Character Information
Basics:
Full name: Leland Horatio Rivera Sykes
Nick names: Le
Hometown: Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA; now resides in Blue Mountain Apartment 708
Age and birthday: 20, 5/17/1992
House and year: University third year, former Shawnee
Boggart: Darkness all around him then suddenly gun shots
Riddikulus: The darkness melts away showing that it was just popping balloons that were making the noise
Patronus and why: Salamander; it represents adaptability, transition, opportunism, and resourcefulness

School Information:

Wand: 10" inflexible dogwood with chimera scale fragment. At first he had a hard time with this wand but over time he's become very powerful with it. It still backfires magnificently from time to time though. This wand replaced his first wand, a 10" sturdy aspen with an erumpent hide core after it backfired and exploded during a duel in his sophomore year.

Classes:
MWF - 9:00-10:10 Wand woods and harvesting II
10:15-11:25 Advanced wand theory II
11:30-12:40 Exotic wand cores
1:45-2:55 Wand repair techniques II

T TH - 9:00-11:00 Advanced pairing
12:00-2:00 Advanced wand crafting II
2:30-4:30 Crafting lab

Major subject and focus: Magical crafting with a focus on wands
Extracirriculars: University Quidditch (beater), muggle sports, art club, dueling club
Animagus form, if applicable NA

Family and Relationships
Parents: Carlita Rivera (mother- estranged), William Sykes (father- estranged)
Siblings: Javier Bidel (brother- decesased), Suzanne White (half sister- estranged), Marney and Ruby Sykes (half sisters- just met)
Children: Eddie Rivera Sykes (two year old daughter 3/29/2010) Her real name is Edith but he's legally renamed her since he gained full custody.
Extended Family: Maria and Tomos Garza (legal guardians, maternal aunt and uncle)
Familiar: Emili, an albino Califnoria King Snake
Sexuality: Heterosexual

Appearance:
PB: Rafi Gavron
Physical Description: Leland is a little on the short side for guys, standing at about 5'9 but he makes up for that in bulk. He's got an athletic build with defined muscle mass. Leland has a little scar under his left eye and a spider web tattoo on the left side of his neck. There is also a scar on his right shoulder from a bullet wound he received.

His style is mostly jock with an edge. He wears hoodies, leather jackets, loose fitting jeans, and t-shirts. He keeps his face and head shaved and probably gets more hair cuts than anyone in school. He wears one single stud diamond in his right ear, thinking it detracts from the scar under his eye.

Personality:
Likes: Eddie, summer time, painting, art, laying in the grass, parties, quidditch, fast cars, easy women, good food, cute girls, churros, Aunt Maria's apple pie, beer, teasing, rain and the idea that it washes everything away and makes it clean again, working with his hands, Emili, buttered toast, weed, energy drinks, hip hop, rap, loud music, joking around

Dislikes: Cigarettes, health food, hippies, people who make fun of gangster lifestyle, people who throw gang signs without knowing what they mean, senseless violence, taco bell, thunder storms, having long hair, tea, coffee

Quirks:
*Wears reading glasses when no one is around, they are prescribed for his astigmatism but he thinks they're too dorky
*Hums to himself
*Every time he hears a really loud bang he still covers his head for fear of getting shot
*His Aunt Maria sends him a book a month to read and despite the fact that she's not there to make him read it... he reads it anyways
*Aunt Maria also sends him formal wear for every dance

Secrets:
*His entire sordid family history is essentially his secret, he doesn't talk about it
*He loves the book The Prince of Tides even though it makes him cry like a little bitch every time

Amortentia smells like: Grass, apple pie, rain

Strengths: Physical strength, strong fighter and dueler, good at keeping secrets, confident, fast, works really well with his hands, magical crafting, combatve magic, hexes, jinxes, charms, lets little things slide right off his shoulders, persistent, never gives up, art and painting

Weaknesses: Thick headed, dishonest about his feelings, no close friends or family relationships, reckless, head strong, short attention span, terrible speller, terrible grammar, he gets caught up in things, impatient

Detailed personality:
Leland comes off as the stereotypical douche bag jock. He's hard to have a meaningful conversation with and even harder to get to know. He is constantly pushing people away because in the past everyone has failed him. His father, his mother, even his brother, the closest thing he ever had to a friend. He keeps his relationships very on the surface, never letting anyone get close. His only outlet has been through painting, what had started as street art became the only way he could express himself without having to talk about the dark details of his past.

Though he is closed off emotionally, he is always the life of a party. He comes off a little aggressive and forward when interacting with people but he knows when to stop pushing. He is loud, obnoxious, reckless, and fun to be around. He is one of the rowdy crowd with endless energy and a constant need for some sort of adrenaline rush. Leland is always in your face with a brash sense of humor. He likes to schmooze the ladies and horse around with the guys. He's landed himself in detention on several occasions for his fighting and his picking on kids.

He is just starting to come to terms with where he is and who he is. He is starting to let go of the things from his past and move on toward a safer future. He has begun to dislike some of the things that people had once commended him on. For example, he had been congratulated in the past for acts of senseless violence, now he hates senseless violence. It doesn't stop him from getting into fights but he no longer just attacks people for the thrill of it.

Raised Catholic by his mother, he always wears his rosary but he tends not to let that religion make decisions for him and he doesn't believe in many of the tenants of Catholicism. Finding out he was a wizard and living the way he did for so long helped shape his beliefs about religion and God. He doesn't practice or attend church ceremonies but he celebrates and meditates religion in his own way. Religion has been a sort of guidance for him as he has steered himself away from gang life. His major belief is live and let live, he has seen too much violence in his life to hate people because of the way they live. He will of course pick on people, but he never picks on people because of their life style (i.e. homosexuals, transgendered, different religions). Sorry nerds... that doesn't include you.

He likes to portray himself as someone who doesn't really have a care in the world and that he doesn't take anything seriously. In honesty, he keeps a large chunk of himself to himself and shows everyone what he thinks they want to see... a douche bag jock.


Personal History
Carlita Rivera was a young single mother of one. Her boyfriend had been incarcerated for grand theft auto and gang related activity, leaving her to care for their son Javier all on her own. Young and unskilled in the work force (basically sticking to cleaning up after other people) she wasn't sure where to turn when she met a high powered lawyer named William Sykes, who worked in the law firm where she was a cleaning lady. Their meeting turned both of their lives upside down and only days after they met they began having an affair. Carlita was the lively woman he had always wanted and William was able to give her money to pay bills and take care of her son. William, a married man, made sure that he kept their affair discreet.

Things couldn't have gotten any better when their relationship fell apart. Carlita informed William that she was pregnant with his child, a boy she would eventually name Leland, americanizing his name in the hopes that William would stick around to help raise him and see him as his own. Though William was the biological father of the child, he refused Leland and stopped seeing Carlita, even going as far as to get her fired and getting her off from her allowance. Carlita was now alone with two children and no one to help her out. She found a new job and did the best that she could do, raising the boys in poverty and in the inner city as it was the only place they could afford to stay.

As they were growing, Carlita started noticing that there were certain things about Leland that were just... different. She wasn't sure what it was about him, but things happened around him, especially when he was angry. She attributed it to the stress of raising two children on her own but nothing could explain away the strange people who began showing up on her doorstep to talk about wizarding school options for her son when he was about nine years old. Carlita was never comfortable with the idea that her child was a wizard and she had never fully accepted it but they offered her full scholarships and she couldn't resist. It was decided that he would start going to a wizard school in California once he had turned ten. School was great for Leland, he was able to get away from home and forget about all their troubles for a little while. But every time he came home, it was a reminder of the devastation.

As the boys got older, they started to see that they were struggling and they needed to do something to help ease their mother's stress. The only thing available to a couple of young kids was getting involved with a gang and running drugs for them. Both Javier at 15 and Leland at 11, were young recruits for one of the most violent gangs in the area and it didn't change when their mother brought home a new friend and a new baby. They lived the street life. Violence, drugs, and crime were just a part of every day life. Javier and Leland rose quickly in the ranks, they were survivalists... they were good at what they did. They attracted attention from everyone in the gang and outside gangs and became favorites among the gang's leadership. To some members of their own gang, they were still outsiders though and the rivalry and jealousy soon became violent. As it is in gangs, it's a fight to the top and many ruthless members worked for years to get what two young boys had achieved in a matter of months. Bent on gaining power, Javier and Leland became targets to the very people they considered their "brothers". They were jumped by rival gang members three years after they had joined.

The fight was quick and fierce, the boys were jumped, Leland took a knife jab to the face, scarring right under his eye, Javier fought off Leland's attacker but was thwarted by a shot to the back. Leland, being terrified and confused accidentally used magic. The earth shook and the lamps above them exploded, darkening the street. It had been enough to send off their attackers after they had fired a few more shots for good measure. Leland took a bullet to the shoulder as the attackers fled. Javier was laying in the street, bleeding to death, Leland called an ambulance and they arrived within minutes but it was too late. Javier had died in his fourteen year old brother's arms before medics arrived to the scene. It had been a set up from the inside. One of their own had wanted them dead.

Carlita did what she could but she had never accepted the truth about Leland's powers and who he was. She had a hard time after Javier's death and found it hard to even look at Leland. She had always been somewhat of an absent mother but things got worse. Carlita began blaming him for the loss of his brother and punishing him for every little offense (and there were a lot). He was being mistreated and blamed, it all became too much and Leland threatened to run away at the end of his freshman year. Carlita did the only thing she could. She called her older sister Maria and asked for help. Maria, who lived in Savannah, Georgia with her husband told Carlita that Leland could come stay with them and go to school in Georgia.

Leland moved to Savannah with his Aunt Maria and Uncle Tomos and transferred to Blue Ridge School at the beginning of his sophomore year. He has done better in Blue Ridge than he did at his old school. He closed himself off emotionally and refused to talk about his past or his family to anyone. He has no intentions of ever returning to California as he's sure there is still someone who wants him dead, he also has a hard time facing his family. He is angry with his mother for not being able to accept who he is and for not being able to be stronger.

He enjoys the mountains of Georgia and loves the peace. During the summer he spends most of the days just laying in his aunt and uncle's back yard. He came to love the smell and feel of the summer grass beneath him and the simple, peaceful feeling he got every time he laid down out there. It had always been sunny in LA but he had never felt the sun on his face like that. It had been a complicated task to grapple with, but he finally understood that he was home, he was safe. He had always been interested in art mostly starting out as a street tagger in his old gang but he really started using it as a way to express himself once he moved in with his aunt and uncle.

He started channeling his energy into quidditch and soon found that it made him feel better and more relaxed. He could easily pass off his anger as general douchey jock behavior. This was something he revelled in and made quite a reputation for himself. He went through girlfriend after girlfriend and got into tons of fights with other guys over girls. One girl in particular caused him more trouble and stress than he could even imagine. Bethany Tanner was a wild child from Atlanta who had always been Leland's go-to girl. She was the only person more flighty than him. They had seen each other on and off and in 2009 when they were seniors, Bethany let Leland know that she was pregnant and it was his. He got a job at the Blue Room Art Gallery and started saving money, he knew he would need it.

In March of 2010, Edith Rivera Sykes was born. Bethany dropped the little girl off with Leland in his dorm and told him good luck, she disappeared without another word. Leland hated the name so he started calling her Eddie and asked for permission to move off campus before graduation so his daughter would have a place to sleep. He was granted permission and moved into the Mountain Top Apartments. Three months later Leland received word that she was had died when her car went into a lake. She had drowned, being so intoxicated she couldn't manage to free herself from the car before it plunged into the lake.

Leland took the news hard. He started to fall apart and had to go back to his aunt and uncle's home in Savannah. The only thing that really got him through it was his daughter. He knew he had to do good by her and the only way to do that was to get back on his feet, go to college, and do better. At the end of the summer, they moved back into their apartment in Bluebell Town and he enrolled in school at Blue Ridge University. He had Edith's named legally changed to Eddie because it would make him crazy to have to call her that.

He worked hard, making sure that between school and his job, he had plenty of time to spend with his little girl. He used the day care services at the school and picked Eddie up by 5:30 every night. He's doing much better now as a student and a father than he ever would have without Ed.