Post by terria kya newton on Dec 17, 2010 18:25:21 GMT -5
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[/b][/div]terria kya newton
sixteen ▪ ravenclaw ▪ nina dobrev
SHY , QUIET , MUSICALLY INCLINED , RECLUSIVE , DISTANT
My name is Terria Kya Newton and I guess you could say that I’ve never been normal. So descriptive, I know. Let’s go back. Let me explain my past before throwing you into my present. My past begins, not here in the UK, but back home, in Greece. I don’t look Greek at all. My mother was though, Greek. My dad was 100% British. He grew up in London. My dad, Archie, was raised in a really strict wizarding family. I am, originally, of pure blood origin. Anyway, my dad came from a family of exceptionally racist, extremely opinionated people. My mother came from an open-minded, pure blooded Greek family. My father grew up studying at Hogwarts. My mother was home schooled. My father ended up pursuing a job in the ministry right out of school. My mother left home and got a studio on an island in Greece where she studied muggle art and painted her way through the hours of the days. They met when my father went on an international study trip. He was exploring new aspects of business within the Ministry. He hadn’t traveled much, but he wanted to see Greece.
He didn’t even mean to end up on my mother’s island. He came across her completely on accident. I like to pretend it was all fate and that their love was the truest love there ever was. I always hated bed time stories about princesses, but I loved to hear to the story my mother told me, about how she had met my father. They met when my father stepped into the gallery where my mother was trying to get her paintings sold. She’d just been having a long argument with an Italian man behind the counter. When my father asked for directions, the Italian man was still so worked up that he wouldn’t give them. So, my mother saved his day. My dad got to where he needed to be and he also met the love of his life for the very first time.
I think I can skip all the mushy in between years since I wasn’t even born yet. Basically, they spent some of their time in Greece and then they traveled the world together. They got married and a few years later, I was born. My father had this strange sort of hate for his past. His parents were not fond of his choice in marriage, so we stayed in Greece. I was home-schooled all my life. I learned the strangest things, both muggle and magic. I had my first wand at age eight because my mother thought I was ready. I spent half my days learning new spells and the other half learning to play an instrument or speak a language or paint with a certain brush stroke. I celebrated strange holidays from around the world, even if they didn’t match up to anything Greek or English. My parents just wanted me to have the life they’d always wished their parents had given them. I couldn’t be more thankful for what they gave me.
By age eleven, witches and wizards start to learn their formal education. My parents wanted to make my coming of age just as significant as everyone else’s. So, my mother took me on a trip around the world with just her. We kept up all my studies and we stayed in the strangest places. We never kept to any known cities. We explored wizarding villages and destinations full of culture and life. We ate the food and drank the water. We danced to the music and smelled the scents. It was life as I’d never lived before. My mother also made an effort to open my mind. She wanted me to understand blood status. She wanted me to see that there was more than muggle and magic. She wanted me to have compassion and understanding of the lives of others. So, we met centaurs and werewolves and merpeople and vampires. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
It was an accident. It was all a huge accident. I knew, even when it happened, that it was an accident. See, we’d found this little village of vampires living in Africa. They’d moved them from different places in the world in an attempt to create a peaceful community. Vampires had been facing a lot of controversy in society and they knew that they would be killed if they were found out in their normal homes. There was safety in numbers here. There was an understanding and a sense of family in this village. My mother knew one of the older vampire women who lived there and had asked if we could stay with her. She had agreed, finding my mother’s attempts to enlighten me to be beautiful.
After a day, I had started to talk with more of the vampire people living there. I wanted to meet people my age who had become vampires. I wanted their perspective. That was when I met Sofia. She was French and blond and tall and only twelve years old. I found her interesting and ended up talking to her for hours. She had the must lovely sense of humor and I felt attached to her. She was the only person I had met there who I actually wanted to stay in contact with afterward. What no one had told me was that Sofia was a new vampire. It’s hard for new vampires to refrain from biting for blood. They can be over-come, suddenly, with a need to feed. Sofia was in that exact position. For the others, this wasn’t a problem. They could calm, Sofia and not fear being bitten because they were already transformed. Me on the other hand? I was an eleven year old witch who wasn’t expecting anything like that to happen.
So, my new friend accidentally bit me. She’d drained me quite a bit too before my mother came stumbling in and started screaming. After this little incident, she rushed me back home and my father was horrified. He took me to St. Mungo’s in London because, if any time called for help, it was then. I was treated and then held there for a month’s time to adapt. I was very, very lucky. Normally, vampires are outlawed. In London, things were different, they were more accepting. I was certainly frowned upon, but my life wasn’t in danger at all.
I went home, to Greece. I spent my time leading a vegan vampire existence. I had to do a lot of researching on what was okay to eat and what wasn’t. I had to drink blood, but I could get it from animals instead of people. I could eat most foods, but some things had strange allergic reactions that I couldn’t understand. I would lose weight, rapidly, and then feed on human blood from a blood bank and gain the weight back. My parents protected me. They kept me away from the prying eyes and gossiping tones of outsiders. We all became somewhat reclusive and I knew it was my fault.
Life went on like that until the Summer before I came back to London. I was fifteen, it was just days before my sixteenth birthday. My parents were killed in a hate crime. People had come to our home, searching for me. They killed my parents because they were raising a monster. That was one of the few nights I had gone to stay with my grandmother in an attempt to feel normal. It killed me, losing them. But, in a sense, it taught me what I needed to do with my life. So, I wrote to Headmaster Dumbledore and told him about my situation. I explained my life and what had happened to my parents. I asked him if I could attend Hogwarts school and if he could keep my secret. I learned that he had the most giving heart I had ever come across. The headmaster agreed to my acceptance. I went back to London, got on the Hogwarts Express, and started the next chapter of my life.
Now, we’re here. I wear a lot of black these days, still mourning the loss of my parents. I’m quieter than I’ve ever been. I’m certainly not used to being around other people my age. Everyone is so prim and proper at Hogwarts, Just wearing robes is a big change for me. Back home, I could wear whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I’m not used to rules, aside from the obvious, don’t kill anyone. I can’t tell anyone about my monstrous little secret. I spend my time trying to hide in different places. One of the only outlets I’ve really found comes from song. I play guitar or piano or anything else I can get my hands on and I sing until my voice goes raw. It’s not the life I thought I’d live, but it’s something. I feel, for the first time, like I’m on a path toward something bigger than me. What that is, I wouldn’t know.
-------
Basic knowledge about my life? Okay, I can do this. My full name is Terria Kya Newton. I was named after my grandmother, Terrya. I was born on July 28th. I’m part Greek, part English. I was born a pureblooded witch. I am now considered a half blood. When I was eleven-years-old, I was accidentally bitten and transformed into a vampire. It’s nothing glamorous or monstrous or even really exciting. After my transformation, I was rushed to St. Mungo’s in London. I was kept there for a while to be treated and looked after. Then, I went home. Both of my parents are dead. I am left in the custody of my earlier mentioned grandmother. I have just begun learning at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the school my father went to as a child. I requested to be sorted into the house of Ravenclaw, my father’s house. I am in my sixth year despite not ever having gone to a real school in my life. I am taking a whole slew of courses, although I will probably excel most in History of Magic, Ancient Runes, and Muggle Studies. Those are the basics.
I got my first wand at age eight because my parents thought I was old enough to handle the responsibility. My father, of course, was more cautious than my mother. It was my mother’s idea and she pushed for it to happen. Unlike most Hogwarts students, who get their wands from a shop, mine was hand-made by a family friend. We knew a young man who had been great friends with my mother when they were children. The two of them had grown up together and learned together. When he was twenty, he was bitten by a werewolf and transformed. He went underground, ashamed of what he had become. My mother’s kind heart promised that she would never lose his friendship. For a weekend a month, this family friend would stay in our home and tell us stories of his adventures around the world. He had taken up a love for wand making. He made my wand to fit the personality he had watched me grow into. He made it short at 11 and a half inches. It was crafted from redwood and had engravings on it that he had known I would love. The markings were made up of dainty little leaves blowing in a non-existent wind and tiny vines draping off of them. There was a handle with my initials, TKN at the very bottom. The core was a miniscule snipping of his own werewolf hair. He told me to carry his heart with my magic and that I would make him proud. He may have lost respect from many with his transformation, but none of that mattered as long as my eyes still lit up every time I saw him. The features remain the same, but now my wand feels much used and has seen more life than I ever expected it to.
As I said earlier, I was born a pureblood, but became classified as a half blood after my transformation. My blood lines date back ages. My mother’s side of the family have always been home schooled and have remained in Greece since before my grandparents were even born. My father’s side of the family spreads out all over the place. He has many siblings, both adopted and biological. He has cousins, aunts, uncles, the whole thing. Sometimes, I fear the opinions of others at the school because I think they might be family that I haven’t met yet. Being pureblooded isn’t as much to be proud of as people make it out to be. It’s a greater cause for confusion more than anything else.
After I was transformed, my parents became extremely protective of me. They taught me more and more about protective magic. I once asked them what the worst thing, aside from death, would be in store for should society turn against what I had become. My father told me that there were many vampires locked up in Azkaban Prison for killing. I asked him about it and he told me about the dementors. I was completely mortified by the concept. I begged him to teach me to protect myself from such monsters. So, when I was thirteen, I learned to cast a flawless Patronus charm. Unsurprisingly, my Patronus was a snowy white owl. The memory I drew from was of the time I had spent with my mother during our travels.
The first time I saw a dementor, I was eleven-years-old and one had been brought in from Azkaban to stand outside my room in St. Mungo’s in case I went on some insane vampire killing spree. I didn’t know what it was at the time and I hadn’t gotten a very good look at it, but I could feel its presence. I was over-whelmed with a kind of sorrow that had absolutely nothing to do with my new, monstrous self. I would lie there in bed, mourning the loss of my life and wallowing in self-pity. I had always been such an optimist and those monsters made me feel hopeless and cynical and sad. I didn’t see one again until much later.
After my parents passed away and I came to London, things became even harder for me. I had to deal with the Ministry of Magic more than I ever had before. I never understood just how much petty paperwork my parents had filed for me. I’d never realized how much time they had put into making sure it was legal for me to have the same rights as other witches and wizards. After their deaths, I had to go in for a three hour appointment to go over all my paperwork. Through the entire affair, a dementor paced the other side of the door. The man doing the work thought I was some kind of monster. Ministry workers thought that, because my parents were dead, I would no longer have any need to not kill. They thought, somehow, that it wasn’t my choice to be a “vegan” vampire, but a rule my parents had pressed. I was suddenly dangerous.
When I came into contact with the dementor, I fell to my knees and couldn’t move. It was one of the worst panic attacks I’d ever had in my life. I sat there, crumpled against a ministry wall with tears streaming from my eyes. My face had gone completely pale. I couldn’t stop shaking, my teeth chattering mercilessly. My breath seemed to have been stolen away. And I was completely stolen by the feelings and emotions I had been suppressing. I felt all of the things I had held back at the funeral come flooding out. I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, but no sound could possibly come to me in a moment like that. My parents, the people who I had loved more than anyone or anything in the world, the people who had protected and raised and nurtured me even when I had become a monster; they were gone. They had been taken by something far worse than the monster I supposedly was. Their lives had been destroyed by hatred, completely unwarranted hatred.
Ministry officials came rushing forward and the dementor was taken away from me. They let me sit in the office for a while, alone, so that I could cry and just be by myself. I hate dementors. They only bring back thoughts of the most horrible things.
At age thirteen, my father was giving me a lesson about boggarts. One had gotten itself stuck inside a suitcase at my grandmother’s house and my father took that as a cue for a Defence lesson. He opened the suitcase and out came the boggart. At first, there had been a mix up and it had turned into my father’s greatest fear, a giant chimara. Apparently, my father had been frightened of them since childhood. When it turned to me though, it turned into something entirely different. I had expected it to become a spider or a snake. Instead, it turned into something that left me standing there horrified. The boggart transformed into the corpse of our neighbor. The body was completely drained of blood, lifeless and pale and defenseless. Then, it became my grandmother. It changed through a traumatizing slideshow of people I knew well. My greatest fear was the ability I had. I was afraid of myself.
The first week at school, I got lost in the castle. I spent hours wandering around until it got dark. I ended up in an empty classroom and stumbled upon the Mirror of Erised. I stared into my heart’s greatest desire and saw my parents, alive and well. Between the two of them, I was there. I wasn’t a vampire. I was just normal old me. I was healthy looking. I was at a good weight. I was happy. I was hugging them. My mother would take my hand in hers and my father would clasp his hand on my shoulder. Tears burst from my eyes. The want for what was on the other side of the mirror was so strong that it was maddening. I wanted to throw a shoe at the mirror, shatter it entirely. I couldn’t though. I shouldn’t. Just then, Professor Port came into the classroom. He had been on patrol duty and it was lights out. He saw my wand light from the hall and had come in. I told him what had happened and he explained how the mirror worked. I told him that I didn’t ever want to look into it again. He said he understood.
As a guide to my own lifestyle, I keep certain things secret. I never tell anyone I am a vampire. I never tell anyone I am a legally registered animagous. I never tell anyone my parents are dead. I never tell anyone I am of pure blood. I never tell anyone that I am afraid of what I am. I don’t tell people how I feel. I don’t express the pain I go through. I fake a smile for everyone because that’s what I need to do. I would rather say nothing than have to risk it and trust any of them.
It may sound strange, but I find myself having to keep up with tiny lies. Normally, I honor the truth. Being what and who I am though, I sometimes lie because it is easier on everyone involved. When people ask what happened to my parents, I say that they’re off traveling the world, just like they used to. I say that I live with my grandmother by choice. I say that I don’t eat a lot of food because I’m just allergic to them and it’s hereditary. I say that I don’t keep pets because I’m allergic to the fur or feathers or scales. I say that I need a lot of space from others and I am reclusive because I get terrible head aches and migraines. I say that I was taught certain lessons by professors instead of my parents because people don’t believe the truth when I say that my parents taught me all of the things that they have. I lie about having to go to either St. Mungo’s of the Ministry for anything vampire related. Basically, I cover a lot of it up.
The facts are the things that aren’t going to change any time soon. I am a vampire. I am a registered animagous. My animal transformation is a snowy white owl, the same as my patronus. The reason I became an animagous was because of my transformation into a vampire. The process was even trickier than usual for me. It’s not normal for a vampire to be able to transform into an animal. My parents knew how hard my life was going to be though, going by these strict “vegan” rules. They knew I would have to go out and hunt for my food. So, we all agreed, a few months after I had settled as a vampire, I began to process of turning into an animagous. It was a way to hunt for food more easily and to get away from people while my thirst became a craving. I was helping others by doing this. The Ministry agreed that it was the safest idea.
On my left wrist, I wear a thin, woven bracelet. This bracelet was specifically designed for me by the Ministry. It monitors weather I have killed any muggle, witch, or wizard. On the first Sunday of every month, I make a trip to the Ministry and have my bracelet checked. They give me the okay and they know I am still on track.
Because animal blood is not the same as human, witch, or wizard blood, I end up checking into St. Mungo’s about twice to three times a year to receive infusions of magical blood. This blood keeps me healthy and stops me from starving. It seems a bit drastic, but it is one of the only ways I can maintain my lifestyle.
I don’t really know what to think of this war. I certainly support muggle rights. I know Dumbledore is playing a greater part in things than he’s letting on and I support him 100%. At the same time though, I’m sixteen. I don’t want anything to do with this war. I’m already practically hunted by the Ministry half the time and it’s only a matter of time before You-Know-Who decides that vampires are a menace and attacks us too. I think, as a personal tactic of survival, I can’t have anything to do with any of it. I am, for the most part, in hiding.
My name is Terria Kya Newton and I guess you could say that I’ve never been normal. So descriptive, I know. Let’s go back. Let me explain my past before throwing you into my present. My past begins, not here in the UK, but back home, in Greece. I don’t look Greek at all. My mother was though, Greek. My dad was 100% British. He grew up in London. My dad, Archie, was raised in a really strict wizarding family. I am, originally, of pure blood origin. Anyway, my dad came from a family of exceptionally racist, extremely opinionated people. My mother came from an open-minded, pure blooded Greek family. My father grew up studying at Hogwarts. My mother was home schooled. My father ended up pursuing a job in the ministry right out of school. My mother left home and got a studio on an island in Greece where she studied muggle art and painted her way through the hours of the days. They met when my father went on an international study trip. He was exploring new aspects of business within the Ministry. He hadn’t traveled much, but he wanted to see Greece.
He didn’t even mean to end up on my mother’s island. He came across her completely on accident. I like to pretend it was all fate and that their love was the truest love there ever was. I always hated bed time stories about princesses, but I loved to hear to the story my mother told me, about how she had met my father. They met when my father stepped into the gallery where my mother was trying to get her paintings sold. She’d just been having a long argument with an Italian man behind the counter. When my father asked for directions, the Italian man was still so worked up that he wouldn’t give them. So, my mother saved his day. My dad got to where he needed to be and he also met the love of his life for the very first time.
I think I can skip all the mushy in between years since I wasn’t even born yet. Basically, they spent some of their time in Greece and then they traveled the world together. They got married and a few years later, I was born. My father had this strange sort of hate for his past. His parents were not fond of his choice in marriage, so we stayed in Greece. I was home-schooled all my life. I learned the strangest things, both muggle and magic. I had my first wand at age eight because my mother thought I was ready. I spent half my days learning new spells and the other half learning to play an instrument or speak a language or paint with a certain brush stroke. I celebrated strange holidays from around the world, even if they didn’t match up to anything Greek or English. My parents just wanted me to have the life they’d always wished their parents had given them. I couldn’t be more thankful for what they gave me.
By age eleven, witches and wizards start to learn their formal education. My parents wanted to make my coming of age just as significant as everyone else’s. So, my mother took me on a trip around the world with just her. We kept up all my studies and we stayed in the strangest places. We never kept to any known cities. We explored wizarding villages and destinations full of culture and life. We ate the food and drank the water. We danced to the music and smelled the scents. It was life as I’d never lived before. My mother also made an effort to open my mind. She wanted me to understand blood status. She wanted me to see that there was more than muggle and magic. She wanted me to have compassion and understanding of the lives of others. So, we met centaurs and werewolves and merpeople and vampires. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
It was an accident. It was all a huge accident. I knew, even when it happened, that it was an accident. See, we’d found this little village of vampires living in Africa. They’d moved them from different places in the world in an attempt to create a peaceful community. Vampires had been facing a lot of controversy in society and they knew that they would be killed if they were found out in their normal homes. There was safety in numbers here. There was an understanding and a sense of family in this village. My mother knew one of the older vampire women who lived there and had asked if we could stay with her. She had agreed, finding my mother’s attempts to enlighten me to be beautiful.
After a day, I had started to talk with more of the vampire people living there. I wanted to meet people my age who had become vampires. I wanted their perspective. That was when I met Sofia. She was French and blond and tall and only twelve years old. I found her interesting and ended up talking to her for hours. She had the must lovely sense of humor and I felt attached to her. She was the only person I had met there who I actually wanted to stay in contact with afterward. What no one had told me was that Sofia was a new vampire. It’s hard for new vampires to refrain from biting for blood. They can be over-come, suddenly, with a need to feed. Sofia was in that exact position. For the others, this wasn’t a problem. They could calm, Sofia and not fear being bitten because they were already transformed. Me on the other hand? I was an eleven year old witch who wasn’t expecting anything like that to happen.
So, my new friend accidentally bit me. She’d drained me quite a bit too before my mother came stumbling in and started screaming. After this little incident, she rushed me back home and my father was horrified. He took me to St. Mungo’s in London because, if any time called for help, it was then. I was treated and then held there for a month’s time to adapt. I was very, very lucky. Normally, vampires are outlawed. In London, things were different, they were more accepting. I was certainly frowned upon, but my life wasn’t in danger at all.
I went home, to Greece. I spent my time leading a vegan vampire existence. I had to do a lot of researching on what was okay to eat and what wasn’t. I had to drink blood, but I could get it from animals instead of people. I could eat most foods, but some things had strange allergic reactions that I couldn’t understand. I would lose weight, rapidly, and then feed on human blood from a blood bank and gain the weight back. My parents protected me. They kept me away from the prying eyes and gossiping tones of outsiders. We all became somewhat reclusive and I knew it was my fault.
Life went on like that until the Summer before I came back to London. I was fifteen, it was just days before my sixteenth birthday. My parents were killed in a hate crime. People had come to our home, searching for me. They killed my parents because they were raising a monster. That was one of the few nights I had gone to stay with my grandmother in an attempt to feel normal. It killed me, losing them. But, in a sense, it taught me what I needed to do with my life. So, I wrote to Headmaster Dumbledore and told him about my situation. I explained my life and what had happened to my parents. I asked him if I could attend Hogwarts school and if he could keep my secret. I learned that he had the most giving heart I had ever come across. The headmaster agreed to my acceptance. I went back to London, got on the Hogwarts Express, and started the next chapter of my life.
Now, we’re here. I wear a lot of black these days, still mourning the loss of my parents. I’m quieter than I’ve ever been. I’m certainly not used to being around other people my age. Everyone is so prim and proper at Hogwarts, Just wearing robes is a big change for me. Back home, I could wear whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I’m not used to rules, aside from the obvious, don’t kill anyone. I can’t tell anyone about my monstrous little secret. I spend my time trying to hide in different places. One of the only outlets I’ve really found comes from song. I play guitar or piano or anything else I can get my hands on and I sing until my voice goes raw. It’s not the life I thought I’d live, but it’s something. I feel, for the first time, like I’m on a path toward something bigger than me. What that is, I wouldn’t know.
-------
Basic knowledge about my life? Okay, I can do this. My full name is Terria Kya Newton. I was named after my grandmother, Terrya. I was born on July 28th. I’m part Greek, part English. I was born a pureblooded witch. I am now considered a half blood. When I was eleven-years-old, I was accidentally bitten and transformed into a vampire. It’s nothing glamorous or monstrous or even really exciting. After my transformation, I was rushed to St. Mungo’s in London. I was kept there for a while to be treated and looked after. Then, I went home. Both of my parents are dead. I am left in the custody of my earlier mentioned grandmother. I have just begun learning at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the school my father went to as a child. I requested to be sorted into the house of Ravenclaw, my father’s house. I am in my sixth year despite not ever having gone to a real school in my life. I am taking a whole slew of courses, although I will probably excel most in History of Magic, Ancient Runes, and Muggle Studies. Those are the basics.
I got my first wand at age eight because my parents thought I was old enough to handle the responsibility. My father, of course, was more cautious than my mother. It was my mother’s idea and she pushed for it to happen. Unlike most Hogwarts students, who get their wands from a shop, mine was hand-made by a family friend. We knew a young man who had been great friends with my mother when they were children. The two of them had grown up together and learned together. When he was twenty, he was bitten by a werewolf and transformed. He went underground, ashamed of what he had become. My mother’s kind heart promised that she would never lose his friendship. For a weekend a month, this family friend would stay in our home and tell us stories of his adventures around the world. He had taken up a love for wand making. He made my wand to fit the personality he had watched me grow into. He made it short at 11 and a half inches. It was crafted from redwood and had engravings on it that he had known I would love. The markings were made up of dainty little leaves blowing in a non-existent wind and tiny vines draping off of them. There was a handle with my initials, TKN at the very bottom. The core was a miniscule snipping of his own werewolf hair. He told me to carry his heart with my magic and that I would make him proud. He may have lost respect from many with his transformation, but none of that mattered as long as my eyes still lit up every time I saw him. The features remain the same, but now my wand feels much used and has seen more life than I ever expected it to.
As I said earlier, I was born a pureblood, but became classified as a half blood after my transformation. My blood lines date back ages. My mother’s side of the family have always been home schooled and have remained in Greece since before my grandparents were even born. My father’s side of the family spreads out all over the place. He has many siblings, both adopted and biological. He has cousins, aunts, uncles, the whole thing. Sometimes, I fear the opinions of others at the school because I think they might be family that I haven’t met yet. Being pureblooded isn’t as much to be proud of as people make it out to be. It’s a greater cause for confusion more than anything else.
After I was transformed, my parents became extremely protective of me. They taught me more and more about protective magic. I once asked them what the worst thing, aside from death, would be in store for should society turn against what I had become. My father told me that there were many vampires locked up in Azkaban Prison for killing. I asked him about it and he told me about the dementors. I was completely mortified by the concept. I begged him to teach me to protect myself from such monsters. So, when I was thirteen, I learned to cast a flawless Patronus charm. Unsurprisingly, my Patronus was a snowy white owl. The memory I drew from was of the time I had spent with my mother during our travels.
The first time I saw a dementor, I was eleven-years-old and one had been brought in from Azkaban to stand outside my room in St. Mungo’s in case I went on some insane vampire killing spree. I didn’t know what it was at the time and I hadn’t gotten a very good look at it, but I could feel its presence. I was over-whelmed with a kind of sorrow that had absolutely nothing to do with my new, monstrous self. I would lie there in bed, mourning the loss of my life and wallowing in self-pity. I had always been such an optimist and those monsters made me feel hopeless and cynical and sad. I didn’t see one again until much later.
After my parents passed away and I came to London, things became even harder for me. I had to deal with the Ministry of Magic more than I ever had before. I never understood just how much petty paperwork my parents had filed for me. I’d never realized how much time they had put into making sure it was legal for me to have the same rights as other witches and wizards. After their deaths, I had to go in for a three hour appointment to go over all my paperwork. Through the entire affair, a dementor paced the other side of the door. The man doing the work thought I was some kind of monster. Ministry workers thought that, because my parents were dead, I would no longer have any need to not kill. They thought, somehow, that it wasn’t my choice to be a “vegan” vampire, but a rule my parents had pressed. I was suddenly dangerous.
When I came into contact with the dementor, I fell to my knees and couldn’t move. It was one of the worst panic attacks I’d ever had in my life. I sat there, crumpled against a ministry wall with tears streaming from my eyes. My face had gone completely pale. I couldn’t stop shaking, my teeth chattering mercilessly. My breath seemed to have been stolen away. And I was completely stolen by the feelings and emotions I had been suppressing. I felt all of the things I had held back at the funeral come flooding out. I couldn’t stop crying. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, but no sound could possibly come to me in a moment like that. My parents, the people who I had loved more than anyone or anything in the world, the people who had protected and raised and nurtured me even when I had become a monster; they were gone. They had been taken by something far worse than the monster I supposedly was. Their lives had been destroyed by hatred, completely unwarranted hatred.
Ministry officials came rushing forward and the dementor was taken away from me. They let me sit in the office for a while, alone, so that I could cry and just be by myself. I hate dementors. They only bring back thoughts of the most horrible things.
At age thirteen, my father was giving me a lesson about boggarts. One had gotten itself stuck inside a suitcase at my grandmother’s house and my father took that as a cue for a Defence lesson. He opened the suitcase and out came the boggart. At first, there had been a mix up and it had turned into my father’s greatest fear, a giant chimara. Apparently, my father had been frightened of them since childhood. When it turned to me though, it turned into something entirely different. I had expected it to become a spider or a snake. Instead, it turned into something that left me standing there horrified. The boggart transformed into the corpse of our neighbor. The body was completely drained of blood, lifeless and pale and defenseless. Then, it became my grandmother. It changed through a traumatizing slideshow of people I knew well. My greatest fear was the ability I had. I was afraid of myself.
The first week at school, I got lost in the castle. I spent hours wandering around until it got dark. I ended up in an empty classroom and stumbled upon the Mirror of Erised. I stared into my heart’s greatest desire and saw my parents, alive and well. Between the two of them, I was there. I wasn’t a vampire. I was just normal old me. I was healthy looking. I was at a good weight. I was happy. I was hugging them. My mother would take my hand in hers and my father would clasp his hand on my shoulder. Tears burst from my eyes. The want for what was on the other side of the mirror was so strong that it was maddening. I wanted to throw a shoe at the mirror, shatter it entirely. I couldn’t though. I shouldn’t. Just then, Professor Port came into the classroom. He had been on patrol duty and it was lights out. He saw my wand light from the hall and had come in. I told him what had happened and he explained how the mirror worked. I told him that I didn’t ever want to look into it again. He said he understood.
As a guide to my own lifestyle, I keep certain things secret. I never tell anyone I am a vampire. I never tell anyone I am a legally registered animagous. I never tell anyone my parents are dead. I never tell anyone I am of pure blood. I never tell anyone that I am afraid of what I am. I don’t tell people how I feel. I don’t express the pain I go through. I fake a smile for everyone because that’s what I need to do. I would rather say nothing than have to risk it and trust any of them.
It may sound strange, but I find myself having to keep up with tiny lies. Normally, I honor the truth. Being what and who I am though, I sometimes lie because it is easier on everyone involved. When people ask what happened to my parents, I say that they’re off traveling the world, just like they used to. I say that I live with my grandmother by choice. I say that I don’t eat a lot of food because I’m just allergic to them and it’s hereditary. I say that I don’t keep pets because I’m allergic to the fur or feathers or scales. I say that I need a lot of space from others and I am reclusive because I get terrible head aches and migraines. I say that I was taught certain lessons by professors instead of my parents because people don’t believe the truth when I say that my parents taught me all of the things that they have. I lie about having to go to either St. Mungo’s of the Ministry for anything vampire related. Basically, I cover a lot of it up.
The facts are the things that aren’t going to change any time soon. I am a vampire. I am a registered animagous. My animal transformation is a snowy white owl, the same as my patronus. The reason I became an animagous was because of my transformation into a vampire. The process was even trickier than usual for me. It’s not normal for a vampire to be able to transform into an animal. My parents knew how hard my life was going to be though, going by these strict “vegan” rules. They knew I would have to go out and hunt for my food. So, we all agreed, a few months after I had settled as a vampire, I began to process of turning into an animagous. It was a way to hunt for food more easily and to get away from people while my thirst became a craving. I was helping others by doing this. The Ministry agreed that it was the safest idea.
On my left wrist, I wear a thin, woven bracelet. This bracelet was specifically designed for me by the Ministry. It monitors weather I have killed any muggle, witch, or wizard. On the first Sunday of every month, I make a trip to the Ministry and have my bracelet checked. They give me the okay and they know I am still on track.
Because animal blood is not the same as human, witch, or wizard blood, I end up checking into St. Mungo’s about twice to three times a year to receive infusions of magical blood. This blood keeps me healthy and stops me from starving. It seems a bit drastic, but it is one of the only ways I can maintain my lifestyle.
I don’t really know what to think of this war. I certainly support muggle rights. I know Dumbledore is playing a greater part in things than he’s letting on and I support him 100%. At the same time though, I’m sixteen. I don’t want anything to do with this war. I’m already practically hunted by the Ministry half the time and it’s only a matter of time before You-Know-Who decides that vampires are a menace and attacks us too. I think, as a personal tactic of survival, I can’t have anything to do with any of it. I am, for the most part, in hiding.
tippy ▪ skype: tiffany.saxe ▪ pacific
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