Alex DiBenedetto | First Year | Slytherin

Alex DiBenedetto was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the US, on February 27th, 2009, to two muggles. She was always a quiet and reserved child, whether it was out of anxiety or her constantly active imagination, getting too caught up with daydreams. Her quiet and independent nature wasn’t just due to her humble nature, but also with her physical appearance. She had the unfortunate luck of inheriting her father's Italian nose, but her mother’s small face, creating a permanent imbalance, along with her mother’s Scottish features of freckles, pale skin, and plain brown hair.

As Alex grew older, she only developed more and more internalized and quiet attributes. Although not a bad person per se, she had grown impulsive and with it, very dishonest, lying solely on instinct. Although reprimanded briefly, soon would be encouraged by her mother.
When Alex was merely five years old, her powers revealed themselves to her and, unfortunately, her parents as well. While playing in the nearby park under her mother’s watchful eyes, she saw a small cat under a tree. It was laying under asleep unaware of what was about to happen. Alex was walking to the cat when a wind blew, breaking a small branch of the tree. A small branch, but nonetheless deadly for the small cat lying unaware. Alex didn’t even see what happened, one moment the branch was plummeting and the next it was across the field, nowhere near the tree. Alex’s mom scooped her up and ran directly home.

Alex’s parents weren’t merely muggles, but Catholic muggles and, fearing that their daughter was demonic, in only a week brought her to their church, which ended up giving them the opposite of their intended effect. Alex, obviously with her quiet nature, wasn’t thrilled with being the center of attention of a load of strangers and, horrified, she shoved them all backward. The embarrassment of having her daughter be magic, something she was raised to believe was evil, she quickly packed the family up and moved to the small town of Millport in southern Scotland, not far from the city that Alex’s mother was raised in.

From the age of six to the present day, Alex has been living in Scotland and barely remembers the incident, it never being mentioned by her parents. From that point on Alex was constantly shut-in, never being allowed to join any clubs outside of school and never go over any friend’s houses, not a problem for Alex, as she didn't really have any friends, to begin with. People didn't bully her technically, as people who were mean to her always seemed to have bad things happen to them. Nothing severe, but enough to scare her peers. When the letter arrived, her mother wanted to throw it away and move again, but her father, a man with less of a religious past and, in fact, having been a Wiccan as a young man (not a wizard with any real magic and didn’t know anything about the Wizarding World), convinced her to let her go. Her mother let her go, however, she swears never to take any part of anything to do with that world.