If you're walking through the countryside on the Isle of Skye, you're very likely to come across what you'll think is a fox running through the hills. Soon enough, however, you'll realise that it's just Cassiopea, twirling her fiery hair on her many adventures in the highways and byways. The little red-haired, freckled, milky-skinned, ocean-eyed girl grew up in the seaside town of Portree on the Isle of Skye, brought up by her single mother, Moira MacLeod. Moira, a Gaelic teacher at the island's only high school, loves her daughter dearly and, having been lulled by supernatural stories from the Scottish countryside since childhood, has readily accepted her daughter's status as a witch. The Hogwarts professor's explanation enabled Moira and Cassiopea to finally understand the mysterious events that had been surrounding Cassiopea for several years, from wounds that healed on their own to the disappearance of glass from cages in the pet shop. Cassiopea remembers well her first instance of magic... Around the age of 6, she fell from a hill while exploring the island, but instead of falling, she slowly bounced back along the very same hill ! For years she failed to explain this incident, until now.
Cassiopea's father, for his part, presented a very special puzzle. Louis Delarchand and Moira MacLeod met on the benches of Edinburgh University, when Louis was an exchange student, initially studying at Sciences Po Paris. A passionate love affair ensued, during which Cassiopea was born, but Louis chose to end the relationship in favour of his career in French diplomacy. Although he recognized his daughter, regularly spent time with Cassiopea and fully assumed his role as her father, his more Cartesian mind found it difficult to accept the existence of magic and the magic nature of his "feu follet", as he calls Cassiopea.
All in all, Cassiopea is just another 11-year-old, hoping to find a second home in this very particular school and integrate within the magic world.
Growing up on the Isle of Skye, she was surrounded by stories of magic, fairies and supernatural events throughout her childhood, thus fuelling her thirst for more discovery within the walls of Hogwarts. Her mother, a teacher, nurtured in the trilingual child, speaking English, Gaelic and French, a real passion for books and discovery, nourishing in Cassiopea an immense appetite for knowledge, which was also enhanced by her father's tales of embassies and foreign cultures.