Disclaimer: Not mine, of course!
A/N: Written for Bad Mum, based on the prompt 'Ugly.' I hope you like it!

Fleur is nine years old. She looks at her face in the mirror.

The rest of the world is attracted to her childish beauty and charm. She smiles and melts hearts. Her beauty is all they ever see. They don't see the child who yearns for knowledge and is desperate to explore. She wants to get her pretty dresses dirty in the mud as she races to climb trees. She wants to dye her milky skin with coloured icing sugar as she eats too much cake.

But she can't. She can't be a child, because she is beautiful and she is Fleur Delacour.

She is a part Veela. She thinks that was probably the first thing she ever knew. She has already learnt how to manipulate those around her with her powers. She can get her own way with a flutter of her long eyelashes. She can get out of trouble simply by pouting her pink lips. She never gets told off and she never gets reprimanded.

But she hates it.

She is told how she must appreciate her gift and her powers. She is told she will break hearts.

She doesn't want to break hearts. She wants what every little girl wants. She wants someone to look beyond her face and her looks to see what beauty is inside her. She wants someone to fall in love with Fleur.

As she looks in the mirror, she does not see the exquisiteness that the rest of the world sees. She knows she is beautiful. She knows that. But she also knows that beauty is only skin deep.

She thinks that she must be a very ugly person, that she must be ugly inside, because no one has ever taken the time to get to know her to discover what loveliness or what horrors lie within. Fleur thinks she is ugly, because no one has ever told her otherwise.