Professor Etienne Diable

[etiennediable]

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Name:
Etienne Frederique Diable

Age:
39

Gender:
Male

Class:
Defense Against the Dark Arts

Celebrity:
Marc Warren


Facial Properties:

Etienne has chiseled features, set in a face that hovers between beauty and ugliness. He has a rather weak chin but compensates with strong facial structure higher up.
His hair is sleek and blond, and lays very fine on his head. He has managed to keep all of his hair up to this point, a fact that he is quite proud of.
Etienne's eyes are pale blue and very deep set. He has a slightly haunted look and the skin around the sockets is quite sunken. He gives the impression of a man who has not been able to get much sleep.
He has a reasonable suntan for his colouring, but has lost a lot of his colour since he moved from his much hotter country.


Physique:

Diable is not especially weedy or especially brawny. He is of average and unremarkable height, standing at around 5' 10''. He doesn't teach sport so his muscle tone isn't fantastic, but he could never be called fat, leaning much more towards a 'skinny' height/weight ratio.
He thinks himself too short and tries to wear robes to hide this face whenever possible. Black being the preferred colour.

Personality:

Etienne is not what many would call handsome, but he has a very attractive way about him. He is never without a cheeky smile and flirts with most of the female teachers in school. If he had owned any other personality, he would have fallen into the background very quickly. He is a pretty arrogant character at best. His walk can be more of a strut on most occasions, especially when he is trying to make a striking impression on people. He is the archetypal 'devil' character. Each move is calculated, and it is his belief that he can bend anyone to his will and way of thinking.

Most of this cheeky-devilish act is his way of hiding a very bruised soul. His upbringing was not a very happy one and the only way he could get people to give him the attention he had never really received at home was to be interesting all of the time. He does relax and show his true colours more often with his closest friends, but with those he doesn't consider buddies, he keeps up the act.

This rings true much of the time with the students he teaches. He is not a nice teacher, and never real feels any empathy with the children in his classes. He is so unlike them all he just sees most of them as annoying brats. He likes to bring down pupils a notch or two when he feels they are getting slightly too cocky. Most of his lessons are conducted in absolute silence, mostly because he likes to hear the sound of his own voice as often as possible, and so he doesn't have to deal with teenagers on any level that doesn't involve his subject.

But if anything, Etienne is fair. He despises bullying in any form and can catch a bully in the act as fast as blinking. Unusual for a devil, he will admit when he is in the wrong. But of course, le fantastique Etienne (!), is of course hardly ever wrong. For the hard life he's had, he has turned out quite well. At any rate he is a good teacher and is very knowledgeable about the Dark Arts and the Defense Thereof. He is good at making the hardest principles simple, but he can still get impatient very quickly.


Likes:

• Going out with his friends and getting absolutely hammered. A trait he has perhaps picked up from his father.
  
• Giving detentions when he is in a bad mood. It always makes him feel ten times better. Especially if the student has done nothing wrong but is too scared to say anything.
  
• Honeydukes chocolate, he really wants to know the potion they put in that stuff.
  
• Walks on the beach. He has missed the warm coasts and white sand of his old home and feels that the coast that surrounds the British Isle doesn't deserve the name 'beach'. He spends most of his holidays near the sea and would love to take up the old muggle tradition of sailing if he ever had the time.
  
• Travelling. A passion he has held for a long time, he believes that if we only get one chance at life, we might as well see as much of the world within it as we can.
  
• Quiet and unobtrusive students.
  
• The company of good-looking women.
  
• Interesting and what he considers to be beautiful creatures. These include, mostly, animals such as snakes, lizards and spiders. Snakes especially have always fascinated him, their strong connection with the Dark Arts (his area of expertise) makes the pull even greater. Although none but Dumbledore himself know it, Etienne is in fact a natural Parselmouth.
  
• Snow, one of the only forms of British weather that Etienne enjoys.
  
  
  Dislikes:
  
  
• Etienne has never liked people who moan. It's not that he thinks other people shouldn't be unhappy when they have a right to be, it just makes him so angry when extremely lucky witches and wizards whine about how awful their life has been. He always said at school - "If they could just be me for one day; coming home to a dad who's hardly noticed you left in the first place."
  
• He's never really been a fan of cats either. He thinks they are elegant creatures but doesn't like the way they fix you with a stare. Leglimency has been performed on his once before - a horrible experience - and he would not like the sensation repeated because a cat happened to be looking at him.
  
• Most students. They annoy him in all their vacuous giggliness. They just seem to have no ambition above securing a boyfriend or girlfriend. And their idea of fun revolves around buying sweets and passing stupid notes around the classroom. He has no favourite students, he hates everyone equally.
  
• The fact his fortieth birthday is in three months.
  
• Rejection, but then who doesn't?
  
• Divination - he didn't even bother to revise for the exam and considers this highly unusual branch of magic a complete and utter waste of time.
  
• Muggles and most muggle-borns. He is half-blooded himself so isn't exactly purity-extremist, but he has had bad experiences with non-magic folk and has never really liked the way they treat the world and the enviroment.
  
• The dark, he's just like everyone else - scared of the great unknown.
  
• Ugly people.
  
• Really old people.
  
  

History:

Etienne, and almost all of his family before him, was born in France. He was born on the outskirts of a small town near the Mediterranean Coast called Grasse; he stayed there until the age of 11 when the long awaited scroll of parchment with the Beauxbatons seal arrived at his cottage.

This so far may sound as a pleasant upbringing, but all was not so. He lived with his father, Jaques Diable, alone and with no other relatives really coming over to visit. This made for an unhappy childhood as his father was an alcoholic and was to be found most nights, paralytic, screaming abuse at his young son. Jaques Diable had once been a kind and admired man, but after the death of Etienne's mother (Francois) had fallen into deep depression.

The loss hit him hard and at a time when he thought everything was going right for him. He had just been promoted (he worked in the head office of a large racing broom manufacturer), he was newly-wed to a beautiful girl from Paris and she was about to give birth to a baby boy. However, Francois became ill in the last stages of her pregnancy, and the labour was long and hard. She had been muggle-born and refused to have a birth assisted by magic, despite her husband's desperate pleadings. She died a few hours after giving birth, and lived just long enough to name her child.

Jaques never loved Etienne, the nurses had to shout at him to make him even take him home after he was born. He saw him always as the reason his wife had been taken from him. He keeps this as no secret from Etienne, and he has always known that the only reason he wasn't dumped off of the edge of a cliff, was in memory of his mother. Maybe someone else would have thought the child a last reminder of the mother who had passed on - but some wounds just run too deep to be healed completely. Jaques was the kind of man who needed to pass the buck to make sense of anything. His old self was gone, if Francois had still been alive, she wouldn't have recognised him as the man she used to be married to.

It couldn't quite be said that Etienne was not affected by his father's neglect. Some nights he would weep bitterly at the hardship of having no-one to love him. But he was naturally hardy, and he just simply had to learn most of his lessons the hard way. As he grew up he just stopped caring, it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference anyway. He had his friends at school, and his girlfriend, Grace, gave him all the love he needed. His father still fed him and made him as comfortable as he could, but his drink problem squandered what little money they had left. They were never anything more than poor.

After Etienne left Beauxbatons, with top grades, he decided to take a break from the path his father wanted him to follow. Grace wanted to work with muggles, so they parted ways, and Etienne went travelling. Like most people his age, he was trying to find himself. He hated the ideas of being just another brick in society's wall, he wanted to do something a little more memorable. He would rather be a drunk like his father than spend the rest of his days in a tiny office, lecturing his work-colleagues on cauldron-thickness.

He spent about three years travelling around Thailand and The Philippines. There, at long last, he found his vocation; being of course, teaching. He had always thought he was of average intelligence, but as he explored different networks of wizards he discovered he was distinctly above average. Potions, having always been his favourite lesson at school, was the obvious choice. When the position came up for grabs at Hogwarts a few years ago, he couldn't believe his luck.



Resume:

Etienne is fluent in many languages including English, German and Italian. French is of course his mother tongue. He is also a natural Parselmouth, but he would prefer if you did not make this information public.

During his school career, Etienne was a prefect and went on to be 'Head Boy' in his eighth year. (Students in France stay on for one year longer, which is like Sixth Form in the Muggle World. It's optional and only a few subjects may be taken.)

In his final exams at Beauxbaton, he received the French equivalent of straight 'Outstandings' in almost all of his subjects. This is excluding only Divination, where he received an equivalent 'Acceptable'.

After school, Etienne spent five years travelling the world before he settled on the occupation of teacher. During his travels, he picked up many skills, muggle and wizarding, and has collected extensive knowledge of the Dark Arts from his year in Russia. He also spent a further six months as the student of the great Ein Blokohov, famous creator of the Patronus Charm, an advanced bit of magic used to repel the creatures called Dementors.

Under Blokohov's study, Etienne learnt much about the Dark Arts, which had always been his favourite area when learning about magic at school. It is because of the knowledge he collected that he finally settled on becoming a DATDA Teacher.


ABOUT YOU
Name: Jennie (I play Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore, I am the admin of this site).
Years of Experience: Just over one.
Sample Post:

Tory was starting to feel the familiar twinges of nervousness. It was an anxiety that had been growing on his mind, and was now seeking to rule his stomach too. With the confusion of Abbie and Dorian coming to his compartment, Tory had almost completely forgotten what he had been worried about. However, as the conversation grew more and more friendly, Tory started to remember that this was his last year. The lack of responsibility and old friendships he had known and loved so well at school, would soon be coming to an end. Sure, Dorian was a new friend. He hadn't known him for more than a few minutes, but he still felt that he would miss him when he left.

He had this picture in his mind of people outside of school being hostile and unfriendly. Surely no-one in the world of work would come and introduce themselves so spontaneously. And be so ready to make new friendships. Tory needed people like that, he wasn't a forward and confident person. He needed time to forge new friendships and even his existing ones hadn't been initiated by him. But the real twinge of worry came when he thought about how many years he had missed with Abbie. She had been the first girl he had ever felt close to, others had just been fleeting fancies. Sure, he had always had a crush on Naida, but it had never been accompanied by a friendship.

He had used to think of Abbie as the girl he would picture himself with when he was older. They got on so well, he had never doubted that he had really liked her. Ok, so maybe it was the idea of being with his best friend that he had liked, but he was so sure that something really special would have come out of it if they had only given it time. Now, after five years, it just seemed far to late to make amends. The thought made the knot in his stomach tighten even more.

"Yea, it does seem a long time ago, doesn't it?"

The line rang with awkwardness. It was the kind of reply that Tory would give when he really didn't know what to say. He suspected she felt the same way as he did about the situation they were now in. But her next words made Tory feel a little winded - 'is she trying to show off to me? Was I totally wrong about the way she feels?' Tory hadn't minded so much that he hadn't got the captain-ship last year. Sure, he was the kind of boy who liked to be best at everything. But he had to admit that Abbie was a much better model for a captain. She had a knack for pep talks and motivational speeches, she had a much better logical mind that him and, although Tory would be loath to admit it, she was a a mark or two higher than him on the Quidditch pitch as well. He knew it, everyone else up for captain-ship knew it, but now he had the horrible feeling that Abbie was trying to dangle it in front of him.

"I heard," Tory smiled, his mood not quite matching his facial expression. "Congratulations, we all knew you had it in you." He was holding his smile so much he had to let his face relax into what he guessed must have been a still quite pleasant look. He wasn't enjoying this at all.

"So, how's life been since I last saw you? Christ Ab, it's been what? - five years now?" He just called her Ab, something he always used to do (but she had always hated) when they were younger. Would she just think he was being annoying again? 'Damn, why couldn't you just of left it out Tory?'

Tory now turned to Dorian, he realised that he must of been left out of the conversation a fair bit. He wondered distractedly whether he was good friends with Abbie, they seemed to be chatting happily about fingernails at any rate. Dorian reminded Tory strongly of a boy he used to know called Kieran Cesspit. He had always wondered slightly why no-one in his family before him had thought to change their surname. Anyway, Kieran had possessed the same unconcerned manner Dorian was now displaying. Maybe they could get on after all, and if Kieran was anything to go by - Dorian wouldn't have really cared that the conversation hadn't been directed towards him for a while.

Other: Mimblus Mimbletonia