Madness

My final memory of my last day of my first life when I knew I was dying because of cancer - I can clearly remember feeling music beats running up from a grassy lawn as a popular musician performs. I knew I was dying soon and wanted my last experience not to be in a hospital bed. Dying at thirty when I knew I should have put more effort into just living instead always working. I felt the beats as the notes run up my tingling toes, as the speakers are so loud; I cannot hear what my friend says. The sky is dark, and the stars are bright. The artist I hear is using the entire stage ahead of me to grab the crowd’s attention. I am feeling high as if I am having an out of body experience moment with the crowd jumping around me. I can still feel the moment as I was jumping with my fellow listeners that I had a realization as the crowd goes wild; that these moments are what life should be like.

My first memory of my first day of my second life is of a beautiful face of a women who is smiling and panting as she looks upon me. I can see her almost white, blonde hair sweated down to her forehead and of her tired light blue eyes gazing at me with the most love. I can remember finding the women wonderfully lovely and thought that she looked almost like an elf from Tolkien. I looked over and saw an almost crazed looking, not as mad looking as he will look when his wife dies, young man who has the blondest of hair watching me. Both the man and women look almost related with their similar colorings and bone structure. Seeing a sign saying St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries from behind his head made me both excited and confused; making me think about the Potter books I never had a chance to read. The man looks over to my new mother and says in an almost lyrical British accent, “Delphi she’s stunning. I wonder if she will have her father’s eyes.” I do not get to hear more but I can see her smile at the man just before I close my eyes.

Awareness came when they were already dead. Who? My mother and father in this new life. Delphi Calliope Lovegood was researching a divination method and Regulus Arcturus Black was about to start as a runes apprentice when they met. They were out of Hogwarts for only six months when they started to see each other in secret after having met at a famous potion’s convention in Paris. I was told that one thing both my parents could totally agree on was their absolute love of love potions. My parents got married in front of a thousand-year-old white oak tree, soaked in magic located on the ancestral Lovegood land, which was home to a family of ravens, the animal on the black family crest, on the day they found out they were pregnant. Each had a brother on their side as witness. The ceremony was in the olde way with a handfasting and blood sacrifice from both of my parents to magic. One brother, a Lovegood who could not be happier for his sister but worries about her choice in partner with the war going on. Another brother, a Black, called Sirius after the dog star had not spoken to his brother in years, as they were initially on opposite sides of the war. Regulus joining the death eaters for his parents’ approval has alienated one brother and worried the other. If only Regulus had known that joining at all was going to get him killed even before his baby was born. Dying by drowning was what was later was told to me by Kreature, my fathers beloved house elf through sniffles. My beautiful mother on the other hand was not as careful as she should have been as she was deep in grief, one day after visiting her brother’s house, asking him to babysit me and catching the attention of a rogue, newly turned werewolf. I never did end up leaving that house. Kreature showed up at the grey, giant, chess rock shaped house called catchpole a week after she died and never left. By the time I was two in this new life of mine I was an orphan.

Once I gained awareness and more intelligent thoughts for the first time in this second life of mine, I learned my new name, Cassiopeia Aurora Black. The vain queen constellation is what I had been named after in this life and I did not know how to feel about it. What if I become vain? My mother in this new life was great at divination and it worried me that my name was an unconscious prophesy. Through shock I remembered stories of reincarnation from my past life, clueing myself in to my new situation. I was and still am in this new life a supporter of those second chance books that showed characters develop into whole new people in their second chances of life and living from another’s point of view. People’s perspective almost always changes, creating new sides of these already complex characters.

The feeling of two family magics from two old pureblood families flowing to my new body and connecting with my individual magic in my heart almost felt like electric shock. It caught my curiosity and it seem almost alive with the impressions and feelings I got from it once it realized I had awoken from my early childhood daze. I also felt this new sense of knowing in my mind and it gave me a more vivid sight. A sight that I shared in a different way with my new cousin Luna who was a born a year after me from my uncle on my new mother’s side Xenophilius and my uncles school sweetheart Pandora Lovegood nee Malfoy. Both Luna and I got the classic gifts passed down from the Lovegood family with both of us having a talent in divination with Luna gaining the sight from deity Fate who was said to have birthed the first Lovegood family, who began the line thousands of years ago with one of lady magics children. I got the more classic sight through objects such as tea leaves and nephelomancy. The darker magic of the Black family and the Malfoy’s talent of mind magic transformed our non-active magic sight with me seeing the realm of the magical dead while Luna could see the whimsical creatures and people of the Fae folk.

I found myself about five years old with steel grey eyes a classic Black family trait and the almost silver, blond hair from my mother. My long new hair was thick and often getting in my way, so I have had the pleasure of being Kreatures test subject as he took his role of being the caretaker to a pureblood child seriously. I often had complex braid hairstyles that really were only realistic because of the gift of magic. I looked like a Norwegian beauty’s child with the extra height and strong bone structure peeking out from beneath the baby fat on my checks. Being born like this, I was almost too skinny not from malnourishment but from my high metabolism.

In this new life, I realized there had always been white see through people around me from my great-great great grandfather Phineas Nigellus Black who was a headmaster at Hogwarts when he was alive to an old black family house elf pixie who was almost always wanting me to pass messages to Kreature. These dead were not ghosts but souls that were waiting for rebirth and had volunteered to stay in the realm of the dead to look after their descendants. The dead were both my parents and my teachers in this life. My uncle Xenophilius had always been a bit mad with his goofy love of magical creatures and his newspaper the Quibbler. I even started an anonymous column in his newspaper called Stories of the Dead, where I gave my uncle original messages from different people who had passed on. Witches and wizards loved it and started to buy the paper regularly. My uncle and aunt knew about my gift as well as the reincarnation as they both looked after me and noticed, but made sure to emphasize, from the time I was very young, to keep my unique situation secret.

Growing up in the Lovegood house was always hectic from Kreature the crazy house elf, the rich blood purist Malfoys and Blacks sometimes just dropping in, and the Lovegood’s own crazy brand of madness. The Blacks were the type of family members who you love, but do not like. The Black family charter did not allow for me to be the heir of the noble and ancient house of Black. Sirius, my dads brother, was still heir even while in prison as the family magic has not disowned him yet. I was unimportant for the most part for the black family as Walburga, my grandmother, stuck to her house at Grimmauld place in London in her own madness and Orion, my grandfather, was indifferent to his dead youngest son’s daughter. The only family member who visited and treated me like family was my great-grandfather Arcturus. Arcturus was over hundred and twenty years old, magic users live longer, and he loved me. He was always telling me about his late wife Melanie Black nee Macmillan who was a Hufflepuff and bore him a daughter Lucretia and my Grandpa Orion. He was the only other adult who knew of my gift and often had tea parties with his wife (who had unfortunately passed) and me. My great-grandfather had a gift for story telling (as he often did) about the dead members of his house or about his time serving on the Wizengamot, wizarding Britian’s high court, which taught me a lot about his experience being a wizard. He was one of the best new parts of my new life and made me feel blessed.

I loved this new life for all the magical experiences that normal magical users take for granted. From holidays like Samhain to the Spring Equinox which had actual magic rituals connected to them to the everyday activities like catching dancing sprites in the forest behind my uncle’s house. I concluded early into this second life to love, live, and breathe magic. I never wanted to be like the other members of my new community who never thanked magic for the gift she had given.