Goddess: Persephone/Proserpina, Greek/Roman Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld

Pantheon: Greek/Roman

Mortal Name: Seraphina Genevieve Lockhart

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Animated Representative: Thumbelina (1994)

Live Action Representative: Chloe Grace Moretz

Demigod Powers: Control over plants; the ability to make plant-life grow or rejuvenate. Her marriage to Hades has also given her dominion over the fate of the souls in his realm.

Personality: Sera is a gentle soul who reveres life as precious and believes death is not to be taken lightly. She was sheltered for all of her life, but she is not so naïve now that her memories of her past life have been unsealed. For the things she lived through and the harsh lessons taught to her by experiences as Persephone, those ancient memories resonate within her and fight off the innocent naivety that had shielded her from the ways of the world in her human life. She is gentle, still, that is not to be denied—but Seraphina is not merely the embodiment of spring’s burst of new life. She was and is the Goddess-Queen of the Underworld, not to be trifled with, lest she make sure your afterlife is the hell your enemies wish it to be. It merely takes a whisper for her to influence the fate of your soul.

Backstory: Reborn in human form as Seraphina Genevieve Lockhart to a wealthy family, Sera spent her life living in privilege and prestige. She was well cared for, with two siblings—one older and one younger—that both adored her. They were raised in a conservative Christian household and went to church often with their parents, though it’s not like they really had a choice in the matter, because their parents forced them to go any time they voiced protest. Despite how much Sera tried to, she couldn’t bring herself to believe in the bible. Did she think the book was important? Certainly. She believes to this day that it holds important lessons. She just doesn’t take it as the literal word of the Christian God. Her siblings share her ideology, but they were forced to grin and bear the services while growing up lest they endure yet another lecture of the many ways in which their souls would be damned for being nonbelievers.

Her parents, being conservative as they were, were quite controlling and strict. They did it out of love and genuine belief that what they were doing was best for their kids, and Sera knows that. She appreciates their love and concern for her soul. She just doesn’t appreciate their methods. But still, she behaved as the good little girl they wished her to be. Sera didn’t mind for the most part. She ate right, wore the pretty dresses her mother would buy her (she genuinely enjoyed them, even if they weren’t exactly her style) and pursued education toward law like her father wanted—thankfully her parents were more forward-thinking in regards to the opportunities for women, so she wasn’t pressured to the confines of the life of a housewife.

Still, the pressures of living up to her parents’ expectations got to her, and she found solace within two hobbies: art and gardening. Sera loved drawing and painting, but she also loved plants. Flowers, especially. She would spend much of her free time either tending her garden with love and care, or drawing the plants that she grew. Unfortunately, her parents had shot down her wishes to become an artist by trade. Her father argued that she should work at his firm and spend her free time pursuing her silly hobby as just that: a hobby. In order to make the disapproving stares go away, Sera conceded. But as her eighteenth birthday approached and she received a letter from Harvard—her father had promised to pay for her college completely if she attended the one he’d attended—Sera was presented with a letter from a second college, and a dilemma.

A place called Pantheon University was offering her a scholarship, with which she could Major in Art and Minor in Botany. But it meant directly disobeying the wishes of her parents.

Just as she finished reading the letter and was contemplating the choice she now had while sitting at the desk in her room, Seraphina began to feel strange. She became dizzy and her senses suddenly felt overloaded, leaving her disoriented. Moments later a shift in her being made something buried deep within her crack wide open, and memories of an unbelievable past life flooded her mind.

A week passed and Sera became withdrawn. Her parents had assumed she was just feeling nervous about leaving home for Harvard. In fact, Sera was taking time to process the fact that she was a reincarnated Goddess. She ate very little and slept littler still, having so much to mull over that she was dizzied by it all. Eventually, after going over the possibility that she was just crazy, she instead decided to accept these memories as genuine and reject the notion that she was in a state of psychosis. After all, how could the memories be fabricated when she suddenly had the power to make plants grow at will? That wasn’t fabricated. The maids themselves had commented on the startling growth rate of her flowers over the course of three days.

The letter from Pantheon University laid tucked away beneath her mattress during all of that time. She consulted it briefly each day, mulling over her new reality that she couldn’t share with her family. They would think she was crazy.

Her birthday came and her family had a special lunch to celebrate her going away to college. Her favorite meal was prepared and gifts were given. One gift, in particular, was of importance. Access to the bank account that held her entire college fund. Her parents handed her the papers that officially gave her control of the account and just like that, she held control of her destiny right in her hands. It was at this point that Sera announced to her family that she would not be attending Harvard. Her parents’ faces fell. They didn’t know of any other schools she had been accepted to. They didn’t know of the bravery—what they would call ungratefulness—that their daughter held for defying them. But she told them; she told them that another school had accepted her, and that she had been accepted to both schools and received acceptance letters from both Harvard and Pantheon University at the same timeS. And she told them that no matter how they yelled, no matter how many different ways they called her ungrateful or stupid, she controlled her life from that point on and there was quite literally nothing they could do about it because they had just given away their sole leverage—her college fund.

Sera didn’t tell them that she was a Demigod. She only told them what they needed to know. They fought against it. They guilted her, they yelled at her, spoke over her, and denounced her ability to make decisions for herself regarding this despite giving her the very means to do so. The fight lasted all of ten minutes before Sera found her true voice and silenced them. Commanding, but respectful, her voice resonated a finality that even her parents couldn’t argue against. Her life, her choice. End of story. And now she is free to pursue what makes her happy at Pantheon University.

That, and try to find her husband, Hades. There are many words she needs to have with him.

Alias: GrimmMemoirs (Call me Grimm or Henry)