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When her father was 18 years of age, he caused an incident in their small town that no muggle ever put down to magic and that he never got arrested for. The incident though very public was put down to a miracle. At an outside grotto, two girls and their mother were praying intently when Declan O’Connor passed by. Having a bit of a mischievous character, he took out his wand and cast a mobilising charm on the statue. The girls and mother never saw the wand or paid any heed to Declan in the background, they were too much in shock by the fact that the statue began to move. Declan went home in hysterics of laughter thinking no more of it. By the following day it was all over Cork and county, the parish priest at the time could not disclaim that it happened, though when the initial spell finally wore off and the statue stopped moving – the novelty eventually (months later) died down. But the small village did for a time become the center for every religious fanatic as a result. The ministry hearing about the incident did go to investigate, knowing that a wizarding family lived in that area. Declan owned up and as a result got off with a warning. Actually the field workers, were just delighted not to have to go through so much red tape and reports, or the bother of calling out the muggle excuse committee or obliviators. Muggles had done the job for them quite nicely.
Declan never did anything like that again however but continued to help his father with his waning farm. When the farm passed to him a few years later, he was already engaged to Maeve O’Rourke from Kinsale, a local tourist hot spot in West Cork. He had big plans for the farm his father had never made work for him, but as Maeve was a muggle ( and not simply muggle born ) he felt he could not divulge magic to her and so with the help of a few friends built a small house on the outskirts of Kinsale for them. When Maeve fell pregnant in 1997, she had already begun suspecting that something was not altogether kosher with her husband. She thought he was working with the IRA or was running some illegal scams because he spent so much time at the old broken down farm that never seemed to improve. Of course the farm appeared this way to every muggle that drew near to it and they all felt a great desire to just keep moving onwards as every muggle does with wizarding buildings.
Declan had taken the farm and over several years transformed it into a Magi-Zoo. With grants from the ministry coming in and a healthy wizarding tourist trade passing through, he knew he had finally found his niche in life. Maeve however went from finding fault with her husband, to finding fault with their new baby.
It all came to a head when the tiny little Cara giggling and gurgling in her cot one evening made the mobile over her bed move. Maeve had been in the other room scouring it for batteries to operate the mobile baby cot unit at the time. She tentatively retraced her steps and looked at the little toys spinning around, music playing as well. Speechless because the motor for it was in her hands, she reached out her hand and stopped it. Cara began to cry and no sooner had Maeve moved her hand again, than the mobile began to work.
With Declan busy down on the ‘farm’ she called Fr. Dermot Murphy, who eventually dropped by and was astounded but wasn’t as quick as Maeve to put it down to her baby being ‘possessed’ but he kept a watchful eye on Cara ever since. At the age of seven, Maeve gave up and moved out for good telling Declan that he could keep the baby, house and all. Declan wasn’t really heart broken, he knew they had been growing a part for a while but Cara was the apple of his eye and he adored her to bits. She came daily with him then to help with the Magi-Zoo, feeding griffins, getting rides on the back of invisible horses (for she could not see a single thestral though she knew something was most definitely there). Her life seemed utterly blissful until Fr. Murphy called to the house when she was five years old and warned her father that he had better start sending her to school for a decent education or he’d get the authorities involved.
She went to the Ballinspittle National school and hated every minute of it until her father encouraged her to learn, to be as good as everyone else … even better. Delighted that he wanted her to do well, she did her best to do just that. It was at the National school that she was first called Bug and it stuck ever since. She was tiny compared to everyone else but when a big hairy spider crawled near the teachers chair, the teacher screamed and lifted her legs up and her reaction made all the kids do likewise. Cara, stood up to get a better look and seeing what it was, simply walked up and picked the spider up and put it outside. She wasn’t called Bug out of malice but out of pride, she made lots of friends that day and sort of just began to fit in. Even those that thought her dad was strange, still liked her and were upset when their own parents warned them to steer clear of her.
When her letter for the JWA arrived, she was delighted. She told her old school friends that she was going to another school up the country because her dad wasn’t Catholic and he wanted her taught by his own crowd. They simply thought she meant protestant or Presbyterian and never commented on it again. Fr. Murphy dropped by often enough, checking in and quizzing her on the school, wanting to know it’s name and the principle and so forth. Luckily enough however, Minerva McGonagall happened to be at their home on one of his ‘visit’s’ wanting to arrange a school trip for the fourth formers to the zoo. She soon put the priest in his place and he rarely called around after that. Even so, he is the only person that Cara doesn’t particularly like.
She had no real recollection of her mother and Maeve never bothered to stay in touch. As soon as separation and divorce became legal in Ireland, she got her lawyers to say she wanted one and that he could pay for it. Declan didn’t mind in the slightest, he had gotten the best deal out of it all and that was his daughter.
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