IVANRIEL Ilya Vali

   Character's Legal Name: Ilya Vali Ivanriel

   Age: Twenty Seven

   Wizarding Education: Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft & Wizardry

   Blood Type:  Muggleborn

   Species: Human

   Face claim: Andrew Lincoln
   

To say that his eyes were blue was like saying that the sun was yellow. Sufficient but not accurate to capture the burning. Not like the sky which would let the sun rise in it, and let it scatter its light. Not like the sea which would reflect the moonlight, and shine like a diamond. His fears, sadness, weakness, everything was betrayed by those eyes. And they looked so cold, like his stare could freeze the whole world in a moment. Clouds of grey and blue threatened floods and fury while pupils dilated in passion, thick eyelashes encasing polished blue topaz. Twin glittering pools of milky azure, eternal and ancient at twenty-seven.

A tangle of chestnut coils sits atop his head; not mousey, not like wood chopped and left to dry in summer heat. They were fresh, warm, with hues of sunrise melted into chocolate and gold. Stark against coarsened bronze skin; harmonising handsomely with cerulean, like the beautiful fae men portrayed in romantic museum paintings.
   

Ilya is a severely introverted and empathic personality type - analytical, calculating, distant - yet all the more still incredibly impulsive, revealing and ruled by emotion - a man of an inordinate amount of passion / emotion. So much so that as a student he had a history of losing his temper, or dissolving into fits of sadness, sobbing with little reserved or control before the eyes of the entire school, his peers and professors alike (something by which those who had known Ilya during his time at Ivermony may very well be likely to remember him by still) as though he had believed himself to be alone as he melted down. For, it was not as though he felt particularly apathetic towards the opinions or respect of others - oh, on the contrary. Ilya has, since his very first introduction to the concept of social interaction, found himself to be unbearably dependent on the respect, acceptance and the general perspective of himself of his peers.

But was perhaps, even more unfortunate, was his acute awareness of this Achilles' Heel; ever self-aware to the extent of great agony, he was; a skilled psychoanalyst of sorts, his empathy lending him a keen awareness and uncanny understanding of all facets of his own mind and emotions. Even during moments of great turmoil, however - during those fits during which Ilya, as a young wizard, had quite publically crumbled into a heap of a boy wracked with emotion to the floor of a classroom, Great Hall, or common room, knees giving out beneath him as he began sobbing uncontrollably in front of his fellows - Ilya's analytical mind did tear his own, irrational emotions apart; painfully aware of just how illogical such powerful feelings were in the very moment of these 'storms', yet entirely incapable of banishing them from his conflicting heart. A critical and calculating mind and an agonised, bleeding and unreasonable heart, ever at war.

His own, almost mathematical picking apart of his cripplingly powerful emotions - or, as his childhood mentors and therapists had often put it, "I think Ilya know's exactly what is going on in his own head at all times" - did not, however, by any means, lend him any better understanding of his sense of "self" or morality; never, had Ilya ever truly felt as though he had "himself all figured out", so to speak, but rather, just the opposite: this unique ability to view his own extreme empathic personality and emotions as though it were all being felt by someone else had made it arguably far more difficult than average to get a true understanding of "who" Ilya truly was - or, sometimes, even more frightening and dissociating, who's emotions he was feeling; his own, or someone else's *.

The emotions he feels, he feels very strongly and often will show clearly on his visage if he isn’t quick enough to school his expression. In the young wizard's later years at Ivermony he had worked very hard at learning to better control himself with only minimal luck; to take a step back before letting his ability to unintentionally take on the "energies" and more powerful emotions of those around him control his actions; to learn the difference between his own feelings, and those which he had without thought absorbed from his surroundings. Since his present suspension from the Ministry of Magic (Auror) prior to the very public fit that had eventually led to his failing of the Ministry's mandatory psychological evaluation - and pending the investigation of the self-defense murder of a fairly well known Wizarding World criminal - however, he has regressed quite a bit on that account. If under even the most minute amounts of stress he will often lose himself amongst the feelings of others, and be seen pacing, clenching his fists, and if particularly pushed beyond his limit he has been known to melt down entirely.

Due to the complicated state of his family life – if he can even call the estrangement "family" – he has developed a habit of avoiding answering personal questions directly. Perfecting the ability to answer questions without ever actually answering them and finding much amusement in a person’s expression when they realise they didn’t actually gain any information for which they were prodding. This mischievous streak is also encouraged by his hatred for gossip, particularly the cruel sort. Not to mention he got very used to avoiding giving any personal information during his time spent in the muggle world after an unfortunate incident from his childhood, which had occurred due to his openness about having first learning of his identification as a young wizard. Since the Ministry turned a cold shoulder to Ilya, his career once a great source of outlet and a release for this terrible passion, he is much less open and trusting than he once was, and has even grown distant from his closest friends and colleges. It is not that he no longer has the desire to be close to them again, but rather, that so much is still coated with a bitterness and when reacquainting with old friends there has always been an uncomfortable awkwardness for Ilya - not to mention the inevitable onslaught of questions that he has no desire to answer.

Despite the general distance he might be keeping others, he is incredibly invested in his new position. He always felt that he was meant to help and protect and in a way, he is still doing such and he cares very much for the welfare of any students who visit him for counseling (though he much prefers his old career, and secretly, and in spite of his denial, has recently found himself feeling a great deal of terror towards the thought that he may never be welcomed back with opened arms). While working with students, he seems to revert the closest to the person he was before the trial, showing that he may one day be able to regain that lively (or, better put: happier) demeanour. For now, it takes much more to make him smile fully or laugh as easily as he did during his more trusting years; before the betrayals of his loved ones, the bitter pill of having his life revoked from him, and before his discovery whilst working in the field of Law Inforcement of how truly dark and terrifying the more malicious minds of both Wizard and Muggle men (i.e. mankind, people, not the gender) alike are capable of making this world. He holds himself with less confidence; more like he carries a heavy weight upon his shoulders.

Despite being a bit broken, he still enjoys a lot of pastimes. A bit unexpectedly – unless you consider how much studying it took for him to gain the test scores he did – Ilya is a private conesciour of all art forms of emotional expression, be it artwork, fine cuisine, literature or poetry, television, movies, classical music, the opera, etc. Any artistic or poetic expression of the sadness or passion of others - but never his own; to pick up the brush of any of the beforementioned artforms would be to utterly and quite permanently destroy Ilya's obsessive enjoyment and consumption of these powerful pastimes. Puzzles and logic problems are also enjoyable to Ilya; he has, since his introduction to the Wizarding World, gotten quite good at wizard’s chess. Since his suspension from his position as a profiler and an auror - a career made up almost entirely of analysing and a deep understanding of the human mind, and ever challenging in an intellectual sense - has recently taken to getting quite restless when there are long periods where he isn’t challenging himself in some way.

While he was always willing to cheer on friends, he never had that much interest in Quidditch, playing or otherwise, a trait he certainly didn’t hear the end of from some of his friends. He hates politics and while he was trained as a previously valued member of the ever-poltically concerned Minitsry of Magic with the expected etiquette, formalities, and nuances of diplomacy, he has no desire to be part of this particularly unattractive side of such a world. Ilya is a man who would much prefer to stick to what he knows best over the political, social nicities; to staring at the evidence left behind by the Wizarding World's most infamous and perplexing criminals and analysing the minds of said perpetrators under his own empathic microscope. Thus, at this point, if taunted by some arrogant member of high society, he’s perfectly happy to be as garish and indirectly rude as possible. In his eyes, he doesn’t think his social standing has much lower to plummet as it is. If he never has to do that disingenuous social dance again, it will be too soon.

When things get "interesting" Ilya is the "Run To The Roar" personality type, opting to charge toward a threat rather than to run from it. When encountering a dangerous situation people typically have three reactions. The first is that they will freeze and do nothing, allowing themselves to be hurt. The second is that they may run which is sensible in a good portion of cases and a good instinct to follow for self-preservation. Finally, there is the reaction to fight the threat. Ilya's main reaction is to fight or more precisely to face the threat with a false sense of bravery - fueled, not by courage, but instead, purely by morbid curiosity and a dangerously skewed sense of his own mortality; a great fascination with danger and self-destruction. This could be considered foolish upon first examination "you don't charge head on towards a dragon."  This often works, surprisingly, in Ilya's favor - despite his true lack of impulse control and strategy; his tendency to operate instinctively on feeling, rather than following his howling rational mind - as most monsters and danger's many other forms are natural predators, set off-kilter by their prey's lack of instinct for self-preservation.

   Early Years: As a child, young Ilya always thought he had been part of a happy family. Two muggles and a single, dark haired and bright eyed boy shared a small (small in the way that a cottage is quaint and cozy - not small as in an ill-fitting and claustrophobic space) two bedroom cabin not too far from the coast of Oka river opposite to Kasimov, Russia;   the picture of a happy little family by all appearances. A chipped, peeling and partially bearded garden gnome stood askew watch over a mangled плакунƀ garden and an array of Ilya's childhood toys. *Inside, the scent of an accidental blend of a particularly familiar brand of laundry detergent and fabric softener, cast into the outside air about the house in great clouds of the milky white aroma that Ilya would later come to associate with home - though, this place would not be his home for long; young Ilya would lay his head in a juvenile bedroom in the rural Russian town for seven years before a catalyst event set in motion his move to the United States of America.

His parents didn't fight, they didn't turn to vices, and they didn't take their stress out on him. He didn't exactly know what other families looked like, because even back then he enjoyed keeping to himself, engaging in games best played alone, but he felt secure in the knowledge that his parents weren't ever going to leave. In reality the quiet rooms of the Kasimov home were evidence of a very different kind of separation - their lack of arguments, a symptom. There was distance between his parents in which there was no heat, no affection, and no tenderness. There was no passion and no love; only a home inhabited by two very different people. Neither was intentionally using the other. When they'd gotten married, it had been because they thought they were meant to be. Comfort was mistaken for caring, and as they lived their two separate lives in the same home, Ilya's father discovered that maybe there was more to life than just being comfortable. Swept up in an uncharacteristic moment of impulse, the only male figure Ilya really trusted - disappeared. There had been more quiet talks with his wife about leaving of course, and things that their son had not been privy to, but when it was suddenly just the two of them, Ilya received no explanation. His father was gone, and his mother wasn't crying. The young boy did not know it yet, but this moment would act the spark of something darker; an excess of emotion to compensate for the lack of it in his childhood home, an unwelcome and uncontainable ability to take on the strongest (and, sometimes, most destructive) feelings of others by means of pure empathy (another compensation; he had blamed himself for not having "seen it", for not having felt the coming storm that was his father's leaving; an involuntary evolution of sorts, to protect himself from being blindsided by the emotions of others ever again - albeit a cruel curse) and an inability to truly trust anyone without their greatest efforts to tear down his mountainous wall.

Skewed views on love and relationships were not improved when his Grandfather, the man he had been named for, stepped in to fill the paternal role. Soon every summer and winter holiday were spent with his extended family in Moscow, where English was abandoned and strict rules were enforced. It was then that Ilya began to notice a trend that he could never quite seem to shake: "always the new kid at school, always excluded". Ilya absolutely despised the lack of freedom he experienced in his Grandfather's home, but he was just a child and had no choice in the matter. He missed the smell of home; the mist on the Oka River in the morning; the family portraits hanging, uneven on the walls of the sitting room; the sickly pale blue of his own bedroom walls; the плакунƀ and the garden gnome. Little did he know, he would not know this home again hereafter; only in his memories, and later, in adulthood would he be allowed to return to the little Kasimov cabin haunted by his father's "ghost".

Magic first presented in Ilya when he was nine years old. There had probably been earlier instances, he later decided, but this was the first time anyone really noticed that something might be wrong with him - aside from what was labelled in his early childhood as "oversensitive". Ilya had already begun developing his extraordinary passion, something his Grandfather was constantly trying to stamp out of him, but it had always been a minor and brief inconvenience until one day, the young boy got into an argument with one of his older cousins. In all fairness, she really shouldn't have called him the things she did. She shouldn't have brought up how "emotional" the boy was, or how sleepy his eyes looked, but she really crossed the line when she started jeering that his mother was a cold fish and that's why his father left. At nine, Ilya wasn't really sure what she was talking about but he knew his mother wasn't a fish, and the way his other cousins were guffawing made it sound like she'd said something very bad. Angry tears streamed down his chubby face and deep red sparks flew from his slender fists as he slammed one right into her pig-nosed face. In seconds the cousins were fleeing, shrieking every step of the way as they ran to the adults to tell them Ilya had put some sort of firework in his hand before punching dear Yseult for no reason whatsoever.

Young Ilya was more than a little frightened of himself  for his "badness", wondering still if he was "messed up", or would grow up to be a "villain" and, worse still, he thought he would be grounded for the rest of his life, even though the lack of fireworks on his person was a little disconcerting to the adults. He was just happy that for a full two years, the visits to Moscow all but stopped. But in this time, they never once had returned home; his mother, opting instead to rent them a cloustraphobic hotel room in Kasimov, just ten miles from their old home, that had begun as "only temporary" and proceeded on to something more closely resembling permanence to the young wizard. It wasn't as though he could use that time to socialise or go on summer adventures with friends, though. He was afraid of his overwelming emotions and he was afraid of the sparks coming back, and playing alone was easier anyways -- so that's exactly what he did right up until his entire world shifted, and without a single explanation, he was uprooted and moved to a country that was entirely, and alltogether different from anything that Ilya had ever known. Ilya Ivanriel was to become an American child.

On his eleventh birthday - which to him felt not like the joy he had once associated with birthdays (being so, painfully close in time to their initial move; immediately following "settling in", but nowhere near the beginning of "comfortable") but rather like mourning,  homesick, and bitterness - the representative from Ivermony showed up at the door of their new American household with an elegant, wax-sealed letter. He was a good sort of freak -- a normal sort of freak. He was a wizard.

   Hogwarts Years:The young boy took to magic well, applying himself in his courses to get excellent marks. He might even have been a Horned Serpent or Pukwudgie, if he had been just a little bit less volatile, but he wasn't sure he would have fit in with them anymore than he fit in with his fellow Thunderbirds. His accent and his quickly earned reputation for outbursts of fierce emotion reached the ears of his classmates and alienated him from any potential social life almost immediately. That suited him just fine. He could watch and listen, and go ignored by his housemates as he learned what made them tick. He had grown to prefer solitude; being on his own implied an ability to avoid becoming inflicted by others' less desirable emotions.

Ilya's own existence was quiet. He didn't get involved in clubs or attend social gatherings. His passions were Martial and Healing Magic, and for a few years he even excelled at it, becoming a reputable dueler and a source of tutoring for his peers (and eventually as he slowly grew into confidence, peer counselling). That was the first time it really felt like people respected him, and even the most elite of his peers may have begun to reluctantly admit that somehow, the muggleborn was an alright wizard. Whatever little praise or attention came Ivanriel's way on occasion, he was still content to keep to himself and the small band of mates he was steadily, though unintentionally accruing. He learned to look forward to meals and group projects, and even the holidays when he was invited to stay with friends and their families. He started noticing how handsome the boys in his year were becoming too, and even entertained the idea of asking a few out, but ultimately never thought he (himself) was worth the trouble. Not until he started seeing more and more of a wonderful young gentleman in the year below him named Paris.

Paris was a Horned Serpent, and he was fiercely intelligent, ruled by thought (in stead of heart) and coldly calculating in all the ways Ilya wasn't, but intellectually wished he could be, and for the first time Ilya found himself pursuing friendship instead of just allowing others in. He never did work up the nerve to ask him out -- but thankfully, Paris took care of that for him. Or at least, he sort of did when he yanked him into a powerful kiss under the moonlight thrown across school grounds and Ilya stammered out something along the lines of "WE SHOULD...SOMETIME...GO OUT. FOR FUN ALONE," in a what he hoped was a charming fashion. The pair of them dated during his last two years at Ivermony, until it came time to leave, and Paris realised that maybe dating an older guy wasn't as logical as he had once convinced himself it to be. He would spend his seventh year all on his own with a boyfriend who was busy getting into his work as an Auror. Ilya couldn't even come to the Yule ball since he had graduated and was supposed to be moving on to Brittian to join the Ministry of Magic as an profiler in training, and onward with his life.

Paris wasn't the only person to unfeelingly sever ties with Ilya when he left Hogwarts, but he was certainly the most abrupt about it. Ilya was shattered. Wreaked. Heartbroken. He was drowning in the depths of emotion, passion, and one in particular that he simply. could. not shake: despair. The young man threw himself into his work, devoting all of his time and energy into tracking down dark wizards and protecting those who needed protection. Friendships had always been hard to come by, and it seemed that as an adult, it was even more difficult. People didn't have the time or patience or inclination to work their way beneath Ilya's shell. He seemed to all too strange, too broken, and too overcome by the very worst of emotion. He was not pursued, and the last time he had stuck his neck out to bring someone in, he'd been dumped via owl in the most humiliating way possible. So Ilya kept to himself, confident that as long as he had his work, he would be content.

   After Hogwarts: During his years as an Auror, Ilya saw many horrific things too terrible to recount. He had plenty of close calls and earned himself more than one scar. He even had a few unfortunate encounters with poison, but none of it was enough to take him out of the field. Not until a band of dark wizards got the upper-hand on him and his team, but they'd really had no way of knowing that one particular dark wizard had an illegal pet Chimaera that really wasn't fond of Aurors. The cavalry didn't come until Ilya was stunned on the ground, bleeding profusely from a mangled leg and too many slashes to the torso. They didn't even notice he was still among the living until he started choking on bile, and a very quick thinker decided maybe it was best if they took him straight to Mungo's instead of the coroner.

They saved the leg, but it was never the same again, and neither was Ilya. He had killed a man in his desperation to escape with is life; to fight to freedome. It had felt like instinct; like self defense, but the tabloids of the Wizarding World had gotton a hold of his story (case) - and had chewed him up and spit him out. It didn't take much more of this to plant the seeds of doubt; within his superiors at the Ministry, and himself. He found himself questioning everything about himself - as well as why it had felt so good to kill someoneso very bad. It had corrupted him. It had wound his interoer workings with veins of black, bitter darkness. He was beginning to doubt [/i]everything[/i] that he had ever known to be true about himself.  

Unable to work, he began life as a recluse, only leaving his little cottage many miles out from things like neighbors or community for the bare necessities -- (pet)food, books, the local newspaper and cigarettes -- and to stop in at the local pub to refresh himself. For a long time Ilya lived just like that; the spiteful neighbourhood speck of darkness who walked around with sorrow, fear and anger boiling in his eyes. That didn't change until one spring, when the sun was finally breaking through the layers of ice, he came across a kitten shivering beneath a parked car, mewling for its mother. At first Ilya only became invested because he wanted assess its state of wellfare, but seeings its damp, dirty little face made the entirely alone, and unhappy man feel vulnerable again. Dropping to his stomach and crawling beneath the car, Ilya scooped it up in one hand and inched his way out, telling himself he didn't mind the damp and the cold or the wet on his jacket. It had been due for a wash.

Ilya didn't bother pinning up fliers of the kitten to see if it belonged to anyone. If little Winston had had an owner, it served them right for losing him - well, and he didn't own a printer he had rationalised to Winston. Having someone to wake up to every morning certainly changed Ilya's routines, even if the only one to see the real, wholeheartedly compassionate him was his new kitten. Two mouths to feed was slightly more complicated than one, but it was enough to make the ex-Auror start to brood over his life, and the ways in which he might change it. Coincidentally, an owl arrived not long after -- one letting him know of the vacancy at Hogwarts and insisting that he was perfect for the job. Being a glorified janitor was more than a few steps below the flash and glamour of being an Auror - but that had never once appealed to him anyway, and just a few months prior Ilya never even would have considered the change. But as he continued to brood and ponder, he realised that the last time he had really felt happy had been at Ivormony - and that perhaps, in helping others, in caring for the young ones, he may find something that resembled contentment again.

Winston needed some other animal friends, anyway.

Note: I am hoping that, in having written the pending suspension from the Ministry rather open-ended that I have left Ilya open to the possibility of the Ministry accepting him back after deciding him incapable of being charged with anything. I think it would be both good & bad for him to return to the field - and it would certainly provide a more dynamic character in his inner conflict. Perhaps Ilya is to meet a dark wizard that he empathises / gets so inside the head of that he finds himself so connected that he begins to lose himself in the criminal's mindset - and maybe even form a strong enough bond to be swayed by his understanding of them to go dark side himself.

   

Personal Information

Nickname/s: Those with whom Illya are particularly close have his permission to refer to him by a nickname born of love, empathy, & familiarity, & invented by his dearest family: Vali.

Gender: Demigender

Sexuality: Homosexual

Social Status: Middle Class by Making, Lower Class by Inheritance

Economic Status:

Magical Information

Wand:  Black Walnut, Fwooper feather, 10", "Nice and supple!"

Less common than the standard walnut wand, that of black walnut seeks a master of good instincts and powerful insight. Black walnut is a very handsome wood, but not the easiest to master. It has one pronounced quirk, which is that it is abnormally attuned to inner conflict, and loses power dramatically if its possessor practises any form of self-deception. If the witch or wizard is unable or unwilling to be honest with themselves or others, the wand often fails to perform adequately and must be matched with a new owner if it is to regain its former prowess. Paired with a sincere, self-aware owner, however, it becomes one of the most loyal and impressive wands of all, with a particular flair in all kinds of charmwork. — J. K. Rowling on Black Walnut

Fwooper feather wands are said to be a mark of ill omen for the wizards they bond to, as, like the birds they come from, they are rumored to slowly drive their wielder mad. Despite their poor reputation, they do well with Charms and Care of Magical Creatures. However, they have a near-inability to castQuietus. They are commonly combined with another feather core, such as the phoenix for health or the hippogriff for stability — source [fanlore]

Patronus: Fallow Deer

Amormentia: Home*, Petrol & Francensense

Favourite kind of magic: Healing & Martial Magic

Least favourite kind of magic: Apparation & Occlumency

Cultural Information

Nationality: Russian - American

Languages: Russian, English, Latin

Religious views: A deeply spiritual, open minded individual; though he himself partakes in no particular religious practises or system of faith, Illya is a man capable of believing in anything, with all hid being, and absolutely if that belief can elicit powerful feelings of truth within him; a man known to disregard all evidence of the contrary for the sake of a compelling argument from feeling. Though a practical and calculating man, Ilya is a believer in souls, intuition, and heart.

Political views: Ilya thinks of the political realm as unbearable, tedious and "all too revealing of an individual's moral standings" and thus avoids taking any part in it.

Ethics, Values, Social Mores: Ilya's ability to empathise entirely has created a sort of skewed morality; an ability to be swayed by utter understanding & empathy to believe sincerely in most anything; to see even the darkest & foulest of deeds as justified or righteous if seen as such by the author of these evilest of things.

Favourite entertainments, hobbies, pastimes: Solitude, poetry (literature), music, others' paintings and any other works of art or expressions of the throws of passionate emotion found only in the deepest recesses of one's soul.

Pets: An entourage of rescues & strays of all breed & species (and yet, a particular weakness to Canis Lupus Familiaris in need of saving.)

Currently

Fears:

Secrets: A darkness is brewing within Ivanriel. A becoming. An empathy with evil.

Desires: To be whole. To no longer feel a manifestation of others - but for himself.
             

Out of Character

I'm Harry's half-sister, Dumbledore's daughter, Voldemort's niece, Sirius' cousin, Snape's daughter and Lupin's great grandmother...

 

   What should we call you: Sansa

   RP Experience: 5+ years

   How you found us: word of mouth

   Main Character: Ilya Ivanriel
   
 

---