july 15th, 1975 was an especially rainy, stormy night in london, (which is saying a lot) despite the uncommon picture-perfect weather that had plagued the city before sundown. the rain began hitting the glass of the bertram's windows at his mother's first cries of labor. lightening ripped across the sky, and droplets of rain dove like kamikazes into the streets below. hardly the conditions to illustrate the joy felt by his parents as archibald mangus bertram took his first breath of fresh air, but it made for a great story, and archie wouldn't have had it any other way.
despite having spent most of his time at hogwarts hearing "ten points from ravenclaw!", and likely being the sole reason he and his housemates were never
really in the running for the house cup, his trouble-making ways did not deter him from returning to the school of witchcraft and wizardry as a professor, despite making enemies with most of his still-employed former professors. his sporadic and seemingly random methods of teaching became like clockwork to students after a year or so; he eases into the lessons primarily with reading, allowing his students to take however much time they need to understand the material, though the time is often spent socially, which archie would turn a blind eye to. that was until he realized he was halfway done with his term and they hadn't performed a single charm, which would be when archie laid the homework on his students pretty heavily. most of his returning students, like most people who knew archie for more than a few weeks, knew his habits better than he did himself. returning young magical minds followed their own study patterns, and generally enjoyed watching first years squirm under the spontaneous change in lessons halfway through the year.
archibald is, and always has been, an anti-purist, like his family. his mother and father, abigail and geoffrey, sided against voldemort's death eaters during the first two wars, however, quite silently. a shopkeeper in diagon alley, geoffrey and his wife went into hiding with five-year-old archie, claiming neutrality, despite their true affiliations. the second had taken place after archie had finished school, and was living in scotland at the time. what some would call luck to avoid battle, archie considered misfortune, though someone who knows archie would know that he wouldn't have fared well in combat; a bit too cocky and aware of his positive attribute (and yes, a bit too blind to his negative ones), archibald can be an unwelcome conversationalist, occasionally. on top of which, he's incredibly paranoid and superstitious, especially in regards to his position at hogwarts, which while he was a student, had a nasty history of being cursed. though it's well-assumed that the "curse" had been lifted after voldemort's death, archie has made it clear that he would not be in a hurry to wander down a dark hallway.
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