Divination Lieutenant Sulu

Played by George Takei (link)
DESCRIPTION: Short, round, and Japanese. Black hair, graying at the temples, and dark brown eyes. He has a number of wrinkles, but is surprisingly well-preserved for his eighty years. He has hidden muscles and strength under his old-person flabbiness and can probably whoop a few Death Eater butts any day. He has a habit of stroking his chin when he's deep in thought- a habit that he developed on purpose to make people perceive him as a wise old man. Of course, he is a wise old man- he just likes to make sure people know it. He dresses very formally and believes in looking his best.



POSITIVE TRAITS: Actually excellent at Divination, clever, friendly, quite relaxed, makes splendid tea, good Charm-work, wise and gives great advice
NEGATIVE TRAITS: Stubborn, sometimes lazy, has a truly dreadful temper when pushed, poor at reading English, impulse shopper
LIKES: Tea, the color gold (brings back memories, somehow), good-quality shoes, dango, music from the '30s and '40s
DISLIKES: Mean people, excess rain, people who dislike tea, the Dark Arts, unfounded superstition
HOBBIES: Tea, strategy games, randomly flirting with cute old people for fun, surprising people with accurate predictions
GENERAL PERSONALITY:
Ryuu is one of those people whom everybody likes upon meeting them, although they may not know why. He’s naturally sociable and open to others' opinions, willing to provide encouragement and help if he thinks somebody needs it. He carries an air of great wisdom, and is usually calm and relaxed through all situations. Only occasionally does his bad temper show, at which point fragile things usually get broken. He’s quite serious about his job, which generally surprises students and staff alike due to his otherwise lighthearted and jovial nature. A warning to all who enter the North Tower- Ryuu does not like having his lessons interrupted. Not at all. Don’t do it.




Parents: Mitsuo Tsukuda, Muggle (deceased) - Miwa Tsukuda, Muggle (102)
Siblings: Nope
Partner: Ah, the stories he could tell... no...
Children: Nope
Other Family: Cousins and such. They live in Japan.

Character History:

Mitsuo and Miwa Tsukuda met in the summer of 1919 in the mountainous Nagano Prefecture, Japan. It couldn’t exactly be called love at first sight- Miwa intensely disliked Mitsuo, who was working as a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army and was stationed in the village Kitaoi, where she lived. For some reason, however, he never seemed to go away. Little did Miwa know that her father had chosen the very eligible Mitsuo to be her husband, whether she wanted it or not.

Mitsuo was fairly traditional, but as he got to know Miwa he couldn’t help but start to value her happiness over his potential marriage. Unaware that he had fallen in love with the pretty young girl, he confessed to her that he was her intended spouse while simultaneously releasing her from the engagement. She was touched by his actions (and although she would never admit it, she had started to like him as a friend) and suggested to him that they might spend some more time together before she made her choice. Three months later and to her father’s pleasure, she decided that she could maybe survive a lifetime with Mitsuo. Maybe.

The happy couple’s first and only child was born on May 6, 1923, a boy whom they named Ryuu after some deliberation. Though they tried more than once to have another baby, it was not to be, so Ryuu grew up as the center of his parent’s attention. Despite being somewhat pampered (read: spoiled) for a lot of his early life, Ryuu grew into a good-natured and polite young boy, with a thirst for knowledge and the ability to get himself covered in dirt every time he went outside.

Then… things started happening. His first magic occurred when he was four- an accident with his mother’s old doll altar led to dolls scattered everywhere, some broken, and his intense fear over the reprimand he was sure to get led to the spontaneous repair of the altar. He had no idea what it meant or whether it was bad or good or even unusual, so he didn’t mention it to his parents- but they started to notice pretty soon, especially when they walked into his bedroom when he was five and found him floating upside down over his bed and giggling like mad.

They, in traditional Muggle fashion, majorly freaked out over this. Fortunately, magical representatives arrived in time to prevent them from accidentally getting their son lynched by telling the whole village about his strange powers. Both parents were accepting enough to allow Ryuu to be registered for wizarding school, and although they didn’t really understand, they were pleased anyways when he left for said school at the age of eleven.

While at school, Ryuu attracted a lot of attention, from classmates and teachers alike. The small academy he was accepted into was mostly composed of students from old pureblood families, and they were interested in his background and his unforeseen excellence at most subjects. He was truly gifted at Divination- known as Uranai in Japanese- and accurately predicted the outcomes of many of the battles of the Second Sino-Japanese War. His skills led his teacher to have him put up a year in the class, where he continued to out-perform the other students.

Ryuu was a cute kid, and he grew into a cute young man- which was very popular with the female population of the school. When Valentine’s Day was introduced to Japan in 1936, he practically had to dig his way out of the piles of chocolate he received from admirers (fun fact- in Japan, only girls give gifts on Valentine’s Day. The boys reciprocate a month later, on White Day). Still, something about the girls was… sweet, but not particularly attractive to him. In fact, guys seemed to be more his thing. Fairly puzzled by this, Ryuu withdrew somewhat from his friends and devotees, focusing himself on his studies.

He graduated from school a year early with a heap of credentials and honors, and was hired immediately by a well-known group of uranaishi- professional magical fortune-tellers, who made a living by traveling Japan and providing both entertainment and accurate predictions for wizarding communities. This was a lucky break for Ryuu- he enjoyed the work and loved meeting new people, eventually learning that being attracted to men was not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, due to the increase of Japanese involvement in the Second World War, business slowed right down, and he was let go from the work he loved so much.

Being a wizard, Ryuu was not drafted- but he knew that if he went home he would have his father to answer to, so he chose instead to wander around Japan, plying his trade alone. He had a number of adventures that shall not be recounted here, because that would take many, many hours and more patience than the author of this chronicle has. Eventually, he encountered another young wizard named Hibiki Oshiro, who came from a wealthy pureblood family and was intrigued by the handsome young fortune-teller who’d come knocking at his door. He offered Ryuu a place to stay for a while, and the two became fast friends, bonding over a shared interest in old literature.

Hibiki was surprisingly open with his desire for a relationship- he was culturally allowed to be so, coming from money and an excellent family name. Ryuu was unsure, and insisted that any romantic interaction between the two of them was closeted and never indicated in public or god forbid to his parents. This worked for a while, but eventually Hibiki told Ryuu that he had to pick a side and stick to it- lovers or friends? Ryuu, flustered, picked friends- a choice that he sometimes wonders about, even sixty years later (still, he remains in contact with Hibiki. There might yet be something there).

Many more adventures could be detailed here, but the author chooses to leave that up to the imagination. Instead, time shall jump ahead to 1956, when Ryuu took a job working at a koun-ten, or a ‘luck shop’- a wizarding store where the workers told fortunes, sold charmed maneki-neko and omikuji, and occasionally added just a little Felix Felicis (Un no Un, in Japanese) to the tea. It was decent work and Ryuu was good at it, and ten years later he owned the shop and finally started to accumulate some money to his name. With this, he decided that it was time to explore the world- visit exotic places, meet new, exciting people, and… tell their fortunes, he supposed. That was what he did, after all.

Despite his desire to travel the world, however, it seemed that Ryuu had a thing for small, damp, culturally stagnant islands after living in Japan for so long. He’d only made it through Europe once before finding England in 1967. He found the people delightful, the tea splendid, and the weather… well. He didn’t much like the weather. Still, the rest was agreeable enough that he decided he’d spend a year or so there.

Super Mega Time Skip to the Rise of Voldemort! Ryuu had never actually left England after ending up there, and was fairly well integrated into the British wizarding community, being a respected if little known master of Divination. His obscurity was what saved him from Voldemort’s elimination of Muggleborns- despite his very Muggle background, Ryuu was foreign. He may or may not have been on the Death Eater’s hit lists- he never knew. Before they could get to him, Voldemort fell from power, and the wizarding community heaved a collective sigh of relief. Ryuu, who had secretly predicted it, was unsurprised.

He was a little more involved in Voldemort’s second defeat, simply because he had moved into Hogsmeade during the interim. He told the none-too-bright Death Eaters who came to secure the town that he was of the well-respected pureblood Oshiro family (privately thanking Hibiki for all the information) and was allowed to continue living there. Unfortunately, he was fast asleep during the Battle of Hogwarts. Hey, he was seventy-five, and it was night. Waking up to Voldemort’s defeat was the best birthday present he could have asked for, even if it was four days early.

In the resulting turmoil and confusion, Ryuu remained mostly uninvolved, partly due to his separation from all sides of the conflict and partly because he was busy with his own problems. His predictions were, for the first time, making an interesting sort of no sense, meaning that he had no idea who was planning what and when. The splintered Death Eater factions and cold-warring Wizengamot and Order messed up every single die he cast and palm he read, leaving him confused and disappointed with his own performance for the first time in a while. He decided that he would have to look at his own future before others, and see what it happened to hold- he locked himself in his cottage for three days and scryed for hours, making the residents of Hogsmeade worry that the nice old Japanese dear who lived down the road had gotten into trouble. Happily for them, he emerged from his house unscathed and with a new sense of purpose- all of the answers pointed to one place. With a spring in his step and no clue that he was attracting attention in his best suit, Ryuu set off for the famed school, secure in the knowledge that the position of Divination Professor was open, although he had never once bothered to check…





Wand: Cherry and Unicorn Tail Hair, 9 1/2"
Former House: Went to school in Japan. See Character History.
Affiliation: N/A
Amortentia:

• Tea- not the British kind, not black tea, but the good old green kind. It reminds him of days flirting with people as a traveling fortune-teller in Japan.
  
• Old books- he used to spend days reading imported literature from other countries, many of which were love stories. Many others were read with Hibiki.
• And, although he hates to admit it- rain. He hates rain, but he loves the scent of it, partly from growing up in a rainy mountainous zone and partly because he finds the entire country of Britain romantic and let’s face it, nothing is more British than excessive rain (except tea, but that’s already on the list).

Magical Abilities: May be requested in the future someday...



Ryuu closed his door, sighing as he turned away to survey the neat interior of his home. Another day, another palm read, another fortune inconclusive. The young witch who had just vacated was at least moderately pleased with what he’d managed to discern from her hand- just yesterday, he’d had to tell a wizard that he simply could not read anything off of his palm. He’d been lying, but he didn’t think that the wizard wanted to know exactly how long he had left to live- or rather, how long he didn’t have left.

Of course, no prediction was accurate. Therein lay the problem- Ryuu’s predictions had been going all wrong for a while now, meaning that they were even less consistent and more bewildering than usual. The only factor that remained constant on every palm, in every mirror, was chaos- remarkably apt, considering how muddled his skill had apparently become.

He was just about to call it a day, pack it in (maybe even pack up and move somewhere else, in the faint hope that his divining would make sense once again), when a knock on the door made him jump. He would have let it go, except that he considered it something of a civic duty to ensure that everybody had equal-opportunity fortunes told. Applying a friendly smile to his face, he pulled the door open.


Also, haaaa-le-lu-jah- it is done!