Something of a forgotten middle child, a condition almost inevitable when the children are as close in age as herself and Geoff and Lavinia, Helena is more apt to try to amuse herself, usually through daydreaming, than to seek out the company of others. Though making up stories, some based heavily on plots off her mother's WWN soap operas, is a favorite hobby, she rarely writes these down, one of her quirks being a reluctance to leave any kind of paper trail or evidence of even innocuous actions. She deals with times of stress through what she calls "staying busy", though others (i.e., her brother) have been known to call it "compulsive workaholism". Organized and generally practical, she prefers making the arrangements and bringing the right people together before melting out of sight to participating in events herself.

She is much more attached to her father Mark, who still sometimes calls her his 'Lullaby Lena' (Lully) in private, and Geoffrey than to her mother Nadia or Lavinia, though she and they did grow closer during Geoff's first year at Sonora. Even before this, her relationship with the roughly two-years-younger Lavinia was far from rocky; the size of their house means that they have always had to share a room, and a furious roommate is a bad one, especially when she's the baby of the family with inches and pounds above one's own on top of it. The relationship has, however, become strained since Lavinia's lack of magical talent came to light. Of her first cousins, she is the closest to her mother's niece Audrey Corin, though she thinks her Layne cousins Jessica and Andrea are "adorable" and feels sorry for Henry.

To the surprise of everyone (except perhaps Mark), Helena followed her father into Crotalus rather than her brother into Aladren. Though she joined the Quidditch team, she interacted very little socially with the other Crotali, having only two yearmates, both boys, and having heard a horror story or three too many from Geoff about the older students in her House. Her main "friends" - read as "self-appointed guard dogs" in her first year were her brother and his friend Anne Wright, a girl a little older than Geoff who had lived next door to them for most of their lives. Despite having done something like a 170° in personality since ceasing to do so, she had kept her attachment to Geoff and Helena, who soon found herself nicknamed 'Dreamy' and treated as something between a younger sister and a confidante.

Either polite and soft-spoken or briskly businesslike around those she's not used to and unaccustomed to talking about her feelings even with those she is, Helena's social interactions all take the form of trying to find a balace between reserve and honest opinions and political correctness. She usually neither enjoys nor dislikes such interactions, though some inspire more of a reaction than others and she sometimes gets flustered if she realizes a conversation has gotten more personal than she's comfortable with or has had a near miss with doing so. Though no longer regarded as over-nice the way she was as a small child, she is a bit soft-hearted and extremely unwilling to see unpleasant things about people she cares for, though she will acknowledge the flaw once it becomes too obvious to explain away.

Reasonably intelligent and a fair enough Chaser, she paranoidly thinks that everyone who knows her last name is constantly comparing her to her brother and/or Anne in all matters pertaining to academic achievement or Quidditch and finding her lacking. Her grades are usually around average because of a mix of resentment about the imagined standard she can’t live up to, a liking for the safety/anonymity of mediocrity, and just not being all that interested in the subjects she’s required to take. She does, however, take great pride in the completeness and neatness of her notes.

See "Geoffrey Layne" for more information.