MINA SHAFIQ (née SHARIF) is THIRTY YEARS OLD and a SOCIALITE amongst THE SACRED TWENTY-EIGHT in LONDON. She looks remarkably like AIYSHA HART and considers herself NEUTRAL. She is currently OPEN.
A beautiful young witch with a healing heart, Mina Shafiq is in part defined by her epic love story that sadly ended in sorrow. Born in Bloomsbury to travel authors ISABELLA WESTWOOD and ABDULLAH SHARIF, Mina was raised in a privileged environment between her family townhouse in London and beautiful hotels around the globe. Mina’s early years were filled with adventure, visiting the beautiful jungles of India and the ruins and misty mountains of her father’s native country of Saudi Arabia. It was likely a result of her upbringing that Mina had a curious nature. Always looking to see what was round the corner and planning for her next adventure, Mina liked to live her life in the moment and never wanted the high of a new discovery to end. Sitting on their campsites or in luxurious hotels, Mina would be surrounded by maps and travel guides, prepared to list the history of the animals they would see on their visits and checking each one off in her copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them which she clutched closely to her chest on all her various adventures. By the time Mina was ready to attend school she had seen over a third of the globe, so Hogwarts didn’t quite have the effect on her that it had on other children. Mina was excited by the great outdoors and plants and magical creatures she could only read about in books. The hippogriffs and mandrake roots who had a home at Hogwarts were not different nor interesting to Mina and so she spent the majority of her time at school dreaming of far off places she longed to see.
Mina’s zest for life and dreamy personality quickly attracted a close friendship with PRIMROSE HOOKUM, who longed to get away from Hogwarts and begin her own fashion line. In the cold common room in the Ravenclaw Tower, Primrose and Mina would whisper long into the night about their dreams and ambitions, Primrose’s nose in a fashion magazine and Mina’s in a book of maps covered in doodles and notes which detailed where she longed to go after she finished school. Long nights spent giggling and plotting soon attracted the action of other Ravenclaw students, the two girls striking a friendship with ALBERT JORKINS and who often sought the company of books over people and was happy to sit on the velvet sofas snuggled in a blanket reading a copy of Virginia Woolf. Whilst Mina had explored a great deal of the magical world, she had seen virtually none of the Muggle one, her scrapbooks were filled with photographs of giant magical waterfalls and ancient castles in thick jungles lost to Muggles- but cities like Paris, Budapest and Hong Kong were a mystery to Mina she longed to explore.Her parents encouraged Mina to follow her heart and fill in the gaps in her knowledge of the world and unlike most parents with standing in Wizarding Society were not pushing Mina to find love or draw up contracts, she was young and ambitious and they wanted her to see the world before she settled down.
After exploring Europe and The British Isles, at twenty, Mina packed a suitcase and made the long voyage to The Middle East, longing to better explore a part of the world she knew relatively well, ticking off places on her bucket list she had never been before. Map in hand and notebook in her pocket, Mina was exploring the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, in search of the coniferous forest which thrived within the area. Mina had been walking for some time when she finally stopped to ask for directions and RAYAN SHAFIQ was more than happy to help her. A fellow British wizard, Mina was surprised to see him in such a remote part of the region, until he revealed his extended family lived close by who he had been visiting for the summer. As they walked side by side, Mina did most of the talking, ready to tell Rayan about her ideas to travel the world and write and create. Aside from London and Pakistan, Rayan hadn’t travelled much. His family were a member of The Sacred Twenty-Eight and were focused more on him marrying well ready to take over the estate which his elder brother had no interest in. Mina wasn’t sure of the exact moment she fell in love with Rayan, but by the time she had reached Jahaz Banda, she had realised she was more engrossed in their meeting than she had been with the beautiful meadow and mountains she had come to explore.
For the rest of her time in Pakistan, Rayan was by her side. A writer of poetry, as Mina would take photographs and write about the things she saw, unbeknownst to Mina, Rayan was writing about her. Pouring his heart out in prose as he fell in love with Mina as they swam in beautiful lakes and danced in the moonlight. Before they left Pakistan the two were married in the Hunza Valley in a small ceremony where they declared their love for one another and explored the rest of The Middle East as man and wife. When the pair returned back to London a year later, both Mina’s parents and Rayan’s were outraged the pair had gotten married. Mina’s parents believed she was too young to have married someone like Rayan and not know what would be expected of her, whilst Rayan’s had wanted more for the future heir of their family than a witch who didn’t want to settle down and play ball. The Shafiq family were far more traditional and lavish than Mina’s, with his mother holding a seat in the Pura Sorores Society which she had designs on Mina joining. Not wanting to sacrifice her dreams, she and Rayan made the joint decision to leave London and continue travelling, much to the anger of their parents. The pair lived a happy life, seeing the world and making memories until just under three months ago. As they were exploring South America, Rayan suddenly became unwell and was admitted to hospital. Much to Mina’s horror and despair Rayan died three days later, the cause of which was determined as Scrofungulus Disease.
Mina was heartbroken. Until she had met Rayan, Mina hadn’t much thought about love or longed for romance but something about the death of Rayan had broken Mina. Lying in her bed in Brazil alone she stayed, surrounded by the poems he had written about her and kept to himself all those years before and wondered if she would ever be truly happy again. Mina was very prepared to stay like that, alone in their little studio apartment in Rio De Janeiro where she’d sit in her red wedding gown and read the poems until she felt tired enough to sleep. Mina was only thirty years old when her husband passed away and ZAHRA SHARIF and Mina’s parents were not about to let their daughter slip away from them when she needed them most.Packing up her things, Mina returned to London and bore the awkwardness of seeing her husband’s family. His parents were unkind to her, but Mina knew from the poems he had written that he had silently longed for them to be closer. Only his twin sister SHAHLYLA SHAFIQ was kind to her, aiming each day to pull her sister-in-law up out of bed with Zahra and try to find a new ray of light in the world that made the beginning the day anywhere other than her bed in Bloomsbury worth it. The battering from her husband’s family didn’t help matters. LARA SHAFIQ was her biggest critic. firmly believing that Mina had not been good enough for her brother, blaming her for taking him away and his death.
Lost with how to make amends with them, Mina joined the ranks of the other Shafiq women and accepted a position in the Pura Sorores Society helping to plan the upcoming season of parties and balls. Mina had little interest in forcing people into marriage or deciding on the right shade of blue for floral arrangements, but had gotten good at feigning interest with Shahlyla by her side who created enough melodrama for her mother and sister to play with on purpose to leave Mina alone. Getting over the loss of Rayan was hard and she was grateful to have family by her side. It would take a long time for her to put the pieces of herself back together again, but Mina knew she was strong and was prepared to live life to the full for the pair of them. Day to day life had been becoming easier until Shahlyla arrived home one day to a poem on her doorstep. Written in Rayan’s hand, seeing a new poem dragged up a lot of old pain for Mina, though the departure from his usual beautiful prose caught their attention. It was a much darker poem than she’d read of his before, shrouded in death and mystery that alluded to something greater than himself. For now Mina tells herself that she has misunderstood the meaning, that her husband died of an illness she couldn’t have foreseen... but something in the words seem as though Rayan knew death was coming, giving new light and new pain to Mina’s life she isn’t sure she can bear.
Blood Status → Pure-Blood
Identification → Cis Female
Sexuality → Up to Roleplayer
Relationship Status → Widowed
Previous Education → Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Ravenclaw)
Family → Rayan Shafiq (deceased husband), Lara Shafiq (sister-in-law), Ejlaal Shafiq (brother-in-law), Shahlyla Shafiq (sister-in-law/close friend), Zahra Sharif (cousin), Elizabeth Westwood (cousin), Louisa Westwood (cousin)
Connections → Primrose Jorkins (best friend), Albert Jorkins (best friend), Fredrick Weasley (close friend), Benjy Fenwick (close friend), Michael Thomas (close friend), Tomas Wood (close friend), Elezar Smith (close friend), Tiberius McLaggen (friend), Olivia Promfrey (friend), Myrine Zabini (friend), Ishaan Patil (friend)
MINA SHAFIQ IS A LEVEL 4 WITCH.
