יעדער מענטש האָט זיך זײַן פּעקל

Post by Anthony Goldstein on Jul 23, 2018 3:41:38 GMT -5

Anthony Goldstein
38 - Male - Halfblood - 10/12/1979

Private Healer at Panacea - Order of the Phoenix

Appearance and Personality

General Appearance: Anthony stands at slightly above 5'11'', has dark-blond locks, blue eyes, and a friendly smile. He looks like a thoroughly nice person, and he also happens to be one. He doesn't really know how to dress smartly, but he's got Ast-, er, his mother to dress him because he doesn't like shopping for clothes.

Sexual Orientation: Demisexual
Skills: Healing (obviously), Transfiguration (he loved the subject at school), thinking logically (unless her name starts with A), coming to quick decisions (and then questioning them forever), staying calm in precarious situations
Weaknesses: He could have done without Herbology, the loss of Hyperion, Tamara (is it better for her to stay away or is it safe to meet her?), Aste/ë/o/œ/ö/øria (well, he believes her whatever she tells him, but he also doubts pretty much everything she tells him... it's complicated), he used to chew his fingernails when he was little (and sometimes still does when he's very nervous - he mostly managed to stop because his Scouring Charm was really bad, so it was always very disgusting after Herbology), noisy surroundings
Positive Personality Traits: Caring, intelligent, dutiful, hard-working, loyal, trustful
Negative Personality Traits: Doubts his decisions a lot, believes (and one minute later questions) anything Astoria tells him; can be impatient when he explains something that he considers obvious; can be very straight-forward with his opinions (more on a personal level, he knows to be careful with politics) and therefore sometimes comes across as rude.
Hobbies and Interests: Healing, Reading, Cooking, spending time with his wi- daught- family, Gobstones (for sentimental reasons, he once won a tournament when he was nine)
Character History:

Anthony was born on a chilly but sunny October morning to a half-blood couple Jonathan and Leah Goldstein. He had a happy uneventful childhood, timey displaying magical abilities at the age of five. He also relatively soon managed to have some control over it, so he never caused much damage (apart from the times when the toilet overflowed because he was trying to make the water in the bathtub bubble). All in all, he was a happy if a little quiet child that never gave much reason to his parents to worry. His Hogwarts letter came, which he was very enthusiastic about (despite Grannie insisting that Ilvermorny was by far superior), they all went to Diagon Alley to buy his supplies, and on the first of September 1991 he was on the train to Hogwarts.

On the way, he met and became friends with Terry Boot, with Michael Corner joining them shortly after the Sorting. The Sorting was not as bad as he had suspected (though in hindsight, why had his parents thought that it would be cute not to tell him what would happen?) though he had been very nervous when Seamus before him sat so long on the chair. But apparently the hat found his case far easier and it was over after a few seconds of the hat also considering Hufflepuff. School went well. His marks were mostly good even without learning all too much (but Ravenclaw is a house in which learning was almost inescapable, so work was really not the problem). There were weird things going on, like a Troll on Halloween, or petrified students in the next year, or Dementors all around the castle in the third. The Triwizard Tournament looked like it would be fun, and it was. Until it ended. He listened to Dumbledore's speech at the end of that year and believed him. Then he went home and the Daily Prophet insisted otherwise.

His Prefect badge came in the same summer, so he thought that this school year was starting well. He went to the Prefect meeting with Padma, met the other Prefects, and received his instructions and so far so good. There was this Umbridge person that held the most boring speech of the century and it soon proved that her lessons were even worse. All the Ravenclaws in his years were worrying how they should pass their OWLs, so when Michael said that Potter wanted to start a DADA group, he fully agreed with his two friends that it was worth a try. So they went and it was undoubtedly interesting. He felt a little queasy when any group activities were forbidden on the next day, because he was a Prefect and should be there for establishing the rules. But it was also very suspicious why such a decree would be issued just after their meeting in the Hog's Head. There was no reason to regret his decision as Potter's lessons proved to be far more useful than anything the official class "taught" them. It had not been his best idea though to take one of the books out of the Room of Requirement. Certainly, it was a fascinating read, but he shouldn't have used it as a way to hide his Remedial Herbology book. It was funny how that little Slytherin seemed to think she was scary. In the end, Astoria even ended up lecturing him on the suspect. It was sort of cute, but also slightly embarrassing. What was she? A third year? Second year? He certainly was not going to ask - as long as it might help him to scrape a grade in Herbology that would allow him to continue the course.

His fifth year ended and with it the big reveal that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was indeed back. He didn't exactly know what had happened and as Michael and Ginny had broken up, there was also no way to hear any eye-witness account (Luna was said to only see what's not there, so the Ravenclaws never bothered to ask her), but on the bright side, they would have a new DADA teacher the next year. He and his friends together with a couple of DA-Hufflepuffs shared a compartment on their way home, which enabled all of them to test their spells one last time before the holidays on Malfoy and his cronies - nothing to feel bad about, not when they were trying to ambush Harry Potter.

The sixth year was uneventful, actually the most uneventful he had ever experienced, until the very end when the headmaster was murdered. Like most of the students, he stayed behind for the funeral and then in August he could put two and two together and could guess what that radical new direction of the Prophet had to mean. He spent the rest of the dreary summer trying to convince little Ilana that going to Hogwarts was a really bad idea. Doesn't Granny Queenie say Ilvermorny is much better? She didn't listen (of course). His mood didn't exactly lift when he learnt on the day of departure who the new headmaster was going to be. He spent most of the train ride repeating to Ilana that she had to behave herself and trying to talk to Michael and Terry about what they could do and whether there would be something like a DA without her noticing. The banquet was certainly the worst ever, with these gross looking new professors for Dark Arts and Muggle Studies, but Ilana got sorted into Ravenclaw, so that made supervising her a little easier. Also, he and his friends managed to talk to Luna the same evening, so there was this ray of hope. So, once Neville, Ginny, and Luna announced the first meeting, he went. And from this point on, they led a guerilla-war against the Carrows. Like almost everybody else, he ended up in detention a couple of times, but Madam Pomfrey was there to heal any broken bones and others had more ill luck than he had. The only torture-detention that stuck with him was the first he ever received. He stood before a fifth-year, the same little girl that had threatened him two years earlier, and she... well, she failed. He had at this point learnt that her parents were Death Eaters, and yet, it was almost... pitiful. It didn't help him right then - the Carrows were there to look after that - but weirdly enough, the incident gave him hope. Being born to Death Eaters didn't automatically mean that the children were monsters. With the progression of the year, it became more and more dangerous for them. Michael was badly tortured and had only been able to safe himself to the Room of Requirement at the last moment, and it was clear that his friends would be targeted next. So Anthony and Terry hid there too a few days later, though that meant leaving his sister and Ilana alone. He gave his sister his DA-coin so that she could contact him in emergencies and only a day later he got the alarm. Apparently his own disappearance had been enough to send the Carrows after his younger relatives. So his sister and cousin also ended up in the Room of Requirement. After about a week, it was time. Harry Potter was back, You-Know-Who was attacking. It wasn't much of a decision, all refugees of the Room of Requirement knew what they had to do. After confunding his cousin and making his sister swear to not let her out of her eyes, Anthony stayed and fought. The rest is history.

After all this darkness, he was glad to be able to orderly complete his education, and then he went to St Mungo's and started to train as a Healer while also starting his studies in Potionology and Spell invention at Lufkin. Until the Battle he hadn't been completely sure what he wanted to do later on, but what he saw there was more than convincing. The autumn of the same year, he went to visit his sister during a Hogsmeade weekend. The last thing he had expected that, once she had rejoined her friends, he'd come face to face with the same little Slytherin that almost exactly a year ago had been supposed to curse him. Even less, he had expected that she'd be happy to see him, that she'd want to talk to him. It was all very strange and he was glad when he could leave her and didn't think about her again - until the following summer. He met her on the street by accident (well, on his part at least), and she seemed even more eager to make his acquaintance. It didn't make any sense. There was of course the possibility that she might need friends that were non-Death Eater related, especially as she claimed to be also interested in a career as a Healer and showed endless interest in his training. Still, there were others that she could throw herself at for this, weren't there? It was almost scaring him, and he really wished that she would stop forcing herself upon him because he didn't know how to react to her. He didn't know whether he could really believe her, and the more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to believe that she actually wanted to spend time with him - that there wasn't an ulterior motive like his friends and family told him there was. He should just tell her that he didn't want to see her - or at least he should believe that. He hadn't wanted to go to Hogsmeade later that year, but again he went and saw her and he was confused and he didn't know why but... about a month later he was told that he was going to be a father. So, of course, he married Astœria (though where that ligature came from, please don't ask him).

Then, he saw a lot less of her. She spent so much time at Bangor and even at the hospital they hardly got to see each other. He tried. In every free minute of his, he tried to see her and make sure that she and the unborn was well. Just instead of him being now the one confused because of all the attention, she now seemed to have no idea why he kept making sure that she and the unborn were well. He wanted to do everything right, especially as his own family was so critical of his wife. She was a teenager, he had never intended to be married with twenty, but now that their situation was like it was, he wanted to do his best. And once the baby was there (and named after the father of the sun because apparently his wife didn't care about whether a child could pronounce his own name or not), everything started to make sense. They were becoming a family, and Anthony thought that in the end, all had turned out the best way possible. All pieces seemed to fall into place. Until they woke up one morning shortly after they learnt about the pregnancy and their little boy in his cot...

It was a shock. Astœria was completely beside herself and completing her tasks like a robot, and he didn't know what to do. He tried to explain to himself what had happened, but Hyperion had been too old for sudden infant death syndrome. He had always seemed so healthy. How could they, two Healers, have missed that something was wrong with their child? He tried to continue like usual. Astœria was pregnant and he had to do what he could to make her live from one day to the other. He had a family who suffered with him, his wife had nobody left but him. He had hoped that she would get better once their second child was born. But she avoided her daughter and began to be less and less at home. He changed from St Mungo's to Panacea because their working hours were better compatible with looking after a little girl and, with the help of his parents and the rest of his relatives, looked after Tamara, trying to compensate for the lack of her mother.

Then, the political landscape changed too. Shacklebolt got ousted from his office, and former Death Eaters got locked away. As much as Anthony was opposed to what they had done, this new policy was neither fair nor prudent in his eyes. And yet, at about the same time, Astœria seemed to recover. So maybe they would be a family again like he had thought before Hyperion... Astœria even returned to work at Hogwarts in Fall 2016, so she'd be there for Tamara. He started to think that things would somehow work out. But.

A few months later, Death Eaters slaughtered the Minister and all present Muggleborns in the Ministry. Maybe he should have expected something like that, but with his family's problems, he had paid less and less attention to politics. It was a shock when his wife told him they needed to divorce, but it was her and their daughter's safety that was at stake. And he was a former DA-member, he couldn't just stand aside and do as if nothing had happened. They would be safer without ties to him. There could be no question that his wife was right and he agreed with her immediately.

The next thing he did after signing the divorce papers with Astøria was to contact Neville and through him he got to join the Order. He heard the rumours that Astoria had only married him because of his background. That Hyperion's death had not been an accident. While the first was a question he had asked himself over and over again, he couldn't believe the second rumour for a moment. But still, he saw the announcement of her marriage in the newspaper and... would this really help Tamara? Theodore Nott... he hadn't had much to do with him during school, but he wasn't really sure whether this marriage would exactly help keeping Tamara safe. And yet, he couldn't demand custody now without causing even more problems... he just had to hope that his ex knew what she was doing.

Plots and Politics
What is your character’s stance on the recent takeover of the Ministry by Death Eaters? He's absolutely appalled. It's a nightmare, a journey back to the darkest age of his youth. Not to mention that he as good as lost his wife and daughter because of it.

Where did your character stand in the treatment of Death Eaters and their families under the late Minister Durant's rule? It was certainly not ideal. Shacklebolt had been doing an excellent job, and while the Death Eaters had committed horrible crimes, after fifteen years, there was no point in punishing anew because almost all capital offenders had received a just punishment, so there had been no reason to open old wounds again.

How was your character and their family affected by the reign and death of Voldemort? Anthony was a member of Dumbledore's Army and he fought in the Battle of Hogwarts. That should say it all.

Family

Parents: Jonathan Goldstein (1945); Leah Goldstein née Mazouz (1945)
Siblings: Fanny Goldstein (1983)
Children: Hyperion (2000; deceased); Tamara (2005)
Partner: Asteria Greengrass (divorced)
Other Relevant Family: Look at this pretty tree
Family History:
(The Goldstein part stolen from Ilana Rose Goldstein 's app, though... doesn't that sound more like something she would do?)

Like most Jewish families, the Goldsteins are half-blood, as for many people, it was far more important to have Jewish children than to marry magical cousins. Jewish families (well, at least when they lived in the Old Country, as far as Ilana knows) are often more connected to their non-magical neighbors, thanks to the small population, discrimination, and the fact that Christians didn't really care overmuch if you were magical or not if you were Jewish-- it really only made it worse. It was best to blend in safely, and try to help your neighbors. The Statute of Security, when it was first proposed, was often flouted and ignored by Jewish mages for their neighbors, though Ministrial mages would often show up several days or weeks later, and modify the memories of the Muggles involved.

The Goldstein family, therefore, has around as many Muggle and Muggle-borns as it does folk born into magical families married into it. The surname itself definitely comes from Germany (though when or when acquired, who knows. it's not remembered, just like the shtetls the first carriers lived in). However, once ancestors to some degree immigrated to the United States, they followed the trend of the American mages- staying separate and following the law, despite resistance at first. By the time Queenie and Porpentina grew up, they, like most American mages, were wary of nonmagical folk-- which was distantly noted, somewhere in the back of their head how almost hypocritical it was-- though they did believe that Rappaport's Law was of importance-- well, Tina did a bit more than Queenie, at least, as the younger could be and had been pulled into the minds and thoughts of others.

Like many other Ashkies, Anthony's European-ish (because it's really complicated, okay, when you're not really considered European for centuries by by the outside and inside and a lot of people kind of don't like you) blend of Belarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, and German. Those are the ones remembered, at any chance. Still, it's not like it could be said with roughly any certainty that those countries had been stayed in for centuries, thanks to being both Jewish (and therefore not recording births in churches, and synagogues being destroyed) and magical (meaning that there was even more reason to stay away from their gentile neighbors). Either way, she's Ashkenazi, and that's a complete other group and something she feels closer to than countries her ancestors stayed in for a few generations.

Anyway.
The Goldsteins-- well, Ilana's parents, anyway, were solid half-bloods, with a generous mixing of magical and non-magical blood from the Old Country. Her father, though his parents were American, chose to get an education in Hogwarts, believing it would be safer, since Jacob Kowalski was nonmagical, and Queenie was a witch, meaning that in the country they lived in, their partnership was supposedly "illegal". To help the pair hide from the American Ministry's reach, Newt Scamander and Tina helped Queenie and Jacob to the Faulkland Islands, where the pair would go on to have children, alternating surnames as they liked. The children went on to have the choice of either Ilvermorny under the care of their Aunt Tina and Uncle Newt (under the name Goldstein), Castelobruxo, or to Hogwarts under whichever name they preferred. Save for their eldest who chose Ilvermorny, their children had a mostly even split between the technically closest Castelobruxo and Hogwarts.

Jonathan Goldstein was the first of the children who chose to attend the far-off Hogwarts school, where he was Sorted almost at once into Ravenclaw.

Leah was the daughter of the Algerian born Alchemist Daniel Mazouz (1911) and the French Muggle Louise Mazouz née Straus (*1912). When she was aged eighteen, her father was proud to marry her off to the much older général de division Robert Bernard, who took her with him to live in Algeria where he was stationed. She was already tired of life with her husband when they got there, and she took every opportunity to get away from her house and explore the town on her own. One day, as she was walking around on a market, she noticed an old woman sitting on the floor who was selling... litter. She would have not looked at her any further, thinking it was just a crazy person as there were on the streets every once in a while, but while she was still looking, a man handed the woman something that looked like a large golden coin like Louise had ever seen and took an empty bottle up, walking away quickly. It was most curious and Louise kept an eye out for the old woman ever since. She witnessed similar transactions over and over again until she stepped up to the woman and tried to start a conversation. Yet, the woman pretended not to understand French, and Louise knew no Arab and just enough Hebrew (ever since her father had converted, he wasn't fond if she tried to learn it - he was in fact not fond of her learning anything apart from looking pretty) to realise that the woman knew the language. Still, she tried to communicate with hand and foot even when the woman packed up and went away, obviously trying to shake her off. Louise was not deterred until there was suddenly a young man before her.

In later years, neither Louise nor Daniel would be able to say later on how things had exactly evolved then. He did know French. And he had tried at first to make her go away and she had in the end. But the next time she was on the market, he was there too with the old woman, and when Louise approached them, he was more than willing to talk to her. And before they knew it, they were as romantically in love with each other as imaginable. Louise wasn't exactly sure how, but she attained her divorce easily (something that would become a little more logical once she learnt that her husband was magical) and was remarried almost instantly. It was something of a shock that her new family was full of wizards and witches, but she soon grew not only used to it, it was as if she had never known any other world. A boy was born in 1932 and six years later his sister. In 1940, the situation in Algeria grew dangerous. They could protect themselves by magic though this might prove useful, should Grindelwald turn his attention also to North Africa. When an Alchemist in Scotland invited them over for a project, they saw it fit to go. Three years later, their eldest received an invitation to Hogwarts and so they stayed, their last child being born in 1945. Like her siblings, Leah went to Hogwarts and was sorted into Ravenclaw.

There she and Jonathan Goldstein met. They shared a common room for seven years and were good friends, but their paths separated, each pursuing their own career. Ten years later, they saw each other again by accident. A year later they got married.

Other: He's got a NEWT in Ancient Runes (and didn't confuse ehwaz and eihwaz); he's also learnt to produce a Patronus during the DA-meetings (originally an eagle, then changed to a lizard). Lufkin Alum. And his Adoptable should be archived once he's accepted.

Eve