(Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?)
She knows it's not her—no, never her, with her muddy eyes, snub nose, freckles and elfin features. No, Alecto Carrow has never been beautiful in her life.
Sometimes she wonders what it must be like—walking up to the mirror in confident strides, and being pleased with what she saw there—instead of fresh new complaints sprouting in her head, nose is too small, too many freckles, eyes too widely set, and chin too pointed.
People have called her 'pretty' a few times, like old Mrs. Nott, pretty little girl, and Antonin, you're actually kinda pretty, but what they tend to describe her by is cute. Cute. She knows she should be satisfied with cute—after all, don't cute things please people?—but there just seems, to her, something somewhat d e g r a d i n g about cute.
Cute is for cuddly kittens, floppy rag dolls, and little children, not Alecto Carrow.
She touches the mirror again. She knows.
She's not talented enough to be able to cast a good Glamour, and she knows there's no other way she'd be able to change her plain looks, so she settles for the next best—feeling beautiful. That was why, of all the things, she slept with Evan Rosier, because his hands, warm and calloused, made her feel beautiful and desirable, like a girl a boy might actually want. It was that euphoric feeling, lifting her above the clouds, that made her squish her eyes shut, and let him cover her tiny body with his, and run his hands down her back.. She let him pull off her clothes and murmur those dirty words into her ears, in that silk-over-shards of glass voice of his, all for that feeling.
Afterwards, she'd lain in the bed, dazed and sore all over, her rational mind telling her rather calmly, about the huge, huge mistake she'd just made, sleeping with Evan Rosier, resident womanizer, whose list of conquests was legendary.
(She was just another notch on his bedpost.)
He'd sat back and puffed on that cigarette of his, with only a sheet slung around slim hips, smiling at her insufferably. Fucking bastard. She'd gone over and punched that smirk off of his face, and stormed off, adorned only in the sheet and her knickers.
Later, she'd gone back for her shirt, because Amycus had given her that shirt for her thirteenth birthday, and she wasn't about to admit to her brother that she'd lost it, and found it folded neatly and clean at the foot of his bed. The resident of said bed was gone, though, probably off in a broom closet somewhere.
(She'd scrubbed herself clean that night, feeling ashamed of herself.)
Skin still red and raw, she'd put her head against the mirror and cried out loud, salty rivers escaping from the corners of her eyes. She'd eventually fallen asleep, and that was where Bellatrix had found her when she'd gone to the bathroom, at two in the morning.
She'd been too ashamed to tell her best friend the reason she was slumped in front of the mirror, eyes red and puffy.
Even though she knew, oh, she knew all right, that it was low and shaming, she still went back to Evan, when it—the panicky realization that she would be the ugly duckling, forever awkward and plain—overwhelmed her and she couldn't take watching all the other girls throw their beauty around carelessly anymore. She went back to those hands and that lean, muscled body and tousled blonde hair. She went back because she hungered for his touch electric, and that euphoric feeling, her mind sharpened into a sharp little nub of want.
Because sometimes, a girl just needs to feel beautiful.
==FIN==