REID, xavier james

xavier tends to dress pretty casual. he loves to wear a shirt (long or short sleeved, depending on the weather) with a jacket if necessary. most of the shirts in his wardrobe have some sort of design on them - although none of them purposely shill out the brand name. the designs are of the funny variety, as in they have funny pictures and sayings on them. he doesn't like dressing up for fancy occasions. when he does have to dress up, he usually puts on a black suit, white dress shirt, and a colorful tie, with the usual black socks and dress shoes. the colorful tie is just a fashion accessory. he wants something to pop out from a plain suit and tie, and the tie definitely stands out from the other students'. his school uniform is pretty much his school uniform. he tries to get away with wearing sneakers instead of dress shoes, much to the professors' dismay. xavier also attempts to go around the school with his dress shirt rolled up, and gets away with it.

• care of magical creatures
  
• history of magic; when he took it
  
• watching quidditch
  
• pumpkin juice at dinnertime
  
• muggle technology
  
• photography
  
• reading the daily prophet
  
• watching snow falling from the dorm
  
• being around his friends
  
• girls; though it's kind of obvious

• people who don't listen to him
  
• playing quidditch; he has a fear of heights
  
• people who touch his stuff without his permission
  
• those who snore
  
• people who aren't good at singing, but do anyway
  
• people who brag about frivolous things
  
• professors who don't provide a challenge
  
• when someone has him do all the work
  
• being forced to do things he doesn't want to do
  
• the crowds at diagon alley

• paying attention in class
  
• being organized; his stuff is labeled
  
• he can make friends very easily
  
• he's aware of his surroundings; espeically in front of staff
  
• he remembers things easier than most people

• his fear of being around too many people in a close proximity
  
• his fear of heights; which means he's never tried out for quidditch
  
• he gets annoyed at people for being assholes easily
  
• the limp he has gets him to class - barely on time for it
  
• he gets sunburned very easily; he doesn't like to sit outside for long periods of time

the memory that triggers his patronus was when he experienced snow for the first time. as far as he could remember, this was when he was three or so. just seeing the fluffy snow and walking around in it that day was a joy to do. both he and his sister started to throw snow at each other, and they couldn't have been happier about it.

his worst memory was when he was a toddler, and his parents took him and his (at the time, only) younger sister to their first swimming lesson. xavier had never been anywhere near water in his life. before the lesson began, his mother took him to the shallow end of the pool. while he was being held tightly, some older kid started to splash him. he didn't like getting splashed like that, and he started crying. xavier's had a small fear of being near a pool or any other large water source since. his boggart is a wading pool with a kid (a young xavier) drowning.

xavier is all the things a gryffindor should be - courageous and damn proud of it... well, except for when he encounters things that he fears. when he faces new things that he doesn't fear, he stands up to them and confronts them. yeah, most of those things are frivolous and not really things that he should be proud of confronting; he doesn't mind to at least admit that. he respects his fellow peers and professors, although there are times when certain peers piss him off to the point where he'll just sternly tell them to do the opposite of what they were doing before that. if xavier's partnered up with another student, and that student is talking to their friend in another house, he'll let them know that they need to knock it off pretty damn quick.

he is a charmer with the ladies. his parents raised him as a gentleman and his sisters as ladies. he's very polite towards people of the opposite sex. xavier pulls out chairs, gets them whatever they need (to a certain degree), and holds doors open for them - among other things. sometimes, these things are just too much for the ladies to handle, and they'll usually get annoyed by his "charm" to the point where they'll just do things themselves and bypass him. xavier then feels down about this, but then realizes that things do happen for a reason. he seems to be disappointed a lot with his ability to get a girlfriend when ladies get annoyed at him. he's reassured numerous times by his housemates, usually his male housemates.

• ----- ----- reid, sixteen, sixth year gryffindor
  
• ----- ----- reid, twelve, third year hufflepuff

xavier james reid is the first of three children, born to zach and erika (hopkiss) reid. the reid parents are muggles, who met while they were in high school. they weren't exactly high school sweethearts, but they seemed to warm up to each other after being partnered up for a project in a science class. the rest, they say, is history. but we're not talking about them, now are we?

it was still sort of cold when xavier was born, as it was in the wee hours of the morning of march nineteenth; around three or four o'clock in the morning. it wasn't a natural birth, but more of cesarian section. somehow, xavier didn't want to come out head first as babies should come out, and the delivery plans were quickly changed. he came out of his mother's stomach weighing nine pounds, six ounces; no hair on his head. the name of "xavier" wasn't exactly something that was in the family. it was something that his mother came up with off the top of her head after she had seen her baby boy for the first time. xavier spent a few nights in the hospital for observation before being released in his parents' care.

as a toddler, xavier grew up learning things naturally. he learned how to walk at a normal pace, how to talk at a normal pace, and how to graduate from one stage of baby food to the next. unfortunately, he was a bit clumsy sometimes when it came to walking. during one day, after he had learned to walk on his own, he fell hard onto the floor, smacking his knees onto the hardwood floor. for some strange reason, this caused massive pain in his right knee, and he had to be taken to the hospital to get it checked. the doctors looked it over, took x-rays of it, and determined that there was more to the damage than meets the eye. they had made the prognosis to be that xavier would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

the rest of his toddler years went smooth.

as he grew older, and went through his school years, he learned that there were people out there that were out to get him - such as the older kids on the bus, or the bigger kid in his class who would try to take his lunch money without question. instead of lying down and taking the brute of the punishment, well... he jumped on the opportunity to stand up to the bigger kids. xavier once pushed a kid down into the snow because the kid was threatening to give him a wedgie in front of the rest of his classmates. his classmates were impressed. his teachers, meanwhile, weren't so much. xavier spent a lot of time staying back in the classroom when recess was going on because he was defending himself.

this was pretty much the case, up until he turned eleven years old. on his eleventh birthday, as the family was sitting around the dinner table, they heard a knock on the door. when xavier's father opened the door, there stood a person that they had never seen before. the person came into the house and explained to xavier that he was from hogwarts, and that the young boy was a wizard. his parents and his sisters couldn't believe what they had just heard. xavier opened up the envelope that the introductory letter came in, and was amazed at what the first year school supplies consisted of. the member of the hogwarts staff mentioned that his parents and family were welcome to go shopping with him. xavier smiled.

when xavier reached hogwarts for the first time, he was amazed at just how lovely everything was. he was a little nervous, however, when the deputy head of the school told the first years that there would be a sorting ceremony. the man who gave him the letter on his eleventh birthday never said that there was a ceremony. he started to feel even more nervous. he wasn't sure what to expect. as he was led into the great hall with the rest of his fellow first years, he could see that all of the other students were just watching them. he felt like a sideshow with all of these eyes staring at him. when he got up in front of the staff table, he could see a hat sitting on top of a stool. he wasn't sure why the hat was just sitting there like that. was he not getting sorted by the staff members? he got his answer after a song that the hat sang (yes, he was suprised that it could talk), followed by students going up to put the hat on.

xavier was getting super nervous now. he didn't know his traits. he couldn't tell you what house he'd be a good fit in. when he was called to put the hat on, he almost felt like he could just run away and go back to his normal life. he didn't do that, though. he stood up like a man and went up to put the hat on. the hat didn't know what to think of the boy, but he knew exactly which house to put him in. gryffindor it was.

here's what you need to know about the first full year at hogwarts: xavier starts off slow. his grades are pretty poor, but it's common for a first year, especially a muggleborn, to not understand what's going on. he chokes in his flying class because of his height phobia. some of the other kids in his class laugh at him - mainly slytherins. he confronts said slytherins and gets detention because of it. he meets a few other first year gryffindors and introduces himself to them. they take him in and they became great friends. through the rest of xavier's first year, his grades dramatically improve; now that he understands what there is to know about being a wizard.

years two through six were pretty much the same old song and dance. (seriously, xavier's life in hogwarts isn't as special as you'd think.) he decided to focus on a job in the ministry, working with magical beasts. care of magical creatures made it into his sixth and seventh year curriculum, among other necessary subjects. that is his dream job - to work for the ministry of magic to do something interesting and relevant to his interests. he doesn't want to fade into obscurity. he doesn't want to be that person who basically does nothing of importance when he gets out of hogwarts.