1871. Ara is born the first child to David and Nicolette Russell, a middle class couple. Ara’s family is more than a little radically anti-muggle–even by purist standards–and as a result, Ara spends her childhood sequestered away at her family’s home.

1874. A brother, Adam, joins the family.

1876. Another brother, Christopher, is born.

1877. Living secluded as they do, the Russells are largely unaffected by this year’s events, though Ara’s parents certainly feel vindicated. The family opts to not move to Hogsmeade, feeling the village is too inclusive for their tastes.

A few days before Christmas, Ara dreams of a terrible fire that leaves her quite upset when she awakes. Still, it is quite forgotten by Christmas Eve, when Adam’s first act of magic causes the dress of the family’s nanny to catch fire–a small one. She’s fine. It’s put out quickly, and the family celebrates Ara’s brother and no one remembers Ara’s dream at all.

1880. Christopher’s first act of magic comes, and while it’s a happy affair, of course, it does highlight the fact that Ara, as far as anyone can tell, has not shown any signs yet. Ara’s parents, already not exactly paragons of parenting, begin to more overtly favor her siblings to her exclusion, and Ara mostly finds herself confined entirely to the family’s home, even on rare occasions when the family does venture out.

1882. Somehow, despite this, in what Ara and her family both can only call a miracle--albeit, for different reasons–Ara receives her Hogwarts letter. She is sent off to Hogwarts, where she is easily sorted into Gryffindor, and it is… well, not everything that the girl had hoped it would be. Having led an incredibly sheltered life up to this point, socializing with her peers is hard, and although she is apparently magical enough to be accepted to the school, Ara soon finds she struggles in all of her practical classes. Her other classes aren’t much better, unfortunately, as Ara finds she doesn’t have the attention span for history or astronomy, and magical theory feels like an insult–what good is it to understand magic if it doesn’t help her do magic?

She doesn’t manage to flunk out, which is probably a small mercy. Regardless, she doesn’t want to go back, and tells her parents as much when she arrives home, but she is informed that she doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

1884. For her third year, Ara takes up Divination as her only elective. She considers taking Muggle Studies, if only to annoy her parents–possibly into finally agreeing to let her leave school–but ultimately decides it is not actually worth the argument that would ensue.

To her own surprise, Divination comes much more naturally to Ara than anything else, and she learns to identify some of her stranger dreams for what they are–prophecy, although Ara’s dreams tend to either exaggerate or grossly under-exaggerate the future, making them feel appropriately useless for a seer who is nearly a squib.

1887. Ara sits her OWLs, and, to no one’s surprise, she fails nearly all of them, only managing a passing grade in Divination, and finally, finally her parents can’t force her to stay at school any longer.

She spends the summer becoming increasingly antsy in the family home, where her family returns to treating her like a pariah and an embarrassment. Years’ worth of pent up frustration and resentment boil over when her youngest brother’s Hogwarts letter arrives, to the great joy of her family, and Ara makes the entirely rash decision to leave home. She takes what belongings she has, sells most of it to pay her way to London, and doesn’t look back.

She is, of course, disowned. And finds herself alone and unprepared in London, where she eventually figures out how to find odd jobs that pay poorly, and some very questionable jobs that pay a little better for someone willing to be discrete and desperate enough to not care about particulars. It’s fine. She’s fine.

1889. Ara manages to get a job as a maid at the Leaky Cauldron, which is at least more respectable than her other jobs–not that she stops those, of course.

1894. If Ara isn’t exactly thriving, she is at least surviving. In her mind, she’s a lousy fit for the future she might have had if she’d stayed with her family. If she’s a lousy fit for that, and a lousy fit for the life she has now, at least the life she has now is one she more or less chose. Now she just has to keep surviving it.