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Eileen Prince was not the most beautiful witch in her year, or even the most beautiful of her dorm mates. No, Eileen was decidedly not beautiful and she would never be a beauty. Beauty could get a girl jobs, money, connections, and many other benefits. Being plain just didn't make the cut. Eileen knew this and had resigned herself to a life of being plain.

Eileen Prince was first made aware of her less than stellar appearance by her mother. Mrs Prince always liked to have Eileen come inside and clean up to greet her friends. "Eileen dearest, you must always look composed in front of mummy's friends. You can't welcome someone into our home with scruffiness and filth." Mrs Dearborn had come over to have a spot of tea with Mrs Prince on that sunny and fateful afternoon in late July. Eileen was nine at the time and had been outside playing when she heard the doorbell ring. She knew her mother was in the drawing room and well out of earshot of the doorbell and she also knew that her mother would be furious if a guest was kept waiting outside. "How rude it would be, Eileen dearest, if we made a guest squander outside when they had come to call." So she had run around the side of the house to invite Mrs Dearborn in.

Now Eileen Prince was very much a rough and tumble child. While she enjoyed dressing up in her mothers fancy hats and glamorous dress robes, she would rather have been spending her time outside building forts in the woods behind her house, or digging trenches to catch any Bicorns coming to eat her papa. So understandably when Eileen came around the side of the house, she was properly disheveled as she had been having a very marvelous time trying to find Gnomes under the shrubbery. She was the very definition of scruffiness and filth (to quote her mother) and while succeeding in rescuing Mrs Dearborn from the ungodly temperatures outside, she did not welcome her into the Prince household with dignity and refinement, but rather with a slightly smelly and rather muddy countenance.

Mrs Prince was appalled when she came downstairs ten minutes later to see her daughter, filthy and smelling strongly of dragon dung (Mrs Prince's fertilizer of choice), sitting across from Mrs Dearborn and telling her all about Gernumbli gardensi. Mrs Prince had hurriedly shooed Eileen out of the room and apologized profusely to Mrs Dearborn for her daughters state. "She is such a problem, my Eileen. I've told her time and again to clean up and act proper because she'll never be a beauty, and it pains me to see her making herself even more undesirable by being so masculine. She's a disappointment to me, I wanted a daughter not a wild animal."

Mrs Prince didn't realize that Eileen had been outside the open door and had heard everything. Nine year old Eileen may not have understood everything that her mother said, but she understood that it was bad that she wasn't beautiful and that not being beautiful would make her life harder.

Eileen Prince had been resigned to her plain appearance from that day in late July and had decided that if she couldn't be beautiful, she should have at least one thing that made her special and valuable. And since she couldn't be beautiful, she should be smart. So Eileen set out that very next day to learn everything she could about anything anyone would teach her. Mrs Prince never really understood the change that came over her daughter, but was delighted just the same by the prospect of no longer having such a rough and tumble child.

Eileen Prince was determined to make her mother proud in one respect, as she had failed to do so in the looks department. So when Eileen turned eleven and went off to Hogwarts, she promised herself that she would excel in at least one aspect of school. Luckily for her she found her niche in the first week of school. Potions and Eileen Prince became fast friends. "Miss Prince has the natural ability and proper temperament for Potion brewing," Professor Slughorn said to the Transfiguration Professor, Albus Dumbledore in the Staff Room one evening, "She show marvelous promise for someone of her age."

Eileen Prince excelled in her academics and Mrs Prince took pride in that she could tell her friends that her previously unremarkable daughter showed such a profound aptitude for something. Eileen herself enjoyed her skill with Potions and was fascinated by the promise they offered. But she still lacked confidence in herself. Successful women were beautiful and shapely, and while Eileen was a prodigy at Potions she was by no means beautiful or shapely and so she thought she had no future in Potions. Outside of the classroom Eileen had one other joy, she was marvelously good at Gobstones and was the Captain of the Gobstones Team and President of the Gobstones Club during her years at Hogwarts.

Eileen Prince had the makings of a great witch about her, but something was lacking in her self worth. She valued herself as little more than worthless, a mere disappointment to her family, and believed that she had no future prospects at all. She had taken her mothers words to heart and held them as true, so it was a great surprise to her to find that she was the object of another's affections.

Tobias Snape was by no means handsome, but he did possess that roguish look that one might find attractive if such a person were truly desperate. And truly desperate was a good descriptor for Eileen Prince. She had gone through life believing that she was going to end up a plain spinster, living a life without husband or child, and then she met Tobias Snape. Tobias was the poor son of a Millworker and a muggle. Eileen knew that she would never be able to please her mother so she might as well be happy in her disobedience. She retained a slight bit of the rebellion she had had at the thunder age of nine and so she had little qualms about falling in love with a muggle.

Eileen Prince was desperate for love and Tobias was desperate for an easy life so when she told him she was a witch and the daughter of a wealthy family, he could hardly believe his luck. He would get a rich and powerful wife all in one go. If Eileen had not been so desperate for love, she might have realized that Tobias was just after her money and powers and not after her. But he was the first person to tell her she was beautiful, and he was the first person to make her feel beautiful on the night that they made love. He was her first everything. And when Eileen found out that she was pregnant with his child, Tobias asked her to marry him in the hopes that he could benefit from her magic and money. Eileen thought that he loved her and went blissfully down the aisle without the blessings of her family, and consequentially without their money either.

Eileen may have been blind to Tobias's true motives when he married her, but after it became clear that she had inherited none of her families wealth, Tobias's whole demeanor changed. He had not bargained his wife's poverty and refusal to summon money. And on top of that he now had a wife and a child to take care of.

Eileen Snape (née Prince) was heartbroken when she realized that Tobias never loved her, but she couldn't go back to her parents with a half-muggle child and she couldn't leave her magical son with the husband that didn't care about either of them and loathed their powers. She was stuck in the prison she had so foolishly built for herself. Eileen had tried so hard to do her best and her one downfall had been a wish to be beautiful, to feel beautiful. A wish that had sprung into occurrence with the careless remark of her embarrassed mother. Her one selfish and vain desire had been granted at a terrible cost.

But Eileen Snape (née Prince) couldn't wish for herself anymore, she had a responsibility to her son. A strong baby that so resembled herself, a child that she named Severus in hopes that snakelike he could escape the same fate as her. She now had a new wish, to see her son grow up into a strong and happy man who would be successful at whatever he wanted to do. Maybe a man who wouldn't make the same foolish mistakes as herself.

Eileen Snape tried her best to make her life worth something, to anyone. It was not easy and she was never much of a success. But Merlin and Agrippa she tried. All she ever wanted was to feel loved and valued. Can you really blame her?

A/N

I wrote this for a challenge in honor of International Women's Day. It made me really depressed to write and I think that it was something other than what the maker was expecting, but I think that we should do our best to respect all women, even the ones who make poor choices and cause strife. We should respect the struggles that some women must face. I guess I wanted to have the truth about struggles women face represented, to show that women do deserve respect.

mulberryjam