Early Years
1868	Brigadier General Abernathy, whose mother has a sense of humor and little regard for practicality, is born into a very modest family with several older siblings. Obviously his parents do not actually call him 'Brigadier General' except a few times as a joke while he is an infant; by the time he is three months old he has been quite firmly entrenched as monkey.
1871	Mrs. Abernathy has another child, who unfortunately passes away a few months after birth. Her primary method of grieving is to cling to her next-youngest, and from then on Monkey is never allowed out of her sight. Several years of this has lead to them still having a weird relationship decades later — weirdly close, but often strained.
1875	Because he literally never leaves his mother's side, Monkey has gradually begun helping her with her work during the day as he's become more capable of tasks. A not-insignificant part of her work involves selling Muggles fake magical 'artifacts' and herbal remedies marketed as 'potions,' and they are in a small Muggle village when Monkey displays his first sign of magic. This leads to a bit of a kerfuffle as the Ministry responds to handle the Muggles, and his mother's work raises some eyebrows. Nothing ultimately comes of the investigation, but it is the source of a few heated arguments between his parents.
1879	As part of her (in hindsight very obvious) campaign to keep Monkey around, his mother begins talking very disparagingly of Hogwarts. Over the years she has also developed a more and more pronounced attitude of 'gives no fucks' and so this disparaging is not limited around her Hogwarts-aged children. Monkey had already never been especially close to his older siblings due to his mother's preferential treatment, but this really causes the rift to widen on+ their end as it's impossible for them to ignore how little regard their own mother seems to have for them or their futures, comparatively.
Hogwarts, & After
1880	He does go to Hogwarts, though — his father forced the issue, though Monkey had agreed that it didn't really seem necessary. He already helped his mother with her work, and expected he would just grow up and do that for the rest of his life, so why bother studying things? Furthermore, he soon discovers that Hogwarts is full of pompous rich kids, and no one seems especially interested in coddling him. And he isn't even very good at it, besides. He determines very quickly that he does not like Hogwarts in the least.
1881	The Christmas holiday during his first year is a bit surreal. During his months away from her his mother seems, to Monk (as he now calls himself, the more grown-up variant of his childhood nickname), to have changed dramatically. Looking back he can realize that it was his perception that had changed more than she had, but in any case it's impossible to recapture the relationship. Her attempts at involving herself in every aspect of his life now feel cloying; her wanting to do little things for him a sign that she thinks of him as a baby. He is almost relieved to return to school. He attempts to make a better show of it for the second half of the year, but it's difficult to recover from the reputation he's earned among his professors and classmates. He is, unsurprisingly, not offered a scholarship past first year. His father scrapes together enough to send him regardless, believing it important for his development (and perhaps feeling he has let his wife run rampant with Monk for too long already).
1882	Midway through Monk's second year his father suffers an accident at work which leaves him with limited use of his left arm. This results in his unemployment, and in the termination of Monk's educational prospects. He goes back to primarily helping his mother with her miscellaneous peddling and mild swindling, less because he is enthused by it (as he once was, when he idolized her) and more because he has to do something to help with the family income, with his father out of work and not able to find more despite his best efforts. He also begins doing errands and things, whatever he can to help. Things are, of course, immensely strained in the Abernathy household. In summer of that year the Hogsmeade Trail is announced, and Monk's father signs up. It was a bad idea from the start, but after half a year of only being able to find odd jobs and no steady employment the financial payout seems like too much to pass up. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he does not survive the event. Monk, who is handling this in a not even remotely healthy way, declares it a relief to have one less useless mouth to feed in the house — and all the better that they still get the payout. Beneath this facade he misses his father terribly, and worries that his mother might secretly believe what he has so brashly proclaimed.
Venturing Out
1883	Despite the financial windfall from the Trail, things become more and more strained between Monk and his mother. His older siblings have already fled for higher ground, which means they can only direct their feelings at each other, and things get pretty cyclically toxic. Just before his fifteenth birthday he has a vicious fight with his mother where she kicks him out of the house — which he spitefully decides to take at face value and runs off to London. He finds a labor job with room and board included, and though it's miserable he is too proud to go back to his mother when she eventually starts un-burning their bridges a few months later. (To date, she has not acknowledged nor apologized for the argument which saw him leave the house).
1885	Tired of his shitty lodging/work situation, Monk shacks up with someone who lets him move in. It's not exactly a healthy relationship and he's pretty aware of that from the get-go, but after two years in a single room he's willing to put up with a lot to live in a flat. This also gives him the freedom to quit his laborer job and start trying some other things out. He experiments with a few different jobs over the next year. Meanwhile, his mother has gotten into some weird botany, particularly a rare plant she's started growing that she says lets people 'see magic.' This was allegedly something she picked up from a traveler who told her about its properties when brewed as a tea. Monk is skeptical.
1886	When Pennyworth opens in 1886, he makes it his goal to live there someday — on his own, without the overbearing mother or the toxic romantic partner. His mother has been getting more and more into her tea. She eventually convinces him to try some, and he has to admit it's certainly something. She gives him some clippings and he starts growing his own at home. The toxic partner is not amused, but this is probably not what ultimately leads to their dramatic breakup later that year.
1887	While bouncing between friends' houses and boarding rooms and tenements and dragging his weird potted plants with him, Monk eventually realizes how he could monetize it. He starts with Muggles, sober, testing out the right words to convince people he can see traces of magic on them and help them out of various predicaments. When he feels fairly confident in this scheme, he starts offering his services in various magical street markets he can find.
1889	After a few years of saving, Monk achieves his dream of moving to Pennyworth — with roommates, yes, but not with the toxic ex or overbearing mother!