Sakura Hirano / First Year / Mahoutokoro

Sakura was born just outside of Sapporo in Hokkaido, Japan to Asahi Hirano and Haruka Yamada. She is a pale, petite girl, with straight, jet black hair that cascades down her back, always looking effortless. Her eyes, nearly as dark as her hair, were piercing. She tends to speak very formally, something she learned from her countless etiquette lessons she attended along with her other lessons. Her grandmother Kaori is a stern woman who never let Sakura miss a lesson as she was always expected to join the numerous parties their family hosted and attended. While they weren’t the most entertaining lessons, Sakura never complained as she was eager to please her grandmother.

Growing up, Sakura knew not to discuss the topic of her mother around her grandmother as it angered her and bringing it up to her father always upset him. The short time she would get to spend with her grandmother Mai, her mother’s mother, each year was truly the only time she was able to hear stories about her mother and feel that closeness to her since she never got to know her. One thing though that no one ever brought up was what happened to her and the not knowing always gnawed at her.

t h e —— f a m i l y

Haruka became pregnant with Sakura and Asahi moved them into a large home together where they made plans to raise their baby girl together in secret, away from his family. A few months after Sakura was born, Asahi’s family had heard word that he had moved in with Haruka and had a child. Haruka left the baby with their nanny so she could go visit her mother while Asahi had gone out for work.

As Haruka left the house two of Asahi’s uncles came and took Haruka away. Asahi had returned later on but his wife was no where to be found. He talked to the nanny who explained she left to visit her mother hours ago so he contacted Haruka’s mother but she had not heard anything either. In the end his wife’s disappearance remained a mystery and he was forced to raise the baby alone, never finding out the truth of what happened to his love.

After a year of raising the baby alone, Asahi’s mother arrived unannounced to his home and insisted she be raised with their values. Asahi was not keen on Sakura growing up around his family knowing how they feel about wizards, since Sakura was half vampire and half wizard herself. His mother was persistent and eventually persuaded him into allowing her to teach Sakura vampire history as well as some other values and things that would allow her to pass within the vampire high society and even gave Sakura her first blood pop.

Growing up, Sakura was quiet, preferring to be alone where she could read or continue to pursue her musical hobbies. Her interests in music and clothing were clearly influenced by her upbringing, preferring to practice classical music on the violin and piano and wore clothing that was black or other dark colors. With her fair skin and condition she preferred clothes that were long or covered her up, taking on a darker gothic style as she got older.

Sakura’s first instance of magic came when she was six years old. She was visiting her grandmother over winter break and had been playing around in the garden next to her grandmother’s greenhouse. When a rabbit surprised her suddenly by hopping out of the garden she backed up and hit against a table that was set up with supplies and things for gardening. Without thinking, Sakura reached her hands out to try to save the falling items but found that she stopped them from falling off without a single touch as they magically floated back to their spots on the table. Her grandmother ran over after hearing her yell and saw the end result of what happened. At first she was shocked but then was pleased to see their family’s magic lineage was still inside the young girl. As the only granddaughter, she was happy that she would be taking after her mother in some way.