User Info

User:

teacherofrock (14385)

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Name:

Mr. Ted Tonks

Birthdate:

1955-10-31

Bio:

NAME: Theodore Edward "Ted" Tonks
AGE: 45 (as of Halloween)
HOUSE/YEAR: Ravenclaw, class of '71

SOCIAL STATUS: Not much! He was a smart kid from the East End of London who managed to get massive scholarship money to go to Hogwarts. He married certified society princess Andromeda Black, but that brought her down to his level rather than vice versa. In spite of his fancy education he's now a teacher of physics and advanced mathematics at a secondary school in his old neighborhood.

SEXUALITY: Heterosexual and happily married.

APPEARANCE: At 45 years old, Ted Tonks is showing some age. His dark brown hair is beginning to gray, mostly at the temples. He's also discovered that his metabolism has at last begun to slow down; his eating hasn't, though, so he's getting a bit of a belly. His eyes are as dark as his hair still mostly is, as are his brows. His lips are thin, his nose Roman, and his forehead high.
His look gives the immediate impression of an absent-minded professor; Ted wore jeans and flannel shirts in the seventies...and the 80s, and was briefly cool again when grunge showed up, and now he's fading back into simply looking scruffy again. The fact that he frequently forgets to shave (even with reminders from his wife) and that even with Andromeda ironing for him he still seems to be perpetually wrinkled doesn't help.

PERSONALITY: Ted Tonks always lists his profession as "Mad Scientist" when asked. That tells a lot about him right there. First and foremost, it's obvious that he has an odd sense of humour. A tendency toward silly jokes has been one of his hallmarks since he was a small child, and it's only gotten worse as he's aged. He's that teacher who tells awful physics jokes and then playfully instructs his students to laugh.

That brings us to his actual profession: teaching secondary school, most specifically Physics, Calculus, and pre-Calculus. This line of work is a good clue to Ted's personality as well. Of course he's vastly outgoing - he'll talk to anyone, and he loves being up in front of the classroom. He's not the math nerd who hides in the corner: he's the math nerd who joined the football team, loves rock 'n roll, and chats with anybody who happens by. It should also be noted that Ted Tonks doesn't teach at Hogwarts or anyplace like it. He's at a regular state-supported secondary school, located in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood where he grew up. He believes in state-supported schools, and is dedicated to offering top-notch education to the kids who he feels need it most. He wants more kids to realize that they can get out of poverty and violence and all the other terrible situations that some of his students grow up in. It's important to him to give something back to the community, and teaching is how he does it.

And finally, Ted's just a quirky sort. He's a science nerd, of course, and throws a huge party every November 11 for the anniversary of the discovery of the Charm quark, a tradition he started when it first happened in 1975. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of rock 'n roll from the 1950s right on up to the present day (his favorites being Steely Dan, Cream, The Clash, Frank Zappa, Elvis Costello, and They Might Be Giants), and plays guitar well but sings horribly. He has a silly sense of humor, horrible hand-writing, and is a hopeless romantic. In spite of many years passing, Ted Tonks is still madly in love with his wife and adores his daughter beyond all reason. Ted Tonks is basically A Good Guy.

DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS: He's strange, but not in a scary way! More in that roll your eyes and sigh kind of way. He's a music nut, a math/science geek, and a major football fan (he cheers for Chelsea). He grew up in Whitechapel and can still sound just as Cockney as you like, though Hogwarts beat a lot of that out of him. He's got a bit of contempt for the upper classes (excluding his wife, of course), but he tries to keep it quiet. He values education, community, and family above all else.

LIKES: Football (GO CHELSEA!), teaching, his family, eating (fish 'n chips being his absolute favorite), and playing guitar.
DISLIKES: Snobbery, most vegetables, people with no sense of humor, dressing up, and students with bad attitudes.

INSIDE SCOOP: Not really! One of the strangest things about Ted, actually, is that he is unfailingly honest. In fact, he sometimes goes too far with the honesty and ends up hurting people's feelings (though when he realizes he has he apologizes with great swiftness). The only time in his life he ever really had a Deep Dark Secret was when he and Andromeda were keeping their relationship under wraps, and he didn't enjoy that at all. Now he pretty much figures that if you have to hide it, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

HISTORY: Ted Tonks was born on Halloween, 1952, in the Whitechapel district of London's East End. His family lived right there on Whitechapel road, well within the sounds of St. Mary's bells. He grew up as true a Cockney as they come, with an ironworker father and a stay-at-home mother and three siblings. In spite of never having much money, the Tonks family was always a loving, happy group. Ted has said since that he didn't really know he was poor until they started talking about Hogwarts. Ted is the second of the four Tonks children, and the only one to attend Hogwarts. He was always a little bit different; while no one in the family is stupid and they all read voraciously, Ted is the only one who had the bizarre knack for math. It seemed from the time he was little that he could just look at puzzles and figure him out. The whole family felt that Ted was special, and that they were going to help him go somewhere in life. It's that spirit of family and community that made Ted into the kind of person who thought the best thing to do with his classy education was to come back to Whitechapel and teach.

Regarding the other children: Geoffrey is the oldest, two years older than Ted, and now a construction worker like their father, but his trade is electrics. He makes better money than their dad did, and is married to a secretary named Mary who constantly reminds him to "speak properly in front of the children" (of which they have two, John and Pamela). Ted is next, followed one year later by the only girl, Tabitha. Tabs was good at school as well, though she was never invited to apply for Hogwarts. Her skills lie more in the literary realm, and she now works as a professional in marketing. You'd never know by talking to her how she grew up. She's married to a criminal defense barrister (Michael Daltry) who does too much pro bono work to make much money. Finally there's the youngest, Stephen, who makes serious bank as a welder. He's married, but he and Polly have no children, preferring to be able to up and move to whatever foreign land will offer the most money and the most adventure in his trade. They're currently in Japan, where Stephen is helping to build an enormous high-rise.

But back to Ted!

He was obviously brilliant, and his family wanted the best for him. They knew about Hogwarts, of course, and decided to do what they could to get Ted there and get scholarship money so he could actually go. He applied, he got in, he got offered the Rowena Ravenclaw Scholarship in Mathematics, and suddenly Ted was whisked out of Whitechapel and into a whole new world.

Hogwarts was completely different from anything Ted had ever experienced. He got mocked for his accent, for being weird, for being skinny, and any number of other things. That first year had many moments of pure misery, and Ted thought hard about pleading to be allowed to come home and say to hell with all this. He grew up rough, though, with an absolute refusal to give up or to take a bunch of crap from some poncy rich kids. Luckily, he was saved from having school years of nothing but hell by three things: football, science, and Benjy Fenwick.

Benjy was a fellow Ravenclaw who shared Ted's interest in rock 'n roll, and soon introduced him to the new interest of smoking weed. They became a fine pair of mates who wore Pink Floyd t-shirts any time they could get out of their school uniforms. They formed a tight group with the other Ravenclaws in their year, and soon the disdain of some of the other students really didn't matter too much to Ted.

In classes, Ted began to show that in spite of his speech (which he was slowly learning to turn off when necessary), he actually had a very clever mind. He could grasp mathematical and scientific concepts with amazing agility, and soon he was helping other students with their work. At last, he was getting some respect in the classroom instead of being written off because of where he came from.

And finally, there was the sure ticket to attention and popularity at Hogwarts: football. It turned out the little scholarship kid was the fastest striker anyone had ever seen. He could run like nobody's business, keep good control of the ball, and made some of the finest assists anyone had seen in Hogwarts in years. He became known as a team player, a fine asset to have on the field, and finally some of his social difficulties began to fade. While there would always be some who would never accept him as part of their world, Ted began to get on fairly well with most of his classmates.

That was how Ted developed enough confidence to approach The Prettiest Girl In School (according to him, anyway): Andromeda Black. She was beautiful, charming, intelligent, and sometimes even a little bit scary. They ended up as Chemistry partners, though, and Ted soon discovered that the pretty girl wasn't nearly as icy as she had seemed when her sister Bellatrix was still around. Before long, he was utterly smitten. Making her laugh became his primary occupation in life.

Soon enough, it paid off. Ted and Andromeda were obviously in love, and it was obviously a mess. Her family would never allow her to be involved with an East Ender with no money or status, so they had to keep their relationship quiet. They hoped, though, that her family would eventually come to understand that they loved each other and had to be together. Unfortunately, they never did. Andromeda and Ted were married, and Andromeda was disowned. Ted realized that he had become her only family except for Sirius, and that it was now his responsibility to make sure she didn't ever regret that choice.

Ted began his university studies, once again on scholarship but this time at Oxford. He wowed his professors with his schoolwork, all while working full time as a clerk in a music shop to support himself and his young wife. In the midst of all this work, he suddenly found himself a new father as well. For the first time, being poor wasn't easy. As much as he adored his wife and daughter, he was working his arse off to support them and put himself through school, and it was running him ragged. Andromeda was unused to poverty to begin with, and motherhood wasn't exactly easy either. Then, in '76, Ted's best mate Benjy was killed in an IRA bombing. Ted was devastated, and it made life a good bit harder. The next few years were rough for their little family.

But life went on, as it always does, and eventually things got better. Ted graduated from Oxford magna cum laude and to everyone's surprise took a teaching job in Whitechapel. While it didn't pay a lot, it easily paid the Tonks family's bills. They could finally afford to spoil their daughter a little bit. They no longer had to struggle so hard to get by, the pain of the losses they had suffered faded somewhat, and they were all much happier.

Eventually Dora followed in her parents' footsteps, going to Hogwarts. Ted missed his daughter, but was glad she was able to pursue a good education. He still wishes she hadn't dropped out of University, though. He feels she could be so much more than just a secretary, but like his wife, he suspects that there may be more to the decision than they realize.

That more or less brings us to the present day. Ted is involved in politics as an obvious liberal type. He sees on a daily basis the struggles of immigrants and the poor, because they show up in his classroom. He votes, protests, petitions, and speaks on their behalf as much as he can, as well as participating in the fight just as a schoolteacher. Ted has serious problems with the trend of social programs disappearing, and wants to do whatever he can to keep that from happening. After all, he's proof that with a few opportunities, people from poor backgrounds can do some great stuff.

Schools:

None listed

Friends:

	88:	ajohnson, amicability, architect, badinerie, balls, bitchy, blaise, bogart, caitriona, canaries, cho, clagg, cormac, crab, creepy, daftne, dicktator, dthomas, dunstan, english, ernest, eugenie, explosives, farmed, filmography, flamethrower, fletwock, foulmouthflint, freddy, gould, gunther, hagrid, hairjordans, harried, heavens_cloths, hooper, ireland, ironyinherent, katies, keenan, kirke, lackey, lysol, macbeth, mchammer, meditation, melinda, moragwrites, muffins, naches, neuro, noraptors, notwilly_thanks, obnoxious, orange, peakes, pensioner, peta, philosopher, physicsgeek, poisonous, ppatil, prayer, propriety, punish, quiet_artist, redtresses, residentabyss, ritchie, salesman, science, shirley, sluts92, sonotperiwinkle, staid, stebbins, sunshine, tattle, teacherofrock, toke, toldstein, torture, tramontane, victoriously, vpmods, vpnpc, wangsta, waynehopkins
	1:	~~vox_politik~~

Mutual Friends:

48: amicability, architect, badinerie, blaise, cho, clagg, cormac, creepy, daftne, dicktator, dthomas, dunstan, english, explosives, farmed, foulmouthflint, harried, hooper, ireland, ironyinherent, katies, keenan, lackey, macbeth, moragwrites, muffins, neuro, noraptors, obnoxious, peakes, peta, philosopher, physicsgeek, poisonous, prayer, propriety, punish, salesman, science, shirley, sluts92, stebbins, sunshine, teacherofrock, toke, torture, tramontane, vpmods

Also Friend of:

1: gems

Account type:

Early Free User

Date created:

2008-01-17 11:36:27

Date updated:

Never.

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