NAME: Blaise Bertram Zabini.
AGE: Born 29 December 1979. 16.
HOUSE/YEAR: Slytherin. Twelfth year.

SOCIAL STATUS: New money of the most ambiguous sort. The name Zabini was once associated with an upper-middle-class family before taking a severe financial plunge several decades ago, but considering Mama Zabini's considerable successes, it's very much on the upswing again. Blaise's lineage is actually rather impressive on his father's side, but unfortunately, Mama Zabini insisted that her son take her less flashy last name instead of keeping his father's after Papa met a strange, unnatural and untimely death. Blaise has always been treated as a valued equal by his Slytherin peers -- because they knew better than to try and put him down, so he'd like to think, he does have the threat of a serial killer mother to whip out and shake ominously in a pinch -- so he's never had people sneer at him for lack of a grand and ancient last name. At least, not to his face.

APPEARANCE: Most reasonable people seem to agree that looking at Blaise Zabini's isn't exactly a hardship. He’s even had the honour of earning high marks in the aesthetics department from Harry Potter himself. Considering that he was a member of a house that included, according to the Boy Who Lived, a menagerie of sloths, hags, pugs, gorillas and ferrets at the time that the assessment was made, being referred to as “good-looking” was high praise indeed. Blaise is not particularly tall, but what Blaise lacks in height he makes up for in what he inherited from his famously beautiful mother – which is to say, everything, since he does not look a single thing like his father – sloping dark eyes, fine skin and cheekbones so high as to be naturally improbable. Blaise is not overly superficial when it comes to other people's appearances, after a lifetime spent watching what being fooled by appearances does to people, but he is extremely conscious of the impression that his own looks are making at all times, and maintains them with more fastidiousness than is healthy. Appearing as anything less than immaculately clean-cut is absolutely unacceptable, and if there is so much as a button or a hair out of place or a scuff along one side of his shoe, he will not set foot outside until the issue is resolved.

PERSONALITY: Most people wouldn't be aware of it, given the aloof, carefully grave look that he cultivates most of the time, but to the few who know, Blaise Zabini is almost never serious about anything but himself. No doubt it's the preoccupation with himself that makes him so sober. The various vagaries of daily life faced by the great unwashed are insignificant, petty, utterly laughable and if unamusing, entirely beneath his notice. The problems that other people have are usually little more than fodder for his dry, rather mean sense of humour. However, when Blaise is experiencing difficulties, the world had better screech to a halt and take notice, for the agonising, never-ending onslaught of problems he faces are monumental and all-consuming. Despite Blaise's absolute inability to care about most anyone else, he's not completely without his charms on the rare occasion when he actually feels it's worth the effort to use them. To the few people he likes or for whom he has a soft spot for, he can actually be rather gallant. Blaise is all too aware of the fact that he is physically attractive and like any Slytherin worth his salt, is not above using them in combination with some smooth moves to achieve his goal. If there’s something Blaise needs, or something good that Blaise knows he can get out of another person, he will kiss arse like a champion. (Case in point: Horace Slughorn.) When you've been raised in the shadow of the most charming and beautiful woman in all of Britain (fifteen years running!), you simply can't help but pick up a trick or two.

Of course, having learned all the tricks in the book from his mother, he has a knack for seeing right through the lesser than when they try to deceive him. He hates liars above most everything else, and becomes furiously impatient whenever others try to lay the blarney on thick during conversations with him. Not only is Blaise kind of atrocious at it (if you can't master the skill, despise the people who have), but to him, lies and insincerities create all sorts of unnecessary waste and mess. He also perceives it as an insult of his intelligence. Blaise would much rather people stop wasting his precious time, cut the nonsense and just get to the damn point, no matter how awful it may be. Blaise is utterly unafraid to tell people to leave off. There's a great deal else that Blaise Zabini is unafraid to tell people. Blaise believes in telling the truth, the absolutely soul-crushing, brutal truth, whenever doing so is humanly possible. He has little compunction about being harsh or blunt when it comes to informing people that he thinks they're wrong -- sometimes when what he has to say is unusually harsh, he'll pull some of his punches for the ladies. Otherwise, he won't restrain his witticisms when he thinks someone's being foolish or that someone's little more important to him than a sticky wad of Drooble's Best bubblegum stuck to the bottom of his shoe -- all of which are typically delivered in vivid, sarcastic prose, punctuated with just the barest hint of a superior sneer. Blaise believes unquestioningly in the idea that he has been marked for greatness, and if someone else hasn't considered the idea, he'll make sure you don't forget it.

Blaise is an absolute perfectionist -- finicky, nitpicky and completely impatient with lesser mortals who can’t do things as well as he can. Arriving someplace five minutes early, in Blaise's mind, is arriving late. More than expecting perfection from anyone else, though, Blaise demands absolute perfection for himself, and throws himself into his responsibilities du jour, no matter how absurd or stupid he thinks they may be, with absolute ferocity, determined to get the job right. Personal failure is never an option. Blaise’s preoccupation with getting everything right also makes him more independent than the average bear when it comes to work. He is a faithful subscriber to the If You Want to Get Things Right, Do Them Yourself philosophy, and much prefers to work alone so he won’t have to deal with someone else’s pathetic bunglings. If he sees something being botched horribly, sometimes he will condescend to help with it or, as he much prefers, take the whole operation over himself. Blaise is also absolutely obsessed with doing things quickly in addition to doing them correctly. Nothing frustrates Blaise like a task that takes forever, even if it’s being completely satisfactorily, so he is engaged in constantly scheming to expedite and maximise efficiency in all sorts of processes that pertain to the ways in which he gets all his work done.

When it comes to other people, Blaise often does things just to do them; he has a difficult time relating to other people on a normal basis, so even his good relationships with others are highly dysfunctional. He can and will be obnoxious whenever he has an opportunity, and he also takes a special joy in creeping the hell out of other people. He is the sort of person who will say that his favourite colour is clear just to frustrate people and the sort of person who would make macabre doodles all over his canvas for Art class just to get a kick out of people thinking the serial murdering tendency had been passed from one generation to the next -- in fact, that's exactly what he did, early in his Hogwarts career.

DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS: If you asked Blaise this question, of course you'd get an answer with something along the lines of "what isn't distinctive about me"? Clearly canon dictates that Blaise Zabini is something special, if his membership in the ultra-exclusive, invitation-only Slug Club is any indication. Perhaps that is what is most distinct and defining about him -- where many Slytherin protestations of brilliance and and incredibleness and singular amazingness have very little depth or truth to them, and where many of his pretensions to the aforementioned megalomania must be incredibly maddening for people who hear it all the time, thing is, Blaise Zabini actually may rock as much as he thinks he does. Much as people may not like to admit such a thing about a Slytherin, that may well just be the thing that puts him in a class of his own.

Blaise's more mixed, more ambiguous background also sets him apart from the rest of the Slytherin House crowd. Though he's always managed to get along with the other Slytherins quite well, he lacks that utterly spotless, flawlessly blueblooded background that so many of them possess. His upbringing was also far from conventional by normal Slytherin standards with the large-and-in-charge father and wilting socialite mother -- but then again, when one's mother is a known serial murderess, is conventional even possible? Luckily, everyone in Blaise's House has seen that his other traits and strengths more than make up for a somewhat sketchy background and choose to look beyond that very minor hiccup.

LIKES:

1. Newspapers and news magazines. Nothing rankles Blaise more about being cooped up at school than being insulated from everything that's going on in the Real World, so he makes a great effort to keep up with the latest developments as best he can. Blaise pays very close attention to news reports that come through on the radio, and reads the paper cover to cover first thing every morning. He also keeps up to date on the outside world through subscriptions to other newspapers and periodicals like the Financial Times and The Economist. Since he's the only Zabini son, his mother is beginning to groom him to help with the family business once he leaves school, and this is a state of affairs he takes extremely seriously. Along less serious lines that he would never admit to, he also has subscriptions to Gentlemen's Quarterly and L'Uomo Vogue. Just to make sure he hasn't veered off into the territory of looking like an utter rube, you understand.

2. Making lists and keeping obsessively detailed calendars. Blaise has a habit of making lists about anything and everything. Lists of tasks to complete around Slytherin, lists of minor chores that need to be attended to, lists describing ways to torture people he dislikes in lovingly minute detail -– you name it, Blaise has probably has a series of bullet points dedicated to your subject of choice in a notepad somewhere. Making random lists is also his means of passing the time when he has very little else to do, or when there's a class that particularly bores him for one reason or another.

3. Fine clothing. Blaise is not a trendsetter, but he still manages to be something of a clotheshorse, since everything he owns is the very best quality available. Around school, he typically limits himself to dark, sober hues like black and navy blue and dove grey, with only the occasional splash of colour in the form of a handkerchief in one pocket or another (he never leaves home without one) or a pair of unexpected argyle socks. At his most easygoing, Blaise typically abandons the more formal stuff for just a dress shirt or polo shirt in some brighter colour, an older pair of trousers and loafers. No matter the occasion, business or “casual,” Blaise is extremely attentive to detail, and takes great care in making sure that everything he wears is pressed and polished. All in all, Blaise does everything he can to cut a sharp figure, something that he can be proud of years from now –- around the school, there’s not very much to dress up for, considering the awful company he's forced to suffer, but it's a habit he just can't seem to shake. With his looks, showing up in anything less than the best would be an absolute tragedy.

4. Utilitarian décor. Blaise's idea of good feng shui includes furniture and décor that are absolutely minimal and utterly unremarkable. Typically Blaise brings very little with him to Hogwarts insofar as decorations for his corner of the dorm is concerned, the most prominent fixtures being the bed, a small and sleek clock radio, a mirror of rather substantial size, a bulletin board also of substantial size with a maniacally annotated calendar, magazine files for all of his reading material, a clothes rack and a tie rack that is also rather healthily sized. He'd charm everything in the room a nondescript shade of charcoal grey if he had the authority.

5. The girls of Slytherin. Not romantically, please; his mother's romantic assignations have scared him out of relationships for life. Blaise actually much prefers female company to male company after a lifetime of seeing his mother's attentions dominated by the flavour of the moment, and as such much prefers his lady housemates to any of his fellow boys -- they are subconscious competition, if you will, his freak of a friendship with Draco Malfoy being the only real exception. Blaise has a habit of getting into wars of the words with the other girls and despite the verbal beatdowns that he suffers from time to time, he actually rather enjoys the ribbing, playful and less so. Psycho-analyse him all you'd like for this, but the verbal abuse gives him a rather ticklish, pleasant feelings since he's immediately put in mind of his mother. His runaway favourite of the lot is Pansy Parkinson.

DISLIKES: Besides everything?

1. Athletics. Sure, Blaise does polo and equestrian events when the season's right and tennis year round (he and Pansy Parkinson are a mixed doubles force to be reckoned with, thank you) and that's a pretty big deal, but generally he doesn't give a damn for sport culture insofar as he's not the one being promoted or celebrated. He's not a fan of any clubs in particular. Anything that encourages further hooliganism and boorishness in people who already behave in such an uncouth manner certainly doesn't need to be promoted, and generally Blaise turns up his nose at such a common sort of thing. The only reasons why Blaise participates are that he is required to and that he feels that it's important to stay in shape as best he can. Once again, if he ever let himself go, it'd be a terribly tragic waste of a body. The girls would all be irreversibly devastated if he developed a jiggling gut, Blaise is positive.

2. Designer items with glaringly gigantic labels. How crass and common -- only desperate, grasping, stupid little people who are desperate to prove things plaster gigantic labels all over themselves, although it's rather rich to hear that one coming out of Blaise's mouth, all things considered. The only product that Blaise Zabini believes in promoting is Blaise Zabini, and he'll be damned if he lets some stupid intruder else share the product placement on his fabulously sinewy body. Small little Polo insignias on the lapel are acceptable, but very little else. He likes his clothing subtly well-made.

3. People who are messy. Blaise is an absolute neat freak, and being around people who let things pile up or fail to arrange their clutter into some sort of coherent structure make him feel absolutely neurotic. He simply cannot understand how some people are casual enough to frolic in their own filth all the time. Sometimes if the clutter's bad enough or close enough to him that he actually cares enough to deal with it -- for example, clutter that would occur in his dorm room nearby his bed or clutter that has some sort of awful, unpleasant smell -- he'll actually bother to help people clean it up.

4. People who make entirely superficial judgments. Blaise is incredibly conscious of his appearance and takes very good care of himself because he's all too aware of how easily people will fall for a good-looking face, having been raised in the shadow of a woman who used her looks to the ultimate advantage. Blaise has a good sense of whether or not people want to be around him purely because he happens to be good-looking or because they actually have discovered his vast and many-splendoured cornucopia of other dazzling positive traits -- he hates it when people fawn over his looks alone, and generally considers that lot of people to be stupid enough that they're not worth any of his time.

5. Being wrong. Being wrong is dangerous. Being wrong means that Blaise has failed. Being wrong means that Blaise will disappoint his mother. Being wrong means that Blaise will be made to look like an absolute arse -- and none of aforementioned are conditions that Blaise can ever bear to see exist. Things that Blaise considers under the unholy umbrella of Being Wrong include but are not limited to losing in any way, shape or form, tripping and using question marks (they imply doubt and unsureness).

INSIDE SCOOP: Blaise can dance. Well. Really well. Incredibly well. Well enough to raise some interesting questions if more people saw him in action on the floor. His mother made him take lessons from an early age, and although he pretends to be Above Such Frivolous Things, he does enjoy getting his groove on when he's positive that no one's around to point and laugh. He idolises John Travolta circa Saturday Night Fever and pre-pedophilia Michael Jackson on the sly. He also appreciates the classics like Fred Astaire, but again, would never admit it. If Strictly Come Dancing was being aired by the Beeb by this time, Blaise would be an extremely avid watcher. He is also a damn good singer and a passable piano player, once again thanks to his mother. Triple threat, anyone?

The only person who has heard Blaise sing in recent years is Pansy Parkinson. Before every mixed doubles match, Blaise makes up some sort of wild untruth to infuriate Pansy, hoping that greater rage will increase the likelihood of their victory. His preferred topics include hinting that the other girl has stated that Pansy has cellulite or that the other girl has gotten herself entangled with Draco Malfoy. If he fails to devise anything untoward about the opposition, Blaise will sing all six creepy verses of 'I'm in Love with Steffi Graf' ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

One of Blaise's other favourites is Barry Manilow's "Copacabana". Music and passion are always in fashion. Don't hate.

Blaise is a big fan of the Blackadder series. He considers Edmund, Lord of Adders Black to be the similarly wittiliciously brilliant, cranky older brother he never had. In Blaise's opinion, Blackie's situation is much like his own -- a solitary beacon of sense with the accursed bad luck of being surrounded by gibbering idiots all the time. Among his massive collection of lists is a notebook full to the brim with all of Mr B's best, which upon closer review does really just seems to be everything that ever came out of his mouth after Series One? Blaise also rather loves the Pride and Prejudice mini-series, though he'd never admit liking something so romantic. Colin Firth's Mr Darcy is another one of his long-lost brothers from another mother, for he too is sexy and fierce.

Blaise has an impressive collection of sunglasses -- expensive, designer-crafted, slightly fruity sunglasses. It simply doesn't do to squint when the sunshine's in your eyes.

There are few things that Blaise enjoys as much as getting regular manicures. Shut up; he's never been quite so poncey enough to get polish on them during a touch-up session, but seeing his fingernails clean and perfectly squared without a hint of excess cuticle is incredibly pleasing to him. He owns a four-way buffer for the occasional touch-up when nobody's looking. Although he's not usually prone to being entranced by shiny things, seeing the light reflect off of his immaculate, mirror-like fingernails mesmerises him like nothing else. He'd stare at them for hours, waggling his fingers back and forth if he had that kind of free time. The occasional eyebrow wax is also an important part of his regimen. Rocking a unibrow? So not acceptable. So not presentable.

Blaise named his polo horse Bucephalus after Alexander the Great's famous steed. Today, naming his horse after the most famous set of hooves from antiquity; tomorrow, conquering India. It's all in the cards for him, Blaise is sure. Bucephalus was imported from Argentina, where all the best pretty ponies seem to come from these days.

Blaise briefly dated one of the Beauxbatons girls who came to Hogwarts in fourth year solely for the purpose of getting into someone's knickers to see what all the fuss about sex was. He dumped the poor girl just about as soon as he succeeded. She was getting too emotionally needy for him to handle, especially considering he'd just taken her on for a clinical curiosity in knocking boots.

HISTORY: The Zabinis are a family of mixed North African and Mediterranean descent – although long since settled in Britain, with an Italian last name like Zabini, it's clear that the family ancestors had wandered through the Continent a fair bit first. The Zabinis were never at all flashy, but prided themselves on always being perfectly respectable – a fine home on the quieter suburban outskirts of Bristol, matches with people from good families and the like - but they had fallen on hard times at what looked to be the end of the line with the birth of a single girl, Morgause. Her difficult birth cost her mother her life, and happened to roughly coincide with her father losing the Zabini fortune in a pyramid scheme. Morgause's maternal grandparents cared for her for several years since her father could not provide for her. Unfortunately, they passed away as well, leaving her in the care of an aunt. Spending her formative years bouncing from guardian to guardian made quite an impact on Morgause, and in later years, pursuit of the financial stability that caused so much trouble for her as a child would become the chief preoccupation of her life, no matter if she had to lie, cheat, steal or kill for it.

Morgause was sorted Slytherin upon her admission to Hogwarts (her father was an alumnus, and her family managed to scrape together enough money for her tuition, though it nearly broke them), where she not only distinguished herself because of her unusual good looks, but because of her extreme ambitions. Horace Slughorn picked her out as a member of his Slug Club, a sure sign of future success. After leaving school, Morgause married her housemate Bertram Aubrey, eldest son and heir to the largest family fortune in her year. The two had been married barely a year when he died following a medication misdose for a simple case of the flu. Quelle dommage! He'd inherited right beforehand. Luckily, a fellow named Brookstanton – Aubrey's older half-brother, currently making a killing as part owner of a textiles import-export company – was there to comfort the unhappy young widow, and married her some months later. Their marital bliss came to an end when he died in a freak fire, but at least it saved on cremation costs. Next was Mr Cooper, Brookstanton's divorced business partner. Although he never had anything to complain about, to hear Morgause tell it, Cooper suddenly grew depressed about his decision to leave his first wife and took too many sleeping pills one night before bed. Despite his sudden despondence over his lifestyle and marital situation, Cooper was still kind enough to leave his entire estate to the second.

Numbers Four, Five and Six followed a similar pattern of connections to the most recent, a few years of wedded bliss and then some sort of (increasingly bizarre) accident that took the current husband's life – Dagworth had bleach instead of water in his glass one morning at breakfast, Ethelred was hit by a bolt of lightning on a completely sunny day, and Furmage was somehow savaged by rabid Manx cats on a day trip to the Isle of Wight. By the time that Morgause Zabini wormed her way to Number Seven, she had accumulated an immense amount of capital in addition to sole ownership of a profitable international business, which she had renamed to Zabini Industries. Morgause had also re-acquired the old Zabini family home in Bristol which had been lost during her father's business collapse, and compelled each new successive husband to pick up shop and join her there. Stories about her good looks grew exponentially with every husbandly death she stoically endured. Considering her start, things were looking up indeed.

Blaise Zabini was born very early in his mother's career, an unintentional byproduct of her first marriage. Morgause was initially displeased to find that she was going to have a child, fearing that the impending bundle of joy would slow her down, but like any Slytherin worth her salt, she decided to make the best of this unforeseen bump in the road. Being a young, pregnant widow did make her an even more sympathetic figure. Given the intensity with which his mother pursued her husbands and managed her ever-growing collection of business assets, there was little time left in the day for Morgause to pay attention to her son once he was born. As such, Blaise received a rather indifferent education from an early age, and was largely left up to the household help, a never-ending line of nannies (they never seemed to last very long) and the odd aunt or uncle who tried to take him in hand. Blaise learned to be utterly terrified of his mother, since she never seemed to have any patience with the foibles of childhood on the rare occasions when he spent a significant amount of time with her. Crying or whinging or telling Mama that he was afraid of something always seemed to earn him a verbal walloping. Blaise was made aware of the fact that his birth was rather more of a hassling mistake than a welcomed event at a very young age, and so since that time it has been incumbent upon him to prove to Mama that he was useful.

Nevertheless, Blaise loved her almost as much as he feared her, and also soon learned that if he was going to get any positive feedback from his mother, it would be by acting grown up, finding ways to be useful to her and being good by not wasting her time. As such, Blaise grew into an oddly serious and seemingly humourless child by the time he received his Hogwarts letter. He was sorted Slytherin, much to his relief; Ravenclaw would have suited him fine, but Mama Zabini would not have been pleased. Given his upbringing Blaise had not been properly socialised at all, but being in close quarters with people his age did a great deal to loosen him up. Blaise's chief focus at school, despite the importance of socialisation, was his studies, which he pursued with a passion and at which he always excelled, no matter the subject material. Not only has Blaise been an outstanding young academic, but he has always been too afraid of what might have happened, had he let his marks slip. Although he has never made it to the top of his class, professors at Hogwarts have taken notice of Blaise's abilities – Horace Slughorn, in particular, will soon see the same potential in Blaise that he had seen in his mother, and will immediately choose him as a member of the Slug Club upon his return to Hogwarts for sixth year.

GCSES: Economics (A*), English (A*), English Literature (A*), French (A), Latin (A*), Law (A*), Mathematics (B), Modern History (A), Science (B), Social Science (A), Sociology (A*).

A-LEVELS: Business Studies, Economics, Maths, Sociology.

ATHLETICS: Equestrian Events (Summer Term), Polo (Lent Term), Tennis (Year-Round).

EXTRACURRICULARS: Political Society, Rous Society, Slug Club.

PB FROM GETTY IMAGES. ICONS BY connie.