Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
All I ever wanted to do was make them proud. I wanted a good job, a pretty wife and some children one day. My two older brothers could do no wrong and I wanted to be just like them, but I could never quite manage it. I was never cool, and I was never athletic, and I was never popular. I got good grades, though, and that made Bill proud enough that I could ignore my other deficiencies. When I was made a prefect, it was the happiest day of my life; at least until I was made Head Boy. My bliss over that lasted exactly as long as it took my mother to shout the news to the whole house. Then the teasing began. Do you know what it's like to have every single achievement you were ever even vaguely proudly of denigrated, mocked or ignored by the ones you would die to impress? It gave me a cringing inferiority complex, and when praise was offered, even by somebody like Barty Crouch, I held each compliment to myself like it would vanish if I let go. It was minor approval at best, the kind of thing you'd say to a child who gets good grades, but I adored it. Fudge treated me better, and when push came to shove, I sided with the one who'd treated me like I mattered. I know he's wrong, but he treats as if I'm somebody, and that's all that I care about anymore.