Post by Curse Kameren on Apr 2, 2011 1:10:19 GMT -5
Full Name: Kristopher Curse Kameren, DSc. Order of Merlin First Class, and Honorary Member of the Wizengamot
Nickname/Alias/Titles: Kris, Curse, Professor, etc.
Male/Female: Male
Age: 28
Birthdate: August 30th, 1993
Species: Half-Blood Wizard
Birthplace: Newark, New Jersey
Family:
Maxime 'Max' DeVille-Kameren- Son, wizard. 10.
Arianna Blackthorn- Fiancée, witch. 25.
Alecsander Kameren- Brother, wizard. 24.
Amelia DeVille- mother of Max, muggle. 30.
Violet Cummings- Adoptive Mother, secretly a squib, 77
Jasper Cummings-Adoptive Father, muggle, 79
Sophia Bortadella- Mother, muggle, deceased.
Cedric Kameren- Father, deceased.
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Height + Build: Kameren is built tall and lean, but extremely strong for his thin frame. He is 6'4", with little visible muscle.
Eyes: Emerald Green, with a stripe of gray through his left eye where he was once hit with a curse as an auror. He has a grey stripe in his vision also because of it.
Hair: Dark Brownish-Black, with patches of white around the bottom of his head. He has been keeping it cut short lately, but it still tends to jut out all over the place.
Physical Attributes/Description: Curse Kameren is a wreck of a man; at 27, he has more damage to his body than most men three times his age. He has scars riddled across his body, most prominently a jagged one from his right eyebrow, across his nose, and finally coming to an end near the left side of his mouth. This scar causes Curse to smile 'crookedly', with his right side of his mouth opening wider than his left. Most of his bodily damage is mainly cosmetic, and doesn't disable him in any way; though a scar over his left eye often makes his eyelid drop slightly.
The young Wizard's face is round and bony, with protruding cheek bones and a crooked nose. He often has stubble on his chin as he often neglects to shave. His face is weathered more than an average 27-year-old. It is the face of a young man who learned his lessons the hard way; a young man who had to mature much too quickly.
Clothing: Curse favors muggle clothing for it's superior comfort over Wizarding Robes. He tends to wear dark-washed jeans with an oxford shirt (usually with the sleeves pushed up) and a thin tie of varying colors. He has a roughly beaten pair of navy Chuck Taylor high tops that are literally the only pair of shoes he owns. He sometimes wears dark-rimmed glasses.
Curse wears a white-gold engagement ring on his finger, engraved on the inside of the ring with the runic phrase "Forever & Beyond".
Personal Items: Curse lives on Hogwarts grounds in an unused classroom with his 10-year-old son. He furnished the classroom with the furniture from his old apartment, and let their pets have free roam of the school.
Two additional members of the Kameren family are Curse's pets. Lucy, an emerald green boa constrictor, has been Curse's pet and good friend for over nine years. He communicates with her in parseltongue.
Curse's other pet, Tabby, is a small cat given to him by Alex. She is a moody and tempermental cat, who is most happy when she's perfectly in your way, but not being touched. She's taken a liking to Max, however.
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Good, Evil, or Neutral: Curse does his best to stay on the path of good.
Alignment: Chaotic Good.
Temperament/Mental Attributes:
Curse's most important attribute, the one that dictates all other traits of his personality, is his immense intelligence. He graduated with his bachelor's degree in Physical Science at the age of twelve. He is a brilliant mind, his grasp of logic and problem-solving easily the best of his generation. He can pick up quickly on concepts other would take years to study. His progress in magic is far beyond his years, and his vast experience makes him an expert in several fields, muggle and wizard. His I.Q. has been recorded in multiple tests across his life, and has averaged and sometimes exceeded 199. Since childhood, this gift has both helped and hurt Kristopher in his endeavors.
A side effect of his differing thought patterns is Curse's eccentric demeanor. His odd way of thinking leads him to go about normal tasks in more "creative" ways, in ways that are often considered socially unacceptable. His thoughts and his words are linearly connected; he does not filter himself to spare other's feelings. A social disconnect stops Curse from truly understanding many of the people around him, though he can usually read their appearance and body language enough to predict them. To Curse, most human beings are only subjects for observation.
Curse has a rather taboo and unique way of dealing with his 'condition', as he refers to his gift. Each day Curse takes a series of potions that effectively 'dumb him down', in order for him to be able to live the life of a normal human being. Without them, he views others as he views animals; passively. Without feeling, or interest. He simply cannot relate. He keeps this method a secret from everyone, even those closest to him; he knows the wouldn't understand.
In another person Curse respects kindness, intelligence, honor, patience, and wit. He is immediately impressed by people who can match wits with him, and even more so by someone who will challenge or outsmart him.
Over the last few years, Curse has developed a foolproof way of keeping his secrets without being too obvious; he's gone from a man of few words, one with obviously many secrets, to an incessant chatterbox. He speaks almost constantly, but often really about nothing. He figures if he bombards someone with useless words long enough, they'll be so tired of his voice they won't want to ask any more questions.
This intelligence mixed with eccentricity is often misinterpreted for arrogance. His sarcastic way of thinking and inability to regard other's feelings pushes his reputation even farther into a conceited mask. But in all honesty, Curse Kameren constantly doubts himself. He is a slave to trauma, a victim of the many terrible things he's seen. He misinterprets his genius for invincibility, and blames himself for not being quick or clever enough when he loses someone close to him. The guilt rules him, tears him apart from the inside out. Eventually, he realized, he would have to deal with it. Slowly he began to trust himself more, but he is still very much a work in progress.
One thing most positive about Curse's personality is his tremendous heart. He constantly wants the best for people, and does his best to make that happen no matter who it is. His love for his friends and family knows no bounds. He would go to the ends of the earth to do anything for them. Curse's trust and loyalty is difficult to earn, but if you do, you will have his loyalty for life.
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Former House: Ravenclaw
Job Position: Potions Master, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. He also does research for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in his spare time.
Employer: Hogwarts, and an under-the-table check from the Ministry; they don't want anyone knowing he's still working for them.
Career Goals: With the release of his Ministry files, Curse is just trying to keep himself and his son safe from his enemies for as long as he can. He also wants to keep his paranoid mental illness in check.
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Magical Skills: Animagus, Parseltongue, and a few other certain dark magics he refuses to perform or even acknowledge he has.
Patronus: Owl.
Wand: Curse lost his wand long ago, in a battle as a part of the Ministry. He now works entirely in wandless magic.
Goals/Aspirations: Curse is shaken by the realization of how little time he has left before the poison takes him, and is now trying to make plans and decisions to help those that will succeed him after his time has come.
Other Information: Beyond Parseltongue, Curse is bilingual in other ways. His large, Italian Immigrant family taught him from a young age to speak Italian around the house.
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History
“Oh for Merlin’s sake you need my history again?!”
Examiner: “Sorry Mr. Kameren, our file formats have changed, and your history needs updating. We run these histories differently now.”
“How so?”
Examiner: “That’s not important. We need to know your history again.”
“How isn’t it important? If I’m giving you my history I’d like to know what you’re doing with it—“
Examiner: “Mr. Kameren--”
“Fine. From the beginning?
I was born in Newark in ’93. My parents hardly knew each other; Cedric probably saw her like an animal, and she probably didn’t really care. Lovely couple. My mum was from a big Italian immigrant family, the youngest of eight. They ran a restaurant downtown, and we all lived in the apartments above the restaurant. I never fit well with the family; I was my mum’s problem, the black spot on their record that they just had to live with. I wasn’t abused, just ignored. They started paying attention a few years later, once my abilities started showing.”
Examiner: “Are these your magical abilities?”
“No, mental. My IQ has always rounded somewhere between the 170’s and the 200’s, since I was around toddler age. Things just came easily to me; I would soak up my surroundings like a sponge. I was reading Thoreau in first grade, when most kids were still trying to figure out the mystery of shoe-tying. I was best with numbers and sciences, but I had a mind for abstract concepts and literature as well. Naturally, a mind like mine attracted attention from the American government. I was signed up for special schooling for gifted children, with the government sending my family checks to fund my learning. I never made it to their schools, though; my family simply enrolled me a few grades ahead in public school, and kept the money for themselves. I somehow got lost in the system, and the government didn’t find out until quite a few years later. When they found out, my mum and I were already on a plane to the UK.”
Examiner: “Now, tell us about your schooling in the UK.”
“Well, I got a full ride to the first college I applied to, University of London. Apparently they don’t get many thesis papers form nine-year-olds. I went for Biological Science, with an emphasis on Physics. My mum and I moved into an apartment in East London; it was nice, and our neighbors were great. I attended college until I was eleven, when I got my Hogwarts letter. I thought someone was playing a trick on me, but then I started to understand. I had a mind for science my whole life, but every now and then something would just… happen. And it would be unexplainable, but I knew I had somehow done it. Hogwarts seemed to explain everything. I got a permit from Hogwarts to keep a laptop for my college classes, and graduated with my bachelor’s the same year I started at Hogwarts. It was around when I started at Hogwarts that I started going by my middle name, Curse. I was a different person in the wizarding world, and I wanted to reflect that. I needed a change from the life I had been trapped in in America.
Hogwarts was great, as I’m sure most students say. I was quiet, didn’t have many friends. I purposefully slowed myself down while I was there; I wanted to interact with people my age, for once. I started experimenting with potions, working on different techniques to lower myself mentally. I figured out the formula I use now in my second year; it’s a lot like being drunk, but without the side affects. It just sort of makes me, well… stupider, for lack of a better word. My ‘stupid’ is still brilliant by society’s standards, but now I was at least connected enough to understand what society’s standards were.
I ended up graduating early, though. In my fourth year. I had gotten a message from my neighbor, Violet Cummings. My mother had been found dead on the side of the road out near Stonehenge. No marks, no signs of a struggle. Just dead. I would figure out later that it was my biological father, Cedric Kameren, who did it. The Kameren estate is located in Stonehenge. After my mother died, I didn’t really know what to do. She was all I had. I took my OWLs and my NEWTs both that year, and passed both of them with perfect scores. Hogwarts allowed me to graduate early under the conditions.”
Examiner: “What did you do after Hogwarts?”
“I moved to Italy and studied ritual magics and other forms of magic delving into death and dark studies. It was there that I gained the power I have now; I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t. I can’t talk about what happened in Italy. I can’t, I’m sorry.”
Examiner: “Dr. Kameren, we need your entire history—“
“I said I can’t talk about it. If you want me to get up and leave, I will.”
Examiner: “Alright, Mr. Kameren. We’ll continue, then. What about after you got back from Italy?”
“After I got back from Italy is when I entered the Ministry as a Junior Auror. I was an obvious choice for them; I had experience, was brilliant, and by my exploits in Italy that had resonated over to the UK, I was fearless. I don’t know if they hired me because I was what they needed, or if they hired me because they needed me on their side. Either way, their best move was putting me with Kirk Caufield. What a bastard. I hated him from the moment I met him. He took good care of me, though; took me in, basically made me a part of his family. Called me ‘convict’ all the time. He was the father-figure I never had.
I also enrolled in college again, going back to Uni of London for my masters in advanced physics. It was there I met a girl: Lauren Fitzgerald. She was the first real girlfriend I had; before her, it was mostly just women I had ‘relations’ with. One of them would come back later, but we’re going in sequential order so I won’t stop on that. Lauren was the light of my life; she made me a better person. I had such guilt in me; I was scared all the time. Lauren made that better. I realize now it was young, stupid love. She was a quick fix, a way of diverting my attention from the bigger problems I had. It would never have worked if we had gotten engaged, like we thought we were going to.
At that same time, Caulfield and I were integrating ourselves undercover in a basilisk-hatching ring in the sewers of London. Someone ratted us out, though, and our cover got blown. Kirk made me apparate away, but he got killed in the crossfire. It was… I don’t know what to say. It was worse than losing my mother. Lauren was the only person I could turn to. Though I stayed in the auror department and I continued working, I retreated more and more into the muggle world with Lauren.
I didn’t know that at that time, I had been recognized and was being watched by the gang that was running the basilisk ring. One night, they killed Lauren on her walk home from work. I was there, I tried to fight them but they subdued me. She died in my arms.
After that, I shut down. Emotionally, at least. That was probably when this PTSD started. I was the most driven auror in the Department; my capture count was the fastest and strongest on record, behind only Alastor Moody and Harry Potter. I rose quickly in the department, rising to Senior Auror less than a year after I passed my final junior exam. As a Senior, you’re assigned Juniors to train and test so they can become aurors some day as well. I was given two Juniors: Emmi Douglas, who’s a smart and lovely girl who I’m sure is going to go very far in the Ministry, and Alex Kameren. My half-brother, who I had never heard of until just then. We have the same father. I learn a lot about the Kameren family over that year, and I grew close to my Juniors as I trained them. I learned Cedric Kameren killed my mother, but he was already serving a sentence for a different murder. While I was figuring out all these new things about myself, though, I failed to notice that I was being lead into a trap.”
Examiner: “What sort of trap?”
“I was framed for the murder of my Junior, Emmi. There had been a lot of aurors being poisoned that year. Two were killed. I managed to save myself, with Emmi’s help, or at least to buy myself some more time. Then, Emmi got poisoned. Apparently whoever did it had poisoned her while impersonating me. I managed to save her at the last minute, but to keep her from getting attacked a second time we faked her death and kept her in hiding. I was tried for the poisonings, as not only was I seemingly the one who poisoned Emmi, I was the only one who survived the poisonings of the aurors because I had prepared an antidote in time. I was basically being sent to Azkaban for being a good Potions-Master.
Azkaban brought me near death; I had fallen under the influence of the White Death Poison, the poison I had been attacked with. Without access to the antidote regularly, it can kill a man my size in about twelve days. Very painfully at that. And with the Dementors on top of that... No, nevermind. I don't want to talk about the dementors. I... I can't. Let us just say that that is a place where my grip on myself was severely loosened.
Through an extraordinary chain of events I was released from Azkaban, cleared of all charges, and made Head Auror on top of that. The last part was a terrible idea; I was an awful Head Auror. I couldn’t stand politics, and I no longer had the case-to-case lifestyle I had grown accustomed to in the emptiness of my home life. I was mentally and physically ill. I couldn’t handle the pressure of the job, and that’s where I started to crack. I had always had a problem with paranoia, but It got exponentially worse when I was Head Auror. I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing things. I locked myself down in the Ministry and my apartment. I didn’t even tell Alex or Emmi about my paranoia, but I’m sure they noticed it.
Even with all of my safety precautions, I was captured and taken from the offices of the Ministry. Mosrael, a witch who thought of herself as the new Voldemort, put a curse in my mind; it wasn’t control like an Imperious Curse, however. She was literally inside my head. Watching me at all hours of the day. I still had free will, but if I tried to escape her power or fight back, She would punish me with great physical pain. I was literally a prisoner of my own mind. Her attack gave me no incentive to keep myself sane; I succumbed entirely to my delusions, locking myself down in my apartment. No one could get through to me—“
Examiner: “Mr. Kameren? We seem to have missed something. Between your promotion to Head Auror and your capture?”
“I… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Examiner: “Mr. Kameren, please explain the gold ring around your finger.”
“Please, don’t ma…. Fine. I met a woman, just before I went to Azkaban. Her name was Arianna Blackthorn. We started dating just after I was cleared. We got engaged. After my delusions started getting worse, she left me. I don’t remember what happened, what I did. I only remember finding her ring on the kitchen counter. Does that cover it?”
Examiner: “We’ll discuss it again in therapy. Continue.”
“Thankyou. As I was saying, no one could get through to me, until one day. I was on suicide watch. My brother was looking after me, trying to keep me under control as I refused to get help. One day, a knock sounded on the door. Alex wasn’t home, so I answered it myself. It was an old flame of mine, Amelia DeVille. She said she had something to show me, so I invited her in. Then, she called down the hallway. She had a young boy with him, an eight-year-old named Max. All I really remember about our first meeting was his eyes. His round, green eyes. My eyes. I knew I had to get better. I worked it out with Amelia, and she would allow me to be a part of his life if I went to the hospital and got myself better. So, I did.
I spent a few months shy of a year here. While I was in the hospital, Amelia got engaged to a bloke named Peter Beauregard. Max chose to move in with me if I checked out properly. I passed all the tests and proved myself sane and mentally able to take care of my child, and moved back into the Muggle world with Max.”
Examiner: “What did you do after you left the hospital?”
“I started off by doing doctorate work at Oxford. More complex physics work, sort of mixing some magical concepts in it. ‘Abstract Physics’ I called it. My thesis was approved and I attended a lot of lectures and had a few of my own, and got my doctorate relatively quickly. I went off my potion during those few months, but I kept on my schizophrenia meds. The delusions had mostly vanished by that point.
At the end of my doctorate work, I got word from the Ministry that my files were being released to the public. A lot of my personal things were in those files, including my address and current employment. That meant I had to change things, because if I had stayed eventually one of my enemies would get me. I convinced Hogwarts to allow me as the Potions Master, and Max and I packed up and moved to Hogwarts. That’s what I’m doing now, teaching at Hogwarts. Its been going well.”
Examiner: “Anything else you’d like to add?”
“Not really. I’m mostly happy. Some days are better than others. I just want Max to grow up well. I don’t want him to have the problems I had growing up. I have a prognosis for my poison of about eight years, so I want to get my affairs in order for his sake.
I just wish I had more time.
Nickname/Alias/Titles: Kris, Curse, Professor, etc.
Male/Female: Male
Age: 28
Birthdate: August 30th, 1993
Species: Half-Blood Wizard
Birthplace: Newark, New Jersey
Family:
Maxime 'Max' DeVille-Kameren- Son, wizard. 10.
Arianna Blackthorn- Fiancée, witch. 25.
Alecsander Kameren- Brother, wizard. 24.
Amelia DeVille- mother of Max, muggle. 30.
Violet Cummings- Adoptive Mother, secretly a squib, 77
Jasper Cummings-Adoptive Father, muggle, 79
Sophia Bortadella- Mother, muggle, deceased.
Cedric Kameren- Father, deceased.
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Height + Build: Kameren is built tall and lean, but extremely strong for his thin frame. He is 6'4", with little visible muscle.
Eyes: Emerald Green, with a stripe of gray through his left eye where he was once hit with a curse as an auror. He has a grey stripe in his vision also because of it.
Hair: Dark Brownish-Black, with patches of white around the bottom of his head. He has been keeping it cut short lately, but it still tends to jut out all over the place.
Physical Attributes/Description: Curse Kameren is a wreck of a man; at 27, he has more damage to his body than most men three times his age. He has scars riddled across his body, most prominently a jagged one from his right eyebrow, across his nose, and finally coming to an end near the left side of his mouth. This scar causes Curse to smile 'crookedly', with his right side of his mouth opening wider than his left. Most of his bodily damage is mainly cosmetic, and doesn't disable him in any way; though a scar over his left eye often makes his eyelid drop slightly.
The young Wizard's face is round and bony, with protruding cheek bones and a crooked nose. He often has stubble on his chin as he often neglects to shave. His face is weathered more than an average 27-year-old. It is the face of a young man who learned his lessons the hard way; a young man who had to mature much too quickly.
Clothing: Curse favors muggle clothing for it's superior comfort over Wizarding Robes. He tends to wear dark-washed jeans with an oxford shirt (usually with the sleeves pushed up) and a thin tie of varying colors. He has a roughly beaten pair of navy Chuck Taylor high tops that are literally the only pair of shoes he owns. He sometimes wears dark-rimmed glasses.
Curse wears a white-gold engagement ring on his finger, engraved on the inside of the ring with the runic phrase "Forever & Beyond".
Personal Items: Curse lives on Hogwarts grounds in an unused classroom with his 10-year-old son. He furnished the classroom with the furniture from his old apartment, and let their pets have free roam of the school.
Two additional members of the Kameren family are Curse's pets. Lucy, an emerald green boa constrictor, has been Curse's pet and good friend for over nine years. He communicates with her in parseltongue.
Curse's other pet, Tabby, is a small cat given to him by Alex. She is a moody and tempermental cat, who is most happy when she's perfectly in your way, but not being touched. She's taken a liking to Max, however.
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Good, Evil, or Neutral: Curse does his best to stay on the path of good.
Alignment: Chaotic Good.
Temperament/Mental Attributes:
Curse's most important attribute, the one that dictates all other traits of his personality, is his immense intelligence. He graduated with his bachelor's degree in Physical Science at the age of twelve. He is a brilliant mind, his grasp of logic and problem-solving easily the best of his generation. He can pick up quickly on concepts other would take years to study. His progress in magic is far beyond his years, and his vast experience makes him an expert in several fields, muggle and wizard. His I.Q. has been recorded in multiple tests across his life, and has averaged and sometimes exceeded 199. Since childhood, this gift has both helped and hurt Kristopher in his endeavors.
A side effect of his differing thought patterns is Curse's eccentric demeanor. His odd way of thinking leads him to go about normal tasks in more "creative" ways, in ways that are often considered socially unacceptable. His thoughts and his words are linearly connected; he does not filter himself to spare other's feelings. A social disconnect stops Curse from truly understanding many of the people around him, though he can usually read their appearance and body language enough to predict them. To Curse, most human beings are only subjects for observation.
Curse has a rather taboo and unique way of dealing with his 'condition', as he refers to his gift. Each day Curse takes a series of potions that effectively 'dumb him down', in order for him to be able to live the life of a normal human being. Without them, he views others as he views animals; passively. Without feeling, or interest. He simply cannot relate. He keeps this method a secret from everyone, even those closest to him; he knows the wouldn't understand.
In another person Curse respects kindness, intelligence, honor, patience, and wit. He is immediately impressed by people who can match wits with him, and even more so by someone who will challenge or outsmart him.
Over the last few years, Curse has developed a foolproof way of keeping his secrets without being too obvious; he's gone from a man of few words, one with obviously many secrets, to an incessant chatterbox. He speaks almost constantly, but often really about nothing. He figures if he bombards someone with useless words long enough, they'll be so tired of his voice they won't want to ask any more questions.
This intelligence mixed with eccentricity is often misinterpreted for arrogance. His sarcastic way of thinking and inability to regard other's feelings pushes his reputation even farther into a conceited mask. But in all honesty, Curse Kameren constantly doubts himself. He is a slave to trauma, a victim of the many terrible things he's seen. He misinterprets his genius for invincibility, and blames himself for not being quick or clever enough when he loses someone close to him. The guilt rules him, tears him apart from the inside out. Eventually, he realized, he would have to deal with it. Slowly he began to trust himself more, but he is still very much a work in progress.
One thing most positive about Curse's personality is his tremendous heart. He constantly wants the best for people, and does his best to make that happen no matter who it is. His love for his friends and family knows no bounds. He would go to the ends of the earth to do anything for them. Curse's trust and loyalty is difficult to earn, but if you do, you will have his loyalty for life.
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Former House: Ravenclaw
Job Position: Potions Master, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. He also does research for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in his spare time.
Employer: Hogwarts, and an under-the-table check from the Ministry; they don't want anyone knowing he's still working for them.
Career Goals: With the release of his Ministry files, Curse is just trying to keep himself and his son safe from his enemies for as long as he can. He also wants to keep his paranoid mental illness in check.
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Magical Skills: Animagus, Parseltongue, and a few other certain dark magics he refuses to perform or even acknowledge he has.
Patronus: Owl.
Wand: Curse lost his wand long ago, in a battle as a part of the Ministry. He now works entirely in wandless magic.
Goals/Aspirations: Curse is shaken by the realization of how little time he has left before the poison takes him, and is now trying to make plans and decisions to help those that will succeed him after his time has come.
Other Information: Beyond Parseltongue, Curse is bilingual in other ways. His large, Italian Immigrant family taught him from a young age to speak Italian around the house.
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History
“Oh for Merlin’s sake you need my history again?!”
Examiner: “Sorry Mr. Kameren, our file formats have changed, and your history needs updating. We run these histories differently now.”
“How so?”
Examiner: “That’s not important. We need to know your history again.”
“How isn’t it important? If I’m giving you my history I’d like to know what you’re doing with it—“
Examiner: “Mr. Kameren--”
“Fine. From the beginning?
I was born in Newark in ’93. My parents hardly knew each other; Cedric probably saw her like an animal, and she probably didn’t really care. Lovely couple. My mum was from a big Italian immigrant family, the youngest of eight. They ran a restaurant downtown, and we all lived in the apartments above the restaurant. I never fit well with the family; I was my mum’s problem, the black spot on their record that they just had to live with. I wasn’t abused, just ignored. They started paying attention a few years later, once my abilities started showing.”
Examiner: “Are these your magical abilities?”
“No, mental. My IQ has always rounded somewhere between the 170’s and the 200’s, since I was around toddler age. Things just came easily to me; I would soak up my surroundings like a sponge. I was reading Thoreau in first grade, when most kids were still trying to figure out the mystery of shoe-tying. I was best with numbers and sciences, but I had a mind for abstract concepts and literature as well. Naturally, a mind like mine attracted attention from the American government. I was signed up for special schooling for gifted children, with the government sending my family checks to fund my learning. I never made it to their schools, though; my family simply enrolled me a few grades ahead in public school, and kept the money for themselves. I somehow got lost in the system, and the government didn’t find out until quite a few years later. When they found out, my mum and I were already on a plane to the UK.”
Examiner: “Now, tell us about your schooling in the UK.”
“Well, I got a full ride to the first college I applied to, University of London. Apparently they don’t get many thesis papers form nine-year-olds. I went for Biological Science, with an emphasis on Physics. My mum and I moved into an apartment in East London; it was nice, and our neighbors were great. I attended college until I was eleven, when I got my Hogwarts letter. I thought someone was playing a trick on me, but then I started to understand. I had a mind for science my whole life, but every now and then something would just… happen. And it would be unexplainable, but I knew I had somehow done it. Hogwarts seemed to explain everything. I got a permit from Hogwarts to keep a laptop for my college classes, and graduated with my bachelor’s the same year I started at Hogwarts. It was around when I started at Hogwarts that I started going by my middle name, Curse. I was a different person in the wizarding world, and I wanted to reflect that. I needed a change from the life I had been trapped in in America.
Hogwarts was great, as I’m sure most students say. I was quiet, didn’t have many friends. I purposefully slowed myself down while I was there; I wanted to interact with people my age, for once. I started experimenting with potions, working on different techniques to lower myself mentally. I figured out the formula I use now in my second year; it’s a lot like being drunk, but without the side affects. It just sort of makes me, well… stupider, for lack of a better word. My ‘stupid’ is still brilliant by society’s standards, but now I was at least connected enough to understand what society’s standards were.
I ended up graduating early, though. In my fourth year. I had gotten a message from my neighbor, Violet Cummings. My mother had been found dead on the side of the road out near Stonehenge. No marks, no signs of a struggle. Just dead. I would figure out later that it was my biological father, Cedric Kameren, who did it. The Kameren estate is located in Stonehenge. After my mother died, I didn’t really know what to do. She was all I had. I took my OWLs and my NEWTs both that year, and passed both of them with perfect scores. Hogwarts allowed me to graduate early under the conditions.”
Examiner: “What did you do after Hogwarts?”
“I moved to Italy and studied ritual magics and other forms of magic delving into death and dark studies. It was there that I gained the power I have now; I wish I could take it all back, but I can’t. I can’t talk about what happened in Italy. I can’t, I’m sorry.”
Examiner: “Dr. Kameren, we need your entire history—“
“I said I can’t talk about it. If you want me to get up and leave, I will.”
Examiner: “Alright, Mr. Kameren. We’ll continue, then. What about after you got back from Italy?”
“After I got back from Italy is when I entered the Ministry as a Junior Auror. I was an obvious choice for them; I had experience, was brilliant, and by my exploits in Italy that had resonated over to the UK, I was fearless. I don’t know if they hired me because I was what they needed, or if they hired me because they needed me on their side. Either way, their best move was putting me with Kirk Caufield. What a bastard. I hated him from the moment I met him. He took good care of me, though; took me in, basically made me a part of his family. Called me ‘convict’ all the time. He was the father-figure I never had.
I also enrolled in college again, going back to Uni of London for my masters in advanced physics. It was there I met a girl: Lauren Fitzgerald. She was the first real girlfriend I had; before her, it was mostly just women I had ‘relations’ with. One of them would come back later, but we’re going in sequential order so I won’t stop on that. Lauren was the light of my life; she made me a better person. I had such guilt in me; I was scared all the time. Lauren made that better. I realize now it was young, stupid love. She was a quick fix, a way of diverting my attention from the bigger problems I had. It would never have worked if we had gotten engaged, like we thought we were going to.
At that same time, Caulfield and I were integrating ourselves undercover in a basilisk-hatching ring in the sewers of London. Someone ratted us out, though, and our cover got blown. Kirk made me apparate away, but he got killed in the crossfire. It was… I don’t know what to say. It was worse than losing my mother. Lauren was the only person I could turn to. Though I stayed in the auror department and I continued working, I retreated more and more into the muggle world with Lauren.
I didn’t know that at that time, I had been recognized and was being watched by the gang that was running the basilisk ring. One night, they killed Lauren on her walk home from work. I was there, I tried to fight them but they subdued me. She died in my arms.
After that, I shut down. Emotionally, at least. That was probably when this PTSD started. I was the most driven auror in the Department; my capture count was the fastest and strongest on record, behind only Alastor Moody and Harry Potter. I rose quickly in the department, rising to Senior Auror less than a year after I passed my final junior exam. As a Senior, you’re assigned Juniors to train and test so they can become aurors some day as well. I was given two Juniors: Emmi Douglas, who’s a smart and lovely girl who I’m sure is going to go very far in the Ministry, and Alex Kameren. My half-brother, who I had never heard of until just then. We have the same father. I learn a lot about the Kameren family over that year, and I grew close to my Juniors as I trained them. I learned Cedric Kameren killed my mother, but he was already serving a sentence for a different murder. While I was figuring out all these new things about myself, though, I failed to notice that I was being lead into a trap.”
Examiner: “What sort of trap?”
“I was framed for the murder of my Junior, Emmi. There had been a lot of aurors being poisoned that year. Two were killed. I managed to save myself, with Emmi’s help, or at least to buy myself some more time. Then, Emmi got poisoned. Apparently whoever did it had poisoned her while impersonating me. I managed to save her at the last minute, but to keep her from getting attacked a second time we faked her death and kept her in hiding. I was tried for the poisonings, as not only was I seemingly the one who poisoned Emmi, I was the only one who survived the poisonings of the aurors because I had prepared an antidote in time. I was basically being sent to Azkaban for being a good Potions-Master.
Azkaban brought me near death; I had fallen under the influence of the White Death Poison, the poison I had been attacked with. Without access to the antidote regularly, it can kill a man my size in about twelve days. Very painfully at that. And with the Dementors on top of that... No, nevermind. I don't want to talk about the dementors. I... I can't. Let us just say that that is a place where my grip on myself was severely loosened.
Through an extraordinary chain of events I was released from Azkaban, cleared of all charges, and made Head Auror on top of that. The last part was a terrible idea; I was an awful Head Auror. I couldn’t stand politics, and I no longer had the case-to-case lifestyle I had grown accustomed to in the emptiness of my home life. I was mentally and physically ill. I couldn’t handle the pressure of the job, and that’s where I started to crack. I had always had a problem with paranoia, but It got exponentially worse when I was Head Auror. I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing things. I locked myself down in the Ministry and my apartment. I didn’t even tell Alex or Emmi about my paranoia, but I’m sure they noticed it.
Even with all of my safety precautions, I was captured and taken from the offices of the Ministry. Mosrael, a witch who thought of herself as the new Voldemort, put a curse in my mind; it wasn’t control like an Imperious Curse, however. She was literally inside my head. Watching me at all hours of the day. I still had free will, but if I tried to escape her power or fight back, She would punish me with great physical pain. I was literally a prisoner of my own mind. Her attack gave me no incentive to keep myself sane; I succumbed entirely to my delusions, locking myself down in my apartment. No one could get through to me—“
Examiner: “Mr. Kameren? We seem to have missed something. Between your promotion to Head Auror and your capture?”
“I… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Examiner: “Mr. Kameren, please explain the gold ring around your finger.”
“Please, don’t ma…. Fine. I met a woman, just before I went to Azkaban. Her name was Arianna Blackthorn. We started dating just after I was cleared. We got engaged. After my delusions started getting worse, she left me. I don’t remember what happened, what I did. I only remember finding her ring on the kitchen counter. Does that cover it?”
Examiner: “We’ll discuss it again in therapy. Continue.”
“Thankyou. As I was saying, no one could get through to me, until one day. I was on suicide watch. My brother was looking after me, trying to keep me under control as I refused to get help. One day, a knock sounded on the door. Alex wasn’t home, so I answered it myself. It was an old flame of mine, Amelia DeVille. She said she had something to show me, so I invited her in. Then, she called down the hallway. She had a young boy with him, an eight-year-old named Max. All I really remember about our first meeting was his eyes. His round, green eyes. My eyes. I knew I had to get better. I worked it out with Amelia, and she would allow me to be a part of his life if I went to the hospital and got myself better. So, I did.
I spent a few months shy of a year here. While I was in the hospital, Amelia got engaged to a bloke named Peter Beauregard. Max chose to move in with me if I checked out properly. I passed all the tests and proved myself sane and mentally able to take care of my child, and moved back into the Muggle world with Max.”
Examiner: “What did you do after you left the hospital?”
“I started off by doing doctorate work at Oxford. More complex physics work, sort of mixing some magical concepts in it. ‘Abstract Physics’ I called it. My thesis was approved and I attended a lot of lectures and had a few of my own, and got my doctorate relatively quickly. I went off my potion during those few months, but I kept on my schizophrenia meds. The delusions had mostly vanished by that point.
At the end of my doctorate work, I got word from the Ministry that my files were being released to the public. A lot of my personal things were in those files, including my address and current employment. That meant I had to change things, because if I had stayed eventually one of my enemies would get me. I convinced Hogwarts to allow me as the Potions Master, and Max and I packed up and moved to Hogwarts. That’s what I’m doing now, teaching at Hogwarts. Its been going well.”
Examiner: “Anything else you’d like to add?”
“Not really. I’m mostly happy. Some days are better than others. I just want Max to grow up well. I don’t want him to have the problems I had growing up. I have a prognosis for my poison of about eight years, so I want to get my affairs in order for his sake.
I just wish I had more time.