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Tyrone Ethan James- Colorado Ministry of Magic, Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Spirit Office: Assistant to Mr. Lyle Q. Frunklehampster III
Scattergood MOO [connect]

Description:

Tyrone stands a little over an inch shy of six feet tall, and is built on a squarish frame, and looks to be in his mid-twenties. His muscles--who knows how he got them--are only evident if he is wearing something slim-fitting, but contribute to his bulk. He keeps his dark hair cropped short in tight curls against his head, often slick with mousse. His skin is on the darker side naturally, not tanned, but as if he has a mixed heritage. The man's eyes are a golden brown, and a bit on the large side. That is, he always appears to be staring at something, and never really blinks. He has his left earlobe pierced and hung with a gold ring with a little moon-shaped bead on the end. Other than that, he wears no jewelry--unless the round, gold-rimmed glasses count as such. 

Generally Tyrone wears a plain black robe with a white shirt underneath, for his everyday work at the Ministry. And it tends to have a dusty sheen over it half the time, as if he's been in some musty old places rooting around. Or maybe it's just the dust from old files. He wears shiny black loafer-type shoes with a little leather tassle on them that look like military formalwear, and not something normally worn to the office. Under his robe, and not normally visible, is a necklace with an odd, almost futuristic-looking pendant on it. Of a spaceship.

History:

Tyrone’s parents met at a science-fiction convention. 

People often wonder about these things. Whether they are breeding grounds for certain types of nerds. Well, in this case, it’s absolutely true. Both his parents are Muggles, but one of them had a squib as a father. His mother, Phillys Loudon, was a seamstress in a blue-jeans factory but spent her free time making costumes for the conventions. She met her future husband Carl James when she won a prize for one of her creations. He was the master of ceremonies. 

Carl introduced Phillys to some of the convention’s VIPs. When they discovered that they had the same favorite author, the two fell in love. The next time they met, they acted out their favorite scene from “Invasion of the Herbacious Vampire Vixens”, the contents of which the writer will leave to the imagination. Tyrone’s Muggle friends cite the fact that he was conceived at a sci-fi convention as the reason for his personality later on. 

He was named for the hero of his parents’ favorite novel series, Tyrone Neutrino. 

Right after his birth, Carl and Phyllis moved the family to Gunnison, CO, out of their apartment in Denver. Carl worked at a bookstore, which he would eventually own. Phyllis spent time raising Tyrone and eventually began to work at a grocery store there. They continued to attend conventions regularly. 

Tyrone dreamed about life on other planets. And, he told his parents, he wanted to grow up and go to the moon. In his room, he kept clippings about space. At a very early age, he was turning french fries into “ray guns” and pretending to zap aliens. His shelves were filled with, among other things, comic books and kids’ books about space. Up until age 11, the high point of his childhood was receiving first prize in a line contest for his “Young Luke Skywalker” costume, one which he had created with more than a little help from his mother. 

Then came the letter. Arriving home after day camp one day, Tyrone found a letter in the box addressed to him. It didn’t look like his report card, as the envelope was too fancy. No, on June 30, 1980, Tyrone received his invitation to attend Scattergood School for the Magical Arts, and after reading it carefully, he promptly threw it away. 

Yes, that’s right. He threw it away. In the kitchen trash can, where his mother would later find it while looking for some milk which she had accidentally discarded before its expiration date. She showed it to Carl, and they both thought it sounded delightful. They would have liked to go there themselves, actually, had they not been beyond the days of education. Tyrone, however, thought that magic was for “wimps and pussies who can’t stop thinking about their fairies and wands when the *real* future is in rockets.” Little did he realize that the only reason the model rockets that his Boy Scout troop built, at his request, ever got off the ground despite their poor workmanship, was that he had willed them to fly. And the sparks and flames had looked natural enough. 

Anyway, a few temper tantrums later, he would no longer be bused to the local middle school, but would be taking the bus to Boulder with his mother in the fall, and from there a bus to Scattergood. He went along grudgingly, assuming that this was another scheme for his parents to be rid of kids in the house so they could go to conventions around the world. Perhaps it was one of his mother’s crazy ideas—she was always going to dance classes in weird scarves, or cooking with herbs, or getting in touch with her inner goddess. 

It was the shopping trip that finally won him over and convinced him that the school was for real, and that magic wasn’t just something out of the kids’ books that he had ignored his whole life. When he took the right wand in his hand, he felt a connection with it. He later named this wand Luke. His mother, 8 months later, named her newborn twins Luke and Leia. 

So much for early childhood. Tyrone did enjoy his time at Scattergood after a little bit of getting used to being Muggle-born. He had his friends. He never did give up one poster of Apollo 11, and for a while, his favorite subject at school was Astronomy. But that was only until he discovered ghosts. Like many things, he was only just realizing that the fantastic was real. He begun to believe that everything that he had heard about in stories was, in fact, real, based on the evidence that Cinderella’s fairy godmother may have used the ‘Automobilus verdura’ spell to transfigure the pumpkin into a coach. Besides, his first encounter with one of Scattergood’s ghosts was when one appeared right in the middle of his homework after walking through a wall and forgetting there was a desk on the other side, a desk belonging to a very surprised 6th grade boy. 

After the initial fright, Tyrone began to follow some of the ghosts around when he could, begging for stories. They had interesting tales to tell, and he was missing his comics. Distracted by such things, Tyrone finished Scattergood with few honors to his name but having learned a good deal about Life After Death if not Life itself. In his free time, he tried to get stories published, but the most success he ever had was convincing his father to carry a few self-printed copies at his front desk. 

Otherwise, Tyrone had little contact with the Muggle world. He went off to work for Colorado’s Ministry of Magic, his full title being Ministry assistant, Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Spirit Office. Seven years later, due to a stubborn boss who just won’t retire, even at the age of 84, the man has that same position. He has, however, worked well for his time there communicating with ghosts, the good and the bad, the haunters and the haunted.

Persona:

Tyrone isn’t outgoing unless he’s tipsy, and he has a tendency to latch onto people who are slightly familiar. He likes, among other things, ghosts and spaceships. At this point in life, he is more content jst to draw pictures of the things and daydream, but as for ghosts, he bargains with them. He’s much more talented at the politics of the undead than he is those of the living. 

Politically incorrect doesn’t come close to describing what exactly is wrong with Tyrone. He just has a knack for saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong people. It’s not that he’s blunt. It’s just that he’ll accidentally blurt out something that others shouldn’t know. 

And then there’s his boss. As stated in his background, the man just won’t retire. Tyrone believes that Lyle Q. Frunklehampster III needs to die, because there’s just no way he’ll give up the job anytime soon. This is mostly due to frustration, since Tyrone is way too old to still be filing and shuffling along behind his boss. He’s old enough to be a full-blown Ministry Official. But he wouldn’t go so far as to kill the man himself. Mainly he prefers to grit his teeth and occasionally complain about it, and usually to the wrong people 

Perhaps this is why Mr. Frunklehampster has never gotten around to giving him a promotion.

But Tyrone isn’t really all that bad…is he?