Terry Boot

Terry Boot / Michael Vartan

OOC

Game Journal Portrayed By
New Salem historyofmagic Michael Vartan

Basic Stats

Full Name: Terry Irving Boot
Nickname(s): None
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Date of Birth: November 23, 1979
Zodiac: Sagittarius
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Bloodline: Halfblood
Hometown: Nottingham, East Midlands, England
Current Residence: Dunmoody, Ireland
House & Year: Ravenclaw 1998
Occupation: Spectral specialist
Wand: 9.5 in, ash, phoenix tail feather
Pet: None

Family

Father: Edward Boot (wizard; Hufflepuff 1968; herbologist)
Mother: Deborah Boot (née Shimpling; witch; Ravenclaw 1973; potionere)
Sister: Thalia Boot (witch; Hufflepuff 1996)
Brother: Tristan Boot (wizard; Hufflepuff 2000; barrister)
Brother: Tyler Boot (wizard; Hufflepuff 2003)

Cousin: Logan Stebbins (wizard; Hufflepuff 1999; hitwizard)

Son: Jaidhara Patil-Boot (wizard; b. August 19, 2005)
Baby-mama: Parvati Patil (witch; Gryffindor 1998; wedding planner)

History

Terry is the second of four children, and eldest son, born to Edward and Deborah Boot, following Thalia and followed by Tristan and Tyler. It was Deborah's idea to give the kids all names that started with the same letter, and Edward's idea to go with T. Although Thalia called him weird for it, Terry enjoyed having that little bit of extra commonality with his siblings. But Terry always was a little bit weirder than his brothers and sister, just a little bit different from the rest of them. He loved to read, he just couldn't get enough of books. In fact, he learned to read right alongside Thalia, because he was jealous that she would get to do this and he couldn't. He would stay up for hours after bedtime, hiding under the covers with a torch and a book, just absorbing all the knowledge he could get. He was more interested in histories and biographies than fiction, but there are a few exceptions to that. He was particularly interested in far away places, so any fiction that involved somewhere far away or travel (something he desperately dreamed of one day doing) was of great interest to him.

His childhood wasn't all books and geekiness. He was teased and bullied, and even beaten up, quite frequently as a young child, all because of being a bookish geek. He got into sports as a way of trying to shed the reputation of being Wussy Girl Terry. And, well, sports also helped him bulk up a bit (he was a bit on the small and skinny side as a kid) so that he could fight back from the beatings from his bullies. At the muggle primary school his parents sent him and his siblings to, he played football, but he also got into quidditch, as any sports-interested young wizard would. Once he got to Hogwarts (where he was sorted into Ravenclaw), he was quick to make friends within his new house (particularly Michael Corner and Anthony Goldstein), and he was immediately fascinated by his History of Magic class — taught by an actual ghost! And, of course, there was quidditch. He was a reserve chaser for most of his time at Hogwarts, but he played starter on the team for his sixth and seventh years.

In his fifth year, he joined Dumbledore's Army, and was one of the DA members to come to Harry's aid on the train at the end of the school year, when Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle tried to attack him. He used a spell on them that left them looking like giant slugs. In his seventh year, Terry rejoined the DA as it was re-formed in Harry, Ron, and Hermione's absence, to fight back against the Carrows and Snape. During the course of the year, he also began dating fellow DA member Parvati Patil. He fought in the Battle of Hogwarts at the start of May, and nearly died on the battlefield. He was in the midst of a duel with a Death Eater (more of a fistfight, really, as the Death Eater attacked with his fists after Terry disarmed him) when another Death Eater caught him from behind with some kind of dark magic curse that sliced up his upper back. They left him there to die, and he almost bled out before he was found and tended to. As the healers were working to stop the bleeding from the cuts on his back and get more blood into him (as the wounds were caused by dark magic, they couldn't be healed with magic), they overlooked damage done to his right ear during his fistfight. It wasn't until much later, when he was conscious and on the mend, that he realised he couldn't hear out of his right ear. The healers did what they could to repair the damage to his eardrum, but he never regained full hearing in that ear.

After he had fully recovered, Terry still yearned to travel. For years, he and Anthony had planned to go on a great trip all over the world after finishing school. Terry's desire to get out and see the world conflicted with Parvati's desire to stay close to England after the war, and they ended up breaking up, though in an amicable fashion. Just over a year after the end of the war, Anthony and Terry left England to go on their trip all over the world. Terry had managed to convince Anthony of the idea of going somewhere and just living and working there until they'd seen/learned everything they wanted and had made enough money to make it to the next destination. They traveled like this together for quite a while, though eventually Anthony returned to Britain to get back to his real life. Terry himself traveled for years, finally coming back home in late 2003, four and a half years after he'd departed.

Upon finally returning to England, Terry moved into a small, cramped flat in London and took the notes that he'd written over the course of the trip and started working on several books with them: insider travel guides to some of the places that he spent more time in (guides that would send you to the sorts of places to go that give you the real experience of the country or city, not just the tourist traps), as well as histories gathered from the stories of the natives. Once he published his first book in late 2004, he took the money from it and bought a house in Dunmoody, one of the historic Hogsmeade houses that had been moved over to Dunmoody by Elphias Doge, instead of being destroyed. He had specifically wanted one of those houses because of, well, the history.

Shortly after moving into Dunmoody, he ran into ex-girlfriend Parvati. She insisted on going to The Local for some drinks and to catch up. They got drunk, one thing led to another, and one highly ineffective contraception potion later (apparently they don't work when combined with pain potions), Parvati was telling him that she was pregnant, and he was the father. Terry offered to do the right thing and marry her, but she politely turned him down. He asked to at least be involved in the child's life, and that Parvati did grant him. She invited him to all her prenatal appointments, and he got to be there when their son, Jaidhara Patil-Boot (Jay for short), was born. Terry and Parvati share custody of Jay.

While he had saved a lot of money while traveling, due to a rather spartan lifestyle on the road and "roughing it" most of the time, he had a house to maintain and a son to help support, so Terry knew that he needed to set aside his writing / research / travel and get a "real" job. Ultimately, after a bit of a search, Terry got a job as a Spectral Specialist at the Ministry of Magic. Over the nearly five years that he's been there, he's worked his way up in the rankings, earning better cases to work on, with older ghosts. He's not sure if this is really what he wants to be doing for the rest of his career (in fact, he's pretty sure that being a Ministry employee is not how he wants to spend the rest of his career), but for now, it's a great job that pays the bills and gets him in contact with history straight from the horse's mouth.

Personality

To call Terry a geek is to pretty much hit the nail right on the head. He is a geek, and it's something he's come to terms with over the years and completely accepts and owns up to. He is absolutely obsessed with both history and travel, they are his two biggest passions. If he could just travel forever and dig around in the history of places far away, he would be happy. History is something that has always fascinated him, and while he still dreams of one day teaching and showing kids how interesting history really is (instead of boring them to tears, as he saw of his classmates through years of history classes), he is absolutely in love with his job at the moment because it lets him talk history with those who have lived through it and seen it: ghosts.

He is also very interested in sports, an interest he cultivated as a child to try to break out of being the geek who gets bullied. He doesn't play sports so much any more since the Battle of Hogwarts (though he wouldn't say no to kicking a football around a bit!), but he loves watching quidditch matches. His team has always been the Appleby Arrows, though since the Dunmoody Daredevils were founded, he's begun rooting for the home team.

Terry might as well be married to his work, for how much he ever actually gets away from it. He frequently brings work home from the office to work on, and has been known to wake up in the middle of the night to write something down that he had just thought of (though it doesn't always make sense in the morning …). He doesn't like being idle, so he switches that around into just throwing himself into his work. The main exception to this is when he has Jay staying at his house, then his son is his number one priority. So far, there hasn't been too much conflict between his work and his son, and Terry dreads the day when he might have to choose between the two. Just don't ask him about his social life, he doesn't have much of one and has to often be reminded to go out and socialise.

Quirks, Features, and Habits