Camilla was born in 1865, the third child and second daughter of Cosmo and Ama Zabini. She is a chatty child with an utterly uneventful childhood (Bellona joins them in 1867).

1876 proves exciting; Lavinia is married, and an eleven-year-old Bellona decides her wedding will definitely outshine her sister's. She also goes to Hogwarts, where she is sorted into Slytherin. Camilla is socially astute and quite cheerful, and shines in her Charms and Art classes. She is joined in Slytherin by her sister in 1878, and takes Arithmancy and Divination as her electives.

1881 is "the year Milly would rather not speak of." An Italian cousin gains an interest in genealogy and outs her maternal great-grandmother as a muggle. The family is broken up, Camilla and Bellona's betrothals are broken-off, and many of Camilla's friends spend weeks or months not speaking to her. Camilla refrains from writing to her mother until the summer, at which point she starts sending regular updates on her week and acts as if she was never out of touch at all.

Unfortunately, 1881 is also the year that Camilla takes her OWLs. Stress over "the situation" lead Camilla to less-than-stellar performance on her exams, and she continues into her NEWTs with only Charms, Transfiguration, Arithmancy, and Divination - rather than the heavy course load she had intended. She also continues with Art classes, because - well, it's not as if she doesn't have the time, and she does love to paint.

1882 sees her father remarried. Camilla is largely furious about the whole thing, particularly when the former Miss Goyle becomes pregnant and gives birth in 1883. She dies in so doing, which is largely inconvenient for Camilla who now has to be "in mourning" for much of her first season. Her half-brother's death in 1884 does the same thing, although it is not as if the season was particularly exciting during the laughing plague.

Really, the mourning just postpones the great disappointment of Camilla's adult life: none of the men she wants want her, or their families don't. She becomes increasingly frustrated every season from 1885 onwards, and begins to throw increasingly elaborate parties in an attempt to 1) gain the attention of Any Man, 2) irritate her father, because while she loves him, a part of her blames him.

1889 sees her father announcing that he is to be married to a woman two years older than Camilla herself. Camilla is decidedly irritated through the wedding in early 1890, and is not, really, particularly good at faking being nice to her stepmother. This is fine, because Calliope is, also, kind of a bitch.