She borrowed Colin Creevy's camera.
She spelled it to take continuous, multiple shots, and then placed it in the middle of the room.
Crossing to her father's record player, she put on a low, thumping tune, one that made her hands itch and her body move and the time slip away. She was tempted to sing along, but knew that though it sounded alright to her, her voice would distract and detract from the music, and disgust anyone who heard her. So she just set the camera to start and let herself move.
She shook her hair and twirled, stamping on the ground and then wiggling her hips. She was sure it would look silly to anyone else, but it just...felt right. Her arms became chains, whipping through the air. She wanted to catch and snare and keep. Keep and never let people slip away. Keep and show them she was more than what they thought.
But she knew she wasn't.
She danced closer to the camera, putting on a show. She wanted proof, proof that this beautiful thing she felt shivering inside her wasn't just her imagination, proof that she wasn't a swan in the body of a goose, that she was a *swan*. The flashbulb was like a strobe light, and it was starting to send up showers of sparks. They landed on her skin and in her hair, but burned themselves out without doing damage.
She twisted her hair up in her hands, pouting and flirting at the camera, then shaking her hair loose to fall around her face in streams of red. Oh, if her brothers could see their little sister now... she was hot, she was sexy, she was pretty, and the music had just stopped.
Jerked out of her trancelike state, she flicked her wand at the camera and shut it off. The crackling of the silent record player was too much for her to stand, and she turned that off too. Gathering up the camera, she set out to return it to Colin and get instructions on developing the film.
Later on, she settled down on her bed with a package of photographs. She'd taken dozens, and Colin had nearly had a fit over the condition of his camera. But it was worth it. She had her proof now.
Opening the package, she dumped the photos on the bed. She'd chosen to do them the Muggle way, and her own face shone out at her from the pictures, unmoving, unblinking. She quickly shuffled through them, image after image after image.
Wait.
No, this wasn't right. Surely... surely she hadn't looked that stupid? Surely she hadn't looked like that, acted like that, while her heart soared with joy?
No.
NO.
She was ugly. She was hideous, she was an idiot. Not in the ranks of Millicent Bulstrode, to be sure, but the best that could be said was "won't make you throw up to look at her."
Her grotesquely pouting face stared at her without moving, and she plucked it from the stack and ripped it up, then threw its tattered remains across the room. The pieces caught in the air and fluttered back down to rest at the foot of her bed.
She went through all the pictures again, slower this time. But still nothing. No light, no shine. No swan.
Tears threatened to escape, but she squeezed her eyes tightly until the feeling went away. Picking up the stack of photographs, she flipped through them, unable to look at just one image at a time. Her face leered back at her, lips pursed, then grinning, then winking...
And she thought she may've seen it.
She flipped through them again. Yes, there was something there. A blur of light. A brief glimpse of her guts, her insides, her swan... She flipped again, slowing down around the point she had seen it. It was still there, but less so now that she was looking for it. Closely inspecting the pictures this time, she couldn't find it at all.
She grouped all the pictures together again, and flipped. It was back. Just a flash, amongst the fakeness and the plainness. Just a second of what was her. She couldn't tell what it was... the smile? The posture? The position of her hair? Maybe it was all of them at once.
She flipped. And flipped. And flipped again. Then she set the stack down slowly and smiled to herself before she burnt the photographs to white powdery ashes.
A wind caught on the pile of dusty shreds and swirled it around her bed and around the room. Some of the fragments went out the window and the rest collected on the beds of her housemates, looking for all the world like feathers. She chuckled. When they asked what the mess was... she'd just tell them a swan had been there.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
the end.