A Portrait of The Black Heiress (Harry Potter)

Chapter II: Of Course, Human Sacrifice Is A Normal Hobby

By the time Aglaia was seven years old, she had found the branch of magic that fascinated her the most. She thought ritual magic was far more interesting than any spell that could simply be performed by a wand. Nowadays, spells had such limitations and even more so once the Light side of their Ministry had prohibited any spell that leaned towards a dark purpose. Rituals didn't work with the individual strength of a caster, it could get its power from anything. Artefacts, nature, any sentient being. It was a limitless source of power. It's one downside was the lack of available knowledge and variation of these rituals. They had not been performed in centuries, at least not on a large scale. Not since wands became so widely used and therefore the way in which these rituals ought to be performed had been lost to time.

The last people to still have extensive knowledge of these rituals were the Celts. They had been the original powerhouses of Magical Britain. Mastering Magic long before the Anglo-Saxons got their hands on wands. The Celts had been the Masters of the Old Rituals. The ones that hadn't required wands and drew their strength from nature. They would worship trees, pray to the stars, and tame monsters who have long since disappeared from British territory.

The Celts had kept their ancient rituals to themselves and no matter who came knocking, they never divulged them. The Celts managed to retain their identity under Roman rule, however, when they left and Britain was once again thrown into chaos, the Celts slowly disappeared. No one was sure when the last rituals were performed or where the all-powerful Celts had gone. Some believe that the Anglo-Saxons had engaged in genocide when they arrived in England in the fifth century. However, no proof was ever found of this. No mass graves, no sudden changes in culture or building structures. If anything, the Romans had made their arrival far more known. Had it, perhaps, been the Vikings who travelled through Britain from the 8th to the 11th century who had vanquished this ancient knowledge?

A book written by a woman named Boudicca, spoke of an even more horrific ending to the magical Celts. The one that came from within. According to Boudicca, who had once been the Beauxbatons Professor of Ancient Rituals, the Celts had engaged heavily in sacrificial rituals. And none of these sacrifices was more powerful than the one they called, "The Gift of the Wine-Blooded". 

Back then, the Celts had never come across the colour purple and were not introduced to it until the Romans arrived whose important officials would wear purple cloaks. To Romans, the colour purple signified wealth and power. Soon, it would mean the same to the Celts. The Celts lacked a name for the colour and referred to it mostly as being the colour of wine. Which is how they came up with the name for the Wine-Blooded. 

The original WIne-Blooded was a mysterious girl that had been born amongst the Celts. A girl with purple eyes. She grew to be extremely powerful and was both feared and respected by her contemporaries. The Celts worshipped her; the Romans tried not to get in her way. When the girl was in her twenties, she died under mysterious circumstances. Some say she was ripped apart by her own magic, others say the Romans killed her. The Celts buried her in their most sacred place, underneath a tree which was the basis for most of their rituals. They hoped that if they buried the girl there, she would become a Goddess that could watch over them even in the Afterlife. They continued to use the tree for their magical rituals as they had done for thousands of years, but the tree no longer worked. The Celts grew weak. At the same time, more mysterious children were born. This time not amongst the Celts, but in Roman camps. And there wasn't just one, there were a few dozen, all with those purple eyes of mystery and power. The Romans grew bold, believing they, too, had been blessed by their Gods with the immeasurably strength of the Celtic girl. 

The Roman children grew to be the pride and joy of Rome but none of them grew to be very old. No one is really sure what happened to them but they do know that on one faithful full moon in 178 AD, a single Roman child disappeared from her bed. However, none of the contemporaries seem to agree on what happened to the girl. She was never seen again. Every full moon after that had more purple-eyed children disappearing, all accompanied by great and destructive storms, floods and fires. It was as if the children were taken by the Gods themselves.