Sylvester Griggs

Character Basics

Character Creator: Crash

Name: Sylvester Griggs Nicknames: Sly Birthdate: October 18th, 1996 Birthplace:In a caravan somewhere between Huddersfield and Leeds Bloodstatus: Muggleborn School: Junior Wizarding Academy Boggart: The Marriage his family is already planning for him. Likes: Hanging with his mates Sneaking out Quidditch Rock and Roll Games of Chance Dislikes: Being told what to do by peers Being stuck indoors Peas and blood pudding Homework Stuck up Rich Kids Favourite Colour Black Favorite Food Bangers and Mash and a good Guinness Favorite Season Summer Favorite Hobby Getting in trouble Favorite clothing Jeans and T-Shirt Favorite school subject Muggle Studies, it’s easy Favorite professor Professor Moore. Family Pets: Irish Terrier - Tosser

Appearance

Hair: Black Eyes: Blue Weight: 150 lbs Height: 5’10

Personality

Sly is trouble, but not always in a bad way. He is a joker and a bounds pusher. He isn’t malicious or mean and is often as willing to get in trouble as those he includes in his various schemes and plots. Sly is loyal to his friends and won’t rat on anyone if he’s the one that gets caught up to no good, but that doesn’t extend to those outside his circle of friends. He isn’t the best of students, but that has more to do with his upbringing than his intelligence. He is smart, anyone that can think of the number of little cons and schemes that he does has to be smart.

A Little Deeper

The Quick and Dirty: Sly was born into an English Traveler family. A complete mudblood he is. This upbringing has certainly patterned his behavior. Property is a loose concept to him, especially when it is someone else’s. He always give it back what he barrows eventually. He has learned to tone down his accent so that he can be understood by his friends, but will use it to his advantage when he can to fast talk his way out of trouble. Learning has been a struggle for Sly, his education having been stopped early by his family, but he has taken great delight in his muggles studies classes, which come easy to him and he has a particular fascination with the study of the Animagus’s. It is a topic he has consumed with great vigor even away from class and he is looking forward to moving on to Hogwarts to pursue those studies in greater detail…if he can pass all of his exams that is. Before JWA: Sly’s parents told him he was born in the back of a caravan on the way to Leeds. He doesn’t have any reason to believe otherwise. His young life was typical for a traveler. This certainly colored his early behavior and outlook. Traveler gender roles are clearly defined and as a boy he was to work hard while at the same time his mother and sisters wait on him and his father and brothers hand and foot. He just accepted this as fact. Even as a boy he knew the face of discrimination and has been called things that would make a sailor cringe. His schooling was lax and he often worked with his father and the other men they traveled with, but he was smart and had an agile mind. This got him into no end of trouble. It didn’t help that his father encouraged him more often than not. He ran cons and confidence schemes and loved to sneak into places he didn’t belong. It was a shock to his parents and himself that when the letter arrived with his invitation into the Junior Wizarding Academy. At first his father refused. Traveler culture does not permit close social contact with non-travelers and from what Sly had seen they could all sod-off anyway. Sly’s mother on the other hand saw an opportunity. Even in traveler culture there was a hierarchy and the Griggs were near the bottom of it. But a wizard in the family could change fortunes. It was Sly’s mom that talked his dad into letting him go. JWA - The Early Years: The first year was hard on Sly. Racism followed Sly into school, but now it wasn’t just Pikey that he heard, but mudblood too. The women refused to do what they were told and he even had a 4th year threaten to have her brother curse him when he told her to make his dinner. He got into a lot of fights that year and there was talk of removing him from the school, but Professor Moore insisted that he be allowed to remain. The professor of Muggle Studies took a particular interest in him from that point on and somehow managed to moderate his behavior enough to keep him from being expelled. That isn’t to say the trouble stopped, but the fights had, at least the ones during school. While the physical battles may have stopped the worst fights were between Sly and his homework. He had only a rudimentary education, certainly not up to pair with most of the other students. He was forced to learn not only the various magical subjects, but simple advanced English and arithmetic. In some ways he had double the course load of others. He was miserable for the better part of his first two years. By this third and fourth year he had gathered a fine group of mates that enjoyed his misbehavior. Sly may get them into no end of trouble but he was also willing to take the fall for a friend and was never malicious in his plots and schemes. Sly’s more outlandish behavior began to subside about the time he started to notice girls and they started to notice him. The girls in school weren’t like traveler girls. They were free thinking and self-reliant for the most part and he soon realized that grabbing was not part of their vocabulary. His wit and rogue-ish looks were much better at attracting the attention of the fairer sex. He also took up Quaf and has been an avid Quidditch fan ever since. Sly has changed greatly in the past five years. He is still brash and charming, a mischievous rogue and he still often finds himself in detention, but years of being a student at the Junior Wizarding Academy have presented him with an alternative way to look at life. He has even found an interest at school. Animagus. The thought intrigues him greatly and for the first time he is concerned about what his grades may end up looking like. Family Issues: The rather progressive views of the Wizarding world have put a strain on his home life. His father has already begun pressuring him to use magic on their behalf and in ways that stretch the boundaries of legality. His mother parades eligible girls through their home at every opportunity in hopes of hearing wedding bells soon. His brothers barely consider him a traveler anymore and he has begun to question whether or not that’s true. Perhaps not incidentally he has a much better relationship with his sisters now. Family weighs heavily on Sly, often when he is alone. He loves his family. He loves being a traveler, but he is beginning to wonder if he can go back to that life once he graduates, if he wants to go back to that life when he graduates. But to deny his family’s wishes is to be ostracized, to no longer be a traveler, to not have a family.

Family

fathers side Name: Samson Griggs Bloodstatus: Muggle Marital Status: Married Occupation: English Traveler Samson is a large man. He is a lazy man and a drunk. He isn’t a bad man, not really. He just doesn’t like work. If there is an easy way to do something Samson will find it, if he can get someone else to do it and still get paid, so much the better. While strict, Samson is a loving father and cares deeply for his children. Sly doesn’t want to let his father down, but at the same time his insistence that Sly break the rules about students using magic outside of school is starting to strain their relationship. Samson holds traveler culture very sacred and was very much against Sly’s attendance at the JWA. It took his wife’s convincing to get him to relent. Much of that had to do with the suggestion that when Sly graduated he would be able to make the family rich and they would never have to work again.

mothers side Name: Nessa Griggs Bloodstatus: Muggle Marital Status: Married Occupation: Irish Traveler Nessa married for love and she won’t let her son make that same mistake. It isn’t that she regrets marrying Samson, she loves the big lug, it’s that she wishes he had some kind of ambition. She is sure that if she were the man in the family they would be wanting for nothing. There is probably some truth to that thought. Sly gets a dose of his mental agility from his mother and she is harder working that even the most put upon Traveler wife. Sly is forever grateful to her for cajoling his father into letting him attend JWA, but her motives weren’t exactly pure. She knows a little about the wizarding world and that being a mudblood is kind of like being a Pikey. At school he is the lowest of the social order and out in the world much of England and Ireland think of travelers the same way. He may not be top of the heap in that world, but he can be top of the heap in the traveler world. With that thought in mind she has already began preparing for his marriage. Nessa has lined up all of the top daughters from the local areas traveling families and only the most influential make her cut. She has no qualms parading them through their home whenever she gets the chance in homes that one will catch her son’s eye, but she is getting impatient. Soon she may just take matters into her own hands and began making arrangements that she feels will be best for the family in the long run.

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