I was born on October 31st, 1926, in a small wizarding town in America. My mother, had been banished from England after supporting the Dark Lord Kemmler, who, while not as famous as later Dark Lords like Grindlewald or Voldemort, was quite feared in those days. He's best known for causing the muggles' World War One. All of it.
In any case, mother was not the most moral person, and rather than raising me herself left me in an orphanage and disappeared for several years, turning up again when I was three to leave my younger sister, Sarah, there as well. All of this I learned later, obviously, as that was the last time she was ever seen. My sister and I were both adopted shortly after her birth. It seems that she was being tracked by the American aurors, and when they found her trail leading to an orphanage they did a routine check for wizarding children, finding the two of us.
When it was found that we were the last heirs of a Noble and Most Ancient family from Britain, we were promptly returned to what the aurors considered our home country. We were raised by Milton and Alice, a muggleborn couple, who weren't told of our status. They treated us well, but they weren't rich. Milton worked for the Ministry as a clerk in the DMLE, and Alice managed a branch of Flourish and Blott's in Hogsmeade. Alice brought us to work every day, setting a ward over the door to keep us from exiting the store, and let us run free. My sister and I grew up around books and loved them well. I never had the same kind of accidental magic as my parents or my sister, or anyone else I knew of, though. I was always in control of it. I couldn't call it up at will, but when my magic manifested I could banish it easily enough.
My first memory was from when I was three, in November 1929. I remember being woken up by one of the workers at the orphanage in the middle of the night. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I later went back with a Pensieve, and it looked something like this.
"Jamie!" she said, brightly. "Your mom's here!"
My heart leapt with excitement, and I jumped out of the little cot where I slept into the assistants arms. "Yay!"
She carried me downstairs to the little room just off the main hallway where people adopting children always waited. The assistant was about to turn when a tall, aristocratic-featured woman with long black hair, all the way down her back, stepped out. Her eyes turned to meet mine for a bare moment, bright purple matching with bright purple. Through the door I could see the matron of the orphanage holding a little bundle of cloth.
It turned out that she had been my mother, heavily pregnant, and had come to dump the baby here, just as she had done with me. I was apologetically put back into bed, and for the next few weeks, I was kept with my sister Sarah, who as I recall was almost unbearable cute.
It was only a few months after that that I was adopted by a government agent, specifically an agent of the American Embassy of Mages, an independent former offshoot of the Ministry of Magic. As I was only four at the time, I was allowed to roam around and amuse myself with nothing but monitoring charms to control me. I was unable to come within several feet of anything dangerous and I was unable to leave my floor, but I was otherwise free. I ended up toddling around during a meeting of the American Aurors.
"Would someone like to enlighten me as to why there are two small children living in the Embassy?" demanded the man sitting at the head of the table. He was blonde, with short-cropped hair and a strong jawline, and his eyes were pure white. After looking back in my pensieve, I discovered that he had been the magical president at the time, one Armand Beethoven, blind, but of great magical power.
"Well, we were tracking the Tau woman, Ariel Tau," one of the other wizards at the table said. I never saw her face, but I remember her magical aura quite clearly –it tasted rather like licorice. "She was one of Kemmler's lieutenants, sir."
"I recall," Beethoven said calmly. "Get on with it."
"She passed a muggle orphanage, and we did a routine check for magical children," licorice-woman said. "We found a young girl and an older brother, both dropped by an unidentified woman. She Obliviated the matron of her appearance –a high quality one, too, it only cut out what she looked like, nothing else.
"I see. Well, do what you can to identify them," the president commanded. "Clearly the mother wants nothing to do with them, so try and find the father – or, failing that, a couple to adopt them.
So, we were brought to the local Gringotts branch to see if we happened to be magical children, rather than muggleborns as they assumed. Of course, they discovered that we were. Sarah and I were the only living members of a British magical noble house, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Tau. We were quickly shipped back to Britain over international Floo and turned over to the British Ministry of Magic.
There I was handled much more directly. A young blonde woman named Cindy took care of me for the week or so it took to find a couple to adopt me and my sister. When it happened, they were a middle-aged muggleborn couple named Milton and Alice Arnell. They weren't told of our status as heirs to a Noble House, just that our parents didn't want us. They adopted us willingly – Alice was barren, but the two of them wanted children. Again, I found this out through use of a pensieve later.
I had a good childhood, as they went at that time. Because both our parents worked, we occasionally were left with baby-sitting neighbors – however, as the time they had to work increased, what with worries of increasing Dark activity, Alice began to take us in to work with her. She worked in a Flourish and Botts in Hogsmeade, and, as all the books were well protected against water and tearing, she simply placed a ward over the door so we couldn't leave and let us roam free. I learned to read with the help of an elderly gentleman who came in to drink his tea every day, and taught Sarah to do it after he stopped coming.
Accidental magic happened occasionally, of course. One notable incident occurred when I was nine, between me and another village kid named Bobby Dalton - a squib.
"Hey, Arnell!" Dalton called to me. "Wanna play Avalon?" Avalon is a game which has fallen out of favor in the last couple of decades, replaced by chess, but in 1939 it was quite popular.
"Sure!" I called back. "Come on in!"
We played, and I won the game. I won the second game, too. I kept winning each game, arranging my pieces in such a way that each time Dalton couldn't block mine. And his face became redder and redder until finally…
"You're cheating!" he shouted.
"Am not."
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"You are!" Dalton shouted angrily. "You're a cheater, just like Kemmler was!" Kemmler, the Dark Lord who had tried to take over Britain some years before my birth, had shrunken in stature to become a mere bogeyman – a dark creature who lived in the closet and would trick you into wandering far away by playing games with you.
"I'm not like Kemmler!" I shouted, beginning to grow truly angry.
"You are!" Dalton shouted. "Cheater, cheater, cheater!"
"Am NOT!"As I shouted, a wave of magical energy rolled out from me, knocking the pieces to the ground. I stepped forward angrily, magic swirling around me like a tornado. Dalton fell back in fright, turning and running out the door.
"Jamie!" Sarah, who had been sitting and watching quietly, asked. "Jamie, stop it!"
I turned to face her. "He deserved it," I whispered. "The little squib said I was like… like that…"
"You're not, just… stop it, Jamie, you're scaring me!"
I took a breath, and the tornado of magic dissipated, books dropping to the ground and dust settling. A moment later, Alice came into the back room where we were from the front.
"James!" she cried, seeing the damage I had wrecked. "Oh, James, you've got to keep hold of your temper!"
"Sorry, mum," I whispered, going to hug her. She wrapped her arms around me and murmured comforting words as I shivered. I had nearly hurt Dalton, and he didn't really deserve it – even if he had said I was like Kemmler. Unlike him, I had read histories, and knew what Kemmler had actually been – but of course Dalton didn't.
But I could easily remember the power that I had felt when Dalton turned and ran from me.
A/N: Welcome to my new story! Now, King of Serpents has higher priority, but I'm ahead on that, so I'm just doing this when I have time. It'll probably update maybe once a month, though. It'll have a summary of the part of James Tau's life it covers at the beginning, taken from the Biography section of my Files from the DoM fic If possible, it will be entirely canon-compliant, but we'll see where it goes.