General Information
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Full Name: Akerrah Marieme Koné
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
School: Beauxbatons
Age: 11
Birthday: September 10, 2012
School Year: Second Year
Species: Human (Seer)
Hometown: Paris, France
Myers-Briggs: ISFP
Face Claim: Karidja Touré |
There was a deep magic in the Koné family, but it had been lost for many, many years—centuries in fact. It was an ancient magic associated with the peoples of the Ivory Coast. And it was raw and untamed.
But over time as the family and the country fell to the muggle tastes of colonization, this magic was lost as the French muggle way of life became the way of survival.
And so it was until the new millennium, when a girl was born in Paris to immigrants from the Ivory Coast would reawaken this deep magic. At first she seemed so very ordinary: average height and composure for a child. And there was no way to tell what magic lurked under her skin or why it would flower here after all this time—that was a question not even she knew the answer to as she would step into the resonant halls of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic.
Akerrah Koné was raised in the 19th arrondissement of Paris by her parents, Fanta (née Yoboue) and Souleymane. A family of immigrants, they did not have much money. Her father worked at a local coffee shop during the day and drove a taxi at night while her mother taught French to other immigrant children. Now that she’s moved so far across the world, she had very little contact with her extended family—a hole in heart she’s never quite been able to fill.
Akerrah’s first instance of magic occurred around the age when she entered muggle primary school or école primaire (about age 6) and was bullied for the color of her skin. As a child, she may only have registered this as general cruelty rather than through the nuance lens of race, but it sparked an involuntary emotional reaction all the same as she sent a pencil flying, lifting off into the air on its own, at the student who’d made the offending comment.
Since then, Akerrah has struggled as she’s grown to balance both her identities as an African woman as well as a French woman. The addition of a surprise acceptance from Beauxbatons has only added to her questions about her identify. Now, she has to figure out how magic fits in to all of that.
Akerrah has dark cocoa colored skin, warm brown eyes, and shoulder-length raven black hair. She is known for being cautious and intuitive, but kind. There is a timidness and vulnerability in her as she is still trying to figure out who she is. She hopes that Beauxbatons will not only help her to understand how magic works, but perhaps also a better understanding of herself and her history.
First instance of Magic:
Akerrah’s first instance of magic occurred around the age when she entered muggle primary school or école primaire (about age 6) and was bullied for the color of her skin. As a child, she may only have registered this as general cruelty rather than through the nuance lens of race, but it sparked an involuntary emotional reaction all the same as she sent a pencil flying, lifting off into the air on its own, at the student who’d made the offending comment. (This is copied from above.)
Seer Linage:
Over generations, much was lost. That is not just the ordinary magic that laid dormant in Akerrah as a witch, but something deeper. Long, long ago, the Koné and Youbue families held an even stronger gift: that of prophecy. Elders with the gift had to train hard to hone this skill using ancient techniques of Divination, rooted in the natural resources of the African continent. It was often not looked on positively to have inherited the gift as an untrained seer could easily become overwhelmed by the mental and emotional strain that came with their visions. Many became crippled with a sense of hopelessness as they were unable to prevent difficult situations from arising.
So, in an effort to keep seers safe, more and more had their gift repressed until it was all but forgotten. Seers were eschewed to the far reaches of society, but their descendants remained and the gift, however recessive, remained imprinted in family blood. This blood had large been ‘watered down’ as it were as generations married outside the tribes and even took muggles into their line. This was especially true as the indigenous peoples of the Ivory Coast were subjected to demands of French colonialism, which oppressed native cultures, including magic. In fact, hiding any and all evidence of magic became for many key means of survival.
It was only many, many decades later, when the blood of two families, each steeped long ago in this forgotten tradition, met that a seer, the first of many generations, was born.
Of course, Akerrah Koné did not know she was born with magic, let alone with the gift of sight. She believed, for all intents and purposes, that she was a girl—nothing more. And being a girl—being an immigrant girl—was difficult enough. When she’d let that pencil fly in an emotional reaction, it was not only a simple act of magic. There had been a flicker—a moment in her vision she didn’t understand—in which the pencil skirted the shoulder and hit a poster on the back wall. And when she blinked, that was where it was. Still just barely a schoolgirl, she knew not what this meant and did not speak of it.
After all, who could help? Her parents knew nothing of their ancient linage. And the social and economics pressures of immigrating to Paris took up all the space and time they had. And Akerrah knew that, at least as much as a child could. She wouldn’t disrupt their challenging, stressful lives for some moment that seemed a little odd, but could have been nothing—just a trick of the light, right?
Despite that, since then, there have been a few moments—barely a few seconds—when she felt herself let go like that. Akerrah knows not what it is and knows her parents don’t either. Perhaps at the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic she might learn the truth and how to control the gift. That, or she may just try to push it out of mind. But magic that deep always lives on somehow.
