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NAME: Helena Margaret Clagg

AGE: 15/July 3, 1981

HOUSE/YEAR: Slytherin/11th year

SOCIAL STATUS: Working class. The Claggs aren't really anything special. No one else in her family has attended Hogwarts and she's only there because of her scholarship. Her father works as a cashier and her mother is a secretary for a small business man. She doesn't know a lot about her family's history - genealogy has never interested her and it's not as if the Claggs kept track of these things - but if she were to research it she'd find that she comes from a long line of average Britons and nothing more.

SEXUALITY: Heterosexual

APPEARANCE: Helena's generally regarded as cute enough. Very few would call her an eyesore, but she's almost never the most beautiful girl in the room. She has fairly long dark brown hair and is always quite tan. She either wears her hair down or in a chignon, never opting for a ponytail. Her eyes are brown and almond shaped. She has a roundish face with a small nose and mouth. Helena's height is on the taller side of average at 5'6. She's rather thin but she's not particularly toned. Helena often wears a fair amount of makeup. She never looks clownish but one can see that she is, indeed, wearing makeup.

When it comes to clothing, Helena has a basic philosophy: get timeless, classic pieces at moderate prices and accessorize with cheap, trendy items. Though she's far from the best dressed student at Hogwarts, she pays careful attention to what she wears.

DESIRED PB: Victoria Justice

PERSONALITY: When asked to describe herself on personality surveys, Helena always puts driven. She's not exaggerating either. Success is very important to her, it's always been and it's safe to say that it always will be. It's how she values herself - her grades, her awards and the like are all an important part of her identity. She's been fortunate enough to have achieved a fair amount in her years, so she has a good amount of confidence, but she's afraid that if she fails she'll lose that. Helena is willing to do nearly anything to reach her goals, which explains why she was placed in Slytherin. There is a part of her that is drawn to fame and prestige. That's why she wanted to come to Hogwarts, that's why she wants to attend Cambridge and that's why her life's goal is to make some sort of medical discovery. Her goals are very specific and she won't settle for anything else, nor will she change them at this point in her life. Were she offered a high paying position at a pharmaceutical company she wouldn't take it, even if would be more fulfilling than being a surgeon. She's decided that she wants to be a surgeon and that's what she'll do. This, quite obviously, stems from stubbornness as well as pride. Helena would never admit that she was wrong about what her aspirations should be and if anyone tries to steer her in a different direction she simply ignores them.

She's very sarcastic but she lacks any real wit. Many people find her quite funny, but her observations aren't interesting or original, she simply has a snarky tone that leads people to believe that she is a witty person. She does like to make fun of people, but she normally does it behind their backs. Sometimes she'll try to subtly mock someone in front of them if the person is particularly stupid, but usually she's a bit two-faced. Which isn't to say she's terribly mean and quite frankly, she's not charismatic enough to be an archetypal 'mean girl', she's just careful about when she makes comments about others. Helena isn't afraid to insult the student body of Hogwarts as a whole though, if only because she figures people will tell themselves that she's not talking about them specifically.

Helena likes to be thought of as unique and will go out of her way to differentiate herself from others. She's not really too extraordinary, so she feels she needs to. When she was younger she would participate in adult discussions and generally tried to act as mature as possible and loved that people were often impressed that a girl so young seemed so much. The fact that she can't rely on her relative youth anymore and must be judged as a teenager and not a child isn't something she likes. Helena reveled in being that precocious child, the one who would rather talk to the adults about the book she was reading than giggle with her peers. Now she enjoys defying Slytherin stereotypes, simply because it makes her stand out. She's friendly to members of other houses and is vocal about her more liberal political views because people expect otherwise from a snake.

Helena is smarter than the average person. She's no genius, but she's clever and makes the most of the intelligence she has. Her grades have always been quite good due to a combination of this natural intelligence and a strong work ethic. She's particularly adept at biology, which she adores. She does think she's smarter than she is and she isn't above intellectual arrogance, which can have embarrassing results when she is faced with someone who is more intelligent than her. She's learned to tone it down, but she's human and she slips.

Since she tends to enjoy subjects that deal with logic (sciences, maths), one may expect Helena to be rational person in her approach to real life. The truth, however, is that she's often ruled by her emotions, such as her aforementioned pride and stubbornness. She's quite petty at times and can hold a grudge over small things. She's been known to dislike anyone who bests her in Biology class.

DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS: She has a strange moral code that many would call hypocritical, and she follows it devoutly. For example, in her mind, stealing cassette tapes or CDs is perfectly acceptable while sneaking into a movie is wrong. Her reasoning for this is that music is a natural thing while movies somehow aren't. It doesn't make much sense and when confronted about her flawed logic, she simply shrugs. Similarly, she would never think of hurting someone physically, but she doesn't show much sympathy for those hurt by insults. The truth is that she likes the idea of being a moral person but simply doesn't want to be inconvenienced. She enjoys music more than movies and verbal aggression over physical, so she tells herself that stealing CDs and insulting people is okay. Though it should be noted that she's no thief, she just likes to think it's okay just in case she ever becomes that desperate. Helena is also less materialistic than most Slytherins. She doesn't care to be anything more than middle class and cares more about being successful than being wealthy.

LIKES:
1. Biology: It's her passion. The human body began to fascinate her as a child, which led to an interest in other living things.
2. Rap music: She feels like she's alone in this, as most of the her fellow fans seem to be, well, different from her but she quite enjoys it. Helena was quite sad to learn of Tupac's death (she never cared much about the rivalry, she just liked the music) and will undoubtedly be equally sad about Biggie's death. She particularly enjoys Public Enemy and doesn't see how liking rap is any worse than liking the Spice Girls, despite people's reactions when they find out.
3. Charles Dickens: She likes his verbosity and appreciates his social consciousness and is quick to defend his works. Plus, her favorite childhood book was A Christmas Carol. Her favorite of his novels is Hard Times and her least favorite is Our Mutual Friend, the only one of that she hasn't read multiple times.
4. Slytherin stereotypes: In a strange way, because she doesn't like when people refuse to accept her because of them but she does like how they help her craft her own identity.
5. The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin

DISLIKES: (At least 5 things.)
1. Capslock: Bolding is far superior. Obviously.
2. Headaches: She's quite prone to them and if someone even bothers her slightly while she's having one it's almost certain that she'll freak out.
3. The rain: It's wet and disgusting. End of story.
4. Astrology: No one is going to tell her what her fate is.
5. Oasis: She doesn't know why, she doesn't find anything particularly offensive about them, but she can't stand Oasis. It's a tad irrational.

INSIDE SCOOP:
1. She's very insecure about her writing abilities, though she pretends she's quite brilliant at it.
2. She tends to assume that all legacy students would never be able to get into Hogwarts without their connections and views herself as above them. Helena isn't stupid enough to voice this; she's in a house that's filled with the scions of families that have been attending Hogwarts for as long as anyone can remember, after all, but she still thinks it.
3. She didn't really become interested in boys until she was fourteen, long after most of her friends did. She wasn't exactly scared of the opposite sex, she just was oblivious. It was during the summer that she met Tad, an attractive boy from her hometown with similar interests. They dated for a couple of weeks and quickly broke up, as he found her a bit awkward when kissing. He was attractive, yes, but he was also quite shallow. It did spark and interest and though she's not exactly a flirt, she thinks of boys romantically now.
4. She likes to bold words when writing on computers. It helps with tone, she thinks, but some find it annoying.

HISTORY: Dorothy Lane and Oliver Clagg met in the least interesting way possible; they were both popular, attractive and unmotivated students in a state school on the Britwell Estate, a lower-class suburb originating as a council estate of Slough, Berkshire. They dated on and off throughout their school years, often fighting and cheating on one another but they ended their education as a couple. Neither had given so much as a thought to university and both went into the workforce immediately. Each had worked during their teenage years and it wasn't terribly hard for either to land a job at a fast food restaurant. They worked together fairly happily and got married a year later, in 1975. It was nothing grand or even notable; all it was a typical wedding with a white dress, a tall cake and an ecstatic couple. Dorothy became pregnant with her first child, a girl who would be called Anna, three months later. Oliver looked for work, but didn't seem to qualified for anything that payed as he wanted to. Impulsive and frustrated, he quit his job and sulked. Dorothy went looking for something she could do and her charm got her a job as a part time low-level secretary, which she still holds. It paid poorly but it was less embarrassing than the other choices, to her. Oliver kept looking, but couldn't seem to last in any job.

The Claggs struggled to provide for their first child but that didn't deter them from having a second child eighteen months later. Oliver kept up his pattern of getting and then losing jobs and, humbled, went back to the fast food restaurant that he'd quite years earlier. The manager, a kind man who liked Oliver, agreed to give him a job. Thomas was born and he and Anna grew up in a normal working-class home. They didn't have a whole lot, but they didn't seem to mind. This all continued until Helena was born in 1981. She, like the other two children, was unplanned and the couple fretted about her arrival.

She was born on a hot day in the early morning. Her childhood was the same as her older siblings, she went to the same state school both her parents had attended at the age of five, played football and watched television. Still, her interests were quite different from her peers. Helena was obsessed with biology from the very beginning and it didn't take her long to decide that she wanted to be a surgeon, she simply wasn't sure what she could do at such a young age to get a head start. During her fourth year, a teacher who was particularly fond of her pointed out that her grades were nearly perfect and handed her brochures to Hogwarts and a couple of other prestigious schools. Helena wanted nothing more than go to one of these schools and got into two of the three. She decided on Hogwarts with help from Anna, who pointed out that she may like a co-educational school once she got older.

Hogwarts was a shock for Helena. For one, she was no longer significantly more intelligent than her most of classmates, something she'd become used to. She was almost normal, it seemed. The luxuries that the other students had also shocked her and her lack of wealth somewhat embarrassed her. However, she began to develop a bit of a superiority complex about her relative poverty as a way of coping with this and eventually moved on. She worked hard and got good grades and seemed to be well and for the most part, she was. Generally, she spent summers working and the school years studying and doing charity work. She did try out for the football team, but didn't make it and never spoke of it again. Helena was delighted to be made prefect. In fact, it was arguably one of the happiest days of her life. How could Cambridge reject a Hogwarts prefect?