Alexander Edgecombe
Nickname(s): Alec, Alex, never Xander.
Age + Birthday: 35 // October 30th
Appearance: On the taller side of average height, pointy features, stubbly jaw, grey-streaked hair. Athletic build kept toned by running and the occasional game of Quidditch with friends. Long, piano playing fingers never put to good use. A kind smile and brown, puppy-dog eyes.
Hogwarts House: Former-Ravenclaw
Facts Known About Character:
- Alec didn't join Hogwarts until late 1998, almost a year after he should have. This was owing to the war and the fact that the Edgecombes largely went underground for its duration. They stayed in a cottage in Muggle Cornwall overlooking the sea. Desperate to join the fight, eleven-year-old Alec didn't find the cottage very diverting.
- He is a steady, reliable brewer of Potions. He certainly was not the most naturally talented of wizards at the art but has made up for it by hard graft over the years.
- Unrepentant bachelor. Dating in the late 2010s didn't go well for him so he dispensed with the practice and got a dog, instead. Much better than a partner and kids.
- Not the best flier in the world - known to fall off, at height.
- Always there for a friend. So much so that he was the birthing partner to one of his friends a few years ago. Incident rather than design, that episode. He's the godfather. It's a thing. See, no need for kids!
- He is not on the best of terms with his sister. Being the brother of the girl who betrayed Dumbledore's Army won him absolutely no favours with the other children when he joined Hogwarts and teenage vanity and an eagerness to fit in made him distance himself from Marietta. It's not been a bond that they have ever repaired. They do send each other Christmas cards each year, though. So that's something.
- Alec feels the cold quite keenly and has done ever since he was clipped by a stray Glacius charm in third year. Even in summer, Alec is quite often seen with his old, faded Ravenclaw scarf wrapped around his neck. He's a man for layers. He bloody loves a bed-sock.
- Burns in the sun like a new-born babe. Enter copious amounts of suncream. Thanks.
- Has worn the same outer robe - patched in places - for probably the last decade. His gran bought it for him, he loves it.
- Would love to keep bees.
- Did quite a lot of travelling in his twenties.
- 100% was not bitten by a dragon in Romania. He still has the scars. He hides them. The whole thing was embarrassing. Let's not talk about it.
Rumors Known About Character:
- Questionable loyalties during the Wizarding War. Did the Edgecombes help the Death Eaters? If so, did they do so only under duress or did they want to?
- Is he actually Mrs Edgecombe's son?
- Undoubtedly brews for the potions black market but no one has been able to prove it just yet. It's an assumption based on the fact that lots of dodgy people used to frequent his shop.
- Possibly now runs a post-order version of this out of his room in Hogwarts. Maybe. Either way, the owls are busy and these letters are normally for him.
- Was he or was he not behind the performance enhancing potions used by Puddlemere United four seasons ago?
- He's an unregistered animagus and the dog is actually him -- now, this one isn't true but he's working on it, alright?
- He has been seen with former-Death Eaters and known dark magic practitioners in the past. Is something else afoot or is this part of the potions business?
Biography:Alexander is the estranged 'baby' brother of Marietta Edgecombe and, undoubtedly, the surprise child. The Edgecombes had been content with one child and Alexander was entirely unplanned. He suspected as a child that he had actually come through the Floo and that they had just decided to keep him as he did not look very much like either of his parents or Marietta when he was younger. It has only been since he's started to mature that he sees the resemblance between himself and his father. He never really bonded all that well with his mother but they have had a cordial relationship throughout his life. She was never openly hostile but he couldn't help but notice how she gave Marietta a little bit more affection than him.
During the Second Wizarding War, the Edgecombes retreated to the Muggle world to hide from the Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort. Suddenly, Alexander went from living in a big house in London, paid for by his parents' job in the Ministry, to sharing a room with his sister in a two-bed cottage in the depths of Cornwall. People came and went from the cottage but Alexander didn't pay much mind to them, too caught up in the angst that was brought on by the realisation that he would not be going to Hogwarts in the autumn of 1997. He had never been a content reader but during that year he consumed as many of his sister's old school books as possible, determined not to be behind once he did get to go to the school. And certainly, he got his wish. The war ended in May, 1998 and he was on the Hogwarts Express that coming September.
School was an odd experience for Alec. He was not immediately popular due to the Edgecombe's wobbly post-war reputation and his sister's sorry legacy of betraying Dumbledore's army. It took until the spring of his first year for him to make any friends but then after that he settled in fine. He didn't excel in any particular area until really his third year when he displayed a talent for Defence Against the Dark Arts and an ability in Potions that only needed to be honed. During the course of his schooling, Alec became a decent dueller in his own right and is difficult to beat, if nothing else. He also began to hone that skill in Potions that was spotted by his professors and as he neared the end of his schooling, began to look for apprenticeship opportunities.
Alexander apprenticed under a Potions Master for around a decade after he left school, interspersing those years with travel and unsuccessful dating. He got closest to marriage once when he bought an engagement ring and she stood him up at dinner. When he returned home to the flat they shared in Camden, she'd left a note explaining she had fallen in love with her colleague at the Ministry and was leaving him. Alexander quit the job he had there brewing for the Auror department soon after and opened his own shop, partly under the sponsorship of his tutor. Anything to avoid running into her.
During the "shop years", Alec gained a reputation for being up to no good. People came and went all hours looking for potions and it didn't go unnoticed by the Ministry or the Daily Prophet. He was widely speculated to be the one behind the performance enhancing potions scandal that wracked Puddlemere United but, even after long questioning by Ministry officials, it couldn't be proved. The shop, it seemed, just attracted the wrong sort and his tendency to keep the company of former and practicing dark wizards made people begin to question just which side Alec, and the Edgecombes by extension, were really actually on.
His decision to move back to Hogwarts and teach the Potions class there was partly fuelled by this scrutiny and he wanted to get out from under the watchful eye of the Ministry. He isn't entirely sure how far he's gotten away with it yet. Probably not even close. He knows they know that he knows they're watching.
Playby: Dave Annable
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