katherine "kitty" townsend ★ professor of charms

Kitty was born Katherine Henrietta Townsend on a November night, living in Columbia, South Carolina, to a pair of wealthy muggles named Henry and Mary Anne. Henry Townsend worked in wealth management—long, demanding hours, and high pay, allowing Mary Anne to stay home. Both of Kitty's parents held expectations for her that were not so much high, as they were specific: she was entering and scoring high in “Baby Miss” pageants before she could properly talk, and was put into a leotard and tights the moment she could vaguely walk.

Kitty was home schooled, in part by her mother and in part by a long list of tutors. She was not particularly good in any of the subjects she was taught: did just well enough to pass the annual tests and then get right back into rehearsals. She was, then, very good at ballet, and even better at beauty contests. Her parents were more than happy to support her growth in that direction—the best schools, the most expensive kid-sized gowns and pretty shoes; the kind with a subtle shine and sometimes glitter. She knew how to walk in heels before she turned five.

She was a good kid: nice, agreeable, and, even as a young child, articulate. Making friends came easy to her—she never had a shortage of girls whose company she enjoyed in any of the classes or dressing rooms she frequented. She had a tendency to be a lot, sure, but she made up for it with an eagerness to please: there was no one ever left behind or on the outskirts of the group. Kitty made sure everyone was always waved at, said hi to, and welcomed into any conversation they wanted to be in. If someone needed a hair clip, she was the first to scramble for her bag, even if the last one left was her favorite one (the one she cherished most, pink, with a little glitter butterfly).

No one would have expected that her promising career, both in pageantry and ballet, would be cut short by the arrival of a stranger at the Townsend’s door, claiming to be a wizard—worse, claiming that their only daughter was a witch, too. The living room was heavy with emotion, a fog of confusion and some odd sort of disappointment. Her parents had a lot of questions.

The first question Kitty herself had was if she had done something wrong.

Kids have an uncanny way of being able to tell when their parents are upset. Kitty felt it in every glance, every look her parents shared now that they looked at her. When she won a young miss summer pageant, receiving her flowers on stage, Kitty spotted her mother in the crowd. The usual pride and warmth were gone from her gaze, replaced with just confusion. Betrayal, almost; heavy with the knowledge that this would likely be the last event like this that Katherine would attend. Family dinners back home were now a mix of failed conversation starters from Kitty and the sound of cutlery scraping plates. Every attempt at reconnection was cut short with such precision, it felt intentional. Every “that’s nice, honey,” only made Kitty feel like she had failed at some unforeseen test.

Her new supplies were bought quietly. Kitty was dropped off in New York with the most stilted parting words she could have imagined—a promise to write that she wasn't sure either her or her parents believed.

She was proven right. Kitty's first year at Ilvernorny was downright miserable. Though she enjoyed the classes, her parents’ demeanor had turned her into an anxious wreck, constantly vying for the return of their approval. Contact was sparse, not for lack of trying—Kitty simply found that her parents either did not reply at all or were, plain and simple, confused. They could no longer talk about pageantry, and though Kitty tried to keep up with ballet while in Ilvernorny, it simply wasn't the same. It wasn’t enough. Henry and Mary Anne had no clue what she meant by being picked by the Thunderbird and replied to her raving about the “too boy-ish” Quodpot with disinterest. Kitty didn't want to disappoint them; promising to participate in local pageants over breaks, agreeing to every event like she was sure a dutiful daughter would.

Summers and holiday breaks almost gave her hives. Though she was welcome back home, Kitty felt the difference in her parents’ attitude in her bones. Time stretched like sticky toffee, some odd resentment filling the air like the scent of burnt sugar, growing thicker and more nauseating with each school year that passed. Expectations mounted; it became clear that each day she had spent at Ilvermorny was something she would have to atone for.

Her parents didn't understand the whole magic thing, neither did they care to try. They made it clear that they believed their daughter had been ripped from their home, and with it, all the plans they had for her. The Ilvermorny education that Kitty was enjoying meant she fell behind her peers in ballet and that she no longer cared for pageants—and for the first few years of her Ilvermorny education, Kitty felt a pit of guilt every time she went home and once again failed at living up to who she was before finding out about magic.

Every day she spent away from home only deepened the disconnect between her and her parents, and there were no two months that could have helped her bridge the gap. Still, she tried.

By the end of Kitty's second year, her parents were only sending two letters a month; she sent two every week. They were informed of every quidditch win, every friend made, every silly situation in class. Her parents, however, seemed to tire of asking questions about what on Earth a tallantalegra was. By the end of her third, she stopped trying to send more than one weekly. Her parents seemed to take this as their sign that it was alright to decrease the frequency of their letters too, going down to only monthly.

She got into a huge fight with her parents the summer before her fifth year, refusing to participate in any event they had lined up on principle. The weeks turned into a nightmarish repeat of the one before Ilvermorny—quiet and painfully long. The only time the silence was broken was for bursts of shouting matches, always ending as quickly and explosively as they began. Kitty couldn't have been happier for summer to be over, feeling some odd sense of relief at not being stuck in that house anymore.

By the end of her fifth year at Ilvermorny, the only letters Kitty received were for special occasions. She went back home one last time that Christmas—some last ditch effort at reconnection. The only question they asked the moment she showed up was if she would be willing to try for a local winter pageant. She spent most of the holidays in her room, blasting music as some weak protest. Coming back to Ilvermorny, she threw herself into her studies, deciding that she would not let silence or disapproval from her parents deter her from the life she wanted—the life she genuinely adored, as a Thunderbird, as a witch.

In her sixth year, Kitty's parents missed the one letter they usually sent for her birthday, and then the special occasion ones dried up too. She did not expect to see her parents at the graduation ceremony, and was not surprised by their absence.

It did not matter. Kitty had spent the last years of her education throwing herself into her studies, receiving high enough marks to get a scholarship at the prestigious Università Bianchi di Firenze in Tuscany. Her programme was exclusive: specialised to the explorers, to the daring and the bold, and more importantly, to her chosen occupation—curse-breaking. She had had her sights set on the job since early in her Ilvermorny career, confidence only bolstered by the issues from her fifth year. She had been working hard for the past three years, and was finally going somewhere she could truly say she adored. Her new school gave her a new place to be from; a home away from the house she no longer felt the warmth of.

Kitty fell in love with Europe in the blink of an eye. Living in student housing in Florence turned out to be perfect for her—new, though after the months spent on campus, familiar. Being in Europe let her travel a lot more than the US did, too. She put in the work during school days, and then spent her weekends and breaks traveling between borders with some friends, half her closet stuffed into a single old bag. She liked the high-class museums in Paris as well as the raves in Berlin—she drank expensive red wine in Rome and cheap beer in Prague, went to Viennese ballets and Madrid parties alike.

After graduation, Kitty had a curse-breaking apprenticeship lined up, accompanying a far more renowned professional. After a year and a half there, watching and learning during progressively more intense cases, she got her certification, and was able to go out on her own. She moved to London, working, as most curse-breakers did, for Gringott's Wizarding Bank—though she didn't spend much time in her cozy flat, her work taking her even further out around the world than she had ventured during university.

Kitty truly adored her job. She would have happily stayed in her position there if not for where one of her cases took her.

It was supposed to be routine; an old inheritance feud, a vault left behind by a wealthy patron's ancestor somewhere in the Faroe Islands—and said wealthy patron wanted access. The brief mentioned no outstanding threats, only some tough spells to be broken. Her supervisor assigned Kitty and her usual partner to the case, both of them sure it'd be a short and simple job.

No one had mentioned a hag. Perhaps no one knew.

A hag had made the decrepit vault into her home. Kitty hadn't been a novice in years—she could recognise the changes in environment, the unsettled terrain, the bone-deep chill in the air the closer she got. Still, perhaps foolishly, she pushed through, ignoring every red flag and deluding herself into thinking that she was being paranoid. After all, no brief had mentioned hags—no brief had mentioned any beings beyond whatever spiders might have taken up residence in the old stone halls.

Kitty was good enough to get out alive. She was not good enough to get out unscathed. After struggling to fight the hag off, Kitty managed to get away—barely, her partner not having the same luck. She got out a call for rescue and was found some ways away from the door, having tried to drag her partner out with her. Her wand was broken and she was barely conscious. She required emergency medical attention, and even after, laid there unconscious in St. Mungo's for a solid week. She needed intense physical therapy, not to mention the mental strain she'd suffered during the incident. Even after she could walk and do most things on her own, a return to her old job would have been diabolically difficult. She spent a few months living off her savings, trying to get herself back on her feet again. She got a new wand; redecorated the flat. Still, she stood at the end of a road with no clear way forward.

The saving grace for Kitty turned out to be an ad in the Daily Headliner. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, seeking someone experienced for the position of Professor of Charms. Charms experience she had plenty—and with Kitty's own positive memories of her wizarding education, the decision to apply was all but made for her. She never liked staying too long in one place, anyway.

It happened when Kitty was nine years old, backstage during a small-time, local pageant—Little Miss Columbia SC Buttercup. One of the last local pageants in the seven to nine age group that Kitty would be able to participate in. These smaller wins were crucial for Kitty to move up to what her mother called “big girl pageants”—the Young Miss, and later, if all went well, Junior Miss America pageants. Emotions were running high for everyone in the family. It didn't help that Kitty hated the dress that had been picked for her; though she liked the color, a pretty pale yellow, the fabric was scratchy, and it grated on her nerves as she was getting styled before actually going on stage.

Kitty had been fidgeting in the chair all day. She was stressed, and overwhelmed, and had about three separate middle aged women fussing over her hair. The scent of hairspray was nauseating, the dressing room noisy with the chatter of fifteen other contestants and thrice as many parents and stylists; it was all too much. Kitty’s final straw came when one of the women began to tug on her hair a bit too hard. She tried to manage it, but she was failing. At first she just whined, trying to get out some sort of sensible protest, but that wasn’t enough. She pushed the offending hairdresser away, abruptly tearing herself out of the hands of both the two other women.

“Katherine Henrietta—!”

Kitty did not hear the end of her mother’s sentence, only knowing that it was the beginning of the scolding by the tone and the use of her full name. She ran out of the room—heels aching on her feet, dress still digging into her skin, and tears coming to her eyes. Her hair was a mess, now, too, thanks to the abrupt escape, and it didn’t take long before she found herself sniffling. Rounding a corner, the mascara running down her small face certainly did not help with noticing an ill-positioned cable, and Kitty faceplanted onto the unpleasant carpet.

She heard her mother catch up with her, Mary Anne’s voice now holding concern in addition to the chiding from earlier. Kitty was pulled to her feet with another small whine, wanting to pout and stomp her feet — decidedly not Young Miss behavior. Her make-up and hair, however, were now miraculously in pristine condition, as if she had never left the dressing room chair at all. Outside of the tears at the rim of Kitty’s eyelid and the slight ache in both her knees and elbows, there was no sign of the outburst at all. Her mother didn’t notice, now far more preoccupied with soothing her crying daughter than the state of her make-up.

Besides, it was almost time to get on stage.