Chapter Text
When she was young, Katarina Vogel had two mothers.
This, she knows. Even though they didn’t talk about it anymore, even though there were no pictures or letters or visits, the knowledge haunts her in the periphery of her mind like a ghost with dark hair and green eyes.
She remembers, when she was little, when it was not just Mama, but Mum, too. When Mama would tuck her in at night as Mum told her fantastical stories about dragons and brooms and creations, about the intersection between something called “science” and the magic that made up their daily lives. And then Mama would smile, laughing about “work” and “research” and “scientists” as Mum launched into mock-protests. And then Kat would laugh, too, because her mothers were happy and so was she.
They weren’t always, though. She also remembers hushed arguments, the glint of rage in Mama’s ice-blue eyes. She remembers Mum’s passionate rants about “power” and “progress” and “revolution”, and Mama’s furious response of “violence” and “terrorism” and “keep your politics away from my daughter!”
And Katarina cannot help but recall the day she left with Mama and never came back, and then all anyone ever spoke was German. Even once they came to New York, the English words were wrong, too hard and flat in her mouth; nothing like the lilting voice of the ghost in her memories.
But of course, the years fade and so do her memories; soon, she doesn’t remember at all. She doesn’t remember that her last name wasn’t always Vogel, nor that her heritage had ever been anything but German-American. She doesn’t remember that she once had another mother who shared her dark curls and heart-shaped face.
No, Katarina Vogel grows up with a single mother named Therese Vogel, an assistant professor of Ancient Runes at the Salem Institute. Her only family are her mother’s German relatives, who are rarely spoken of (she doesn’t know why Mama’s smile always stiffens whenever they are mentioned). When her classmates ask her if she has a father, she says no, because she has never needed one, why would she?
When Katarina is fifteen, five years into her time as a Horned Serpent of Ilvermony, she thinks she must have another parent.
She knows enough to be sure that even with magic to allow virtually any individuals to combine their genetics, the other half of her DNA must have come from somewhere.
Therese Vogel isn’t married, nor, to Katarina’s knowledge, has she ever been. When asked, her mother has always been close-lipped, refusing to say a single detail. But Kat is nothing if not curious, so she searches her mother’s life.
No stone is unturned. She finds old photographs of her mother’s youth, pale blonde hair and sharp blue eyes just as beautiful then as now. She unearths dusty family portraits of an old man standing next to a younger woman who looks almost exactly - but not quite - like her mother, and in the middle is a girl who couldn’t be anyone but a young Therese Vogel. Expensive, traditional robes drape off their shoulders like centuries of wealth; they are undoubtedly the scions of a powerful European legacy. They are absolutely nothing like everything she knows of her mother, and yet…
From her research, the old man is Anton Vogel, a prominent German politician in the days of Grindelwald and a former Supreme Mugwump. The second woman is his daughter, Mathilde Vogel, former Minister and current German representative to the ICW. (Not pictured, Katarina finds, are Anton’s long-dead wife, son, and son-in-law - the invisible ghosts in their midst.) But the third… Therese Vogel, her mother, and the respective granddaughter and daughter of the others in the portrait. Kat has never met either of her family members.
Despite these revelations, her mother’s early life in Germany is a dead end. After completing her first mastery in magical history, Therese went on to apprentice under Yvgenia Abernathy, a renowned Runes Mistress in the British Isles. Her mother would only leave the country five years later-
No, that couldn’t be right. Katarina had spent the first few years of her life in Germany, not England; yet during that time, her mother had apparently lived in London.
One day, late in the evening of her Christmas break, she asks her mother if she’s ever been to Britain.
“No,” Therese Vogel lies seamlessly. “Why would I have?”
“No reason,” Kat answers, her face just as flawless in its wide-eyed deception. Like mother, like daughter.
The next summer, when she sends a postcard letter describing her trip with a friend’s family to Spain, Katarina’s owl delivers its message from London instead. When it comes back from its trip to the States, it soon carries a request for tea with Yvgenia Abernathy, introducing the sender as an American journalist following the career of Therese Vogel. When she receives an affirmative response, Kat smiles and downs a dose of aging potions.
“Therese was one of my best apprentices. So talented, so bright! Why, I even introduced her to another of my former students - Jasmine Potter herself!” Yvgenia exclaims.
“Jasmine Potter?” Katarina lets out an unintentional gasp of surprise. “Really?”
“Of course, it was back when the Lady Potter was just an… ah, avant-garde researcher. I remember how well they got along, their projects were simply brilliant. They made a good team, it’s such a shame-“ Suddenly, Yvgenia cuts off as her eyes darted around the nearly empty café, honing in suspiciously on even the tiniest of shadows.
“What is such a shame?” Katarina asks, straightening eagerly.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” Yvgenia says quickly. It was clear that neither of the two believed her statement.
“What is a shame?” She repeats. “Tell me!”
Yvgenia’s hand shoots out to snap the self-writing quill that had been recording every word of their conversation. “This is off the record, are we clear? If I see one word of it, my life will not be the only one on the line.”
“Off the record,” Kat concedes. She didn’t even bother to muster a token protest, too intrigued by this mysterious secret.
“Therese was always a private person, but I knew her. I taught her for three years and kept in contact for years after. So I was also one of the few who knew of her relationship with Jasmine Potter. I was at the wedding, I attended their daughter’s christening. But one day, in the early years of the Ouroboros Group, Therese disappeared from Lady Potter’s side. She stopped responding to the owls of any of her British acquaintances, including myself. I’ve read several of her papers, but I haven’t heard anything of her since.” Yvgenia turns her dark eyes, suddenly cold, towards Katarina. “Don’t write that article. In fact, don’t look into anything to do with Therese Vogel at all, because sooner or later, someone will hear that you’re asking questions, and trust me - you might not know this as a foreigner, but catching Jasmine Potter’s attention can be quite… fatal.”
She isn’t sure if it was meant as a threat or a warning.
The Lady Potter. Katarina’s mother is her. The British Dark Lady with a notorious information network that spans continents, who would easily be able to find her ex-wife and daughter if she had cared to.
Kat doesn’t know what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t a mother known for the mysterious deaths and “disappearances” under her iron rule. And it definitely wasn’t a woman who could’ve contacted her at any time, who undoubtedly wanted nothing to do with her. She doesn’t even know which is worse.
She feels so… hollow. Perhaps it’s that she only now sees the way Therese sometimes looks at her - like a ghost, a reflection, someone else’s features overlaid over her own - and other times, when she feels angry or passionate or dares to fan the flames of her temper, instead of snuffing them out, she is stared at like she’s a ticking bomb, a single Reducto away from exploding everything around her into nuclear smithereens.
She stares at pictures in the newspaper, of coal-black waves carefully tamed and cheekbones that could cut glass, and smashes the mirror after a single glimpse in a furious rage.
At least she doesn’t have the eyes, those green green eyes that have been so often compared with the killing curse. No, her eyes are all her own, belonging to neither of her mothers in their mismatched glory - one a pale, whitish gray, and the other a sapphire so dark it looks nearly black at night.
But they’re the only parts of Katarina that belong to herself. Her deathly pale skin and its stubborn refusal to tan, unlike Jasmine, is all Therese, along with her slim nose and that one birthmark on her shoulder. And the rest, from her height to her hair to her bone structure… it could only belong to her.
She wants to tear herself apart, to get those pieces of those women out, because how could she be like the Dark Lady, famed for the atrocities she committed in her rise to power? How could she not be terrified of herself, interpreting every action as a sign of becoming a monster?
Kat knows she’s powerful, has known that since she was five years old performing wandless spells in her mother’s - no, Therese’s, she has two mothers now - attic. Magic has always come easier to her, every spell like a song only she could hear. She thought it made her special, but was it only a hallmark of a monster-in-the-making?
But the worst thing is that she never cared before this. She’s always found Therese’s lectures on ethics and morality trite, simple societal constructs drilled into citizens as a sort of cultural glue. Before, such things were always a matter of perspective. But now…
How could Therese keep this from her? She knows why, though. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Such a shame that she didn’t stay ignorant.
When she comes back, Katarina pretends she doesn’t know, of course. What else can she do? She goes on determined to forget, finishes school, graduates Ilvermony at the top of her class. And then… she has no idea what to do. She’s rarely thought of her future, not since she found out about her parentage.
It’s almost a relief when one day, fresh off a glaring session with the stack of Mastery pamphlets in her apartment, she is caught in the middle of an altercation with a group of aurors chasing their furious target, shoved into the path of an unknown curse.
At least now she’ll never have to make a decision.