find out who am I too

But if you can't look inside you

Find out who am I too

Be in the position to make me feel so

Damn unpretty

~I Feel Pretty/Unpretty; Glee Cast~

There's an array of cosmetics and hair products arranged on my bedside table. I sit on the floor, Kitchen bumping his head gently against my clenched fist, hunched over, arms wrapped around my stomach.

Why does everyone have to be so fake in this day and age? Why is there so much make-up on the surfaces around the room, why is hair gel and a straightening spell considered the only acceptable way to start my day?

Why do I squash my feet into tiny little shoes with too-high heels? Why do I wear make-up and gel-and-spell my hair smooth?

To escape them and to keep him.

'Them' is the various bitches sprinkled throughout the years and houses who'll pounce on anyone who tries to rise above the stereotypes. Lipglossed, straightened, made-up to the max, they roam the hallways, the tapping of their heels a hellish drill that never ends. They imprison us all within bars of foundation and mascara and tight clothes and heels.

'Him'…well, isn't it obvious? Scorpius is one boy I want to hang onto in this crazy world and with those bitches roaming the corridors I'm hardly likely to want to look anything less than perfect around him.

But before I met him, I wasn't insecure. Make-up wasn't commonplace on my desk and the gel-and-spell routine hadn't even been thought of. I was a happy little thirteen year-old with wild hair and freckles you could draw dot-to-dot pictures with. I knew about the roll of fat around my middle but I didn't care.

Who cared about silly little things like bellies that wobbled and freckles that stubbornly broke through make-up and spots glowing like volcanoes on your chin when you could spend lazy summer day with your family? Who cared about straightening spells and Siren's Secrets hair gel when you could paddle in a stream and make daisy chains and roll in the scent of freshly-mown grass and sheer summertime?

But then fourth year began, and my friends had learnt over the summer about make-up, about the gel-and-spell routine and about how all this would help attract a boy. I didn't care. Scorpius had seen me at my worst - hair tangled up with straw, freckles joining up on my face, lobster-red arms and legs from forgetting to use sun-screening spells - and he was hardly likely to ask me out anyway.

But he did, and for a few days it was blissful. The late-autumn sun shone through the windows and every morning you could sneak out to the grounds and roll through piles of Gryffindor leaves until Filch came running out of the castle brandishing his rake at you. And I found out for the first time about boys and how their lips and hands felt on my body.

But then the bitches swarmed like mosquitoes, all determined to sink their teeth into him and I was terrified to realise that he didn't mind the attention. In fact, he encouraged it and flirted with them in a light-hearted 'I have a girlfriend but a little light flirting is fine' way. I pleaded with other newly-boy-crazy girls to show me how to keep him close to me. They taught me about artificial beauty.

I didn't understand then, when they transformed me from the young girl with the freckles and the tangled hair to the teenager with layers of make-up and hair that crackled with product. I still don't understand today.

Beauty isn't in the lipgloss and the tight skirts and the spiked heels. Beauty is in the way you smile, the glow that comes from within, the tangled head of hair because it shows who you really are. Gingerbread women, that's all we are. Row after row of teens with shining lips and straightened hair and high heels and tight skirts. We are dough, moulded the same way and expected to conform to the cookie cutter that shaped us. If we can't or won't, we're thrown away.

But I won't be like this any more. If Scorpius loves me, he'll want me just as much and perhaps even more when I look like myself again. For him, I changed to a person even I don't recognise. So, overnight, I package up all the make-up and hair gels and send them away to a gift-giving charity. There are people out there who want those things more than I do.

And I walk proudly into the Great Hall the next day, hair tangled, freckles proudly standing out, in a loose skirt and flat shoes and finally feeling like me again. And people look at me and the names start being called out. I blink back the tears and sit down.

And Scorpius leaves me. I see him around the corridors, with the bitches and I can't help thinking I need to get out. I need to leave Hogwarts, leave the horror of my teenage years behind. I need to find out who I really am inside.

So when we graduate, I leave Britain and go off chasing dragons with Uncle Charlie for three years, returning with a new short haircut and burns up and down my arms and a scar above my left eyebrow from when I tried to hand-feed an irate baby Horntail. This is me, scarred and cut, rampant freckles up and down my arms and legs and a tattoo of a Chinese Firebolt slithering in figure-eights across my back.

I start touring the country, and later Europe, and going to schools and telling the children about real beauty. I show them pictures of what artificial beauty can do to you. Some girls cry at the harsh reality and they promise to be natural. I make friends and the sense of pride when some teenage girls send me picture of themselves without make-up and hair potions, looking beautiful.

Five years after I left Hogwarts, I see him again. And he makes me cry, because he's the only one who's in the position to make me feel so damn unpretty and, despite five years of never seeing him and his grey eyes and trying to fill the hole in my heart with dragons and teaching, I'm not over him.

He takes me for a coffee and we make stilted conversation over croissants and marmalade. After our families and what we've been doing for the past five years, there doesn't seem to be much else to say, and I stand up to leave.

"Don't go, Rose, please," he begs, catching my arm. "I need you to stay. I just need you."

"You broke up with me," I remind him, tearing myself out of his grip. "You didn't like that I didn't conform to teenage witch regulations and you left me."

"I was an idiot," he says and I note incredulously of the tears in his eyes. "You're beautiful, Rose, even more so now with your scars. I'm so proud of you, teaching teenagers what beauty really is."

"I don't belong to you!" I scream, blinking back tears and trying to swallow the ever-present lump in my throat. "You have no right to be proud of me!"

"No, you don't belong to me," he agrees. "You're an independent woman, you've proved that by living for five years alone. But I want you to maybe consider taking a break from your brilliant solo life and coming to me occasionally. Please?"

I can't help it, I just fall into his arms. With him holding me tight and whispering that he'll never let go, I feel truly pretty.

"You're beautiful," he whispers, running a hand through my short curls. "Utterly beautiful."

"What does that mean to you?" I ask. I'm not going to let him just take me away again, I went through too much shit when he left to fall again so easily.

"It means you're smart and crazy and funny," he begins, looking into my eyes all the while to let me know he speaks only the truth. "It means you're amazing and independent and kind and generous and the most a-fucking-mazing person I've ever met and that I love you with all my heart for just being you, Rose Nymphadora Weasley."

And then he kisses me and the tears leak out from under my closed eyelids and I feel amazing. To be all poetical, I feel pretty and witty and bright, and I pity any girl who isn't me tonight.

And I don't even notice when the coffee goes cold.

This was for NextGen Fanatics' Song of The Day: I Feel Pretty/Unpretty; Glee Cast with the prompts lipgloss, smile and croissant.

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