AN: TRIGGER WARNING for eating disorders. Please read with caution. This story does not address recovery, although I may write a second part in the future. I don't own Harry Potter.


Paper Bag

There's always been a void inside of her. At first, it was not knowing why she was different, why she could make her toys float across the room to her or turn the schoolyard bully's hair bright blue. Once she discovered she was a witch, her focus shifted to being the best in her class, proving that she was just as capable as any magically-raised child. But she's done that, and the void is still there. It doesn't seem to shrink, no matter how many Outstandings she gets or how much extra-credit work she volunteers to do. By fourth year, she's starting to wonder if she might be happier if she were more like her roommates, content to spend their free time gossiping and practicing cosmetic spells. She still thinks they are shallow and dumb, but she envies the fun they seem to have.

It starts innocently enough. She overhears Lavender mention calorie counting, something Lavender had read about in some teen magazine or other. Lavender and Parvati want to try it, just until the Yule Ball, just so they can look extra good in their dresses. They're becoming women, and they want to lose their baby fat and flaunt what little they have.

At first, she doesn't think anything of it. Nobody is going to ask her to the Yule Ball. She probably won't go. She'd hoped that Ron might ask her, but he hasn't, and she won't ask him first because she has no interest in making a fool of herself by getting rejected by her best friend. He's been salivating over Fleur Delacour all term. The attraction is obviously not reciprocated, but she knows she can't hold a candle even to an unrequited infatuation. Harry, likewise, is mooning over Cho Chang and probably hasn't given her a second thought.

So, when Viktor Krum asks her to be his date, she accepts. She's talked to him a few times when they'd seen each other in the library, and he seems nice enough. Like her, he's studious, and like Harry, he seems to run from the noise that his fame creates. She isn't interested in Quidditch, but he is undeniably good-looking, and it's flattering to be wanted. Nobody has ever wanted her romantically before, and who knows when anyone will again? All the boys she knows only see her as a brain, not a person.

Lavender and Parvati are always talking about their diet now, sitting in bed with the curtains open at night and comparing calorie intakes. They don't seem to take it too seriously, shrugging it off if they felt like a second serving of pudding, saying silly things like, "My dress is pretty, but that treacle tart looked prettier" and then dissolving into giggles.

She casts a silencing spell around her bed to shut out the noise. Alone with her thoughts, she wonders if she should also go on a diet. She isn't attractive. Her front teeth are too big, and her hair is long and frizzy, and her skin gets dry and flaky in the winter. She doesn't think she's fat, but slimming down a bit couldn't hurt. This is her chance to be more than just a good student. This is her chance to be a girl. Maybe once she's shown that she can be both smart and pretty, the emptiness inside her will go away.


She takes to counting calories like a duck to water. At first, she only counts to find out how much she is eating. Then, she begins setting goals for herself. She gets a thrill every time she tallies up the numbers at the end of the day and sees that she has achieved what she set out to do. Not only that, but it keeps her mind occupied. She loves the mathematics of it, the strategy, the careful calculations of what she will eat at the next meal or the next day in order to reach her goal.

The numbers get lower. She challenges herself to cut down her intake by one hundred, two hundred, three hundred calories. It's like a game that she plays with herself. It's absolutely secret, and it's terribly exciting. All her life, she has done things with the hopes that others will notice how brilliant she is. But this, nobody knows about. She does it for herself and herself alone. In the eyes of others, she loses nothing if she fails—not that she ever fails. She's proving to herself that she can have it all, do it all. It somehow makes her feel like she can do anything.

She doesn't need to lose weight, but it's satisfying to see her waistband fitting looser or her collarbones showing more. She likes to imagine that the hollow part inside is getting smaller, too. It only seems logical. She needs her internal organs, but she can live without the void inside her. If she shrinks the receptacle, then those inessential parts should disappear. The more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that she has constructed a plan that is absolutely fool-proof and that's very satisfying, too.


Snape hands her paper back with an Acceptable scrawled at the top and a laundry list of derisive comments in the margins, although he notes that the paper's one merit is being "shorter than the dissertations you usually foist upon me." She isn't as surprised as she should be. She'd known it wasn't her best work. The paper had slipped her mind. She'd already changed into her nightdress and settled under the covers, only to bolt upright when she remembered it was due the next morning.

Ron catches a glimpse of her mark as she's returning the paper to her book bag, and he teases her about "losing her touch." She goes off on him about how "some of us have the capacity to be worried about important things" and "at least I'm not wasting my time lusting after a girl who would never give me time of day." Snape takes a hefty amount of points for disrupting class. As soon as the period ends, she and Ron have a massive row outside in the hallway, while Harry hovers uncomfortably between them and tries to play mediator.

She isn't hungry, so she doesn't go down to dinner that night. She's fuming over the fight with Ron, and fuming that she's fuming about it. Ron is an idiot and isn't worth being upset over. Still, his words got under her skin. She wonders if she really is losing her touch. How could she let an assignment slide like that? If anything, she's usually a week ahead in homework. She goes to bed vowing not to let it happen again.


She begins skipping dinner on the regular, using the time to double and triple check her assignments and study calendar. Without dinner, the numbers drop into triple digits. It's much better this way, tidier. She figures she's saving space in her notebook.

She makes up with Ron, although she begins to wish she hadn't once the nagging starts.

"We never see you anymore," Ron complains. "And you're never at dinner."

"I stop by the kitchens on my way back to the dorms," she says, even though she doesn't. "We have OWLs to think about, you know."

"But 'Mione, OWLs aren't until next year!"

Eventually, she grows tired of Harry and Ron's concern and snaps at them. They stop pestering her, but she knows that they're talking about her behind her back. As long as they let her be, she doesn't care.

True to her promise, she doesn't get an Acceptable on an assignment again. She's filled with a nervous energy that buzzes through her and electrifies her brain, even after her body is ready to collapse from exhaustion. Even Parvati and Lavender have commented on her new sleeping habits, or lack thereof. She's taken to sitting in the common room long after everyone else has gone to bed, drumming her fingers on the coffee table as she reads. When her vision goes blurry and she can't uncross her eyes, she goes upstairs and sits in the window. If she listens closely enough, she can hear the rhythmic breathing of her slumbering roommates. Sometimes, she fogs up the window and draws patterns in the mist with her finger like a little kid. Once, she thought she saw a bird down in the courtyard, but it was just a paper bag tumbling in the breeze.


By the time the Yule Ball rolls around, she's feeling quite proud of all that she's accomplished. Upon her request, her mother sends her some muggle makeup, and she spends nearly an hour applying and reapplying it, trying to make it perfect. She wants everything to be perfect. She wants to prove that she can have it all.

After her makeup is done and her hair has been tamed with an entire bottle of product, she carefully slips into the pale blue robes she purchased at the last Hogsmeade weekend, a garment that resembles a muggle gown more than traditional wizarding attire. She looks at herself in the mirror. The dress hangs off her body like her skeleton is nothing but an extended version of a wire hanger. She is all long limbs and sharp angles, ensconced by a cloud of silk and tulle. The cherry red of her lip gloss stands out against the pallor of her skin.

She smiles. For the first time, she is beautiful.