Violet Bellbrew|First Year|Ravenclaw

For as long as Violet could remember, two things were certain: her parents loved her, and magic was real. Though momma and papa hadn’t any magic of their own, the wizarding world was never too far out of reach. Her Aunt Bea had a habit of apparating into the sitting room of the Big House, stirring her tea while reading the muggle romances her momma kept on the shelf. Aunt Lori kept the cabinet stocked with potions, always muttering about mallow leaves and powdered cockroach. The aunties were her grandad’s younger sisters, and though grandad had long since passed, the aunties remained a constant magical presence in her life.

But, when she was seven years old, everything changed—all because she answered the door. Behind it had been a tall, pale man, with a pointy mustache and eyes like chipped ice, wearing this long gray coat and leaning on a cane with a silver fox-head pommel. Violet had noticed he hadn’t expected her to be at the door; he’d stumbled back a step, then got this look in his eyes that made her skin crawl. Momma had met her at the door, and she started yelling at the man, then Aunt Bea and Aunt Lori were there, and they pulled out their wands—at that point, Violet was tucked so far behind everyone she couldn’t see anything. After that, Momma told her about her family; just little bits and pieces—they were bad wizards. Lots of them were Seers, which allows them to see the future, but they wanted to be the only Seers with the biggest power, and they’d hurt people to do it. When they learned Momma had no magic, they didn’t want her anymore and sent her to live with Uncle Rodger—she thought they’d leave her alone, but somehow they found out about Violet. The man at the door had been her father, Silas Foreborne, and he was a very bad man, and if he ever got near Violet, she was to scream and try to get away as fast as she could. Violet didn’t think that would work very well if he was a super-strong wizard, but she’d promised Momma she’d try anyway, especially when Papa got home from work and nearly had a fit.

A few weeks later, Papa told her they were going to live with Nan. Nan was Papa’s momma, and she lived in a little town in southern England, where Papa grew up. Violet didn’t want to leave the Big House—she didn’t want to leave America, but Momma was scared, and Papa would do anything to make Momma happy, so they got in the car and drove away—Momma and Papa didn’t like people using magic on them much, though Aunt Bea always tried. They claimed magic, as wonderful as it was, wasn’t always necessary, and regardless of their ties, they were, after all, muggles, or close enough to it. So, they drove to the airport. Violet had been reading—she saw a flash of light, the car swerved, then spun. She hit her head, and when she opened them, they were upside down, and momma wasn’t moving—nor was papa. She must’ve blacked out, because when she woke next, she was in the hospital, and Nan was there, and she was crying, though Violet could tell she was trying to hide it. Both momma and papa were gone, Nan had told her—it was like her world had shattered, nothing made sense anymore. She was released from the hospital, and Nan took her home to England, to the cottage she lived in, to the room already set up for her.

For over a year, she didn’t want to do anything; it was an effort just to breathe. Then, she found this book in her Grandad’s study, hiding in plain sight, titled Ancient Runes Made Easy, and she just knew it was magic. She’d nearly memorized it by the time she found the next, tucked amongst mundane Linguistics books, this one called Advanced Rune Translation. Over time, she’d gathered a collection of books that weren’t made for muggles, books that read themselves or fluttered or had symbols that moved, and there was a certain excitement in reading something that she shouldn’t. Her favorites were The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection and Unfogging the Future, though she also loved the artwork in Extreme Incantations.

But—soon enough, while Violet was in school, Nan found her stash and had Aunt Bea take anything that was even remotely magical back home with her. Violet got home that day, entered the study, and found all her books gone. The anger she felt was astonishing, and she just wanted so badly that suddenly all of Grandad’s books were shooting off the shelves, slamming into the wall, the floor—shattering trinkets and knocking everything over. Nan had shielded her as the books shot through the study, and when the books stopped moving, Nan held her as she cried. Though Nan herself had no magic, she held Violet close and reassured her that everything would be okay.

From that day on, Violet spent every summer with her Aunt Beatrice at the Bellbrew west country estate in Kent. While there, she learned about magic, family history, and bloodline purity. She learned that both sides of her family had darkness if one looked hard enough for it.

Virgil Foreborne | Pureblood | 1780
Virgil was a patient of the Oracularum, an asylum run by a sect of pureblood wizards called the Ophidian Order. The Ophidian believed children born under certain astrological alignments, to bloodlines with traceable Seer ancestry, with the mark of the Inner Eye, would inevitably become seers in adulthood. They aimed to collect as many seedling seers as possible, cultivate them into powerful wizards, and use their prophecies to further their own desires. Virgil’s parents are unknown. The Ophidian often eliminated wizarding parents who would not relinquish their children, disguising the deaths as accidental, being aided in secret by pureblood families and their sources in the Ministry of Magic.

From a very early age, Virgil could sense when something was wrong and had prophetic dreams, often painting them on the walls of his cell. He was a curious child who grew into a cunning man. After centuries of manipulation, Virgil became known as Virgil Foreborne, a patron of the Ophidian and keeper of the Oracularum, believing in the rhetoric that had raised him: the Ophidian were guardians of prophecy and the Oracularum protected those who would be used indiscriminately by the Wizarding World.

Dorthea Whitlock | Pureblood | 1840
Dottie was born to the pureblood Whitlocks, an English family who had long since established themselves in the realm of locks and protective charms. Dottie, the youngest of six, was the only witch born of the line with her great grandmothers Seer ability. When she was five, she was donated to the Oracularum by her parents, who sought to make her profitable. She was trained in the Oracularum, and was later married to Virgil Foreborne, bearing three children: Phineas, Prudence and Horatio. Only Horatio survived to adulthood, with her two older children succumbing to the Oracularum’s brutal teachings.

Horatio Foreborne | Pureblood | 1903
Though not born with the Seer ability, Horatio Foreborne made up for his “barren” inner eye by becoming a skilled Legilimens and, by the 1940s, gaining employment as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries. His position represented great opportunity for the Ophidian Order, as though he could not speak of his work, his knowledge became an essential asset when he joined the Order. Betrothed since infancy, Agatha Fairbrow became his wife in 1952. Agatha, though not a seer, was from a Wizarding line known for their potent Seer heritage, with Agatha’s mother having been an intuitive Seer who foretold many dangers. The Ocularum, in conjunction with the Ophidian order, believed mixing the Foreborne and Fairbrow Seer bloodlines would strengthen the intuition of the Inner Eye; thus, the Fairbrows were brought into the fold. Agatha would later have just one child before her death in 1962 (not an accident), leaving behind one son, Silas Foreborne.

Agatha Fairbrow | Pureblood | 1927
Agatha was born into the Fairbrow Wizarding Family, a wizarding family known to delve into auras and energy while maintaining powerful control over their faculties. This peculiarity brought them to the attention of the Ophidian Order, who sought to mix their unique Wizardry with that of a more prominent Seer line in hopes of producing more powerful, aware, Seers. The Forebornes, one of the founding families of the Ophidian, put forth their only surviving son, Horatio, then a child, as the Seer Line representative. Agatha and Horatio, henceforth, became betrothed. Though Agatha herself was not a seer, her understanding of divination lead her to becoming a great diviner and seeker of truths, becoming a talented archivist and researcher of the Inner Eye. She was employed by the Ophidian and given every opportunity to delve into the Wizarding World’s full understanding of Seer magic but would step away from her research when her first and only child Silas was born. Agatha was against sending her son to the Oracularum, having experienced only a taste of the methods they used on seer-expectant children, she believed her son would benefit most from being around other influences, such as her extended Wizarding family, and the community she hoped he would find at Hogwarts. Shortly after Silas’s 2nd birthday, Horatio Foreborne killed Agatha with a cursed sapphire taken from the Department of Mysteries, designed to resonate and enhance the inner eye by sapping the life force from those without one.

Silas Foreborne | Pureblood | 1960
Silas was raised within the Oracularum, cultivated by his father, the head of the Ophidian Order, to believe that success was defined as having more knowledge, awareness, and power than the wizards below you, and that seers were the epitome of this rhetoric. Over the years, as Silas’s powers grew, his father got increasingly agitated over his lack of a true seer ability. While Silas’ magic was strong, he did not have an inner eye, which made prompted his father to ignore and avoid him. Silas became an angry child, and he grew into an angry young Wizard, delving into the dark-arts. He proved himself an accomplished dualist and would later become a Dueling Master, teaching pureblood children dangerous and forbidden techniques.

Francine Grantham | Half-Blood| 1968
Francine “Anne” Grantham was an American-born Seer with a flair for dramatics. The Grantham line had not produced a seer in nearly five generations, with Anne’s visions putting the family back into the notice of the Wizarding World. Though her mother was a magbob, Anne herself went to great lengths to prove her power was extraordinary, inserting herself into MACUSA investigations, becoming a Divination professor at Ilvermorny and later, dabbling with the dark arts and later, advancing to the position of MACUSA Diviner. This advancement brought her to the attention of the Ophidian and directly into the path of Silas Foreborne, who sought to add another strain of Seer to the Foreborne legacy. Anne was quick to fall for Silas’s darker allure, and together they had four children: Sebastian, Theodore, Katherine, and Clarissa. Sebastien and Katherine died in the Battle of Hogwarts, while Theodore now resides in Azkaban. Clarissa, the youngest, was determined to be a squib at age 10, disowned by the family and sent to live with her uncle, Rodger Grantham, and his Muggle wife Edwina, back in America.

Clarissa Bellbrew-Grantham | Squib | 1994
Clarissa was born a Squib, a magical child without access to magic. As the only Foreborne without magical ability, her family pawned her off on her Uncle Rodger and his no-maj wife, Edwina. Clary had spent ten years being told that the only way she’d have any worth was if she had powerful seer abilities, and she hadn’t even simple magic. It helped that Clary had Edwina, who became a mother to Clary, and helped her learn to love herself regardless of her lack of magic. Though the household always had a degree of magic within in, her uncle Rodger being a skilled Broom maker, he never made them feel like they were damaged or lacking or lesser and Clary learned that magic did not define someone’s importance. She later went to university and studied abroad in England, where she met Benjamin Bellbrew—Ben. Ben was kind and quirky and… the son of a squib, the discovery of which was a shock—though not entirely accidental. Clary and Ben were good together, they understood each other in ways others couldn’t, and a short time later, Clary gave birth to Violet.

Benjamin Bellbrew | Muggle | 1993
The Bellbrew family has always had deep roots in St. Mungo's, employed as Mediwitches searching for the cure to lycanthropy, a curse that afflicts many generations of the Bellbrew family. Ben, though born a Muggle, was also afflicted with the curse, bitten at age ten by his grandfather in a rage. Though not inheritable, his father, aunts, and grandfather all endured the curse as the burden of the Bellbrew line.

Ben's father, Thomasan Bellbrew, was a highly intelligent professor of linguistics and philosophy who regularly used his access to magical texts to help him understand complex theories and ideas, searching for clarity in his own ways. Due to his father’s eclectic work and his own burdensome nature, Ben had always known of the wizarding world, often thinking those with magic had more troubles. He met Clary through her Uncle Rodger, who was a friend of his father's and had convinced her to travel abroad. They became inseparable, and shortly before their junior year, Violet arrived, throwing their plans into chaos.

Violet is naturally curious, habitually cautious. and occasionally reckless in the pursuit of knowledge. She's quiet, though not necessarily introverted in the same way one might want to avoid all interaction with the living, no-- her quiet stems from her need to watch, to analyze, and to memorize the actions of those around her. Though she's hesitant to form relationships, she's extremely loyal and would go to great lengths to protect a friend. She can be blunt and brutal in her honesty, but she means well. She has a temper that has been proven to level any bookcase, though she struggles with intentional cruelty as her words are never quite what she intends them to be.

At age 8, nearly a year after her parents' deaths, her Nan found and removed the stash of magical books Violet had gathered from her Grandad's study. Feeling her privacy violated and utter anger at having them taken from her, Violet's rage caused all of the books in her Grandad's study to fly off the shelves, slamming into the walls, breaking glass, scattering paper.