*or occasionally on the weekend, when the editor forgets to post...
Participants drew some amazing characters and provided excellent backstories to match, but there could only be one winner, and The Quibbler was lucky enough to convince said winner, Adam Morris, to allow his character's backstory to be published. A transcription of his submission at the event follows:
(6 June 1306 – 6 June 1326)
Agatha was taken into an orphanage but an hour later, she inexplicably disappeared. It is thought that between 1306 and 1317, she was taken into at least three other orphanages, all of which she disappeared from without a trace within an hour. Her whereabouts outside of these events, which happened around the country, are unknown.
In 1317, Agatha turned up to Hogwarts and was sorted into Slytherin. She was described by the headmaster as “the smartest 11 year old in the history of England”. In her time at Hogwarts, she spent most of her time studying intensely, but she was also good friends with Wendelin the Weird – a witch who would later become famous for allowing herself to be caught by Muggles and ‘burned at the stake’ (while using a Flame-Freezing Charm) forty-seven times.
Agatha had a particular love for Alchemy, Transfiguration and Spellcasting, though she achieved full marks in exams for every subject, which she sat in third year. She invented six spells whilst at Hogwarts, all with incantations beginning with ‘D’:
- ‘Debrius’ – summons debris from the tip of the wand.
- ‘Defodio’ – gouges areas of earth or stone.
- ‘Depulso’ – banishes an object away from the caster.
- ‘Diffindo’ – severs the target object.
- ‘Dodus’ – summons a dodo from the tip of the wand.
- ‘Draconis ignis’ – allows the target to breathe fire resembling that of a Common Welsh Green dragon for two minutes.
Following her graduation from Hogwarts in 1319, Agatha is thought to have travelled around England taking revenge against Muggles involved in witch-burning, because between 1319 and 1325, sixteen such Muggles died of inexplicable causes. Their deaths were determined by Healers to have been caused by an unknown magic.
In 1325, Agatha travelled to an island in the North Sea which would later become Azkaban. In the 15th century, Ekrizdis would travel to this island and practice Dark Magic, luring Muggles to their deaths. In her time on the island, Agatha wrote a 667 page manuscript whose contents are unknown, as Ekrizdis burned it, declaring it to be “cursed magick too dangerous for even Dark Magick practitioners to learn of”.
Agatha is thought to have been the creator of dementors, which Bathilda Bagshot describes as: “Creatures more malevolent than any others in the magical world. The magic required to create them is thought to be more difficult and powerful than anything other than perhaps creating Horcruxes. Dementors feed on human happiness, and with direct contact can suck the soul out of a person. They are unlike any other known being, with no confirmed cases of Dementors dying or being born.”
Agatha’s gravestone remains in Azkaban today, reading “Here Lieth a Witch Moste Wicked”. The date of death is given as 6 June 1326, her twentieth birthday. It is unknown how or when the grave was created, as it was present when Ekrizdis arrived on the island, and there are thought to have been no inhabitants of the island between Agatha and Ekrizdis. Some historians have suggested that Agatha created the gravestone herself, committing suicide via poison out of the guilt that she felt for creating Dementors.
During her lifetime, Agatha popularised the pentagram as a symbol of magic, using it in the spellbooks she made for her six ‘D’ spells and perhaps in her 667 page manuscript. A pentagram appears on her gravestone.
Agatha is the only individual person to have a whole chapter dedicated to her in “Magick Moste Evile”. For unknown reasons, Agatha is depicted on the first page of the Voynich manuscript.
Appearance-wise, Agatha developed a hunchback from a young age. She had green piercing eyes and her voice is said to have been “a mixture of rasps and hisses”, both of which contributed to rumours that she was half-basilisk. Agatha was left-handed and never cut the fingernails on her pinkies, letting them reach two inches in length and then using magic to prevent them growing further, which she told her friend Wendelin was “a fashion choice”.