![[Image: wizardingworld.png]](https://knockturnbound.net/images/logos/wizardingworld.png)
General Information
Character Name:
Mateo Wesley
Type of Character:
Adult
Age:
20
Date of Birth:
31 October 1902
Blood Status:
Halfblood
Residence:
London
Family:
Mother: Rosita Manuela Wesley (nee Arriola)
Stepfather: Thomas Joseph Wesley
Siblings: Chester Rafael, Louisa Julieta
Occupation:
Logistics Coordinator for Goodman & Sons Trading Company
Personality & History
Personality:
- charming, perceptive, reliant, dependable, keeps his word once it’s given
- sharp tongue and instincts, adept manipulator, gifted conversationalist, good judge of character
- fiercely protective, loyal, butter-soft core, shell of stone
- rarely allows himself vulnerability, slow to trust
- meets violence with unsettling composure when necessary, ignores the part of him that feels unsettled by that; violence is a tool, never entertainment
- calm under pressure, difficult to rattle, unafraid to act
- doesn’t ask for help, deeply uncomfortable being cared for, struggles to believe he deserves kindness
- doesn’t drink
History:
Chapter I — Rosita Manuela Arriola (1902 - 1912)
It was a short winter affair, a beautiful, exciting stranger who swept her off her feet amid the never-changing, same-old rut of her small, Catholic village somewhere deep in the rural landscape of Andalusia, Spain. A few weeks of life and love and passion until one day — he vanished. To her, he’d been the most intoxicating, most electrifying thing to happen. To him, just another stop on the road.
She waits and longs in vain. He doesn’t come back. After another few weeks, Rosita discovers she is pregnant.
Her family reacts with disappointment and shame; the gossip spreads fast, and soon, Rosita finds herself the subject of whispered conversations, pitying glances, and harsh judgment. Despite her father’s desperate efforts and her mother’s pleading prayers, no one is willing to marry a disgraced woman already carrying another man’s child. Isolated, scrutinised, and humiliated, Rosita sees no future left for herself. Without telling anyone, she gathers what little money she has and boards a ship bound for England — as far away as she can afford to go.
She arrives in London alone, unable to speak English, carrying no more than a small suitcase and the child growing in her belly. Penniless, she finds refuge through a Catholic charitable home offering shelter to vulnerable women, and, surrounded by strangers who expect nothing in return but honest work, Rosita slowly begins building her life. She learns enough English to find employment — sewing, laundry, cleaning — and on the night of 31 October 1902, gives birth to her son Leopold Mateo.
For the first two years, life remains difficult but hopeful, and Rosita works tirelessly, determined to provide for her son and give him the best she can afford. It is through the local Catholic community that she eventually meets Thomas Wesley, a quiet, hardworking factory labourer, gentle and earnest, merciful where life had been cruel. He asks no questions, casts no judgement — "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”, and he lives by that. Rosita and Thomas marry, Leopold adopts his step-father’s last name, and for a handful of years, happiness seems evergreen.
Chapter II — Thomas Joseph Wesley (1912 - 1916)
But happiness proves fleeting. Work at the factory grows increasingly uncertain; wages sink while prices rise, and feeding his family becomes a burden that steadily weighs heavier on Thomas with each passing year. When Chester Rafael is born in 1912 and three years later Louisa Julieta, living gradually makes way for survival. Struggle finds its way back into the Wesley family’s life, and festers. It starts as a drink after a long shift, then gradually becomes two, then three, and invariably, the bottle begins to replace the gentle man Rosita once married. Frustration turns to bitterness, bitterness to anger, and eventually anger finds its way home.
At first, it’s only shouted words and slammed doors. Then broken plates, then torn skin. Rosita learns to recognise the warning signs, learns to endure and tiptoe. The children learn to make themselves invisible, learn to hide and obey. But Leopold never does. Fiercely protective, he places himself between his stepfather and the rest of the family whenever he can, earning as many blows as he prevents. And the older he grows, the more steadfast he gets.
When his Hogwarts letter arrives, Leopold doesn’t want to go. The little he earns as a newspaper boy isn’t much, selling the evening print on street corners and train stations, but it helps. Helps stuff the hole Thomas’ drinking keeps digging deeper. Helps keep anger and violence at bay. But his mother insists. Begrudgingly, he relents.
Sorted as a Ravenclaw, Leopold excels less through diligence and studiousness than instinct. Resourceful, sharp, and observant, he discovers that words can open doors just as surely as magic can. He learns how to charm, negotiate, flatter, and deceive, how to read the people around him and how to manipulate his way into opportunities, out of trouble, and toward whatever he needs or wants.
And holidays at home teach him hardness. They teach him reality is harsh and unforgiving, cramped and ugly. They teach him hungry stomachs care little for star constellations and wand movements, that silence can ring louder than drunken screams, and that personal desires die in the face of survival and protection. They teach him to take a blow without crying, to stand between danger and those too small to face it themselves, and to bury fear so deeply it no longer shows upon his face. It slowly erases the bright, cheeky and curious boy, and leaves a teenager in its wake that is forced to become an adult long before his time.
At fourteen, after his third year at Hogwarts, Leopold decides not to return to school. Holiday after holiday, he watches his mother’s hands grow rawer from work, his father drunker and more aggressive, his siblings thinner and more reserved. He can’t watch it any longer. His father doesn’t care; his mother reluctantly relents. She needs the help — she knows it. She feels guilty for it every day. Leopold, though, is determined. Taking on every job he can get his hands on, he vows to be a better man than his stepfather was. Eventually, Leopold adopts his middle name, Mateo — one name for home, one for the rest of the world.
Chapter III — Victor Edmund Goodman (1916 - 1923)
Money, however, comes by the hard way. The jobs he finds are simple yet demanding and relentless. Employers see only a fourteen-year-old boy desperate enough to accept whatever wage is offered, taking advantage of cheap labour by paying miserable coin. Unloading carts, carrying coal, warehouse labour — anything Mateo can get his hands on, he accepts, but it barely makes a dent. Still, he shows up every day, and it is that determination and resilience that eventually steer him into the maws of Victor Goodman’s organisation. An ordinary and respectable trading and shipping business on the surface, layered with spells to keep the muggles away, and beneath it a well-organised smuggling ring for all things magical and illegal.
A young man by the name of Jack Doyle notices him — the boy who always asks for work, who seems to know London’s streets like the back of his hand, who asks few questions, the boy who doesn’t shy away from hard labour. He presses a small parcel into Mateo’s hands, gives him an address, a time, and a handful of instructions. The job takes less than an hour; the pay exceeds anything he has earned in an entire day. The next day, he returns.
At first, the work is simple. Deliveries and pick-ups, nothing more. But he proves reliable. He is always on time, doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t steal. Slowly, Jack pulls him further in and jobs begin to evolve. Soon, Mateo no longer carries letters and packages across town. Soon, he attends meetings, learns about the inner workings of Goodman’s dealings, understands the stakes and risks, and stays anyway. The money has already changed his family’s life; he can’t let go now. And as the years pass, the network quietly becomes something else entirely. Education. Family. A place to belong and trust. He learns the value of loyalty, of silence, of reputation. He learns which debts are paid in gold and which in blood; he learns to hone the skills Hogwarts had already begun to shape. The men around him begin to see what Jack had seen from the beginning: someone remarkably composed under pressure, quick on his feet, difficult to intimidate, and possessed of an instinctive understanding of people. Over time, Mateo finds his place among these men. Camaraderie, friendship, respect.
Again, jobs begin to change. Collecting debts, delivering warnings, standing behind someone else while difficult conversations unfold, and eventually, handling them himself. He discovers that words solve most problems, and when they don’t, other means come more easily than he liked. Each crossed line becomes easier than the last.
He crosses the last one the day Thomas pushes too far. The pleas and screams can be heard from down the street, and as Mateo rushes into the small flat to find his father stood above Rosita, fury in his eyes, fist balled, he snaps. In a matter of minutes, Thomas lies dead upon the floor, and Mateo is the one to stand above, hands slick with blood, cold to the core but void of regret. Jack Doyle is the first person he seeks out. He doesn’t ask questions; he simply takes control, and by morning, the death has become an unfortunate event, the witnesses have become uncertain, and every trace that might have condemned Mateo has quietly disappeared. Victor Goodman knows before the sun has fully risen.
And from that day forward, Mateo’s place within the organisation changes. No longer merely a reliable pair of hands, he becomes someone entrusted with the sort of work that cannot afford mistakes. He is promoted to Logistics Coordinator by the time he is 20, organising incoming and outgoing shipments, overseeing warehouse inventory, planning delivery routes, and coordinating with suppliers and clients. Beneath that, he has become Senior Operative, the part of his job that decides which crates contain contraband, that alters manifests, and that arranges covert deliveries. And when someone doesn’t pay, when someone becomes a problem — he handles that too.
Chapter IV — Alice Ravenstone (May 1923)
A new job waits for him, an unconventional one. A special assignment Victor doesn’t lose many words over, just enough to make the objective clear. Get close to Alice Ravenstone, find a way to make her break ties with the family, and disappear with her before anyone has the chance to stop her. It’s no work he’s used to, nothing that requires fists or fear, but still the very skills that have carried him this far. The opportunity presents itself in May of 1923, during one of Hogwarts’ Hogsmeade weekends. To him, she’s little more than a face attached to a pureblood name, a generous sum of money, and a job he doesn’t ask questions about.
Prompt Response:
The head of your department made clear that a meeting is mandatory, and you are running late
His half-smoked cigarette hit the cobblestones in a spray of embers, hurriedly snipped from his fingers as he made for the door, already moving before the swirl of apparition had fully dispersed.
The damn Irish had kept him longer than anticipated, going back and forth without coming to any conclusion whatsoever, despite their agreement from last month. Things had changed, they’d claimed; transportation was uncertain and demand lower, they needed dates and amounts changed.
Unfortunate for them, none of this was Mateo’s or Goodman’s problem. Agreed was agreed; no adjustments. The longer they sat on these Ashwinder eggs, the riskier it was for them, and how the Irish handled their shit wasn’t part of his job. They would take all they’d ordered, and they’d pay; he would make sure they understood. In private. Mateo knew what they thought they’d done today, setting up this meeting in public for all of London’s docks to see, thinking they’d get away with it.
Mateo had let them believe that.
Later tonight, he would get that sorted.
Now, he was running late for his meeting with Goodman, though. It wasn’t any of their usual scheduled ones either, but an unexpected request to find the man in his office at three-thirty sharp, mentioned in passing earlier that morning and with no further explanation. He’d wondered, but he hadn’t asked. Likely just another job that needed more careful handling than the usual, something better discussed in confidence. He would find out now anyway.
With a delay of ten minutes, Mateo rapped on Goodman’s office door before stepping through. “Apologies, boss,” he said as the wood clicked shut behind him and he lowered his head in a respectful nod. “Small inconvenience; it’ll be handled. You wanted to see me?”
The man behind the desk smiled, gesturing for him to sit. “Mateo,” he greeted him with even warmth, leaning back in his chair and making no sign he took offence to the tardiness. “Sit. I have something for you.”
Miscellaneous
Other Characters
Maevie Golding and Co.
How did you find us?
a kind elf took me by the hand and led me here
