Application

[colitaderana]

GENERAL

NAME: Miguel Leandro de la Guardia
NICKNAMES: Miqui/Mickey, Mijito or Papi if you’re family.
AGE/DOB: 16, December 25th.
BLOOD STATUS: Halfblood.
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Male. He/him pronouns.
SEXUALITY: Rainbow glitter bathbomb.
HOMETOWN: Miami, FL.

CONCEPT: Tiny Cuban striving for the top, isn’t tall enough to reach.
 

PHYSICAL

APPEARANCE: Miguel keeps to an immaculate adherence to uniform dress code. Part of it he feels is his responsibility as a prefect to be an example to the other students under his charge; the other half is that he views the business of attending Gooseberry as a job and as such, he needs to take it seriously. His hair is always tidily coiffed, clothes ironed and charmed to resist wrinkling, and skin aglow. (He probably has more skin care products than the entire sophomore class combined, honestly.)

His casual clothing, when he is rarely out of his uniform, is a carefully curated collection of hand-me-downs from his siblings. From his sisters. So yes, he is wearing tight girl jeans and a slim fit top and he dares you to fucking make something of it. You wanna see some hippie croptop bullshit in the summer? Dios es grande, you will be so blessed.


HEIGHT: 4'10. Small in stature, TALL IN 'TUDE.

PB: Mark Indelicato.

PERSONALITY

LIKES: “Mi Corazón Es Tuyo” (he’s kind of crushed that he’s missing the newest episodes), Agua de Violetas (it’s less that he likes it so much as he misses smelling it all the time), free stuff, that feeling after you have successfully coupon-blitzed the HELL out of a store sale, Mr. Elmasry, cheer squad, his skincare and hygenics collection, his guitar, the freshman class--he loves kids and has severe Mothering Issues, so he mommy-hens the fresh meat. His 3DS--he needs to find other people who have Pokemon XY here at camp so he can try to complete a region pokedex.


DISLIKES: Contact sports, any commentary on his height (or lack thereof), laziness, general privileged snobbery and rich bitchery, being pressured into doing something against his wishes, being spoken over, not having ALL THE INFORMATION AND GOSSIP, puns/dad jokes, bland white people food, GMOs! MSGs! Artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors, and additives! The words “made from concentrate”! THESE ARE DEATH TO THE COMPLEXION. And horses--something that stupidly big is not to be fucking trusted.


PERSONALITY:

-Miguel tends to be very logical and methodical, and very driven to succeed. He grew up in a family that never had much in the way of spare income, and less than his best was never acceptable. He isn’t necessarily studious by nature, but he’s overtly aware and anxious of his academic performance as a scholarship student. He's not prone to flights of fancy or indulging his imagination much past the prerequisite required to play Snow White for his younger siblings'/cousins' pretend games. He errs on the side of using tried and true methods, even if the more unorthodox method could possibly be more efficient. He's not comfortable enough taking risks to try anything that isn't guaranteed. His flexibility is limited to the shit he can pull at cheer practice and next to nothing at all in his approach to life. The walls of the Coppertot boys' cabin are usually victim to his endless sticky-note agendas and bullet-point lists and "casual reminders and/or Strong Suggestions".

-Patience was a cultivated virtue in the de la Guardia household; it had to be, when there were constantly people underfoot, in your lap, hanging over your shoulder to snoop at your text messages while a baby was crying in the next room...but Miguel can have patience in spades for those really needing a metaphorical soft place to land, a shoulder to lean on, and calm advice. He's brusque and businesslike with those who really should know better because everyone makes mistakes, but his expectation is that you don't repeat mistakes once you've learned otherwise. But he, as he is his mother's son, has zero tolerance for bullshitting and people making trouble just for the sake of having something to do. This fucker learned how to whisper in a sawmill and anyone who crosses him will soon find out exactly which decibel Miguel needs to reach to burst their eardrum.

-Very strong Middle Child Syndrome tendencies; he tries to hide insecurities under bluster and stoicism, but even with as loving and supportive as his family and friends are, his older siblings have always done it first, or done it better, and Miguel labors under the pretension that it almost doesn't matter at all what he does. So being the first at Gooseberry means more to him than it might to someone else. Needing to excel and maybe leave behind a reputation and legacy that any of his following siblings would be hard-pressed to live up to...well, it's on his mind but it's not something he necessarily wants to admit to either. 

-Since he's had run of a literal gang of children since he was in kindergarten, he can be very domineering and tends to self-appoint himself to roles of responsibility; it’s partially because that’s the role he’s used to with his younger siblings, but it also is rooted in a desperate need to prove himself and distinguish between himself and his high-achieving older siblings. He also rarely trusts someone else to do a job with as much meticulousness and attention to detail as he might; it's not meant to be condescending or disparaging, but he also sees little point in wasting time or energy by juggling resource allocation when he is right there to handle whatever may arise. So yes, he's kind of really bossy but he means well.

-He acts like he craves quiet and solitude, but panics when left alone; he desires autonomy and order but not by himself. Miguel needs to be by himself in a room full of people. He's never really been by himself since birth and being alone triggers a smothering sense of mild monophobia. He's realized this is probably not a useful adult behavior and he's working on trying to fix it by attempting to put himself in situations where he'd be alone more often (volunteering for more prefect patrols, for instance), but he still finds himself almost constantly drifting back to his cabin-mates or other friends. And then he gets pissed off at himself for being a big goddamn crybaby. 

SKILLS

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English and Cuban Spanish.

PATRONUS: He’s a baby, so he can’t. Not yet. (Just you wait, Ms. Lilywhite.)

SKILLS:

► Very gifted in Charms and Hexes. He’s spelled a pair of his sandals with a Boomerang Charm so that it always returns to him after he inevitably throws one at someone’s head. (Looking at you, Youngblood.)

       ► Addendum: He never misses a Chancla Throw. Especially at Youngblood.

► If frugality is a gift, he can pinch both pennies and dragots until they scream. He’s very adept of getting something out of nothing and making sure that nobody is left out of anything in that brusque way of his.

► Single-minded focus. If he can study through the hurricane that is all of his sisters, younger cousins, and every female adult in his family yelling and carrying on and other general localized chaos, he can get through anything.

► He plays acoustic as a hobby on an old unbranded guitar his abuelo gave him. He uses it as a way to relax and de-stress and lowkey maybe would like to bring it out for a Coppertale campfire one day...but he really only knows how to play tumbao and española, so...maybe not.

► Baby wrangling. Erm...well, he knows how to deal with kids and he knows how well reverse-psychology tends to work on kids. More than once he’s used his Humongous Family Babysitter Powers on his recalcitrant peers and found it tended to work out well in bringing them back in line.

HISTORY

FAMILY MEMBERS:

Ahmed de la Guardia: Father. There’s some muttering amongst the de la Guardia siblings that their dad MUST be a Squib or engaging in some kind of wizarding magic celibacy, because that’s the only explanation they can come up with for the majority of their extended family being a blend of both magic and muggle with few concerns about the Statute of Secrecy. Ahmed himself is a radiologic technician at the University of Miami Hospital. He’s a big, warmly affectionate man, though more reserved than his wife. He has four adult children from his first marriage with his previous wife, now deceased.

Esperanza de la Guardia (née Rodríguez): A Muggleborn witch with no time for nonsense, idleness, or any of your pinche tomfoolery. She teaches third grade at Hialeah Magical Academy, and exudes a cloud of constant low-grade stress from Monday through Friday. Weekends have her reborn into Happy Mama. She places a lot of emphasis on common sense and practical skills; thus Saturday is Cleaning Day and wands are banned. Bust out the Fabuloso, kids! She’s also the sort of hyper-competent, hyper-aware mother that always has a snack or a hug or a place at the table with a hot mug of maté cocido ready for you, if you need to talk. She has a sixth sense for sadness and a seventh sense for detecting bullshit; Miguel inherited both of these.

Rafael: Older brother, age 24. An Ilvermorny graduate. He works with the Natural Magic Conservation Program to rescue and rehabilitate magical creatures that have been displaced by human expansion. He’s currently in Hawaii, working with his partner to relocate a clan of Nawao in conflict with a larger tribe of Menehune. He is the family golden boy and the criteria which all his siblings feel they are held to. (Except Micaela, but Micaela is weird.) It doesn’t matter what they do, because Rafael did it first. It doesn’t matter how well they succeed, because Rafael did it better. They might all resent him more if he wasn’t such a genuinely good person.

Micaela: Oldest sister, age 22. She’s interning for some sketchy MACUSA department and she’s not allowed to talk about it. No, it’s classified. That’s classified too. Everything, okay?! Everything is classified, oh my God, go away--WAIT. Leave the croquetas, Papi.

Gabriela: Older sister, age 18. Finishing her final year at Hialeah Magical Academy; she opted not to go to Ilvermorny because her then-boyfriend was not going and it was clearly True Love, they were going to be Together For All Eternity and she couldn’t Leave Him Like This. It was all very dramatic. 7 year old Miguel very bluntly told her that Eternity was a very long time, and 11 was too young to be this stupid about boys; the ensuing fistfight has made de la Guardia family history. (Obviously, she isn’t still with the boy.)

Camila: Younger sister, age 13. Now that Miguel’s a fancy scholarship student at his fancy alternative high school, Camila’s doing her best to rule Hialeah Magic Academy’s eighth grade class with the petty theft of her brother’s reputation and an iron fist. She’s mostly enjoying what Miguel being gone means: her own room and bathroom for the first time in her life. She’s enjoying much less the realization that she now has nobody at home to hang out with.

Yesenia: Younger sister, age 7. A second grader at Hialeah. She’s always been the quietest and most shy of the de la Guardia brood and her reticent nature has always made her an easy target for bullies. She got along with Miguel best, as he was a solid and steady figure in her life that could always be counted on to chase off bullies, neaten hairdos, and share his bed with scared little sisters who’d had bad dreams. He understood her better than the rest and never pushed her to be more outgoing; now that he’s away for school, she only has Gabriela and Camila and they’re too loud and outgoing to really understand.

Alina & Alejándro: The twins, age 3. There’s not much to say about them yet; they’re still practically babies. Their favorite sibling tends to fluctuate from week to week, but Miguel could always be counted on as a reliable player of hide-and-go-seek and retriever of galletas (Mama knows but pretends not to). They’re usually the loudest campaigners during his skype calls and always cry when he has to go.

He also has four half siblings (Navid, Ivelis, Amir and Yasmin) from his father’s previous marriage, but they’re all much older than him. From them, he has a mess of nieces, nephews, and cousins, some older, some younger, some right around the same age as him, so his baby-wrangling skills are on POINT. It’s a large family, but never boring.

HISTORY:

Infancy

The amount of shade that was thrown when Ahmed and Esperanza de la Guardia got married would be enough to fuel a full solar eclipse for decades; he was a much older man, previously married, with three children approaching adulthood. She was young, freshly graduated from her teaching certification program, and very determined to not let such a good man slip out of her clutches. There was the expected disapproval from their respective families, the unsubtle mutterings that a marriage with such a large discrepancy in age and maturity could never last.

And yet, twenty years and three children later, Miguel was born, effectively ruining Christmas forever. (His mom loves that joke; he will never have the beautiful quinceañera he deserves.)

The family had settled in Miami at this point, in a medium sized house that was always just a touch too small for their large family (and the extensive number of nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and neighbors that tended to take up residence without warning), but cozy enough that the claustrophobia of it all felt like an invited guest at the dinner table.

When Miguel arrived, suddenly and a few weeks premature on Christmas morning, it was the only the first exclamation mark that would punctuate his life; he grew up in a loving family and though they never had much in the way of money, they never went truly without.


Early Childhood

His younger sister Camila was born not longer after him, and by virtue of being the oldest amongst the family’s most recent crop of children, he had the responsibility of looking after an ever-expanding group of nieces, nephews, and cousins by the time he was five, a responsibility he took up with gusto and as much pride as a five year old can muster. That responsibility included playing chaperone on the playground, settling disputes, pushing swings, briskly sorting out skinned knees and dispensing kisses when needed, and glaring his wards into submission when they protested doing their homework (he has always been his mother’s son).

His first manifestation of magic at age six involved a Little Tikes elephant slide, a kiddie pool, his older brother Rafael being a horrible teenager and magicking a load of dirt into the water by the time Miguel had reached the bottom; the ensuing tantrum reached ear-splitting levels and had Mama running outside dual-wielding chanclas and then trying to puzzle out how to melt the pool of mud her youngest son had angrily frozen himself into.

After that, he joined his older siblings at Hialeah Magical Academy, where his mother was a teacher. He was almost instantly popular with teachers and students alike for his confident, responsible attitude and winsome personality. (He bragged to his mom about being elected line leader for the whole year and she was very pleased.)

There was next to no downtime at home after: his preoccupation with his schoolwork while taking care of an ever-growing horde of children meant little time spent pursuing hobbies. It probably would’ve been a bigger concern to his parents if he had ever expressed discontent, but Miguel was never the competitive sports type (competitive academic and competitive empanada-snatcher are a different game altogether). If he had ever expressed any interest in something, they’d have found a way to make it happen. But their son had very little taste for getting sweaty and dirty.

Hialeah & Ilvermorny(?)

By the time Miguel had been enrolled into Hialeah, his oldest siblings Rafael and Micaela had already been at Ilvermorny for several years. His elementary years were fairly typical for the most part (aside from the occasional accusation of being a teacher’s pet and the playground fights that ensued).

(...he never lost though!)

When he was 11, his letter came from Ilvermorny. But he was dreading it. His father had just entered a new certification program for work and had lessened his hours as a result; his mother tried to pick up the slack by taking on a part-time job to lessen the financial burden on the family while her husband studied, but Miguel knew that he couldn’t have gone to Ilvermorny in good conscience with the family situation being what it was.

So he, like his sister Gabriela, opted to not attend Ilvermorny and instead remained at Hialeah Magical Academy, fully expecting to graduate from there. When he was thirteen, his mom brought home a scholarship application she’d received from Hialeah’s administration office, slammed it on his desk, and told him to stop trying to mother his mother because she was grown.

Needless to say, he had the application finished and mailed off in record time (unlike his mun who is Struggling™.)

To Gooseberry (and Avoiding the Freshman Fifteen!)

Being accepted into Gooseberry added another exclamation point to a paragraph in Miguel’s life story. He would be the first in his family to do so, which was an achievement in a family so large. The first few months were a hard transition for him; none of his siblings were there, he was accustomed to seeing the same faces day after day at Hialeah, tons of the kids seemed to already know each from Ilvermorny (or worse, knew of him in passing because of Rafael and Micaela). Gooseberry also felt...small, in a way. Forty kids per grade level? One hundred and sixty people total? That was fewer people than usually showed up for the weekly Saturday pachangas at his house, man.

But he adjusted. And he found a new version of Miguel that was better settled in his skin once he was allowed to make his own way.

(Though he still has a collection of spice jars he brings to mealtimes because yo, this white people shit is water.)

Freshman year he thrived academically, didn’t hear about the arrival of Bluebell until...way after it happened (to be fair, unicorns didn’t rank highly on his list of interests because it's a glorified horse, but his younger sister Camila would’ve shit herself). He remained skeptical of Anonymous for months, because how hard it could it really be to shield your identity in a magical journal with the proper incentive? He regretted that later, at the end of the year.

He opted to maybe...not mention it to his parents when he went home for the summer. Now that he’s returning for his second year (and given prefect duties!), he’s making a point of keeping a closer eye on his fellow students to try and stop something similar from happening again.

SCHOOL

YEAR: Sophomore.
HOUSE: Coppertale.
SORTING: It was less of a legitimate Sorting than it was Miguel striding in and laying out his demands for Coppertale with no if’s, and’s, nor but’s. He’d done his research on the houses prior and saw his best opportunities as arising in Coppertale. And with that sort of conviction, the emblems were a bit hard-pressed to argue.
WAND: A Jonker-made wand with the traditional mother-of-pearl inlay, ten inches long and made of maple with a Wampus cat hair core.
FAMILIAR: N/A. The family has a dog at home that they suspect may be a pit bull...crossed with a sunka. It’s the only reasonable explanation, considering that they’ve had her for over thirty years. Miguel feigns typical teenage disdain, and yet Margarita’s always found sleeping in his and Camila’s room. He’s still kind of salty that he couldn’t bring her to Gooseberry.

CLASSES:
Core: Charms, Hermeticism, Potions, Transfiguration, OE
Electives: Artificing, DADA, Wizard Literature

ADVANCED STUDY: Muggle Technology Studies. He grew up in a very Muggle-friendly household and is very familiar with Muggle technology in general, but that doesn’t mean he knows how it works. He thinks this class could prove hugely beneficial to the direction of his senior project; Muggle children are increasingly exposed to technology earlier and earlier, and he finds that digital records are far more efficient than the wizarding forms of archiving with hard copy. He wants to gain the tech-savvy to be able to frame his ideas and institute the concept properly.

SENIOR PROJECT: He’s not quite sure yet of the specifics, but having watched the Muggleborn kids at his school struggle to integrate, keep up, and maintain relationships outside of the magic community. Miguel wants to either formulate some kind of system or maybe even a device that could, in theory, detect the potential magic in Muggleborn children before their magic manifests in order to begin easing them into the Wizarding world earlier on in life; he feels that many of the conflicts that come up between those raised in the Wizarding world and those raised outside of it are from simple misunderstandings and a lack of necessary education. The end goal is tolerance and understanding between the two; their differing natures should not make them incompatible.

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: He’s never able to forget his status as a scholarship student and what is at stake for his failure; for that, he refuses to be less than stellar and what he lacks in natural talent he makes up for in sheer bloodymindedness and grim determination. A few nights of lost sleep to getting ahead of his coursework and maintaining his perfect scores are nothing in the grand scheme of things.

EXTRACURRICULARS:
Prefect: He takes his prefecting duties seriously. He maybe even takes them too seriously and perhaps doesn’t quite know when to shut them off. The Coppertale sophs are a rowdy bunch, but he often feels more bound to honesty, responsibility, and culpability than he does to seeing Coppertale making strides in the House Cup. He will take points from you if you fuck up, fellow Coppertale or no. He will mete out appropriate punishments for poor decisions. He’s strict, but fair.

Dueling & Fencing: Having a mandated Wednesday every week to vent his aggression on other people under adult supervision is swiftly becoming a necessity. He’s too small to really have the proper reach for fencing, but he shines during dueling weeks. What a vicious little monster.

Cheer Squad: While he feels it’s partially his duty to be on the Cheer Squad to show House Solidarity™ for Quidditch matches, mostly he revels in the chance to be in the spotlight and hurl verbal abuse without consequences (mostly; as he learned from having sisters, your first amendment rights only go so far and do not mean Freedom From Consequence For Your Smart-Ass Mouth, Miguel Leandro).

OOC

NAME: Anya
EMAIL: youpromisedmejetpacks@gmail.com
OTHER PREFERRED CONTACT: GChat or skype at @acodori
TIME ZONE: EST