Written for the All-Era Endurance Test Competition Round 3 - Riddle era, set at Hogwarts or Diagon Alley, use one of the Unforgivable Curses.
A Place to Belong
Myrtle was never an attractive little girl, even her parents admitted it. Her eyes and hair were dark, providing a stark contrast with her pale face, which even as a small child showed a distressing tendency towards pimples. Her heavy-framed glasses did nothing for her, seeming always too big for her thin face, and however pretty the dresses her mother put her in were, she always managed to look dowdy. Her hair remained stubbornly straight, despite the knots of rag her mother tied in it every night in an attempt to coax it to curl. Perhaps the discomfort of this was the reason she always seemed to get out of bed on the wrong side. She was one of life's born pessimists, and her natural expression was a frown, despite the efforts of her parents and brother and wider family to "cheer Myrtle up".
Perhaps at the root of Myrtle's troubles was the feeling, which she never admitted to anyone, that she did not really fit – in her family, in her school, in her neighbourhood. She could not articulate why – she was only a child after all – but she felt as if there was something wrong either with the familiar places she inhabited or with herself. She felt different.
Children are quick to pick up on differences and to act on them. Myrtle had no friends either at school or in the quiet neighbourhood where she lived with her parents and younger brother, Brian. She was used to playing on her own in a corner, or to reading a book while other children ran and shrieked around her. But she was not picked on or bullied. Things – things no one could quite explain – happened to people who were mean to Myrtle. Sally Robinson's beautiful curly hair became as straight as Myrtle's own after she mocked Myrtle's plain looks; Davy Russell fell and broke his ankle immediately after his football hit Myrtle full in the face, breaking her glasses, and Peg Rathbone ran home in tears one day with the homework and reading book in her school satchel in shreds after she pulled Myrtle's book away from her as she sat on the school steps reading.
Strange things happened at home too. Brian's beloved tin soldiers melted into a puddle of lead one day after an argument about who should help their mother with the shopping; Mother's favourite vase, which she saw shatter when Myrtle knocked it off the mantelpiece, was picked up from the floor whole and unbroken, and the hated curl rags were found morning after morning on Myrtle's pillow with no sign of them having been pulled out or untied.
It was almost a relief when the strangely-clad woman came to the door with a letter and the news that Myrtle was genuinely different. It seemed that she was a witch, and the woman, looking somewhat sternly at Myrtle's parents, whilst smiling at the girl herself, told them it would be in everyone's best interests for her to go to a special school to learn to use her talents. Myrtle's parents agreed, with some degree of guilt about how little reluctance they felt about getting rid of their difficult daughter for much of every year.
To Myrtle herself, the news came as a blessed relief. That there was somewhere where she would be normal, where she would not be ostracised and ignored for what and who she was, was an idea beyond her wildest dreams. She counted down the days until September 1st when she would come into her own world.
But Hogwarts did not live up to her expectations. The first day or two were fine, even enjoyable. Sorted into Ravenclaw, she found herself sharing a bedroom halfway up a tower with four other eleven-year-olds. It was the first time she had ever shared a room with anyone, and at first she enjoyed their chatter and the new girl camaraderie that they fell into. However, it did not last. As time wore on, the four other girls in the dormitory paired off as friends, leaving her the odd one out again. They were not unkind to her, but they made no effort to include her. The boys were not so kind, particularly those from Gryffindor and Slytherin. The younger boys from those houses seemed to think that house pride dictated they be mean to those they saw as less fortunate or less talented than themselves at every opportunity. And Myrtle soon discovered that she did not have the defence here that she had had at home. When she pulled out her wand to hex a boy who had laughed at her glasses, she was told off by a prefect and hauled before her head of house, who told her firmly that the use of magic against another student was never permitted and gave her a detention.
Time wore on. Myrtle enjoyed her classes, particularly Potions and Charms, and gained herself a reputation as a steady if not particularly brilliant student. Much of that was because of the time she spent alone studying whilst others were with their friends. The pattern of the first few weeks never changed, and Myrtle remained friendless as she had been in the Muggle world. Her rather forbidding manner and her permanently put-upon expression deterred anyone from approaching her if they could help it, and if anyone was ever kind to her, she invariably snapped at them out of habit. So she was left strictly alone, and as the boys got tired of laughing at her, and began to ignore her completely in favour of the prettier girls, the girls her own age began to find her a useful scapegoat and target for jokes. Her dorm-mate Olive Hornby was particularly assiduous in taking every opportunity to tease Myrtle for her ordinary looks, her heavy glasses and her acne, tossing her own blonde hair and smiling to show her small and perfect teeth as she did so. Myrtle hated her.
When she went home, as she did every Christmas and every summer, things were somewhat improved. The neighbours did not know that she was a witch of course, but they knew that she went to a special boarding school, and the local teenagers held her in a kind of awe as a child prodigy or a genius. Her parents were nervous around her, but assuaged their guilt at their neglect during school terms, by buying her clothes and books and acne creams, and cooking her favourite meals. Brian was frankly scared of her, and kept out of her way as much as he could. Myrtle enjoyed the gifts and the food, and liked lording it over the local teenagers and making up stories about her travels and her achievements and the rich and powerful people she had met. No one dared challenge her.
But when she returned to school, the place where she should have belonged, she was once more the outsider and the misfit. Olive's bullying increased as time went on, and she drew other girls into it, so that Myrtle was truly alone. To add to her misery, a clique of older boys, mostly Slytherins, were conducting a subtle but persistent campaign against Muggle born students, which meant that many students openly sneered at and avoided her for her parentage, whilst the other students in the same position as her did not care for her enough to defend her as they did each other. Myrtle became increasingly lonely and bitter, and when Professor Merrythought taught them about the Unforgivable Curses, spent many hours researching them in the library. She spent many more dreaming about how she would use Crucio on Olive Hornby and her other detractors once she got the chance, and how she would then make Olive her slave forever by judicious use of Imperio. She did not care if the curses, were illegal or wrong: she cared only that she had been put down and bullied and deserved some kind of revenge.
It was not to be, of course. In school they were overlooked always by teachers and prefects, and Myrtle knew that once she left school she would never be brave enough to carry out her plans, even if she had the opportunity or skill to do so, which she doubted in her most honest moments. She was counting the days again now, counting the days until the end of her school career, when she could find herself a job that would involve as little contact with others as possible and allow her to live with a cat and an owl for company, with her books to keep her busy, and no need to worry about what anyone else thought of her. It might be four years away, but the thought kept her going through many difficult days.
One day, one day not too far away, she would find a place of her own, a place to really belong.