Her lips are a little too red, and her nails a little too long. She's wearing a black dress that's probably a little too tight, and her laugh is a little bit fake.
It's obvious to anyone, she's there just like the rest of them- to get drunk and to maybe cop a feel before they went back to their monotone life, to feel as if she's beautiful and powerful just for one night.
Mary understands, she herself is wearing a too tight dress, too bright red shoes, too dark eyeliner. She's too simple, too plain, too much nothing to be anything. Mary sits at the bar, drinks her dull drink, and smiles a boring smile at anyone who graces her with a look, hoping that maybe tonight will destroy her mundane routine.
(It didn't.)
And Mary comes back the next night, and the next. She goes outside once, with a man who could have been attractive but wasn't, and lets him touch her in the back alley; but he was soon forgotten after that night, when Mary reapplied her lipstick and settled back on her stool.
"You know, you could be the Ugly Duckling," one man whispers into her neck, sometime later. "But you never get pretty, you'll always stay the same."
Mary smiles and purrs, and pulls him up to a kiss, trapping his words in his mouth. An ugly duckling she may be, but she wasn't the only one, caught in a never-ending tedious cycle.
Her dress was a little too tight, her heels a little too high, her eyes a little too flat, and her life a little too bland.
Mary was used to it.
So she smiled.
for daily prophet ql, season two round twelve, using ugly duckling prompt.
i dont own hp.