Fantine Sophie Dantes was born in the wee hours of a cold December morning to Philllipe and Madeline Dantes, an Auror and a homemaker, respectively. As a toddler, she had trouble saying her name, so it was shortened to Tina and the nickname stuck. .Although her family never had much money, Tina’s early years were happy. She was a precocious child who learned to read at an early age. She had an especially close relationship with her father. Whenever he had to leave for a work assignment, he would bring her back a stuffed animal (hence her collection). But that all changed.

Shortly after Tina’s sixth birthday, her dad was killed in the line of duty. The loss of her dad meant a loss of stability, and Tina, despite being too young to fully understand what happened, had to grow up fast and take on more responsibility. She tried to help her mother around the house and make her happy again, but Mme. Dantes was ill-equipped to handle her husband’s death and a child with budding magical abilities. After the death of her mother three years later, Tina, having no other living relatives, was sent to Chateau Croyance, a home for orphaned French wizarding children run by Andre Evremonde (a former Beauxbatons professor) and his family. The loss of her parents and unstable home life instilled in Tina a deep-seated fear of uncertainty and an unwillingness to depend on others. She arrived at Chateau Croyance an angry child who lashed out at anyone who tried to get close to her, and for several months, she made little progress. The only person who could get her to open up was one of Chateau Croyance’s summer volunteers, a young Hogwarts professor named Gaston Marchand. Marchand became like a second father to her, and with his help, she began to overcome her anger issues.

Although the residents and staff of Chateau Croyance were never anything less than kind to her, Tina never felt she belonged there, so she was pleased when she was accepted to beauxbatons on her eleventh birthday. She looked forward to going to school, learning magic, and making friends. She was sorted into Bellefeuille and discovered a love for quidditch and a knack for classes involving wandwork, transfiguration and charms being among her best subjects (the latter of which she credits her success to her father figures Marchand and Evremonde, both former charms professors). She played Beater in her 2nd-4th years and hoped to one day make quidditch captain.. Although Tina never wanted popularity, her quidditch position made her feel important for the first time in her life… but all good things come to an end.

During her time at Beauxbatons, Tina met a boy named Cassius Rosier, who was two years ahead of her. Despite their different backgrounds, the pair became fast friends and were inseparable for three years. At the start of Tina’s fourth year, Cassius was made prefect, and she started to notice a change in her friend. Things came to a head at the end of the year when Tina learned of a prank Cassius and a few of the other student leaders had planned. She tried to stop them, but she was too late. The culprits ran, and Tina got blamed. She expected her friend to vouch for her, but instead Cassius claimed she was behind the prank; the others backed him up. When Tina confronted him about it, Cassius said he lied because taking the blame would hurt his chances of becoming Head Boy.Tina was stripped of her quidditch position as punishment for the prank. Having lost her friend, her good reputation, and her validation, she decided there was nothing left for her at Beauxbatons, and her father figures (one a former Beauxbatons professor, the other then deputy headmaster of Hogwarts) pulled some strings to get her transferred to Hogwarts.

It was only after the transfer was finalized that Tina learned Marchand would not be returning to Hogwarts alongside her. Between her bitterness over leaving Beauxbatons and anger over the circumstances of her father figure’s departure, she entered Hogwarts with a preconceived aversion, and her opinion of the school only grew worse with time. In her first year of Hogwarts (fifth year of school overall), she was sorted into Ravenclaw. The sorting hat almost put her in Gryffindor, but she begged it not to out of loyalty to Marchand. As another gesture of loyalty, she adopted a purple butterfly (the symbol for Papillonlisse, Marchand’s Beauxbatons house) as her personal symbol to honor her father figure.

That year, Tina tried out for quidditch but was disappointed when she only made reserve after 3 years playing at Beauxbatons. Having been warned of Hogwarts’s dangers, she spent most of the year keeping to herself and focusing on her upcoming OWL exams, and that warning (paired with her general aversion to anything out of the ordinary) saved her from turning into a mutant when dangerous pink furballs invaded the school. She was shaken to learn that Professor Dopple, who she initially disliked and regarded an unworthy successor to her father figure, had been eaten by the pink mutants, and she made a genuine effort to be kinder to Dopple’s ghost.

After a chaotic first term at Hogwarts, Tina was ambivalent about returning for her sixth year but did so to honor her father figures’ wishes that she continue her education. Her sixth year started off with several changes. She dropped a few classes from her course load and elected not to try out for quidditch to spare herself the humiliation of being relegated to reserve again, but the most discouraging change was the departure of almost all the professors she’d come to trust the previous term. The term got off to a fairly normal start, which Tina was pleased to see. As the term went on, a mysterious mist appeared on the school grounds. Although she was never caught in the mist herself, she wasn’t spared from it affecting her life. The more the mist spread, the more it infringed upon Tina’s freedom; first trapping her inside the castle, then confining her to the upper floor, and finally forcing a merge of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Tina became increasingly frustrated with the lack of personal space, but it was the lack of information given about the two students who’d gone missing (and about the situation in general) that caused her anger to reach a fever pitch. She ended the term even more distrustful of Hogwarts than ever, and she faced a difficult choice whether or not to return for her final year, only deciding to return to school when it was announced that Beauxbatons, her former school, would host the displaced Hogwarts students.