Title: Andrew Lenski
Andrew Lenski - December 31, 2008 06:36 PM (GMT)
Name: Andrew Lenski
House: Ravenclaw
• revised august 19, '09.
OUTER SHELL: Andrew is a scrawny scrap of a thirteen-year-old, a doll-like child. He is thin and frail, lacking the muscles of a Quidditch player and the roundness of a child. Only his head seems unaffected by this—his face is still baby-round, with a pointy chin. He stands at almost—almost five feet tall and is characterized by his customary stare at the ground beneath his feet. His body is mostly of average proportions, except for his head which seems to be too big on his shoulders. When he’s not out playing Quidditch, he is usually hunched over, studying the floor tile pattern or watching his feet—bad posture sticks to him like a permanent sticking charm. Never in his life was Andrew ever satisfied with his own appearance, and he probably never will be. In the mirror he sees a frail, weak child—in his mind he aspires to be strong and well.
To begin at the top—his hair is light brown. It's quite long, and messy enough to give his mother a headache. Being someone who doesn't worry too much about appearances, Andrew leaves his hair alone. He stays away from gel and dyes--and potions that change his hair color according to mood. Once upon a time, he tried the latter, only to have the solution turn his locks a perpetual shade of shy pink. From then on he learned his lesson and never messed with his hair again. The only time he'll think about his hair is when he gets a haircut—a squeamish ritual that has him fidgeting in his chair while his mother attacks it with enchanted scissors. It’s fair to say that Andrew walks around with bits of leaves and grass in his hair—the only indication about his appearance that he isn’t a sickly child who needs breakfast brought to him in bed.
His skin is the softest of soft, and paler than a ghost's. During his early childhood he rarely saw sunlight, so he tends to have the appearance of just recovering from a long illness. In recent years his skin tone has improved slightly from paper-white to a more natural peachy shade...but only slightly. Perhaps in years to come he might even end up looking like a normal child—a small possibility, but one nevertheless. He has an impish smile and eyebrows that can do the wave. Andrew's eyes are the cleanest of blues, but they usually lack the sparkle of people his age. His nose is thin and pointed, and his mouth is a soft, pink line in his round, doll-like face. In fact, his entire body could be characterized as a living doll, with its childish proportions, delicate features, and big eyes. Unfortunately, his eyes are big enough to make him look slightly out-of focused, giving people the impression that he’s always daydreaming.
It is an established fact that Andrew is a midget. As stated above, his body is of average proportions—the average proportions of an eight-year-old, without any of the softness of a small child. What does this leave? Thin. Everything about him is delicate, with, once again, the exception of his head, which is resistant to all but heavy concussions from Bludgers whizzing towards him at high speed in the air. It is as if Andrew’s bones were made out of toothpicks—his limbs break easily (although they do mend at a fast rate) as if snapped in two, with only a small bit of pressure. His skin bruises as quickly as coloring it in with crayon. While his limbs are quite nice in shape, his body is the size of a child a few years younger than he is. Tragically, he’s stayed the same height and weight since his first year at Hogwarts—nothing has matured, physically, except maybe gaining a few pounds and looking less like a skeleton than his eleven-year-old self did. Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of room for improvement.
Most clothes don't fit him at all, so he doesn't bother with looking for the right ones. Sweaters and jackets swamp his thin shoulders and scrunch up near his hands. Jeans trail two or three inches below the soles of his shoes. Being a short boy never did much good for Andrew; his clothes give him a feeling of hiding from the world. In fact, his Hogwarts robes nearly drown him during the school day, and he is always modifying it, but he hasn't quite gotten the hang of that yet. A peculiarity of his is that he is mostly unaffected by the weather. In a blizzard he would be numb to the cold and wear only a sweater—in blazing summer heat he would be able to wear the same and not feel anything different. Supposedly, when he was a child, this was how his parents found out he had magic. He likes to wear blue, not so much because he loves Ravenclaw, but more because most of his clothes are the same color as his eyes. Sneakers in any weather suit him just fine, as well as jeans or khakis when he isn't swamped in his school robes.
INNER WORKINGS: Who is the clumsiest boy at Hogwarts? Doubtless, the honor would go to Andrew here. He trips over everything, from rocks to blades of grass to thin air. His fingers, though long and slender, are clumsy; his feet are the bane of his existence. Perhaps for this reason he is quite taken with Quidditch—indeed, he is unusually good at it for a boy his age and build. He certainly won't be a match for an older, seasoned athlete, but he is able to hold his own on the pitch. Quidditch is his passion, and one of the driving forces that keep him going. The walls of his dorm are covered with Quidditch posters (mostly of the Arrows, his favorite team) and the space under his bed is occupied by stacks of slightly dusty chronicles of the game.
Aside from Quidditch, he loves to read. Most of his time indoors is spent inside the great library of Hogwarts, where he likes to bury his nose in various types of books. Recently he's taken a liking to the Restricted section, and he's gotten very good at sneaking off there when no one is paying attention. Most of his reading, though, is centered on the history of the Wizarding world—historical fiction being his favorite genre—and stories about Muggles. He finds Muggles to be a very interesting subject, but he prefers to learn about both Muggle life and History of Magic on his own time. Anything, in his mind, is better than the drone of the boring professors who teach both. His interest isn’t centered only on history and Muggle-life, though. The boy is quite brilliant at Arithmancy, Charms, and better than most at Transfiguration. The spells he can cast are rather powerful, although not very varied because he only uses the ones he is most familiar with—the other ones he knows are mostly useless, like making hair grow and changing the color of wallpaper, neither of which are of much use in battle.
Andrew tends to have a shorter attention span than most Ravenclaws, hence the reason he can't focus in class. In the past, he would promise himself to pay attention and take notes during a lecture; nowadays he doesn’t even bother to do that. Never has he ever made it past the first three minutes without staring dreamily out the window, or doodling all over his notes—he’s not that bad of an artist, although he isn’t too into art. When teachers call on him, he tends to blush madly and spew out something about not remembering. This leads people to believe that he is a poor student, but he actually manages to maintain Ravenclaw-level grades due to the time he spends reading outside of the classroom. He is very curious, having been, for lack of a better word, sheltered as a younger child. In fact, he is so very curious that he gets distracted very easily. One minute he would be looking up something about Mimbus mimbletonia and the next, see a speck of dust on the carpet and attempt to learn a Vanishing spell. Of course he failed at that miserably—but that’s beside the point. Sometimes he ponders why he ended up in Ravenclaw, because he lacks most of the traditional traits of the house—level-headedness, cunning, competition, among others—and his conclusion is that his thirst for knowledge is stronger than all of his other traits.
Although generally a mild-mannered, calm person, he is very flustered when he causes a commotion. This happens when he trips over things—his face burns scarlet; he apologizes until he runs out of breath, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt all the while. He does have a tendency to ramble in situations like those, and usually the rambling is quite incoherent. In fact, when he isn't happily wondering around in his own air-headed world, he's staring at the carpet, face smoking, apologies streaming out of his mouth at top speed. Most people at Hogwarts give him a wide berth because they don't have the time to deal with him and his liking for laying the blame on himself. Actually, Andrew just has very low self-esteem, instead of the calm self-assurance so closely associated with Ravenclaw. He is naturally very shy, but having been teased mercilessly by his deceased older brother—indeed, almost driven mad—before coming to Hogwarts caused his shyness to grow into something much more pathetic. Loosing self-confidence is easier done than said for one as shy as Andrew, and even though he’s slowly regaining assurance in his own abilities, he doesn’t expect any compliments from anyone. Instead, his mind always leads him to think that he’s causing trouble for others. Sometimes it comes off as pitiful; most of the time, it's just annoying.
People generally see Andrew as a shy—although rather adorable—scared, harmless person. Ninety-nine percent of these people have never seen him angry. It takes a lot to make Andrew mad, because most of the time he accepts people teasing him due to his low self-confidence. He’s only gotten really, really angry about three times in his life—once when he was four, and his brother stuck itching powder in all of his clothes, including underwear. The incident caused Michael Lenski to almost lose his hand when baby Andrew went after it with a gleaming kitchen knife. The family looks back on that now with smiles and laughter, but the other two incidents weren’t nearly as amusing. As seen from the kitchen knife ordeal, though, Andrew is unreasonable and violent when seriously disturbed. In life he may have his bad days, and he can get annoyed with people, and he might frown a lot, but not many people have seen him seriously, truly angry. He doesn’t really know what makes him go insane like that, but he’s not in a hurry to find out. Andrew seemed to have gotten the negative effects of the two types of anger: his rage burns long and slowly, but also violently. So what calms him down? Usually, if left to his own devices, he will calm down after a few hours of slamming things into the wall, as if having a horribly long tantrum. Add this to the gift of quite powerful magic, though, and things suddenly get a lot worse. Once he set fire to his room during an angry spell that lasted a few days—yes, his ignited temper is quite problematic. Two things have been known to calm him down: time, and space. No one really dares to approach him, because he might accidentally—or not so accidentally—hex off a couple of limbs.
THE BACKSTORY: From the tender age of eight, Emrys Lenski—the only heir of a Russian-Welsh line of purebloods—had known the need to produce a male heir. He grew up to be a complete charmer, having witch after witch fall in love with him. When he arrived at the feet of Irina, though, he was rendered completely powerless. With her rich golden hair and brilliant green eyes came a sense of virtue and impeccable self-control that lengthened their courtship by about three years. At age twenty-five, Emrys wedded the Russian beauty. A year later, to the pleasure of his entire family, grandparents especially, Michael Lenski arrived in a blaze of glory. From the beginning, he was a merry little child, always gurgling and laughing. As he grew, he became an inquisitive toddler, poking his fingers into various potions to taste them, never suspecting that one day, the curiosity would kill him. Curiosity killed the cat? More like the child…
Emrys was working for the Russian Ministry of Magic for a bit—dangerous work. He accidentally left one of his poisons out when he went to a meeting, and of course, Michael was the one who went and tasted it. The child was completely sure that whatever substances his careful, loving parents displayed did him no harm. Irina found him a few minutes later, skin tinged with blue, eyes wide, dying on the carpet. She took him to St. Mungo’s at once, but while they extracted the poison, it had an effect on his heart that could not be healed. Nevertheless, the devastated parents lived on bravely until Michael’s fourth birthday. He had a bad-heart-spell. Irina took him to St. Mungo’s again, and there the Healers told her that it was unlikely he lived past twenty—or even fifteen. Driven nearly mad with grief, Irina suggested to her husband that they have another son.
“No child of ours could replace little Mikey,” Emrys answered, frowning. “You can’t just get another Mikey.”
“Oh?” Irina had shot back, vehemently, “We’ll see about that.” And then they talked, they argued, and the long and short of it was that Irina became pregnant with her second child—Andrew.
Michael was five years old when Andrew was born. From the start, it became quite clear that Emrys had been right. Andrew was another breed of child entirely. He cried a lot—quietly—and he was quite a tad smarter than the already clever Michael. Michael, with his jokester nature, couldn’t help teasing Andrew all the time. Andrew grew up to be naturally shy, but the way his parents treated him, as if he was an old, faded photograph of his brother, did not help things at all. Unfortunately, the parents were so absorbed in losing their eldest that they rather forgot about the youngest, seeing him as a sad replacement for the cheerful, outgoing son…the son that would one day be taken away from them forever. Fortunately, both parents, aside from the evil habit of comparing their children in a way that made Andrew feel extremely inferior, were optimistic enough to not say a word about Michael’s health problem to either child. They wanted to enjoy the time they had with their eldest for as long as they could
Eventually Michael went to Hogwarts, where he was sorted as a Gryffindor. Needless to say, Emrys and Irina were ecstatic. They placed much pressure on young Andrew, telling him that they wished him to follow in his brother’s footsteps, or even get sorted into Slytherin, a house for powerful wizards. For two years, the family lived, with all its internal problems and Andrew’s increasing withdrawal into his room, as happily as one could expect under such circumstances. But after Michael’s second year at Hogwarts, everyone could see a change in him.
Normally, little Andrew was quite happy when his brother was at school. That way, he reasoned, his parents would see only him, and treat him better, and buy him more candy and Pumpkin Pastries. He was right about the candy, but sadly his parents still acted like Michael was still around. Eventually the little boy came to the conclusion that his parents just didn’t like him, but it was their duty to love him and care for him. He never said a word of this to either of his parents, but at night, he brooded over this fact. The result was that he became even more introverted, hardly daring to say a word to neighbors or guests, answering questions with a fixed stare on the carpet. During the summer, when his brother was at home, life was a lot worse. He didn’t get any candy—and where Michael received huge, lavish gifts on holidays, Andrew was forced to be content with small toys. Now, don’t get me wrong, his parents treated him kindly and with care, but their constant comparisons made the boy feel quite horrible.
The summer after Michael’s second year, life suddenly became a lot worse for Andrew. One night, in their bedroom, the older brother decided to have a talk with his younger sibling. The talk went something like this:
“Say, Andrew, wouldn’t it please you to know that I was dying?”
“D-Dying?” Andrew echoed.
“Yes, then Mum and Dad could do whatever you want them to do, without me in the way.”
“No, why…why would you think that?”
“I know they treat me differently, Andy.”
“But I—I’ll miss you…where do you go when you die?”
“Far, far away,” Michael mumbled, “But don’t worry. I’ll leave some of myself behind for you to talk to.”
“Y-You can do that?” Andrew squeaked.
“Oh, yes, I’ll leave my…ah…spirit behind, so you can talk to me whenever. But…Andy…promise me something?”
“Anything!” Andrew said, excited that his brother would be in his debt, and eager to help.
“Promise me that you’ll never, ever tell Mum and Dad what I said to you tonight?”
“Oh…of course I won’t.”
The fact that Michael was dying did little to put Andrew at rest. He insisted that his parents took him to the library the next day, where he checked out twenty books about death—which startled his parents. But the mother and father covered their surprise and, coming to the conclusion that maybe he was just curious, gave him some more books about Quidditch. It was the best moment of little Andrew’s life. From then on, he adored Quidditch. Michael let him use his broom sometimes—a good broom, too—and while he never played the game before he arrived at Hogwarts, Andrew flew quite well—and happily.
The summer passed quite uneventfully, except that maybe Michael was a bit…more tired…and more quiet in general. Andrew had the uncomfortable impression that his parents were always crying at night. And one day…one horrible morning, Andrew woke up. It was horrible, because he woke up without the aid of his older brother yelling into his ear, or tickling him, or lifting him up and threatening to throw him off the bed. Andrew was seven—and as curious as his brother. He climbed down from his bed and padded over to his brother’s, and poked him. “Morning, Mikey!” he chirped. When there was no response, he grew a little frightened, but told his brother to stop pretending. When there was still no response, Andrew froze.
Was this what dying was?
He stared for a long time at his brother’s lifeless form on the bed. Then he started talking. “Mikey? Michael? Have you been dead? But you…but you said you’d go somewhere…far a-away…where’d you go? You’re still here?”
And that was the moment when a familiar voice said in his ear, “Hullo, Andy.”
Andrew screamed, horribly. The sound brought his parents running. They took one look at their cherished eldest and, while Irina sobbed over her son’s body and begged him to come back, Emrys looked around in a wild panic—he looked around, but he never saw his youngest. In fact, when his father’s eyes swept past him, Andrew saw a sort of desperate, blank look in his eyes, as if he was invisible and his father had seen right through him. And from that moment on, the small boy changed. His parents couldn’t see him? Was he gone? Maybe he was the dead one. He tugged at his mother’s sleeve, but she didn’t notice him. Andrew silently climbed back into bed, shivering and frightened. Two days later, when his mother found him still huddled in the blankets, pale and soaked with sweat, she asked him why he didn’t cry and miss his brother.
But he’s not gone, he wanted to say. He’s right here, in my closet. Unfortunately, Michael had made him promise never to tell. He had been trying to get his parents to forget him and focus on his younger brother, but his ingenious plan seemed to have backfired. Not only was little Andy treated worse…he’d nearly been forgotten. And he didn’t talk, either. Andrew was convinced that Michael was a figment of his imagination, all the more reason why he never mentioned it to his parents. Day after day he huddled in the darkest corner of his room, growing increasingly more unresponsive, and one day, he stopped talking to them completely. Meals carried to his room were carried out scarcely touched. He forgot books. He forgot Quidditch…and to make matters worse, Michael tried to make him feel better.
The voices in his head never made him feel better.
For four long years, the pattern carried on. His parents, distraught but afraid to approach him for fear he was really mad, walked into his room a few weeks after his (extremely silent) eleventh birthday. The “party” had involved a few words from his parents (“happy birthday, son”), a few pleading words from his mother (“would you like some tea and cake?”), and few mournful wishes from his father (“grow tall, son…if only Michael were here”), and complete and absolute silence from Andrew. A few weeks later, his parents walked in, talked to him for a long time, until Andrew, who grew increasingly annoyed with them, lashed out and nearly snapped his mother’s neck in two. Then his father proceeded to wrestle him onto his back after a shouting match, and carried him to St. Mungo’s. A horribly dull council followed, during which Andrew stared out of the window blankly while he thought his mother was talking about Hogwarts.
Hogwarts changed him. From the very start, Andrew entered the eighth compartment of the Hogwarts Express with his head bowed, his eyes trained on his feet. When they reached Hogwarts, Andrew had taken an unplanned bath in the lake, had been pulled up by a boat that happened to pass (the students on the boat he’d fallen out of didn’t even notice he was gone), and sat down to be Sorted with water streaming down his face. There he’d been subjected to further humiliation by being Sorted into Ravenclaw. Ravenclaw. It was a disaster. His parents had wanted Gryffindor or Slytherin, and he himself had been hoping for Hufflepuff, where he’d heard that the people were nice and considerate—and didn’t betray others. Ravenclaw. The word from the Hat made him feel quite dead.
Time went on, though. Hogwarts worked its magic on the small, broken boy. By winter holiday, he’d made a few friends, too—mostly older girls who thought he was the incarnation of their little brother, which made him feel a bit pleased but secretly a little hurt, because he didn’t tell anyone that he had once been a little brother himself. When people asked him if he knew Michael, he shook his head to avoid explaining everything. By and by Michael had been forgotten. Andrew went home in June quite different from what he had been when he left. His parents, pleased with the change, took a hint and stopped mentioning his dead older brother around him. Generally, from Hogwarts on, Andrew started going uphill. Sometimes it was hard work, but in the long run, his life became much, much better. He’s still shy, and still has self-confidence issues, but at the very least, he doesn’t believe he hears voices in his head anymore.