Make You Feel Pretty: An Ugly Girls Story.
By alloy (Beta: Sandy)
There are two histories of Hogwarts. There is the official "Hogwarts, A History," a seminal book of which six copies reside in the school library, and only one copy has ever been withdrawn; that only because the earnest young woman who did so, had left her copy at home.
The other book also resides in the school library and has never been withdrawn. It is part diary, part scrapbook. Its pages contain a thousand years of the thoughts and dreams of young witches, and their tears stain every page.
He's insufferable and arrogant; he thinks he's better than me just because father values his smithing. I don't see why? There's always soot on his freckles and in his hair. Why, oh why, did Father make Robert Weasley his apprentice?
It was the first entry in the Ugly Girls book, an entry that many girls overlooked. But to some girls it was important. According to 'Hogwarts a History,' Robert Weasley was apprenticed to Godric Gryffindor whose daughter he eventually married. Helen Gryffindor was reported to be a great beauty.
How typically Weasley to make a girl feel that way.
Despite her tears, the young girl smiled and pushed her bushy hair out of her face.
Few of the entries in the book were signed, though many ugly girls with an intimate knowledge of their family histories, claimed to have found entries by their mothers and grandmothers. There were a thousand years worth of entries about Weasleys. Something in the make up of a Weasley man demanded that girls name and shame them.
Robert, Andrew, Richard, Marc, Giles, Huge, Kevin, Rupert, Arthur, Bilius, Donovan, William, Charlie, Percy, George, Fred, Ronald, Craig, Thomas, and many more. Sometimes the entry was as simple as:
"I hate Hugh Weasley!"
Other entries listed took up pages listing a young man's faults.
There were seventeen full pages devoted to Ronald Weasley, with the exception of Penelope Clearwater's entries to his brother Percy that were more than the entries to his brother's and father combined.
"Ahem." The girl looked up to find a familiar lanky form in front of her.
"It took me a while to find you here."
She nodded.
"I should have looked here first. I call this section, 'Hermione's corner.'"
Ron Weasley dropped to his haunches; his rough hands gently pulled the girl's hair from her face, his thumb wiping away a tear. "Your mum used to come here often, mostly after we had had a fight. I used to follow her, just to make sure she was safe. Sometimes I had to borrow Uncle Harry's cloak."
"She still comes here sometimes."
"I know, Ariel." Her father's face formed a frown. "I'm not happy that I still hurt her sometimes."
"It's not often, Dad, and not always because you've made her mad."
"I'm supposed to make you feel better," Ron said. "Not the other way around."
"That's okay." Ariel sniffed hard, put the book to once side, and hugged her father hard.
"Dad, am I ugly?"
Another girl might have expected a simple denial from such an ostensible simple man as her father, but Arial knew better than that.
"Who said you were ugly?"
"No one. It's just that the boys don't look at me like they look at Rosemary or Sage."
"Do you want them to?"
It was an important question: the Malfoy twins had complained many times about how boys always gawked at them, never treating them like people, and Ariel had pitied them.
"Sometimes, Dad."
Ron Weasley paused and thought for a moment. "Your Aunt Fleur is a very beautiful woman; many men think that Uncle Bill married her for that reason."
"But that's not true!" Ariel objected, "That's not fair to Aunt Fleur or to Uncle Bill."
"But he did marry her for her beauty."
Ariel opened her mouth to object, but her father held up his hand. "There was a beauty that only Uncle Bill could see. That was why she married him, because of all the men that looked at her; he was the only one who saw it."
Her father chuckled. "It took me ages to see it, even after Uncle Bill told me it was there."
"But you saw it in Mum?"
"From the very start."
"Do you see it in me?"
"No."
Ariel gasped, he was her father. All her life Ariel had felt safe and warm and loved in his presence, and now he had just said she was ugly.
"I'm not supposed to, I'm your dad. A dad always sees his daughter as beautiful. What I see in you is your mum, every thing that's beautiful in your mum, I see in you."
Ariel hugged her father harder. "You have to say that 'cause you're my dad."
He nodded. "Very true, it's in the rules."
Ron wiped away a few more tears as Ariel sat back on her chair. "Why are you hiding, luv?"
"My best friend thinks I'm ugly."
"Oh, he told you that, did he?"
"No, he…." Ariel swallowed, looked into her father's concerned face. "He stood me up!" she blurted. "We were supposed to go to Hogsmeade together, properly like a date." Ariel flung herself into her father's arms again. "He stood me up and Melinda saw him leaving the school with a Hufflepuff girl." The tears flowed freely again.
"I assume we're talking about Frank Longbottom?"
"Yes… yes, Daddy, who else?"
"Lynda Longbottom is in Hufflepuff."
Ariel looked up in surprise. Lynda was Frank's twin. Why would Frank stand her up to leave the school with his sister?
"I'm afraid Frank had some bad news. Uncle Neville summoned Lynda and him home."
"He could have told me. I would have understood, how could he just go?"
"He didn't want to. In fact, Uncle Neville had to be very firm with him. So he asked someone to give you a message."
"I never got any!"
"Well you were bloody difficult to find."
"Oh dad, when Melinda told me what she had seen, I just…"
"Acted like your mother."
Ariel forced a smile. "Something like that."
"Franklin asked me to tell you that he's very sorry to break your date, and that he'll make it up to you."
"What's wrong, Dad?"
"His Grandfather's just died."
"A didn't know he had a grandfather?" said Ariel shaking her head.
"He'd been in St. Mungo's since Uncle Neville was a baby."
Ariel swallowed. "From the war?" she asked, "The first one when Uncle Harry's parents were killed?"
"Yes. Uncle Neville's always kept it a secret, and your mother and I have respected that."
"Frank's never told me."
"Ariel, he asked me to tell you. He said he wanted to tell you everything today."
Ariel sat quietly for a while and her father stood up groaning as he did so.
"It's important when a boy wants to tell a girl his secrets. Remember that."
"I will, Dad."
"Your mother and I are having a private supper in our quarters if you care to join us?"
"Thanks."
"You can floo-call Longbottom Manor from our fire."
Ariel smiled her thanks
"Alright, then?"
"Alright."
Ariel watched as her father made his way through the library, his copper head nodding as he acknowledged a barrage of friendly greetings as Professor Weasley, Defence Against The Dark Arts Master.
Ariel picked up the book, placing her palm on its spine, she allowed it to open at random. It was an entry she had never seen before, a single line in her mother's precise script.
"Ron Weasley loves me."
Murmuring to herself, Ariel looked up to see her father exit the library.
She looked down; underneath her mother's writing, the book had interpreted her murmuring, two words in her own hand writing.
"Me too."
fin