early childhood
1864 - 1875
there isn’t much to be said about cornelius’s childhood that hasn’t been said about any other young boy to be born to an upper class, pureblood household. while he didn’t get much attention from his parents, as they were busy with the ministry of magic, traveling, and other society functions, he wanted for nothing, being spoiled with anything he could ask for, which was usually stacks of books as even at a young age, he had a love and hunger for knowledge. he also had his governess to take care of him whenever he needed and she would say that he was a neat, quiet boy who wasn’t that hard to care for, that is, unless something in his schedule was changed or someone moved his belongings. in that case, you could almost guarantee he would throw some sort of tantrum or cry in a total and complete panic; the servants in the home learned rather quickly not to ever touch master cornelius’s stuff without first getting his permission.

cornelius’s eldest brother, thaddeus, was attending hogwarts for the majority of the childhood that he can recall, and so for most of the year, he felt alone in the grand estate. his favorite place to spend time was the estate’s library, of course, as they had collections of some of the most interesting books in the wizarding world as his father was a collector of them. unfortunately, however, cornelius did not yet have the magical background to fully understand what he was reading and some of the more fascinating and complicated books were kept well out of reach, likely in his father’s study, which he was not allowed to step foot in, and he was not yet old enough to read them anyway. still, cornelius would read all he could when given the chance and would write down what he didn’t understand in hopes those questions would be answered later in his studies when it was his turn to go off to hogwarts and learn how to perform magic on his own.

while he would never inherit in the same way that his eldest brother would, it was still important to his father that cornelius be educated in everything his brother was; languages, etiquette, occlumency, legilimency, ancient and rare magic, dark arts, and so on. most of it, of course, would have to wait until he was older, but the things that he could start on right away, he did, and it suited him just fine. in fact, having a rigid structure, lessons at home with an advanced schedule kept him happy and calm to the point where he almost preferred it to going out and playing with the other children who could be temperamental and unpredictable. however, his governess wasn’t about to let him become a recluse, so he was encouraged to make friends with other upper class children when he could, and he did. he preferred games such as wizard’s chess to tossing a ball around and if anyone said quidditch, he’d rather watch than play, but still he made do.

the summer before he was supposed to start at hogwarts for the first time a new baby entered the household; a little girl, a sister, by the name of lucretia. cornelius was endlessly fascinated by the child, not really because he particularly loved her or cared about her, though he supposed he did on some level - he was only ten years old and he’d never bonded with something so small and fragile before - but he was fascinated because he’d never really seen a baby up close before, especially not a girl baby. if it wasn’t for the nurse shooing him out and his governess dragging him off the other direction, he would have poked and prodded those little cheeks with his brand new wand as if she was some sort of experiment. he would grow to love and understand his sister once she was old enough to speak and have a personality of her very own, but for now, she was a fascinating new mystery that nobody would let him solve and it drove him crazy.



hogwarts school of witchcraft + wizardry
1875 - 1882
it seemed the first september couldn’t come fast enough; cornelius barely said goodbye to his parents before boarding the train for his first year at hogwarts. unlike his father and his elder brother, he was sorted right into ravenclaw, but not without having significant slytherin influences like his ambitions and his thoughts on blood purity. it interested him that for the first time his peers consisted not just of little boys of his station, but little girls as well as those of the lower classes and even those without wizarding parentage. while he never would consider any of them to be friends, not truly, as he had a rather arrogant attitude full of purist and classist teachings from home, sometimes he’d take the time to talk to them just to learn what they were like, what made them so different from him and his family; most often, it only reinforced his already prejudiced ideas - he and his family were inherently better than many other families.

he took to school well and was considered extremely bright for his age, always receiving rather high marks, even in lessons like herbology, which didn’t interest him nearly as much as history of magic or defense against the dark arts did, but that could be attributed to the amount of time he spent in the library studying or in the courtyard, practicing what he had learned. although at this point, his eldest brother had graduated, he felt like he had to do just as well, if not better than him in order to prove himself to his parents and his professors. if he found himself not grasping a subject as quickly as he would have liked, he would insist on extra homework and use office hours to make sure that he would not be left behind, no matter what. then, during the summers, he’d work with his tutor to master anything that hogwarts didn’t teach him that he might need to learn such as various languages, and when he was older, he got to attend lessons at the newly established flint institute like his brother. it was this extra dedication to his education that allowed for him to learn so much so quickly compared to most of his peers who would use the summers to relax and take a break from their education.

when cornelius was old enough, he selected both ancient studies and ancient runes as his electives, as well as alchemy when he reached his n.e.w.t. classes, because some of his favorite recent memories during the summer was sitting in the library at the flint institute and looking over the artifacts that his father would procure to study. of course, he wasn’t supposed to ask many questions about them and was forbidden from speaking about them outside of the flint institute and he never broke that rule out of a healthy sense of fear and respect, but cornelius always found a way to sneak in and look because the curiosity often was too hard to control. he believed that these electives would help him better understand and maybe he’d be able to be of service to his father’s school the way that his elder brother was as the future head of it. along with new electives, cornelius was a member of the dueling club and became quite the master in it despite his looks and he was the president of the history club in his later years, having been a member of the club most of his school life.

reaching his fifth year, he was filled with a great sense of pride as he was made a ravenclaw prefect and was even able to hold onto the badge for his sixth and seventh years as well. if he was to be honest, though, he mostly used the extra privileges to be out of bed so he could sneak off to the restricted section of the library so he could read up on things that were considered forbidden knowledge for their age group; he was caught only once or twice and was threatened to have his badge removed if he were to continue doing it, but he couldn’t help it. cornelius did not agree with the idea that there was magic out there he wasn’t allowed to know about - it was his birthright as a wizard to know everything there was to know about his abilities and to be treated like a child was infuriating. still, he didn’t want to cause a stir at school so he held his tongue and kept his head down. reaching seventh year he was disappointed to find he wasn’t given the position of head boy, but he supposed he was lucky he got to keep his prefect badge at all. when graduation rolled around, he was both thankful and relieved, because it meant he could finally be treated like an adult by society and perhaps really be able to look into all that forbidden magic. it wasn’t that he wanted to necessarily use it, but he wanted to know everything he could about it.



flint institute of advanced magic
1882 - present
after graduation, cornelius traveled around a bit, continuing his studies into ancient and rare magic, as well as perfecting his dueling abilities, occlumency, and legilimency. it was important to him to learn how other cultures, other wizards of other locations did things because not only could he could bring that knowledge back to the flint institute and it could be taught to their students, but it provided him a greater understanding of his own abilities and where magic may come from based on theories presented by scholars from all over the world. he learned some wandless magic from professors at uagadou and delved into the connections of indigenous magic to what he already understood at ilvermorny and it all fascinated him greatly. he would take lengthy and detailed notes on all that he was taught and would share it with his elder brother and father, who would eventually offer him the position of the archivist for the flint institute.

cornelius took to the position with both seriousness and enthusiasm, feeling like he was doing his father proud by studying each artifact that came in, experimenting, and understanding what sort of magic was hidden in every one. he would read all that he could and write his own works that would be kept within the archive that would be of use to anyone else who would have a desire to understand what he learned from the artifacts. the archive in the library of the flint institute became his life’s work and he has great pride in it; if anything were to happen to the archive, he would be absolutely devastated. but, it’s kept well protected with numerous protective spells and no students are allowed to touch anything in it without his expressed permission and oftentimes supervision, and, of course, clean hands.

when his mother passed away in 1890, it took cornelius and the rest of his family by surprise and what bothered him the most about his thoughts regarding her death was that he never could remember a time when he was particularly close to the woman. he always recalled her being kind and lovely to him, as a mother should be, but he knew that they weren’t exactly best friends either. still, it made him value his relationship with his father and siblings a lot more and he’d make time to spend time with them if he was able to. his father retired and passed on the flint institute to thaddeus and cornelius was proud of him and it was then that he got his own invitation to officially be initiated into the knights of walpurgis, which cleared a lot of things up in what some of his work was for; cornelius was raised not to ask questions about certain things, so he had previously just did his work and added it to the specific archives that he was instructed to.

while he normally hasn’t cared much about society events other than he attends them for appearances sake, and sometimes enjoys himself though he is hard pressed to admit it, since his sister’s debut he finds himself paying more attention to them and tends to offer to accompany lucretia to things if her usual chaperone is not able to go with her as he feels protective over her for the first time in a long time. otherwise, he stays working quietly as per usual in his library, assisting flint institute students with their coursework when needed and focusing on experimenting on things and archiving when he gets the chance. in 1893 a defunct chapter of the knights of walpurgis donated boxes upon boxes of various ancient texts and mysterious artifacts and cornelius excitedly got to work on cataloging all of it.