Marcus Rigel Vega

Marcus Rigel Vega
Biographical Information
Full name	Marcus Rigel Vega
Born	28 February 1894
Birthplace	London, England
Residence	London, England
Nationality	British
Blood Status	Pureblood, The Vega Family
Education	Hogwarts (1905-12), Slytherin Journalism, London (1913-16)
Class	1912
Physical Information
Family Information
Spouse	Tiril Eir Vega (deceased 1925)
Children	Marcus Anthares Vega, Catharina Vega
Parents	Arcturus Vega (pureblood, deceased 1921), Rosemary Vega (pureblood)
Siblings	Claude Cepheus Vega (b. 1891), Anthony Perseus Vega (b. 1896), Philip Alphard Vega (b. 1901)
Magical Characteristics
Wand	Larch, Hippogriff feather, 12 1/3 inches, flexible
Affiliation
Occupation	Journalist for the Daily Prophet, Foreign Section (1929-33, 1935-)
Former Occupation(s)	Freelance journalist, occasionally for the Daily Prophet (1916-25)

Biography

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1908
"Get up!" shouted Rosemary Vega, her looming figure framed by the door. The fourteen year old groaned in his half sleep, and that was enough. With five quick steps, was she over by the bed, the duvet in her hands. Marcus flailed for a second, then opened his eyes wide, awake by the second. Halfway did he fall out of the bed, stumbling onto his feet. Standing upright he was taller than her, and still she always seemed to loom.

"Wash your ears," said his mother, and Marcus marched off to the bathroom witout a question, Rosemary staying to do his bed, and he caught the smug expression of Claude outside of his bedroom, sparing his older brother a smirk. Had mother caught him being smug there would have been hell to pay. But Claude, Marcus and Anthony, and later Philip, all understood that they were allowed to have fun on each others' expense. It was what being brothers was all about.

Either way they always agreed that their mother had a murderous glare - the consequences to disobeying would be severe, always. The Vegas didn't play at raising children. And there was only so much to do with four sons that did or did not do as they were told - the former always at home, the latter occasionally at school. Rosemary Vega had eyes in her neck, of so were they sure. But she always loved every one of them, deeply, and never did she forget that she did.

Arcturus Vega, their father, was a much more patient man, eleven years older than his wife, but no less resourceful. He reigned over their money until his death in 1921, at age 62, after a long period of illness. Rosemary's fortress was the home, and Arcturus' would always be wherever he was important, as the successful business man that he was.

Two hours after Marcus had been chased from his bed stood the four boys, age seventeen, age fourteen, twelve and seven, in line, none of them smiling inappropriately, their hair and ties impeccable, suits handsome and dark. And still Rosemary would go over them, one after the other. And always would she find something to pick on, but unless they mocked her, or each other, and unless they did something inappropriate like playing outside in their suits, getting all dirtied up on purpose, she did not blame them, finding her cloth to remove the stains. For in the end they were, and would always be - boys.

---

JUNE 1911
"Your grades, Marcus," said Arcturus, him and and his wife on one side of the dining table, their second son on the other. "We're worried." And there was concern in his eyes, while the strictness of his voice told of a suspicion that the boy might just be lazy. And maybe that hurt him the most, their doubting that they did not in truth know their own son.

Marcus took the sheet and looked at it. He'd received a Dreadful in Summoning, and a Poor at Divination and Potions, but other than that they were all Acceptables.

He pushed it back.

"What about them?" he asked, stiffly, and he'd never been an overachiever, they could hardly expect him to have straight E's and O's just because Claude had graduated with ridiculous grades. He was just number two. And they might get much worse.

"Don't talk to in that tone," Arcturus said, and Marcus knew that he was challenging fate already, so he looked down, submissive to his father's glare. "Your NEWTs are coming up." He knew that all too well. It had been another reason to spend his second to last year doing something else but reading himself to death. "Have you put any thought into what you want to do after graduation?"

Marcus looked up, and found concern again - they just wanted him to have the opportunity of getting a good, acceptable, well-paid job. And while he hadn't thought that much about it there was still something that seemed to always catch his attention.

"I like writing."

His father wasn't taking him seriously.

"You like writing?"

Marcus nodded.

"So you're going to make yourself some no-good writer just because you don't bother enough to read for subject that actually mean something?" said Arcturus, voice increasing. "Arcturus-" tried his mother, but his father motioned for her not to interfere.

Marcus didn't say anything.

"You're going to have to pass all of your NEWTs. Or you may find yourself disinherited. Do you understand?"

Nothing.

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes, Sir." The slight mocking was left untouched, luckily.

"Good. Now leave. And if you make yourself a writer, don't bother coming home to ask for money."

The threat was nothing but words from a concerned parent, none of the children were ever disenherited. They never knew though, for Marcus passed his NEWTs the following year, if only barely. He still wasn't able to pull himself away from what interested him the most though - Marcus had always had a wide circle of friends, and participated actively in extracurriculars like Quidditch during his school years. That he actually moved on to study journalism a year after his graduation was a direct result of this conversation, both because it seriously forced him to think about what he wanted to do with his life, and because once he'd said something he didn't want to go back on his words. Luckily, he enjoyed journalism a great deal.

---

AUGUST 1913
"And there," said Tiril, long red hair flowing about her shoulders, so fascinating, thought Marcus, that he had a hard time turning away from it. A light chuckle escaped the girl's throat and she put a finger under his chin, forcing it upwards to the sky, to which she was pointing. "In the constellation of Lyra, and as a part of the Summer Triangle, is your star, Vega."

He tried to see.

"And Rigel is at the foot of Orion. In one version of the story of the great hunter Orion he dies from the sting of the Scorpio, which is my sign. When is your birthday, hunter?" Her voice was so soft and full of a mildly disguised joy that he couldn't help but getting drawn in, sucking in every word. Still it was hard for him to keep them there, for there was so much else in this girl that he'd met only a few times, and who wanted to come back to him and share his time.

She was salt and sugar, all at once. Marcus couldn't help but want more.

"February 28," he said, and the word Pisces exited her mouth. Never had he been particularly good at Astronomy nor Divination, and never had he held any gift in any of them - or anything else, for that matter. He admired her for it, at the same time as a pinch of healthy scepticism told him that she might be making all of this up.

Maybe it didn't matter.

It seemed she knew so much then, and him so little. And it was her that had kissed him, as if that was to where they'd been headed all along. And never did she let him go, even when he fumbled, an anchor in his existence, until he managed to gather the courage to propose. And from then on he never doubted that everything was as it should be.

---

JUNE 1925
"What do you mean you can't find her?" The concern was deep in his voice as he spoke to the officer outside of his door, but irritation and anger floated upon it, desperate for a real answer. Tiril had gone missing the day before, and he'd called the law enforcement. He hadn't slept all night, and still the children were playing like there was nothing wrong in the world.

"Marcus - please!"

A grumpy-looking eleven year old dragged his sister, shrieking with laughter, by the hand and put boots on both of them, first on himself, messily, then on Cat, more carefully, and they both exited the front door to go play in the garden.

"We've searched the lake, and the surrounding forest," said one officer. "The sky too," added the other, and it got a tragi-comical effect, too far from funny, considering the circumstances.

But there wasn't much he could do but wait.

Four days later the officers were back at his door. This time they were both hanging their heads, and the laughter from inside had been exchanged with crying. Cat was throwing a tantrum because her mother hadn't come home, and the son of the house had gone quiet. Marcus couldn't deal with either of them - he could hardly deal with himself.

"Mr. Vega, your wife has been found, Sir," said one of the officers, raising his head only barely, as if afraid of looking into the other man's eyes. "On the shore of the lake. It seems she's been underwater the whole time. She is dead. I'm sorry, Sir."

Marcus couldn't say anything, only stare blankly in front of himself. The words didn't penetrate him, not his mind, not his skin.

But had she been there to see, she would have known, that everything inside of him was crumbling into one big heap of everything that could have been, now broken. He'd never felt strong and never given himself the illusion that he was. But five days without his wife had brought him to seeing that the world could either be everything that you dreamt of.

Or it could be nothing.

It took him three long years until he managed to pack all of their belongings, and during this time the now slightly reduced Vega family would stay largely at his mother and father's home in London. Marcus worked freelance at the time, and almost nothing at all for the time being. Later would he get a job at the Daily Prophet, to which he frequented for many years until the next tragedy that should bestow the family in 1933.

---

NOVEMBER 1928
His mother had given him a quarter of the manor for himself and his non-existent work. The children hung mostly around their grandmother as a ways of giving him his much needed peace.

Peace to be alone. To contemplate his existence mostly.

There were bottles all over the small room that he used as a living room after a particularly hard Tuesday. Usually he didn't let anyone into there, dressing up and pretending to be fine when invited to dine with the rest, or to see his son and daughter. But too often did they seem like ghosts, both of them. He wanted to hold on to them, but he didn't know how to.

Still, they were his only reason to keep living.

Now it was the throbbing headache that should remind him that he was still a part of this, but not before his area was invaded by none other than his own mother.

"MARCUS RIGEL VEGA!"

She had respected his space, and he'd respected everything that he could respect except from himself. But now she was there, and Marcus pulled the blanket further over his head. His mother was over at his bed at an instance, pulling him onto his feet with surprising strenght for such an old woman. He stumbled, naked except from his underwear, feeling exposed even as he stood in front of his own mother, feet refusing to cooperate.

"My God, you're still drunk," said Rosemary, and it was disgust in her voice now. Disgust for the disgrace that had come to be of her son, of the way that he would lose faith and abandon every responsibility that he held.

"From tomorrow you're going back to your old room." If he'd be a child, then she'd raise him as one. "Then you're going back to the Daily Prophet to get yourself a position - fulltime if possible."

He just stood there, staring blankly, having no belief in any of this, wanting to disappear back into a neutral existence where nobody cared and nobody needed to care. Once had it hurt. Now it only felt hopeless, without meaning.

Still she managed to get him back on his feet. And he refound his reason to live in his son and daughter, for never had it been difficult for Marcus to feel other people's joy. And while his son would drift away into his own matters, there was always Cat, always warmth, so different while still so alike her mother. And so much his daughter.

"You're a father," said Rosemary, and even Marcus Rigel Vega couldn't refuse the implications of those words.

---

AUGUST 24TH, 1933
In London city, in an untidy office in the building of the Daily Prophet, a dark haired man, his appearence strikingly alike that of his son, was given the urgent message that his house was on fire. Leaving the building at once, Marcus Rigel Vega apparated and arrived to a scene that he had never in his life imagined. Panicking, the man started moving around the building, looking for a way inside, his heart beating hard from the fear that his son might actually be inside. And for a moment the two of them actually moved towards each other, separated by the burning wall, as if some invisible bond were dragging them.

At one point the flames seemed to calm down. It had been a long time since then, that the assembling wizards had concluded that this was no normal fire. Water and magic didn't affect it in the way that it should be, this fire had been meddled with, in a frightening way. But it did calm down, eventually.

He didn't know what it was that drove him inside, but there was something, and it wouldn't let go of him, wouldn't release the desperation that had taken hold of his body.

The tall, dark haired man that was Marcus Anthares Vega's father had entered what was left of the building at that point, escaping his fellow wizards' wands barely, moving too fast for them to pull him back out. It took only minutes for him to return, so fast had the fire calmed, that he had reached his son in little time. But what the father carried in his hands now did not look at all like the young man it had once been - the flames had eaten parts of the body, parts of it was black as coal. It was hard to tell clothes and flesh apart, and most of the skin had melted off to become a bloody mass. Still, there was something recognizable about that burnt face, eyes closed - he could have been sleeping, that expression could have been one of a bad nightmare - because that was what it had truly been.

Nobody wanted to separate the father from the ugly, dead creature in his arms. He put up a noble fight, but in the end he was overpowered. And death would always succeed in its fight against life.

---

AUGUST 1935
Not a word had escaped his mouth when his son turned up at his door two years after his death was supposed to have happened. Never had he seen his daughter cry as much, never had he been more shameful about returning to his mother after his house had burnt down, never had he felt more miserable. Never had he felt as much of a failure as he did then - before had been hopeless, but this - this was his fault. No fathers should bury their sons. And then...

He couldn't recall what exactly had happened, but he knew that his hand had rose, and for a frozen second had it met his son's cheek, to bury that pride that glowered from an individual so sure of himself, so true to his own cause and so much a betrayal to everybody else's. Never did he want to see his daughter cry again after that night - she was supposed to be growing up to meet the world, and everything that people ever did to her was to pull her down. This was not what the men in her life should be like.

Once had it been her brother that had snuck into her room to hold her when she was frightened. That night neither father nor daughter had gone to their rooms, for both of them knew that they loved who was brother and son, and none of them could manage without the other. It had been quiet, for so long, but at some point they both collapsed in the sofa, and father and daughter had clung to each other although none of them had spoke of it afterwards.

And ironic was it, for Marcus had never been able to speak and neither had his son, that him and Catharina should reach this point together. She'd always wanted to speak, for her feelings had always been worn on her sleeve, but it was a hard family in which to speak.

Still, hopefully, she had somehow known that she'd been loved when she woke up with her father's arms around her, platonical, pure.

Marcus Rigel Vega had never wanted to disappoint his children. But he reached an understanding then, that even if he'd failed at one child, he must have succeeded at the other. Still he never seized loving the one that he'd lost. And even when they met again, as they did, on several occasions, he always wanted to forgive, but he wasn't able to. To end up alone was never what he had imagined. But when little Catharina Vega approached her seventeenth and eighteenth birthday he knew that the inevitable was about to happen. And when he understood that she was - as he had, once upon a time - falling in love, he tried to stay on the wave of compassion and joy - for her.

Always would the time come that the father would have to let go of his little daughter.

And he could be happy for her. Or he could bury himself elsewhere.

See also: The Vega Family