Rashida Tharwat/Story

## Early Life

Rashida Tharwat was born at the stroke of midnight on 21st September 1986, in a privileged magical neighbourhood in Cairo. Her name meant a number of things - righteous, wise, mature. Whether this young pureblood witch lived up to those expectations was yet to be seen.

As a child, Rashida was many things, but dainty was not one of them. Much to the disappointment of her parents, Rashida was a child bursting with turbulent spontaneity - not a day passed without some form of a commotion formed in the house by the young girl.

## Primary Education

For her primary education, Rashida’s parents sent her to a magical school for the upper-class in Cairo. There, Rashida quickly gained droves of knowledge about the magical world, devouring every bit of information she could get. She even learned a number of non-magical skills that helped her in the future and gained fluency in a number of languages, including English, Arabic (both Modern Standard and Egyptian), and German. All her teachers noted she was a fast learner, and by the time she began her schooling at Uagadou, it was unanimously agreed that the girl lived up to her name - at least when it meant ‘wise’.

## Uagadou

At Uagadou, Rashida learnt about a whole new form of magic - wandless magic. A technique limited primarily to wix in the African continent, she gained mastery over wandless magic, mainly as it was the primary method of teaching at the school. However, as Egypt had a long history of wand-users, Rashida also had tuition with wands every summer, where she learnt just about every spell students in other schools were learning with a wand - as well those out of typical curriculums.

During her third year at Uagadou, she was given the opportunity to choose her electives. Rashida, of course, picked all of them, but she had been interested in one subject in particular - Ancient Runes. The concept of ancient writings had always fascinated Rashida - to think that wix from millennia ago had used these unique scripts… the girl had always wondered about their original uses.

Over the next few years, Rashida immersed herself fully into Ancient Runes, despite constant urges from her family to choose a broader subject to study. She learnt all about Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Elder Futhark at Uagadou, attaining the highest mark in her class for the subject during her final exams - 100%. Of course, the Egyptian ‘prodigy’, as some would call her, did well in all her other subjects as well, achieving the highest grade in all of them, if not the highest mark.

## Becoming a Cursebreaker

When Rashida graduated, she had high hopes, dreams and aspirations - she had decided she would become a curse-breaker. After all, she was adept at all the fields it utilised - especially Ancient Runes - it was a no brainer! To her family, however, the choice was not nearly as clear. Her relationship with her family began to deteriorate. They had tolerated Rashida’s behaviour all these years, hoping it was a phase, but she was now a woman. She was expected to uphold herself with the dignity and propriety of a respectable Tharwat woman. They constantly insisted that they had plans for her, that curse-breaking was not a suitable field for a woman, and that she should explore something simpler and more ladylike.

Rashida refused to listen, blocking out the voices of her family. Over the months that passed, their pleas grew more and more desperate. They cited 'the shady government'. The 'risks of dealing with Goblins'. The fact that previous discoveries had not gone to magical museums, but to the pockets of colonists. That curse-breaking was a 'dying field'. And that soon, there would be nowhere left to go.

But Rashida was dedicated to her cause. She knew what she wanted to do. She knew why she wanted to do it - reasons her parents wouldn't understand. And that is why, at the stroke of midnight on September 21st, 2004, Rashida Tharwat ran away from the place she had called home for the last 18 years.

To her family, pursuing her dreams was not wise, righteous or mature. Now permanently erased from the Tharwat family, the young woman had no worries. She was free, she was independent, she was happy. She was doing what she loved every day. She had no rules to follow, no elders to listen to, no actions forced on her. The liberty she had yearned for for so long was finally hers. In other words, she was young.

Rashida quickly found a job at Gringotts as a curse breaker, and spent the next 7 years excavating the tombs of Ancient Egyptian wix. She attained complete fluency in Egyptian Hieroglyphics as she did, learning more about it by applying herself efficiently. By the end of her 7-year tenure in the nation, she found and bonded with two unique pets - a cobra she named Wadjet and a vulture she named Nekhbet, paying homage to her magical heritage.

The now experienced curse breaker then left her job at Gringotts to become a freelancer in the profession - although she continued friendly relations with her ex-employer, who continued to call on her for her services. Over the course of the next decade and a half, Rashida travelled across the globe, applying her Elder Futhark to explore decipher magical inscriptions in the lands of the Germanic people, learning Mayan Glyphs to unravel the secrets of persisting magical codices, exploring the complexities of Chinese Script for personal recreation and dabbling in the Cuneiform Script to unlock the door to numerous languages in the Mesopotamian region.

Unfortunately, there was one thing Rashida had failed to account for - she was primarily relying on her days of youth. Days quickly turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, and the result was very much visible when one looked at the woman. The young child, once excitable and overly enthusiastic, now appeared to be a husk of her former self. Gradually, at an almost painful pace, the requests began to steadily dwindle to a slow trickle.

And so, in the beginning of the year 2028, Rashida felt the world she had built crumble around her. What had it all been for? Nothing. Her parents had been right. They had been right about everything.

Rashida was alone, with nothing but an apartment at Grosvenor Square, a vulture and a cobra to her name. She had travelled the world, mastered all sorts of languages, dabbled in the most obscure of runes… but what had it all been for? Nothing.