This roleplay character belongs to Grace King (tumblr)
and he can be found here.
Note: this page comes with a trigger warning for child abuse, domestic violence , sexual assault , major depression , stalking/harassment , and suicidal ideation.
|
|
| Anton "Ant" Clemens Hans Anders Eriksson | |
|---|---|
| Biographical information | |
| Born |
5th of March 1955; "The Clock House", Gnistagatan, Gällivare, Gällivare Municipality, Lappland, Sweden |
| Marital Status |
|
| Blood Status | |
| B.A.P. Rank |
"High" |
| Age |
|
| Title |
|
| Signature |
  |
| Captured |
10th of May 1998; The Harmaajärvi Manor, Sipinäinen n Seutu, Rauma, Rauma sub-region, Satakunta, Finland (aged 43, he initially believed he was being arrested for being an unregistered animagus (thinking that he may have accidentally forgotten to register it in one of his countries of residence), though was actually being charged with 15 counts murder alleged to have taken place during the war, as a war crime, upon realising what was happening he still came quietly and without incident, believing the situation would be resolved quickly, since he was very obviously innocent to his mind.) |
| Released |
16th of June 2004 (aged 49, fully exonerated of all charges, falsely served 6 years in Azkaban) |
| Alias |
|
| Physical description | |
| Species | |
| Gender |
Cis Male |
| Height |
6'2" |
| Hair color |
Dark brown, "wavy" (read: curly) |
| Eye color |
Heterochromia; left eye icy Blue fading into a pistachio green at the centres, right eye the same but with a subtle segment of solid pistachio green near the top right corner. |
| Skin color |
Olive |
| Family information | |
| Family members |
|
| Magical characteristics | |
| Animagus |
Golden Retriever (registered, only registered in United Kingdom as of 2004, after the misunderstanding around his arrest) |
| Boggart |
|
| Jukebox song |
|
| Wand |
Apple, 11⅜", Snjófugl feather, originally quite simply carved, but with a tasteful twisted wire handle added to it, which he made by hand; it has small pieces of jet and black star diopside woven into it in a snowstorm-like pattern. This causes it to look like an approximation of snowfall at night. This wand is remarkably loyal, as its owner is in return, often refusing to work for those not close to its rightful owner, making it also difficult to 'win' over. It has a small trace on the tip of light blue glitter, which was acquired when its owner's daughter was young and decided she wanted to 'decorate' it. It has the tendency to smell faintly of jasmine flowers and/or vanilla for a while when used for neutral or good spells. If darker or bad spells are attempted to be used the wand has a tendency to give off an descriptively bad spell. (confiscated upon incarceration in 1998, returned upon acquittal and release in 2004)
|
| Patronus | |
| Affiliation | |
| House | |
| Loyalty |
|
| Occupation |
|
— Anton playfully teasing his son, Mags, about his Yule Ball date's fashion sense, who would later go on to be Anton's son-in-law.
Anton "Ant" Clemens Hans Anders Eriksson, R.C. , M.T. (Civilian Grade), A.M.R. (Civilian Grade), W.W.M.C.S.A (Winner), (born 5th of March 1955) is a Swedish pure-blood wizard born "Anton Clemens Hans Ulrik Eriksson" in the Eriksson family home (known as "The Clock House") in the snowy northern town Gällivare, Lappland to Ulrik Eriksson and Brigitte Vanhanen. He has one elder brother Anders and two younger siblings Andreas and Antonia. Famed from an early age for his career as a seeker for the Västernorrland Valkyries and the Swedish National Team that began in his mid teens, Anton has strived to enjoy what he called the "high life", when he could in a semi transparent attempt ho hide his pain. He is also a holder of the Måne av Tapperhet (a form of knighthood), knighted by King Ludvig VI of Sweden.
To him, this meant spending a great deal of his time at parties or between the grand properties he owns in various picturesque locations. It also apparently meant a fairly ridiculous number of one night stands. Over the course of his life he's had seven wives, the first three marriages ending in his wives' deaths. Two due to or at war, one tragically and unexpectedly of a magical desease. His fourth marriage ended in divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour on her part. The last three have all been ongoing for 15 years. To this day, Anton remains a household name in many wizarding families, having become somewhat of a quidditch legend by age 17.
He attended Durmstrang Institute between the years 1966 and 1973 and, to his father's surprise and horror, was sorted into Frigg Hus. This was horrifying to Ulrik, as a steadfast pureblood supremacist, due in no small part to the fact that Frigg was known to produce blood traitors from the "best" of families. Anton was (surprisingly to some) an extremely good student, doing spectacularly well at transfiguration, history of magic, divination and, to a lesser extent, duelling. This was done through a great deal of effort, in the fear that he would be thrown out by his father if he didn't achieve excellent grades at school due to pressures from his father. However his true talent lay in quidditch. At school, Anton was amicable and friendly with his classmates and housemates, even having a half-blood girlfriend, the later of which was making Ulrik all the more nervous that he would end up turning his back on the values he was "supposed" to have, and solidifying his decision to "do something" about it when he found out.
While still in school, he began his professional career as a seeker, fairly easily wowing the scouts and members of various teams. Though, as most boys, he ended up picking his own favourite team when they gave him an offer; which was, in his case, the Västernorrland Valkyries a team hailing from the Västernorrland county in Sweden, though he did get an offer from the local team, the Gällivare Gengångare as well, which he passed up for the Valkyries (much to his little brother's mock outrage and dismay). Anton was also accepted onto his national team, and in his capacity as seeker for the Swedish National Team he caught the winning snitch of the 1972, 1984 and 1996 European Quidditch Cup, and the 1978, 1986 and 1990 Quidditch World Cup. While in this career, he had a lot of fun with the renown and added popularity it brought him. A young man in his late teens, Anton absolutely did not want this fun to end, however it would soon come crashing down.
His first wife, was the result of an "arrangement" set up by his father and prospective wife whithout Anton's knowledge and while he was still in school, to be carried out as soon as it finished, despite Anton making it abundantly clear that he was not ready for marriage at the age of only recently 18. In reality, it was less of an arrangement and more of a requirement according to his father, agreed to by Anton only in a state of sustained fear, coercion and by his father essentially taking his mother hostage. Blodwen was known by Ulrik to be extremely violent Death Eater, as well as being no less than 14 years older than Anton; it was Ulrik's hope that, after Anton's unfortunate and disappointing placement in Frigg, and his decision to date a classmate (whom he had later discovered was half-blood), Lilja, that she would be just psychotic "keep him in line" and prevent him from being able to break away and become an open blood traitor.
Wendy did seem to prove effective in this regard, even if behind the scenes this was only due to eight years of severe psychological, physical (with him even enduring the all too frequent use of the cruciatus curse), and just about any kind of abuse Wendy could think of, that constantly pervaded the entire eight years of marriage. It was with Blodwen that Anton had his first three children: Magnus, Jesper, and Eira; all three of whom Anton loves and fiercely protects despite the circumstances of their birth (those being that Wendy pressured him into having them). She died, aged 40, in 1981 at the hands of famous auror duo Ayanda and Alastor Moody, during the tail end of the First Wizarding War, trying to resist arrest for her war crimes. While their marriage had been nothing less than a complete nightmare, Anton was devastated by the loss, having actually loved her. Anton, aside from the obvious trauma, still suffers many permanent physical scars, and some permanent neurological damage from the uptick in his endurance of the cruciatus curse he suffered toward the end of the war, with Wendy having upped how many times and for how long at a time she would use it. Anton prides himself in both living through his abuse and being so successful in life despite it, though also has days where he feels quite the opposite.
His second marriage was to pop singer Anđelka Eriksson (née Živković). It was sadly short but one of the happiest times in Anton's life prior to the end of the Second Wizarding War. An incredibly strong pair throughout, having slowly built up a relationship over a few years (beginning dating in 1982) after being close in school, Anđi was tirelessly careful about avoiding causing Anton to relieve any of the pain he'd experienced in his first marriage, distressed and horrified by the whole thing. She also chose to behave as a mother figure to Anton's first three children, she behaved this way even after the couple had a son of their own son, Gabriel. However, it ended in Anđelka's tragic death in 1986 within two years of their marriage in 1984, due to a sudden magical illness caught while on tour in Egypt. Anton was, again, completely heartbroken. The song "Purple Leaf Blue", released several months after her death, written and performed by a mutual friend Rés Eiríkursson is, though never publicly stated to be, written in Anđelka's memory. Anton liked the song, but it always brings him close to tears to this day.
While his marriage to Linnea initially had real feelings at its core, it was a bad decision brought on by the greif of losing Anđi, eventually the romance petered out and became sour, with Linnea becoming bored of Anton. She would also occasionally knowingly take advantage of the emotional abuse caused by Anton's first wife to manipulate him. Before it went bad, however, the couple had two daughters, Willamina and Inessa, both of whom Anton loves deeply. Though they were separated for half of their marriage, Anton was sad to hear Linnea had eventually come to die at the Battle of Hogwarts, though greatly relieved that Linnea's daughter from another marriage, Yuriko Solberg (whom Anton had come to love as if his own), had lived. While he'd taken a few steps backward mental health-wise after the death of his second wife, this time of stability after the separation allowed him to regain some of that progress. Linnea was technically the longest lasting of Anton's former spouses, with them being married for just under 12 years before her death, though for much of their marriage they had been separated and planning to have a fairly amicable divorce once their daughters were of age.
During the war, at great personal risk to himself, Anton anonymously passed on information from several Death Eaters he personally knew (such as his elder brother, his wife and his father) to his elder three children, who were all involved in various ways in the conflict. This included things like locations, overheard plans and carefully and meticulously thought out strategies. They, in turn, passed the information on to the Muggle-Born Network to put to good use. The information passed on by Anton to his children likely saved many lives. Also great personal risk to him, he offered some of his properties as sanctuaries to refugees, as he couldn't stand by and do nothing, especially when his children were in harm's way. He carefully planned this around holding events as usual in his 'favourite' holes to avoid suspicion. He was briefly captured for by a rogue group of Death Eaters who saw him giving out information, only to be freed after a few days by his elder brother.
Following the end of the war, a conspiracy and a case of mistaken identity led several witnesses to testify that Anton was responsible for 15 of his elder brother Anders' murders committed during the course of the war, owing to a family resemblance, tacked on top were several actually committed by Mercutio Hill. Being the only famous one of the two brothers, when some noticed the family resemblance, they were initially convinced they'd seen Anton. Due to the fact that the newly implemented government had its own issues, and despite much effort, Anton's false imprisonment was left uncorrected for six years, despite several people proclaiming his innocence, protests from activists as well as the Magical Swedish government, including the king, and just how ludicrous the accusations were.
While Anton was stuck in Azkaban with dangerous criminals who by nature reminded him very strongly abusive first wife and the people she spent the later years of the first wizarding war. His two young daughters from his third marriage spent the rest of their childhood growing up without their father, as well as their mother; being without them, as well as the rest of his family, was something that deeply distressed Anton during his stay in the British prison, as he watched his children start families without him being able to be there. He also made the bizarre decision to get re-married,this time to Océane Eriksson (née Lévesque), someone he said in his own words reminded him "of Wen", a decision borne of a desire to make his life in Azkaban more bearable, believing he would ever get out.
Unsurprisingly for everyone but him, she turned out to be nearly as abusive as Wendy was toward the end of the marriage. Highly manipulative, willing to take advantage of the damage done by Wendy, and later taking to physically abusing him in the form of her tendency scratch up his arms when frustrated or angry with something, usually completely unrelated from Anton himself. The core difference here was that he took this for only so long before he reached his limit; with the support of his elder brother as well as other inmates, he decided of his own free will and volition to divorce her on account of the abuse, and finalised it several months before his release inn 2005 after 6 years, including half a year of Anton avoiding her as things went through.
Upon his release after 6 years (aged 49), and the complete clearing of his name, Anton had an emotional reunion with his family, including the two daughters who grew up for six years without him and his grandchildren he'd so far seen only on visit days. He was offered compensation, but not really needing money rejected it suggesting that they keep it and "use the money to sort out their legal system". No one at the ministry could really argue with that. After two years of fun, he decided to take up a managerial role for both his old team, the Västernorrland Valkyries (as of 2006), eventually as well as the Swedish National Team (as of 2010). He's also married to three people he cares for deeply, Helene, Lilja and Morrigan Eriksson (all also married to each other); with whom he has a son each Finn, Viggo, and Rikard, all three of which they're raising together as a team.
Anton is a member of the Eriksson family and the Vanhanen family, as well as the Vaughan family, the Živković family, the Nilsson family, the Lévesque family, the O'Shea family and the Jespersen family (by marriage).
Biography[]
Early Life[]
The Northern Lights in Gällivare, where Anton was born.
Anton "Ant" Clemens Ulrik Eriksson, R.C. , M.T. (Civilian Grade), A.M.R. (Civilian Grade), W.W.M.C.S.A (Winner), (born 5th March 1955) is a Swedish pure-blood wizard born at 13 minutes past midnight with the Northern Lights in the sky in Gällivare, Lappland to Ulrik Eriksson and Brigitte Vanhanen, the second of four children. From his early life he was very much controlled by his father. This was because Ulrik Eriksson was a thoroughly unpleasant and abusive man, obsessed with having absolute power over both his children and wife.
While his elder brother Anders was always able to convince his father of things, even if this was only because he intimidated Ulrik. Anton, however, didn't share his brother's ability to overrule his father. While Anton did start out with the attempt at being defiant, whatever he did, the consequences were never good for him.
His younger siblings, Andreas and Antonia, in their younger childhood, were at this point in time much like Anton was in this regard, unable to say no to their severe and controlling father. Unable to fully stick up for himself, Anton begun to stop trying to contradict Ulrik's edicts as much. He did protest occasionally, though these would be easily dismissed by his father, who didn't particularly care what Anton wanted, as long as he got what he wanted and knew that Anton could easily be made to "understand" that he had no other choice, or at least be made to believe that he didn't. In a similar way, what Anton (or any other member of the family that wasn't Ulrik, in fact) wanted was only acceptable as long as it was also what Ulrik also happened to want. This was true of all aspects of Anton's life. This led to Anton feeling very restricted and confined from his early childhood, never really having been allowed the freedom to be who he actually wanted to be and do what he wanted to do. The only thing that he had that was truly, in any way, his was quidditch.
From a very young age, Anton showed a shocking amount of passion and skill around the sport. His favourite team was not, however the local team, it was the arguably most proficient in Sweden, the Västernorrland Valkyries. From the age of only eight on he'd already decided just about the only thing he ever truly got to decide in his young life: he decided that he was going to work as hard as he could to play for them. While he could easily play as both a chaser and a seeker, his skill was geared most to the later, with his acute broom control and lightning speed being there and fantastic even before fist attending school. Anton was, undeniably, a natural talent. The seriousness with which Scandinavian wizard culture treated quidditch was also lucky for Anton, as it meant quidditch was a prestigious enough path that Ulrik would accept his son going into it.
The Eriksson family home, in Gällivare, Sweden; which Anton grew up in in for the first 18 years of his life.
Not only was Ulrik a controlling man, he was also a dyed-in-the-wool pure-blood supremacist. Ulrik therefore required and expected his family to share and agree with this too, or at least to present to the wider public a convincing enough pretence that they did, so as not to show Ulrik up to his peers. He taught and instructed all of his children on how this was to be done. As long as they were not an embarrassment to him, and kept in line with what was allowed and expected on them, they were fine. Deviation from this path, wasn't tolerated. This was done, obviously, via emotional abuse (it constituting that in and of itself). There was always a vague threat behind Ulrik's words, even if that threat was never carried out. There was always a sense to Anton, that if he stepped out of line (to his father's mind) terrible things would happen.
As mentioned above: this abuse was present in the way Ulrik treated Anton's mother, Brigitte, as well. This was something that naturally always upset and bothered the boy because he knew it was wrong, but he felt helpless to protect his mother from his father, being so far under her thumb himself. Throughout his life, Anton found himself compared to his mother frequently; they simply had a similar way of seeing things and treating people, a compassion. If anything, Ulrik likely saw this as an early warning sign of what was to come with Anton. Throughout his youth Anton used to dream that Brigitte would leave their father and they'd go with her to live in Finland with her family there. This obviously never came to pass, but the desire to leave what was often known as "The Clock House" (for he large clock slapped on the front of it that made Anton feel like it was counting along the amount of time he was stuck there) was present with Anton until the day he was able to afford his own house. It was, to both himself and most of his siblings, a kind of prison more than it was ever a home.
Durmstrang Years[]
Note: This section will not be chronological, but more an overview of aspects of Anton's time at school catagorised.
Early Years[]
Being Placed in Frigg[]
Durmstrang Institute, in Northern Sweden, this was where Anton went to school.
Anton started his education at the Durmstrang Institute at age eleven (as all children from the good pure-blood families of the area did) in the year 1966 and, to his father's surprise and horror, when it came time for Anton to approach the sorting tree it quickly embraced him. Thus he was unquestionably officially placed into Frigg Hus.
This news was catastrophic for Ulrik, as Frigg was notorious for centuries of turning out blood-traitors, the other two houses Hveðrungr Hus and Woðanaz Hus both being perfectly acceptable, Frigg was not only a risk factor of actually converting Anton, but also an embarrassment to Ulrik in and of itself. Anton not subscribing to his father's views of the wizarding community and how it should be run was unacceptable, but also an almost inevitability if he was to be allowed to follow this course.
As a result of the sorting, Ulrik was already concocting ideas for how he should keep his second son in line even before any signs of defiance would have the chance to arise. If Anton was allowed to be a blood-traitor the effect on his image would be catastrophic. The happiness of his son, was not only unsubstantial, but irrelevant. People would talk about this and Ulrik knew it, people would already be assuming Anton becoming a blood-traitor a foregone conclusion. Anton also knew that this would be his father's reaction. This put the eleven year old boy on edge as he knew as soon as he got home there would be hell to pay and his father was going to accept no excuses. Despite the fact there was no way the sorting could be anyone's fault.
Reputation and Associating with the "Wrong" People[]
As a member of Frigg Hus, in order for school life to even be tolerable Anton decided almost instantly to do exactly what Ulrik had feared he would: he talked to people who weren't pure-blood (and very importantly proud of it). He talked to and got along with half-bloods and blood-traitors, as well as the quiddicth team from Rättförtrolling; good people basically. Including his fast best friend Darius Geraikova, who was from a family of known blood traitors. This would be absolutely unacceptable to Ulrik, but the only way that Anton was able to get any joy out of his time at Durmstrang. To Ulrik, however, the more whispers he heard, the more he felt his second son was dangerously close to if not already performing a form of "blood treachery", and Anton's personal enjoyment of school was naturally secondary in importance to Ulrik's reputation. Anders, Anton's elder brother, never caused such trouble. He'd been placed in Hveðrungr Hus like a respectable Eriksson and pure-blood.
Frigg Hus's common room. Anton would naturally spend a lot of his tie outside if classes here. Studying, of course.
However, not out of defiance but more his basic nature, even when told directly to try to make "good" friends in the other houses rather than Frigg, but he couldn't help it. They were his dorm-mates, his classmates; he wanted to make friends near him, and these people were nice. Despite his terrible upbringing, Anton was a surprisingly personable boy, and he did, despite Ulrik's wishes befriend a lot of the "wrong people" just by his natural way of behaving.
Luckily for Anton (despite a lot of stress worrying about it) there was no way that his father could hear about the "bad connections" he was making. His eyes and ears in the school, the former potions teacher, having retired shortly before Anton even arrived. Having been there to keep an eye on Anders, the son Ulrik hadn't even been worried about.
However, his disregard for his father's rules earned Anton a status of being somewhat popular amongst the nice crowd. After his actions had relieved any shadow of a possibility he was anything like his elder brother. Anders, while never having actively harmed anyone, had very much appeared in-line with Ulrik, in addition to being very unnerving to most of his younger classmates. Though, Anton's defence of Anders as "not that bad of a guy" was concerning to some. Most people assumed that Anton was too much of a softie to speak ill of his big brother. However their concerns were even further alleviated as Anders' treatment of his younger brother shook slightly the frightened assumptions their classmates had made. Anders' positive response to Anton's tendency to tackle hug him on occasion, made people realise that perhaps they had misjudged the older Eriksson brother all along.
On a separate note, being the seeker for his house's quidditch team, of course, only served to add to his positive reputation in Frigg. Especially since he was helping them do better than they had in many years, being a true talent at the sport. He soon proved to be a useful resource in terms of planning the celebration parties, as well as aiding in the smuggling of food for them. Later on in his school career, he would graduate to being the primary culprit for them. Though this did have the side-effect of making his reputation with the students who were trying to study (and his head of house) fairly poor during exam season. Anton, for the most part, however, had the reputation of simply being a nice guy, albeit with a mischievous streak and a less-than-stellar, as well as a passion for having the most fun he could muster. This would pave the way for his younger sister and brother to have a positive time when they attended later on, as they were seen as Anton's younger siblings as opposed to Anders' (even if Anders' ills had only been perceived ones).
Meeting Anđelka[]
It was during his school years, his second to be exact, he would meet Anđelka Živković. A year below him, they were still friends from mid-way through the year, sharing a love of quidditch. And so, Anton was thrilled when she was accepted onto the team as a chaser in her second year, which was his third. The two were close friends even then, having a stupid victory dance together and everything (the sign of true best friendship). The "problem" with this friendship was that Anđelka was from a family known to have views someone of Ulrik's ilk would view to be blood-traitorous in nature, and would thus have confirmed even further the concerns Ulrik had about his son. With reason, it was people like Anđelka who had convinced Anton, fairly quickly, that his father was wrong.
Though he played the part well at home, in spirit Anton was already of the exact same conviction as Anđelka, even if he couldn't participate in the protests as she did. Most of his classmates understood his reasoning for this. Few students in his predicament did or would and championing kindness and compassion, it wouldn't be the Frigg way to shame someone for a circumstance out of their control like that. Some of the Hveð and the two of three Woð students of the blood-traitorous persuasion were less understanding.
Academic Achievement and Skill Levels[]
In his Classes[]
A tarot deck, gifted to him while at school. To this day, Anton will occasionally bring these out and use them with fair accuracy. This is mainly as a party trick, and tends to garner a lot of amusement and awe.
While he was no genius, Anton was fairly bright, and did fairly well in classes. He had a fair amount of talent in a fair few of his subjects. For one, while it was clear he lacked the full abilities associated with the sight (which his brother would prove to display), he had some promise in theoretical and basic to moderate divination. This included an actually quite acute level of accuracy and skill with both tarot readings and tea leaves. These were talents he'd use for fun and to impress his friends at dorm parties, behaviour he'd continue into later life at parties at his houses, to great effect.
Anton also did fairly well at transfiguration, eventually proving to be able to produce an animagus form (a golden retriever dog) by the fairly young age of 16, a feat not often achieved in their particular part of the world. While duelling was a skill he possessed and was competent at, he failed to do as well as he easily could have in the subject, not comfortable with the idea of potentially harming his classmates.
Another subject Anton exelled in in was History of Magic, which was mainly due to a genuine, passionate interest in the subject that only seemed to develop over time. While Anton engaged well with the subject as it was taught and was interested in the history he was taught at school, it was sadly limited to very local history, Northern European and more usually Scandanavian to be exact the legends of Alpertti, the reigns and actions of the various Swedish Kings and their families (including a short-lived attempted coup by his paternal ancestor Sivert Eriksson in the 1300s), the strange political intrigue that seemed to always be going on in wizarding Denmark and Liechtenstein; but it was nice to see the legendary figure Alpertti Vanhanen I came up, as he remembered that he was descended from him through his mother's side of the family. However, Anton felt the urge to branch out from it a bit more, studying in his spare time all kinds of far-off magical civilisations and cultures. He found himself particularly fascinated by the magic of Ancient Egypt and Rome. He wished they would cover them in school, as he found the way that the cultures and ways of doing things were so far different from their own, but yet so interesting to hear about.
A broomstick Anton had when he was at school.
His main skill lay, however, in flying lessons as well as quidditch. Though it was true that he'd been playing quidditch all of his life, this also was true of most (if not all) of his classmates. A culture of reverence for the sport being common in Northern Europe. With muggle-borns not being allowed at the Institute, Anton's classmates had all grown up in a world of magic and, of course, that included he world of flying and quidditch.
However, Anton showed a particular and natural affinity for the sport in the eye of his flying professor, who said with almost certainly, that if he chose to in later life Anton could play quidditch professionally. It was a hallmark moment for the young boy, as this had been his dream. He was going to make it big, he was determined to.
In his other subjects, while he didn't fail, Anton performed far more averagely, doing badly in comparison in Dark Arts class only because the subject matter was something he simply couldn't stand to apply himself to. However, he was quite knowledgeable on the subject, over the years having been taught a great deal about the effects and incantations of some very nasty spells. This was especially because he knew of family and extended family who dabbled in such things, and he knew the kind of people they were or that it made them.
On the Quidditch Team[]
It was in his second year at Durmstrang, Anton that tried out for the Frigg Quidditch Team. To his absolute delight, he was accepted as their new seeker, after having tried out for both seeker and chaser (as a backup); not only had he made it onto the team, he'd made it as the position on the team he'd wanted to. While he felt he could settle for being a chaser, his skill lay far more in the position of seeker. The captain of the time, Gereon Petrauskas, didn't regret his decision: Anton's involvement in the team was a great asset to them, with him being able to outperform both Storetz and Woð's seekers seemingly in his sleep. While Hveð and Rätt's seekers provided a far better challenge most years, he had a good win record overall.
A golden snitch, something that would go on to be very important in Anton's life.
As the years progressed, with experience in the game, Anton's skill only grew in the sport. Being adaptable, Anton was able to not only see when techniques worked but reflect on when they clearly didn't. Self critical but not too hard on himself, Anton practised in his spare time to improve on things he was limited at and bulk up the ones he already was.
He became known for a tactic of being able to tilt his broom into extremely sheer drops or climbs, which most seekers would not try for fear of falling off. While this would actually be impossible, some say the drops and climbs he did were ninety degree, as it almost looked that way on occasion. This allowed the young seeker to get to the snitch when far higher or lower than it far quicker.
After Captain Gereon Petrauskas graduated from school in Anton's fifth year, he named Anton as the person who should take on the reigns in his absence. This made the young man, to his glee, the new Frigg Quidditch Captain in his sixth year. While this bestowed a great many privileges on him, it also handed him several responsibilities, not that Anton minded. These included the selection of new team members to replace those who left in the previous year, or who simply were better than those currently playing for the team to join their ranks. With careful consideration, and no amount of ease due to what Anton felt was an unbelievable amount of talent (which he careful to make sure every unsuccessful applicant knew of), the new captain picked two new chasers and a beater to play on the team for the year.
While it was in this year, his sixth year, that he started thinking about the scouts and members of the teams who watched the matches for potential players, knowing that several of the highest-profile teams, including the Valkyries, who were his personal favourite team, would be present at some of the matches. Not getting his opes up, he was excited and heartened by the fact they were looking for a new seeker. While he tried to not let this affect the other members of the team or take over the whole year of quidditch, it was hard not to put pressure on himself to perform better than he ever had before. He had to impress the scouts, it was his dream to play quiddicth professionally.
Other Extra-Curricular Activities[]
Anton's always enjoyed creative outlets. Even growing up he'd help his mother decide what to do with the interior design of their home really enjoying the way the beautiful things and ideas they planned being made real, of course, that was if Ulrik would accept the changes, however. It being the Eriksson family home it was his and he had the final say. This meant that it was always something that Anton found a bit restricting as well as fun as a result and so he searched for other forms of art to play with in order to entertain himself and keep his mind engaged. He never stopped helping his mother with the plans though, he did enjoy it, and he liked to spend time with Brigitte where, for the most part, Ulrik was to completely switched off from it to bother them too much.
While at school, Anton decided to join the crafts club, though not a typical choice for a sportsman, it gave him something he could play with that was more his, he also learnt a variety of different artistic mediums. However, the one he settled on was making simple jewellery out of beads and wire. Usually he gave these to his friends and family. It was using these techniques that Anton made the handle he still currently has on his wand, which took him several months to get exactly the way he liked. This would prove to be indicative of a trend, Anton found himself very interested in fashion. Not only did he like to make sure he looked nice, when not wearing Durmstrang uniform, he liked thinking of things that would suit other people.
Later Years[]
Studying for his G.E.T.s[]
Anton was a reaonably smart student, while no genius, he was average to moderately good at most subjects, as mentioned before, his particular skills were in divination, history of magic, and transfiguration, the subjects he particularly excelled in, the others took a great deal of effort on his part to achieve the same kind of grades in, especially with his external responsibilities and aspirations within sports to consider. However, he knew that his father would not find an average set of grades with an excellent record in quidditch to be good enough (he wouldn't consider anything good enough, but Anton was a long way away from realising that), so he pushed himself to do well. He hoped that he might finally feel somewhat accepted if he did. All this while attempting to apply for quidditch teams to play for them (somewhat rare for someone of his age just yet, but not unheard of). Even with that he knew that his father would only think he was utterly stupid unless he got at least a B in everything, in his worst moments he felt like he might as well not even return home if he got a single result below B. Closer to the final exams this panic intensified to the point where he was convinced if he missed out on a single O grade his father would kick him out.
Offer From Västernorrland Valkyries[]
Mid-way through his fifth year in 1970, having put his name forward for the scouts to consider at the first oppotunity available to him, he was showered with various offers from teams from all over Europe. One even from as far afield as Barcelona, the Barcelona Buzzards; however, the offer he was by far most exited by, and which drew his attention instantly, was that of his personal favourite team, the Västernorrland Valkyries. Arguably the most popular team in the Swedish magical community at least, as well as being highly popular abroad, the Valkyries were Anton's absolute favourite team, and he'd always dreamed of joining them. With the blessing of his father, which he had to have to be able to do all things in life at this stage of his life, he accepted their offer and began attending practises when he could, with special provisions being allowed for him to go during term time. For the most part this didn't interfere with actual classes, as practices were held at early morning, or on weekends, though when they clashed he was excused from the class he was due to attend.
A 16-year-old Anton, thoroughly excited abotut his new job, in the new Västernorrland Valkyries robes of the era (contemporary 1972-1977).
This, as far as Andre, Anton's younger brother, was a travesty. Andre knew that Anton had got an offer from his team of choice, the local team: the Gällivare Gengångare. Accepting the Valkyries would mean he'd reject the Gengångare and that was just inconceivable. The brothers had a playful tiff about it, though Andre was really just exited and pleased that Anton had really done it.
He wasn't alone there. Anton could hardly believe his own success yet himself, he always knew he was good, he knew he'd get offers but he never would have fathomed the figure he'd been offered on the Valkyries' letter, or getting an offer from someone as amazing as the Valkyries. He knew it was likely better not to say this aloud, but it was enough to easily match his father's fortune, the family fortune, in a couple of years, with change.
Money wasn't exactly the most important thing in the world, Anton had never exactly lacked that of all things growing up, but he'd always liked to have fancy things, parties and spoiling his family and friends with gifts he simply thought they would like; this money could buy that, a lot of that. It also allowed him to buy supplies for his crafts (in droves) as well as a large manor house (at the time in a more tasteful colour) in an expensive area of Stockholm, which was popular with wizards. He had every intention of moving out and making his own way alone after he left school the following year, he was also going to ask his mother to come with him. A bit of a mama's boy, he obviously hated the way his father treated her, and if he could help get her out of that cage too, he knew he had to try to. He couldn't just get out and leave her there. What sort of son would he be if he hadn't at least tried? A poor one in Anton's eyes.
Early Quidditch Career[]
Sixth Year and Balancing in Professional Quidditch[]
Härnösand, the location of the historic stadium of the Västernorrland Valkyries, Anton's workplace where he'd go on to work for several decades, lasting to this day as the current manager.
Anton's sixth year studying at Durmstrang was also hardly an easy one, given that he was now also working on the side, however his early success in quidditch was something the school tended to be more than accommodating toward, and more than used to, given that it reflected well on its ability to train its students in the sport. This was why despite everything he was given the role of captain for his house team by the head of house of the time.
Despite the hectic nature of the year, travelling to and from the Västernorrland Valkyries' stadium in the city of Härnösand in order to attend practices throughout the year, Anton was determined to at least perform reasonably well at his exams (something he imagined his father would also be concerned with). He also wanted to prove himself to be a competent captain at an early point of his career, a lot of that was of course for his own gain, but he also very much didn't want letting his entire team down to be his legacy as Frigg's captain.
The boy already seemed to be rapidly making a name for himself outside of the school circles for his signature "eagle dive" move (later known as the "Eriksson Eagle Dive"), which was described almost across the board as excellent; though the manager of the Sibiu Strigoi of the time (and all time), Adrian Arahnidescu, pretentious, dangerous and needlessly showy. It was possibly sour grapes over the fact that his (and chaser and captain Mirela Constantinescu's) offer was politely declined. It would have been hard for the audience not to notice the manoeuvre. Not only did it look spectacular from a shire visual perspective, it was also highly damn effective, and something many other adept seekers seemed to struggle at when they tried to mimic it. However, when performed correctly it was effective due to its speed, and it was one hell of a crowd-pleaser. Some attempted to mirror Anton to disastrous effect. The seeker for the Gällivare Gengångare of the time, Meinard Mårdh, disastrously crashed his broom into the ground in the Härnösand stadium during the teams' Swedish League match, attempting to match Anton's sudden eagle dive for the snitch from 50 feet, after having witnessed it before at the Scandinavian cup match.
Anton couldn't help but feel guilty for Mårdh's severe injuries that resulted, he felt like he'd indirectly caused them, but Mårdh made a full recovery after a night in the Kloka Magi-Sjukhus, however he could have been killed. This wasn't the first time Anton had seen a fellow player injured playing the sport, but this was an extremely nasty set of broken bones and lacerations from the chipped broom wood. It was also the first time a player had been so badly injured attempting to do something, to his mind, only because he had done it. He visited the player, giving him a box of assorted wizard sweets as a peace offering, which was received well by a slightly confused and disorientated Mårdh. Despite this incident Anton continued to use the signature manoeuvre, knowing on some level that he was being irrational in terms of the guilt he felt over the other player's injury.
Back at school, Anton remained overwhelmingly popular, now to the extent that even the most staunch pure-blood supremacists chanced their image by hanging out with him. He tended to avoid them nonetheless, perfectly content with the "concerning" friends he already had. Naturally his best friend was thrilled by the whole thing, only pissed that he couldn't actually attend the matches because he was stuck in school.
Creepy Correspondence[]
European Quidditch Cup 1972[]
Anton had been offered a place on the Swedish National Quidditch Team, in mid 1971, after performing superbly for the Valkyries; making him one of the youngest players on the team, with the keeper Gabriel Holmström (who happened to also play for the Valkyries' rival team, the Ostrobothnia Ouroboroi) being only a few months younger than Anton. Despite being "bitter rivals" the two got on well, having actually been quite close friends. This was in time for him to compete in the European Quidditch Cup in the summer of 1972, which would be held in various cities in Italy. This event was when Anton really shot to fame, this was while he was still in school, naturally making him very popular with his classmates when he returned for that final year at school.
Anton continued utilising his "eagle dive" move to great effect, helping his country's team soar its way through the qualifying stage with ease. Though he felt it was absolutely worth it the role he was playing was far more intensive then he'd ever had before with playing on a national or Scandinavian regional level. Once out of the qualifying stage was hen things got really tough. The actual games themselves were also much faster paced, even though they lasted longer. Though naturally he didn't catch the snitch in every match they played, and the team didn't always win, he had a good catch record, and his captain and manager were pleased with his performance. He and the rest of the team were actually doing far better than Sweden had in a fair few years.
A lifelike figurine of Anton sporting Swedish National Team robes from the 1972 range for the European Quidditch Cup of that year, which sold very well.
This shot the team into prominence in the European quidditch fan's eye (as well as the small amount of the wider world's audience who watched the European cup as well), with their shiny new young seeker, Anton, being particularly notable for his very unique, arguably dangerous and aesthetically eye-catching favourite manoeuvre. This meant that Anton was already gaining a fair fan-base.
This, as an experience was both heartening, as he knew he was finding success, and hard to adjust to given that it genuinely changed a lot of the way he lived his life from then on. It was both exciting and downright weird for Anton to see figures of himself being sold to people, to have people approach him when he was out with his mother (probably finding things to redecorate with) out of excitement of for an autograph.
In some ways it grew to be kind of exhausting, rather quickly; this was especially when papers started to get involved in things. The papers, while treating Anton in quite a positive light, often liked to gossip about his personal life, obviously mostly in the tabloids, despite him being quite young for a quidditch player. With an Icelandic newspaper doing a very long article about his life with a lot of the details exaggerated or just plain wrong; a very strange German magazine also made the bizarre and completely incorrect claim that he'd been recruited at thirteen by a special form of divination practised by Swedish quidditch teams. This, naturally made Anton quite uncomfortable, as having people he'd never met before approach him like they knew his entire life story was a very odd thing to experience indeed. This led to him looking into ways to try and stop them doing this. However, since he was already 17, of age in the wizarding world, there was no recourse for him. He had to slowly try to get used to it.
As the event continued through the summer, Anton became more used to the pace of things, at least on the pitch. It had taken a while but he was fairly used to the scale and the way in which national matches worked now and the long hours they'd often run to, having played an over 10 hour game against Spain in the middle of the June heat in Italy, which had been a close game with Sweden just about edging a victory 490-480. He did suffer a nasty injury after falling from his broom upon taking a bludger to the shoulder, which was hit at him by one of the Bulgarian National Quidditch Team's beaters, Evangeliya Minkova. He suffered three broken bones and a compound fracture. Though he missed only the rest of the one match as a result of it, magical medicine worked fast, it came as a huge worry to his younger brother Andreas, who up until then had found the whole thing to be amazing and highly exciting, as Anton had spent the night in one of the Italian wizarding hospitals, Malattie Magiche Ospedale, in Bologna to receive treatment for his various broken bones.
His mother came over to visit him as soon as she could, fussing over him, naturally. Ulrik had naturally declared himself too "busy" to check that his son was okay. Though Anton didn't have much love for his father by this point at all, he couldn't help but be hurt by this, something that he could see that his mother noticed. He begged her not to say anything about it, knowing full well that the result would be his father hurting her, though he got the distinct impression she was still going to. This fact kept him up all night, unable to sleep from the guilt and worry, though when she returned in the morning he lied and told his mother he'd slept well. Minkova also came in to check on Anton in the morning, who was already by then about ready to leave. He was amused by this, thanking her for being concerned and admitting he could be the same, but playfully teasing her because she is a beater, it was her job to do that. The papers couldn't keep their nose out of this either, they speculated about the reasoning of Minkova's hospital visit: it had been only a sportsmanlike gesture, to make sure he was actually recovering well. Several papers insisted that they had entered into a romantic relationship, which worried Anton because he did actually have a girlfriend, Lilja Leifursdóttir. Though Lilja simply found the fact that he'd think she'd believe anything the papers say amusing.
Another lifelike figurine of Anton sporting Swedish National Team robes from the 1972 range for the European Quidditch Cup of that year, which sold very well.
The rest of the cup went without serious incident of the medical kind. Anton's team soared to victory upon victory in the various rounds games and Anton couldn't help but start to reel from just how well they were actually doing. While he'd been exited to play for the national team, he'd never expected them to get this far.
Before long they were in the semi-finals, where he beat the Welsh team's seeker, Eirwen Banes, to the snitch by a few seconds, thanks to his trusty "eagle dive" despite her having spotted it first, the speed of the manoeuvre and Banes' unwillingness to attempt to copy it won him the day. This was after Anton faced a narrow miss of yet another run in from a bludger, this time hit at him by beater Gruffud Priddy, which was expertly blocked this time by one of Priddy's Swedish counterparts, Britta Ahlström.
In the other semi-final, however, the Transylvanian team lost to the Belgian team. During this match, a slightly tense moment took place between the Transylvanin keeper, Andra Ionescu, and one of the Belgian beaters, Aafje Aarle, wherein Ionescu successfully argued that the Transylvanian team should be given a penalty, as the referee agreed that Aarle's use of one of the bludgers was a foul, despite Aarle's protests. There was an injury as well, as one of the Belgian chasers, Abel Schenk was "accidentally" hit in the face with a beater's bat by one of the Transylvanian beaters, Florina Văduva in revenge; this was an undeniable foul and thus granted the Belgian team a penalty. Schenk, however, needed to be taken to the hospital for the night, as he had sustained several fractures and a concussion from the fall. In the 7th hour the Transylvanian seeker, Stelian Albert, lost the snitch to the Belgian seeker, Aurèle Dubois by a very close chase, winning the match for Belgium.
It was surreal, his team had made it to the cup final, and it was a feeling unlike anything he'd felt before. Anton was all over the papers, as was the Belgian seeker Aurèle Dubois (even having to pose together, as well as with their teams for the British newspaper the Daily Prophet). The very real chance they had of winning this failed to really sink in for Anton though until the match itself, by which time he was eager and ready to make this a win. The game started with controversy, the other of Belgium's beaters, Alexis Zuiderduin, attempted to knock Swedish keeper and captain of the time Jörgen Winther off of the broom vie the "excessive use" of elbows, and when that didn't work actually trying to collide with him. This earned Zuiderduin a ban from the field and Sweden a penalty, starting the game off 10 to 0 to Sweden already. Zuiderduin was substituted for Corentin Van Breda, and the match continued as normal until the 6th hour. At this time Swedish chaser Ingegärd Lång was knocked off her broom by Van Breda, who in turn was knocked off his by Ahlström.
The game ended in the 16th hour upon Anton spotting the snitch around 55 feet down, he accidentally did somewhat of a feint by climbing upwards rather than diving for it straight away, in order create more speed on the eventual decent. This led to Dubois noticing Anton's stark incline upwards and tailing behind him believing the snitch to be up there. This all went horribly wrong for him when Anton steadied and performed possibly the steepest dive he'd done yet, directing his broom toward the ground at alarming and increasing speed, he begun to steady the broom around 6 feet from the ground and grab the snitch with a confused Dubois still around 20 feet in the air, having been unable to match the decent. The match was comfortably won by Sweden, with a score of Sweden 910 and Belgium 720. What had just happened took a few seconds to sink in for Anton, he'd started this competition terrified he'd show himself up, but slowly it became ever more real to him: he'd caught the winning snitch of the European Quidditch Cup and they'd won. It had been the first time in just over a century.
A Swedish wizard newspaper reporting on the win of the European Cup, specifically on the popular image of Anton celebrating by tackling Anders. several says after the win in the September of 1972.
Naturally elated, Anton embraced his family members in celebration, tackling his brother who twirled him in response (several pictures of which made several front pages, and are now pretty iconic images of Anton); he also hugged his mother, Lilja and younger siblings clearly in shire disbelief of what he'd actually just helped achieve. After an awkward exchanged look, Anton gave his father Ulrik a hug to, as somewhat of an attempt at an olive branch, which Ulrik only very roboticly returned.
Anton clearly was under the mistaken belief he was here for any reason other than his own image. His son being in, and now winning, the European Quiddicth Cup final for Sweden reflected well on him: that was the only reason Ulrik had even bothered to attend. And he'd accept the hug in order to look like a normal, loving father as that would make him look good too.
Final Year at Durmstrang[]
This year of at Durmstrang, quite honestly, the strangest he'd experienced yet, as the years had progressed that had seemed to be a trend. The now world famous seeker had been fairly used to the popularity the success with his Swedish and Scandinavian teams had garnered him at the school, but he'd not quite been anticipating the shire level of hype and excitement around his part in actually winning the European Quidditch Cup for Sweden for the Swedish National Team. None of the other members of the Swedish team were still in school, nor were any of the members of any of the other qualifying teams and so naturally the school was abuzz with asking him what it was like and enthusing about some of the highlights of the match. While at first flattering it was soon hard to realistically deal with without some level of stress. The relief from this came in the form of the crafts club; artistic outlets for stress seemed to be what Anton relied on most (and he would need to turn to them often in his future).
He continued as his role as quidditch captain, though he did express concern that with all of his other responsibilities (yet another season of quidditch was starting up on the national level), and went about making sure he came up with a strategy and plan that recreated the success of the previous year. Though obviously he had to juggle this with both his professional playing, with pretty intense practices taking place throughout the year, somewhere amongst all this he still actually had to study. This was made difficult by the aforementioned questioning about the European Cup win. While this calmed down as the year progressed, he still found he'd acquired a small entourage of people, something his best friend, Darius Geraikova, seemed to only find extremely amusing at first before slowly joining Anton in getting exhausted by it, and concerned by how it was clearly stressing his friend out.
Anton still had all the responsibilities of last year, he was still the captain of the Frigg quidditch team, which didn't help his stress levels. However, despite the added stress, Anton wouldn't have had it another way. While that year Rätt's quiditch team won the Three School Quidditch Cup, that wasn't for lack of a good leadership from Anton. Frigg came second, with Rätt's seeker of the time, Ruuben Linna beating him to the snitch by mere nanoseconds in the ninth hour of the match much to everyone's shock. For the first time in half a century neither Hveð or Woð had made it into the top two; with Woð making it to third for a narrow victory over Hveð in a pretty intense match in its own right, only to get beaten very thoroughly by both of the higher scoring teams in their respective matches. Anton even managed to beat their seeker, Vytenis Petkevičius, to the snitch by almost half a minute, because he'd been "distracted" by one of the Frigg chasers. Petkevičius attempted to call foul, even though there was no discernible grounds, though he was a fairly skilled player and did go on to play for the Kaunas Kaukas for ten years before retiring and going into commentating despite this blunder.
tea leaves, one of the tools of divination, and a variety Anton was rather skilled at. This came in handy for his F.U.T.T.s as it was one of the subjects he managed to do well in despite his other stresses.
Anton's F.U.T.T. grades, however, likely would have been far better if he hadn't had so many other responsibilities to contend with. Anton liked to think that if he'd have been either just the Frigg captain, or going across the country for practice sessions or matches alone: he might not have been under so much stress, and would have had more time to set aside for revision and study.
However, as it stood, his grades were still not too bad, and he even managed to get an excellent score in history of magic, divination and transfiguration, his three best subjects without a doubt; the rest of his subjects, however, Anton simply performed averagely in. This was actually enough for him, as his intention was to pursue quidditch as his career, and he already knew he could do that. But his decent results also showed that he wasn't a complete idiot, as a stereotype for quidditch players often were, he wasn't completely useless at other things.
Anton had his career path already planned out and he was already doing well at it. Even if he needed something to fall back on, one of his creative interests would likely have been his go to rather than anything that particularly needed grades. Anton was simply not the academic kind, and he wasn't the kind of person who would thrive in a Ministry job. Anton was simply not made for it, like his home life already did, that kind of job would simply suffocate him. However, the teenager didn't think that his father was going to be particularly proud of anything that he actually could do. After all he'd worked hard all summer, and he'd actually helped to win the European Quidditch Cup for Sweden, something they hadn't managed in ages, and Ulrik hadn't even seemed to be remotely interested in it let alone being anything so sentimental as proud. He'd scarcely even bothered to show up to the games after all.
The feeling of being a disappointment was, though not solved, overshadowed by him landing an invite to the king, Ludvig VI's, annual Christmas party at the Palats Över Isen in Kiruna. A fairly important and exclusive event, which many high-up officials attended. This was something Ulrik had been trying to get invited to for perhaps most of his career and had been thus far unsuccessful at doing so. This led Anton to the false assumption that him successfully getting an invite and a chance to speak with the monarch would be something Ulrik would be proud of, something he'd actually consider an achievement. Anton was obviously mistaken, and all Ulrik has for his son was resentment that he'd received an invite. He argued that the reason was that he'd gotten it without really trying for that specifically, when Ulrik had been working hard to get the king's favour all of his career. However it was probably sour grapes. Never mind that Anton had actually worked very hard to do well in the European Quidditch Cup. Because he hadn't done that just for the sake of garnering favour with the royals, he'd simply had a free ride in the eyes of Ulrik.
The inside of the Palats Över Isen in Kiruna, Sweden, where Anton attended a fairly exclusive Christmas party thrown by the king during the Christmas break of his last year at Durmstrang. This was also where he garnered a fair amount of favour with the king, much to his father's dismay and annoyance.
Despite his father's scorn he was still determined to have a good time. Naturally, he invited his girlfriend at the time, Lilja, to go with him to the palace as his date, them having been dating for almost a year now it would have seemed crazy to Anton for her not to be there. He excitedly planned things with her (it being very important to Anton that they should have robes that complemented each other).
The night went fantastically: Anton and his girlfriend had fun together and naturally danced half of the night away (though not exactly his biggest interest it seemed to make Lilja smile), and the boy was able to energetically entertain other guests who asked with first-hand retellings of the events of some of the European cup match catches. Traditionally the king liked to talk with all the guests and, a keen quidditch enthusiast, Ludvig particularly enjoyed talking to Anton and his teammate Gabriel Holmström. Almost the exact age Ludvig's late son would be, the ruler took to Anton, finding him both polite and entertaining to talk to.
After the ball, however, despite any mention of him in the papers in relation to it being fairly positive, Ulrik had spotted a picture of Anton there with Lilja. Somehow, and Anton planned to ask his elder brother if he knew how, Ulrik had found out that she was "only" a half-blood; this resulted in a major argument about Anton "gallivanting around with people who are far below [his] class", which culminated in Anton pointing out to his father that he might be doing less well in terms of making connections in Swedish magical society these days because "maybe [he has] to live in the society [he exists] in to actually succeed in it?". This made the remaining few days staying at the clock house eerily quiet, with Anton and his father not speaking more than five words in total to one another the entire time. Anton spent the lion's share of these days talking with his mother, and angrily playing piano, like any good posh but angsty teenager would. After the last few days Anton left home, ostensibly for the last time, expecting to graduate after his final term and leave the house to live in his own for good.
Back at Durmstrang, his focus went back on to strategy for the last two school quidditch games of the year (against Rättförtrolling and Woðanaz Hus), his professional games for the Swedish League, as well as his actual exams, which he was still determined to do well in despite the fact he was understandably a incredibly bogged down with other things. Exams at durmstrang for the most part were a practical display of ability followed by a small written exam. Easily his easiest class to get a decent grade in was divination, which Anton had a natural talent for. The second easiest was History of Magic, from a position of just loving the subject so much and finding it fascinating, he was able to revise for it and not really having that much trouble engaging himself in it. Darius even joined him revising sometimes due to the fact Anton's enthusiasm kept him entertained as he revised. This was bizarre to show as History of Magic was seen as one of the worst subjects, due in no small part to its entirely written nature. Darius returned this 'favour' by helping Anton with his practical charms, which at the beginning of the revision period could have used a lot of work.
The secondary courtyard at Durmstrang, where Anton and his girlfriend would enjoy practising trying to fend of a trained duellist later on away form Anton's entourage. It was a surprising amount of fun, especially since it descended into the pair having a laugh instead, and the occasional tickle fight, and plenty of making out.
His next easiest was transfiguration, which Anton did well at in general, but particularly impressed Professor Frisk in the exam by managing to transform into an animagus; which, while technically illegal, was something that had excited Anton as he read about it and was actually very difficult. Frisk made him register it after the practical. After a lot of practising as well as a lot of fun times with Lilja (who Anton had not stopped seeing), he did fairly well with the duelling practical exam. Anton managed to hold out against the examiner for long enough that his grade could be placed at O.
All in all, Anton had acquired fairly respectable grades for his schooling that year, outstanding considering his outside commitments and responsibilities. These were still grades with witch which he could have gone to get a decent regular job with. Not that he expected to get anything resembling pride out of his father, especially after Christmas. When he left school in June, he expected to visit home only briefly before moving in permanently to his new home in Stockholm, visiting his mother as often as he could, of course.
Forced Marriage to Blodwen[]
Note: Things start to get kind of (really) rough from here (you may have guessed from the title of this section) so if you are triggered by stuff with, well literally any kind of abuse (emotional, physical and sexual)... I'd give this one a miss. I won't be offended.
Returning to the clock house was a massive mistake on Anton's part. What was once a metaphorical prison became a true one. Upon returning home, Anton was on placed lock-down, as were the owls and all other forms of communication in and out of the house. His father had had it, he'd found a method by which he felt he could keep Anton in line. While he'd been away in school, a Welsh witch by the name of Blodwen Vaughan had contacted Ulrik in the hopes of setting up a match with Anton. Despite the fact that Blodwen was both 14 years older than Anton, known for having several violent outbursts which took place during her schooling, was a fellow Death Eater, and came off as a unsettling nigh-on stalker of the young seeker (who had disturbingly caught her interest at just 16), Ulrik accepted her kind offer. Anton was going too far off the deep end and that simply wouldn't do, someone like Blodwen seemed like the perfect person to stamp the resistance and "bad habits" out of him. Once Anton returned home, Ulrik informed him of the arrangement. When Anton naturally protested to this idea Ulrik pretended to not understand why his son was being "difficult", as Anders had agreed to an arrangement several years before (failing to acknowledge both that the brothers' personalities were wildly different, and ignoring the fact that Blodwen was almost double his age).
Blodwen "Wendy" Eriksson (née Vaughan), aged 31, as she looked when she first met Anton Eriksson, aged 18, in 1973, upon his "agreement" to go through with the marriage arrangement under the threat of his mother would face further physical abuse from Ulrik if he refused to do so. Wendy was aware of this.
As anyone could have predicted, Anton did not accept this arrangement readily at all, though due to his nature of being under his father's thumb (having trouble shaking the idea that he was being unreasonable as Ulrik said), and still not wanting to completely cut ties with the rest of the family, he tried to negotiate rather than refuse outright. He pointed out that Ulrik had no financial hold over him, that he could make it on his own, but was coerced and emotionally manipulated into a position of feigning "consideration" of the idea.
Shortly after his initial talk with his father, Anton sought advice and comfort from his mother, with whom he still got on tremendously well. He was nervous at first, as Ulrik had attempted to convince him that Brigitte had agreed that the match was a good idea as well (though Anton found this incredibly hard to believe). He initially attempted to pretend that he was neutral about the idea, but his mother saw straight through this, and confirmed her son's suspicions that she had been against the idea.
Anton was cautious to admit all of his concerns, despite everything, his father's "talk" with him about this had him at least semi-convinced that it was he that was being unreasonable, crazy as that was. He instead tried to subtly ask if his mother was concerned about the circumstances around the "match" and the fact she was so much older than him. He didn't mention Lilja, if he thought about that right now, or he'd just think about how rightfully angry she'd be about this. however his inquiry had an unwanted side effect, able to tell from both how he was speaking (with the beginnings of his stutter rearing its head) as well as common sense that Anton was both terrified and absolutely did not want to get married. Anton was simply not the kind of man who would marry at such a young age, especially not to a woman (who was not his girlfriend) almost twice his age, and from what he could gather was a bit of an avid "fan"; Anton had more been planning to get married when he felt like it was time, probably in his thirties. Despite everything, he'd held out the ghost of hope that his father would have known that, and cared about his happiness to at least a small extent. However, Anton wasn't even surprised by his father's clear and terrifying willingness to ignore completely Anton's potential happiness for whatever it was Ulrik was undoubtedly getting out of the arrangement. He was just disappointed.
Despite Anton practically begging her not to, knowing and fearing what Ulrik would do, Brigitte spoke up against the match again, to disastrous effect. Ulrik was begrudgingly sure that Anton was actually going to refuse to accept the match, despite the fact that to his mind, it was his right to set up his children as he pleased. He'd have to really take drastic measures to show Anton that this was not, despite what he might have thought, a request: it was required. Ulrik essentially held Anton's mother hostage, saying that he would continue to physically harm her should he continue to be "difficult". This had the desired effect of making Anton feel as if he was responsible for his father's actions if he refused, that he would be "letting" his father do this. Unable to refuse under these circumstances, Anton was panicked but agreed to the match as long as Ulrik swore that he'd never harm his mother again. Ulrik accepted this, though naturally had no intention of honouring it. After his the wedding was set to go ahead, though the lock-down persisted, Ulrik knew he had to keep this from Anders or this would be over, that Markku (Anton's maternal grandfather) would also likely cause problems and so no correspondence was to be sent to him, all Anton was allowed to send for for were the plans and resources for the event, and had to go through Ulrik so that he couldn't attempt anything. In a similar vein, Anton was also not allowed to invite certain people, because the risk of them seeing that something was up was far too high all the way up to inevitable. He wasn't even allowed to explain to Lilja what was happening, or tell her he was sorry.
The very homemade décor that Anton had for his wedding, set up while he was feeling emotionally distressed in the buildup to the day itself as a bit of a morbid outlet for the stress. A lot of it was Macgyvered together, as he had limited resources at his disposal thanks to the lockdown his father on the entire house.
Emotionally, Anton was in a state of free-fall, he was plummeting ever further down with no sign of an end in sight. He wasn't allowed to see his elder brother, his friends, his extended family. It was all cut off from him. The only people who seemed to have any sympathy for him was his mother and two younger siblings. He was scared, terrified, but the only people who would care were those which would only be deeply upset by it the most if he were to tell them. Unwise as it was, however, his reaction was to pretend to be okay.
Hope that the cracks in his smile didn’t show through the thin veneer, and that no one heard him when he couldn't hold back the panic any more. To try and hide it better he'd try to make sure to do so away from everyone else, which usually turned out to be by locking himself in the third story bathroom, a habit that would continue most of his adult life. For the days leading up to meeting the woman of the hour, and after that the days leading up to their wedding, Anton was crumbling away; but he still kept that hollow smile plastered on his face. Distracting himself only slightly by making preparations for the day, making everything look beautiful.
Anton first met Blodwen, his soon to be wife, a mere few days before their wedding, when she came over from Wales, very excited to meet him. Excited was not exactly the word one could use for Anton's feelings around their introduction, apprehensive and scared out of his mind was a more apt description. His expectations were turned on their head, however. Though the circumstances around their marriage were no less bleak and unnerving, Blodwen herself was oddly sweet upon introduction to Anton. Caught off-guard by this, Anton reacted the only way he could work out to do so, he was polite back. However, he was naturally still thoroughly unnerved by the woman (given that, as far as he was aware, she was understood fully all of the circumstances at play here and was still pushing ahead with this). Over the course of the days leading up to the wedding she attempted to convince Anton, who was naturally quite terrified of her, that she wasn't a complete monster, when really nothing could be further from the truth. While Anton didn't hate the woman she was pretending to be, he still didn't want to marry anyone, let alone someone thirteen years older than him and under these circumstances. There was also the fact that anyone who would willingly go through with this knowing what was happening on his end, by default, was a monster, no matter how "nice" they were about it. Blodwen, to try and get around this, however, attempted to convince Anton that she was in a similar situation to him, and that she didn't want to do this either.
Anton as he looked at age 18, shortly before his disastrous forced marriage to Wendy on the 2nd of July 1973, holding on only by a thread.
Not thoroughly convinced by this, Anton nonetheless humoured her. Other people would probably think what was happening to him was far-fetched too, so a far-fetched tale didn't necessarily equal a lie. He didn't want to assume that she was a compulsive liar as, if she was, it wasn't like he had a choice to not marry her anyway given the circumstances he was working with.
He suggested that if she could, she should get an owl out to his big brother Anders who, though he knew it sounded strange and naive, Anton knew could stop this. Wendy made a feeble excuse about how it would be impossible for her to do this, and that Anders probably wouldn't want to help anyway if he had gone through with his match, he'd probably just see this as normal. Anton found this answer unsettling, as it made no sense, and the solution seemed just within reach for a second.
In the final days before the wedding Anton attempted to suggest that he invite the king, Ludvig VI, who had shown a fondness for him. Despite what Ulrik had said to him, Ludvig had actually very quickly invited him to the following year's Christmas party, as well as a few other smaller events for people closer to him. This was Anton's second attempt to get word out to someone he believed would help him, knowing that the king's stance on this was harsh, especially because of the death of his elder brother Lars. While he couldn't be certain, he had a feeling that this might at least tempt his father, as he seemed pretty intent on getting closer to the top of the ladder of success. It didn't work out, however, tempted by the idea as he was, Ulrik knew that Ludvig VI would put a stop to this and probably make a few arrests. With the failure of this plan, Anton was running out of ideas of how to get away. Especially since he needed to think of a way that would help his mother, too, that being his basically main priority, that being the reason he was forced to agree in the first place, the risk of his mother being in danger in any other case. And so, without any more ideas, the date loomed closer and closer. The day before the wedding was when he met the rest of the bride's close family, including her brothers Cadwal and Morithic, who he tried to be friendly with only to face amused dismissal on their part, both of them seeming to find the situation chillingly funny. He was essentially pointedly ignored by her father; the only member of her family who was present and treated him with kindness or respect was Wendy's mother, Aeronwen. The other attendants were blissfully unaware of the context by nature, and Anton had no idea which of them he could trust.
Blodwen Eriksson (née Vaughan) ecstatic (who was presumably the only person at the event who was) and looking thoroughly pleased with herself on her and Anton's fateful wedding day in her dress, presumably beaming at her new husband, Anton.
On Saturday 7th of July 1973, the wedding took place. The event was described by Anton's younger brother Andreas to be "like a funeral" in to him atmosphere, in that everyone with any sense had a sense of sombre foreboding about the affair. This was even Wendy's mother, who attempted to comfort Anton's mother, who was naturally in a state of pure distress; she was clearly as horrified by her own daughter's actions as many others would be over time.
At around midday the ceremony happened and the pair were officially married, despite it some effort from Anton to keep publicly calm throughout (knowing how dire the result could be if he failed to was little help, his mother would be hurt). He attempted to entertain somewhat during the reception, though clearly was more than somewhat emotionally drained at least, this could be put down to nerves, though under the surface the truth was he was a complete wreck, as the reality of the fact he was now married to someone, someone he didn't want to be married to, set in.
He was greatful for the help of his mother's cousin Anna-Liisa Karppinen, who made and effort to help him feel more comfortable by stealing a dance every time it became clear to her that Anton really wanted to do anything at all other thandance with Wendy. She also played a comfortimg world hugging and reassuring Anton's mother and siblings.
Anton, who clearly wants to be anywhere but here right now.
Despite this, he knew that he had to power through the event and give the unknowing onlookers nothing to be overly concerned about. He couldn't allow them to see that he was, in fact, a complete mess, or he might have ended up getting his mother hurt. Any escape he made would have to get he and his mother out, or he felt he was responsible for anything that happened to her.
At around half one in the night, he and Wendy left the party for Anton's own home he'd bought himself in Stockholm, which he'd been exited to move out to alone for moths before (having enthused about it to his friends and girlfriend), and Ulrik naturally went back on his word to his son almost instantly.
Start of Abuse[]
— Anton's go-to "excuse" for Blodwen's actions toward him over
their eight years of marriage.
For the first few months of their marriage things were naturally deeply uncomfortable but the implicit abuse was not obvious to Anton himself yet, though the very nature of the arrangement itself was naturally completely exploitative and abusive to begin with. For these months, Anton scrambled to convince himself it was okay, that he was going to be okay, repeating it in his mind over and over like a mantra. When Blodwen asked for things and Anton was unwilling to deliver them, Wen would attempt to act as a normal person would and would try and persuade him if she was really adamant but seemingly "accept" the answer at least for the moment. Though inevitably, if the thing was something she really wanted she would persistently ask him, weaving in a few emotionally manipulative statements where she could, hoping to wear him down on the issue so she could have her own way. However the nature of some most of her requests was deeply disturbing. For instance, from literally the first night, Wendy asked her new young husband for sex, though this was obviously one of the last thing he was interested in in this particular situation. She would seemingly accept the response in the moment but continually ask again, days or even just hours later, it was enough to easily make Anton feel constantly uncomfortable and unsafe in his own home.
Anton Eriksson posing with his new wife Wendy Eriksson (née Vaughan) in the December of 1973, very early in their marriage, at one of Jörgen Winther's many parties celebrating a quidditch victory, which the "couple" attended together. Wendy particularly enjoyed the feeling of importance attending these lavish parties gave her, and very much enjoyed it when Anton broght her to them. He is definitely very happy, honest.
During this time, still naturally in a state of emotional free-fall, but Anton was desperately scrambling to make this work as well as well he could, feeling like that was his only chance of having happiness again in his life. As a result he still threw and attended his parties, and he still read his tarot cards, pretending like everything was okay, trying to convince himself it was actually true at the same time. All the while Wendy was still poking and pestering him about the as of yet obviously slow and virtually nonexistent "physical" side to their relationship.
This consisted of, at the most, brief and extremely awkward kisses that were returned by Anton only out of a want to feel something so this could be bearable (which it failed miserably at doing), but the more Wendy harassed him about it the more uncomfortable this made him. Wendy would also get "offended" if Anton spent too much of his spare time with his friends and teammates, often complaining about the blood-status of some of them and how it was a shame he was forced to associate with them. While she knew actually isolating him was a bad idea, it didn't stop her complaining to him about it. The other things she nagged him about were less serious than the other issues, but combined with them in context, horrifying.
In a continued attempt to feel part of the family, he continued to try to involve the two of his brothers-in-law he'd already met (Cadwal and Morithic) and again he was faced only cruelty and ridicule from them, which Wendy did not complain about on his behalf. His attempts to get to know Wendy's father led to his father-in-law, Ercwlff, still mostly coldly ignoring him, acknowledging his presence only dispassionately when directly addressed by him. The reason mainly being that the horror of his daughter's actions was far easier for him to ignore and deny the existence of if he didn't get to know the boy, though he refused to admit this to his wife or eldest son, who admonished him for his treatment of Anton. Ercwlff knew that if he acknowledged and got to know Anton he would feel sympathy for him, and with that would come guilt for the part he played in facilitating the situation. Ercwlff had convinced himself that he'd had to do this to get Wendy out of his hair. The only two people in the family who treated him with kindness were, in fact, his mother-in-law, Aeronwen, who had been kind to him at the wedding already, and his eldest brother-in-law, Gwydion, who had not attended (as Blodwen had known that he would only have "caused problems"). Anton still, of course, visited his mother and younger siblings as often as he could, but his father, he felt, resented his presence, and he was afraid to push too much in case he was prevented from speaking to them permanently.
After two months of marriage, Wendy lost her "patience" with Anton's lack of interest in her sexually, feeling as if she was being deprived of something she had expected to receive after successfully making Anton go through with the wedding. Clearly Anton's perspective hadn't been something she'd thought about fully, her thoughts had been with the fact that she had wanted this, not how logistically it was going to work out once they were married and he was "trapped". One night, several months into the marriage, she flew off the handle. She guilt tripped, manipulated, screamed at, threatened to use dark magic on, and eventually beat Anton until he finally agreed to do what she had been pestering him to do from day one, due to a unique blend of guilty feelings as if he was being unfair to her, and fear of her rage-filled attacks continuing indefinitely. This, though Anton refused accept it under several layers of denial, constituted a sexual assault. He spent the rest of that night lying awake next to her on his side, staring at the wall, trying very hard not to audibly cry. After that first "fight", Anton's attitude with Wendy changed, he was now far more on-edge around her than he had been even before; he was still fairly convinced by her characterisation of the situation, being very good at taking on the blame for things, as well as lacking self-worth enough to believe he deserved better with any conviction, but he still had this niggling conflicting voice telling him that he'd been through something horrific, backed up by the sick and cold chill feeling that kept running through him whenever he thought of it.
"The Pink Monstrosity", the first home Anton bought for himself from his own money he got from his work with the Valkyries and Sweden in his mid-teens, and something that symbolised his prospective freedom from his father to him. He'd been particularly drawn to the exterior of the house, before Wendy violently insisted that he paint it pink and teal (a colour scheme that didn't appeal to him). It's somewhat of a metaphor for the control Wendy already had over Anton.
However, Wendy getting her way didn't end the problem. She continued to repetitively force her opinions, her will, and herself on her young husband. A narcissistic woman, her own perspective was the thing that mattered most, to her anyway. If Anton dared contradict her, it was taken as a direct insult to her, and was a mere hurdle to get over, by any means to get whatever she wanted. No matter who it actually meant more to, her way was the only way. She would scream at, smack him and throw things at him until she bullied him into agreeing to whatever demand she had.
A great example of this was the house that became known as the "The Pink Monstrosity". When he bought the house a few years before, Anton had been particularly drawn to how the exterior had looked to him. As he grew ever closer to being of age and out of school, he found himself enjoying the idea of living there and being independent from his father. However, it became the house which he and his new he and his new wife lived in. And a few months later, she insisted he have it modified to look how she wanted it, despite his protests and despite him explaining to her how much it meant to him she bullied him until he agreed.
While it was true, and something Anton would try and reference frequently later on, she would always apologise for physically smacking him at the very least, however, she would repeat the actions over without attempting to alter her behaviour in any way (sometimes within seconds of an apology), rendering the apology hollow. There was the added horror that her apologies would often come in the form of, or otherwise involve, her kissing him or oftentimes kissing where she had smacked him, naturally making Anton feel worse. She'd often then even try to progress things further in that regard, which Anton obviously didn't want to do at that time, however he felt he had to, because refusing would simply have started a fresh fight. Anton also had to accept this "affection" while trying to act as unfazed by doing so as he could, as flinching (his natural response by this point) would get him into trouble. This was rarely if ever completely successful, as he naturally couldn't help but be uncomfortable and afraid, this often led to him having to come up with "excuses" for his natural negative reactions, such as being "surprised", so as to avoid further anger. This was all interspersed with Wendy's demeanour completely changing, and her acting as if she and Anton were a completely normal couple and the yelling and abuse simply didn't happen, as if they really had just had a normal discussion, and he'd changed his mind. This gaslighting started to mess with Anton's head, and eventually he believed that he had "changed his mind".
Blodwen, of course, wanted to keep what she was doing very quiet, however, as she knew that most people would object to what she was doing to her husband and put a stop to it. She fully believed Anders, Anton's elder brother and an already fairly formidable fellow Death Eater, would likely have murdered her if he'd known what was happening. However Wendy already had worn Anton down into being a mixture too terrified to try to speak up and, after persistently gaslighting him, completely convinced that he was being unreasonable and the one in the wrong anyway. This meant that Anton had to put on a very good facade that all was well, and that things with him and Blodwen weren't turning out as bad as he'd initially worried about, with mostly only his friends noticing the undercurrent of unhappiness there. Fairly early on, a few months after the first fight was when Blodwen started talking about the fact she'd always wanted to be a mother. As with most 'discussions' between the 'couple' Wendy would start off simply accepting the disagreement with a bit of combativeness, with the full intention of asking him again. This would ramp up slowly to pressuring him, though children were one of the things Anton stayed resolute on. Anton was terrified of having children at that time, he felt too immature and was worried he'd be a terrible father, or worse, like his own. He'd told himself that he wouldn't have children unless he was sure he could do right by them and raise them properly, like they deserved. He got around it by agreeing in mid 1974 that he would "one day", just not right then.
Quidditch World Cup of 1974[]
The first World Cup Anton got to play in was the quidditch world cup of 1974, which took place in the summer, in various locations in Germany. Both he and his similarly-aged teammate, and only close friend from before he was still allowed to contact without "repercussions", were equal parts excited about it and terrified. They'd just won the European Cup two years prior, but this was the World Cup: Anton couldn't help but feel, distinctly, like he was going to mess this up. This was added to the fact that every evening he had Wendy, and therefore all of the things discussed in the previous section, to look forward going back to. However, at work, Anton was as close to his old self as he could be, having fun with teammates. The team was still captained by Anton's close friend Jörgen Winther, who was a fantastic mentor to the entire team, and who Anton had always looked up to, despite his insane decision to move from Anton's Swedish Cup team, the Västernorrland Valkyries, to the Gällivare Gengångare; an undoubtedly inferior team. Despite this logical setback, however, Jörg was actually an excellent strategist in terms of quidditch and, along with their manager of the time, Gunilla Sjöstedt, were confident they could take the European Cup win of two years ago and turn it into a World Cup win for the first time in over 500 years.
Famous last words published in the "Kvällsgnista". The Evening Spark in English, Sweden's most popular paper. Jörgen Winther ran an interview stating he was determined to head for a victory. The Kvällsgnista's head fortune-teller, Hilda Långdröm backed this up by stating that she saw a Swedish win "very soon".
Anton thought they were mad but of course he was going to put his all in anyway, he'd always dreamed of catching the winning snitch at a Quidditch World Cup, and unlikely as it was, they had to play to win. The first match was held in Munich, and was against Hungary. In the entire first five hours the conditions were too bad for Anton or his Hungarian counterpart, Ábrahám Sarka, to be able to do their jobs at all. Not that either seeker took that as an opportunity not to try. On the contrary, Anton spent those first five hours hovering around at mid-level regardless.
Whilst this was going on, Hungary's keeper (and captain), Jozefa Bartos, managed to save no less than 12 goals, conceding 7, before she lost her temper and yelled at her chasers to get their act together. At around the 5 and a half hour mark, Anton was starting to notice the weather changing, though he was sure Sarka had too, so he started his search. With the visibility still bad it was an effort but doable. Sarka, however, seemed to still be struggling, whereas Anton could see fairly well (with his glasses mind), though hadn't had eyes on the snitch yet.
Abut five minutes later, Erzsébet Zentai, one of the Hungarian chasers snatched one of the Swedish beaters' bats and hurled a bludger at Anton and soon after the beater she stole the bat from, while the other Swedish beater managed to defend the beater, Anton took a bludger to his stomach. Needless to say, that was blatant foul. While Zentai was being dealt with, Anton continued to search for the snitch, after all the pain he was in right then was actually a fair amount lesser than some of the things that the nineteen-year-old was used to feeling dispute the possibly life-threatening nature of it, he continued to play. The pain worsened as the match went on, though it only lasted for a further hour before Anton caught his eye on the prize and dove wildly for it, managing to catch the snitch two feet from the ground. Anton felt fantastic... for a couple of seconds, after he tried to get of his broom to celebrate with his team, he swayed a bit, before he toppled to the ground. He was helped to the medi-wizards by Gabriel, insisting that he was fine the whole way. Presumably under the influence of the adrenaline, Anton laughed as he said he barely even felt it and it's "nothing". It turned out he was bleeding internally. Easily fixed of course but no less worrying, considering he'd been playing with it for so long. Jörgen, infuriated, lambasted the referee to ban Zentai for "trying to kill [his] seeker". This got Zentai a ban for three games, however it also got Jörgen a warning for arguing with the referee.
A photograph of the Münchner Zauberkrankenhaus, where Anton recovered from his nasty quidditch injuries for the night. Though his wife wouldn't leave his side, his friends Jörgen and Gabriel visited him anyway, as did his brother and mother, much to Wendy's anger. She couldn't use some of her methods of control with other people around.
Anton spent the night in the Münchner Zauberkrankenhaus, where he was monitored to make sure that the injury was healing well, during which time his wife didn't leave his side, taking the day off work to sit at a chair at his side. A lot of his friends and team, however, weren't fans of this Mrs Eriksson. Though, without fail, Anton would defend his wife and insist that nothing was wrong with the circumstances of his marriage, his teammates couldn't help but be more than a little concerned.
In this case, unfortunately, it just meant that while Wendy was there (i.e. the entire time he was there) they were not going to visit the young man. Jörgen and Gabriel did, however, and they didn't leave based on any of Wendy's pointed suggestions that perhaps he just wanted his wife with him, and they might crowd him. Jörgen's personal policy was that unless Anton told him to leave, he wanted to be there for the kid, especially since it seemed to Jörg that Anton was being cheered up by the company of his family, as well as the friends who could show up, despite Wendy's insistence that he was just "too polite" to say that he wanted time alone with her.
By the next match, Anton was ready and able to play again. The match, which was against Japan, took place in Hamburg, in a stadium just outside of the city that had been there, concealed for just over 800 years. It was almost as old as the Västernorrland Valkyries' stadium in Härnösand, which fascinated Anton. The match lasted just over 7 hours, with some pretty impressive playing from both sides' beaters with the Japanese team's beaters, Sakiko Akiyama and Hiroki Yamaguchi, having a particularly exciting move that Anton had never actually seen done before; their Swedish counterparts took a few hours to work out how they were going to counter it, making it very much a case of avoiding being distracted by it for Anton. In the fourth hour, Anton managed to dodge a bludger sent his way by Akiyama, and several close calls with bludgers from Yamaguchi in hour 5 and 6; but other than that had a fairly relaxed, if frustrating match. That was until he caught sight of his counterpart Tomiko Matsuoka diving for the snitch at about 7 hours and three minutes in. Anton soared up and then straight down at alarming speed, nearly meeting Matsuoka but instead losing the race to the snitch by mere seconds. The match, however, was won by Sweden, as the chasers had managed to score well over 1,000 points.
Slightly sour from the defeat Anton resolved to practice a few more times before their upcoming match with Argentina. Though, of course, Wendy despised this decision: it meant that she got to see her husband less, and it implied to her that he was actively avoiding her. How dare he? Of course, while not having to deal with his home life was a fairly positive outcome for Anton (given the way he was being treated whenever he was there) his reasoning was genuinely that he wanted to get more practice in before the next match, and so he promised to spend more time with her once they'd played against Argentina. He was quickly discovering that, though the European Cup had been a lot of work, it had been nothing on the pressure and work that went into the World Cup, dealing with that and his wife was seemingly getting noticeably close to burning the nineteen-year-old out.
On the scheduled day of the match, the team was slightly alarmed to have to go to Berlin instead of Freiberg, due to Cyprus and Peru unexpectedly being in their fifth day of play, because that match was obviously still taking place. The match itself was a very short one, one of the chasers, Alvarado, managed to give the rest of the team a run for their money but Anton was far too focused on his opponent seeker, Bienvenida Casal's interesting propensity to constantly feint and it therefore left Anton unsure of when he was actually catching sight of the golden snitch or just pretending, and the foggy weather conditions helped nothing. In the beginning of the second hour, however Casal dived again, though Anton knew this time it was a feint, as he had caught sight of the snitch around fifty feet above, while Casal performed a perfect dive, Anton caught the snitch, and Sweden won the match 990 to 1780.
There was around a week in-between the match with Argentina and their upcoming first round match, which was now confirmed to be against Scotland, after their notoriously short seeker (standing at 5'0) Ishbel Mac Cába thoroughly thrashed Australia's Ronnie Braam in Leipsig two days prior in a match that lasted a day and a half. Anton knew that he had a challenge here, which was something he enjoyed, despite the pressure. Anton loved nothing more than a good challenge. He put a lot of extra hours into training, though (by necessity) he made sure not to spend too much time practising, for fear of attracting Blodwen's ire; she was angry enough as it was after last time. During the course of the world cup, Wendy had been getting worse with Anton. She resented the fact that Anton had to spend so much time away from her (even though most nights he went home to her for this reason) she resented that, as a normal young man his age might, he liked spending time with his friends celebrating the victories the team had rather than returning home to some variety of abuse. Before the match Gabriel and Anton had the chance to meet Ishbel, and she and Anton got on very well, despite the fact they were about to play each other in a few hours.
A picture of Anton in 1974, aged 19 at the celebration at "Die Tanzende Häsin", among other establishments, after the Sweden vs Scotland match. Seemingly very cheerful in the picture, at the time Anton was suffering with a pretty severe depression, and was in a very dark place. It was only getting worse as the weeks went on.
During the match both seeker showed their strengths, while few points were scored in the rest of the match. Scotland's keeper Ryan Lindsey, was good, and as Anton already knew Gabriel Holmström was amazing. This seemed to mean that for as good as both sides seemed, neither could score a goal, over the course of the five hours of play, in fact, Sweden scored only twice and Scotland scored once. The match was by no means boring however, due to the myriad of close calls and a slightly adversarial exchange between one of the Scottish beaters and a Swedish chaser.
At about five hours and a half in Mac Cába dived for the snitch, though Anton just about managed to build up enough speed with his famed eagle dive to get their first, winning the day. The team made up by going on a night out in magical Munich to ease the tension. Anton and Ishbel managed to keep in touch from then on, and remain friends to this day. Wen, however was not pleased he gave up on an opportunity to go home and see her.
This resulted in a major argument about it once Anton returned home, Wendy screamed at him, choked him, and smacked him in the face so hard she injured her own hand. The argument had been resolved only by Anton promising to involve her in the celebrations when he could, getting a sinking feeling at the thought. He wanted to have those nights out just with his friends. Though it occurred to him maybe that was unfair of him, was it? He couldn't figure out what was normal any more, thanks to Wendy's constant gas-lighting. Anton returned as usual to the next training session with a hoarse voice he blamed on a "sore throat". The next match they had was against Icelandic team, whose seeker, Leifur Pétursson, was already somewhat of a legend, having been frequently touted as one of the best seekers of his age. Anton certainly had no doubts of that, and while he was a fan, he still wanted to win this match. Others, however, in certain publications were certain that Anton had no chance. Deciding not to let this drive him into a mad panic, however, Anton still put it all into his practising and going through photographs and recordings of the methods Pétursson was using. The match was to take place in about three days in Frankfurt and thus this was a very short timescale Ant had to prepare. The nineteen-year-old was particularly on-edge, due to the fact he wasn't getting a lot of rest. When he was returning home from work, it was to Wendy, who didn't give him much quiet let alone peace and at work he was too busy most of the time. He probably hadn't been allowed time alone for about 72 straight hours, sleep included, considering she was right there with him even then.
Frankfurt, the city in Germany that the mach against Iceland was held. Anton appeared to be having a lot of fun in a long time. He and his fellow teammates, as usual decided to 'celebrate' their victory here, which meant that they partied. Though Anton left a lot earlier than he usually did (or really wanted to given how much he usually enjoyed being there). Insisting that his wife would probably be missing him. Amusing to the Icelanders but concerning to the Swedes, due to Anton's history of being less than excited about returning home in the past suddenly turning to desperation to do so.
In Frankfurt, on the day if the Iceland vs Sweden match, one of particular significance due to the teams' slight rivalry, Anton still had a slightly hoarse voice, but seemed fairly confident about the match, seeming particularly excitable if anything. He had a very silly conversation in the broken Icelandic he had picked up while he was still with Lilja with several members of the Icelandic team, dragging his best friend along with him, including his opponent seeker Leifur Pétursson, one of the chasers Gróa Ísaksdóttir, and the keeper Vigdís Ásgeirsdóttir. Despite the fact they would be bitter rivals in less than 24 hours, as Anton joked that they would be, the group had a very positive conversation.
To an onlooker, Anton seemed like he didn't have a care in the world, to many of his close friends it seemed like the young man was happier than he'd been in months. The weather was very harshly windy with a downpour of rain, making it quite hard to keep one's broom from veering off wherever the wind took it let alone play a quidditch match but, determined, Anton powered through. Hulda Ingvarsdóttir, one of the Icelandic chasers had to be substituted on the 2nd hour due to her losing control of her broom and falling unconscious when she came hurtling into one of the stands, she was replaced by Páll Magnússon, who looked less than excited to take her place given the circumstances but nonetheless performed admirably.
After 4 more hours Leifur Pétursson went for a feint, detecting the deception Anton kept circling looking for the snitch Pétursson attempted this several more times and seemed to get more and more visibly irritated as Anton didn't dive with him as per his favoured tactic. When Anton dove for the snitch for real, Pétursson made a shockingly rookie mistake and assumed that he was returning the favour for a few seconds before joining the dive, allowing Anton to easily catch the snitch with ease. Pétursson cursed a few times as he dismounted and looked rather angry for a few moments, but Ísaksdóttir seemed to calm him down before anything went down, though what he read as aggression seemed to disturb Anton significantly. Pétursson later returned to the Swedish team's area along with Ísaksdóttir to carefully apologise for scaring him, and telling him he was actually genuinely just gutted that he'd lost and that he wasn't angry with him specifically. Another celebration party was held and though Anton attended he insisted on bringing his wife along, which dulled the evening as she seemed reluctant to allow him out of her sight for a nanosecond, and not allowing him to interact with anyone female for more than five seconds before looking angry and offended.
The following Monday at practice, Anton had several noticeable new bruises on his arms and cut on his nose. Anton, of course, lied through his teeth as to the cause: he claimed this was from practising at home on the Saturday and Sunday, and that on the Sunday he'd fallen off his broom. In actual fact that night Anton and his wife had had another heated "discussion", this had involved Wendy grabbing Anton by his wrists (causing the bruises), liberally using the torture curse and throwing one of his valuable sculptures at him, this had caught him off-guard, hitting him on the nose and causing a nasty cut, which had ended the argument because eventually Wendy became concerned about him bleeding heavily for a long time. While a fair few of his teammates flagged this up as suspicious, and seemed to doubt Anton's "home practising sessions" ever occurred. However, it was hard for them to know what to do about it, given Anton denied everything and that there was the ever looming concern of anything one trying to do coming back to harm Anton rather than his wife.
Cologne, where the Sweden vs Syria match took place in 1974, unfortunately Anton couldn't catch the snitch before Zaher Youssef caught it, and Syria won the match, knocking the Swedish team out of that year's tournament (albeit with a respectable.. placement in the tables).
The next match the team had was against Syria, and was to take place in Cologne. Upon researching his counterpart on the team Anton was fairly sure he'd met his match, Zaher Youssef was clearly as excellent a seeker as anyone. Not discouraged, however, he decided the best course of action was to train. This did, however, garner more annoyance from Wendy, who resented Anton wanting to spend so much time away from her. It was hard for anyone to handle, the stress of both home and a bust work life but Anton was trying hard, knowing that there wasn't much longer to go before it would be over.
The weather was uncharacteristically sunny the day of the match, which was a relief to the whole team, given the disaster that was the weather in the previous match. It was a fairly long match with a particularly exciting moment where keeper Abdur-Rashid Karim had to be substituted due to catching a bludger to the sternum, a feeling Anton could close to relate to. The reserve keeper, Fakhri Al-Mufti, while by no means terrible, was nowhere near as good as Karim, however.
Youssef didn't disappoint, he and Ant had two occasions where they raced for the snitch, however external events broke their concentration both times allowing them to lose it. The first event being Syrian beater Habiba Ali nearly successfully knocking Anton off his broom, possibly in retaliation for Karim, the second being a particularly spectacular save by Gabriel Holmström. In the end, however, Youssef simply spotted the snitch too long before Anton the final time, allowing him to, eagle dive by Anton or no, catch the snitch with 10 seconds to spare. This allowed Syria to defeat Sweden 1800 to 1710, knocking Sweden out of the World Cup. Unfortunately, however, this would prove to be an ominous landmark for Anton's friends, as now he didn't consider himself "needed", and now he was free to seek the solution that had seemingly given him a final spur of life throughout the past two to three weeks of the tournament, when he'd seemed so tense the weeks before.
Emotional Breakdown[]
The Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne, where Anton went the night after the match against Syria in the middle of the night, intending to commit suicide to escape his state of depression due in no small part to his traumatic and volatile home life.
It was would have been no great revelation to tell his friends and family that Anton had been in a very dark place the past few months, during the World Cup. While, on one hand, he'd seemed to have been (and was at times) having a lot of fun and really enjoying participating in the Quidditch World Cup, a personal dream of his from a very young age, the fun seemed to have been made sour by his disastrous home life he had to balance it with.
On one hand he'd had a lot of fun, he'd enjoyed the challenge of playing some of the world's best players and meeting them, partying with his friends across Germany, the job was a stressful one and one with a lot of pressure. Anton had felt that natural sense that he had to do well or he'd be failing the country and his team. While this alone was fairly taxing on a young man of 19's mind, there was more, of course. As mentioned above, Anton's home life was unbearable.
While his fellow team-members had had plenty of nights sleeping well between the partying, the practising, the fun and the playing of the games, Anton had had less of that. When Anton had returned home it had been to his wife, who as usual was demanding and selfish. She refused to think of and take into account Anton's feelings, her desires and wants were all that mattered. While, in some ways, she cared about not hurting Anton, it was not enough to stop hurting him to get her own way. The entire time he'd been doing this high-pressure job, Anton had also been coming to the same relentless, violent abuse as before. These attacks were often directed at him because she was angry with him him staying out with his friends to enjoy winning matches or his continued reluctance to engage in the "physical" side of their relationship, but other times about trivial things, however it was always met with the same angry and usually violent response. It was fair to say that most times he came back home it was to yelling and/or a beating. While this alone may have been enough to bring him over the edge on its own, the stress from work added to it, and possibly expedited things escalating to the state it reached.
By the second week to near end of the World Cup, Anton's friends could tell that there was something horribly wrong with the young seeker's mental state, and they could tell that if was only getting worse as time went on. As mentioned in the section above, about two weeks before they were knocked out by Syria, during the preamble before their match against Iceland, Anton seemed to have gained a fresh lease of life. This was odd to his close friends and family, and concerning. For good reason, Anton's burst of life was due to him deciding, after a particularly nightmarish weekend at home, that his only way out was to end his own life. While the thought of dying upset him, he didn't want to, there was a strange sense of relief in him once he'd made up his mind that he wasn't going to be a burden on his family and friends any more, he wasn't going to make his wife (or anyone) miserable any more. The idea, for those final few weeks of the world cup, gave him a morbid sense of peace. He decided that he'd finish the tournament to the best of his abilities, so he was no needed any more, and after that he'd jump from the Hohenzollern bridge in the middle of the night.
Gabriel, one of Anton's oldest friends. Anton considers him his best friend, the two having met via the school quidditch matches, since Gabriel attended Rättförtrolling rather than durmstrang. The two later worked together for the Swedish National Team and had a very close bond.
Over the days after the match, when he had time he spent as much time as he could visiting each of his family members and friends he loved, ostensibly 'for the last time' as a kind of, carefully subtle, goodbye. He spent a day with his mother asking her how she'd do certain things in his house in Stokholm (which he had given to her in his will), he admired some of the things his brother-in-law Dion had found on his travels, and he'd spent the day with Anders teasing him about his fashion sense.
On the night he decided to do it, they'd had one final practice before Jörgen decided they could all use a couple of weeks to rest up and recover, adding that he wanted to see them all at the final, as he'd arranged them seats together. Anton was quite an affectionate young man at times, so the fact he was particularly affectionate wasn't that odd to his teammates, however the tone was, it lacked all of its usual silliness that it usually had in tone. Before he left to go back to the hotel room he was sharing with his wife he gave Gabriel one last hug and said goodbye.
Luckily, this was enough to get his best friend worried. Once Anton returned to the hotel room, it was to, surprise, Wendy complaining about how he'd been so late home. He apologised, despite having come home almost the instant he could, stopping only to say his goodbyes. He went along with her various demands and requests for things, they ended up in bed where he stayed until he was sure she was asleep. Once Anton could be sure she wasn't still awake, he left the bed and wrote a note to all of his family apologising and reminding them all that he really did love them, he didn't want to leave them, but he "couldn't live like this any more", he left it in the locker room, where he knew Gabriel would find it the next day, feeling a large stab of guilt as he did so, but he pushed himself forwards. He left for the Hohenzollern Bridge at around a quarter to one, walked along it to the middle, voices egging him on, reminding him how miserable he made people, how useless he was and how quickly it would be over and he wouldn't be in pain any more. Before he could try to hurt himself, however, he was stopped in his tracks by none other than Gabriel himself.
Gabriel, later followed by Dion (who he'd contacted for help him talk to Ant), though naturally distressed by the situation, both painstakingly attempted to persuade Anton off the edge. It was a nigh-on impossible conversation to have, with the depths and levels of Anton's depression and hopelessnes being easy to see, intermingled with concerning phrases about how he didn't want to go but he saw no other way out. It was especially difficult to talk to him about it, given that a lot of his points really did have no positive counter-points, such as "I'll just go back to where I was and it'll just get worse and worse"; especially knowing that, when he returned, it would be to Wendy. While neither knew exactly what that entailed, they knew it was horrifying. They did, however, persuade Anton that this wasn't the answer and managed to get him to talk to them about things somewhere safer. Though they did talk for a fair while, as usual Anton lied about and deflected telling them information about his home-life if asked, insisting that Wendy was lovely and it was that he was a terrible partner because he couldn't give her what she wanted to make her happy.
After a few hours of talking Anton insisted he had to return home. After all, Wendy would be upset and "worried" about him if he was missed when she woke up (also mad at him for "sneaking out on her") . So after a few more minutes of talking and promising them he wasn't about to return to the bridge, he left in order to return to the hotel room, and to Wendy who was still, to his relief, fast asleep. He slipped into his pyjamas and crawled carefully back to bed, where he lay awake for a few hours, contemplating what was going to become of him, since his attempt on his own life had failed. Hehad a million thoughts swarming around in his mind, apparently it was impossible for his brain to conjure an optimistic idea. He just tried to feel comfortable and hoped to fall asleep, though Wendy had already wrapped herself around him in her sleep again. He ordered them both breakfast in the morning, acting as if all was normal, and then excused himself for work. As far as Wendy was aware, all was well.
"Deciding" to Have Magnus[]
Anton with his older brother Anders, with whom he's always been very close, seeing him as almost a father figure. Anton loved to visit Anders and his wife Petra (also a close friend) and their children: his nieces and nephew, Noah, Sorrel, and Hilde. Anton's love for his nieces and nephew and how he was with them was what 'inspired' Wendy to want children of their own.
Things continued as they were for the years after, the cycle continued: Wen would make a demand, she'd scream at him if he refused her, then if he didn't relent instantly she'd beat him into submission. The dynamic remained unaltered. This was until Anton's second niece, Hilde, was born. Of course, as soon as Anton heard the news she was on the way he was excited, and as soon as the he could get word to him, Anton enthusiastically asked Anders if he could come and meet her. Wendy, of course, invited herself along to see her too, much to the silent irritation of Anders and Petra.
Anton doted on his new niece, holding her and cooing at her. He loved kids, he knew he didn't want any yet and he'd said for years that he intended to wait until he was "at least in his thirties" due to him not being sure he was responsible enough to do it right yet, but looking after his nieces and nephews was that perfect balance where he could be the "fun uncle" and lack all semblance of responsibility. Anton feared parenthood, because he was terrified of being a bad parent, either by being irresponsible or incompetent, or by being like his own father who had abused and bullied him, his mother and his siblings all their lives.
Wendy, ever since the first time she saw him play with his brother's children, and how good he was with kids, had been pestering him to do so anyway, despite his very clear, well considered and valid concerns (which should not have even been necessary). Despite his anxiety about not being mature enough to have kids, he did have the maturity to know in himself he wasn't ready for that and how important of a decision it was. For this reason, despite some fairly nasty 'fights' they'd had about it he'd held his ground on the issue and told her he wasn't ready to be a parent, and that he was sorry that this decision upset her but he just wasn't ready. Anton endured a lot to stick to his decision on this one. Anton loved spending time with his nieces and nephews but he also knew that it was a far cry between being a fun uncle and spending a little bit of time with a toddler and actually being a child's parent, being the one responsible for them 24/7. He took the idea of that responsibility very seriously and he wsn't feeling ready for it.
However, it was after seeing him coo and dote on his brother's newest child, that it was the last straw for Wen. She had to have that too, and she had to have her own kids and watch Ant play with and dote on them. After returning home she relentlessly wore Anton down, causing him to completely dissociate at one point, until he finally agreed to her demands just because he felt it was the only option he had. During the months where they were trying, Anton's mood plummeted once more. He got to a point similar to when he was on the bridge in Cologne two years ago, contemplating ending his life. This time, however, though he was very afraid to, he had the courage to seek support from his best friend and brother-in-law. He didn't tell them the reason, however. He tried his best to convince them that he was stressed about something coming up in the future, allowing them to assume it was the European Cup that was taking place that summer, and talked about his feelings that he was going to be bad at it, and that it was so much responsibility and he wasn't sure if he could do a good job. Blodwen, of course, ignored any sign, no matter how obvious, that Anton was anything less than enthusiastic about this. Instead, she acted as if they were both nervous but excited prospective parents.
Blodwen Eriksson, happy with her baby bump which would one day be Magnus Eriksson.
It wasn't until several months later that the pair successfully conceived their first child, which led to some more bizarre behaviours on the part on Wendy. She insisted that she knew the child was going to be a girl, specifically with blonde hair like her own, but she would otherwise have features from Anton's side (believing this would make her daughter beautiful).
She was especially insistent on the eyes. She just "knew" she had to have Anton's "pretty blue and green eyes". Anton, on the other hand, was simply terrified by the whole ordeal. He still absolutely didn't want to do this and didn't feel remotely ready. All he knew he was going to ruin this kid's life, and now it was too late to escape it without abandoning his wife and child.
Despite being entirely unwilling and unhappy about being a soon-to-be father, the other thing he knew is he'd love this baby the same no matter what, even though he wasn't ready for this, whether they were a girl or a boy, blonde hair or (far more likely due to his own dark hair) brown. He didn't see why it would matter, why it mattered to Wendy so much, and it worried him. He didn't understand why Wendy was so set on one specific view of what their child will look like while he was still stuck on trying to acclimatise to the fact that he was about to be someone's dad. He also feared deep down that he'd resent them, because he associated the idea of them with how they came to be conceived. He remained in denial about why he might resent them, of course, the answer couldn’t be true. Afterall, Anton was convinced that he was the evil one.
Anton had scarce knowledge of what a decent father even looked like, much less how to be one himself. His father, Ulrik, hadn't been a good parent, this much Ant knew, he knew his mother had been. He'd never felt anything other than loved by his mother, and never felt anything other than resented by his father. Because he was in denial of why he was worried about resenting the baby, he worried that, like Ulrik, he was just going to hate the kid for no dicernable reason. Naturally, despite his opposite nature, Anton was terrified of being just like his own father, bitter, cruel, and abusive; he already knew that he made his wife miserable, she'd made sure he was aware of that, Anton was sure he'd make his child miserable too. He wanted to be a dad like Anders was, he was a great father, but he'd always been so much more together as a person than Ant. He wanted to be a dad like Brigitte was a mum, caring and encouraging, but he didn’t trust himself. He was broken, that much was obvious.
Naturally, Anton's friends and family were concerned by his sudden change of heart, paternity-wise. He'd been so insistent that there was no way until he was at least thirty five. It was suspect at best that he was now set to be a dad at only twenty one. OK for some, sure, but it just wasn't Anton and his family were fully aware of that. He went about slowly announcing the "good" news to everyone. His mother actually cried upon hearing the news, a reaction Anton was surprised and confused by at the time, though in hindsight it was obviously due to the fact he clearly did not want to do this, and she knew what that was like too. There was no convincing Brigitte of his change of heart. He insisted to the others, however that he had really been convinced on this, and that he was nervous, wasn't sure if he could do a good job, but he did want to try to. It's questionable if anyone else found him all that convincing either, especially with the air of impending dread that was on Ant's features on occasion, when he thought people weren't looking.
European Quidditch Cup 1976[]
By the time of the 1976 European Quidditch Cup, Wendy's baby bump was very much showing, and Anton felt guilty for the fact that just looking at it filled him with dread. How was he going to do this? As was now usual, Anton was serving as seeker yet again, for his national team alongside his best friend Gabriel. Of course, Anton unhealthily flung himself at the job in a vein attempt to avoid the reality of what was happening at home and the impending arrival of the baby. The European Quidditch Cup of 1976 took place in Hungary, which meant that the team would be basing their operations there, though Wendy insisted that Anton should "prioritise their family" and apparate back to their manor in Stockholm at every opportunity he was able, not saying so, but intoning in such a way Anton felt that he would have trouble if he didn't. This meant that after the first practise, uncharacteristically, Anton told the team that he as too exhausted to go to the party they were throwing to celebrate the start of the tournament and that he'd be going home to spend time with his wife. And so he did go home, only to deal with Wendy hurling her abuse, and several heavy objects, in his general direction. While pregnant, Wendy had become more needy and violent than ever.
Before they got to the stage of actually playing the games, the team was gifted 16 of the broom to have of the time, the Nopeuspuu 1975, a generous gift from a wealthy fan of the team who really wanted to see a repeat of 1972, after the failure of the team to win the World Cup in 1974. This was quite the fun gift, however it was something Ant couldn't shake, the fact that he could easily have bought his own, he didn't need a wealthy fan to buy the broom. Still he was appreciative of getting one. He'd been mulling it over in his mind, but he'd never been particularly bothered about having the latest racing broom, he'd probably have spent the money on ancient magical artefacts of some description. So it was probably just as well the wealthy fan had made the donation if having the broom was necessary for his job. Though he much preferred to fly on one of his cousin Niels Larsen's brooms from his shop Larsen Gyvel Butik, the Himmeldanser 2, it having far more sentimental value to him, and from his perspective being a lot easier to steer by a wide margin.
The warm and cozy kitchen of Anton and Blodwen's home in Stockholm, Sweden. On one occasion during the 1976 European Quidditch Cup Anton and his wife had an argument in this kitchen because Anton came home just 9 minutes later than he'd promised her he'd be home and Blodwen slammed his head on one of the counter-tops in a fit of rage when he tried to explain.
The first match took place in a town called Győr, and was to be played against The Republic of Ireland. At the time, Anton's opponent seeker from Ireland was a man by the name of Daley O'Mooney, whom Anton found to be quite strange, but nonetheless fun to talk to, despite being quite hard to talk to. Anton, despite the stress, seemed to be perfectly capable of doing his job as well as ever, rather than having a struggle with is, in fact, Anton found it comforting to live in his job where he could to escape both his home life and the constant reminder of the impending baby that was on the way. He, as a result made quick work of O'Mooney.
The match ended with Anton catching the snitch in the first hour leading to a 550 to 400 victory to the Swedish team. Irish chasers McElligott and Cavanagh only managed to score several goals, and were excellent, but Holmström was better at defending the hoops, and managed to defend them against over half of their attempts. Their own chasers managed to score their fair share of goals, but both teams seemed pretty evenly spaced, with them both technically scoring the same amount, with the extra points from the snitch being what won the day for Sweden.
The team, as usual, wanted to party to celebrate their victory, but Anton uncharacteristically declined again, saying he should get back to his wife because he'd promised he would be straight home. He returned to practice the next day with a large gash under his right eye which he claimed he got from "falling over" and hitting his face on the counter-top in the kitchen. In reality he'd been pushed into it, hard, by his wife for getting home a few minutes "late", when he'd apparently promised to be home by 7. He'd arrived at 7:09. The next mach was due to take place in Debrecen against Lithuania. While Anton really just wanted to prepare for it, the new chaser, Lovisa Jensson, kept talking to him, trying to ask if he was OK, very obviously not convinced by the "clumsiness" story. This just panicked Anton, who avoided her for the rest of the day, automatically worried that Lov would confront his wife about what she'd done and get him "in trouble" with her. Of course it didn't make much of a difference, she still found a reason to him for something, Anton was just terrified of the idea that he might be subjected to that spell, which he knew he would be if she felt he was "turning people against her". It was what happened when she felt he was turning Dion, her brother, against her. A complaint he still didn't understand, as he'd never done anything but defend her to him.
Brooms on a stand as used during the practices leading up to the various matches Anton played in. in the year of 1976, the Swedish National Team was gifted 16 of the, popular at the time, brand new Finnish brooms the Nopeuspuu 1975. This was in hopes that it would help them repeat their 1972 victory.
Once calmed down, Anton studied the playing style of Saulius Jankauskas, his opponent seeker. He tried to focus on this, though the fact that he may possibly have started his working relationship with his new teammate badly weighed on his mind and he made sure to apologise first, though his mood was still anxious. It felt like his horrible home life was bleeding into the one place he felt safe and happy. He also knew that that's not what Lov had intended, and that she was clearly just a very nice woman who was very concerned about someone she'd barely even met before.
As a result of the lack of training, Anton struggled far more to keep up with Jankauskas. The seeker had an interesting style of never staying at the same altitude, he was always flitting about at different heights, and it made it hard for Anton to work out if he was just shifting or he'd found the snitch. In the ninth hour, however, he spotted the snitch and flung himself into an instant, highly dangerous and impressive dive for it. He managed to catch it at 10 feet from the ground after diving from 220 feet at alarming speed.
After giving half of the audience a near heart attack with his highly risky flying techniques, people couldn't help but wonder if Anton had a death wish as they watched him nose-dive for a ball at unimaginable speed, and while in some ways he did kind of have a death wish, he would have done this anyway. In Anton's head, as he tried to explain to the people who worried, something about him just intuitively knew when he should start to slow down or stop in order to not crash into the ground, or in order to even out at the correct height. Since he'd yet to do that, the world just assumed he was right and that there was some bizarre rhyme to his reason. This particular dive was so dangerous that former Portuguese seeker, Patrício Paredes, described him in his piece on the game as a "brilliant madman" because of the dive. The game was, of course, won by Sweden, though Jankauskas and Anton did have a chat about the match after it was over and had a nice conversation, with Anton explaining how much Jankauskas's altitude hopping method had intrigued him, before he realised with a nasty shock it was 13 minutes past when he'd told Wendy he'd be home from the match. He excused himself as quickly as he could, made a few rushed goodbyes and apparated home, by which time he was 23 minutes late.
Ant would 'bizarrely' wear scarves to events even on warm evenings, claiming that he was 'cold'. Of course he made sure to make them work well with the outfit he'd put together, presumably the in the hopes that people would not figure out the likely real reason he was wearing a scarf in the middle of summer.
Anton suffered for this mistake, but he did manage to persuade Wen to allow him to attend the celebratory party that evening, provided she be allowed to come with him. This was something he was concerned about still, but he was glad to have the opportunity to see his friends again, and be able to participate in the celebrations. Anton helped Wendy pick out something nice to wear so she felt like she looked good despite the bump, which she was starting to become self-conscious about, with the bump pretty prominent at this point.
She attended looking lovely in a green dress, Anton showed up wearing a suit, and, oddly, a matching green scarf, despite the hot weather. During the party, she became increasingly irritated with Ant as he spoke with his new teammate. This was quite simply because she was a young, beautiful girl around Anton's age, leading Blodwen to become convinced that he had a thing for her, and terrified that he would decide to cheat on her.
This would naturally lead to a further fight when they returned home, wherein, confused and terrified, Anton insisted that he wasn't having an affair with Lovisa (which he wasn't), and he had no idea why she would think he was. This didn't dissuade Blodwen of believing this, or at least worrying about it, however. Wendy screamed at him that she knew he was going to betray her if he hadn't already. Knowing that she'd only got Anton because he'd been bullied, scared, and forced into being her husband caused Wendy to be paranoid, as she knew, even if she didn't admit it to herself, that Anton would be able to easily find another woman that he wanted to be with more than he wanted to be with her, given that Anton never truly wanted to be with Wendy at all. This apparently meant that she was going to freak out if he was caught speaking positively toward any other woman. Her jealousy was to the extent that Wendy resented the time Anton spent with his pet cat, Ilmatar. Anton liked to, as most cat owners do, sit and read or draw designs with his cat curled up on his lap, giving her the occasional pamper as he did. Wendy somehow even managed to find a way to feel as if Anton was spending "all of his time" with the cat. Of course, Anton spent far from all of his time with his cat, she merely hopped up to cuddle up with him when she got the chance like normal cats did. However, possibly due to her somehow even heightened state of emotion and aggression, she managed to even become jealous of a cat. Of course, Anton didn't know what to do with this information. Why would she be mad at him for this? How was he going to placate her with this?
Trying to work out what to do, however, had to be postponed while Anton practised with his team all ready for the match against Monaco. Anton had been researching this where he could but watching his opponent, Fleurette Travert's, matches in his spare time hadn't been an option for him given his especially violent and volatile home environment even for him over the course of his wife's pregnancy. Jörgen was concerned by the fact he hadn't done this, more because it wasn't like him than he was annoyed that it could jeopardise the match, and when Anton apologised in a mild panic for not doing it, he threw the excuse of not wanting to let his life be alone and miserable while she's pregnant. Winther was sure that this was at least partially true, but didn't help his concern about the way Wendy was treating him. Luckily Anton never detected this, however, as he would likely have panicked over this too. Jörgen reassured him that Travert wasn't anything to write home about in terms of ability, and that Anton would probably play circles around him, he just reminded him to put on the practise. Apologising profusely for not going to the matches, Ant promised to put the practice in. In the next few days Anton worked his ass off, though still made sure to make it home on time.
The city of Pécs, where Anton and the rest of the team against Monaco, the seeker of which was actually a fan of Anton. Anton particularly enjoyed this city, due to how beautiful he found the various buildings with all of the brightly coloured flowers around it.
The match against Monaco took place in the town of Pécs in Southern Transdanubia, and talking to Travert before the match had Anton somewhat taken aback. About a year younger than him, Travert seemed to be a big fan, saying that he was probably the most nervous about this match. This installed a sense of guilt into the scenario for Anton, though he'd still play to the absolute best of his ability, he felt bad at the prospect of publicly beating a fan of his at the start of his career.
Travert just seemed excited by the prospect of actually getting to play against him. The match lasted about 6 hours, with Travert making some fairly decent goes of various dives to try and throw Anton off, Anton only fell for the first one. Due to his previous attempts, Travert mistook Anton's dive for the snitch for a feint and therefore kept looking for it as Eriksson smoothly dove down and caught the snitch with ease. Sweden won the match and Anton celebrated happily with his teammates. However, as usual he returned home early, as he'd have to answer to Wendy if he didn't.
The next match was Sweden vs Iceland, a very important match at the best of times due to a more than slight rivalry between the teams, it was to take place in Szeged. The opponent seeker was Leifur Pétursson, a superstar in his own right and for good reason. He had a fantastic track record and while Anton had beaten Pétursson to the snitch in the 1974 Quidditch World Cup, a lot of the Icelandic seeker's fans blamed that on the poor weather conditions during the match, which had actually managed to cause chaser Hulda Ingvarsdóttir to be flung into the stands by high wind, a fate that Jörgen Winther admitted to coming close to himself several times. After the previous match, Pétursson had become angry at his own defeat, which had worried Anton, despite him having come to apologise about it later, it had him nervous to meet the guy again, despite a lovely conversation they'd had with a few other people as Anton butchered their language terribly. Several sports magazines, during the week leading up to the match talked about how Anton was either doomed to meet his match or in one case was a "Pétursson wannabe". He intended to prove both wrong, simply because he really wanted to win this match, and less because he cared what the media had to say about it. Like last time he prepared by watching some of Pétursson's latest moves.
It was a relatively sunny day, which was quite the contrast to the previous Sweden versus Iceland match's appalling downpour. There was no "weather excuse" for either seeker not winning the golden snitch for their team. Even so, it was a hard won match, lasting for about a day and a half. There were some tense moments one either side, where one was unsure who might win the match. For about three hours it did look as if it was going to be Iceland at 220-360. but after some swift goals, by another hour and a half Sweden had caught up so the score was 360-360. The match ended in a close call where both seekers dived for the snitch at 100 feet, Anton made the odd decision of flying upwards before diving, which allowed him to gain much more momentum before he dived for it at, again, a shocking angle that would make anyone concerned, though it was second nature to Anton. He finally caught it, winning the game for his team. As he and the team celebrated he looked over to Leifur, who looked nowhere near as irritated as last time, though still looking quite gutted, and offered to shake his hand.
Debrecen where Anton played against the Serbian team and specifically Ivo Živković as seeker. Ivo, interestingly, would later become Anton's brother-in-law, via Anđelka Eriksson.
Anton was still buzzing from this win as he prepared for the next match, he couldn't quite believe he'd done that again, he'd beaten Pétursson, even he had half-believed what people had said last time that he'd won out of a combination of luck and the poor flying weather. Despite his excitement Anton still managed to focus on his next match, in between his worry about returning home.
His next match would take place in the city of Debrecen, and was to be against Serbia. Anton was surprised to see that he would be playing against Ivo Živković, rather than Jadran Vlahović. This was both because this was a substitute, and because Ivo was the brother of one of Anton's close school friends Anđelka Živković. He hadn't met Ivo in several years and the two had a warm meeting. Ivo was playing because Jadran Vlahović had been injured in the previous match against Finland.
The match took about 6 hours, with Serbia's chasers giving the team a run for their money. The four chasers were Tanja Pavlović, Željko Milošević, Mila Petrović, and Dobroslav Stankić, and the quartet were gaining a name for themselves, though the Swedish chasers were doing well at keeping pace with them. at the 6 hour mark, Serbia was very slightly in the lead until Anton spotted the snitch, he soared up to do his eagle dive for it. By doing so, he accidentally confused Ivo into flying upwards for it, thinking that's where it was, and that was the direction Ant was therefore intending to continue to fly for it. Before the other seeker could realise, however, Anton had dived and rocketed down at lightning speed to catch the snitch. It was an easy mistake to make, but admittedly it was an embarrassing one. Some called it a "reverse wrongski feignt", but others pointed out that it hadn't been an intentional move on Eriksson's part, more of a misunderstanding. This was also a mistake a fair few other flyers had made in the past while dealing with Anton's eagle dive; for Ivo it was especially embarrassing, as this was one of the first times he'd been called in as reserve for his team. As mentioned before, Ivo was also the elder brother of a friend of Anton's from Durmstrang, and so during the aftermath, after he played the obligatory pretence of being mortally offended that Ant dared beat him they caught up a bit and Ant asked after his sister, Anđi.
The next match was to take place in Székesfehérvár against the Danish National Team, with Anton facing newcomer Gregers Carlsen, who at the time was only 17, just a bit older than Ant had been when he first started playing professionally. Anton was surprised and flattered to again hear that he had been somewhat of an "influence" to Gregers. Jörgen Winther told him he should get used to playing fans, being the calibre of player he was, he was likely to get that a lot, but added "Don't get too arrogant, though, Ant, it wouldn't be a good look for you". Though to his team's collective exasperation, it made him feel slightly badly about going for the win. Not that that was going to stop him, of course. Unfortunately, despite being quite pregnant by this point, Blodwen decided that she missed watching Ant play, (disturbingly) having watched him play on occasion since Ant's early games, and so told him that she'd like to attend the match. This resulted in a massive rage on the part of Wendy, who didn't like it when Ant told her he'd try his "best" to find her a seat with the other family members (as she refused to have a regular seat, "so he could see her") as opposed to guaranteeing her a place to sit, as they may all be taken.
The town of Székesfehérvár, where the match against Denmark took place. Wendy would insist that Anton give her a "romantic weekend" here after enjoying the place so much while there for the match. This would be torture for Ant as he both wanted to celebrate with his friends and didn't want to do anything romantic with Wendy at all. It would be literal torture, however if he refused, meaning that he found himself forced to oblige his wife on her whims.
This resulted in Ant having a black eye and some red hand marks around his neck, which by now Anton had worked out how to mask by the careful use of glamour spells. The next day he asked around if there were any tickets available and, sure enough, there weren't any family tickets left so close to the game. After talking to his manager about it, he said that there was nothing he could do, though was clearly concerned about it. Anton assured him he understood, and he did, but Anton also knew that Wendy would not understand. She was going to go crazy when he told her after work.
Anton mentioned it in front of Gabriel and some of his other family and friends, but attempted to mask his shire panic behind a façade of finding how changeable Wendy was funny. His mother, Brigitte, saw through this and sensed his son was in danger. She therefore gave Blodwen her seat to save the trouble. Horrified at the idea, Jörgen Winther and some of the rest of the team, all of whom loved Brigitte dearly, suggested that she be able to sit on the extra reserve's chair, since he happened to be off to attend his sister's wedding, though they warned her that she might have to dodge the odd quaffle or bludger.
With that issue solved, if marred by Blodwen giving Brigitte the stink eye the entire match, jealous she got an extra special seat when they were going to deny her the ability to come when she asked. This would lead to a fight with Anton where she claimed to believe his teammates hated her, and she wasn’t exactly wrong. The match started with a bang, as the Norwegian beaters turned out to be brutal. Anton ended up dodging a bludger a minute, so much so that he could hardly concentrate, a common tactic. However, once he'd got a rhythm for it, he could still concentrate on something else. However, in the ninth hour, Anton was circling a possible snitch sighting, about to dive to calculate the speed and time. While he did this he wasn't paying attention and if it hadn't been for Jörgen Winther batting it away at the last second it would have hit Ant in the head. In the shock of the moment he lost sight of the snitch. Later on, one of the Norwegian beaters came barrelling into his arm, causing Ant to nearly fall, hanging on only by his right hand. Thankfully, he managed to swing back to a seated position without falling. Naturally, Sweden were awarded a free goal attempt as this was ruled a foul. Though his arm hurt a bit, Anton was otherwise unharmed, seemingly completely unshaken by the incident.
The cover of the Kvällsgnista after the win against Denmark. Since Anton was still in the city he was available for an interview, which went rather well.
Ten minutes later Anton caught the snitch; Sweden won 2400 to to 1600. This was a clear win for Sweden, though it was made awkward when Wendy came onto the pitch for a hug, Anton obliged and met her for a hug, giving her an awkward kiss (not wanting to make her feel like he showed her up), but couldn't give her a twirl due to his sore arm and especially the fact she was a fair bit heavier due to the baby.
She luckily didn't seem too offended by this, perhaps not noticing, but she did regale Anton with how much she loved the city they were in and how he ought to turn it into a "romantic getaway" with her. Anton honestly couldn't think of anything worse, but he knew what the consequences of refusing would be. He paid for several more nights in the hotel suite they had had for just the night, thanking his lucky stars it'd been free, and told her about all the historic sites in the area he was interested in.
She seemed to like watching him talk, but Anton got the distinct impression she wasn't actually interested in a word he was saying and so, nervously, became quiet. As Anton had worried (as this happened frequently at this point), Wendy then became "affectionate" with him on the way home, when they got back to the room Anton tried to explain he was exhausted and would prefer to just go to sleep, Wendy smacked him (a clear warning that worse would come if he refused to comply) and he relented, doing everything she wanted him to do from fear of how he knew it would escalate if he didn't, despite it being clear he didn't want to. He also didn't know what would happen if someone heard the shouting and screaming. He lay awake that night. In the morning he got an owl from the editor of the Kvällsgnista (the most popular newspaper in magical Sweden), Tatiana Ahlgren, to do an interview about the tournament. Since he was still in the city he agreed and left soon after, leaving a letter to let Blodwen know where he was, and apologising for leaving so soon. He told her to get herself a lovely breakfast instead and he'd be back before lunch. The interview went well, and he came off as the charming young man he was. When he returned to the hotel room, however, Wendy was enraged with him, screaming at him for sneaking off on her to meet up with a some probably young and beautiful reporter who he was "probably sneaking around with", Anton said that he'd never met her before and she looked like she was in her 60s.
The next match was the semi-final in Nyíregyháza against the Belgian National Team, again his fellow seeker on the team was Aurèle Dubois, who he'd previously played in the European Cup in 1972. Successful win against her or not, Anton didn't assume he could do that twice; especially since the Belgian team had been making a killing all tournament with a spree of fast victories. He brushed up on her style, trying to make sure what he was up against before the match. During this time, he and Wendy attended a party of Jörgen's, which, if it even had an occasion, Anton forgets it. During the party, Wendy again became jealous of Anton so much as talking to other women. The match against Belgium took place on a sunny day, though it lasted a long time, three days and two hours. The two teams slowly went from in the winning range to out and back in again, the race was close and thus when Dubois spotted the snitch, it was her that won the day for her team when she caught it after an impressive, and frighteningly dangerous, upside-down move that allowed her to catch it before anyone could really grasp what was happening.
Sweden unfortunately lost the semi-final 4020 to 4200. Though they still had a play-off to place them in third or fourth place against whoever lost between France and Portugal the next day, the chance of winning was gone. The team felt they'd done a good job however, and third or fourth place was certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but Anton teasingly asked Jörgen if he would mind never doing interviews about hoping for another tournament win again because it seemed to always spell disaster for them. This was seconded by a few teammates and Jörgen teasingly agreed that was a fair complaint. The day after they wall watched the final between Belgium and Portugal, which had been won by Portugal in the end and had been a great deal of fun, though they they had their play off with France on the horizon. As usual Ant had tried to gain some understanding of the techniques used by the opposing seeker, which in this case was Jean-Félicien Dufour, whom he'd yet to play before.
A golden snitch, something Anton had been catching for several years now.
Much like Anton he was amazingly speedy, but apparently where he lacked was broomstick control, he didn't seem to match Anton in the department of quickly changing direction, but Ant felt it was hard to guage until they were actually playing. Sure enough, while Ant had good speed and his movements were aslo quite intuitive and agile, while Dufour seemed to need just that little bit longer to adjust for direction.
Ant decided this was what he'd use to his advantage. When he spotted the snitch about 7 hours into the game he moved in strange jagged ways confusing Dufour before he fell into his eagle dive. Confused, it took Dufour just that unfortunate few too many seconds to realise what was happening allowing Ant to snag the snitch while Dufour was only three seconds into his dive.
The team won the match, and while they didn't win the competition, Sweden had come third, which was nothing to sniff at. It was a result even if it wasn't the win Jörg kept jinxing. The team celebrated, but Anton decided he should be a man of his word in terms of what he talked to the papers about, and he went home instead to spend time with his wife before their baby came. It was a fair few months to go yet, but she was exited, even if he was just terrified. He tried to engage with her in conversation about their "daughter" (Wendy still insisted that it was going to be a girl and she could just "tell"), but try as he might Wendy could still seemingly tell he was less exited than she was. One thing was that he really didn't want to touch the "bump", he'd keep saying as much, but Wendy would insist, giving him "the look" so that he'd relent from fear of what would happen if he didn't. Once there she'd grab his hand, holding it in place. Given they had months until he was playing again, practice even for the Valyries was far more relaxed, so he really did have all the time in the world to spend at home with her.
Birth of Magnus[]
Blodwen, at some point near the end of her pregnancy with their first son, "Gavin" Eriksson, later known as Magnus. Antpn was dreading the reality of being a father, as it had never really been something he wanted to do until he was a fair bit older than he was.
This state of things continued, getting worse if anything, in the final months of 1976 going into the start of first month of 1977. It was on the 11th of January 1977 that Blodwen finally started to go into labour. Carefully, Anton apparated them to the Wizarding Hospital in Stockholm, a few of the nurses of whom knew Anton from his various 'accidental' injuries over the years spotted him as he was explaining what was happening.
The nurse who tried to persuade Anton to tell her what was really happening couldn’t even look Wendy in the eye after she realised who she must be. Luckily, she was in a completely separate department. The people working with helping people give birth, however, had no idea about any of it, and Anton feels like they probably thought he was an idiot because he was panicking, though trying and failing to mask his utter fear.
He sent word to his family that the baby was on the way in hopes of having some company other than Wendy, though not completely sure why he wanted that. He was trying to appear exited and, distracted as Wendy was, she seemed to believe that he was, despite the fact the young man was clearly not exited in any good way. He was thinking a mile a minute about all of the things he'd been worried about the whole time but with the real baby being here within hours it all seemed so much more real. He knew he wasn't ready for this, he knew how terrible of a father his father was and he was terrified of the idea of being like that (even if this was irrational) he was scared of resenting them like his father clearly had resented him, he didn't want all of the responsibility because he took it seriously and he didn't think he'd be capable of raising a child well. He just wanted to be young and immature but he didn't have the choice, he didn't have a choice about much since he married Wendy. There was the added struggle overy the fact that he associated this baby with how they were conceived, and he didn't really understand what he felt about it or why he felt it. It was confusing but whenever he thought of it he went into panic mode, feel like he needed to find somewhere right then and wanted to be sick. This occasion was no better, if anything it was worse than ever.
The hallway of the hospital Magnus was born in, several years after his birth in 1977.
Dion and Aeron were the first people to be able to get there, closely followed by Brigitte. Until Anton's mother could make it, Aeron tried to get Ant to calm down, but she didn't really know how or what to say to him. She wished she could say that she didn't have any idea why he'd be particularly scared but, while she had no idea the extent of it, she did have a few.
When Brigitte did arrive he gave her a big hug and apologised for the state he was in, still trying to lie that he was having any kind of normal "pre-parental panic". She obviously didn't buy it, and Anton appreciated the support but didn't confirm any of the things his mother apparently thought. He kept going back to get updates, as you might expect and ask if Wendy needed him there.
Soon after his brother arrived, looking very flustered, explaining that work had been nearly impossible to get away from and that he'd gotten away as soon as he could. Anton thanked him for coming and gave him a massive hug too. Ant gave him a fake laugh and told him he was being a complete wuss, he'd already started to painc and the baby wasn't even born yet. With Anders clearly completely seeing past Anton's incredibly transparent attempt to make light of his mood, Anders explained that he had also felt scared of being like their own father when his first son, and just generally at other random moments. Anton told him that he wanted to be a parent like him, because Anders was a brilliant father, there was no way Anders could be anything like their dad. Anders probably gave Anton a look and told him that the same was true with him. After some more attemptsto pretend he was just nervous and a huge wuss, he decided to admit to his worries about the same thing, in part hoping that Anders wouldn't look for anything else that was making him feel like this. They had a heart-to-heart about it and, while he was still obviously not remotely OK, he knew he had his brother on his side.
After this talk, Anton made a much better effort at hiding his anxiety and panic. He was acutely aware that he could blow this and his family wouldn't understand that it actually was all his fault, and he really did deserve it. Anders and the others would blame Wendy, when both Anton and she knew that he was the problem, they'd just not been there. So Anton bottled up his emotions, he laughed and joked about sleepless nights and dirty nappies, but on the inside he was silently screaming and crying with shire anguish and fear as he waited patiently for the last vestiges of his life as a young and carefree man were about to disappear. He wasn't sure how long it was before someone came in to tell him that Wendy needed him. It was a fair few hours, but to Anton it felt like days and yet far too soon. He was as also incredibly worried about her and as soon as he got in he, albeit nervously, held her hand. He was assured everything was going okay, but she’d just wanted his company, despite the fact that she was yelling expletives. This was one of the times no one could really blame her. Three further hours later, with Anton's nervous encouragement (he wasn’t sure if he was being helpful or annoying), their baby was born: a perfectly healthy, amber eyed boy. This had not been what Blodwen had expected and Anton was visibly worried about how she'd react.
Anton, trying to look merely excited as he shows off his new son "Gavin" to the family.
Anton was instantly struck with fear of how Wendy was going to deal with the fact that she'd not got the heterochomatic blue-green eyed girl she'd just known she was having. The only thing she'd got right were the heterochomatic eyes, though not blue and green like Anton's, the baby did have a little segment of dark brown in his otherwise amber eyes. Anton pointed this out, but this didn’t seem to improve her mood at all. He said he liked her eyes, this earned him a scowl.
After a few further moments, casually, and in a tone that made it clear that there would be no arguments here, Wendy informed Anton that they would just have to have another one right away. Anton didn't answer, he had no idea how to respond to that honestly without her flying into a rage at the hospital and he knew what the result of that would be.
They had a small discussion about the name of the baby, Anton told her he liked the name Magnus, she told him that could be a middle name and that she liked Gavin. Again, knowing this wasn't worth the fight, especially in a public place, the name was 'decided' as Gavin Magnus Kian Eriksson (though the boy would eventually choose to use his middle name, Magnus). As soon as it was possible, he encouraged his family (including his friendly in-laws) to come and see "Gavin", feigning as best he could excitement and attempting to mask his anxiety and fear about it. It was easier, because despite how anxious he was that he was going to ruin this kid's life, he didn't hate him like he worried he might, understandable as that might have been, he didn't. He couldn't help but have trouble looking at him for reasons he couldn't quite discern, but he didn't feel resentment. He introduced them to him telling them to "look at how adorable he is" with an awkward smile and then asked his mother if he looked like that. He was trying to show how okay he was now, not that he was, he just needed his family to think so.
By the time they brought their new baby home, Blodwen had essentially lost all interest in her new son, he hadn't been what she wanted after all. This meant that, not only was Anton made to be a father before he felt ready, he was being made to essentially be a single father. Since she didn't want anything to do with the less glamorous parts of being a new parent and barely had time for baby Magnus anyway, Anton was forced to do the vast majority of the actual parenting. He changed the diapers, he fed Magnus, cared for his other needs while playing with him. He struggled not to associate the boy with some of the most negative and upsetting moments of his life (especially because a lot of these events were repeating in the backdrop the whole time), he did in some ways, he felt guilty for this, especially when his son laughed, because he found it infectious and couldn't help but laugh back.
He tried to ask Wendy to help him out several times, but this resulted in her screaming at him for asking her to "act like a subservient housewife" and asking him if he'd "like [her] to just quit her job and stay at home the whole time". This was obviously not what Anton had meant or wanted. Convinced, however, that what he'd said could fairly be construed that way he eventually avoided asking her. Instead, when he simply had to return to quidditch practices for both of his teams, having pushed the time off already, he decided to ask her if he could hire a nanny. She agreed as long as she was pure-blood, she didn't want anyone with "dirty blood" looking after their child, a statement that shocked and sickened Anton. Asking around, his captain on the Swedish Team, Jörgen Winther, recommended his younger sister Åsa Winther, who Anton had met, knew, and already trusted. She was a well-respected nanny as well, and Blodwen certainly wouldn't complain to have someone else look after the boy, even if it was cutting into the money Anton could be spending on her, she knew someone had to.
Åsa Winther, the younger sister of Jörgen Winther, who Anton got along with well. It was because of this Ant felt that he knew he could trust her with his new son. The pair had a lot of fun together as Magnus learned and grew, except when Blodwen became irrationally jealous.
Still sane enough to know that he should not trust their son to be looked after even if Blodwen was home from work because he knew deep down that, left to her own devices, she'd probably ignore him until he came home. A normal person, Anton couldn't bear the thought of his son being neglected like that. Anton arranged her around his own schedule so she would be there while Magnus would otherwise be alone with his mother.
Anton still rushed to get home from work, this time however he did it out of want to make his son feel loved, not just because he was too scared to be late. Though the consequences of such "behaviour" would still be fully felt once Åsa had safely left the house so Wendy was free to abuse her husband without fear of being found out and reported. As soon as she was back in work, Wendy was adamant that they start trying for the second child (this time a girl as she'd imagined) she wanted, Anton tried to protest again but after some more heavy manipulation and rage filled violent attacks he capitulated.
Start of Affairs[]
Over the next few months life for Anton was the kind of horrible he'd become accustomed to. Constant screaming directed at him by Blodwen, and more screaming for gently asking her not to yell in front of the baby because it scared him. In the end Anton had to find creative ways to get Magnus to somewhere that he hoped the young boy would be safer, and less afraid, before Wendy began her abusive tirades. Unfortunately he was wrong when he thought that Magnus couldn't hear the yelling. All the while, Anton and Blodwen were trying to conceive the next child, despite Anton's obvious serious misgivings and initial protests to doing so, Wendy refused to listen to what he wanted in anything. By this point she would simply manipulate, scare, and beat Anton into submission. He didn't find himself with much choice in anything. It was in the early months of 1978, soon after Magnus had turned one, that Wendy announced with glee that they'd been successful and their baby "girl" was on her way this time. Anton knew better than to be remotely sure of that.
Anton as he's recieving the news from Wendy that Jesper is on the way, despite the fact that he really really would rather not have more children (especially given she'd been the one who wanted their first son and had yet had now already lost any interest in being a mother to or taking any care of him, leaving Anton to do that pretty much alone), ostensibly because Wendy wanted them to have a girl.
Anton managed to pretend to be happy until he was finally alone, when he had a panic attack. Knowing that he was worried about not being a good father to the boy they had, he had no idea how he was supposed to cope with another child. He would have to pretend to be happy again after a few months, however, as he proceeded to 'excitedly' announce to his family and friends that he and his wife were expecting their second child in late October of that year.
This, of course, drew suspicion from those closest to him; like before, this was totally unlike Anton, and something felt horribly wrong. Anton, yet again, insisted all was well. Anton hadn't wanted to have kids until he was older, and so the decision to have two in as many years seemed highly unlikely to those close to him. While this was happening the lead up to the 1978 Quidditch World Cup was well underway. This thankfully, to Anton's now thoroughly warped perspective, distracted the team enough to buy Anton's fake excitement (which was mingled with true excitement at the idea of the World Cup) as real. All except Gabriel, who always just seemed to be able to see when he was struggling.
Knowing that he had Åsa there to look after Magnus, Anton was able to occasionally go on nights out with his teammates, when he felt comfortable enough that he wouldn't be attacked by his wife for it anyway. This included the obligatory pre-world cup night out. In 1978, this took place in a rather exclusive Malmö magical nightclub called the Älva Mossa. During this night out, Anton loosened up, somewhat, and nervously confessed to his best friend Gabriel Holmström that he'd been thinking about being with women other than Wendy. Though this was a totally understandable desire, given the circumstances, Anton naturally treated it as if it were a case of him being in a normal marriage and wanting to wantonly cheat on his loving wife for no apparent reason, he appeared visibly guilty for even thinking about it. His desire came from a place of wanting to experience these things in the way normal people his age would, the only experience he had was her, and it was a completely negative one that filled him almost exclusively with terror. To his surprise, his friend seemed to understand that this would be good for him. Having almost completely expected and hoped to be talked down from it, Anton was shocked that his friend was completely ready to assist him as wing-man.
Despite the guilt Anton bore surrounding the idea of going ahead with this, as well as the very real fear of harm that might come to him, he went ahead with it, with the encouragement of Gabriel being a large part of how he was even able to bring himself to do it. His friend being under the impression that something like this might help Anton feel a little more in control of his life. As mentioned before, Gabriel had no idea the extent of things, but he did know his friend was struggling, and that Anton's wife had a (though he couldn't know it all too literal) strangle hold over him. Anton felt both stupid and awful for doing it, but it helped him feel less trapped, though in actuality (as would probably be a shock to no one) it didn't actually make him feel any better, if anything Anton just compared himself all the more to his father. This was the kind of thing his father would do right? His abusive, awful, callous father. Was he turning into him? Was he any better? He worried constantly over the idea that he was becoming like the man who terrorised him and his siblings as they grew up. Though, of course, he couldn't be much more different.
Quidditch World Cup of 1978[]
Birth of Jesper[]
The Later Years of First Wizarding War[]
Avoiding Joining the Death Eaters I[]
Escalation of Abuse[]
Attempting to Visit Lilja After her Attack[]
Birth of Eira[]
Death of Blodwen[]
Intervening Years[]
Aftermath and Media Attention to Abuse[]
World Cup of 1982[]
Marriage to Anđelka[]
Birth of Gabriel[]
Death of Anđelka[]
Recovering from Zahf'laenatan & Outrageous Rumours About Anđi's Death[]
World Cup of 1986[]
Marriage to Linnea[]
Birth of the Twins[]
Quidditch World Cup of 1990[]
Separation from Linnea[]
Saana's Insanity[]
Lasse's Visit[]
World Cup of 1994[]
Second Wizarding War[]
Avoiding Joining the Death Eaters II[]
Passing on Information[]
Offering out Safehouses in Secret[]
Brief and Haphazard Capture[]
Battle of Hogwarts[]
Death of Linnea[]
Aftermath, False Accusation and Imprisonment[]
Initial Arrest and Charges[]
Conviction on Flimsy Evidence[]
Slow Loss of Hope[]
Ill-Advised and Unhealthy Marriage to Océane[]
Harassment by Karppinen[]
Further Abuse and Hasty Divorce form océane[]
Eventual Acquittal and Release[]
Short-Lived Retirement[]
Final Marriage to Helene, Lilja and Morrigan[]
Starting His Managerial Career[]
Managing the Västernorrland Valkyries[]
Birth of Finn[]
Birth of Viggo[]
Managing the Swedish National Team[]
Writing[]
Autobiography[]
Self-Help[]
Quidditch[]
Etymology[]
- Anton is a form of the name Antonius[1], which is the Ancient Roman form of the more common name Anthony[2]. It's of unknown Etruscan origin. Antonius was a family name, the most notable member of which was the general Marcus Antonius (called Mark Antony in English). For a period in the 1st century BC, he ruled the Roman Empire jointly with Augustus. Their relationship famously turned sour, resulting in a chain of events leading to he and his mistress Cleopatra being attacked and eventually committing suicide, or a least according to Shakespeare's tragedy "Antony and Cleopatra" (1606)[3]. His name was likely partially due to it beginning with the letters "AN", as Anton's father, Ulrik, seemed to be obsessed with "AN" names.
- Clemens is the original Latin form of Clement, often used in Scandinavian countries[4]. The name is also derived from Clementius, and which meant "merciful, gentle". "This was the name of 14 popes, including Saint Clement I, the third pope, one of the Apostolic Fathers. Another saint by this name was Clement of Alexandria, a 3rd-century theologian and church father who attempted to reconcile Christian and Platonic philosophies. It has been in general as a given name in Christian Europe (in various spellings) since early times. In England it became rare after the Protestant Reformation, though it was revived in the 19th century" [5].
- Hans is a short form of Johannes[6]. Johannes is a latin form of the name Ioannes, like the name John[7][8]. Hans was also the name of one of the sons of King Ludvig V of magical Sweden, Hans Frystström, it's possible Anton was given this name as a gesture toward the Swedish Royals, as Ulrik is rather obsequiously and unrequitedly in love with them[9][10].
- Ulrik is a Scandinavian form of Ulrich[11]. Ulrich is derived from a Germanic name: Odalric, which meant "prosperity and power", from the element odal "heritage" combined with ric "power". It's often confused with the Germanic name Hulderic[12]. This name was also clearly picked in order to name Anton after his father, Ulrik Eriksson, partially, a fact he has always despised, so much that in later life he changed it due to all of the horrific things that his father did to him to all of his family.
- Eriksson is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Erik" [13]. Erik is a common Scandinavian form of the name Eric, it was the name of several kings of both Sweden and Denmark'[14]. Eric itself comes from the Old Norse name Eiríkr it comes from the words "ei", meaning ever or always, and "ríkr" as in ruler. Essentially: ruler forever. Eric the Red bore this name, and was notable for discovering Greenland[15][16].
- Anders is a Scandinavian form of Andreas[17], confusingly both are names of his brothers, the latter (Andreas) being the Ancient Greek and Latin form of the name Andrew[18]. Andrew is the English form of the Ancient Greek name ανδρειος (Andreios), the name means "manly, masculine", which is why it would make so much sense for Ulrik to be apparently obsessed with it enough to use it twice. It was also the name of one of the apostles[19]. Anton changed his middle name to this after the death of his father, as he always hated having Ulrik as one of his middle names, since his brother had always been a vastly more positive figure in his life[20].
Trivia[]
- Had he not been forced to marry Blodwen Eriksson, and to further on from that be forced to have children with her before he was in any way ready, Anton would likely have turned out as somewhat of a combination of Ruuben Linna and Jesper Eriksson.
- Ruuben's timeline is actually designed based on these headcannons.
- Though not a full-on seer himself, which both Anton's mother and little brother are, and Anton has inherited only some prophetic ability from her. He can read tarot and tea leaves with acute accurately as a result.
- He mostly uses this as a party trick, to impress his guests as a bit of fun; however the readings are fairly accurate, so if one doesn't want to know their future it's best not to have it read by Anton.
- He collects tarot decks as a result of this. He has a few known decks:
- A deck gifted to him in his second year at Durmstrang Institute by his best friend Darius Geraikova. The cards are very old, well loved and worn now but this is only because they're his most cherished. The back of each card was mostly pitch back with a starry pattern in silver ink on the back. The cards are stored in a small wooden box.
- An ornate deck gifted to him by the countess Isabella Di Amalfi, contained in a wooden box inlaid with a rose-quartz pattern. They're painted in vivid watercolours and adorned with intricate, water-coloured patterns like a kaleidoscope in turquoise, blue and green with tasteful gold lines separating the lines on the back of each card.
- His son Magnus inherited this ability from him, something he's immensely proud of and attempted to encourage as soon as he was informed about his son's divination professor saying that he had some level of the "sight". Gifting him with a set of cards to practice with.
- Anton has an
obsession withenjoyment of products with pistachio flavouring in them. His favourite being pistachio ice cream.- He often teases his children and their dates and friends that to be "approved of" they must like pistachio ice cream or he just won't be able to relate. Though it's clear that he's joking.
- He makes his own pistachio ice-"cream" on occasion.
- His drink of choice is a drink he invented himself that mixes "Kanerva’s Hallavodka mixed with two parts Albani's Pistacchio Liquore and a touch of cardamom and nutmeg".
- He worked out how to make a non-alcoholic version for his step-father Ludvig.
- He has a small burn on his left foot from a cursed book he found in the Pompeii villa while clearing it out. He made the mistake of reading the inscription on the back, and it began to pour out a small amount of blue-flamed gold liquid before he could close the book. His shoe was also ruined.
- He has a sprinkling of other scars caused by things his first wife threw at him while she was, or while she pushed him into things, in a rage.
- He has a half cat, half greniköttur hybrid, named Ilmatar, whom he named after the figure in the muggle epic Kalevala, which is from his mother's home country, Finland. She's been around since Anton was 11.
- His abusive first wife became jealous of the attention Anton paid to his cat companion, and seemed increasingly likely to kill her for this reason, being a truly unhinged woman. Because of this, he sent her to live with his mother, who he knew loved that cat
almostas much as he did. - Ilmatar had several kittens with Anđelka Eriksson's regular cat Ser Pussycat. They were given out among a few friends. One of these kittens, Coco, still belongs to François-Marie Di Vèneto, the current Count of Veneto though is naturally a very old cat now.
- His abusive first wife became jealous of the attention Anton paid to his cat companion, and seemed increasingly likely to kill her for this reason, being a truly unhinged woman. Because of this, he sent her to live with his mother, who he knew loved that cat
References[]
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2017). Anton. (Last accessed 23rd Apr 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2017). Antonius. (Last accessed 23rd Apr 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2017). Anthony. (Last accessed 23rd Apr 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2017). Clemens. (Last accessed 24th Apr 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2017). Clement. (Last accessed 24th Apr 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Hans. (Last accessed 20th Oct 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Johannes. (Last accessed 20th Oct 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Ioannes. (Last accessed 20th Oct 2018)
- ↑ King, Grace. (2018). Hans Frystström. (Last accessed 3rd Dec 2018)
- ↑ King, Grace. (2018). Ludvig V. (Last accessed 3rd Dec 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2017). Ulrik. (Last accessed 24th Apr 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2017). Ulrich. (Last accessed 24th Apr 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Eriksson. (Last accessed 2nd June 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Erik. (Last accessed 2nd June 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Eric. (Last accessed 2nd June 2018)
- ↑ Sephton, J. (1880). The Saga of Erik the Red. (Last accessed 2nd June 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Anders. (Last accessed 20th Oct 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Andreas. (Last accessed 20th Oct 2018)
- ↑ Campbell, Mike. (1996-2018). Andrew. (Last accessed 20th Oct 2018)
- ↑ Sherman, Rebekah. (2017). Anders Eriksson. (Last accessed 20th Oct 2018)