Getting dressed in the mornings was harder than anyone else thought, even if she used magic. Putting on her corset and tying the laces was not as easy as it used to be before her unintentional increase in size after she widowed. And to put on her shoes? She had to spend fifteen minutes every day trying to put them on without damaging her fragile but fat feet.
Her husband's passing had brought her down. When once she enjoyed spending the mornings in bed with him, she was left alone in a too-big bed that did nothing to help her get over his untimely death. They had been in love and losing him left her heart drowning in pain and loneliness.
She found comfort in food. The delicious pastries bought in the nearby bakeries were almost as sweet as his words to her, and the cakes as soft as his kisses. She ate until the laces of her corset were too short and she had to get more made to fit her. Her growing girth didn't stop there, and soon she was a walking boulder with aches in every bone and muscle.
Even worse than the physical pain of walking with all her recently gained weight and the longing for her once slender figure, were the whispered critiques made by those who called themselves her friends.
Maud Kekilpenny endured with grace the cruel comments of the other women of the neighbourhood, though her heart shrivelled under the unwanted attention.
"Doesn't she look lovely, girls?" Lady Blanche Chamburleyne would ask her friends whenever Maud joined them for breakfast. "Are you sure you want to eat dessert, Maud? You might want to leave some cake for the rest of us!"
Lady Chamburleyne's guests would laugh. They always did. At first, she had thought it was out of their need to be in Lady Chamburleyne's good graces, but soon she learned the truth. Nobody could see past her large body.
In the darkness of her rooms, Maud would cry at night. She felt disgusted by herself and the sad thing she had become.
She suffered for a while; he husband dead, no children to make her smile, no parents or siblings to visit. Maud had nothing. Not even her once sensuous body. What was she if she couldn't be a wife, a mother or a daughter? What was she, if she wasn't considered womanly enough to be a woman?
Maud spent months grieving –for both lost husband and lost body– until she grew tired of herself and her attitude.
"You make the stars seem boring, my love. You are brighter than they are," her husband used to say and even in her modesty she knew it was the truth.
Before she met him she went to the most prestigious school for wizards and witches in Britain: Hogwarts. Perhaps it was the time she went back to her alma mater. Maybe she'd find a job there, as a teacher.
Much to her surprise, getting away from the dull and cruel life in London was easier than she thought. But then again, she had no ties to the city or the people there.
"You will be missed, Maud," said the Lady Chamburleyne. "What will we do without your uplifting personality?"
Maud didn't bother to answer her. Instead, she boarded the carriage that would take her to the school in Scotland. The journey would be long, but with so much knowledge to be remembered she didn't care. Not even the pain in her back and legs prevented her from going north to the great Hogwarts.
Day after day she would study her old books again, recalling the seldom used spells and potions from her youth. With her single handmaid she hadn't needed them, but now she was on her own and every piece of knowledge counted along with each wave of her wand.
The sight of Hogwarts met her soon, and she didn't waste any time before presenting herself to the current Headmaster.
"I seem to recall you, Missus Kekilpenny," he said and she nodded.
"You were my Arithmancy teacher for two years, Headmaster Warbeck," said Maud to the wizard who used to be her teacher. "I was then known as Maud Stroke."
She blushed a little, remembering how he must recall her: young, smiling and slender. She wasn't like that anymore, but the intelligence she had back in her student days remained with her.
Sadly, there were no vacant places in any subject, but the elderly wizard suggested something else.
"I feel bad offering you so little after your long journey, Missus Kekilpenny," he said. "But you might be employed as an assistant to Madam Catherine and Miss Violet at the hospital wing."
Maud quickly accepted the offer. The Headmaster took her himself to the matron and nurse, who received her warmly even if their eyes betrayed their medical opinion of her body. Maud tried to stand proud of what she was and not to care about her opinions, but she did.
Once the Headmaster left for his office, awkward silence ensued. She could tell the nurses wanted to comment on her weight. Not like the cruel Lady Chamburleyne. Maud knew if these women wanted to talk about her weight it was because they worried about her health and the example she would set for the students who came to the hospital wing.
"Maud Kekilpenny?" she hears Miss Violet say. "Would you agree to a test to see where your knowledge and abilities lie?"
Maud nodded and for the rest of the day, she answered to the nurse's questions about what she would do when encountering with this or that troubled patient.
A few minutes after the sunset, she sensed discomfort again and looked at Madam Catherine hesitate a bit before finally talking.
"What would you do, if a student comes and you notice he has some –unhealthy eating habits?"
While Maud knew this was a trick question. She was rich and could afford all the food she might want, but most of these students had nothing but what Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic gave them. Still, she answered with honesty.
"I would tell them to look at me," she said, sadness visible in her blue eyes. "And to question themselves if they want to look like this. That would probably stop them from eating too much. Of course, if the issue is that they are undereating I would explain what it does to their magic."
Silence met her words. None of the nurses said anything else, but Madam Catherine waved her wand and produced a white uniform for her. Maud smiled sincerely. She was part of Hogwarts again.
At first, the students rejected her. They stared at her as if she was a freak but she treated them with kindness and respect. Eventually, Maud got that in return. Even if the kids disliked her appearance, they learned to love her for her warm personality and caring attitude.
Maud was the happiest she had ever been, all thanks to those kids who accepted her and even laughed with her when she sang with her horrible voice. They could see how she tried to amuse them to make them forget about their pain while she healed them.
The years went by and Maud grew old. Most of the children attending Hogwarts were the grandsons and granddaughters of those kids she had once cared for. Headmaster Warbeck had died many years before, and Madam Catherine as well. Violet, now her closest friend, got old as well. Everything changed.
Even her.
Her large body grew even more, turning each step she took into a painful agony. Her back hurt every day and she had to cast reinforcement charms to any chair she sat on to prevent them from breaking under her weight. The worst was the pain she felt in her chest whenever she went from the hospital wing to the Great Hall for breakfast or dinner. Everything hurt so much.
One day, Maud told Violet she would be quitting once the year was over. Her friend accepted her decision, knowing fully well how much Maud suffered from the active lifestyle of a mediwitch.
"You are the bravest woman I have ever met, Maud," said Violet to her. "You suffer so much and still find time to be happy and merry for the children. I admire you."
Maud shed a few tears that night, and for the first time in her life, she tasted Firewhiskey in the company of Violet.
The Headmaster, now the old Potions professor Andrick Potter, insisted on getting her portrait done after she left Hogwarts.
"I know you won't come back if you cross the Castle's threshold," he told her. She smiled sadly, knowing he spoke the truth.
"I would like for my portrait to be near Catherine's," she told him, but Headmaster Potter shook his head.
"Madam Catherine was smart and loyal, Madam Maud," he said. "But you are brave and as such, you will be where you belong"
She got her portrait done in less than two weeks. The painter complimented her in her ability to keep still for long periods of time. She never told him everything hurt less if she didn't move.
Maud was amazed at her portrait; as she was still alive, the portrait was lifeless and cold, but she could see the resemblance to herself: the painter captured her very essence –and all of her large body– with accuracy.
She went away that day, without knowing where her portrait would be set.
Nobody in Hogwarts knew of Maud for a time, but nine weeks after her departure they got a letter. Madam Maud Kikelpenny had died and her last will had been that her galleons be granted to Hogwarts to cover for medical
The children in Hogwarts honoured for a full week without being prompted to do so and, at the end of their mourning, her portrait was hung.
All the Gryffindors were happy to have the Madam Maud as the guardian of their Common Room, and they were even willing to show their Slytherin classmates where the entrance was so they could talk to the kind Lady too. Hogwarts never saw such benevolent actions between the rival Houses.
Madam Maud would talk to all the students who addressed her, and even a few teachers went to her sometimes. She was happy there, as a painting, without pain and devoid of all suffering. Life was never as good as death turned out to be.
But the years went by, and the students who loved the kind nurse graduated. New students entered the secret room behind her portrait and they didn't speak to her. These students didn't know how kind the Maud had been and they never bothered to get to know her.
Her only comforts were the quiet, philosophical visits from Madam Catherine's portrait and the wild getaways with Violet's, once she died. It wasn't enough, but it was something. At least her body didn't hurt anymore and the furniture didn't crack under her weight.
Now it hurt to know she was not a person anymore. It hurt to be ignored, to only be told the password so the students would get to spend the rest of their day with their friends.
With each year that passed, the students would be even less interested in her name. She ceased to be Madam Maud for them, just to be called the name she loathed for so much time; the name that made her hate herself.
It hurt to be the Fat Lady.
