Aksel Nylund | 22 | Unaffiliated Wizard
Both of Aksel's parents were Wizards, but his grandparents on his mother's side were Muggles. The Nylund Family was Pureblooded by accident, focused primarily on marrying for love at it's start, but eventually it became wrapped up in the blood supremacy propaganda like many others. It fractured a majority of the Family into three groups; the Supremacists, the Muggle-Lovers, and the Independents. The Family was quite large at the time, stretching across northern Europe and into the East, but the war with Grindelwald put blood against blood and nearly ended with the Muggle-Lovers' demise. At the very end of the war a majority of the Supremacists side of the Family were captured and put behind bars. The surviving Muggle-Lovers' pushed for the death sentence, but were overruled by the Independents who'd decided to not interfere in the war at all. When the war was over, the Independents had a change in leadership, and turned on the rest of the family, now significantly smaller, and tried to have them all assassinated. Unfortunately, the powerful and old Lord Petros of the Muggle-Lovers faction escaped and had vengeance. By the time the man died of old age only a single line remained of the Nylund Family, two Independents who raised their sons to be just as neutral. Their oldest, Oliver, fell in line without fuss, until he met a Muggleborn girl in Stockholm, her name was Mary, and he fell in love with her. Their youngest, Liam, rebelled from the start, going off to Hogwarts rather than Durmstrang as his parents wanted. Later, after having his first son, Oliver fell ill with dragon-pox, leaving Mary to raise their son with his brother.
This left Aksel to be raised by his mother and the occasional support of his flighty uncle. Aksel grew up with an appreciation for the fun things in life, as well as a healthy respect for the persecuted, repressed, victimized, bullied, and underprivileged. His uncle was considered a Blood-Traitor by Purebloods, a trouble maker and scoundrel by society. His mother was called a line-thief, marrying into a powerful Pureblood family and claiming the treasures for her own when her husband died, to the Wizarding World she was jobless, doing nothing but staying at home while House-Elves raised her stolen child. In reality she owned a bakery in Odense, a short ways from the Nylund Family Estate in Nyburg, and raised her son on her own, only using House-Elves for menial things or maintaining other properties.
Aksel attended a specialized Muggle private school, learning basic maths, Danish, physical education and a number of other things- such as the violin. When he first heard the instrument, he enjoyed the sounds it made, but did not particularly care enough to learn to play himself. However, when he had to select a study in music, he chose the violin. He was a natural, taking to string instruments quickly but the violin was his favourite. For his art selection he chose to paint, and while he was no Michelangelo, what child would be?, he learned quickly and loved how his mother and the Elves would ooh and ahh over his works. He made few friends, mostly because he was shy, but a particularly tomish girl would always share her drawings with him. Her name was Anise, and her mother was insistent on enrolling her into health and sex education classes, mostly because she thought her daughter would turn out to be transgender and wanted her to be aware of what that was before she hit puberty. Anise convinced Aksel to join her for his classes, and while at first scandalized, his mother eventually agreed to allow it. Before he could get properly entrenched in the more advanced classes, such as metal working and English, he received his letter of acceptance to Durmstrang.
Bidding his Muggle friends good bye, Aksel took his education with him into the dark and oppressive halls of Durmstrang. He was shy still, keeping his opinions to himself, but his talent and excellent scores drew attention to him. when he joined the Quidditch teams as a chaser, he became even more popular. He particularly excelled in Transfiguration and Charms. Durmstrang encouraged talent where they saw it, so it was a no brainer to pair the to best students with each other in work. The Transfiguration teacher was a kindly woman, and she quite happily paired the unobtrusive and polite Aksel with Tyra Edsen, an overly harassed metamorphmagus. In Charms, the less kind Professor originally paired him with whomever, but when Aksel defended a dubbed "Muggle-Lover" from the Professor, he started pairing Aksel with Rhyan Oslend, the student who did the worst in Charms. However, Rhyan was excellent at Potions, and managed to explain and simplify it in a way that Aksel could understand and even get excited about. Meeting Lora Jorks and Juno Riggo as his fellow chasers, Aksel found himself comfortably surrounded by friends. He was even well-liked by most of the students who weren't in his immediate circle.
In their last year, Tyra confessed she was interested in women, which the group already knew. Stemming from this conversation came a decision to eliminate discrimination in Durmstrang. None of them actually believed it would work, but they tried nontheless, forming a group called the Coalition Against Durmstrang Discrimination. The group was not aimed directly at protecting sexualities, or other commonly debated things of the Muggle World, but at the tolerance and acceptance of Muggleborns. Of course, if the article they insisted be ratified, written by themselves, happened to have hidden clauses protecting everything from lesbians to muslims to vampires to goblins, then that was just a coincidence. Not many people took the group seriously, not even when Aksel convinced three separate Quidditch teams to join, or when Lady Nylund through her support behind it, but when a fight broke out on the school grounds over a debate on Muggle blood vs Pureblood blood, people began to take sides. Unfortunately, while remnants of the movement are remembered and scattered throughout the school and former students' homes, it was largely swept under the rug when Aksel and his friends graduated.
The end of their last term dominated their attention as they tested for their final final exams, and then afterwards they began working towards Masteries and their own careers. Aksel was still working on his own research after receiving Masteries in both Transfiguration and Charms when Tyra came to him, seeking to get away from the constant nagging that came with being a metamorphmagus. After intense discussion and theorizing, Tyra and Aksel began looking for answers in the magic of her blood. It was slow work, but the things Aksel found and talked about in his notebook would cause Transfiguration enthusiasts the world over to sell their souls for a glimpse.
It was during his studies that his old friend, Rhyan who moved to England, became infected with vampirism. Smuggling him free, Aksel and Tyra hid him away and erased all trace of him ever touching English soil and fabricated records of him having lived in Denmark with them. Thus, unless they looked closely, no one would be able to tell he was a vampire. They told him what they were working on, and soon he was helping them, putting his Mastery in Potions to work. They discovered a lot about how Potions effected the blood, but they soon turned their attention to Rhyan's problem, starting a study on what vampirism did to the blood too. By this point, Aksel had neither a cure for a metamorphmagus, or a way to become one, but he was reasonably sure he could make a charm or potion that would mimic the effects for a time. Using this they smuggled Rhyan into a country that wasn't quite so strict; Russia.
Using his blood they began researching a cure for vampirism on the side.
Then he was visited by a Witch from TOE, and he was skeptical at first, more interested in continuing his work and helping his friends than joining some weird organization, but he did not tell her no. The Sevens figured he would say yes, given his past in the group called the Coalition Against Durmstrang Discrimination, and with his Masteries, connections, and rumored research, he was too valuable to leave alone, taking him and imprisoning him illegally. Luckily, Tyra escaped with the research and went into hiding, denying the Sevens that boon.
[Patronus Memory]:
Aksel was getting frustrated now, and people were starting to notice. He'd never been so great at Defense Against the Dark Arts, but this was ridiculous! Two weeks after the first lesson and he still hadn't gotten the spell right! A good memory, they said! Only your happiest would do, they said! Some of his friends kept giving him looks, sad and curious like they were wondering if he'd ever been happy at all. Aksel never left any spell unlearned, sometimes it'd take him a day or so, but this! Two weeks at it and he still couldn't make it into any kind of shape! Why didn't any of his happy memories work?!
First he'd tried his first glimpse of Durmstrang, which prompted a bit of a mist, but nothing else. He was actually the first to get anything at all, but after that there was no improvement. Muggle friend Anise? Mist. Quidditch? Mist. Friends? Mist. Mother? Mist. Uncle, House-Elf, First Spell, First Class, First Pet, Father, Grandparents, Gold, Goblins, Owls, Mail, Quils, Ink! All mist! You could see the point where he stopped trying and just started thinking of things in the room with him.
But suddenly, while practicing the spell over the lake close to his room, he knew the memory to use. He was having lunch, halfway between words when a letter landed in his lap. He absently directed the owl to take whatever it wanted from his plate and opened the envelope. It was from a Muggle university teacher, he wasn't sure how they'd gotten the letter to him, but he recognized the name. It was his old violin instructor. She wanted to meet again so she could see how he'd progressed. Aksel had been playing the violin less and less recently, too focused on school and magic, but he still enjoyed it. Rhyan snatched the letter after he'd finished reading it. Once he knew, everyone knew, thus led to the night Aksel and his violin were dragged from their room and thrust out to perform for a large group of interested students. Once he'd started, the smile wouldn't come off his face. Aksel loved his violin and the merry little party that broke out into song at his tune was the single happiest moment of his life.
Aksel dredged this memory up now, lips curling into a small just at remembering. "Expecto patronum!" He commanded happily, he imagined he heard birdsong then, but he knew the light apparitions didn't make their own sound. It was a bird though, and the sight of the little ball of fluff zipping around was enough to bring laughter from him.
