Whitney Writes…

Over the following weeks, Cirice found herself spending every free moment she had looking up Joanne Rowling – J.K., as she had taken to calling herself. She found herself struggling to connect this woman to the young girl she had known back in school. They seemed so… different.

In her teens, it had appeared the memory charm had begun to crack on Joanne. The girl’s family had done their best to bury it, but with Cirice’s access, she had found it. Joanne had struggled deeply with her mental health in her teenaged years. Her family had cited paranoia and hallucinations. Sometimes claiming she had memories of things she couldn’t possibly have known. Of places she had never been.

Joanne had been committed during the summer of her sixteenth birthday. She had experimented with some lighter drugs, gotten into “light” legal trouble. Cirice drummed her nails on the wood of her desk as she scrolled down on her laptop screen.

Life outside of Hogwarts did not seem to have treated Jo very well, Cirice thought. At least her family had hid the evidence well, Cirice would have a talk with her father to make it all completely disappear.

There was a knock at her door and Elliot let himself in. He smoothed his mustache and lingered in the archway. Cirice glanced over at him, he was acting… odd. “What is it?” she finally asked, sitting up straighter and turning away from her laptop and towards him.

“She’s done an interview,” Elliot said flatly.

“What?” Cirice’s hand dropped to the desk with a thump.

“With the BBC,” Elliot continued. “She’s going around saying she knows it’s all real, the ‘Wizarding World‘, as she calls it.”

Cirice stared blankly at Elliot. Well, if her father and his cabinet, as well as the Prime Minister and his, along with the Queen, had yet to decide if they would go public…. Joanne had just thrust them all into the inferno, forcing their hand.

Inktober 2025, Prompt #25: INFERNO🧡🖤👻🎃