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Carmen’s parents are wealthy immigrants from Hong Kong, but their business is still based in China, so they travel to and from there a lot, leaving Carmen at home with various nannies who would change every few months. Growing up, her best friend — and only constant figure in her life — was a ghost named Thomas who lived in her house, and when she wasn’t playing with him, she was playing in the forest near her school. Still, she never wanted for anything growing up.

When she started school, she would keep talking to anyone who would listen about her best friend Thomas. Her classmates initially found it cool, before they went over to her house and weren’t able to see him and found her childish for having an imaginary friend, and then eventually, they just thought she was weird and either bullied or avoided her.

Assuming she was a witch because she could see him, Thomas started teaching her about magic, as long as she didn’t practice it. She eventually became an Animagus under his instructions, but was told she couldn’t transform in front of others. She was fascinated by her new form, but she still felt somewhat resentful towards magic. After all, even though she loved Thomas and it would upset her to not see him again, it was because of him and her magic that she was ostracized at school.

One time during recess at school, she hid behind the building and transformed into her magpie form, but some other students saw her her. After school, she went into the forest, but she was followed by a group of students. They began to beat her up, some motivated by fear of the weird being able to turn into an animal, and some just wanted another excuse to bully. It got really violent, and was how Carmen lost her left eye. This, alongside years of bullying and general avoidance because of what she saw as her magic, was what made Carmen snap and become an Obscurial. Very soon after, she lost control and her Obscurus appeared. By this time, Aurors started arriving to subdue her, but they were too late. The Obscurus had already killed all the other children, and Carmen was left unconscious in the centre of the carnage. 

Afterwards, she was obliviated, forgetting the event while the incident was written off as a freak accident.  Her family soon moved to a different city where she was homeschooled instead. Without Thomas, Carmen was noticeably more lonely, even to her mostly absent parents, and they got her a dog, Pan, to keep her company, and trained him as a guard dog.

Longing for her only friend, she also began longing to simply belong somewhere — and never having had friends in the non-magic community, she decided that she could only belong in the magic community. Carmen began devouring any information about magic that she could find, even if the information was incorrect or if it was just sleight of hand magic tricks. When she got her letter to Hogwarts, she was so excited to finally have somewhere she could have a chance at belonging.