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Juhani Kekkonen- Hogwarts student, Ravenclaw house
Hogwarts MOO [connect]

Juhani is...ah...I wouldn't say he's all that fun to play, but still an interesting character. He's one of the few Ravenclaws that doesn't excel in school, and he's generally not doing so well in his classes.

Description:

You notice a third-year student who stands out among his classmates due to his height- not unusually tall, but still a few inches over the average. He's built lightly- skinny, maybe even bony in some places. But the most apparent thing about this child is his complexion: extremely pale. His hair is a very light blonde that is practically white in some places, and his skin is equally bright. One could say that this boy almost glows in the dark.

Does he ever care for his hair? Probably not, based on its appearance. It hangs about three inches long in some places, almost covering his eyes. Mostly it's unkempt, tousled as if he's slept on it most than once.

Almost invisible against the boy's face are the silver-rimmed glasses he bears. These spectacles don't fit quite right: they're a little large for his face and usually end up slipping down his nose.

The kid wears the usual uniform. The dark grey colors of his sweater-vest and too-short slacks seems almost black compared to his hair, yet still lighter than the misfitted school robe he wears over those clothes. All of these haven't been ironed recently with the lone exception of his starched white shirt, but its cleanliness is made up for with a mis-buttoned shirt. Somewhere along the line he missed a hole, resulting in an extra buttom hanging off the top. Remarkably the only perfect item he wears is the pair of shoes, so shiny that one can make out a reflection in their toes. These Oxfords are double-knotted tightly. Tightly enough that maybe the child couldn't untie them and had to cram his feet in without doing so; the backs bear the telltale signs of being put on wrong.

History:

Matti Kekkonen had grown up in a small town near Helsinki and as a child had demonstrated a remarkable talent for mathematics. He wasn’t the stereotypical child prodigy, and excelled in other areas including carpentry, poetry and running, but math was his one true love. He left Finland to attend university in Copenhagen, but returned to his country at the age of 21 when he had received his doctorate. 

Meanwhile in Helsinki young Hannele Haavio was blossoming into a singer. By age 16, she was in high demand as a singer in restaurants and clubs. She had grown up in a wizarding family. Her parents and five siblings all attended the Finnish wizarding school hidden somewhere in Lapland and known as the Taikuri Academy, but Hannele chose instead to pursue her musical career. She never got beyond small venues, but was reasonably happy with the money she made doing that. 

In 1901, Matti was 23, teaching math at the university in Tampere and visiting in Helsinki when by chance he ran into the 19-year-old Hannele in a museum. They talked and eventually a romance developed between them, resulting in a beautiful, albeit young marriage between the two. 

In 1904 the couple had their first and only child, Juhani. At an early age he showed signs that he would grow to be an intelligent child. No one expected him to be magical, however, since his father wasn’t and his mother had never been trained. So when he suddenly seemed to be able to coax dying plants back to life, both parents were extremely surprised. Matti was at first a little skeptical- although his wife had informed him about magic, he never entirely believed her. But now it seemed that her story was true.  

Hannele doubted her ability to teach her son magic, so she called up her sister Annikki who had moved to London to work in a curiosity shop, thinking that perhaps Juhani would benefit from a short stay with his aunt. What was meant to be a one-summer vacation was extended indefinitely; now Juhani stays with Aunt Anni in her apartment above the shop all year round. He misses his parents, writes to them weekly, and has seen them once since leaving Finland on a vacation to France. He does mind his aunt; she is what one could call a curiosity herself—she has demonstrated to be a rather impatient and absent-minded woman, bossy to her charge and yet strangely affectionate at the right times. 

Meanwhile, Juhani has managed living in a foreign country very quickly. Like most children, he picked up on a new language rapidly, mastering English within a year of speaking it daily at his grammar school, although a faint accent can still be heard in his speech. He taught himself German and Spanish in addition to the languages his knew already, and in correspondence with his father learned quite a bit of mathematics as well. He currently works on learning trigonometry and his own special project, a language of his own, words of which Juhani occasionally drops into everyday speech. (He tried speaking to his plants in Finnish, which never worked as well, he thought, as when he spoke nonsense using the correct intonation. And so began Lailentil, the Whispers of the Trees.) 

If you had asked this child what he wanted to do with his life just after his eleventh birthday, he would have responded that he aspired to be a linguist and travel to Africa like he had read about in books. This was before an unexpected letter arrived at his aunt’s doorstep two months after his birthday informing him of his acceptance to Hogwarts. Unexpected mostly because he had never heard of it. With some gentle advice from his parents and some vehement persuasion from his aunt, Juhani sighed and put away his dreams of Africa and a relatively normal childhood, opting instead to silently visit the strange and bizarre places to which Anni led him, speaking to no one but her with few exceptions. But always with a similar look of curiosity gracing his pale face. 

It was hard for Juhani to adjust to his first year at Hogwarts, and as a result of the transition, he spent much of his time isolated, trying to keep up with his work. Although clearly he was clearly able to do the magic, often nerves prevented him from doing so, or coming up with any clear answer in front of the class. So for the first year, many of his marks were unusually low for a boy who seemed to spend all his time studying and very little time socializing at all. It’s a wonder that he kept up a smile throughout all this, though, at one point, the boy’s letters to his parents revealed a few months of misery as he felt like he could do nothing of worth, at all. The situation improved slightly through the spring, and over the summer, while taking a break from magical activities, the boy’s happiness has increased. Will Juhani’s second year be better than the first? Only time will tell.

Persona:

Juhani is an imaginative child, but unfortunately seems like an absent-minded professor trapped in the body of a 14-year-old child. He is quiet, but what he does say seems carefully planned; so carefully it is almost as if he plans his thoughts. The care he puts into his thinking, though, is less apparent in his personal care and memory for other things. At times he has to be reminded to eat his meals, or else he’d forget. 

Quietness can be mistaken sometimes for snobbishness, but this child is anything but a snob. He wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally, not even a fly; in fact, he has almost a holy regard for anything living especially plants. It’s no moral flaw that makes him seem inhuman, but simply a lack of presence in the real world.

Family:

Mother: Hannele Haavio Kekkonen, wizard family "rebel", nightclub singer
Father: Matti Kekkonen, Muggle, Professor of Mathematics
Aunt: Annikki (Anni) Haavio, proprietor of Curios and Quirks

Juhani's mother, Hannele Haavio, comes from a long line of pureblooded Finnish wizards from the Viipuri Karelia region. This bloodline can be traced, through family records, back over seven centuries. In the 14th century, they were one of the foremost wizarding families in the whole area. In the 16th century, however, they fell into a bad name with a mistake of by one of the members; a young man named Paavo Rajala had made a grievous public error that caused some mayhem-in church, no less, causing him to be one of the only true wizards to be tried for witchcraft during that time. Many of the wizards knew the name and his connection as the son-in-law of the family head, and so the Haavio family name fell into disgrace

Slowly, over the years, the family regained its reputation, but never quite the same stature it had before. After all, how can a family with ties to royalty, suddenly shut out, ever come back?"