RAGNORMETA
ATHOGWARTS
House: Slytherin
Wand: Hazel wood with a phoenix feather core, 14 ½" and unyielding flexibility
Hazel: A sensitive wand, hazel often reflects its owner’s emotional state, and works best for a master who understands and can manage their own feelings. Others should be very careful handling a hazel wand if its owner has recently lost their temper, or suffered a serious disappointment, because the wand will absorb such energy and discharge it unpredictably. The positive aspect of a hazel wand more than makes up for such minor discomforts, however, for it is capable of outstanding magic in the hands of the skillful, and is so devoted to its owner that it often ‘wilts’ (which is to say, it expels all its magic and refuses to perform, often necessitating the extraction of the core and its insertion into another casing, if the wand is still required) at the end of its master’s life (if the core is unicorn hair, however, there is no hope; the wand will almost certainly have ‘died’). Hazel wands also have the unique ability to detect water underground, and will emit silvery, tear-shaped puffs of smoke if passing over concealed springs and wells.
Phoenix: This is the rarest core type. Phoenix feathers are capable of the greatest range of magic, though they may take longer than either unicorn or dragon cores to reveal this. They show the most initiative, sometimes acting of their own accord, a quality that many witches and wizards dislike. Phoenix feather wands are always the pickiest when it comes to potential owners, for the creature from which they are taken is one of the most independent and detached in the world. These wands are the hardest to tame and to personalise, and their allegiance is usually hard won.
Patronus: Hippogriff
***Rare Patronus***
Those with this unusual patronus are truly unique in character. People with the Hippogriff are fiercely loyal to those who earn their trust, often willing to go the extra mile for those who they care for.
If you have a friend with the Hippogriff it is likely they are the most Loyal to you above all others.
Those with the Hippogriff patronus are often very proud and self assured. They do not forgive insults easily. Occasionally this pride can drift into arrogance and cause friction with those around you.
The characteristic which makes it so rare to find people with the Hippogriff is the large heart. Not many people have such a large loving heart as those with this patronus, something very special indeed.
THETITANIC
Ragnor Fell does not like boats.
He didn’t like them as a child, when his brother, Janne took him out to fish, and it sprung a leak. Or when he was a young man, traveling the Silk Road (which is why he took the land route. 2 years round travel was a fair trade). And he didn’t like them in Peru, when Magnus sank the ship.
But none of those compared to April 1912.
Magnus had still been working on his portals at the time. Extending the distance, fine tuning the stability. And Ragnor had, in his usual pessimistic way, told him that he was going to end up dunking himself in the Atlantic one of these days. The message that he’d arrived in New York safely? Well… relief doesn’t quite cover it.
Magnus had been ecstatic, begging Ragnor to come to New York by the fastest boat he could manage. Catarina was there, and she missed him, and once he arrived he could show Ragnor the great leaps he’d made with his portals. He’d never have to take a boat again– just one more time, please?
Ragnor had never been very good at refusing his friends.
It wasn’t the right season for a trans Atlantic crossing, and Magnus had been so insistent that he come as soon as possible. So Ragnor had booked passage on the Adriatic. But a week before they set sail, the Adriatic passing was cancelled– and the passengers transferred to the new ship of the White Star Line. Ragnor didn’t think much of it, at the time– after all, if he had to be stuck on the water, it might as well be aboard the safest ship. And comfortable, as his second class berth on the new Titanic was more comfortable than many first class accommodations on other vessels.
What followed has become a matter of history, and there are things even magic cannot fix.
Like the other passengers, at first, Ragnor thought it was a drill. Shortly after, that it must only be a precaution. But before long, it became clear to everyone that things were more dire than they’d realized. And as the women and children were helped into the life boats, Ragnor knew there would be no escaping that way.
Not for him, and not for the hundreds left aboard.
It was at that point that Ragnor considered sending a fire message to Magnus and Catarina.. but what would he say? People were screaming around him, sobbing, as the ship listed hard beneath their feet. But Ragnor refused to simply give himself up for lost. Perhaps he didn’t have a boat, but he’d be damned if he accepted defeat quite that easily!
My love to you both. Take care of Magnus.
Like many others, he helped throw things overboard- life jackets, tables, debris from the ship, anything that would float. There was only so much he could do with warming charms, but he added those, too. And enchanted the flask in his pocket, offering a sip to the Mundanes helping him. It wouldn’t save most of them, but it gave them a chance.
Ragnor was one of thirteen survivors fished out of the ocean that night.
STRANGEHANDS
With a mother, several older sisters, and no money for a maid, Ragnor learned to plait hair and tie laces at a very young age. His hands, with their light touch and extra joints, gave him the dexterity to weave the elaborate styles into their hair without pulling. And by the time he was seven, despite being a little improper, part of his morning always consisted of helping his sisters dress.
It’s a skill he would use while traveling the Silk Road as a merchant guard, as there was always need for rope, and solid knots that wouldn’t unravel. And from the rug weavers and other artisans, he picked up a few new tricks.
Over the years his wife, and later his lovers, took advantage of his deft hands. After all, corsets and stays and the other layered pieces of women’s fashion had never really been meant to tackled alone. And calling for a maid to help dress after an afternoon tryst was asking for all sorts of trouble. There was something intimate, many of them said, in the way he helped set them to right after. The same hands that had unfastened all the laces, doing them back up after.
HISWIFE
Born: August 1463; Aachen, Germany
Moved to England: June 1488
Met Ragnor: January 1501
Returned to Germany: May 1555
Adopted Rhiannon: February 1579
Died: November 1585; Trier, Germany
Agathe was willful, impossible, and too smart for her own good. And from the first time Ragnor met her (when the damned woman corrected him on a matter of literature!) he knew he wanted to marry her.
A healer, midwife, and warlock in her own right, Agathe challenged him to be the best version of himself. Countless nights they would sit up, debating and arguing, until she would kiss sweetness into his scowling expression, and drag him off to bed.
She had the most beautiful scales, he thought. A silvery blue-green, that ran down her sides and in patches on her arms. And she loved him, green skin and horns and all.
They had 84 years together. And even though it’s been centuries since her death, Ragnor still misses her fiercely.
HISDAUGHTER
In the 1580′s, Ragnor was living in Germany with his wife, Agathe, and their young daughter, Rhiannon. It was a small village, and it seemed safe; so when Ragnor was called back to England temporarily, he thought nothing of leaving his wife and child behind. It was, he thought, safer than travelling.
When the witch trials started, he couldn’t make it back in time to save them.
There was a child. In his bed.
In fact, Ragnor reconsidered, he wasn’t sure the tiny, wrinkled little creature could be called a child; she was too small, too thin, and watched him with the most disconcertingly direct, green gaze that he had ever seen on a newborn. She was also, he noted with some dry amusement, in possession of the reddest hair he had ever encountered, soft curls of it peeking from beneath the cap that had been pulled down over her ears.
None of this, however, explained how she had come to be in his bed.
“Agathe!” His wife’s name was a snap in the quiet room (in a volume he would soon regret), and in protest the tiny child opened her impossibly small, pink mouth and screamed so loudly that Ragnor was quite sure they could hear her in China! Cursing under his breath, he paced the room, refusing to interact with a squalling infant, any squalling infant, at such an obscene hour of the morning.
“Ragnor Fell, you’d wake the dead!” Agathe said sharply, hurrying into the room with a small, clay pot; it was an elongated design with a narrow spout, and Ragnor could already see drops of milk collecting in the scrap of muslin she had tied over the end.
“Wife.” Ragnor said stiffly, pointing to the snugly swaddled newborn with the same expression he would, if she were a very small, very loud, demon, “While I try to refrain from telling you your work-”
“Then don’t. And don’t stand there like a lump, put another log on the fire, it’s freezing in here.” She cut him off, her expression unapologetic as she swept the sobbing girl up against her breast, “There now, my little girl.. Don’t listen to him, he’s all bark and no bite.”
Ragnor was quite sure he didn’t resemble that in the slightest, but he stirred the fire into new warmth with a surly stab of the poker. “I believe,” He started again, his voice gruff and annoyed, “That being a midwife involves giving the child back to its parents after.” Mercifully, the child’s cries stopped abruptly as her mouth latched onto the end of the bottle, the ear-piercing shrieks muffled to much more contented slurping, sucking sounds.
And he could hear his thought again.
“And she is. With her parents. Right where she belongs.” Agathe replied, sitting down in the chair closest to the hearth; the broad, soft affair that Ragnor preferred for reading. And which apparently, he noted with annoyance, was also his wife’s favourite for feeding this loud addition.
“Gretchen’s dates have never been right, and with her husband gone last winter, I know you’d suspected as I had.” She added pointedly, and even Ragnor had to nod his agreement to that. It had all seemed very strange, but the young girl was so swayed in grief from her husband’s illness that it had seemed unkind to mention it aloud. A fact that the rest of the small village seemed inclined to share. Publically, at least.
Reaching down, Agathe gently pulled back the edge of the warm newborn cap, showing her husband one of the child’s pointed, elfin ears. “She has extra fingers, six on each hand. And the same on her feet.”
Ragnor didn’t need her to tell him the rest. How desperately she had wanted a child; the one thing he could never give her. How lucky they had been to find each other, someone who understood the weight of immortality, and accepted their marks as beautiful, instead of damning.
And what danger the child might be in, would be in, if anyone knew the truth.
“Keep it quiet, I don’t want to hear any more of that infernal noise.” He finally snapped in defeated aggravation, giving his wife a sharp look in return for the beatific smile she cast him over the child’s head. Clearly, he thought uncharitably, whoever had decided that the man was the head of the household had never met a woman so singularly, pigheadedly stubborn as his dear wife.
“You’ll have to find her a good name.” Agathe said mildly. Her eyes followed Ragnor as he paced the room, the orange firelight on his green skin. She could see the way he looked back to the child, and then to the door, restless and chafing at the sudden change in his orderly life. “It’s a father’s right.”
“Until you decide you dislike it, and change it.” Ragnor pointed out, his circuit finally bringing him close to his wife’s chair. He wasn’t ready to admit that the wrinkled, pink newborn was more pleasant when she wasn’t screaming; or that her dark lashes looked dusted with gold at the tips, already curling sleepily against her cheek.
The firelight flickered on skin that would be very fair, and her hair was bright burnished copper against her cap. With a heavy sigh of defeat, Ragnor fixed the edge of her cap, pulling it warmly around her pointed ear. And if his wife looked just a little triumphant? Well.. He had always known she would win out in the long run.
She always did.
“Rhiannon.”
- late 1500s
Ragnor and Agathe both agreed that it was simply too risky to keep much domestic staff, too much chance that someone would realize that they weren’t entirely human. Of course people talked, after first, but eventually most of them assumed that the Fells were just a little eccentric.
After all, he chose to let his wife continue her midwifery practice, even after their marriage! Highly irregular!
But babies have inconvenient timing, and with nobody else to help, Ragnor frequently found himself in the position of caring for their daughter, Rhiannon. At first, he railed against the idea; he was a man, this wasn’t his responsibility! What the Hell did he know about changing swaddling, or preparing a bottle?
In response, Agathe kissed his cheek, and left Ragnor to figure it out himself. Labouring mothers wouldn’t wait, after all. And he might be a man, with important, manly business things to do, but (as Agathe had guessed) Ragnor wasn’t going to leave Rhiannon to scream.
The first bottle was a disaster. The muslin unwound, doused them both liberally with honeyed milk, and left Rhiannon very damp while Ragnor ranted about the stupidity of the design, and began to heat another. The second was slightly better.
It was trial by fire, and when Agathe returned home that evening, she found her husband fast asleep on the couch, with their daughter peacefully curled on his chest.
After that, inspired by the fact that his cruel wife would, in fact, abandon him with the baby, things got easier. Rhiannon didn’t care if her bedtime stories were, in fact, the recent news, or his correspondence from England. She only knew that her papa’s voice was quiet and steady, and lulled her to sleep.
She was endlessly curious about everything, and Ragnor learned to take delight in answering her questions. She would be educated, he’d long since decided; no life of being a witless fool for all eternity. His daughter was brilliant, and she would have all the opportunities he could make for her.
TOUCHING
For warlocks, touch is more than just the physical, tangible meeting of flesh.
It’s the wordless affirmation that you can still connect with the world, and those living in it. The tingling, euphoric simplicity of unhurried, undemanding fingers sliding over your body and closing the broken circuit between the cold and unchanging, and the warmth of the fleeting.
Between two warlocks it’s the breathless, base intimacy of their magic seeping beneath your skin. Until you can feel the presence of them fill you up, and the distinctions between you blur. Knitted together, for a moment, in ways that skin can never imitate.
It’s a sign of absolute trust.. And given very rarely.
Ragnor has learned to live without it. He’s made his peace with his distance from the world, and the emptiness of that cold space. He connects in other ways, sterile ways; in ways that he can control, and predict. It isn’t that he isn’t tempted. But if he reaches out across that void, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to pull back again.
JANEAUSTEN
“My dear Ragnor, remember, Mr. Darcy is at his best with Mr. Bingley at his side. Take this with my love for you and Magnus, always. -Jane.”
In the early 1800′s, Ragnor had settled comfortably back in England; dividing his time between his own estate in the country, and the social requirements in London.
Magnus was returned from his lengthy stay in France, and it would be quite some time before the debacle with Edmund Herondale. And even longer before Magnus could drag him back to Peru.
All in all, it was a pleasantly quiet time for Ragnor.
He’d met Jane Austen through a series of mutual acquaintances, and as Magnus worked his way through every dance of the evening, Ragnor and Jane had a lengthy conversation about literature, and her writing in particular.
The three of them ended up quite good friends, and traded letters for the rest of her life.
A copy of Pride and Prejudice still sits on the shelf in his library, her neatly penned note on the inside of the front flyleaf.
FIRSTTIME
Had never, even when he learned of his immortality, expected to marry. After all, what were the odds that he would meet someone he loved that much? Or that he could trust with his secret?
Shortly before he turned 20; just a young man working along the Silk Road, Ragnor found himself in a city on the Indian coast. It was hot, and the other men in his company were trading stories over drinks one night, but Ragnor’s attention had bee caught by the beautiful older woman he could see through the kitchen door. He managed to discover that her name was Ishani; but they shared no language in common.
They were days that were fixed in his memory, as she guided his hands and showed him, eager to learn, how to please a woman. Even without words, Ragnor felt like they had created a language of their own. There were no promises made, and when he left the city, two days later, it was with his eyes turned forwards, and a half smile.
TOWEROFLONDON
Once every few decades, Ragnor visits the Tower of London. Watches the tourists, their horror; he listens to the guide’s stories, and enjoys the sight of the constant restoration.
Sometimes he looks into the cell that had been his, and gazes out the now crumbling casement window. Once upon a time it loomed, terrifying.. now the world has forgotten it.
There is something vindicating about watching your prison fall.
HOUSE
“Ah. It was Ragnor’s home, in England. It is ridiculously large, has a magical door that no one can eliminate, and a garden full of bees, at the moment.”
Ragnor’s house is a cluttered affair filled with piles of books and papers in a sort of pleasantly academic chaos. There’s simply more books than shelves, and some of them (especially his most thumbed references) are rather migratory!
A large portion of the yard has been laid aside as garden space, which Ragnor always means to take better care of. But he rather likes the charming profusion of flowering weeds, and so do all of the bees!
And then there’s the doors.
Most of the doors in Ragnor’s house are very mundane– they open into the next door, and close on hinges. But not all of them. There’s a door in his study that leads to an impressive library that simply doesn’t fit on the grounds. The study windows look over the yard, and from the outside, there’s no sign of a library at all!
But most interesting, is the blue door, just off the living room. Because the blue door leads to (in no particular order) a workshop, a spare bedroom, a large pantry, and still has space in the enchantment for a few more (should he need them).
Dimensional magic is trickly, temperamental, and only one or two warlocks in the world know how to use it. Ragnor thinks adding space to his house is a perfectly practical use for it!
Magnus has been trying to figure out how the doors work for over a century.
Ragnor has been entirely unhelpful.
FAMILYNAMES
Like all warlocks, Ragnor changed his surname when he stopped aging. His given name, however, has stayed the same.
Gerda and Allard : mother and step-father
Gerda’s parents had immigrated to England when she was a baby, from either Norway or Sweden.
Siblings, oldest to youngest
Eline : sister
Ademar : brother
†Leif and †Margery : twins, brother and sister
Arvid : brother
†Dorothea : sister
Janne : brother
Karina : sister
Thomas and Tobias : twins, brothers
Bridget : sister
Ragnor
† indicates death before age 5
IMPRISONMENT
London, 1554
There was screaming.
But then, there was always screaming.
It was a terrible sound, echoing up from the bowels of the Tower, and echoing along the long, stone corridors. It reverberated in the prisoner’s minds during the day, and assaulted their sleep at night. By the end of the first week, Ragnor had learned to tune the balance of it out; letting the sounds of human misery fade into the white noise background of the prison.
By the end of the first month, he had managed to stop wondering whose voices they were. Or what methods could be applied to summon such a wretched, inhuman sound from human lungs.
Sometimes he was sure he could recognize the voices; Wyatt, Carew, Suffolk.. But he could never quite be sure. And as the weeks bled into long months, Ragnor began to wonder how many of them were still alive. And how much his guesses were merely wishful imaginings..
If they were screaming, then they were still alive.
Denied candles, Ragnor wrote during the midday hours, when enough light seeped through the thin, slit window in his cell. So far he had escaped the bite of the rack and the headsman’s axe; but even magic could not solve everything. Escaping the Tower was only good, if he wasn’t executed before they could leave the country.
My Agathe, sweetest dove…
Ragnor paused, his quill loose in his fingers, as he watched the sun sinking beyond the edge of his window. They could not hold him much longer, not when they had no evidence of his treason. But he could not escape when the risk to his wife was so high.
Soon, my love, I will have you back in my arms, where you have always belonged. And we shall never be parted again.
Suspected of Protestant sympathies, and involvement in the Wyatt Rebellion, Ragnor Fell spent nearly four months imprisoned in the Tower of London. After his release, he and his wife left the country for her home in Germany.