Most of the time, Eloise was miserable at Hogwarts.
She had no friends. Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones were joined at the hip and tended to ignore her completely; the other girls in her year weren't quite as inseparable but also seemed standoffish to the point of hostility when speaking with her.
She felt uncomfortable all the time. Her face itched and stung, and her parents refused to take her to a Healer specializing in skin conditions.
She hated her classes, felt constantly behind, struggled to complete her homework, flushed every time a teacher directed her to answer a question.
She participated in no activities, as a consequence of having no friends – or perhaps her lack of interest in clubs and teams precipitated her friendless existence?
Most recently, she had failed her OWLS. Nearly all of them, at least. She'd managed to scrape an Acceptable in Herbology, but in her fellow Puffs' minds, an Herbology OWL was the absolute bare minimum of academic mediocrity.
She felt she'd studied hard, but she'd failed them anyway.
And now her parents wanted to take her out of school, which would be fine with her because she was absolutely exhausted at trying to be happy at this godforsaken school when she wasn't.
Except, she had never spoken a word to Harry Potter.
She'd heard the other Hufflepuff girls gushing over Harry ever since she'd returned to school, discussing the best way to garner his attention, or whether he was interested in Hermione Granger, or whether he really was the Chosen One. Eloise very rarely felt superior in anything she did, but she took some small pride in being in love with Harry all along, far before it was in vogue to lament one's poor prospects of dating him.
Even in their second year, when most of her peers were convinced he was the Heir of Slytherin and had Petrified Justin Finch-Fletchley, and even in their fourth year, when all of Hufflepuff was united in their hatred of him, she had maintained a secret, yearning love for Harry Potter.
She had wanted to speak to him so many times. They shared classes together every term – it wasn't as if she never had the opportunity. Sometimes she would plan what to say in her head, from a simple Hi, Harry to elaborate scenes involving dropped quills or tripping over desks. Then she would arrive in class, and stare at him, and try to say something, but the words would catch in her throat and the moment would pass and she would say nothing.
She never told a single person.
She didn't have anyone to tell, primarily. But also, the secret of her crush sustained her, and it became private and intimate and hers alone. She could daydream about him whenever she wanted – mostly innocent, but as the years progressed, they sometimes turned salacious – and no one would ever ask her why she hadn't yet acted on something she professed to want: his attention.
In fact, she sometimes thought her infatuation was stronger precisely because she never acted upon it. She watched him laugh and grin, relaxed, with his friends, and was sometimes happy that smile was never delivered to her. After so many years, she was afraid it could never hope to live up to the devastating smile she daydreamed.
That realization came to her only in her most honest moments of self-reflection. Most of the time, she was at varying stages of her willingness to approach Harry within ritualistic cycles she concocted for herself. May in any given year was far too late to talk to him, for example, as they'd soon be departing school for the summer. Similarly, September was much too early – she needed time to determine whether he'd acquired a beautiful, charming girlfriend over the summer, one who didn't have horrendous acne and social anxiety.
There had been some close calls over the years, a few occasions where she had nearly carried out some plan or another, but in the end her fearfulness won out, swallowing up every morsel of confidence she possessed and leaving none to pursue Harry.
She had nearly asked him to the Yule Ball. She planned to pull him aside after dinner, which she ate alone, into an antechamber off the Great Hall where no other Hufflepuffs could observe her House treachery and proposition him. She had even filled out a form for owl-order Carraway's Clearing Cream, guaranteed to heal even the most horrid complexions in mere moments, and planned to post it in the Owlery that night, once he inevitably agreed to go with her.
But when she left her second-to-last period of the day, where she sat alone, she overheard two Hufflepuff sixth years gossiping about Cedric Diggory's date prospects, as Hufflepuff seventh year Katie Thompson, whom Eloise knew only by sight, had apparently unsuccessfully asked Cedric to the Yule Ball earlier that day.
"It's just so tacky," one girl said loudly to the other. "Asking the school champion to the Yule Ball."
"You know Katie only did it because she wanted to be the center of attention," the other girl agreed.
"I mean, would you ask Aidan Lynch to be your date for the World Cup ball?"
"Right! It's so presumptuous!"
And Eloise, never one for persevering in the face of self-doubt, felt her plan crumble.
She didn't ask Harry to the Yule Ball, and she didn't speak to him for the next year and a half.
She thought her sixth year would be different until she received her OWL results, and a note from Professor Sprout telling her very kindly not to fret, that they would meet on the first day of term and discuss how to proceed.
Eloise's father didn't even get as far as the letter. The moment he saw failing grade after failing grade, he didn't want her to return to Hogwarts. He hadn't wanted her to return before she received her results, either, but in his mind the abysmal showing cemented his decision.
"You can study at home just as well as you can study there," he'd said. "Clearly, the lessons aren't sticking."
Stung, Eloise had cried, and argued, and sulked, and eventually she'd gotten her way, after her father had written to Professor Sprout, who had written back and assured him Hogwarts' remedial OWL courses often yielded remarkable success stories, and while these were indeed perilous times, it was far better for Eloise's future to have a few OWLs to her name.
When she returned to school, Professor Sprout urged her to focus on two remedial OWL courses that year. "That will give you more options," she said. "If these go well, you can try for a few more next year, or even a NEWT. Please don't worry," she said, as Eloise felt tears begin to overflow her eyes once more. "Work hard, speak to your professors, and ask for help. And I'll write to your father and let him know what we've decided," she finished firmly.
So Eloise had tried. She tried to finish all her homework the day it was assigned, tried to practice each spell to mastery. She was terrified of falling behind, but for the most part in the first few weeks of term, she felt she was precariously succeeding.
Of course, her class schedule meant she never saw Harry anymore. Her classes were filled with other dunces like her, sixth years and even a few sorry seventh years trying to salvage their academic record. She didn't care about not being in classes with the rest of the Hufflepuff sixth years – none of them were her friends – but she was positive she'd never muster up the courage to walk up to Harry at the Gryffindor table, or in the courtyard during break, or on the grounds at the weekend.
On the second Thursday after term began, a girl she didn't know hurried up to her after lunch and handed her a note from Professor Sprout, asking Eloise to come to her office immediately. When she arrived, her father was standing, agitated, before Professor Sprout's desk.
"Dad?" Eloise asked, shocked. "What are you doing here?"
"I've come to pick you up," he said. "You're leaving Hogwarts. It's not up for discussion this time."
Evidently, Eloise learned after much badgering, cajoling, and even more tears, that her father's uncle, with whom they were not close, had been found dead with the Dark Mark over his house. While the death of this distant relation meant nothing to Eloise, and she was confident her father had not spoken to the man in years, her father had apparently interpreted the murder as a harbinger for their own safety. He wanted to withdraw Eloise and leave for Europe where his sister, Eloise's aunt, lived with her family.
Eloise failed to understand how living in Europe was any safer than Britain, but her father was stalwart, immovable from the moment she entered the room. She was leaving Hogwarts and that, to him, was that. She had the evening to pack her things and say goodbye to her friends, and they would leave the following day.
That night, as she cried in her bed – she was sure all the other insufferable girls in her year heard her, but for once, she didn't feel she was taking up too much space, her self-consciousness evaporating far too late for her to act on her newfound liberation – she was sad to leave Hogwarts.
Part of it was because, while she'd largely hated her time at school, she'd spent most of the past five years learning how to exist in that solitary context, and living in Europe with her aunt's family seemed to invite ever-more-complicated social situations she was confident she would fail to navigate.
But also, she would never speak to, never act on her crush toward, and possibly never see again the Chosen One, Harry Potter. She had loved him from afar, and she'd always desperately clutched the faintest glimmer of hope that somehow, in some romantic, inexplicably complicated, happily-ever-after sort of way, she would be with him.
She felt sorriest for herself realizing she wouldn't be. And in a moment of self-clarity late in the night, she realized that – that the worst part of leaving a place she'd lived for five years was leaving a boy she had never even spoken to – was the most pathetic of all.
Poor Eloise Midgen - even Hermione uses her as a punchline! Thanks for reading this chapter!