Daniel Prochazka: Bio

[alchemically]

basics :

Name: Daniel Alexander Prochazka
Nicknames:
Birthday & Age: January 3
Occupation: Auror/Liaison
Wand: Thirteen and a half inches, sturdy hornbeam with thunderbird feather core

details :

High School: Halve Maen Academy, New York, New York
University: Salem Institute of Advanced Magical Study, Salem, Massachusetts. Major: Forensic Wizardry & Potions
Additional Education: Auror Training School, Death Valley California [Auror Certification]; Skólanum Seiðr, Akureyri, Iceland [Course in Norse and Runic Magic]
Relations: Muggle Father (Deceased in the war), mother, brother and sister.

appearance :

PB: Douglas Neitzke
Notable Features: Tall and thin, blue-gray eyes, shaggy hair.
Detailed Description: 6'2, skinny with dark, floppy straight hair and chilly blue eyes. Daniel is narrow-boned with sharp cheekbones and pale. His front right tooth is chipped from a run-in with his broom and a wall when he was twelve. Tattoo of a coyote on his lower back, left side. Often wears glasses, but sometimes forgets - his vision is 20/40, so he can see pretty well without them.

Daniel's a recovering hipster; he still wears skinny jeans and band t-shirts, but the eyeliner has been retired since high school, and his style has gotten a little more refined. He's almost never without the leather jacket he's had since he was sixteen, and he's replaced his sneakers with boots.

personality :

Quiet but not particularly shy, Daniel is a classic introvert - he likes people well enough and has a small group of friends, but he definitely needs that alone time to recharge. In this way and others, he's more like his Muggle father than his witch mother; he's just a little bit apart from the crowd, and his natural inclination is to observe and analyze, parsing motivations and objectives more than involving himself. As such, he can seem a little cold.

He cares deeply, though, and when he does love people - whether as friends or as lovers - Daniel can be very intense about it. He's loyal to his family to a fault, and the reason he hasn't told anyone at school about his sister's illness is because she didn't want anyone to know. He won't betray a confidence. He's very inexperienced in romantic relationships, but in his first (and only), he tumbled hard and fast and found that it wasn't at all the same for the other person. It's not in him to blame Jamie for not returning his feelings; Daniel is too logical to blame someone for not being exactly what he wants. But he's very reticent about getting into that sort of thing again. He doesn't want to lose control and give someone else the upper hand so fully again, and as a result he's mostly been indulging in one night stands since he's returned to school.

He's done a fair amount of those, and that's the one area where Daniel doesn't fit the classic introversion characteristics. When he decide he's interested in someone, he's almost brazen about it: he flirts more skillfully than one would think he was capable of, he goes in for the kill, and he gets whoever he is in bed. He has the distinction of having done more walks of shame during this school year than any other member of Astor House, and he doesn't care what people think. He especially doesn't care what people think of his sexuality. In a way, he almost dares people to judge him by it.

If they do, he's guaranteed to judge back - to hit back, really, with a sharp, sardonic wit that's a little surprising in someone so quiet and generally kind.

He's academically ambitious, and determined to be nearly the best in all of his classes. It doesn't bother him that he's terrible at Flying, but it does bother him that he's still pretty bad at Charms, and that it takes weeks of practice to perfect the ones he needs for his own experiments or potions. He's a little obsessed as a result by trying to "catch up" to the better students in that class, and it frustrates him that he can't do it on his own.

history:

Daniel's childhood was fairly typical for a halfblood wizard; he was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, with a younger sister and a younger brother, by his parents. His father was a university professor at the University of Nebraska, teaching in the chemistry department, and his mother a mediwitch for the local magical community. He attended local muggle public school until he was eleven, and then went first to the regional Midwestern magical academy before transferring at fourteen to Halve Maen Academy in New York City.

At Halve Maen, he was sorted in Astor House, and he excelled in the more scientific magical arts of potions and herbology, and he was superior at transfiguration as well - becoming a registered animagus shortly after his graduation. He struggled more with charms, more due to the rigid nature of his wand than any lack of ability, but was an all-around excellent student. At Halve Maen, he also first met Leon Shaw - who would become his first real boyfriend.

The relationship flourished through late high school and even after Daniel went to university in Salem, but shortly after his graduation and his employment at the Congress, the relationship ended, seemingly permanently. After this break, Daniel took an opportunity to transfer to Britain to work with the British Ministry rather than the American Congress. It seemed an odd choice, if he was looking to get away from Léon, who was of English and French extraction and spent as much time in Europe as America, and most of his friends and family expected him to come home after a short period of time. He hasn't, though, working as a liaison between the Ministry's Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Magical Congress.