NAME: Dean Henry Thomas
AGE: 16
HOUSE/YEAR: Gryffindor/12th
SOCIAL STATUS: The Thomas family is strictly middle-class, but paying for Dean's tuition and his many half-siblings means that they don't live as comfortably as their income would suggest.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual
APPEARANCE: The first thing many say when identify Dean is that he's 'that black Gryffindor kid'. Indeed, he dark-skinned. He has curly black hair and brown eyes. He's not bad looking, overall, though he looks perpetually'nice'. He's very tall and always has been, at about 6'3. His figure isn't exactly scrawny, but he's on the thin side, though he's fit from sports.
He wears fairly normal pieces of clothing. Out of uniform, he's often found with jeans and a plain colored shirt on. He's not a fancy sort of boy, nor does he follow trends.
DESIRED PB: The last one used Percy Daggs III, and I would like to as well.
PERSONALITY: Dean can seem quite contrary at times. He isn't hesitant to tell off a Slytherin or scream out in support of West Ham United, but in other situations he can act surprisingly like a peacemaker. It usually has to do with the seriousness of the situation, he understands that there is a place for loudness and a time to be soft-spoken and understanding. Apathy is a foreign feeling for him, he
always cares, whether it is anger or happiness, love or hate, he is never without a strong emotion. Oddly enough, he still comes off as laid-back, perhaps because he has learned to express his extreme emotions in, for lack of a better word, 'better' ways.
If there's a reason, besides being a natural Gryffindor, that Dean wasn't sorted into Hufflepuff, it's certainly his lack of a work ethic. He's not lazy, per se, and he does do what needs to be done but unless he's interested in something that is all he will do. He's limited in mathematical ability and his grades in that class were simply average (he dropped it, naturally). If he's not naturally good at something, he doesn't really care to work to change that. He figures he has enough talents that he doesn't need to compensate. On the subject of Hufflepuff qualities, Dean Thomas is a loyal boy. He's loyal to friends, loyal to ideas, loyal to teams. And perhaps above all, he's loyal to his family. He adores them and it was hard for him to leave home at first. He wrote constantly and once his family got a computer, e-mailed quite a bit. Less so now that he has grown, but still a fair amount.
Dean likes to say he has a good sense of humor and there isn't really much to dispute this, he's constantly laughing and joking, which adds to his friendly demeanor and reputation. Much of his humor comes from pretending to be arrogant, which sometimes gives the wrong impression. He's not one with a sharp tongue - insults don't come easy for him, at least not amusing ones. He likes situational humor and is fond of harmless jokes (with a few exceptions). This reflects his personality, one can suppose, as he's not an edgy sort of bloke. If he ever makes it big in the art world it won't be because of his subversive projects that push the boundaries, it will be because of his insights on the human condition and his skill.
Lastly, Dean is compassionate. In fact, human rights is often a subject of his work. He felt terrible when he first met Harry, how awful it must have been to lose your parents so young. He won't act on his compassion by nurturing or saying he's sorry every five seconds, but there are subtle ways in which he shows that he cares.
DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS: For all his gifts, Dean is a fairly normal boy. He enjoys football, pretty girls and hanging out with his friends. Still, he is rather level-headed for his age and remarkably kind. His normalcy is something of a defining characteristic in itself, because unlike most, he accepts it. He's often defined by his race and artistry by others, though he doesn't quite like this.
LIKES:
1. Seamus: His very best friend.
2. Ice cream: It's sweet and awesome. The end.
3. West Ham United: His favorite team, of course!
4. The Simpsons: It's funny and he's recently become fond of calling Cletus Greengrass a 'slacked-jawed yokel (specifically, since this past August, when
22 Short Films About Springfield aired in the UK).
5. Art: Naturally, you knew it was coming. He likes to sketch and paint, particularly.
DISLIKES: Maths, peppermint, Manchester United, Draco Malfoy and horror movies.
INSIDE SCOOP:
1. His biological father was a fairly upper-class man, from a family involved in politics. Unfortunately, though Dean doesn't know this, he was killed when refusing to participate in one of Voldemort Inc.'s more unsavory plots.
2. He's imagined himself doing drugs - not hard stuff, pot and like. Drugs that are supposed to open your mind. When he was thirteen he almost asked some older boys about it before deciding that his mother would kill him. As of right now, he's done nothing more than drink a bit of beer.
3. He understands fashion, though he refuses to admit this. His sister, Lucy, found herself interested in the subject and Dean was excited that someone in his family shared his interest in things artistic. This doesn't mean that he's going to compliment Lavender Brown on her outfits, but he will pause and examine when he sees a Comme de Garçons piece in the newspaper or a magazine.
4. He's quite a devoted Christian, though in a liberal-interpretation-of-the-Bible, Jesus-said-to-love-unconditionally sort of way.
HISTORY: Clare Matthews was a shy girl, everyone said so, and so it wasn't a shock that she generally went unnoticed by the male population. Alfred Young, however, picked her out immediately when he first noticed her in a cafe in London. A confident young man, he walked up to her and offered to buy her a coffee. She accepted and they dated quite happily. They got married in 1978 and all was well until Alfred was approached by a henchman for Voldemort Inc.
The Youngs had been involved in politics for a few decades and while they weren't the crème de la crème, they were about as high in status as a black family in Great Britain could be. They were members of the Conservative party and for the most part were fairly moderate in their views. Still, Voldemort Inc believed Alfred to be a fine choice for their plan to ruin an opponent. He had been a Slytherin in his school days and had written in support of legislation that benefited Voldemort Inc. in his university's newspaper, so they seemed to jump to conclusions. Alfred, however, was not a bad man and refused.
During this time, Clare had become pregnant with Dean and poor Alfred was left alternating between worrying about the fate of him and his wife and celebrating Dean's arrival. Things seemed to be going well, Dean was born and Clare was ecstatic, but it didn't last. Two months after Dean's birth, Alfred found threats. He left Clare a note stating that he had to walk out. He said that it had become to stressful and that he had to do something else, live on his own far away. Two days later, he was killed, but Clare never learned of this. She was understandably upset and her life changed in many ways. She had to move out of the flat they occupied, as it was too expensive, and she had to get a second job as a waitress. There she met Paul Thomas.
Paul was, by all accounts, a noble man. They comforted and understood one another and by the time Dean was eighteen months old, they were married. This led to several half-siblings, the first being Mark, who became one of the people closest to Dean. Then there were the twins, Lucy and Rachel and then Samuel. They all got a long, with the exception of Rachel and Samuel. Dean, for all the unusual circumstances surrounding his early life, led a normal, happy existence.
Clare felt some sort of loyalty to Alfred, even after all that had happened, and she remembered that Alfred had wanted Dean to attend Hogwarts. After he received a letter from the school, Clare asked Dean to think it through thoroughly. He had heard that they had a good football team and jumped at the chance. His grades weren't bad and he showed a skill for languages, so he was accepted. Although he had initially been excited, the months leading up to his arrival at Hogwarts were rough. He began to realize what a change it would be and it scared him. He was a boy emotionally dependent on his family and it wasn't abnormal. But he left and was sorted into Gryffindor.
It helped that he got on so well with his roommates, it really did. He immediately clicked with Seamus Finnigan, in particular. Things went well, though he missed his family dearly, he was okay. He has become rather skeptical of Voldemort Inc. and the Prime Minister (though he doesn't really know the connection) and believes what Harry has to say about it. Late in his 11th year and early in his twelfth he dated Ginny Weasley.
