Name: Jeremiah Nigel Wilkes
Birthdate: 10 June 1960
House: Slytherin
Residence: Chatham, Kent, England; a strictly suburbian, predictable, and unspectacular house.

Classes:
OWLs: Ancient Runes [O], Arithmancy [E], Astronomy [E], Charms [E], Defence Against the Dark Arts [E], Herbology [E], History of Magic [O], Potions [E], Transfiguration [E].
NEWTs: Astronomy, Charms, Defence Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, Potions, Transfiguration.

Appearance:
By most accounts Jeremiah was not utterly bereft from birth in the looks department, though it would be something of a stretch to say that he was exceedingly attractive. Of the most oft-abused stereotype when it comes to male physiognomy – that is to say, “tall, dark, and handsome” – he fulfils, at best, one and a half of the three. Tall? Indeed, Jeremiah stands at six feet one and has a lean Seeker’s build, all wiry frame and tapered long limbs. Dark? Debatable – his frequently tousled brown hair is more apt to take on a blond tint beneath the sun, and often he looks rather typically pasty in that characteristic British way. Handsome? Well, perhaps “striking” is more appropriate; his features angular and formed by rather hard lines – strong jaw-line, sharp chin, and cheeks drawn so hollow by the proud high cheekbones in his narrow face that Jeremiah has a tendency to appear rather gaunt. A certain amount of athleticism and quick reflexes aside, he carries himself with a deceptive lethargy, a slow long drawl present in both his speech and movement clearly implying that he is better than getting worked up about the current state of things. Pride is a factor here, inevitably enough: there is sometimes an unmistakably disdainful curl to Jeremiah’s generous mouth, a haughty appraisal in his dark eyes, and his default expression (when he doesn’t stand to gain anything by being charming to you) can best be described as: make like Elaine of Astolat and drown already. For the most part, though, he manages to school his features into something less incidentally vitriolic.

History:
The Wilkeses were the typical middle-class Wizarding family: with a long history of incidental blood purity and a steady output of mid-level Ministry officials, they were considered to be upstanding, unambitious, and ultimately unexciting citizens, the sort of pillars that societies are founded upon. This current generation seemed bent on winning the prize for Being Par for the Course: a white-picket house in Chatham, steady Ministry jobs for both Emmett and Samantha, and a precocious young son whose deliberate incineration of an out-of-favour teddy bear at two years old marked him as being unequivocally bound for Hogwarts. Growing up, Jeremiah was already proving to be an "odd" child: bright and intense, he was the boy who led local children in seemingly insane escapades, who would calmly attempt a balancing act atop a cathedral roof and emerged unscathed, simply because falling never occurred to him as an option. As Jeremiah grew older, Emmett and Samantha spent a lot of time worrying about the child; they couldn’t afford to stay home and watch him, and at five years old he was already proving to be too much for local babysitters. Off to Muggle primary school he went.

Needless to say, Jeremiah resented this decision a whole bloody lot, until his first-grade teacher, one young Ms Chesterton, asked to test him for “special education”; after all, a boy of six years who could extensively quote Le Morte d'Arthur had to be special in certain ways, and that unnerving way in which he made her feel like she was always stating the obvious couldn't at all be normal. When the aptitude test results came back, concern turned to accolade, and of course a healthy dollop of "I knew it! I knew he was special!" was thrown into the mix as well. In any case, Jeremiah spent those first few years of elementary school as a sort of golden boy ("so much potential!"), and the attention somewhat pacified his extremities. Still, the sense of broader horizons and the knowledge that this was only to pass the time until Hogwarts kept him from becoming complacent. But there was no denying the fact that Chatham was irrevocably, terminally boring.

Hogwarts, however, certainly was not. The freedom of turning eleven and boarding that train, a new world to discover and conquer, quite went to Jeremiah's head. And furthermore, the classes there were actually useful, and there was Quidditch too. The first years were as close to happiness (or at least, “more satisfactory than usual”) as Jeremiah had gotten thus far in life, even though Slytherin’s blatant class bias hardly worked in his favour. A challenge, certainly, but not an insurmountable one, as his speech inflections imperceptibly morphed to take on a hint of the upper-class (cling to the consonants, drop the vowels), his penmanship markedly improved (your essays had better look damn good if you want the impression marks), and too-many-languages-to-properly-enumerate were steadily learned from dorm-mate (and more often than not, semi-conscious tutor in "how to act like a rich Catholic swot") Evan Rosier.

Jeremiah has also enjoyed a successful run since third year as the Slytherin Quidditch team’s Seeker, and since sixth year has found himself, unsurprisingly but still pleasantly, captain of the team. The rest of his Hogwarts years have thus far passed uneventfully enough. The intellectually-exhibitionist tendencies from his pre-Hogwarts years have mellowed into a sort of calculated slacking, with his grades permanently hovering above "average" but not quite entering the realms of "spectacular". He has remained on decent terms with most of his house-mates, forming true friendships much less often than highly convenient brief alliances, but considering the fact that many others seem to have the same goals in mind, this could hardly be called surprising.


Personality:
One of the archetypal Slytherin traits is eloquence, the image of the silver-tongued serpent being inextricably tied to the house, and this is perhaps the trait one would most readily associate with Jeremiah Wilkes. He is and always has been charismatic – but of course, that's the nice way to put it, and those who aren't inclined to be nice would call him a manipulative bastard. Personally speaking, Jeremiah is more partial to this latter way of thinking, because this talent at manipulation is something he's proud of, and he finds euphemisms a waste of time when he's not the one employing them to good effect. And on the diametrically opposite side of this preference for bluntness is his gift with words. Jeremiah likes getting what he wants, but he likes getting what he doesn't even really want all the more, since it's not the final objective that interests him but rather the process of procuring.

Jeremiah enjoys storytelling because he's very good at it, and because it's fun to watch you gape like a fish over some particularly outlandish tale. These stories are hardly ever personal (that would be simply too gauche) but he is often full of amusing anecdotes and distracting little cliffhangers, lazily and seemingly carelessly drawled out, but – ah, the magic is in the delivery, of course! In reality these tales are rather more premeditated upon, calculated to give a certain impression with inextricable links to charm. This has two main implications in his social skills: first, that he would be a welcome guest at a party (as a rule, Jeremiah makes friends or at least acquaintances, and not enemies; entertains but is rarely offensive; and gets people's guards down without them becoming aware of the fact), and secondly, he is given plenty of opportunity to hone his powers of deception. Jeremiah is an adroit liar, the type of boy to clasp your hand warmly while driving a dagger into your back without the slightest change in his schooled expression – probably a bright genial smile you would have no reason whatsoever to doubt.

Most people are either charmed by him or repulsed by his duplicity – it depends on how much of his little games they've seen him play, and whether they've had first-hand experience with Jeremiah on the Quidditch field, at which point any and all honeyed words are shed for an intent sense of purpose, and a distinct okayness with playing dirty. When it comes to the sport, he demands nothing but the best from himself and from everyone else, and takes losses very badly. (That Jeremiah is a sore loser is a very telling note: he's obviously not used to it.) But Quidditch aside, Jeremiah much prefers to not get his hands dirtied and is satisfied with being a back-seat driver. He likes to not take charge of a situation, because of an acute sense of self-preservation – this way, if something goes wrong then he would not be to blame. His view on life is often tempered by schadenfreude and a belief that he is untouchable, two traits which, more than anything else, show his immaturity. He likes, for the most part, the things that teenaged boys like (Quidditch in all aspects, herbs of the not-perfectly-aboveboard variety, somewhat questionable humour) but is bothered by the fact, as the image he tries to present to the world is somehow above all these juvenile temptations.


Not Eddie Redmayne, not Wilkes; the former belongs to himself, the latter a name belonging to J K Rowling's Harry Potter universe. Journal title from Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, cut-text from Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game.