L-L-Love - Special Ability One-Shot

[jimbo brian blishwick vi]

The Blishwick boys had been privy to a hereditary trait for the last five generations. Jimbo Brian Blishwick VI was no exception. If anything, it was expected of him to inherit the ability in his formative years, and to spend his schooling at Hogwarts honing it to the point where it would be useful for the family business. Of course that was the one and only Blishwick Matchmaking Services, the one that his great-great-great grand-pappy built from the ground up well over a century ago. Success was quite literally in their blood, and anything less than making accurate calls on customer’s love lives was unacceptable.

That was how Jimbo had grown up. By the time he came along, the shop was headed by his grandfather and father. They were the cause of peak popularity in the matchmaking lifestyle. It used to be that only the purest of pureblood families looked towards them; meaning that even of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, only a handful looked towards the Blishwick’s for aid. Having a comprehensive list of family registries, utilizing the matchmaking business meant avoiding crossing family lines, something that was becoming increasingly common as the twentieth century started to come to a close. The introduction of other European pureblooded families meant more business, and more business meant more pressure on little Jimbo VI. He knew what his destiny was at a young age - to perfectly pair partners.

The hereditary ability, or sixth sense rather, that the Blishwick boys had been granted was nothing too extraordinary when it came down to it. Special magical abilities were known the manifest now and again, sometimes through bloodlines, but to have one that only passed on from first-born male to first-born male was something yet to be seen. They tried to keep it on the down low for as long as possible, stating that they were simply good at their job. Jimbo’s great-grandfather was the first to readily admit that they had special powers that no one else did. That made Jimbo slightly cocky about his ability while at school. He tried to run an underground matchmaking service, but was soon stopped by his father and instead forced to hand out fliers – it became the birth of Blishwick’s mail in matchmaking services, and how their blind dates were set up going forward.

One of his favorite parts about the ability during school was listening to ice-breakers during the first few years at the start of each term. Professors asking students to tell the class about themselves meant that Jimbo could listen to all of their passions and dictate who would end up with who in his head. Of course, most of this was kept to himself because people tended to get creeped out when he walked up to them and said they would be marrying little Joey, the second year Hufflepuff, someday in the future. Usually he was correct about that.

The majority of his ability, later dubbed Love Weaver upon his graduation from Hogwarts, began to manifest once he used it for the family business. Focusing on it one-hundred percent of the time and with deep, meditative concentration, he was able to change it from listening to ideals, to being able to sense ideals in the perfect partner. It wasn’t flawless, as he already knew from his family members, and his problems also became apparent as he got older. While his father and grandfather could use Love Weaver on him and determine who he would fall in love with, Jimbo could not do that to himself. He also became completely inaccurate during the month of February and the Holiday season, where a lot of “natural love”, as he named it, was floating in the air.

One such occasion had a young woman hoping to get an accurate reading around Valentine’s Day. A young, twenty-something Jimbo believed that he had a shot with leading her in the right direction, and if not, maybe he would have his own chance. He should have refused it to begin with or passed it off to his father, already aware that he could have complications, but he didn’t. Arrogant that he could best his own magic, Jimbo went through with it, and surprisingly came away with a person that could work for the woman. He warned her that there was a chance for inaccuracy and to take things slow with the gentleman that he was going to set her up with and all seemed well moving forward. A gentleman that he had also refused to send to his father during the month of February. Long story short, Jimbo sent them off together, their ideals and values matching up perfectly. It looked like this would be the end of his curse. Except it wasn’t, and the ideals that the man was giving him were actually what he was looking for in women to kill. A serial killer, funnily enough, had used a matchmaking service to find and prey on new targets. Normally the ability wouldn’t have worked in a manner to allow that, but it had this time because Jimbo hadn’t heeded the warnings. From that day forward, February and the holiday seasons are off limits, and he shuts down his main services.

But still feel free to send in letters for blind dates. He does those during the off season. People need to fall in love regardless of whether or not the doors to Blishwick Matchmaking Services are locked.