(no subject)

[solveforx]

GENERAL

NAME: Xavier Madhava Lewis
NICKNAMES: Zav is preferable for friends. Responds to both zay-vyer (correct) and ecks-zay-vee-er (not correct), as well as Javier, Lewis, Lewlew, "Hey, asshole," Madhava and Madh. Mostly just his mom calls him Madh, and he gets pretty bent out of shape when people mispronounce Madhava, so probably just stick to Zav.
AGE/DOB: 17, Aug 5th
BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Male. He/him.
SEXUALITY: There is only one person on this earth for Xavier Lewis, and that person is the inventor of the walkin' taco.
HOMETOWN: Long Island, NY by way of Huntington, West Virginia. His Appalachian accent manifests in a slight nasalization of his vowels, a faint and inconsistent twang and a tendency to mash entire sentences into two or three words - Jeet jet?

CONCEPT: Math genius battles twin demons of gravity and inertia.

PHYSICAL

APPEARANCE:
Zav could do a one man show. A reenactment of the scene from Jaws where they compare their scars. He's got blotchy marks on his arms from compound fractures, faded burn marks from run ins with cooking oil, long old gashes on his legs from surgeries to remove foreign objects and reset bone. There's a blessedly attractive nick on his chin from "getting in a fight with a fence -- you should see the fence." and a hyphen on his forehead where his face had a tete-a-tete with the corner of a wooden table. It's good that he's sturdily built, because otherwise he might've broken in half by now. Even on a good day, he's covered in bruises and scrapes, like he doesn't know the dimensions of his own body.

Despite being a walking disaster, Xavier is still a sharp dresser. Even "disheveled," is a manicured look handcrafted to make you think he is carefree. You can rest assured that loose ties or hanging shirt tails are absolutely purposeful. He's a preener who spends an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror every morning.

While neat and put together, Xavier is not above committing dress code violations in the name of fun, and has been campaigning for a "Senior Jorts Day" since he stepped off the bus this September, saying things like, "Guys, it'll be the THIGHlight of the year!" One can always expect that he will be wearing goofy socks under his uniform. In casual clothes, the meticulous adherence to looking good - so long as it also looks effortless - persists. He's never just wearing t-shirts and jeans. There's always matching shoes, a nice jacket, a couple of necklaces, a scarf--whatever. He's definitely fashion conscious and willing to drop serious dosh to keep up on popular trends. God help us if he lives long enough to see normcore.

HEIGHT: 5'10

PB: Avan Jogia

PERSONALITY

LIKES: Weird sodas, snacks, food trucks, fusion cooking, period action films (westerns and wuxai, especially, which means he has an embarrassing amount of love for the Shanghai Noon line of movies), aquariums (personal and public), saltwater tanks, fashion, needlepoint, mathematics, transmutation, arithmancy, non-base 10 numerical systems

DISLIKES: early mornings, any snow after the first one (one is enough, thanks), wasting food or otherwise disrespecting it (by pooh-poohing something that "looks gross" or "sounds weird"), anything more than a buzz, being confused for a burnout, Divination, feeling pressured, anything that requires him to feel anything more complex than relaxed contentment, political-adjacent types (pundits and brown-nosers)

PERSONALITY:

What do you get when you combine a puppy with a graphing calculator? Hopefully jail time, but probably also Xavier Lewis. Sweet, dumb, endlessly cheerful Xavier Lewis. Friendly and extroverted, a people person through and through, just like his mother (don’t tell him I said that). He’s the sort of person that engages kids standing on the sidelines and encourages them to participate in the fun – whatever “the fun” happens to be at that moment. He rarely has anything bad to say about anyone. Frankly, he rarely has anything of substance to say, period. I’d say at least 55% of the things out of his mouth are actually interjections - “Cool!” “Neat!” “Fascinating!” “*air guitar noises*.” Around campus, he is reputedly a major airhead.

But Xavier’s head isn’t empty. It’s just full of numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. By 9 he was multiplying 8 digit integers in his head. He picked up counting and calculating numbers in base 8 and base 4 the summer after 7th grade. Xavier is a certifiable math genius. A child prodigy. If his parents let him near a computer, he might’ve become quite the programmer. He’s very good at long term memorization, visualizing and problem solving. Not so great at speaking or critical thinking or intuitively socializing. He is easily made victim to mind games and manipulation. He is conscious of these deficits and tries to combat them by being kind. Unfortunately, he also has a habit of putting his foot in his mouth. Just because he’s trying to say the right thing doesn’t mean he always succeeds. He has a particularly obnoxious habit of thinking five or six steps ahead of a current topic in conversation, responding with a non sequitur and then failing to explain himself. Trust me, what he said makes sense to him.

For the most part, Xavier is a laid back dude. He’s game for just about anything. He’s not a worrier. He’s not looking to lead or be the center of attention. He just wants to do his thing and have fun. There are certain things that will set him off, of course – timed tests, being called on in class, his parents, being pressured to do something he doesn’t want to do – and he tends to respond by becoming a superdense, immovable object. Xavier is really good at peaceful resistance. He clams up, shuts people out and withdraws. Thankfully, he comes back from these moods pretty quickly, but man I tell you what it is awkward as hell to deal with him when he’s like that.

If it wasn’t obvious, Xavier is a bit of an eccentric. On top of everything else, he tends to “get ideas” that he has to see through. He’s constantly trying out new skills and discarding them as interest leaves him. Xavier also seems almost pathologically incapable of learning from the mistakes of others. Like he is called by a higher power (the scientific method?) to rigorously test and verify that, yes, that stove is hot, yes, it does hurt more to get hit in the face by nerf darts that have been soaked in water and frozen, no, no one looks good in a fedora. Dare him to do something physical and he will probably try it at least once. It’s as though someone cast Mr. Spock in Jackass. It would probably be best if no one ever let him browse Vine or Youtube. Add on to this the fact that Xavier is inherently clumsy and danger prone and it’s a recipe for disaster. He is constantly sustaining injuries both ordinary and grave and he pushes through each one with a smile-like grimace. As though it’s all in fun.

Xavier is worryingly disengaged about his future. For all his gifts, he seems disinterested in using them for anything more than his own enjoyment. His parents are convinced his post-Gooseberry plans begin and end with “mooching off mom and dad like a lump” which isn’t entirely off the mark. Zav has absolutely no desire to live under his parents’ roof into adulthood, but he would like to take a year off. He tells his parents he’s going to be “a blacksmith’s apprentice at a Renaissance fair” or “a dog wedding photographer” to drive them up a wall, but at the moment his plan is to land a weird job somewhere far away from Long Island, work for a year, and figure himself out. He’s toyed with the idea of attending a muggle college to major in mathematics or statistics, but isn’t sure how to go about doing it – or if doing it will break his mother’s heart.

Xavier tends to gravitate toward people with greater emotional intelligence than him. Which means he really likes all the sensitive souls in Ribbonfin. While he generally thinks positively about himself – I am intelligent. I am also very attractive – he is still conscious of his own short comings and tends to be deferential in friendships. He wants to look up to people rather than feel equal to them. As mentioned previously, he’s pretty easy to manipulate and take advantage of. He wants to please others and has difficulty saying no – to requests, to dares, to whatever. His consistency in following through after agreeing to something is questionable, however. More than once he has found himself in a relationship and promptly discovered he was miserable.

Summary:
+ Literal math genius.
+ Very nice.
+ Resilient.
+ Creative.
= Extroverted. Outgoing.
= Easygoing.
- Poor speaker. Undersharer.
- Flaky.
- Vain.
- Distracted, unfocused. Stuck in his head a lot.
- Easily manipulated.

HISTORY

FAMILY MEMBERS:

Ankita Lewis. Mother. Muggleborn. MACUSA representative for the fine state of West Virginia. She is currently in her third term in the position, and had been involved in politics in local magical communities pretty much from the moment she graduated Ilvermorny. Ankita finds her son's lack of drive maddening, and tends to run hot and cold with him, split between letting him be what he is (something her parents could do for her) and demanding him to fit the ideal political family profile.
David Lewis. Father. Half-blood. A Certified Magical Accountant working in enterprise risk management. David had a shot at pro quodpot, but a knee injury out of school benched him early. Loves his family but is practical to the point of parody and isn't winning any father of the year awards. Constantly bemoans the fact that Xavier acts "like the son of a car salesman."
Nisha Gretchen Lewis. Sister. 13yo. Xavier and Gretchen may as well live on two different planets for as much as they interact. Gretchen is currently attending Ilvermorny in House Wampus. Obviously the favorite child.
Maternal Grandparents. No-Maj. Xavier has no contact with his maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Joshi, muggles who rejected their daughter's fascination with her gifts. His grandfather is a retired university-level Biology professor. His grandmother a homemaker.
Paternal Grandparents. Half-blooded. Ma and Pa Lewis are both metal charmers by trade, making snitches and such. They've retired from steady work and enjoy their retirement taking commission projects that excite them. Xavier will frequently go and stay with them over breaks if it means a bit less supervision.

HISTORY:

Ankita Joshi was a witch. Her parents couldn’t handle that fact, so as soon as she was old enough she stopped going home. She’d bounce between the families of school friends who would put her up for a few weeks at a time over breaks, ingratiating herself to them by being noninvasive and helpful. She’d return from Ilvermorny to Morgantown, West Virginia only when she had no other choice. Practically from the moment it was legal, Ankita held down a job. Once she turned 18, it was out of the house and on her own, leaving the world of muggles behind. Nose to the grindstone thereafter, she split her time between work and volunteering. Ankita focused down a career in politics, starting as an advocate for young witches and wizards rejected by muggle parents and later becoming a scribe for a MACUSA representative.
She met David Lewis at a singles mixer in New York when she was 27 and he was 32. They hit it off and a tremendously boring courtship followed. Each was far too busy for grand gestures. They enjoyed each other well enough and never fought, so they married after a year in a quiet ceremony, settled in Huntington, West Virginia, then went back to focusing on their careers until they were ready for children.

By the time Xavier was born, his mother’s political career was just taking off. She had spent the previous nine months combating the pervasive idea that a pregnant woman is incapable of holding public office, and now that the baby was born there was even more scrutiny to face. Maternity leave did not last long, but Ankita also wasn’t going to shove her child off on a bunch of nannies – she was too image conscious for that. So Xavier got carted around in strollers and babybjorns while his mother shook hands and schmoozed and smiled for the cameras. It looked great in the papers.
Xaviers first years were a stream of fund raisers and press junkets. He became as much a part of his mother’s ensemble as her American flag lapel pin. When he wasn’t being held up for cameras, he spent his time in increasingly spacious green rooms, playing with blocks or crayons or action figures while his mother’s star continued to rise. It tired him out, and he was fussy more often than not, bouncing between irritable and taciturn. His mother smilingly blamed her long hours and complimented her son on "being a trooper" for the cameras, but behind the scenes she was getting worried. He hardly spoke at all. Seemed interested in very little. Always thinking.
David and Ankita took Xavier to all manner of experts, up to and including a muggle child psychologist. The stress of it only made him worse, even as each healer and shrink and mediwitch reported back that he was “just a late bloomer.” The muggle psychologist suggested that – maybe, just maybe – carting such a young child around all day every day was not great for the child. The very idea that it could be their lifestyle and not an inherent deficiency in the child seemed laughable to Xavier’s parents, but, perhaps thankfully, Ankita caught pregnant not long after and was forced to give the psychologist’s prescription of “stability, calm and alone time” a try. His moods improved almost overnight, although he remained quiet. When Nisha was born, it became too much for Ankita to cart two children around, so she finally hired a nanny and enlisted David’s parents in helping.

It was Grandma Lewis who noticed Xavier’s impressive talent for numbers. So impressive was it that at eight, Xavier found himself back in the neutral-painted offices of experts. It didn’t take long to label him a child prodigy, able to calculate eight-digit numbers in his head. From there it was only a matter of time before Xavier’s “talent” got folded into his mother’s campaign aspirations. And that is where the war began.
Xavier was back to parading around fund raisers and press junkets, but now, he wasn’t hanging out in the back. Now, his mother had him out and about, showing off his “little gift” for the nosy reporters and brown nosing lobbyists. That didn’t last long. No mathematical genius necessary to discover that doing the exact opposite of what your mother wants means she won’t drag you out like her performing monkey. Xavier began to cultivate a disengaged, lackadaisical persona specifically to upset his mother. He found he had a hard time shaking it outside of her presence.
Even aside from that, his childhood was tumultuous. He was sent to several different prestigious schools for gifted children before he turned eleven. He floundered in all of them, including Ilvermorny. Based on rumors about Ankita Lewis’ son’s gift, no one was surprised to see him sorted into Horned Serpent...until he actually started taking and failing classes. As more and more unwanted attention was hoisted on Xavier, his sister began to act out, as well.
After a semester at Ilvermorny, a muggleborn professor realized that Xavier needed a steady guiding hand, and worked with him to get him on track. It took a great deal of time and effort. Xavier was never and all star student, but he was no longer flunking out. He wanted desperately to learn and succeed – not for his parents, but for this teacher who seemed to have faith in him. He went out of the way to seek tutoring from his peers, spend extra time in the library. He was starting to succeed.
And then, when he turned twelve, his mother won the West Virginia representative’s seat with MACUSA. The family uprooted their lives and moved to Long Island to be closer to NYC. Xavier was still at Ilvermorny, but the stress of relocating and being suddenly under the microscope of American wizard politics practically sent him back to square one. He started his eccentric, destructive behavior. Photos of him bruised and scraped up or in casts started to surface. It was all from his clumsy escapades, of course, but rumors still swirled. The final straw came when a local tabloid published an article questioning whether “Representative Lewis’ Genius Son” was “Actually a Dunce.”

Gooseberry may have been interested in taking on Xavier based on his math skills, alone, but a sizable and annually renewed donation from the Lewis family ensured his enrollment. They sent him there because “a smaller school meant more individual attention” and “a unique setting would help him home his gifts” and also because Xavier was an embarrassment and Gooseberry was out of the way. Xavier started there as a freshman, joining many of his fellow former Ilvermorny students. The smaller classes and more relaxed setting did wonders for Xavier, and though he struggled, as he always did, it was not so severe.
His first year was an adventure of keeping all his ducks in a row and causing himself grievous bodily harm through ridiculous antics. He became well acquainted with Healer Mufferaw, had his classes switched out mid-year “to accommodate his gifts” (i.e. keep him from failing out) and joined any club that would have him. His sophomore year, he made the quidditch team, then failed to meet grade requirements, then got the grades back up, then rejoined quidditch, then promptly sustained a significant head injury that benched him. His parents forbade him from rejoining, fearing what another concussion might do, but that lasted only through the rest of sophomore year. Junior year was as uneventful as a year with a hip dislocation can be (he “slipped down a flight of icy stairs” which may or may not have been tied to some more elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that did not come to fruition).

Xavier broke his leg "doing kung fu" in his back yard right before his senior year started and spent most of the first half of the year trying to remember what he did with his journal. Over winter break, he somehow managed to break his arm playing a pick up cricket game.

SCHOOL

YEAR: Senior
HOUSE: Ribbonfin (Horned Serpent at Ilvermorny)
SORTING:
Coppertale came on a bit too strong, and Ebonhide was entirely too serious. It was a tight match between Azurcrest and Ribbonfin, but Ribbonfin was, of all the houses, the least interested in “bringing out” some quality that Xavier had hidden inside of him and told him he could just be himself among the fishes. After about three minutes in the cave, Xavier emerged and joined his fellow trouts.
WAND: Catalpa, Unicorn Hair, 13", very bendy
FAMILIAR: A Great Horned Owl named Jessica Albatross. Just call her Alba.

CLASSES: Hermeticism, History of Magic, Potions, Transfiguration, Astronomy, Magical Rudiments, Animagus Studies (Pangolin), Independent Study - Arithmancy, focusing on the predictive power of numbers, under Ms. Vector
SENIOR PROJECT: Developing Arithmantic Models for Numerical Animagus Prediction.
Xavier has been both studying, himself (and his classmates, if they consen), and gleaning information about registered animagi to develop a linear arithmantic model to determine the measures of successful animagus transformation. He’s basically producing a lot of raw data that someone, some day, may be able to use for say...determining a person’s overall chance for success or what animal a person might become before they even begin studying.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE:
Xavier is more widely known for having his quidditch eligibility constantly called into question than he is for being a math genius. Most people think the math genius thing is just a joke. He has a light course load, whittled down to the classes he can best manage, and he still struggles. Xavier has trouble focusing in class, crumples under the pressure of timed tests and tends to choke when called on. Critical thinking does not come naturally and anything that requires tapping into intuitive feeling is right out - forget about patronus summoning.
He's come a long way under the patient guiding hand of Mr. Hightower. Zav really knocks it out of the park when he's in his element. He functions best in classes where precision is important - Transfiguration, Potions, Hermeticism. Transfiguration, in particular, is easily his best class, a fact that may boggle his peers, but he still seeks tutoring for almost everything else. "Tutoring" in Magical Rudiments is usually just an excuse to get some food.

EXTRACURRICULARS: Quidditch (Reserve); Boating; LARP; Dueling & Fencing; inconsistently shows up for Gaming Club whenever someone is naive enough to let him play Dungeons & Dragons with them (he is a min-maxing asshole)

OOC

NAME: Jenny
EMAIL: tiny kitty feet aatt gmail dot com
CDJ: werewolfboyfran
OTHER PREFERRED CONTACT: Steam messenger is the fastest way to reach me: steamcommunity.com/id/motherfuckin_keytar. Yes I am super classy thank you for saying so. If you add me, just leave me a message in my dropbox or email.
TIME ZONE: EST