ooc • app for scorched

[alphaophiuchi]

Out of Character Information

player name: Momo
player journal: momobean
playing here: Isabelle Lightwood | the Mortal Instruments (nolessthanseven)
where did you find us? word of mouth!
are you 16 years of age or older?: yes.

In Character Information

character name: Draco Malfoy
fandom: Harry Potter (books)
timeline: immediately post-war (June 1998), end of Deathly Hallows
character's age: 18

powers, skills, pets and equipment:

Draco is a wizard of average to decent skill. Though he still requires a wand and experience for the vast majority of his magic, he is a very quick study, and was one of the top in his class during his time at school. He is a known Occlumens, as taught by his aunt Bellatrix, and is generally quite proficient at Potions and Charmwork. Though he's theoretically quite skilled in magic, doubtless having some skill in non-verbal spells, his practical skills rather leave something to be desired. Any time pressure is put upon him, he prefers to avoid conflict. In that sense, most of his skills haven't properly been given room to flourish. Like his father, his talents have a tendency to lean towards the Dark Arts; he is a known user of the three Unforgivable Curses, though only when it's absolutely necessary, as evidenced by his poor reaction to the torture being performed in Malfoy Manor during the Second Wizarding War. As a Death Eater, it is unknown if he is capable of producing a Patronus. There is no canon evidence to suggest that he can, but as he remains young enough, and became a Death Eater largely against his will, it's possible that he may be able to achieve this in the eventual future.

With him, Draco will be bringing his own wand: . In coming into Anatole, he will be obtaining a low-level persuasion power, thusly allowing him to persuade people to better listen to him when he wants them to. It is by no means constant; it will only become a viable option when Draco is truly concentrating on making someone listen to him. At first, before he is aware of the power, it will be extremely sporadic, though fairly effective; over time, assuming he realises it, there may be the chance to control it a bit more. It will be limited to convincing people that his opinion on a matter is right, or that what he's saying is the truth, rather than allowing him to control their actions in any form.

canon history:
At Wikipedia
At the Harry Potter Wikia
At the Pottermore Wikia

personality:

Draco has been brought up from a very young age to believe that he is triply gifted, in that not only is he a pureblooded wizard, he is a Malfoy. It is exactly this mindset that drives him to be the person that he is throughout his life. He spends the vast majority of his time acting like an entitled, superior individual, and generally treating those he believes to be beneath him for whatever reason - impure blood, an unfortunate family tree, et cetera - like the rubbish that he has been raised to believe they are. At some point, likely sometime during his sixth year, Draco seems to change his mind at least somewhat as to what he believes in. No longer does he believe in the same things as his parents to the same extent; time being fully immersed within the situation - being a Death Eater, having to do things he had only thought of in the theoretical, rather than the practical - opened his eyes to it all, allowing him to form his own opinions of what Voldemort stood for and the related topics, all things that had been prominent stars in his life since he was young. Even with the minor changes in mindset as he grew up, the core of whom Draco is as a person - an elitist albeit somewhat misguided bully - remains true.

Most of his bullying towards fellow students - and even some teachers - can be superficially traced back to his belief that he's better than everyone else. On a psychological level, however, it lends itself to suggesting that there's something more driving this: he knows that some people are better than him, but refuses to believe it on the grounds that he's a Malfoy, and he ought to be better than them. As Draco also tends to compartmentalise his emotions, thusly separating himself easily from most things around him - a talent that tends to be tried during the duration of the war, when he's faced time and again with torture and murder - it's easy for him to separate himself from how any of those he puts down might feel; it's easy to assume that his own emotions also need some kind of release, and that they find it through his bullying. To him, pushing others down so that he might take his rightful place high above them is his way of refusing to acknowledge that he might be just as human as the rest of them, with just as many flaws. He prefers to believe that he and his life are perfect, rather than dotted with the many problems that it is; to put it bluntly, he's jealous of what others have - or at least what he perceives them to have - over him. Often, it will be obvious what exactly he's jealous of: it will be that that he focuses in on for the brunt of his verbal attack, as if lessening what someone else has will make it mean less in actuality.

Slytherins are known for their loyalty, but only to a select few, and Draco epitomises that: his family takes precedence over anyone else, with his mother as the absolute highest priority. It's easy to see that he has a lot of pride in where he comes from, both in terms of House and ancestry - he's been toting both as the be-all, end-all since he was small. Even when it becomes apparent that perhaps his father's decisions may not have been the best, Draco still stands by him until the end; however, the fact that he's been practically forced into becoming a Death Eater to take his father's place does take its toll on their relationship, putting a certain strain on things that makes Draco's focus on his mother that much more obvious. But all things considered, it's obvious from the get-go that the only drive he has behind anything he's done in this, his sixth year at Hogwarts, is to keep his family safe and proud of him. No matter what, he wants to live up to his father's expectations of him, rather than hazarding disappointment. Another way this manifests itself is through his mission in his sixth year of school, during which he is reduced from the smug little boy who thought himself better than everyone else to nothing more than a pawn, expected to carry out his tasks with robotic precision. It takes its toll on his body and psyche alike, but he pushes through, because if he doesn't, it will be his family to suffer for it.

Though he's generally known as a coward for a wide variety of completely true reasons, Draco's family is one of the few things to make him truly courageous. In that sense, it's only his loyalty that makes him put aside the flight aspect he so cherishes. It's simultaneously fleeting, as he finds the upkeep on aforementioned courage more work than its worth; he breaks down in his sixth year over things getting too difficult for him, and that emotion sticks with him through the remainder of the Second Wizarding War. However, assuming that his family is what drives him to be courageous, they have the simultaneous effect of rendering him more cowardly: more often than not, he would rather do anything other than go against his parents or their ideals. He's terrified of disappointing his family, as proven throughout the sixth and seventh books, when he had opportunities, however minor, to speak up and speak his mind, but didn't; as long as his parents are around, his immediate loyalties are to them, and what they believe in. Though most of the time his cowardice has little to no reason behind it save that he doesn't truly like conflict, or putting himself in harm's way, it does manifest from time to time - once in a blue moon - in a display of enlightened self-interest: where he truly does know what he's doing, but knows his own limits at the same time. At the same time, both pride and his Slytherin tendency to choose flight over fight override certain instances of this. In the case of danger, he will feel a sort of morbid curiosity that often gets overridden until he's at an appropriately safe distance from the aforementioned danger; until that moment, his fear of virtually everything takes over and puts him effectively into a panic that can rarely be sated easily. He's easily frightened, often reacting at moments of fear or frustration by lashing out angrily.

Draco doesn't tend to trust people, nearly as a rule. Perhaps when he was younger, he was more open about trusting, largely when it came to those in his House, but as he grew older, there is no doubt that he grew more withdrawn. He puts on facades most of the time, according to what he believes people to want to see in him, or what he wants people to think of him: he might be the most charming young man in the world at first glance, but the truth of the matter is that he is more likely to act this way if he believes a person to be able to do him a favour in the future. In simple terms, if he thinks you can do something for him, he's considerably nicer than if he knows you can't. In a way, he tends to see having proper friends as a bit of a weakness - a thought passed down from his father; however, he does have a small handful of those he trusts implicitly. He prefers to take allies, people with skills he recognises that he doesn't have, or henchmen who can do his dirty work for him. He fears being made expendable, and projects that fear onto those he interacts with; it severely colours the way he treats people, particularly in the case of Crabbe and Goyle, his well-known lackeys. It's possible that Draco either doesn't believe that anyone else is capable or worth of being his equal - or few people, at the very least, as he does consider a unique handful of that level - and that's what drives him to treat others warily, keeping them at arm's length. It's also obvious that he has an incredible inability to ask people for help, though whether that's a matter of distrust or simple pride getting in the way is a toss-up: it's likely both. Considering he spends most of his time using people for his own various purposes, it should come as no surprise that that's exactly what he believes others will do to him. He doesn't like owing people, which is precisely what he thinks will happen if he asks for help. Also tied into it is his tendency to believe that he needs to appear rather better than everyone else: rather than letting himself appear as human to people, he would rather bottle his emotions inside and keep them all at arm's length, thusly creating an almost godlike persona. Completely by his own choice, Draco strives to be absolutely unapproachable, and generally surrounds himself with bulky henchmen types in order to better achieve that end.

Despite his obvious lack of intelligence when it comes to trusting people, especially those that he should have no problem trusting, Draco is actually a very intelligent young man. He is referred to as the top of his class, excepting Hermione Granger, which suggests that he's at least academically brilliant, if even in those classes that he chose to take after being given the option in fifth year; it also suggests that he at least made the effort in those classes he despised, for the sake of his pride and his determination to be the best. His family has always pushed him that direction, and his Slytherin ambition agrees wholeheartedly. Also a key part of his intelligence is his tendency to be curious about things: if he feels like he's missing out on something he perceives as good, he will thrust himself into the middle of it, regardless of what other people around him think. He very much gets off on being in the spotlight, and he's very good at drawing everyone's eyes to him; he knows exactly how to work people so that they feel for him, and sympathise. His intelligence plays heavily into his manipulative streak, simply enabling him further. He's also remarkably clever, which he never fails to show off; in Draco's world, his intelligence and cleverness are both things that he ought to flaunt just as much as his pureblooded status. It is, after all, his cleverness that leads him to generally know exactly what buttons to push with people, and how to annoy them most without actually getting himself killed.

As the only son of two pureblooded parents, Draco has been taught to strive for the same greatness that his family has achieved in all aspects of their lives: the Malfoys are one of the better known wizarding families, known to have been pure for as long as anyone can remember (or at least, as long as is recorded publicly), and their name alone holds plenty of clout. Throughout his youth, he uses this to his advantage, dropping his father's name at every opportunity he possibly can in hopes that it will benefit him, and as he gets older, Draco wants nothing more than to keep this reputation up. He sees the more widely-beneficial qualities of having a positive reputation, and realises that it most certainly does open doors. Besides that, the last thing he wants is to disappoint his parents. He knows perfectly well that he has the capabilities of excelling at anything he puts his mind to, and if doing it by skill isn't the most expedient method, then cheating or putting others down to get himself up to the top is a completely viable route, as far as he's concerned. He doesn't bat so much as an eyelash at the idea of buying his way onto a team, or using others as stepping stones to get what he wants.

Even with all his ambition, though, Draco is still not much of a proper leader. Despite being able to boss around his lackeys, and command enough presence to be well-known and well-feared, he simply does not have the drive to be able to take point in any major situation. Instead, he does what's expected of him, stepping into positions of power not because he wants to, but because he has to; for example, when he steps into his role as Death Eater after his father's incarceration, and very quickly realises that it's best to keep his mouth shut, and just follow along.

why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting?
I feel like Draco would fit nicely in the setting largely because of Anatole's tendency to be a bit of a throwback: wizarding culture tends to mirror that of Anatole fairly well, and so he wouldn't find too much of it difficult to adjust to. He's also used to seeing strange things and creatures, further allowing him to actually adapt and perhaps flourish easily enough. As well, his father is already there, giving him some grounding right off the bat.

Writing Samples

Network Post Sample:
See here.

Third Person Sample:

He'd been nothing short of terrified the moment his eyes opened up to a completely unfamiliar room. Especially once he'd realised he was alone, allowed to panic while he searched the immediate area for signs of where he was, how he got there, who brought him there without warning. Nothing. Absolutely nothing, except a boxy thing with more buttons on it than one of his good waistcoats. A cursory examination of the thing provided no idea as to what it might have been, short of incredibly reflective if he hit one of the buttons. It wasn't really doing him any good though, no matter how reflective it was, and it was quickly ignored for slightly more interesting pursuits. Leaving the room tentatively, eyes scanning each side of the hallway before he crept out, calling out a wary 'hello?' before realising that it was likely a waste of his time.

Draco pursed his mouth into an annoyed sneer for no one's benefit but his own as he strode out purposefully into the corridors, winding his way through what felt like a maze until he finally came out into the rest of the city. This was most certainly not London, not anywhere he'd ever seen, and that was assuming he'd somehow gotten into town from the Manor. It was disconcerting at best, even if most of the people around him seemed unperturbed by someone looking as confused as he did. Almost as though they were used to it. He wasn't sure if that was a good omen or not.

It still didn't answer his questions, and considering how disinclined he was to ask any of the surprisingly, if somewhat anachronistically well-dressed, Draco was starting to think that he was never going to get answers. So be it. He could find them himself; he was adaptable, and this place didn't look like it was about to kill him. It couldn't be that bad.

Glancing around again, letting some - but only some; he still had need to keep them all at bay lest they suddenly swarm him with greetings and oh, let me help you with thats - of his ire fade away as he took in his surroundings, then began to stalk off down the cobbled streets in search of something that made sense.

Anything else?
Nothing that I can think of!