[b]Name:[/b] David Howell
[b]Age:[/b] 27 (born 1972)
[b]Gender:[/b] Male
[b]Nationality:[/b] British

[b]Blood Purity:[/b] Muggle-Born

[b]Marked?[/b] Beyond being on the Muggle-born register, no.

[b]Appearance:[/b] [hider=Click][img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A-WxSR0X4Iw/UgKir-KqVpI/AAAAAAAAHGI/NK8AqK-2peg/s1600/C&C5.jpg[/img][/hider]

[b]Personality:[/b] David comes across as chirpy and cheerful even in the face of adversity. He has a great sense of humour (and a particularly dark one) and is more than happy to take a joke himself: he’s used to it, having been the obvious butt of jokes for most of his wizarding career. Because of this, he is fairly likeable, if not especially impressive.

While he projects an image of self-confidence and bravery, this is bravado. Underneath he is a disquiet man with many insecurities, not least about his own shortcomings as a wizard and his status as a second-class citizen. For all his happy-go-lucky projection, he is hugely bitter on the inside, about being constantly passed over or considered unworthy, confused by the fact he knows he considers himself unworthy as well. This bitterness manifests itself in an unexpected cruel streak every so often.

Because of his treatment by the Order, he is very untrusting, and, in turn, naturally deceptive. He does not tend to confide in anybody, even in the other members of the Ashes, even though he is often forced to rely on them because of his own magical incompetence. Despite this, he is not gushing with intellect or strength of character, and so he can be quite easily bullied into things, and, because he relies on his not-always-reliable instinct rather than actually thinking critically, tends to be easily manipulated, too.

[b]Weaknesses:[/b]
[list][*] Magic(!): Despite being an indisputable wizard, David grew up in the muggle-world, never had any great aptitude for magic while at Hogwarts, and fled the school before completing even his OWLs. Inevitably, he is really not the world’s best wizard, and tends to avoid actually using magic. He is capable of most basic Charms and has been taught a decent selection of Hexes and defensive spells by the Ashes, but it’s best not to rely on him for anything magical.[/*]

[*] Apparition: Never even got the chance to take his test, and so has never learned. As a result, he relies on other members of the Ashes to apparate with him or create a portkey for him just to get around.[/*][/list]

[b]Strengths:[/b]
[list][*] Seer: Despite divination typically being considered a load of hooey, David is a seer. He tends not to make formal prophecies and he cannot force himself to see something. Instead, he will ‘see’ events as they unfold, rather than knowing precisely what will happen, and subconsciously informs his good instincts - which manifests as being quite lucky in day-to-day life.[/*]

[*] Dark Arts: Because David’s spells typically tend to lack any real oomph, he has been secretly seeking ways to level the playing field. One of these pursuits is the Dark Arts, which feel more holistic and intuitive to him, rather than the intricate nature of ‘normal’ magic. While he’s hardly at Voldemort’s level, he is making some decent progress and is already capable of some rather nasty bits of magic.[/*]

[*] “Bluff Magic”: On paper, David should never win a duel. His magic is frailer and less consistent than most wizards. Instead, he basically cheats. Instead of really actually thinking about what he’s doing and duelling ‘properly’, David just shoots whatever the hell he can create at a target and hopes for the best. This is normally a healthy mix of harmless sparks, random Charms, and legitimate hexes. Because they’re all half-formed and random, he can launch an absurd amount of individual spells with decent accuracy at a given target. The target is typically forced onto the defensive, because any one of those spells could be the end of the duel if they hit. While David has never actually won a fair duel in this way, he has also managed to force those one-on-ones he has been in into a stalemate.[/*][/list]

[b]Wand:[/b] 8¼”, maple, coral core, pliable

[b]Bio:[/b] David is a complete immigrant into the wizarding world. He and his parents (who owned a small restaurant in Durham) were all completely shocked to receive his letter of admission to Hogwarts, though they later agreed that they had always known that David was in some way ‘special’. He had always been incredibly lucky, almost uncannily so: his mother had even begun to buy lottery tickets on his advice, and, almost every week, they would win a small but respectable sum. The child also had a knack for knowing things he had no real way of knowing.

The fact that David was not just a wizard but a seer to boot was only revealed in his third year, when he took Divination as a subject, and his natural gift was given space to breathe. It’s just as well he at least had Divination (as not-proper a subject as it was considered) because he was a walking disaster area wherever a wand and actual spellcasting were concerned. Non-directly magical subjects such as Portions and Herbology were fine: Charms, DatDA and Transfiguration were only just passable.

In his fifth year, David made the decision to leave Hogwarts. The increased pressure and danger for muggle borns, even within its walls, had become too much for him, and so he fled. It was not, however, even particularly safe for him to return to the muggle world, as his identity as a muggle-born was known to students and so he was taken into the custody of the Order of the Phoenix (while in no way permitted to participate, being both underage and under-competent), presumably partly to prevent his ‘instinct’ being captured by the enemy.

Growing resentful of the Order’s treatment of him, David eventually joined the Ashes when they splintered off from the Order with whom he has remained to this day.

[b]Other:[/b] Ravenclaw