ISABELLA FLUME ♦ THIRTY ♦ OWNER OF HONEYDUKES SWEET SHOP ♦ JENNIFER MORRISON
Education: Hogwarts, Former Ravenclaw
“I have the best job ever, owning a candy shop and making kids happy? They should make me a saint.”
Born on the cusp of winter and spring, March 21, 1984, was a day her parents, Michael and Amelia Flume, cherished. They were two highly respected Aurors who had been trying for the longest time to conceive children — their window of opportunity was running out. It was their only way they could think of keeping their marriage together, especially after the war. Both had been through a great deal, including losing two of their previous children and found themselves irreparably changed — but scared of being alone. In turn, they clung to each other and decided to build a new life — starting by restarting a family. Her mother who was almost too old and weathered to have children, went to healer after healer, trying everything she could to have a child. Finally, their miracle of miracles, Isabella Marié Flume was born.
They spoiled their daughter rotten and made sure she was educated in absolutely anything and everything from a young age. Her mother, Amelia, was harder on her daughter than her father was. Especially when it came to food and appearance. She wanted her daughter to be the epitome of perfection but not only that, to grow up a strong woman. Amelia felt by being tough on her daughter, this would cultivate a strong exterior. While this did happen, Isabella was also utterly miserable. Instead of playing wizard games with the other children in Godric’s Hallow, Isabella was learning French, and just injected with all kinds of knowledge she didn’t really want at the time. Happy was what she wanted, and happiness to her was in the form of being free, especially from these expectations — but going outside to play would do. Isabella never got the chance and eventually gave up trying to fight her parents, and ultimately instead started trying to please them.
Still, the absence of the children they should have had, weighed heavily on Isabella’s shoulders. Late at night when they thought their prized daughter was alseep, her parents would bicker and cry about how much they missed their other children. Amelia and Michael blamed each other — and all this made Isabella want to do was make them happy even if it meant sacrificing her own happiness. The only truly happy childhood memories Isabella could draw around her childhood revolved around food — which was a great coincidence seeing as her uncle owned the infamous Honeydukes Sweet Shop. She was always completely entranced when she went in, and Ambrosius and Arabella Flume always gave her the parental love she desperately needed and was lacking. Once her mother saw her love sweets she nicknamed her daughter Belly, in an attempt to maybe get her to lay off the candies. It didn’t really work, so her mother’s primping and comments became frequent.
Isabella tried to be what they wanted and failed at first when she was sorted into Ravenclaw instead of prized Slytherin. But her parents overlooked that first transgression — Ravenclaw was respectable. Isabella became the perfect daughter they wanted her to be. Seeker on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team her Second year. Made prefect in her fifth year. But — when they wanted her to make Captain in her Seventh as well as Head Girl — she faltered. Isabella was just average at best. She had reached her potential and it was never enough. The girl was under such pressure, one day she just snapped and yelled at her parents, telling them what she thought. Her parents then started to fight, and blaming each other. In turn, Isabella once again felt she had to make them happy. The cycle continued.
It was in the beginning of her seventh year that Isabella fully started to feel her parents pressure. Food became a comfort, and she’d often sneak to her uncle and aunts shop to binge on sweets whenever she was nervous or anxious about something. Then, because she felt guilty for eating so much, she’d force herself to throw it up. This became a coping mechanism, and it gave her a sense of calm until it just became something she couldn’t stop. Bulimia was something all her own, something her parents didn’t control. Something she was good at.
Since then, Isabella’s life has been a blur. After she graduated, she desperately wanted to move to Romania to work with dragons for a year before becoming an Unspeakable — but it was something her parents disapproved of. Isabella ended up taking a lot of shifts at her uncle’s store, Honeydukes, and when her uncle fell ill — they trusted her to take care of the store. Since her aunt was always taking care of her husband, they gave complete ownership to Isabella — who now feels complete bound to it. Her and her eating disorder are in a hellish like equilibrium. She clings to it, it’s her security, but she knows it’s a horrible behavior to have and a disease that eats away at her even with magic.
You’ll more than likely see Isbaella walking around with a bright smile, walking around, talking with her customers, getting to know each in every one of them. When people in Hogsmeade invite her out, she usually declines — not wanting to be any sort of burden on them. This isn’t to say she’s a complete homebody though — when she finds that being in her head is too much for her to handle, she goes out and engages in what some would call “risky behaviors”. Sex (though it’s not intimate), drinking, drugs occasionally. Isabella doesn’t really enjoy it, she just does it to escape, to simply be doing something — she can only read so many books.
The years she was supposed to use finding herself and discovering who she was have been used to help with Honeydukes and fuel her disorder. At the ripe age of 30, if you were to ask Isabella what kind of woman she was — she wouldn’t really be able to answer.
