Meeting the Marauders (Sirius Black)

INTRODUCTION: Origins (and early life)

Camellia Sallow was a witch born to a pure-blood family in the English county of Cambridgeshire.

During her years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where she received her magical education, she was a good student, if a bit different from the others. She found interest in the unexplored aspects of sorcery, which is why she did not show such a big attentiveness to most subjects taught at school. She loved the magic hidden in nature and was outstanding at Herbology.

She met Bosco Bru at the end of her school years. He was a Spanish young wizard of her age who had left his country for the first time to visit the United Kingdom on a trip.

They had the same interests and got along easily, which is why they fell in love quickly, overcoming the language barrier. They moved together to Spain, where they found the perfect place for their passion and diversion, as the Mediterranean woods and mountains had substantial magical flora and fauna. They settled at the North of the Iberian peninsula, surrounded by mountains and relatively close to a series of Wizarding towns.

They worked as a kind of freelance herbologists. They researched the magical properties of plants and published studies and books. Their work was successful, not solely in the peninsula, and earned them a comfortable living. Some of the books they made were used at the Académie de Magie de Beauxbâtons. Sometimes they had interviews from wizard journalists of the countries nearby, so they were quite known amongst nature lovers and people dedicated to Herbology.

However, they always liked to live close to mysterious places, far from the muggle cities or the places of higher wizard concentration.

They had a daughter when they were young and named her Elizabeth, though Bosco would usually call her Elisa.

She lived with them during all of her childhood and learned about their passion. They gave her homeschooled education, the same Bosco had received, as it was common in many of the Western and Southern European countries. She also spent a lot of time with her father's family — wizards and witches who were kind and easy-going, if a bit too boisterous and fervent — either when they visited them or when they hosted them at their own home.

Elizabeth got different personality traits from each of her parents, but she received the bravery and the talent in magic from both. Thanks to them, she acquired a lot of knowledge on the magical properties of plants and the power of nature, although she did not pick up such a taste for Herbology as they did.

In Elizabeth's youngest years, since she lived in such an uncommonly unprotected place, her parents shielded her a lot from any possible danger: she was put restrictions, like staying most of the time at their home and not being allowed to explore out alone in the forest.

Since she was dauntless and had (not unlike her father) a bit of a knack for breaking the rules, she decided to ignore the restrictions for the first time when she was six. She went out at nighttime, when she was supposed to be sleeping, careful not to be noticed.

The adventure ended ten minutes later, when her parents, who were going out to pick wild raspberries, heard her screaming nearby. She had not gone too far but she had encountered a forest animal, an inoffensive roe deer. The following screams, the parents found when they arrived out of breath, were of delight, as Elizabeth showed one of her first displays of magic in the face of danger, and a powerful one at that. The poor deer was floating in mid-air, a little bit over Elizabeth's own head and a couple of meters in front of her. Bosco quickly reacted taking out his wand to stop the animal from falling heavily on the ground.

After this, the restrictions on Elizabeth were firmer and her parents supervised her more for some time, but although Camellia had wanted to give a symbolical punishment to her daughter, it didn't have much effect as Bosco was greatly pleased with her demonstration of talented pre-wand magic, and he did not waste an opportunity to make it known to her and give her some award — like an allowance for a later bedtime or for more raspberry cake for dessert. Eventually, they changed the strategy and started to take her out with them in their quests so that she learned more, and could have fun in the forest doing whatever she wanted, safely.