ROWLE, Thorfinn

Thorfinn Rowle

THE RECORDS

PERSONALITY

Thorfinn is not an inherently evil person. He does not enjoy torture, excessive violence, mutilation and whatever not that are so dear to other Death Eaters. In fact, he would not even go as far as to call his feelings towards muggles and mudbloods as hateful. The best way to describe it would be that he doesn't really care about them. And the best way to describe why he, at times, does commit random acts of violence and mutilation is, well, that he has the tendency to just snap.

He got mixed up with the Death Eaters back at Hogwarts when he lost his temper and nearly beat a Hufflepuff that had been coming on to this girlfriend at the time to death. The boy turned out to have also been muggle-born - plus, yeah, he might have, in his rage, called him 'filthy mudblood', for lack of anything else to say - and, voila, Thorfinn suddenly had a crowd of new friends willing to back him up and promising the world on a platter, eventually. So, without any family or anyone else in this world,  he joined up. 

His sense of humor is very dark and he flaunts it shamelessly, laughing even at situations that might make him cringe on the inside. In fact, that is when he laughs the hardest. He does not come across as unfriendly, conceited or difficult to approach(though he definitely can be cocky), but once someone does approach him, they quickly find out that it is all very superficial and that he does not plan on letting anyone in. He does his job because he is good at it, but without any passion or joy. His temper is vicious, but he does not like to play with torturing their subjects the way some of the others do. 

Thorfinn is, in fact, rather disillusioned with the whole Death Eater idea. He cannot say he really likes the world the way it is now, but there had not been much for him to like before, either and he is too passive to make any attempts at changing that. His work, good as he may be at it, often makes him sick; especially when he's sent to bring in girls Piper's age and when he isn't sent in alone(his colleagues mostly prefer playing with their food, as they put it, so he has to do the same in front of them).  But he also knows it's Piper's life on the line - as well as his - if he does give in to such feelings.

As a father...well. There are two things on the top of his list of fears: Fenrir Greyback and children. Seriously. When his wife passed away, he had no idea what to do with the little girl(especially a girl!) and he was too scared to try and make it work for her. In fact, he often feels that, even if he had let Piper stay with him, he would have sucked as a dad. Drinking, womanizing, killing, maiming and torturing for a living - hardly an ideal environment for a girl to grow up in . He sends Piper birthday gifts and occasionally visits her, but since he is not exactly on the list of the Dark Lord's favorites, he tries not to draw to much attention to her and tries to avoid mentioning her, at all.

HISTORY

Thorfinn's mother was, for lack of finer wording, a whore. Sure, a pureblood, rich whore, but one nonetheless. She may have lived in a mansion and not frequented filthy street corners, but she was better known for sleeping around than any of those. His father had been the one unlucky enough to marry her; although he was just as bad, himself. As their only son, Thorfinn did not get much attention from them. Not that he would have remembered it, if he had,  since they were both killed in a rather freak accident when he was two - they had, apparently, attempted apparating someplace in a state of severe intoxication. They ended up, well...all over the place. Literally.

His only living relative turned out to have been an Aunt Dana Rowle - his father's fifth cousin's widow. Childless and alone, one would have thought she'd have cherished the opportunity to take in a little boy. However, Dana had been enjoying her years as a widow much more than she had enjoyed being a wife. Later on, Thorfinn found out that his father's fifth cousin had been a downright bastard who had enjoyed his Cruciatus curse and whips far too much. It made all the angry words and insults he had thrown at Aunt Dana during the years feel rather bitter in his mouth. 

At any rate, Dana despised men and had no desire to raise one. So, she left his upbringing to her butler and bought him a meager present every Christmas. She had never bothered to remember his birthday. Her butler, Marcus, was not much of a parent figure, either - and he was not very gentle in his upbringing. Thorfinn had not thought Dana would have cared much for a bruise or two on him, so he had not bothered telling her anything. Such a childhood had left him rather unable to attach himself to people. He never had any real friends, just people he was putting a show on for to hide his vulnerabilities; from himself as well as from anyone else.

Hogwarts had made him rather happy, since it meant being away from Dana, Marcus and their dark estate. Again, although people may have looked upon some of his exploits in awe and girls may have fawned over him some, he did not form any real attachments. The Death Eaters were the most lasting thing he had.  Of course, that had not stopped him from taking advantage of his rugged good looks and sleeping around with as many witches as possible. He would not have minded a muggle or a muggleborn and he may have indulged in those when drunk, too, but when sober he knew better than to invoke the wrath of his fellow Death Eaters and the Dark Lord. A true scion of his family, he often joked.

Then, one of those witches turned up on his doorstep, pregnant. 

He had moved away from Dana when he came of age, having inherited a considerable amount of money from his parents' estate. During the Dark Lord's apparent demise, Thorfinn had decided to spend the years squandering that money away - and he had kept the same company purely out of habit.

This woman, Gaby, was all alone in the world, living above a shady tavern and trying to work for a living without becoming a prostitute. She had taken him in during a terrible hangover and he had...heh, he'd made the best of it. Her hair was a silvery blonde and her eyes were dark; she claimed there was a drop of Veela blood somewhere in her veins. Gaby had been different - Gaby had been someone whose smile he happened to like more than her breasts and someone who might have become the first person he had actually let in.

But, she was a kind and gentle soul that did not take well to the company he was keeping. Thorfinn was 21 when their daughter was born - he'd let Gaby choose the name. He'd feasted with his fellow Death Eaters(the one not in Azkaban, anyway) rather rambunctiously(yes, he had actually found himself happy at the prospect of having a daughter) but Gaby was very cold and reserved when they came to congratulate them. She had asked him to keep them away from her - and he had, not putting much stock in those words of hers. It was not as if he actually liked them, anyway.

But she kept complaining about both them and the other aspects of his lifestyle. She had been far too direct about it ; had she been a touch more subtle, she might have gotten through to him. The arguments over the company he kept often caused his temper to flare and while he never had physically harmed Gaby, he had often vented his anger on their furniture, windows, plates - once even a neighbor who had come over to see what the noise was all about. When he was drunk, which was rather often since he did not quite know how to have any fun, at all without it, he was worse, calling her names and sometimes even jinxing with harmless, if unpleasant jinxes.

He had not noticed that she often went to St. Mungo's - he was not home enough for that. Their daughter Piper was six when he came home one day, only to be greeted by one of St. Mungo's healers, seated next to the solemn-faced(but tearless) Piper in their kitchen. She said Gaby had killed herself. That she had been coming in for therapy for years. At that exact moment, he'd been too hungover to feel anything but numbness. Later on, he'd felt both guilt and regret for drawing Gaby into his life, in the first place. Another good reason to send Piper away - not to destroy the girl's life, too. She also resembled her mother. And he had no idea how to take care of a child and was too afraid to find out. Plus he didn't think he could quit his nasty habits.

So, he sent a letter to Aunt Dana. He did not want to send Piper off without the elderly woman's consent - he did not want his daughter's childhood to be like his had been. Apparently, though, Dana was delighted to be getting a girl child. So, he had Piper shipped off in a matter of days. When saying goodbye, the girl was frighteningly silent for a child of six. When he told her to let him know if she was ever being mistreated, though, she'd coldly said she could take care of herself.

Years passed and when Lord Voldemort rose again, Thorfinn was once again cast into his ranks. He is still his same old self, though it keeps getting harder and harder to drink away the horrors he is actually supposed to do now, rather than just talk about them as he had done before the Dark Lord won the last war.