Name: Alasdair Winchell Maddock Alasdair - defender of people, defender of mankind. Winchell - from the corner. Maddock - champion, good fortune. Birthdate: March 8, 1961. Nicknames: Let's see, there's Al and Ally, as he's mainly called by his family, Maddock, as it's pretty customary for a professional athlete to be called by his last name most of the time, Maddy, because his last name is obviously too much to say or write, Mad Maddy, the press's favourite, and Skeletoid, thanks to an unfortunate bone structure and lean build. (Former) House: The House that Rocks the Party that Rocks the Body. Allegiance: Neutral. He likes his life, he likes his fans, and he likes causing stirs in his own way. He doesn't want any controversies surrounding him to be about something he doesn't exactly know everything about. Occupation: Chaser for the Montrose Magpies, and he got the honour of playing for the Scottish National Team this year. Bloodline: Halfblood, though he hasn't exactly had a direct Muggle influence in his life. Sexuality: Straight, but he'll openly joke with just about anyone, and he's far from modest. Pet(s): Pets? Pets? He doesn't need to get in trouble for neglect now does he? Wand: Fourteen inches, alder, unicorn hair core. Boggart: A severed arm. It isn't that he's scared of the arm itself, but what it represents: no longer being able to use his signature "power shot". Patronus: A squid. Probably. He conjured it once, and it was big and...blobby, and it seemed to have multiple wiggly legs. Might've been an octopus, or possibly a jellyfish. Maybe a sea cucumber...
Appearance: Alasdair Maddock is not a good looking man, but that's not something anyone ever really told him. He's a tall, skinny guy, standing at about 6', with lean abs and stringy muscles on his arms and legs. And, it seems, if you pay enough attention to him at a victory party, or a charity dinner, or a press conference, or...walking down the street, there's a good chance you'll get a good shot of his body. His...rather pale and not that attractive body. Although Maddy's pretty thin, he's far from skeletal, but, oddly enough, you wouldn't really know that upon first meeting him. His face is thin and angular, but the shape is deceiving, making him appear thinner than he really is. This, of course, was only made worse when he contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever at eighteen and lost enough weight to merit the nickname Skeletoid.
Though he's not exactly a good looking guy, he's most definitely not forgettable. He's got the look of a madman who doesn't quite eat enough. His mouth is larger than normal, his lips are thin and almost always curved into a smile, and his teeth are small and crooked, the result of years of dealing with British dentistry. That in and of itself isn't all that odd, but the most noticeable of all his features are his perpetually wide open brown eyes. His eyes are big and round, and they look even bigger considering his face shape. In fact, he's been known to scare small children with them. His looks aren't exactly helped by the fact that he keeps his dark brown hair shorn short, partially in the interest of not being completely blinded when out on the Quidditch pitch, making his face seem almost larger. Maddy's not exactly all that hard to recognize these days, and not just thanks to his rise to fame as a mad Chaser for an incredibly successful professional Quidditch team. Over his 24 years, Maddy has added more than his fair share of distinguishing marks to his body, both in the form of more tattoos than should be healthy covering his arms and back, and plenty of scars and bruises, only half of which are caused by Quidditch. Don't worry about the fact that most of them aren't visible when he's playing, though, considering that half the time his dress style is anything but modest. On an average day, Maddy's clothing choice is a toss up between casual jeans and a t-shirt, or next to nothing. On those latter days, you'll see anything he's legally allowed to show.
Personality: Madder than a hatter and faster than one, too (as we all know hatters are notorious for their speed), Alasdair Maddock isn't called "Mad Maddy" by the press for kicks, giggles and a love of alliteration. Maddy's one of those try-anything-once kind of guys with the amazing ability to not die or at least pass out from half of them. That, of course, is helped by the fact that Maddy has a very high threshold for pain, and a love for alcohol, which always seems to be around when he's doing some of that stupider stuff. But Maddy isn't invincible, and he has been known to crack a rib or even his wrist doing this shit (his Captain was not happy about that). In fact, most of the stuff he does is incredibly dangerous, and at least somewhat painful to himself. So, why does he keep doing it? Well, for one, he thinks it's funny, he gets a kick out of seeing how far he can push his body, and enjoys that feeling of just abandoning all thought for a couple moments. For the most part, however, Maddy does it for approval, because he wants everyone to like him, or at least look at him and laugh. He does what he does because it makes people smile, and it makes people want to hang out with him. Aside from those who say they always end up doing something they regret when they hang out with him. He doesn't know what to tell those guys, but he's very sorry.
This probably goes without saying, but Maddy's an attention whore. A hyperactive attention whore. On any given night, if you head on out to the pub with him, instead of chatting it up with the girls to his left and right, he'll want to dance on the bartop and start a food fight, or a beer fight, or a...shoe fight. The man has no modesty, less of an attention span, hardly any tolerance for alcohol, and on more than one occasion, he's ended up in his underwear, covered in beer and in the back of a police car. In a foreign country. In many foreign countries. Though Germany seems to be his favourite country to be arrested in. And it all seems to happen because he's bored, and someone decided to give him a beer.
Maddy is a man of extremes; most of the time, he's on the happy, upbeat, screaming, are you sure he's not on crack? end of the spectrum, but, every once in a while, something will happen, and he'll rocket to the other end. When that happens, those who have witnessed such a reversal before know to get the fuck out of the way and leave him alone. More than once he's been kicked out of a hotel because he got angry and started throwing things, and with the strength he has in his arms, that means breaking everything in his immediate path. When he gets angry, and especially when he's been drinking, he runs the risk of blacking out and destroying things, or even hurting people. But don't worry, he's yet to kill a man!
To describe Maddy as "a tad cocky, but really just self-absorbed" would be...well, it would be hitting the nail on the head. Even growing up, Maddy was always a "me, me, me!" sort of guy. If his parents were taking pictures, he would be the one off to the side, doing backflips and saying, "Look at me Da! Look't what I can do!" It wasn't so much the desire to have everything be about him, it was really that competitive "I'm the best here!" sort of attitude. Which is really a longwinded way of saying, he loves himself. Even now, when he walks into a Quidditch stadium, Maddy claims he imagines that at least half of those on their side and at home are cheering for him and his famous power shots and on-the-field antics. This, of course, doesn't end on the pitch, as it has been known to follow him down the street to the pub, where he'll tell anyone who will listen his version of events for...anything. Ever. His presence at said event preferred but not required. Which is probably another reason he prefers jumping off roofs to polite conversation -- he royally fails at the latter.
This less-than-sane Scot seems to have more than his fair share of oddities and obsessions. Despite the fact that he is technically a halfblood, growing up, he never had a direct Muggle influence in his life. His grandmother was a Muggleborn, his uncle was a Squib, and his cousin a Muggle, but the extent to which they were present in his life was limited. He learned the basics of driving from his grandmother, and discovered what television was at her house (though it was an old black and white television and she watched nothing but the news and shows about cats). The biggest Muggle influence he had in his life was his cousin, the man who introduced him to Muggle music and athletics. Poor guy never knew what he was doing when he dragged Maddy out back to play a game of one-on-one basketball, or when he let him tag along to a pickup game of football with his friends. Maddy found Muggle sports to be downright fascinating. His world had but one real sport, and, as thrilling and exciting as Quidditch was, it had absolutely nothing on Muggle contact sports like rugby, and the prospect of playing a game using anything but your hands to move the ball, like in football, boggled his mind. He loved them all, and there was such a variety of games. So many ways for people to get hurt! Before long, an obsession started. Of course, his Captain wasn't too thrilled about his obsession when he came out on the field and bounced a Quaffle off his head like he'd seen a footballer on his cousin's telly do. Or when he attempted to dribble a Quaffle on the ground like a basketball (turns out the slow falling feature made that feat rather...difficult). ...Or when he tried to kick the Quaffle into the middle ring. Oh, and how about when he "slam dunked" the Quaffle into the ring, leading to a discussion on whether it should be allowed for a Chaser to physically pass the Keeper to score? Okay, that wasn't so great, considering he stalled the game for twenty minutes. In the end, they allowed it, but only for that match. The move ended up being outruled it for any future matches, much to Maddy's dismay. As it is, though, his Captain is just glad he hasn't tried to take a Beater bat and use it like a cricket bat, and he really hopes he doesn't discover sumo wrestling while he's still playing on his team.
Maddy's a fast moving sort of guy, he has a hard time focusing, and he really doesn't like having to sit still for long periods of time. Sit him down and tell him to wait, and almost immediately he'll be drumming his fingers biting his nails, chewing on his tongue and the inside of his cheek, and popping just about every joint in his body, from his knuckles and his toes to his shoulders and his jaw. In extreme bouts of boredom, he'll pop his eyelids and the cartilege in his ears, try to pick his nose with his tongue (disgusting, yes, but he can get his tongue to the tip of his nose and he's positive either his tongue will grow or his nose will drop), try to turn his eyelids inside out (he can do it, but they never stick), and pull strings out of his shirt, sweatshirt, robes, or whatever he's wearing, wrapping them around his fingertip and cutting off the circulation. Before he started cutting his hair so short, he used to do that with his hair, as well as just pulling the hair out and biting off the ends, but that was when he was about twelve. His mother made him start cutting his hair short so he wouldn't end up with large bald spots at thirteen. He's a prime case of ADHD, back before Ritalin and Adderall was handed out to every kid who sneezed in the middle of class. He was the kid in class who had hundreds of half-finished doodles on his notebooks in school, as he lacked the focus necessary to simply doodle a man with a big nose, and always ended up jumping up the minute they were let out, wanting to run out of the classroom. Honestly, Maddy's lucky he's got enough of an attention span to sign his name to contracts. It seems the only thing he can really focus on is something moving as fast as he is; something like sports.
Maddy's also got a spot of ambition, typical in your youngest child. The youngest of three, he was the baby of the family. See, when you're the baby of the family -- especially in a family of overachievers -- people are going to know you, but they won't necessarily know you by name. You'll always be "so-and-so's little brother," or "the little Maddock." The baby of the family always has a tendency to want to outshine their older siblings, to succeed where they failed, so they can show that they are not their brothers and sisters, and prove that they are, in all respects, better than them. Not only that, but they're usually attention whores, like Maddy, and the only way to get attention sometimes is to to show that you're simply the best thing to happen to the family. Growing up, and even to some extent now, Maddy was always determined to show up his big brother and sister and be the successful one in the family, the one everyone talks about at the family reunions. This meant that, even when faced with certain failure, or the prospect of getting up early in the morning and practicing hard until late at night, he would do what it took to be the successful sibling. He's just a bit spiteful like that.
History: On March 8, 1961, Alasdair Winchell Maddock was born to Troy and Dominique Maddock in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the youngest of their three children, the second boy, and from day one, he was determined to be something more than that. Or at least get all the attention. Yeah, that sounded good, too, as long as the attention he was getting was because of something he did, and not anything his brother or sister did. The first years of Maddy's life were nothing too spectacular. His family was a typical one, a happy one; his mother was a teacher, homeschooling young witches and wizards whose parents chose not to risk them exposing their magical abilities by sending them to Muggle school, and his father managed a magical menagerie in Diagon Alley. There was nothing glamourous about his upbringing, and he didn't exactly have any false notions of it being any better. He was raised in the suburbs of Aberdeen, surrounded by typical families just like theirs (or, at least, as typical as any family in the 1960s truly could be), and taught by his mother in his youth, alongside his brother and sister, Aiden and Jo.
He was a hyperactive child -- always fidgeting, always looking for something to do with his hands -- and he was a troublesome child -- though no more so than any other hyper attention whore with the attention span of a fly, -- yet his parents felt they'd done a pretty damn good job with him. The Maddocks, you see, never read any parenting books, didn't take any classes, and definitely never considered sending any of their kids to therapy or putting them on drugs. So, Troy and Dominique conquered this "parenting" thing on their own, just like everyone else in the neighbourhood, and they, of course, made the typical parenting mistakes; they spoilt the first child, angered the first by having a second, then daring to lavish attention on the second, then decided they had it all figured out by the third while the first fumed at the third taking all his hand-me-downs. In a family like that, it's almost as if the first two children are practice children, and the third one's the real deal, the one that's going to be successful, so they'd better learn how to do it right by the time he came along. By the time little Ally Maddock got around to doing what had sent his parents into a panic when his brother did it, Troy and Dominique felt that they were old hat, and handled everything calmly. Ally jumped off the roof thinking he could fly and broke his leg? No worries, take him to Mungo's and he'll be fine in a matter of seconds. Hell, knock him out if he gets to be too much trouble. He was caught smoking pot with the kid down the street? Tell him you're very disappointed with him and take away something he loves for a month. See? No problem. Their household was somewhat lax on discipline, they were friendly with their kids' friends, and they taught their kids how to keep their heads when needed. This has really proved to be the most useful of Maddy's skills as now, when a teammate has found himself injured or in trouble, they have turned to the notorious madman for help. Even when Maddy himself is hurt, he's usually the calmest one in the room.
Realising that there was a very good chance they would find their house burnt to the ground by the time Ally was ten, and really wanting to get this kid right, the Maddocks made the decision to buy their youngest son a broom and a Quaffle for his eighth birthday. Though they didn't exactly have any place for him to practice flying, they needed something to drain the bouncing boy's endless amounts of energy, and that seemed to be the only option really open to them at the time. Despite very limited flying time, Ally and Troy, and occasionally Aiden, would practice tossing the Quaffle (charmed to look like a football, because that made so much more sense) around out back, completing that picture of the perfect little nuclear family unit. The Maddocks had purchased the Quaffle for Ally because he had a lot of energy, but what they hadn't quite expected was for him to harness that energy to throw the Quaffle as hard as possible. When not casually throwing the ball around with his father or brother, he would be out back, throwing it at a bullseye on the fence. He would challenge himself to get five, ten, twenty bullseyes in a row, to break the fence, to break the wall to the shed, to dent the front door, and whenever he was angry, he could be heard, up in his room, hurling the Quaffle about with frightening power. That was the first time Dominique was ever really scared of her son, while his father just smiled to think that Ally would finally be able to defend himself.
For those first few years, though Ally had a broom, he had done very little flying. His family lived in the middle of the suburbs, surrounded by Muggles, and, so he'd been told, it was just a bit odd to look out over your backyard fence and see the neighbour kid skimming along on just a broom. Every once in a while, his parents would get the chance to take him and his brother and sister to his grandmother's in Montrose, or his uncle's in Dundee, where they had woods or a nearby Quidditch pitch for him to practice his flying. However, it wasn't all that often, and Ally really hadn't done enough flying to really get into it. He had proved to have good balance, and he seemed to know where to hold the broom, and even how to stay on without any hands, but, by the age of ten, he had only been on a broom above ten feet in the air approximately five times. Things changed at that age, though, when the family picked up and moved to the nearby port town of Montrose. Ally's grandmother was getting old, and his mother wanted to be nearer to her to take care of her should she need any help, or just want some company. So the family made the move from their suburban home on a quarter of an acre in Aberdeen, to a spacious home on ten acres in Montrose, home of the Montrose Magpies. And the best part of it all? Ally finally had a place to actually fly his broom. His family really had no clue what they were starting with him when they pointed him towards the woods out back with his Quaffle and a broom, or whenever they took him to a home game for the Magpies.
Once Ally got up in the air, Quaffle in hand, he realised that it was a whole new game. Taking a shot on the ground was very different than doing it in the air. It was harder to aim, harder to keep his balance, harder to stay in one spot and still keep the same amount of power in his shots, but Ally was a natural athlete, and he was willing to work hard. He didn't pick everything up right away, and he wasn't exactly about to pull up out of a fifty foot dive his first time out, but whatever he didn't get, he was willing to work at. Flying and throwing this damned ball had proved to be the only thing he alone was good at, and he was going to work it for all it was worth. Quidditch was the first of his many athletic obsessions, and it showed. He would watch the Magpies playing closely, read (okay, skim) books about how to be a better Quidditch player, and he would practice. Because, really, what good is knowledge if you can't apply if practically? And, after all, in Ally's experience, he could read all he wanted, but no one knew what he was capable of better than himself, and he was going to find the best way for him to play.
At the age of eleven, like his brother and sister, Ally headed off to Hogwarts. He, like his sister Jo, was Sorted into Hufflepuff after a small moment of debate, but the siblings ended up in those Houses for very different reasons; Jo became a Hufflepuff because she was fair, loyal, and a hard worker, whereas Ally became a Hufflepuff because he was...loud, and he worked hard if it was going to benefit him immensely, or show up his brother and sister. In the end, it really seemed as if Hufflepuffs would be the only one patient enough to put up with the trying eleven-year-old who really didn't mean all that well, and just wanted to laugh and move on. So he ended up in Hufflepuff, five years below his sister, who would eventually end up Head Girl, and just missing his brother, who had been Ravenclaw's King Nerd (aka President of the Gobstones Club and winner of the Wizarding Chess Tournament three years running). Maddy had to admit, he had been more than a little nervous coming into school. He had been homeschooled for the first several years of his life, and he had never really had to deal with others his age in an academic environment. He'd most certainly never had to deal with those in an academic environment sans parents. It was a brand new experience for most of them, and he was horribly anxious about it. His first year of school came, and...his first year of school went without much of an incident. For something he had been so nervous about, he was almost disappointed to report that it was pleasant, enjoyable, and less than remarkable (aside from flying lessons. Those were pretty damn ace). Ally was friendly, loud, and didn't really know when to shut up, even in class, and somehow that attracted a friend or two. It was all right.
And then second year rolled around. Ally was eligible to try out for the Quidditch team. Tryouts that year were a snap for Ally, or Maddy, as he would be called by the end of the month. As it turned out, not every kid in that school had been shoved onto a broom four years earlier and had practiced day in and day out. Even those who had lacked Maddy's boundless energy and enthusiasm for the sport. Especially in Hufflepuff. He showed up to tryouts, broom in hand, and was disappointed to see there were probably about four people trying out for two Chaser positions. He was pleased to see, however, that he was the youngest one there. The tryouts couldn't have gone better as the Captain sent them up in the air to do a few warm-up laps, and Maddy proved to be the fastest one there, as she told them to toss a few shots into the rings without the Keeper, and Maddy got them all, and as she sent the Keeper into the air to try and block the shots, and Maddy accidentally broke the Keeper's wrist. Before he even reached the ground, Maddy had one of the two positions, and it would only be three years before he was named Quidditch Captain. And, okay, he'll admit it, he wasn't the best Quidditch Captain in Hufflepuff Quidditch history, as he had a bit of a tendency to change plays and not tell the team, or forget to schedule, or even attend, practices, but they were an awesome team. They were awesome because half the time it didn't even matter who caught the Snitch; they were awesome because people couldn't take their eyes off him the minute he stepped out on the field; they were awesome because, in his seventh year, for the first time in ages, Hufflepuff won the Quidditch Cup. That wouldn't happen again for...a very long time, if ever again. Maddy was pretty damn proud, and the scouts of a couple local pro teams were pretty damn interested.
Immediately after the final game, Maddy was approached by scouts for the Pride of Portree, the Montrose Magpies, and the Ballycastle Bats. They each offered him a chance to tryout for their teams once he finished up his schooling. Maddy could hardly believe his ears. Being a Montrose man, he could hardly hold back his excitement at the prospect of playing for a team he'd grown up watching, both while playing in professional matches, and while kidding around at practice as he sat on the top of a tree, trying to catch his breath so he could keep practicing himself. Now, many young Quidditch players dream of playing for their favourite Quidditch team when they get out of school, and most think that, if they're up to snuff, they'll be handed a contract, offered a spot on the team, and then they'll be set for the next five years or more. What they don't know is that, despite the fact that they were scouted and recruited, unless they're spectacular, their chances of ending up even as a reserve on the team are less than that. In fact, unless there's an open spot and no one currently on the reserves that can fill the position, there's practically no chance of them making it onto the actual team. Most end up on the reserves until someone is traded, injured, or retired, and hardly ever get a chance to play until they move up the ranks. There wasn't an open spot on the Magpies that year, and, though there was a good chance of him landing the open spot on the Prides, Maddy couldn't turn down his hometown. So, when he was offered a spot on the reserve team for the Montrose Magpies, he took it without a second thought. It wasn't the best pay, and he did a whole lot of work for not a whole lot of glory, but Maddy loved it. He was doing something he liked, something he was good at, and he actually went home tired at the end of the day. And, hey, he even got to stay close to his family when the team wasn't travelling out of the country.
It was on one of those international team trips that Maddy hit a spot of bad luck. While at an away game in the States, Maddy found himself suffering from what he had believed to either be a bad case of the flu, or the worst case of food poisoning to ever exist. Despite the fact that the symptoms hadn't been anything too severe, the team manager had to follow protocol and took him to the hospital. He was given pills to lower his fever and sent on his way. The very next day, however, he awoke with a rash on his arms. He assumed it was just a side effect of the pills, which really weren't working, and he and the manager headed back to the doctor to swap prescriptions. The harried doctor gave him a new set of pills and sent the pair on their way again, not bothering to check further into the rash. Maddy happily (well, technically he was completely miserable, but without any argument) popped his pills and headed back to the hotel, where he packed his bags, preparing to head out to the airport to fly back to Scotland that night. All he recalls about the next three hours is a complete blur, in which one of his teammates wouldn't stop making paper airplanes, and another kept talking about a goat and a buffalo he'd seen, in pens right next to each other. Once they reached the airport, though, he remembered nothing more as he stepped out of their rented van and fainted right on the sidewalk. Maddy was rushed to the nearest hospital and admitted. Upon examination, they found that he had been bitten by a tick not too long after arriving in the States and had contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Within a few hours, his fever seemed to be idling in the 100s, and he had gone into a coma. He was just eighteen years old, comatose in a foreign country, and he had yet to learn that his life was on the line because of an insect the size of his thumbnail. Maybe even smaller. He was in a coma for five full days, during which he remembers hearing a really bad car commercial on the telly and someone talking about the Beatles, until they finally found a way to make his fever go back down. When he finally fully awoke, about a week after he'd fainted in the airport, he finally heard the full story...at least four days after over half of Britain heard it first.
Maddy returned to Britain to recuperate with his family, which included having food shoved in his face by his grandmother, and pouting. He was to be out for the rest of the season now, and there was no guarantee they were going to give him his spot back the following year. After all, they had yet to find out what all the long term side effects of this Rocky Mountain spotted fever were, and he very well might be useless to them. What if he couldn't keep his balance anymore? What if he mixed up left and right? What if he never really gained his strength back? The next seven months, Maddy was a royal pain to be around, pouting and practicing rather half-heartedly, but it was all for nothing. The next year, Maddy resumed his place as a reserve Chaser for the Magpies, and the year after that, after Bryan McGhehey's debilitating neck injury, he was presented with a starting position on the team -- a position he's held for four years now. In those four short years, he's broken the arms of two Keepers, the wrists of three Keepers and two Chasers (one of which was on his own team), and countless noses, as well as earned himself the nickname Mad Maddy. Gee, wonder why.
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dudakoff) wrote,
