that he “do something more productive” with his life. Unable to displease his father, Terence acquiesced and quit professional Quidditch, choosing, instead, to go into the Ministry, where he fit right in. True, there were people who’d been there longer than he had, and there were giggling secretaries and interns who wanted to meet the former Quidditch star, but he found contentment at the Ministry, in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. What he really wanted was to deal in foreign affairs, but, for the time being, he was more than content with his position.

Then, he met up with Marcus Flint again. They don’t discuss the details, really, but the fact remains that, in early 1999, Marcus came to Terence, proposing that they rally their former schoolmates for the Dark Lord’s purposes and join the Death Eaters. Terence wasn’t entirely surprised to note that Marcus hadn’t changed much and wound up manipulating Marcus and his proposal until they had the Reactionary Federation. Moreover, he managed to convince Marcus that it had been his idea, and that Marcus was bringing in the necessary clout to Terence’s underhanded political savvy. They began recruiting their former schoolmates, including Myrrha’s husband, Frederick Bole, but an early tragedy marked the RF’s start: Frederick had only joined as a way to get into the Death Eaters, and, on a mission to prove himself to the Dark Lord, he died. He didn’t even complete the mission. While Marcus encouraged the image of Frederick as someone who’d died for the cause, Terence merely viewed it as the natural process of the unhealthy limbs of a tree being clipped. Myrrha mourned, especially since she’d just learned of her pregnancy, but her grief was short-lived: only a few short months after giving birth to a daughter, Olivia Bole, Myrrha went the same way that Mother did, losing her mind, attempting to kill her child, and being placed in the same Muggle institution, with a Muggle pseudonym for her protection.

Terence dealt with his family’s tragedy by throwing himself headlong into the RF. He didn’t go on as many missions as Marcus, but he worked from inside the Ministry, destroying evidence, slipping stories into the Daily Prophet’s pages and onto the WWN’s airwaves, spilling honey into people’s ears until they believed his way, and otherwise pulling as many strings as he could get his hands on. His most notable moment, in his opinion, was leading the kidnapping, torturing, and killing of Fred Weasley, who died by Terence’s wand. Terence came out of the Battle of the Ministry a hero for the Dark Side, having killed several, including: Cuthbert Mockridge, Katie Bell, Padma Patil, Marietta and Madame Edgecombe, Victoria Frobisher, Eloise Midgen, Stephen Cornfoot, and Dirk Cresswell. His favorite kill, though, was one, Amos Diggory. In the aftermath of the Battle, Terence has been put out there as one of the examples of what young wizards should aspire to be like: he’s intelligent, capable, he believes the right things, he’s on the right side, and he actively works towards keeping the right side in power. He’s been able to take on his desired position now, and currently serves as an ambassador for the DE-run Ministry in foreign countries, trying to assist the Dark Lord’s aim of foreign expansion by winning over international governments to the Dark Lord’s side.

OOC Information
Name: Kassie
Email: duanya @ gmail . com
AIM/MSN/Yahoo: SailorStarPoet on AIM