(no subject)
Name: Malik Hakim. (It means “wise king” in Arabic.)
Blood Status: Technically halfblood, but rich enough to buy God’s summer cottage, so the impurities tend to be overlooked. In other words, pureblood for all intents and purposes.
Age/Birthday: August 22, 1981 (16 years old)
House/Year: Ravenclaw/6th Year
Classes: Charms, Transfiguration, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Astronomy, and Muggle Studies, apparently.
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Appearance: Malik’s stands at an unimpressive height of 5’7”, with dark skin, and proportional, if somewhat large, features. He’s fairly good-looking and he knows it, and while he doesn’t always use it to his advantage, he tends to look a bit smug. That being said, he’s no Blaise Zabini-he’s an obsessive runner and it’s caused him to suffer from mild exercise anorexia in his fifth year, leaving him anemic and a little gaunt. His face is also much more boyish than most of his peers, and people often mistake him for being younger than he is, though not by too much. He speaks in a very loud, somewhat grating tenor, with noticeable Scouse tendencies.
History: Malik was born the first son of Mahmoud and Rasha Hakim in a well-to-do area of Khartoum, Sudan. You might assume from his name and birthplace that Malik grew up to be very interesting culturally, but that’s not really the case. The family moved out of Sudan when Malik was three, settling in Liverpool. Malik never really learned Arabic fully-he never really wanted to, because it made him so different from his peers-but he can understand it when it’s spoken to him by his parents. He pretends not to have a clue about Sudanese or Islamic culture, so don’t ask him. (He does, however, have a devotion to football, which may or may not be because he’s a terrible flyer.)
He grew up in an ostentatiously large house in the city, with a great emphasis put on how much better he had to be than anyone else. Purist values, etiquette lessons, expensive tutors-Malik got it all. Being the oldest of three boys, he naturally developed the role of absolute dictator over his brothers, which his parents saw as, for the most part, appropriate. He got quite used to having his way at all times; if something wasn’t handed to him on a silver plate, he argued and threw hissy fits and sulked until he got it.
His friends were other rich, pureblood boys (though perhaps not quite so high-society as the Malfoys), but when Malik got to Hogwarts, he didn’t see any reason to isolate himself from the “mudbloods,” as his parents would have preferred. Malik enjoyed attention far too much for that. So he buddied up instead with the most dynamic, popular boys, despite what their bloodline was. He became known as a bit of a smartarse-always mouthing off in class (but still managing to get frustratingly high marks and inexplicably endear himself to the teacher), and notorious for picking on some of his slightly less socially gifted peers. Most notably, he started the pastimes Taking the Mick Out of Luna Lovegood. He didn’t really care that he was hurting her feelings. He was the very height of cool.
Things started to fall apart for Malik in his fifth year. His parents were getting fed up with stories of him associating with mudbloods, even publicly announcing his indifference towards blood purity. Schoolwork became harder and with OWLs looming in the distance, Malik began to stress out. His obsessive-compulsive tendencies started taking more control of his everyday thoughts, and so to keep himself from going mad, Malik started running. Constantly. He’d always been a runner, rather than a Quidditch player, but the frequency and intensity of his workouts became excessive. He would skip meals to go out running, and never seemed to eat enough in between. He claimed the running cleared his mind, and made him feel in control of his body. He would then stay up for hours and hours each night studying, all the while his urges to control things growing stronger when his ability to control them grew less. Eventually even the least perceptive of his friends began to notice something was wrong, and reported him to Pomfrey. When he learned his friends had “turned him in” for something (he claimed) he hadn’t even been doing wrong, he exploded at them, and then refused to communicate with them for several months. He was put on a special diet and exercise schedule, and was sent home for a few weeks when even that failed to curtail his habits. Eventually, he recovered, and though he was still plagued by his obsessive habits and newly acquired anemia, he managed to pass his OWLs with five Outstandings. How did he recover? Marijuana, surprisingly, helped him calm down enough to go long periods of time without feeling compulsions. (He obviously has not told this to Pomfrey, and still continues to smoke it on occasion.)
Sixth year he returned to Hogwarts considerably healthier, though still with a strict exercise schedule and diet monitor. Malik also found that he had permanently alienated most of his friends; they didn’t want to put up with him losing his temper with them all the time, and gave up. Currently he is trying to pretend he doesn’t miss them a bit, but is noticeably withdrawn and anxious most of the time. He has, however, given up on picking on Lovegood (for the most part, anyway).
Personality:The real Malik, buried under layers and layers of insecurity and anxiety, is a generous, charismatic soul with the ability to make nearly anyone laugh. He enjoys people, and he enjoys attention. Unfortunately his various insecurities have turned his affinity for humor into a weapon to use against his fellow students, bringing them down to make himself look better. He’s obsessive about his reputation in that way; he cares far too much about what other people think of him, while he doesn’t even like himself to begin with.
One of Malik’s most remarkable, and perhaps, admirable, qualities is his curiosity. No matter how low his mental or physical health deteriorates, he’s constantly pursuing a new fascination, from a school subject to something going on in the outside world to observing the way his peers interact to a mysterious stain on a wall. He won’t stop pressing on for new information until he’s satisfied with what he knows. Even then, he’ll keep tabs on the situation for a long time afterwards. He’s also incredibly organized; his mind is kept as sharp and clean as the workspace he inhabits, if perhaps excessively so. He can’t stand it if something is out of place, or sloppy and disheveled, or simply unclean. His dorm mates have received several lectures over the years about cleanliness, especially during the period when his health problems were most intense. He’s obsessive-compulsive, and while he does not deny it to himself, he’s reluctant to share the fact with other people. He hates to be pitied, and he hates to be judged. Privacy is a matter of grave importance to him, as is control. He strives to have control over his own life, and, much to his peers’ frustration, other people’s. He’s constantly telling people what to do and how to do it, and when they don’t go the prescribed route, Malik is likely to blow his top. (He has a terrible, terrible temper.)
Malik is also well-known for being a bit of a drama king. When things don’t go his way, the whole school tends to know, either through hearing him complain loudly and exaggeratedly to anyone who will listen, or from people complaining about his complaining afterwards. His hissy fits are LOUD, his explosions are violent, and his heart, though he likes to think of himself as highly secretive, is usually worn on his sleeve.
Questions (To be answered briefly and completely, in about 100 words.)
What does your character think of the current situation at Hogwarts, especially the Carrows?
Malik’s not exactly sure what he thinks. He’s a “pureblood,” raised with purist values, so he’s glad he’s not the one being discriminated against. At the same time, he hates the obvious censorship and dislikes the way other students are being treated-not to mention the disappearance of the muggleborn students made him angry. A few of the only friends he had left were in that group. However outraged he might be, though, Malik is keeping it under the surface. He’s not a revolutionary-he’d rather keep his life, thanks.
What's your character's deepest, darkest secret? Who might know this?
He has the hugest crush on Ingrid Graves. Absolutely no one knows because it would utterly destroy his reputation-because Ingrid Graves? Come on. She’s like a pariah. No one likes her. Not to mention the fact she probably hates him anyway because he made fun of her so much in previous years. But the worst part about it is that he feels the need to control her, in a way that is far more intense than it is with other people. She irritates him almost more than she interests him, so he feels an overpowering need to correct her. He wants to tell her what to do, what to say, what to wear, how to eat, how to walk…everything. It especially frightens him because his second biggest secret is that he’s fascinated with feminism. He doesn’t quite know why, but he’ll read everything he possibly can on the subject without being discovered. His Hogwarts career has been full of undercover visits to the library, catching up on his Mary Wollstonecraft.
His actually fancied Luna Lovegood before Ingrid, which lasted about two years until she actually got friends and Malik simply couldn’t handle that kind of change.
Describe your character's Sorting. What about them caused them to go in their house?
Malik was, like most ickle firsties, shaking in his wee boots during the Sorting Ceremony. But unlike most ickle firsties, Malik was playing it as cool as a small only-just-turned-eleven-year-old possibly could; he folded his arms across his chest like his dad did, and tapped his foot on the ground as though to say, “I’m not getting any younger here.” When the white-faced boy next to him asked him, “Aren’t you scared?” Malik replied with a casual, “Nah, not really,” though his voice, high and quivering, gave away his fear immediately.
With the Hat finally on his head, Malik wasn’t going to pass over the decision-making control just quite yet. Which one’s the best House?, he asked the Hat. His friends had all said Slytherin was the best-all their parents wanted them to go to Slytherin-but who knew the answer better than the Sorting Hat itself? They could all be quite wrong, after all. The Sorting Hat equivocated for a while, telling him it was all about what House was right for you, and eventually telling him he’d be an excellent fit for Slytherin. Gryffindor took integrity and courage that the Hat didn’t see in him (though he certainly had the bravado); Hufflepuff he was certainly hard-working enough for, but still not quite the correct fit. The Hat nearly placed him in Slytherin. Malik was ambitious, and undeniably fond of power, but he wasn’t exactly conniving. Malik took a more direct approach when he wanted something, namely, pestering someone until he got it. It was really Ravenclaw that suited him best-the Hat saw he loved to discover, solve, and organize, even if the material he was delving into was forbidden. Like his first question to the Hat, Malik simply always wanted to know.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this Harry Potter stuff, though the characterization of Malik is mine. I am not Sheldon Turnipseed, even though he has the most awesome name in the universe. (All icons of him are by blevconsThe Little Foxes, also not mine.