As a child, Elaine was very much a loner. It wasn't her choice -- she spent most of her time with her parents, two rather interesting individuals, and surrounded by books. When thrown onto the social scene with others her age, she felt very out of place and awkward. While remnants of this awkwardness remain, her time at Hogwarts has helped her learn to navigate the perils of socialization. However, she still experiences extreme social anxiety. She is constantly afraid of saying the wrong thing and worries that people will think she is downright weird. Sometimes her fears are realized, sometimes not.

As a student, Elaine is diligent and attentive. She absolutely believes in the values of education and obedience, and also has inherited an intense intellectual curiosity from her parents. Viewing her from an academic standpoint, one would be very surprised she wasn't sorted into Ravenclaw. She's a total rule-follower and even breaking them in the slightest makes her squirm. In this respect, many would label her uptight, or more frequently, boring. Elaine is the type of girl who always does all her homework, does not have a habit of procrastination, and usually enjoys assignments at some level. She is not, however, a 'that girl'. She will not speak out in class unless called upon, and even then feels very uncomfortable. She prefers to keep her genius quiet so as to fly under the radar. While her social anxiety is somewhat related to this, it is more that she fails to see the point of showing off; she feels it is unbecoming and pointless. Announcing what you know to everyone does not somehow validate knowledge, only ego.

Partially due to her upbringing and partially because of her character itself, Elaine desires to find goodness in everyone. She whole-heartedly believes that, even in the smallest ways, there are bits of God evident in every person, and she loves them for it. Naturally, this belief makes her easy to manipulate but also difficult to be rid of. She is not easily riled up or angered, but she knows her actions do open her up to be hurt. Strangely, it doesn't cause her to be more careful in selecting acquaintances or develop some sort of shell. Elaine is very open and unafraid to put herself out there again and again, even when people let her down. Some would say this makes her weak or stupid, but she sees it as a strength. Those who seek hurt or humiliate her will find a seemingly simple task before them, but appearances are deceiving; if anything, Elaine is tougher than she looks. She's absolutely resilient and always ready to kill someone with kindness, as the saying goes.

Despite this virtuous and kind-hearted outward attitude, inwardly Elaine struggles with her identity as a Catholic and as a witch. The two simply should not intersect, one would think, and yet in her exists these two opposing ideologies. She often feels that, due to her religious identity, she is out of place in the Wizarding World, and yet because she's a witch, she can't every really belong to the Muggle World again. She doesn't see her magical ability as a sin because, well, she simply had no say in the matter. She is concerned, however, about using her magical ability. She believes the training she receives at Hogwarts is necessary because without it her magic would become out of control and dangerous, but to what extent should she use magic in her everyday life, when the time comes, that is. Isn't using magic to do chores lazy? Is using magic to influence others, from something as simple as a cheering charm all the way up to a memory charm, morally objectable? In what circumstances, then, is magic good, and how can she use it and still feel as though she is respecting her conscience? How can she integrate it into her life without making it an idol? Such questions plague her daily and cause her to feel self-conscious about her magical ability.

As well, Elaine struggles with intellectual elitism. While she does everything in her power not to pander to her ego and show off, she often finds herself silently judging others based on intellectual ability. She sees people who have no respect for the rules, or authority, or more importantly, education, and it just does not make sense to her and struggles to not see herself as intellectually and morally superior to such people. In this respect, she can come off as unresponsive or distant when she is not at her best. Luckily, people misinterpret this reaction as shyness. Those who know Elaine, however, would not characterize her as 'shy.' Her social anxiety does not keep her making friends or interacting with people -- she does not let it. Although not naturally outgoing, she loves discussing a wide variety of topics. In fact, once you get her going, it can be hard to get her to stop! Once she has become comfortable expressing herself around someone, she is fiercely loyal to them. Even when they fail her, she often is ready to forgive (though not always so easily). She is not the type to dwell on the past, but prefers to start each day anew and rarely holds a grudge. Elaine is not, however, 'fun-loving,' or 'laid-back;' she takes life and its details seriously, so don't expect her to laugh at your jokes which aren't particularly funny, and don't expect her to crack jokes either (unless of course they contain sarcasm).

Celina Malevska, the French-born granddaughter of Polish émigrés, met Caradoc Bowen when she moved to Wales for graduate study. A lover of Arthurian legend, she figured there would be few places better to study than in the supposed land of his inhabitance. Caradoc was the brother of Celina's roommate, and for him, it was love at first sight. For her? Not so much. Although she could enjoy his company, from the get-go she considered the two incompatible. First of all, and probably most importantly, not only was he not Catholic, he was decidedly irreligious. Secondly, she often felt intimidated by his intelligence; while a talented student of languages herself, Caradoc was a PhD candidate in astrophysics! How could she spend her life with a man for whom God was not a part of the equation and who liked to talk about equations?

Despite her reluctance, Caradoc spent two years convincing Celina to give him a chance. It was difficult for her, because as time went on she truly came to love him, but did not know how to reconcile that love with her faith. After another three years of dating and much prayer on her part, Celina Malevska became Celina Bowen. Having grown up in a traditional family, she was under no illusions about her family's reaction. In her marriage, she clung fervently to her beliefs and hoped that one day, the man she loved would come to love her Church. To this day, she is still waiting, but one thing the couple did love very much was their only daughter. Elaine Cecilia Bowen was welcomed five years after their marriage, and was a pleasant surprise. Upon marriage, Celina found out that while she was not completely barren, conception was highly unlikely. Under such circumstances, Elaine came as a blessing to their family.

Luckily, Caradoc did not put up much of a fight about the role of the Catholic faith in Elaine's life. She was promptly baptized, and Celina made sure to impart the importance of faith and piety on her daughter, instilling in the little girl a love of tradition and of God. At the same time, Caradoc wanted to raise her in the most intellectual atmosphere possible. Between the two academics, this was not difficult. Growing up, Elaine was surrounded by books and a hunger for them made its way into her heart early on. By age 9, even though she didn't understand much of what was being said, her father was taking her to lectures of various topics regularly. In short, he was more than enthusiastic.

This strange melding of academic and religious culture is the atmosphere in which Elaine was raised, alone with her eccentric professor parents and all of their books. As a child, she was never lonely, per se, but still acutely aware of the lack of interaction with her peers. While she had many, many cousins, most were in France, where she only visited once a year (Christmastime). She often felt uncomfortable in social situations (at least with other children, not so much with adults) due to her lack of experience, and strangely, magic was something she never quite noticed about herself. On her eleventh birthday, she received a strange letter by owl which announced her a witch. Both her religious mother and scientific father scoffed at the idea and thought nothing of it until a few weeks later when a stranger appeared at their door to explain. Needless to say, everyone in the room minus the professor was quite shocked. Her mother's first question was how was her daughter to attend Mass if she were holed up in a wizarding academy in the Scottish highlands so many days of the year? Her father's was, naturally, how is this scientifically possible? Is it genetic? Elaine's first question was an excited 'when can I go?'

Upon agreement that arrangements would be made for Elaine's religious affiliation and after a lengthy discussion about the so-called "Enchanted Gene," Caradoc and Celina felt they had no choice but to let their daughter attend Hogwarts. Their special daughter was indeed more special than they had possibly imagined, and cheating her out of this education would not be fair. At Hogwarts, Elaine was promptly sorted into Hufflepuff, though at the time it meant nothing to her, and she embarked upon the adventure of a life time as the child of multiple, sometimes opposing, worlds.