Cirice gave a little wave to Joanne and bounded down to join her housemates at their table. They were all cheering and quickly shuffling around at the table to create gaps for her to sit. She sat next to a girl with skin and hair as black as night, but eyes a crystalline blue. She smiled at Cirice, her name had been Fadama Beauton, and was a fellow first year.
When the professor on the stage called out: “Joanne Rowling!”, Cirice’s head perked up. She had her fingers crossed for Joanne to come join her and Fadama. But after much deliberation, the sorting hat had declared Joanne to Ravenclaw, and Cirice felt disappointed. She watched her first friend get swallowed up by the table strewn in black and purple, but eagerly turned back to her new friend. Fadama had been telling Cirice all about a lantern festival she had been to along the Nile this summer with her father’s family.
As the months ticked past, Cirice and Joanne always tried to make time to catch up over breakfasts once a week and have study time together in the libraries. The girls did not have any classes together in their first semester, and Cirice soon noticed a pattern: Joanne was not succeeding in any of her classes. Her desire was there, she could learn the rhetoric and the practicality of all the various forms of magic. But when it came to actual demonstration, Joanne could not get anything to work.
The months that followed saw Joanne becoming more and more frustrated. She even went through a few week period where she treated Cirice as a rival rather than a friend, resenting all of the progress Cirice had made with her charms.
When Christmas break rolled around, Joanne vowed the break was what she needed and she would return after the new year with a fresh outlook and things would be better. And in January, things were better. The girls had a class together, Charms. They were elated, and Cirice vowed she would help Joanne.
Inktober 2025, Prompt #20: RIVALS🧡🖤👻🎃
Whitney Writes... 
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