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[Jul. 16th, 2009|01:13 pm] |
ooc.
Name: Victoria
contact info: AIM - headful of dust
character.
Name: Abraxas Malfoy
Age/Birthday: 16; November 19th, 1926
House/Year: Slytherin / 6th
Bloodline: Pure as the driven snow, thanks very much, and he won't hesitate to tell you.
Personality: There are people in this world who look only towards the ground; moody, soulful types who are world-wary and wise beyond their years. Abraxas is not of that sort. He’s good-looking and wealthy as sin, and so acts accordingly. His future looks golden and the present is rosy. What does he have to be sad about? And he’s a nice guy, that’s apparent enough. While he’s far from humble, you couldn’t call him stuck up either; all the years spent with tutors who painstakingly outlined for him proper diction and drilled into him exquisite elocution have been a waste. His accent varies depending on his company; around his parents, it has all the posh gloss he was taught, but around his friends it acquires some comfortable and much less mockable Wiltshire grit. Being as stinking rich as he is, and also not being short on muscles and having a face that is naturally prone to looking vague and guileless, Abraxas is often content to play the Rich Dumb Bloke – a good friend who’ll listen to your jokes and tell you some of his own, someone who’d buy you a drink at the pub and a round for everyone else, but probably not the brightest torch in the hall.
But he’s not in Slytherin just because of his family. There’s always been a conniving streak in the Malfoys. Goodness knows it’s probably why they’ve lasted this long. Conspiracy and backstabbing have become something of a family tradition, and Abraxas would be very bad indeed at it if he went around displaying his intentions. He’ll cozy up to whoever he’s around, be they blood purists or mugglelovers or anyone in between. The last thing he’d want to do is make an enemy when he doesn’t need one. He’s proud, but he’s not stupid. And Abraxas is much quicker to laugh than to anger. It would practically take a force of nature to get him visibly riled. It’s a sign of weakness, as far as he’s concerned. If you buckle under pressure and start shouting and lose your head, well then you’ve lost, haven’t you? But to fault him, he is constantly overestimating himself and underestimating others. He just assumes that he’s better, and it’s this palpable ego that can rub some the wrong way. Although usually he’s not trying to, honest.
He keeps his prejudices discreet. And they’re sort of… abstract, anyway. He doesn’t like muggles in general, he’s certain of that. But he likes their music. And their books. And Winston Churchill. But he’s almost positive he doesn’t like muggles as a group. Just as a matter of principle. He doesn’t think too hard on the matter, to tell you the truth. What with the war and everything, right at this moment, he hates Germans a lot more than he hates muggles. And anyway, at least if he does hate someone, he’s a lot less inclined to show it. That would be rude, and he is nothing if not a gentleman. And anyway, it's much easier and immensely more satisfying to get close to them first and then stab them in the back. Abraxas has always been one to do things the diplomatic way.
Family: The immediate family consists of his father, Sebastian Malfoy, his mother, Elyse Malfoy, and his half-brother, Lucius Dauphin. Beyond that, it becomes a bit complicated. The Malfoys, like any pureblood family of some distinction, don’t have a family tree so much as a family briar patch. Trying to decipher who he’s related to and by what lines is like trying to untwist a tangle of thorns.
History: The Malfoy family line goes back as far as can be recorded, with a history traced back to the landing of the Normans. How much of that history has been made up has never been determined and no Malfoy has ever been very interested in finding out. The Malfoys are one of those families in which money is passed down through generations. But there’s always been an entrepreneurial spirit to them. They are not content with sitting on their cash. Not only do they keep passing down wealth; they constantly acquire more. Somehow, they manage to walk a fine line between new money and old money, and possess what some may call the worst qualities of both: the staunch air of superiority and arrogance of long-time aristocrats while at the same time having the vulgar taste and tendency to flaunt their cash of the nouveau riche.
Abraxas’s father, Sebastian Malfoy was born, like plenty other sons of British gentlemen, in Bombay, India. The muggles certainly were not the only ones to enjoy the spoils of an empire. For the past couple generations, the Malfoys had been adding on to their already formidable fortunes through brokering a healthy trade of magical goods from India to the rest of England. Sebastian never even saw England until he was eleven where, as per the custom, he was shipped off to Hogwarts to be properly educated. And he found the country quite to his liking. So much so that after he was done with school, he remained there to maintain the Malfoy estate in Wiltshire, which had fallen into disrepair with the absence of inhabitants. And while he didn’t work, because a gentleman certainly doesn’t, he did know that it was expected of him to be married. Which he did, at the ripe old age of thirty-six.
His bride was Elyse Rothbauer, the widow of Andrew Dauphin; she’d decided to shed her first marital name when the namesake itself was dead and gone. But along with adding a well-needed feminine touch in Sebastian’s life, she also brought a five year-old son from her previous marriage: Lucius. Sebastian liked the child well enough but, as he knew, he needed someone of genuine Malfoy blood to inherit all the prestige and property and piles of cash that went with the name, so he sired a son of his own, who was named in the traditional Malfoy fashion: find the most embarrassingly-named fellow in the bloodline who made a right ass of himself at some point during his lifetime and go with that. And so the child was christened Abraxas, after a mad great uncle who went out with a tragically botched transfiguration, convinced he was an elephant that belonged in the wild jungles of central India. Abraxas has vowed that when he has a child, he will give them a sensible, non-humiliating name unlikely to get them mocked at school. And it would be after a relation who wasn’t daft.
Abraxas was plenty coddled and spoiled, but also didn’t lack for discipline. His father’s parenting philosophy could be boiled down to ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’. But his youngest son was still generally raised to believe that the center of the universe may not revolve around him, but it certainly did his family. Blood purity never had to be ground into him because it went without saying. Dark magic was somewhat of a factor in his life, although he was often given very long lectures that bored him to tears about how why only those who don’t fully understand it would call it ‘dark’ and how those spells can be used to one’s own noble purposes as much as more wholesome spellcraft, but it was never a fixation. Just another weapon in the formidable Malfoy family arsenal, along with power, money, prestige, and political sway. But resorting to the nastiest option possible, Abraxas had been taught, was terribly bad form.
In school, Abraxas was a bright if brash boy. He was vigorous in his studies, even if he appeared to reduce all the classes he entered into an exercise in being as raucous as possible. The only time he ever got marked down was for behavior. “A smart boy,” his teachers would say, “he just needs to learn to control himself.” His brother had left a good impression after graduating. In fact, Lucius Dauphin’s academic career consisted of making seeker in second year and working his way up to Captain of the team by seventh, as well as a formidable number of NEWTs and OWLs, and becoming prefect and head boy. There are also plenty of awards in the trophy room with Abraxas’s brother’s name on them. Most people would consider living up to this reputation daunting. Including Abraxas. His drive to succeed might be chalked up to trying to live up to Lucius’s standing, while at the same time trying to get out of his shadow.
The war meant little to him personally, what with his family living in a house that had been fortified by several hundred years’ worth of paranoid wizards’ wards and protections. But he’s as patriotic as he is proud of his blood, and he won’t stand for England being bombed to bits or invaded by those filthy huns. Although his family’s policy tends more toward cheering from the sidelines and donating money to the wizarding world’s war effort. It’s been like that throughout history. Men of Malfoy stock aren't soldiers by nature.
Likes: American music, firewhiskey, cigars (on special occasions), Quidditch, politics, dancing, parties
Dislikes: Quiet, boring people, History of Magic, glum conversation, losing, failure, the word ‘no’
PB: Max Riemelt
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