Letters to The Boy Who Lived

3. Light- Fleur Delacour

Dear Harry~

I'm to teach you about light in this letter. This is my story.

"Donec turpis!" I heard my father yell again. The painful spell washed over me again, this time hitting me square in the eye. I wondered why, as a child, I had to go through all of this.

I was the ugly child. I was short, with chubby legs and lank, brown hair. My eyes were a dull grey and had very little life in them. My sister, at only two, was already much prettier than I. Yes, Gabrielle took after our mother. I did not.

But I was to be starting school in September at Beauxbatons, and ugliness would not do. My parents were the rich sort, and they could not bear to think that they'd produced a child less than pretty. So it had started simply enough.

My father paid a large sum for the incantation that would make me pretty for the rest of my life. We'd agreed on it as a family. My parents told me that if I was ugly, I would be teased at school. I did not want that, even at eleven. I wanted to be popular.

My father tried out the incantation on a garden weed first, and instantly it became a rose. We cared for the rose, making sure it never turned back to a weed.

Then, he tried it out, first on my hair. An immense pain came over me, and I started to cry.

"Father, father no!" I screamed, sobbing hysterically. "Not again!" But it had worked. My hair was slightly nicer, turning to a lighter blonde. 

But he did it again. I counted miserably as he did it fourteen times just to my hair, turning it to a radiant blonde. Yes, it was pretty. But the pain was like I'd never experienced before, and I begged him to stop. When my hair was as beautiful as it could have been, he stopped. I was relieved.

He started again the next morning, this time on my whole body. I screamed and cried the whole time, until a tall, slender girl had taken shape. My mother had initially tried to convince my father to stop, but soon he had convinced her. She held me down while my father shot spell after spell at me.

"Beauty is painful, Fleur." said my father, smiling. "You will be a pretty child if we spend all night doing this."

And we did. The only break my father took was at midday, when he went into Paris to buy my schoolbooks. He was back very soon, and since he had finished on my body, he turned to my face.

This was by far the worst. Each part of me was twisted into this fake little girl who I didn't know. I was disgusted, but there was no countercurse. I would be like this forever.

For a year, I was ok. It was my first year at Beauxbatons, and I made many friends. I was like light, some told me. Light radiated from my being.

I knew, though no one else did, that this was not my being. I wanted to go back to the fat, ugly child I was inside. Although I might be giving off light, I was dark inside.

I went back home for the summer holiday, and the rounds of torture started again. Every summer holiday, my father would fix and configure my entire body as I grew. 

And now, I was to walk down the aisle at my wedding. Of course by this time I was done growing, and so my father had not put that painful spell on me in some time.

I was a fake, and I felt so bad for Bill. He had fallen in love with a girl much prettier than she ever should have been. I felt as though my innermost being was represented by the scars on Bill's face, and I wondered why it was he whose looks had to be ruined.

I was never really light. Maybe I looked like light, but my innermost being was darkness.

Harry, know that what seems to be light- to be beautiful- may not be so inside. Take care to see people for their real selves, not their image.

~Fleur

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