iNPC

name of PC: Avis Greymond
name of iNPC: Bastien Archambeau
school of iNPC: Durmstrang
year: 2

personality: Outwardly, Bastien is the perfect image of composure. He's poised, educated, articulate and impossibly self-controlled for someone his age, thanks to his mother's intense training from the day he was born. He carries with him a cold, aristocratic dignity that makes him seem untouchable at times. He doesn't speak much in groups, preferring to observe and choose words carefully. When he does speak, every sentence is a precise, almost manipulative chess move. Bastien doesn't have friends. He has pawns, knights, rooks and queens and he has no knowledge of how to possibly create any relationship deeper than that.

To summarize, this is not a boy who slouches, stumbles or giggles without reason or calculation. He has been trained to win and it's a mask that he is never allowed to drop, no matter how badly he wishes to.

physical: Straight sandy dark blonde hair styled into a classic curtain cut fall into innocent-looking hazel eyes. Bastien's fair and obviously meticulously cared for skin is complimented by full lips. This makes for an almost innocent feminine look, something carefully tailored throughout his younger years in order to combat his equally tailored personality and look likable, doe-eyed and easy to those in the world of French aristocracy. His more masculine features include a strong nose and a taller-than-average height, played down by thin features.

backstory: Bastien was born in Strasbourg, a city filled with cathedrals and old traditions, located in the Alsace region of northeastern France. His family, the Archambeau's, are a famously reclusive pureblood line who have resided for centuries in an ancestral chateau just outside the city and this is where Bastien was raised. His parents, Lucien and Sabine (nee Moreau) are generationally wealthy high-class pureblood French socialites and both have very different styles of parenting. His father, if you could call him that, distanced himself early, leaving the boy to his gouvernantes and mainly his mother. Lucien could often be seen living the high life: partying, gambling and generally wasting money as quickly as possible with no concern for the consequence it might bring. Sabine knew this and saw Bastien as her opportunity to bring the family redemption and bring power to herself as the mother of a prestigious French heir. She "trained" him for years, keeping him close to her side and training him into the weapon she would need to take over the family legacy in the future. The boy grew up thinking he would be a savior, only for everything to tumble down around him at 12 years old, during his last term at Beauxbatons. A shocking secret was uncovered (in reality, a rumor sold to a rival family) that Bastien was, in fact, not his father's pureblood child, but a bastard of a passionate and short affair between his mother and a muggle. Although yet to be proven by the public, the rumors were true and Sabine knew it. She immediately set a plan into action, sending Bastien off to Durmstrang for his second school year in hopes of protecting his reputation and his status as a pureblood from prying eyes and ears at Beauxbatons. She would stay in France and combat the rumors, manipulating those that needed to be bought and getting rid of those that couldn't. Now, Bastien has all but disappeared, losing his identity, his purpose and his status as a prestigious Archambeau to strangers in a foreign land surrounded by those he saw as opponents on his chess board.

first instance of magic: At the age of 6, during one of his many fencing drills, Bastien was practicing posture in front of his mother in which he was required to hold a stance and keep his sword out in front of him as "a gentleman must master discomfort to be fully in control."
He was nearing the end of the drill when his blade wavered slightly. Sabine took immediate notice and coldy stated that if he wished to portray weakness, he needed to train for longer in order to overcome it. In response to this, the mirrors all along the walls of the training room shattered and he dropped the pose, sword clattering to the floor. His face remained a perfect picture of stone, however, as his mother looked down upon him.
"A lack of control, but impressive, nonetheless. Again."
He ran the drill again and she never told his father.