Berenice Biggleswade’s decision to run away with the local wizarding blacksmith (in a village near Bristol) is what Algernon Cripps later decided doomed them all. Algernon Cripps was the wizarding blacksmith in question, of course. And he loved her tremendously, while they lived. Her (middle class) family obviously didn’t approve, and the first year or two of marriage was happy enough. But then they began having children, and their luck ran out. Berenice died not long after Titus was born, the youngest of the brood, in 1869. With eleven ten children to support (the first Titus died a month before Titus Two was born), the future did not look easy for Algernon. Titus, however, recalls his childhood fondly enough, though he never saw much of the world beyond the house and the smithy, and can mostly only remember spending his time in putting newly-made cauldrons upside down on his head as hats. (His first act of magic is touching one still hot from the forge and somehow not getting burned.)

The elder children only scraped a year or two of Hogwarts amongst them - and Albion didn’t go at all, in order to start apprenticing under his father immediately - but by the time Titus turns eleven, enough of them are in full-time work to spare enough money (and a wild surplus of hand-me-downs) to get him through a few years of school. He sets off in September 1880, and is sorted into Gryffindor. He enjoys lessons, and puts in the effort even when he finds things hard. His favourite lesson is Astronomy until he gets to third year and gets to add new classes, where he chooses Divination, Earth Magic and Care of Magical Creatures. The latter becomes his new favourite. He’s obsessed, and would sneak away all the creatures to his dormitory if he could.

He’d also have stayed to finish his OWLs if he could, but a series of tragedies sees the family strained once more, and Titus can’t in good conscience stay past his fourth year when there are family duties to see to, siblings to take care of. Those that haven’t died yet, that is. They’ve been dropping like flies, if all for different reasons. Old Algie Cripps knows this is part of the curse, and that he and Berenice were to blame. At last, all of his children bar Titus have been lost to spattergroit, tuberculosis, some poisonous frogs, a Knight Bus accident, and so on. Albion is last of his brothers to go, in 1885, in the explosion that also decimates the forge... and this really sends Algie over the edge, once and for all. The pity is, Titus’ father has spent so many of his days (months, years) muttering over when his foretold doom will come that when he drowns in the River Avon on Christmas Eve, ‘85, it’s almost an anticlimax.

And now Titus is alone, and probably doomed as well. He’d been left largely to his own devices even when his father was living, so being an orphan and alone is not entirely as daunting as it sounds, at least. The only relative he now has any kind of relationship with is his Uncle Bum, his mother’s brother who is an eccentric old fellow, and more willing to overlook the past than Titus’ grandparents, but Uncle Bum, though kindly, is... both broke and a little senile, which leaves Titus resolved to fashion a life and living entirely for himself. And an adventurous one, he hopes. Without official OWLs, some things are out of reach, so he had been taking odd jobs here and there, and then settles in as a groom and stablehand for a year or two, but hopes to find something more exciting than horses and fancy houses sooner rather than later.

As it is, opportunity comes in late 1887, when a dead man advertises a job. Titus, undaunted by death (Mr. Fudge’s or his eventual own, probably on a great expedition across the world!) leaps at the opportunity and dazzles Mr. Fudge, he’s sure, with his enthusiasm for magical creatures and his diligence in copying things down. The job turns out to be a little more... varied than the travelling he’s expected, but that’s okay! If you try hard enough, anything can be an adventure.