Hugh Bradley

OOC

Game	Journal	Portrayed By
Pons Novus	hughmorous	Hugh Jackman

Basic Stats

Full Name: Hugh Reynold Bradley
Nickname(s): None
Gender: Male
Age: 48
Date of Birth: August 15, 1979
Zodiac: Leo
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Married to Morag MacDougal (Jan 21, 2006)
Bloodline: Muggleborn
Hometown: Falmouth, Cornwall, England
Current Residence: Cheddar, Somerset, England
House & Year: Ravenclaw 1997
Occupation: Voice actor: Timeturner Tales
Wand: 11 in, cedar, phoenix tail feather
Pet: None

Family

Father: Verne Donald Bradley (muggle; b. November 30, 1945)
Mother: Stella Anne Bradley (née Layton; muggle; b. June 8, 1948)
Brother: Samuel Richard Bradley (wizard; Gryffindor 1995; b. October 23, 1976)
Sister: Chelsea Rachel Bradley (witch; Hufflepuff 2000/1; b. January 16, 1982)

Wife: Morag Iseabail Bradley (née MacDougal; Ravenclaw 1998; b. November 13, 1979)
Son: Mark Aidan Bradley (Ravenclaw 2025; b. November 7, 2006)
Daughter: Holly McKenna Bradley (Hufflepuff 2027; b. April 3, 2009)
Daughter: Melissa Catarina Bradley (Hufflepuff 4th; b. February 14, 2014)

History

3 Significant Moments in Childhood

Middle child: Being the middle child of relatively hands-off parents, Hugh always had a yearning for attention, especially as his older brother was always seen as the golden child and his younger sister as the princess. He felt that he always had to work three times as hard as his siblings to stand out and get his parents' attention.
Troublemaker: Not so much making trouble for others, but for himself. In striving for attention, Hugh took on crazy (and stupid) stunts: jumping off the roof of the house (and breaking his leg); trying to jump his bicycle over a parked car (and breaking his arm); painting the cat blue (and getting scratches all over his arms and face). Nothing he did was ever harmful to others (except maybe the poor cat), just to himself.
Best friend: His best friend in childhood was his next-door neighbour, Mark Cross, who was a year older than him. They spent all their time together, trying to catch frogs at the pond, building a no-girls-allowed fort in Mark's backyard, racing their bicycles up and down the streets of the neighbourhood. It was rare to see one boy without the other, and they were closer than brothers.

3 Significant Moments During School

Discovering magic: To learn that the Bradley siblings were wizards was a shock to the whole family. After Sam got his Hogwarts letter, Hugh anxiously awaited his. He couldn't wait to go to a wizard school and learn spells. Hogwarts certainly didn't disappoint: ghosts and a poltergeist and paintings that talked and staircases that moved! Discovering everything he could do with his newfound birthright was like being outdoors on a mild summer day: pure heaven. Sure, there were other students who sneered at him for his family, but although he bristled at it, he ignored them (for the most part). The magical world was too wonderful for him to let anyone get him down.
Quidditch: Hugh already loved sports before discovering he was a wizard (rugby and football), so when he learned that the wizarding world had their very own sport, of course he had to learn everything he could about it! Finally, in his third year, he tried out for the Ravenclaw quidditch team and secured a spot as a chaser. For a while, he even thought about going into quidditch professionally: it would be a thrill to do that for a living!
Mark's death: In the summer of 1995, while the rest of the wizarding world mourned the sudden death of Cedric Diggory and whispered about whether Voldemort was back or not (and whether or not that Harry Potter kid was a liar), Hugh was just shy of sixteen, and Mark was seventeen, complete with a driving license and a beat up old car. They used the newfound freedom of having a CAR to find all sorts of new ways to have fun that summer, including Mark teaching Hugh how to drive (even though Hugh was too young, legally … who cares about that? It's more fun this way). It was a hot July night that Hugh found himself behind the wheel of Mark's car, careening too fast down a road that had a sudden curve. Hugh missed the curve and the car left the road, rolling over several times before ending up on its roof. Hugh survived the accident with only a concussion and broken wrist, but Mark had been thrown from the car while it was rolling and died. Although Hugh was never charged with Mark's death, he blamed himself endlessly for it, a self-blame that he still holds to this day.

3 Significant Moments Since School

Azkaban: Being muggleborns, the Bradleys were rounded up in the summer of 1997 (just after Hugh had finished school, and between Chelsea's fourth and fifth years), found guilty of magic theft, and sentenced to Azkaban. The year Hugh spent locked up in that prison was hell for him. With the horrible memory of Mark's death already haunting him, and the Dementors draining him of any hope or positive memories, he spiraled into despair. Hugh took to digging his ragged nails into his palms until they bled, to remind himself that he could still feel. By the time he left Azkaban, he was a hollow shell of what he used to be, and it took him the better part of a year to return to any semblance of who he used to be.
WADA & Timeturner Tales: After a year of recovering from Azkaban and bouncing around from job to job, Hugh applied for admission to the Wizarding Academy of Dramatic Arts, to study acting. Acting brought Hugh more release than anything ever had: he could take on the role of somebody completely different and just let his own troubles fall aside. It was liberating to be someone else, even for just a while. In his third year, one of his professors helped him get an audition for a long-running wireless serial, Timeturner Tales. Hugh nailed the audition and secured the role of Ryan Sprecher, a main character on the canvas (Ryan's previous portrayer had just left the show after disagreements with … pretty much everyone involved in the show). Ryan was a fun-loving character who didn't have a worry in his mind beyond his next race, which was a wonderful departure from Hugh's own world.
Morag: Hugh and Morag had become friends back when they were both young students at Hogwarts, both in Ravenclaw. After the war, Morag had been the one constant in Hugh's life, his best friend. Realising that there might be something more to their relationship than just being friends was both terrifying and invigorating: if things didn't work out, he might lose his best friend, but if they did work out … what could be better than falling in love with your best friend?

3 Significant Moments With Morag

Finally dating: After having been best friends for so long, it was a little bit weird for Hugh to suddenly look at Morag different, but a good kind of weird. It was the realisation that Hugh didn't want to imagine life without her that helped him realise he was in love with her. At least they were able to skip right past the awkward "getting to know you" phase of dating, since they had been friends for so long already. It didn't take long for everything about them dating to feel like an altogether natural extension of their time as friends.
Confessing his past: The hardest part of Hugh's relationship with Morag was confessing to her about what he viewed as "I killed my best friend." Nobody in the wizarding world (aside from his siblings) had known about Mark's death that summer, and Hugh had always wanted to keep it that way, but when Morag felt that the horrible secret he was keeping from her, the reason he kept fighting against furthering their relationship, was that he was unfaithful, or that he didn't really love her, Hugh finally broke down and confessed the whole thing. That she accepted his past immediately and didn't blame him took him completely by surprise, and though it furthered his feelings of not being good enough for her, he still realised that this wasn't a burden he had to bear alone.
"Botched" proposal: It was still a while after Hugh confessed to Morag of his past that he finally proposed. He got the ring and kept it hidden for weeks while he tried to plan the perfect, romantic proposal. But one day, both Hugh and Morag had had horrible days at work, and "we should get married" just popped out over dinner. To prove he was serious about it, he summoned the ring from its hiding place and got down on bended knee (in their kitchen!) and asked Morag to be his wife. Luckily, she said yes anyway.

3 Significant Moments in Parenting

Oh, baby: Even after they were married, Hugh still had feelings of inadequacy, of being undeserving. He knew that Morag wanted children, but he was afraid that he would screw them up, or be ignored as a hypocrite for telling his children to not do stupid things, considering his own past. He also felt a little like, after having taken a life, what right did he have to create a new one. When he did find out that he and Morag were expecting a baby (and so soon after the wedding), his nerves kicked into high gear. But the moment he held that little boy in his arms for the first time, he finally felt like he could do this.
What a surprise: Holly is the only one of the Bradley children who was sort-of planned: both Mark and Melissa took their parents by surprise, but especially Melissa, born five years after Holly. Of course, neither Mark nor Melissa was unwanted in any way. Although Hugh had thought their family was already complete with Mark and Holly, Melissa proved that there had been something missing: her. Now their family really was complete.
A father's confession: Hugh battled himself for years over when (and if) he should tell Mark the story of his namesake (he'd always told Mark that he was named after Hugh's best childhood friend, but that was it). Just as he was afraid of what Morag would think, when he had told her the story all those years ago, he was afraid of his son judging him, of hating him. But at the same time, he didn't want Mark to make the same mistakes he had. The summer Mark was home from school between his third and fourth year, Hugh took him to the lake near their house where they'd taught all three children to swim, and where Hugh and Mark sometimes went fishing, and told him the story. It was one of the hardest things Hugh ever did.

Personality

3 Positive Traits

Levity: Hugh has a fantastic sense of humour. He loves to entertain people (which makes his career choice extra-fitting), and frequently says that if he can't make you laugh, he's doing something wrong. He especially loves to try to keep smiles on his wife's and children's faces. He tries to find the lighter side of everything, the silver lining to every dark cloud. He doesn't always succeed, but at least he tries.
Charismatic: Bred out of his childhood desire for attention, Hugh is very good at getting and keeping it. He knows just what to say and do, just when to smile, but it's not in a fake way like politicians: his smiles and actions and comments are genuine (unless he's joking around, but the difference between joking and being genuine is obvious). He generally knows how to recover from saying or doing stupid things.
Deeply caring: Hugh cares deeply about the people who are important to him. Topping that list are his wife, children, siblings, and parents, but his friends make the list, as well. Hugh learned in the car accident that everything can change in an instant; that someone could be alive, breathing, and laughing one minute, and just be gone the next. The war only made that all the more obvious. So Hugh always makes sure that the people he cares about know it, because you never know if you missed your last chance to say so.

3 Negative Traits

Self-blame: Hugh has a habit of blaming himself for everything, even things that were beyond his control. Even if he's been forgiven for something where he was at fault, he holds onto the blame regardless, constantly punishing himself over and over for it. (Example: Mark's parents forgave him for Mark's death and had the charges dropped; Morag forgave him for it; but he still holds onto the blame, even after all these years.) He is able to forgive others for things they do, but he can't ever forgive himself.
Insecurity: Because he blames himself for everything and can't let it go, Hugh often feels undeserving of the things he has, particularly his family. He feels that he has no right to the better things in life because of the things he's done. If he took a life, what right does he have to create life? He also, like nearly any actor, needs reassurance that he's doing his job well. When he's done stage work, negative reviews ate him up inside (over time, he's built up a thicker skin to negative reviews, but they still have a tendency to throw him off his game).
Haunted: For years after the war, Hugh was plagued by vivid nightmares of the accident that killed his friend Mark. Although the nightmares have, for the most part, subsided, they still come back on occasion, particularly when he's stressed or worried about something else. Sometimes, other important people replace Mark in the nightmares of the accident (Morag, the children, his siblings), but it's always the same: Hugh is hopeless to do anything but watch them die. This has resulted in a slight phobia of cars: he won't drive, and hates if he ever has to ride in a car. He's forever nervous of his children traveling in cars, too.

Boggart: Losing his family. It tends to present itself (in his nightmares) in the form of his family being crushed in a mangled-up car.
Mirror of Erised: His childhood best friend Mark, forgiving him for the accident.
What is your character's outlook on life? Generally positive, though Hugh knows that our lives are never as long as we think they'll be, so he tries to make sure that today is the best it can be, and he doesn't put off letting his loved ones know that he loves them.