Full name: Joseph Astrid
Age: 20
D.O.B: (Day and month) 1st of February
Birthplace: Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, England
Current location: Merlin's Academy for Excellence
Blood status: Muggleborn
Occupation: Student
Major: Healing
Year in University: 2



Hair colour: Dark brown
Hair style: Relatively short, casually messed up.
Height: 6ft1
Eye colour: Dark blue, but can look grey in certain light.
Freckles: Only in the summer.
Body type: Broad shoulders and narrow hips, but not overly athletic in appearance.
Dress sense: Button down shirts and tight jeans, mostly. He wears glasses constantly though.



Likes:
- Reading; though he was sorted into Hufflepuff at Hogwarts, Joe was always a bookworm. When he wasn't hunched over piles of homework, he would be sitting in the common room by the fire with a good book. It helped to relieve stress, he found.
- Romance; he's an absolute sucker for a fairy-tale ending, and he tries to lavish his girlfriend in chocolates and flowers whenever he gets the chance. Always red flowers, though, the colour her hair was when they first met. The colour he sees when he closes his eyes and she's in his arms.
Dislikes:
- Arguments; Joe was never big on confrontation. Back in school, he only ever had one person he didn't get on with; a Slytherin boy named Josh Murray. They hated each other, mostly because Josh had an obsession with Joe's best friend stroke Herbology Professor, but the boys got over their dispute in sixth year.
- Supremacy; if there's one thing that really get's Joe's goat up, it's people thinking they're better than other people. It drives him up the wall, just the idea that someone's worth more than someone else just because of their age, or their intelligence or blood line or gender.
Quirks:
- Flustering; if it's not a word, it should be, because nothing else fits this boy. Joe can't help but get unbelievably flustered at times, especially when he's around Brooke, his girlfriend. When she compliments him or really even is around him, he gets this ruby red flush that's brighter than the sweater he was wearing yesterday.
- Clumsiness; it's mostly as a result of quirk number one, but Joe is horrendously clumsy. He falls over his own feet, though he's actually figured out why- something to do with turning his feet in when he walks, it's complicated- but that's not even the worst of it. It's only when he concentrates completely and utterly on the task at hand that everything doesn't go falling to the floor.
Flaws:
- Overly Emotional; the poor sod can't help it, but sometimes he gets all these emotions that he just can't handle. He experiences just about every feeling at once and he doesn't know what to do with them or who to go to, and though he usually sorts himself out, he struggles sometimes.
Strengths:
- Moral Understanding; while he may not be a super genius, Joe prides himself on the fact that he can tell right from wrong in almost all situations, and that he can make decisions for himself based on what he sees as good and bad.
- Friendliness; he would never leave a person stranded, and he vows never to let anyone down. He thinks everyone deserves to be happy, and that it's okay to need help sometimes. Joe feels that if he can make one person's day better, the world has another smile in it, and smiles can be incredibly infectious.
Weaknesses:
- Performing Under Pressure; it doesn't matter what the situation is, Joe can't perform under pressure. It's one of the reasons he didn't try out for the House Quidditch Team; he had the muscle to be a beater, he just knew he wouldn't be able to play well with people watching him. It was the same with magic too; he could do the theory perfectly well, but the practical side of things? He struggled a little, to say the least.
- Brooke; I did warn you he was an emotional sap when it came to her, okay? He can't help it. She's his ultimate weakness, and he really, really, really loves her.


Joe's story is an awfully long one, so please do bear with me.

He was born into a family of very well-to-do people. The boy grew up in an area that all but radiated class, and everyone he knew was sure he'd be just like the other kids in his area; stuck up. Joe turned out to be quite the opposite, though, and he was a very humble child, shy around others and reluctant to go out in the street.

When he received a letter saying he possessed magical powers and that he would be sent to a school for other kids with magical powers, it was lest to say that Joe struggled to get his head around it all. He knew he wouldn't fit in; he was just Joe from Oxford, not one of those kids.

After a lot of contemplation, Joe decided he would go. It would be a fresh start, a new adventure, and he came to the conclusion that going off to this Hogwarts, wherever it was, would give him the chance to discover who he really was, and be who he wanted to be.

Sadly, this turned out to not be the case, exactly. Joe struggled to settle in. With his slightly too posh voice and his odd mannerisms, he didn't make very many friends. After a few months, he really started to retract, and instead of putting himself out there he did the exact opposite.

At the start of his second year, Joe met a witch who really did transform his life. His new Herbology Professor, Azalea Harrington, a teenage witch on transfer from Salem in America as a substitute teacher. She was amazing in every sense, and the witch took Joe under her wing. They developed a bond unlike any other.

On the Friday mornings that Azalea was around, they would meet outside the Herbology Greenhouses to grow Mimosa plants. Joe slowly started to open up to Azalea, and he began telling her why he was such a recluse. They got to know each other exceptionally well over the following years, and she brought him out of his shell tremendously.

In his third year, after a fight with the (annoyingly attractive) boy who would eventually become something of a nemesis, Joe started to discover more about himself. He began to have a little bit of a crisis, questioning his sexuality, and as per usual he ran straight to Azalea. She explained things to him as best as she knew, and it was thanks to her that he came out as openly bisexual and demiromantic.

The confidence Azalea gave him carried Joe into his fourth year, when he met a lovely young Ravenclaw by the name of Morgan Rosier. She became his first real friend, and they bonded over a love of literature, particularly Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In the evenings after dinner, they would meet to not really talk, but just be with each other. It was the closest thing to family Joe had ever felt.

Eventually, Morgan became something of an object of affection for Joe. He started to see her in a whole new light, and he fell head over heels for the witch. She was beautiful, intellectual, funny, and she had the most incredible personality. He never got to tell her how he felt, though- at least, not to her live self.

One afternoon, in the midst of a rather standard day, by all accounts, Joe was pulled out of his Transfiguration lesson to be told that Morgan had been found dead by the Whomping Willow. He was handed a letter by a rather teary-eyed professor, and he waited until he was in the confines of his dormitory to read it. The boy was glad he did.

Amongst those written were the words "promise you'll always be there to save me, Joe?" were written in her wonderfully cursive script, and it was then that Joe lost it completely. He broke down, sobbing loudly and throwing his belongings around the room until he eventually reduced himself to a quaking mess in the corner, his entire body aching to wake up from the nightmare.

In short, Joe fell into a rut. He barely ate, sleep was a rarity and he became almost entirely mute. The Hufflepuff sat by the fire most days, or laid in his bed. The teachers allowed him to grieve, for they knew the bond the two students had for each other, and every day he would have a different one coming to the chair in which he seldom moved from, asking if they could do anything for him.

It took a while, but eventually Joe realised that Morgan wouldn't want this. She wouldn't want him crying and shaking and hating the world because she was gone, so eventually he started to come back to life. He attended meals, took potions to help himself sleep and he even started going into classes. The will power it took was phenomenal, but he knew, wherever her body lay, she would be proud of him.

The next year, in the first few days of term, Joe took a midnight stroll to the lakeside. He was sure the sleep deprivation was making him hallucinate at first, but he swore he saw her. The silvery, lost form of an immortalised fifteen year old girl, gliding easily over the grounds in a Ravenclaw uniform. Morgan Rosier... Perhaps it wasn't his best idea to stay up talking to her until the sun started to rise, because the next day he was positively exhausted. It gave him closure, though, knowing that Morgan had in fact reciprocated his feelings, and knowing she would always be there for him if he ever needed her.

A few weeks later, during a little bit of a Forbidden Forest adventure, Joe met Brooke Walters. He hadn't been planning on meeting anyone, actually, he was trying to get his Muggle Studies assignment done, but when she walked into the clearing he'd long since claimed as his own, they seemed to hit it off immediately. They arranged a date, of sorts, in Hogsmeade for a few weekends time, and long story short, Joe was sure things were looking up.

The morning of the Hogsmeade weekend came, and he spruced himself up as nicely as he dared; a dark polo shirt and tight jeans, a look that was almost signature to the boy. He stood outside the Three Broomsticks with enchanted flowers for Brooke, pacing for what he was certain was at least half an hour before he saw her approaching.

Something happened, then. His heart started pounding in his chest and his stomach was doing backflips. It felt almost as though he were allergic to the witch, in the best way of course, but all good things were never to last for the boy. Out of seemingly nowhere, no-one other than Josh Murray appeared, slinging his arm around Brooke and walking towards Joe as though it were a daily occurrence.

Humiliated and crushed, Joe handed over the roses to Josh and ran, booted it back to the castle where he sat in the greenhouse in his embarrassment. He didn't know how he could have been so stupid to believe that anyone could actually fall for him, but he'd done it, and it was the biggest mistake he'd ever made.

Things went downhill from there. Having suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder from a young age, the winter months approaching didn't help at all. The numbness consumed him, but at the same time he felt an unimaginable pain, and it all became too much too quickly. In the January before his seventeenth birthday, Joe found himself moderately tipsy atop of the Astronomy Tower, muttering something about the stars to himself when a voice rang in his ears.

Josh Murray. The boy who was the reason he was there in the first place, the boy who ruined e v e r y t h i n g for him, had the audacity to try and tell him to stop, to step back, to live? The argument between them lasted a solid few minutes before Joe pushed himself over the ledge, the feeling of falling sending his body into an adrenaline induced shock. He never hit the ground, but instead became immobilised at a height around about the second floor.

The Hufflepuff came to a few days later, strapped down to a bed in the Psychiatric ward at St. Mungos with the crying forms of his parents at his bedside. He struggled at first, protesting that it wasn't fair to keep him here, tugging at the wires that seemed to sprout from his every damned orifice. A week later, the staff gave in, and agreed to let him back to Hogwarts on the grounds that he stay in the hospital wing until they deemed him fit to leave, and that he remain under constant supervision.

Being treated like a kid didn't sit well with Joe, and he spent most of the days in the Hospital Wing sleeping. That was, until one day, he heard footsteps beating harshly against the tiled floor, and the boy forced himself awake. A wave of green hair met his eyes, and he barely had time to recognise the girl before her lips were firmly on his. The kiss couldn't have lasted for more than a few seconds, but it felt like a blissful eternity.

Joe asked Brooke to be his girlfriend on the Valentines Day. The whole ordeal was quite mushy, really; he was released from the Hospital Wing the night before, and he spent all night writing a letter for Brooke to find when she got back from her classes for the day. He had also picked a fresh red rose from the grounds, and asked a young girl to deliver the message for him. The two teenagers met in the library that evening, and after a long conversation that entailed a lot more admission of feelings than Joe would readily admit, the two became an official item.

Seventh year for Joe flew by. He went to classes and was happy. He did homework with Brooke in the library or the Room of Requirements and he was happy. He sat his exams, came out with results that no-one had been expecting, and above all else, he was happy.

Life after Hogwarts was simple enough. He took a gap year, bought his own flat near where he'd grown up and did a few menial jobs to pay the rent. His parents offered him money on a weekly basis, but Joe outright refused. He was living for himself now, and for the first time in seven years, he knew that he would make it.


Father: Andrew "Andy/Drew" Astrid
Mother: Charlotte Astrid (neé Johnson)
Girlfriend/Boyfriend: Brooke Walters



Wand: Birch, unicorn tail hair, thirteen and a quarter inches.
Pets: An owl named Ariel.
School that they went to: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
House they were in: Hufflepuff
Why you chose your major: It's really only in the last year or so that I considered healing as a profession, but once I started to think about it, I became irrevocably drawn to the idea. If I want to be doing anything with my life, I want to be out there helping others and doing my best to make a difference every single day I work.



OOC Alias: Jodie/Jess, it's up to you!
Best Way To Contact: Either by PM on here, or by email.