FULL NAME: Gideon Manolo Ofelia Rowe
NICKNAMES: Deon, usually. Hearing his full name pronounced correctly still involves one of those brief, disassociative moments where he looks genuinely stymied about his own existence. (Look - his Abuelita is completely incapable of saying Gideon the right way. It's Gih-dee-ohn or bust, my dudes. Deon's just easier for everyone involved.)
AGE/DOB: 15 | May 5^th
YEAR: Sophomore
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Male | he/him/his
SEXUALITY: ¿¿??

HOMETOWN: Born in the Bronx, New York. Grew up mostly in San Antonio, Texas. Currently living in Orlando, Florida. (Where there's a zoo, there's his mom.)

APPEARANCE:
Gideon Rowe is an angular motherfucker. His nose is sharp, his chin in sharp, his elbows are also awfully sharp when they happen to end up shoved into someone else's ribs. He's average-sized, by most measures. But - other than his uncle, who is a freakishly tall Ent of a human - he's the tallest person in his family by far. So he thinks he's doing okay.

His fashion sense isn't anything to write home about - he likes color and patterns, but isn't coordinated enough about the whole thing to make any impression with them other than 'yup, this kid dressed himself in the morning.' Though he's usually sporting an impressive array of bruises and scrapes from tripping over himself. He also keeps the fingers on his left hand polished. Because, look, if it's going to hang around there being useless, it might as well be pretty.

He doesn't have a thick accent, but he does have one. It's a bit muddied - vaguely southern, vaguely Puerto Rican - but it softens out his words just a bit at the edges.

Gideon Rowe is a particularly deft code-switcher. When around adults, he's polite and well-spoken. He remembers your children's names and that your cat had to go to the vet last week (How'd that go, by the way?) and he'd sooner die than use off-color language. He converses in rapid-fire Spanish to his Abuelita's friends and keeps up on the plotlines of their novelas.

Put him in front of an audience and he performs. He's effusive and dramatic. (Ignore the fact that he walks off again shaking like a leaf and feeling like he may or may not have returned from a very localized, personal war.) An introverted actor, he pipes up with quick anecdotes in group conversations and plays at it like he's a seasoned comedian.

If he was an electronic device, however, it'd be real easy to see the social battery-drain that occurs after too long of this sort of performance. He's good at it because it's what's polite. Because it makes people happy. But Gideon definitely requires some plug-into-the-wall time. Please. Just put him on a shelf and leave him there for a bit, okay?

In what might be a somewhat ironic move, the better he knows someone, the more contained he is. Or maybe not contained. Contained isn't the right word. He speaks fast - his family's Hispanic, fast is just how you speak - but he's far less on. It isn't a 'put up the houselights, will you?/ay, bendito/before I forget - how's your grandson, Mrs. G?' art piece of what's expected. His opinions are a bit more dry, he's a bit less polished, he's fussy and he likes to complain and he maybe wants to be dramatic about it, but not because he wants anyone to look. It's just because he likes being dramatic.

His Abuelita learned the English language through what she describes as a combination of romantic poetry, altering costumes backstage during musicals, and Dateline. This is the woman that raised him. (Not to imply that his mother wasn't a large part of the process. She was. It's just that she was also working full-time and sometimes she wasn't home to watch Dateline with them.) It's bred a strange combination of romanticism and caution. Your lips are like a red, red rose - and your blood all over the good upholstery will be too, if you keep leaving your window unlocked when you go to bed. Fresh air after midnight is for dead people.

He's never particularly minded not exactly fitting into whatever box the world has decided to provide. People shouldn't need to change to make other people happy, the world needs to be fair - and what Deon wants is to even out the playing field. Not particularly for himself. He's doing fine, thanks for asking. (Really. Sounds like a brush-off, but he's actually pretty used to the whole thing. Plenty of people get by just fine without the ability to instantly fix the things they break.) But because he knows that other people aren't. Wizarding learning differentiation has probably improved over time, sure. But it could still stand to improve more. (Look, the education game in Florida isn't great in general. He's seen some shit.) How do you teach nonverbal kids spells? How does hearing impairment effect casting ability? Why isn't teaching wandless magic to people with motor difficulties more of a thing? Familiars would be really good service animals - why aren't more familiars trained as service animals? They're fixable questions. And he wants them to be fixed.

It's all set to a backdrop of of the chipperly pessimistic complaint, impending doom layered over genuinely excited intrigue. Things are terrible, sure. You might get murdered. You might get eaten by a hippopotamus. (They kill up to 500 people per year in Africa, you guys. They're terrifying and they make their own sunscreen.) People may not understand or try hard enough or even care - but there are so many possibilities. So, yeah. There's no reason not to be nurturing and helpful and invested. To be patient and to care enough to make other people comfortable. Sure, you might get murdered. But you might not.

LANGUAGES: Fluent in both English and Spanish. He grew up in a very much bilingual household - though he'll admit that his written Spanish grammar can be a bit dicey. Abuelita didn't make him write letters, she made him watch telenovelas.

HOBBIES: cooking, soccer, teaching his bird to wear sunglasses, reading poetry, seeing how many times a person can ride Great Thunder Mountain before vomiting

SKILLS:
general animal competence : Gideon's a zoo baby. In that his mother has worked at a zoo since he was a baby and he's maybe been allowed to hold baby lions in a context that is decidedly unlike a horrifying amount of men on dating sites. He's good with animals and he can spew facts about using 3-D printers to make better toys for rhinos.

highly specified child competence : His younger brother is autistic. Gideon has grilled a terrifying number of at-home therapists about what he's supposed to do to be the Most Helpful and Productive sibling.

basic first-aid : When healing magic just isn't going to cut it - and it isn't, let's all be honest with ourselves about our situation - you learn to develop a very comprehensive understanding of how to fix your broken body without the shortcuts.

dancing?? : Abuelita was a dancer and, as a child, Gideon was an uncoordinated mess. (He still is, honestly.) So in some effort to combat this, she routinely made - and continues to make - him waltz her around the living room. His form's a bit shit, frankly, but he picks up steps quickly and he's decent enough that he isn't a complete embarrassment to her good name.

music stuff : He can play the piano. It's another skill that isn't anything to write home about. He's never had lessons or anything, but he knows his way around a keyboard. They have a big one in the place where a dining room table should probably be and Nouh likes to sit under it while he plays. A voice too. He has one. It's decent? That's - about it.

cooking : He can cook things! Mostly Spanish food and breakfasts, he's not going to lie. He's basically somebody's grandmother. He's ... basically his own grandmother. Yes, he's aware.

FAMILY:
BACKGROUND:
Isabel Rodriguez met Benjamin Rowe while she was on an assignment in Mozambique. (He was on vacation, just to be clear.) Which would have been well and good, if not for the fact that Benjamin Rowe didn't exist. Metaphorically. He didn't metaphorically exist. The man, obviously, physically existed. He was tall and blue-eyed and he knew nothing about an alarming amount of very basic topics - but he was also funny and, yes, slightly strange. But who wasn't?

They never married, but they were happy. Happier still when they found out that they were going to have a child. Or at least Isabel thought that he'd been happy. But then Ben disappeared when Gideon was two. Right about the time when weird things started happening around their apartment - lights flickering, furniture moving, toys rearranging themselves on the shelves. Abuelita insisted that they were being haunted, which was ridiculous, but Isabel already had more than enough reason to take the San Antonio Zoo up on their job offer. So they relocated.

They'd been in San Antonio for about a year when Mick appeared in their lives. Literally appeared. In the middle of their living room. Saying something that Gideon's certain he meant to be reassuring, and maybe would have been, if he hadn't been a fully grown adult man materializing in the middle of someone's locked apartment. (It might've been something like "BE NOT AFRAID!" because his uncle's a dramatic idiot.) His mother immediately beaned him with a remote control. Right between the eyes. It was great.

After slapping a bag of frozen carrots to the man's head and not calling the police - jury's still out on whether or not that was ultimately a good call - Isabel hefted Gideon onto her hip, leveled her best unimpressed glare at the actual adult man whining on her couch, and then told him to elaborate.

So he did. And then he just didn't leave.

(And, look, it's not like his dad had been great at blending in. His mom had kind of figured he was Amish or something. Or maybe a cult escapee. A technology-hating cult that had really weird ideas about, like, basic modern conveniences? Whatever. The guy was odd. So, yeah. At the end of the day, the whole: 'Surprise! That weird stuff your kid is doing? Actually magic!' thing wasn't that much of a big deal. Which - it was either that or he was some sort of mutant.)

His mother and Uncle Mick made a surprisingly good team. They bicker like an old married couple and fight like the siblings that neither of them had. (As far as Gideon was concerned, between the two of them and Abuelita, they were better than any expectations he had about the concept of regular parents.) His mother read every one of Gideon's textbooks, frankly has an encyclopedic knowledge of every magical thing she has access to, and never balked at a single strange occurrence. Other than apparrating in the living room. She's dead set against that. It's impolite.

So, despite a mildly rocky beginning, most of Gideon's early childhood was happy and uneventful. He spent a lot of time with his grandmother - his mother worked and Mick worked and he wasn't the best at making friends in Catholic school in the south. They moved again when Gideon was eight, this time to Florida. Which, okay, also the south. But now his mom worked in Disney World. And magic school honestly helped with the whole 'holy shit, this kid's a weirdo' thing. Most kids are a bit weird at magic school.

The twins showed up when Gideon was in fourth grade. His mother had always talked about wanting more children, they weren't a surprise - but a fully non-magic, single parent adopting two wizarding children took some hoop-jumping. But Mick co-signed. (Teamwork makes the dream work.) And Gideon was suddenly and forcefully removed from the Only Child Club, something he previously would've figured to be a less desirable division of the undivided attention he was so accustomed to receiving. But it turns out that Abuelita having more people to fuss over meant actually getting to, y'know, read books. And play video games. And, after a while, it meant people to read things to.

Going away to high school wasn't the easiest of decisions, but he doesn't regret it either. He isn't any more likely to get into trouble away from home than he was when he was at home. Not in the grand scheme of things, anyway. (Florida's real messed up, you guys. There are so many alligators. There's so much weird crime.) And, hey, apparently he isn't the only one at school who's family made some grave errors and irrevocably screwed up their ancestors' lives in fun and exciting ways. Who knew!

WAND: Alder, 12", fwooper feather core. It was brand new when he got it, but it's always looked like it's seen some stuff.
FAMILIAR: A raven named Crisis. He's a mess.
CAREER GOALS: He doesn't know if he'd call them goals just yet, but he has some ideas. Some trajectories. (He thinks he wants to work on training familiars to be put in more service/therapy-oriented positions. Maybe.)

PART-TIME JOB: Peck ‘N’ Paw

CLASSES:
charms : He can keep up with the information just fine. And the repetitive motions? Cool, cool. Great. It's just there's a subset of time lasting an average of four to five days a month where all of that super cool memorization and practical knowledge don't actually matter. But otherwise? Yeah, doing great in charms!
potions : It's like cooking, but with explosions! So he's real good at all those breakfast potions. And the other ones too. It's just enjoyable to think of which potions would be better as breakfasts.
transfiguration : It's not that he's bad at math, it's just that he's bad at explaining how you get to the answers in math. The path is usually round-about and effectively wrong - and yet.
cryptozoology & magizoology (H) : One class where he's raising his hand because he actually has things to enthusiastically contribute. He loathes the interview portions. But he's unfortunately really good at them.
hermeticism : He's probably a nightmare to have in this class, because theoretically he's genuinely good at it. There's just the whole issue where it doesn't matter how good he is at certain periods of time. But he likes it?
home mag-ec : Honestly, this class is soothing. Someone dramatic ordering him around in a kitchen-like setting? Sure. Yup. Nice.
wizard literature (H) : Another class he's just good in. Mr. Crockett's hair is really nice - and he likes having new bits of poetry to send home to his Abuelita.
symbology : God, yes. Let him put his wand down please.

EXTRA-CURRICULARS: A/V Club, Performing Arts Club, Culinary Club

SORTING?: It wasn't that hard of a choice, weirdly enough. By the time you reached the Spring Room, you'd had the chance to see all of the options. And they were all nice. Each one was beautiful and interesting and he'd maybe spent a bit too long staring up at the northern lights - but the Spring Room was the most alive. So, yeah. It really wasn't that hard.

NAME: Jackie
EMAIL: yourbodyanditsbones@gmail.com
CDJ: jackspratt
OTHER CONTACT:
TIMEZONE: EST