Post by Luca Xiao Song on Nov 12, 2012 11:47:48 GMT -5
Name: Luca Xiao Song
Age: 15
Birthdate/place: 01/02/2031; Hong Kong
Species: human/squib
Gender: male
Family:
Father: Daan Van Gelht, 35(muggle – whereabouts unknown)
Mother: Jiu Lee Song, 32 (human – squib)
Half-brother: Zhane Marx Sian Song, 5 (wizard – half blood)
Appearance:
Hair: dark brown
Eyes: dark brown
Build/height- slender/5’10”
General Description- Luca is on the tall side, for his age, and very slender. His skin is a beautiful café au lait shade, a mix of his Caucasian and Chinese/Korean parentage. His almond shaped eyes are a very dark brown, just like his mom’s, and his hair is a slightly lighter shade of dark brown than hers. Usually, he prefers to wear his hair longish, about shoulder length or a little above. He has multiple piercings in his ears and lower lip, and has three tattoos – a dragon on his right shoulder, another on the inside of his left forearm and one that is the Chinese pictograph for life on his right lower back. For clothing, he isn’t too into styling and throughout most of his life he hasn’t had the funds or connections to obtain poplar brand labels. For a good part of his life, he has worn hand me downs and donated clothing from church clothing closets or the like. But when he does get his hands on something nice, he takes very good care of it and he can be kind of picky and ultra-careful about any possession he has that has value – either monetary or sentimental.
Possessions- Mostly Luca has just the clothes on his back and what can be stuffed in a duffle bag. He’s tried to hold on to things that he considers important or precious, but life just hasn’t been too cooperative in that way.
Personality:
Temperment/Mental Attributes- Luca is, on the surface, a very quiet boy, prone to observing the world more than participating. Part of this stems from the fact that he is hyper-vigilant, despite things in his chaotic life having calmed down in the past few years. The recent events of the late spring/summer, though, have once again turned his world on its ear and he is back in crisis stabilization mode. He’s overly mature for his age and is a very responsible, reliable person, often acting more like a 35 year old than a fifteen year old. This doesn’t mean that he isn’t still a teenage boy, though, with all the ‘normal’ needs and inner confusion that most boys his age can feel. This paradox can cause turmoil sometimes, for when he allows himself to act like a kid, he feels guilty, as if he is letting everyone down. (everyone at this point in his life meaning basically his little brother, Zhane) Luca is intelligent, perceptive and highly intuitive – again, a lifetime of having to watch everyone really carefully and try to stay ten steps ahead of the adults in his life have him constantly analyzing and worrying over situations. One facet of his personality that often surprises people (read – adults) is how stubborn he can be, though he isn’t outwardly rebellious or defiant. When necessary, his path is one of craft and subterfuge – when he sees something about to go down which he doesn’t want, he will go to great lengths to make sure he, and Zhane, aren’t there when things blow up. Again, as life has been slightly less rocky in the past several years, this constant strategizing probably isn’t as necessary as it used to be. But it seems to be something Luca has a very hard time turning off. Now, with the two of them having been suddenly, out of the blue, introduced to the wizarding world, Luca is once again extremely apprehensive about what the grown ups are planning to do with them.
Overall, when he isn’t stressing over how to survive yet another wave of adversity, he is a pleasant, quiet, solitary kind of boy who doesn’t make overt waves and who is generally helpful, polite and cooperative – except for when he is being sneaky and pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes.
Alliance- His family – which would just be Zhane and his mom
Alignment- neutral
Employment&Education:
-Students- n/a as he is a squib
House-
Year-
OWLs/NEWTs-
Other:
Magical Skills- n/a
Patronus- n/a
Wand- n/a
Goals/Aspirations- Luca would like to go to art school one day and then be an artist of some sort, though he isn’t quire sure how this will fit into now being part of the wizarding world – though an imperfect part (in his view). His most immediate goal is making sure he and Zhane aren’t separated. He would like, one day to somehow be reunited with their mom.
Other Information- Though technically not an orphan, as his squib mother is still alive and his muggle father might be alive (no-one knows where he is), Luca, and Zhane, are now wards of the Harkness Home for wizard children, having been brought there in early summer, 2036.
History-
Luca’s story actually begins with his maternal grandmother, Chen. She came from an ancient and pureblood Chinese wizarding family. Chen was born in Hong Kong. Her father, however, moved the family for a while to England, and ultimately Chen received a letter to attend Hogwarts. She was sorted into Ravenclaw, and did very well. By the time she graduated, the family had moved back to Hong Kong so it was there that she began her adult life. She had a great passion for art – painting in particular – and she chose that as her career, despite the inherent risks of trying to make a living at it. Soon enough, she met and fell in love with a man – a gallery owner. Unfortunately, from her family’s point of view, he was a muggle, and Korean. Chen didn’t care – she was in love – and she eventually married him. Her family basically disowned her at this point, and she had very few interactions with them.
Chen was very happy otherwise, and within a few years, she gave birth to a daughter, Jiu. Jiu was a cute, happy child, for the most part, and Chen eagerly looked for signs of the magical skills most wizard children would begin to display at certain ages. So did Chen’s family, whose interest was sparked by the arrival of a granddaughter, who might make up for the ‘transgressions’ of their daughter. But over the course of ten years, Jiu showed no signs whatsoever of magic. When Jiu turned eleven, she received no invitation to attend a wizarding school. Chen was dumbfounded but tried to hide her disappointment. Jiu was a squib, and would never know the wonder of magic. Jiu’s grandparents made no effort whatsoever to come to terms with this child’s ‘imperfection.’ They cut off all ties with Chen and Jiu, with no thought or care for how this rejection might effect the little girl.
Of course, this was a very confusing, befuddling and humiliating occurrence for Jiu. The disappointment that Chen thought she hid so well, was still apparent to Jiu. The absolute cutting of all ties with her grandparents was devastating. Jiu was never able to reconcile any of this internally, and of course, blamed herself and her lack of magical skills as making her undesirable, unworthy, unlovable. When she hit her mid-teens, she began to self-medicate with first booze and then other drugs, and engaged in other self-destructive behaviors. When she was seventeen, she became pregnant. The father was a muggle, a club DJ from South Africa, who wanted nothing to do with Jiu once she told him about the impending child. Jiu’s parents encouraged her to have an abortion, but Jiu was adamant – she wanted this child.
So, when Luca came into this world, his mother held him close and promised to love him beyond all things, in a way that she felt she never had been loved, because of her fatal flaw of being non-magical. She gave him his father’s middle name as his first name, and the rest was a combination of Chinese (Xiao) and her own Korean last name (Song). Still living at home, Jiu tried to be a good and loving mother. But she wasn’t really well equipped to do so. Soon enough, she was drawn back into the party scene, and left the day to day care of her son to her parents. That was probably a good thing, for her substance abuse began to spiral out of control. Finally, when Luca was about two, his grandparents convinced Jiu to go into a rehab facility. She came out sober and things were looking up.
Then tragedy struck. Jiu’s parents were both killed in a car crash, and Jiu and Luca were left really without anyone. Jiu’s Chinese family remained incommunicado and her father’s family were all back in Korea. Jiu had few to no life skills, and soon enough, she and her little son were living basically on the streets. Jiu did contact Luca’s dad, who was back in South Africa, and he gave her a tepid invitation to come stay with him. She and Luca hopped on a plane, and landed in Joburg. Luca was just turning three.
For the next seven years, Luca led a chaotic life of ever changing cheap flats, or couch surfing with mom’s friends, and sometimes being parked with his dad, though never for very long. Jiu worked sporadically, drank a lot and was addicted to pills. Social services was in and out of the picture, and once she messed up enough that they actually took Luca, for a few weeks. He was six at the time and he swore, to himself, that was never going to happen again.
So, at the ripe old age of six, Luca began to teach himself how to take care of his mom – how to make her look like a functioning adult, so that the damned social workers would keep their bloody noses out of their lives. He learned to cook, to do the laundry, to shop, to use public transport, to get himself to and from school. He even learned to steal his mom’s money and squirrel it away so that the rent could get paid or some food could be had. In some ways, his efforts were rewarded by some half-hearted attempts by Jiu to shape up, for her son’s sake. Though just as often, he would spend a night or two sleeping at a friend’s house to avoid his drunken and angry mom who was demanding her money back – so she could go get even more drunk. He learned how to read Jiu like a book, and he learned to read other adults too. He learned if he played their games the right way, he could win, and they wouldn’t take him away from his broken mother. His father disappeared again – though it turned out he had moved to back to Hong Kong. Word came eventually that he had been sent to prison for a very long time for trafficking charges. But who cared? On most days, Luca was able to keep things under control, and he actually saw his life as being pretty normal. And hard as it might be to believe, he really, really loved his mom and through all of this, his focus was trying to stay with her. His greatest fear was that he would lose her, and then she would lose herself. He felt totally responsible for her.
When Luca was nine, his mom turned up pregnant again. Despite a seemingly never-ending string of horrible boyfriends in the intervening years, this time around, Jiu was convinced the baby daddy – Marx Lowell – was her forever man. Marx was from England, and had moved to South Africa to work at a pharmaceutical company. He had found it useful to give out “samples” of his company’s products to lure women to his bed. Poor deluded Jiu! When she happily told him that he would be a father in six months, he about blew a gasket and almost throttled her. Luca spent a good month trying to figure out where he could get his hands on a gun so he could go blow Marx away. But Marx’s company had discovered what he was up to, amongst other unsavory activities, and he got fired and had to return to England. It seems that others were, like Luca, pissed off at him for various things and someone got to him, and he wound up floating in the Thames.
In due course, Jiu gave birth to another boy – whom she named Zhane Marx Sian Song. Luca adamantly refused to let her name his brother Marx, as a first name, but she snuck it in there as his middle name. Sian was his Chinese name. Immediately, Luca put himself in charge of little Zhane, and made sure his hopeless mom didn’t accidentally or negligently kill him or forget to feed him or fail to get his vaccinations. Once again, they began a dance with social services, Luca constantly trying to stay at least one step ahead of the system, determined to keep the three of them together. It was getting tougher and tougher. Jiu was really going downhill fast, with Marx’s desertion. And then, as Luca’s eleventh birthday approached, Jiu just lost it. For weeks, she seemed obsessed with the mail, constantly asking Luca if he had gotten a letter, sometimes a dozen times a day. As if an eleven year old boy got letters! Finally, after a month of this, Jiu seemed to collapse into herself. She began to ramble on and on, when she was high or stoned or drunk – about ‘magic.’ She would grab a terrified Luca and hold him tightly, mumbling about ‘squids’, though she pronounced the word wrong. Luca was totally confused and could only take her behavior for proof that she really was going off the deep end. She had quit working altogether They were booted out of their slummy flat and had to live on the streets, moving from one homeless shelter to another. They actually left Joburg and that was a fatal mistake – Luca knew this. When he failed to show up in school, they went looking for Jiu. Some three months after his birthday, the social workers found the three of them, camped out in a wrecked car near a dump. The jig was up. It had been a good run, but there was to be no more running.
Jiu, half out of her mind, was committed to a state psychiatric hospital. The boys were placed in temporary foster care – at least they were together – while a search was made for relatives. The only one that could be located (and who showed any interest) was Marx’s little old mum, who lives in Liverpool, England. She was Zhane’s gran – but not Luca’s. Would she take both boys, social services asked. They really should be kept together. Marion Lowell agreed – both boys could come to her, as long as the government helped with their expenses. Well, of course – that was part of the deal.
So, with his almost two year old brother in his arms, accompanied by a pinch faced woman who was excited about getting to fly to the UK, Luca moved to England. Life suddenly became quite tranquil. Nana Marion was a nice enough lady, though she obviously was much more interested in her dead son’s little boy and not his half-brother. But she wasn’t mean, or grudging, and Luca was able to settle in to life being a pre-teen, and then a teen, in a not so wonderful neighborhood in Liverpool. Of course, he missed his mother terribly – both boys did, at first. But little Zhane seemed to forget poor Jiu more and more as the months passed, despite Luca’s efforts to keep reminding him of their mum. There had been some talk of a reunification plan, but that never really materialized. Apparently, once committed, Jiu just deteriorated even more and became fairly catatonic.
Luca’s sadness over the loss of his mother was also diverted by some alarming developments in regards to Zhane. As his little brother left his toddler years and became of pre-school age, from time to time, strange things would happen. Strange things. Silly things. Scary things. But somehow, Zhane was making them happen, as far as Luca could tell. Luca never told anyone – of course - because he was convinced that Zhane’s odd behavior was some early symptomology of what his mother suffered from. He was terrified that Zhane was…crazy, just like Jiu. Luca made sure to cover his brother’s tracks, and not let anyone know, and he kept an eagle eye on Zhane. He was so afraid.
Then one day, about a year ago, it finally happened. The two boys were out at the shops, picking up some groceries, and Zhane saw a toy car he wanted. It was an expensive remote control one – more for a hobbiest than a little boy. Luca of course told Zhane they didn’t have any money for such a thing. They left the store, with Zhane protesting loudly, and, unbeknownst to Luca, so did the car, floating in the air after them. They got as far as the bus stop before Luca noticed it, and grabbed for it, just as several onlookers were staring at him. Luca was in a panic – he wanted to return it but how could he explain the little boy getting out of the store with such a big box and he, the fourteen year old, never noticed? So he dithered as Zhane clamored for it and quite unfortunately, a nosy bystander called the police. A panda car had pulled up to the kerb before the bus did and two cops hopped out – with nothing better to do than hassle a young boy. With Zhane there, Luca knew he couldn’t outrun them, so he tried to explain that his little brother had – innocently – taken the car. The cops took one look at the little four year old and immediately took Luca into custody. They asked Zhane if his brother had taken the car and Zhane just looked at them with huge eyes. They marched Luca to the store and asked a lot of questions there and finally determined they had enough to lodge charges against him. The car was worth enough that it was a big deal, apparently, though how the thing was snuck out of the place no-one was able to explain. One old woman claimed to have seen it floating in mid-air but that was dismissed as just attention seeking on her part. Eventually, Nana Marion was summoned and she took Zhane off home and Luca was taken to the juvenile facility and charged and processed and released back to her. Once he got to court, he was put on a diversion that would last a year. That year is just about up.
Nana Marion was pretty nice about the whole thing. She somehow got it in her head that the police had nabbed the wrong boy – despite Luca being caught with the bloody thing in his hands. Anyway, things settled back down and no more was said of it. Life went on as before, and it seemed that the boys were destined to live there in relative peace with Nana Marion until they were grown
Um, no…
In the late spring of 2036, Nana Marion passed away, out of the blue. She had an undetectable brain aneurism and it just blew one day. She dropped in her tracks. Social services was back on the scene, and once again, it seemed a search for relatives would begin – a fruitless one no doubt.
Finally, perhaps long after it should have, the wizarding world stepped into the boys’ lives. They had always been somewhere on the radar – first in Hong Kong, and then in South Africa, and then when they moved to England. For the first ten years of Luca’s life, there had just been him and his mom – and they were both squibs. So, really, why drag the boy into the wizarding world at all? At least, that’s what people were saying now about decisions that had been made, or left unmade, then. Then Zhane had come along, and still, the boys had their mom, though her parenting abilities were questionable. That resolved itself, though, when they went to Zhane’s gran, who was a muggle, but they seemed stable. There was an uncomfortable feeling about it all – as if maybe someone had dropped a ball somewhere. Now, though, with the children at risk of being placed with real strangers, the Ministry finally acted.
To Luca, it all seemed like a strange dream – a nightmare in some ways - that night the wizarding social workers showed up, along with a couple of hitwizards, and removed the two brothers stealthily from the Muggle house they were living in. Flying through the night – on brooms! Seriously. Luca thought he finally had gone off the deep end, like Jiu. He was numb, and bemused, and underneath that, terrified, as they were taken to Harkness House - for wizarding children whose parents were dead or otherwise – unavailable? Unsuitable? Too unstable? Whatever the entry parameters were, Luca and Zhane were welcomed with open arms. That was in July.
It would take a novel to describe Luca’s complete and utter amazement at what he was discovering – an entire new world – and one where all those crazy things that had happened with Zhane were starting to make sense. Suffice it to say, he was suffering from culture shock, big time, and of course, he still is. Finally, the meaning of the word ‘squib’ was explained to him. His little brother was a wizard – and he wasn’t. He was being brought into a world where he didn’t fit. His fear of losing Zhane has gone through the ceiling because of this. His brain is reeling, and his sense of identity is completely wack, but Luca is the type of boy to always try to take things in stride and figure out a survival strategy. His main concern isn’t himself anyway – it’s Zhane, and he’s terribly worried that someone might decide to separate them further still, and allow Zhane to be adopted by some wizarding family. If that is proposed, he’s going to go down fighting, he has made this his silent vow. They will take Zhane away from him over his dead body, literally. But, so far, the Harknesses have assured Luca that this will not be allowed to happen. For a boy with real trust issues, these words don’t necessarily equate to a promise set in stone.
For now, though, Luca is trying to keep his head down, his spirits up, and his sanity intact, as he learns about the wizarding world and all that he has missed over the past fifteen years, and how in the hell he is going to fit into it…or not.
Age: 15
Birthdate/place: 01/02/2031; Hong Kong
Species: human/squib
Gender: male
Family:
Father: Daan Van Gelht, 35(muggle – whereabouts unknown)
Mother: Jiu Lee Song, 32 (human – squib)
Half-brother: Zhane Marx Sian Song, 5 (wizard – half blood)
Appearance:
Hair: dark brown
Eyes: dark brown
Build/height- slender/5’10”
General Description- Luca is on the tall side, for his age, and very slender. His skin is a beautiful café au lait shade, a mix of his Caucasian and Chinese/Korean parentage. His almond shaped eyes are a very dark brown, just like his mom’s, and his hair is a slightly lighter shade of dark brown than hers. Usually, he prefers to wear his hair longish, about shoulder length or a little above. He has multiple piercings in his ears and lower lip, and has three tattoos – a dragon on his right shoulder, another on the inside of his left forearm and one that is the Chinese pictograph for life on his right lower back. For clothing, he isn’t too into styling and throughout most of his life he hasn’t had the funds or connections to obtain poplar brand labels. For a good part of his life, he has worn hand me downs and donated clothing from church clothing closets or the like. But when he does get his hands on something nice, he takes very good care of it and he can be kind of picky and ultra-careful about any possession he has that has value – either monetary or sentimental.
Possessions- Mostly Luca has just the clothes on his back and what can be stuffed in a duffle bag. He’s tried to hold on to things that he considers important or precious, but life just hasn’t been too cooperative in that way.
Personality:
Temperment/Mental Attributes- Luca is, on the surface, a very quiet boy, prone to observing the world more than participating. Part of this stems from the fact that he is hyper-vigilant, despite things in his chaotic life having calmed down in the past few years. The recent events of the late spring/summer, though, have once again turned his world on its ear and he is back in crisis stabilization mode. He’s overly mature for his age and is a very responsible, reliable person, often acting more like a 35 year old than a fifteen year old. This doesn’t mean that he isn’t still a teenage boy, though, with all the ‘normal’ needs and inner confusion that most boys his age can feel. This paradox can cause turmoil sometimes, for when he allows himself to act like a kid, he feels guilty, as if he is letting everyone down. (everyone at this point in his life meaning basically his little brother, Zhane) Luca is intelligent, perceptive and highly intuitive – again, a lifetime of having to watch everyone really carefully and try to stay ten steps ahead of the adults in his life have him constantly analyzing and worrying over situations. One facet of his personality that often surprises people (read – adults) is how stubborn he can be, though he isn’t outwardly rebellious or defiant. When necessary, his path is one of craft and subterfuge – when he sees something about to go down which he doesn’t want, he will go to great lengths to make sure he, and Zhane, aren’t there when things blow up. Again, as life has been slightly less rocky in the past several years, this constant strategizing probably isn’t as necessary as it used to be. But it seems to be something Luca has a very hard time turning off. Now, with the two of them having been suddenly, out of the blue, introduced to the wizarding world, Luca is once again extremely apprehensive about what the grown ups are planning to do with them.
Overall, when he isn’t stressing over how to survive yet another wave of adversity, he is a pleasant, quiet, solitary kind of boy who doesn’t make overt waves and who is generally helpful, polite and cooperative – except for when he is being sneaky and pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes.
Alliance- His family – which would just be Zhane and his mom
Alignment- neutral
Employment&Education:
-Students- n/a as he is a squib
House-
Year-
OWLs/NEWTs-
Other:
Magical Skills- n/a
Patronus- n/a
Wand- n/a
Goals/Aspirations- Luca would like to go to art school one day and then be an artist of some sort, though he isn’t quire sure how this will fit into now being part of the wizarding world – though an imperfect part (in his view). His most immediate goal is making sure he and Zhane aren’t separated. He would like, one day to somehow be reunited with their mom.
Other Information- Though technically not an orphan, as his squib mother is still alive and his muggle father might be alive (no-one knows where he is), Luca, and Zhane, are now wards of the Harkness Home for wizard children, having been brought there in early summer, 2036.
History-
Luca’s story actually begins with his maternal grandmother, Chen. She came from an ancient and pureblood Chinese wizarding family. Chen was born in Hong Kong. Her father, however, moved the family for a while to England, and ultimately Chen received a letter to attend Hogwarts. She was sorted into Ravenclaw, and did very well. By the time she graduated, the family had moved back to Hong Kong so it was there that she began her adult life. She had a great passion for art – painting in particular – and she chose that as her career, despite the inherent risks of trying to make a living at it. Soon enough, she met and fell in love with a man – a gallery owner. Unfortunately, from her family’s point of view, he was a muggle, and Korean. Chen didn’t care – she was in love – and she eventually married him. Her family basically disowned her at this point, and she had very few interactions with them.
Chen was very happy otherwise, and within a few years, she gave birth to a daughter, Jiu. Jiu was a cute, happy child, for the most part, and Chen eagerly looked for signs of the magical skills most wizard children would begin to display at certain ages. So did Chen’s family, whose interest was sparked by the arrival of a granddaughter, who might make up for the ‘transgressions’ of their daughter. But over the course of ten years, Jiu showed no signs whatsoever of magic. When Jiu turned eleven, she received no invitation to attend a wizarding school. Chen was dumbfounded but tried to hide her disappointment. Jiu was a squib, and would never know the wonder of magic. Jiu’s grandparents made no effort whatsoever to come to terms with this child’s ‘imperfection.’ They cut off all ties with Chen and Jiu, with no thought or care for how this rejection might effect the little girl.
Of course, this was a very confusing, befuddling and humiliating occurrence for Jiu. The disappointment that Chen thought she hid so well, was still apparent to Jiu. The absolute cutting of all ties with her grandparents was devastating. Jiu was never able to reconcile any of this internally, and of course, blamed herself and her lack of magical skills as making her undesirable, unworthy, unlovable. When she hit her mid-teens, she began to self-medicate with first booze and then other drugs, and engaged in other self-destructive behaviors. When she was seventeen, she became pregnant. The father was a muggle, a club DJ from South Africa, who wanted nothing to do with Jiu once she told him about the impending child. Jiu’s parents encouraged her to have an abortion, but Jiu was adamant – she wanted this child.
So, when Luca came into this world, his mother held him close and promised to love him beyond all things, in a way that she felt she never had been loved, because of her fatal flaw of being non-magical. She gave him his father’s middle name as his first name, and the rest was a combination of Chinese (Xiao) and her own Korean last name (Song). Still living at home, Jiu tried to be a good and loving mother. But she wasn’t really well equipped to do so. Soon enough, she was drawn back into the party scene, and left the day to day care of her son to her parents. That was probably a good thing, for her substance abuse began to spiral out of control. Finally, when Luca was about two, his grandparents convinced Jiu to go into a rehab facility. She came out sober and things were looking up.
Then tragedy struck. Jiu’s parents were both killed in a car crash, and Jiu and Luca were left really without anyone. Jiu’s Chinese family remained incommunicado and her father’s family were all back in Korea. Jiu had few to no life skills, and soon enough, she and her little son were living basically on the streets. Jiu did contact Luca’s dad, who was back in South Africa, and he gave her a tepid invitation to come stay with him. She and Luca hopped on a plane, and landed in Joburg. Luca was just turning three.
For the next seven years, Luca led a chaotic life of ever changing cheap flats, or couch surfing with mom’s friends, and sometimes being parked with his dad, though never for very long. Jiu worked sporadically, drank a lot and was addicted to pills. Social services was in and out of the picture, and once she messed up enough that they actually took Luca, for a few weeks. He was six at the time and he swore, to himself, that was never going to happen again.
So, at the ripe old age of six, Luca began to teach himself how to take care of his mom – how to make her look like a functioning adult, so that the damned social workers would keep their bloody noses out of their lives. He learned to cook, to do the laundry, to shop, to use public transport, to get himself to and from school. He even learned to steal his mom’s money and squirrel it away so that the rent could get paid or some food could be had. In some ways, his efforts were rewarded by some half-hearted attempts by Jiu to shape up, for her son’s sake. Though just as often, he would spend a night or two sleeping at a friend’s house to avoid his drunken and angry mom who was demanding her money back – so she could go get even more drunk. He learned how to read Jiu like a book, and he learned to read other adults too. He learned if he played their games the right way, he could win, and they wouldn’t take him away from his broken mother. His father disappeared again – though it turned out he had moved to back to Hong Kong. Word came eventually that he had been sent to prison for a very long time for trafficking charges. But who cared? On most days, Luca was able to keep things under control, and he actually saw his life as being pretty normal. And hard as it might be to believe, he really, really loved his mom and through all of this, his focus was trying to stay with her. His greatest fear was that he would lose her, and then she would lose herself. He felt totally responsible for her.
When Luca was nine, his mom turned up pregnant again. Despite a seemingly never-ending string of horrible boyfriends in the intervening years, this time around, Jiu was convinced the baby daddy – Marx Lowell – was her forever man. Marx was from England, and had moved to South Africa to work at a pharmaceutical company. He had found it useful to give out “samples” of his company’s products to lure women to his bed. Poor deluded Jiu! When she happily told him that he would be a father in six months, he about blew a gasket and almost throttled her. Luca spent a good month trying to figure out where he could get his hands on a gun so he could go blow Marx away. But Marx’s company had discovered what he was up to, amongst other unsavory activities, and he got fired and had to return to England. It seems that others were, like Luca, pissed off at him for various things and someone got to him, and he wound up floating in the Thames.
In due course, Jiu gave birth to another boy – whom she named Zhane Marx Sian Song. Luca adamantly refused to let her name his brother Marx, as a first name, but she snuck it in there as his middle name. Sian was his Chinese name. Immediately, Luca put himself in charge of little Zhane, and made sure his hopeless mom didn’t accidentally or negligently kill him or forget to feed him or fail to get his vaccinations. Once again, they began a dance with social services, Luca constantly trying to stay at least one step ahead of the system, determined to keep the three of them together. It was getting tougher and tougher. Jiu was really going downhill fast, with Marx’s desertion. And then, as Luca’s eleventh birthday approached, Jiu just lost it. For weeks, she seemed obsessed with the mail, constantly asking Luca if he had gotten a letter, sometimes a dozen times a day. As if an eleven year old boy got letters! Finally, after a month of this, Jiu seemed to collapse into herself. She began to ramble on and on, when she was high or stoned or drunk – about ‘magic.’ She would grab a terrified Luca and hold him tightly, mumbling about ‘squids’, though she pronounced the word wrong. Luca was totally confused and could only take her behavior for proof that she really was going off the deep end. She had quit working altogether They were booted out of their slummy flat and had to live on the streets, moving from one homeless shelter to another. They actually left Joburg and that was a fatal mistake – Luca knew this. When he failed to show up in school, they went looking for Jiu. Some three months after his birthday, the social workers found the three of them, camped out in a wrecked car near a dump. The jig was up. It had been a good run, but there was to be no more running.
Jiu, half out of her mind, was committed to a state psychiatric hospital. The boys were placed in temporary foster care – at least they were together – while a search was made for relatives. The only one that could be located (and who showed any interest) was Marx’s little old mum, who lives in Liverpool, England. She was Zhane’s gran – but not Luca’s. Would she take both boys, social services asked. They really should be kept together. Marion Lowell agreed – both boys could come to her, as long as the government helped with their expenses. Well, of course – that was part of the deal.
So, with his almost two year old brother in his arms, accompanied by a pinch faced woman who was excited about getting to fly to the UK, Luca moved to England. Life suddenly became quite tranquil. Nana Marion was a nice enough lady, though she obviously was much more interested in her dead son’s little boy and not his half-brother. But she wasn’t mean, or grudging, and Luca was able to settle in to life being a pre-teen, and then a teen, in a not so wonderful neighborhood in Liverpool. Of course, he missed his mother terribly – both boys did, at first. But little Zhane seemed to forget poor Jiu more and more as the months passed, despite Luca’s efforts to keep reminding him of their mum. There had been some talk of a reunification plan, but that never really materialized. Apparently, once committed, Jiu just deteriorated even more and became fairly catatonic.
Luca’s sadness over the loss of his mother was also diverted by some alarming developments in regards to Zhane. As his little brother left his toddler years and became of pre-school age, from time to time, strange things would happen. Strange things. Silly things. Scary things. But somehow, Zhane was making them happen, as far as Luca could tell. Luca never told anyone – of course - because he was convinced that Zhane’s odd behavior was some early symptomology of what his mother suffered from. He was terrified that Zhane was…crazy, just like Jiu. Luca made sure to cover his brother’s tracks, and not let anyone know, and he kept an eagle eye on Zhane. He was so afraid.
Then one day, about a year ago, it finally happened. The two boys were out at the shops, picking up some groceries, and Zhane saw a toy car he wanted. It was an expensive remote control one – more for a hobbiest than a little boy. Luca of course told Zhane they didn’t have any money for such a thing. They left the store, with Zhane protesting loudly, and, unbeknownst to Luca, so did the car, floating in the air after them. They got as far as the bus stop before Luca noticed it, and grabbed for it, just as several onlookers were staring at him. Luca was in a panic – he wanted to return it but how could he explain the little boy getting out of the store with such a big box and he, the fourteen year old, never noticed? So he dithered as Zhane clamored for it and quite unfortunately, a nosy bystander called the police. A panda car had pulled up to the kerb before the bus did and two cops hopped out – with nothing better to do than hassle a young boy. With Zhane there, Luca knew he couldn’t outrun them, so he tried to explain that his little brother had – innocently – taken the car. The cops took one look at the little four year old and immediately took Luca into custody. They asked Zhane if his brother had taken the car and Zhane just looked at them with huge eyes. They marched Luca to the store and asked a lot of questions there and finally determined they had enough to lodge charges against him. The car was worth enough that it was a big deal, apparently, though how the thing was snuck out of the place no-one was able to explain. One old woman claimed to have seen it floating in mid-air but that was dismissed as just attention seeking on her part. Eventually, Nana Marion was summoned and she took Zhane off home and Luca was taken to the juvenile facility and charged and processed and released back to her. Once he got to court, he was put on a diversion that would last a year. That year is just about up.
Nana Marion was pretty nice about the whole thing. She somehow got it in her head that the police had nabbed the wrong boy – despite Luca being caught with the bloody thing in his hands. Anyway, things settled back down and no more was said of it. Life went on as before, and it seemed that the boys were destined to live there in relative peace with Nana Marion until they were grown
Um, no…
In the late spring of 2036, Nana Marion passed away, out of the blue. She had an undetectable brain aneurism and it just blew one day. She dropped in her tracks. Social services was back on the scene, and once again, it seemed a search for relatives would begin – a fruitless one no doubt.
Finally, perhaps long after it should have, the wizarding world stepped into the boys’ lives. They had always been somewhere on the radar – first in Hong Kong, and then in South Africa, and then when they moved to England. For the first ten years of Luca’s life, there had just been him and his mom – and they were both squibs. So, really, why drag the boy into the wizarding world at all? At least, that’s what people were saying now about decisions that had been made, or left unmade, then. Then Zhane had come along, and still, the boys had their mom, though her parenting abilities were questionable. That resolved itself, though, when they went to Zhane’s gran, who was a muggle, but they seemed stable. There was an uncomfortable feeling about it all – as if maybe someone had dropped a ball somewhere. Now, though, with the children at risk of being placed with real strangers, the Ministry finally acted.
To Luca, it all seemed like a strange dream – a nightmare in some ways - that night the wizarding social workers showed up, along with a couple of hitwizards, and removed the two brothers stealthily from the Muggle house they were living in. Flying through the night – on brooms! Seriously. Luca thought he finally had gone off the deep end, like Jiu. He was numb, and bemused, and underneath that, terrified, as they were taken to Harkness House - for wizarding children whose parents were dead or otherwise – unavailable? Unsuitable? Too unstable? Whatever the entry parameters were, Luca and Zhane were welcomed with open arms. That was in July.
It would take a novel to describe Luca’s complete and utter amazement at what he was discovering – an entire new world – and one where all those crazy things that had happened with Zhane were starting to make sense. Suffice it to say, he was suffering from culture shock, big time, and of course, he still is. Finally, the meaning of the word ‘squib’ was explained to him. His little brother was a wizard – and he wasn’t. He was being brought into a world where he didn’t fit. His fear of losing Zhane has gone through the ceiling because of this. His brain is reeling, and his sense of identity is completely wack, but Luca is the type of boy to always try to take things in stride and figure out a survival strategy. His main concern isn’t himself anyway – it’s Zhane, and he’s terribly worried that someone might decide to separate them further still, and allow Zhane to be adopted by some wizarding family. If that is proposed, he’s going to go down fighting, he has made this his silent vow. They will take Zhane away from him over his dead body, literally. But, so far, the Harknesses have assured Luca that this will not be allowed to happen. For a boy with real trust issues, these words don’t necessarily equate to a promise set in stone.
For now, though, Luca is trying to keep his head down, his spirits up, and his sanity intact, as he learns about the wizarding world and all that he has missed over the past fifteen years, and how in the hell he is going to fit into it…or not.
