Home. The word is enough to bring the idea of warmth and love to almost any heart. However, while most people think of home as the feeling of sitting by a warm fire on a snowy-day, for Amelia that was never the case. Amelia and her brother were like toys in a house much too large, who were primped and prodded to be what their mother and father wanted to show to the world. It didn’t matter what they wanted, it mattered what the world saw, and for Amelia that was a perfect daughter with bows too large and dresses too frilly. She was adorned like a cupcake, and while compliments on her appearance were always around, they were always directed as a compliment to her mother rather than her. She was like a living statue in her home, moved to be presented whenever there was company or whenever they were outside. Her mother usually called her in and talked to her for a new dress fitting, or about manners, and how to stand all before the age of eleven. Her father spoiled her with sweets she didn’t truly like but appreciated her father trying, and with pats on the head as he walked by too preoccupied with his job to look down and notice that Amelia was being drowned in her own ruffles. Any other person would have said their parents had been neglectful, smiling for the cameras and the great show of life rather than taking true care for their own children, but for Amelia that wasn’t true. She had always been cared for, with tutors, nannies, and butlers to do the jobs a usual mother or father would do, and Amelia didn’t mind quiet. She was imaginative, seeing the horse tapestry on the walls come to life before her eyes and run all over the room as she ate her dinner quietly while her brother studied, or seeing the books she read come to life in her small head. She never truly felt she needed much, she had all she needed, liberty in her eyes to be and do as she wanted as long as she behaved and looked nice whenever people were around. Her brother, as she remembered him when she was young, was the star of the house, he radiant and his smile was always complimented on, but she never truly saw him in the house. She ate alone, while he was Merlin knew where, but he was never really wherever she was. They served different purposes, she imagined, in her parents eyes, but in all honesty she was more preoccupied with herself than him. The only real reason she knew he existed was because when she grew older she began hearing her brother cry from his room, wailing like a child, and not really one to cry, Amelia never understood why, and since they were always on different schedules she never got the chance to ask.
Hogwarts came around and Amelia was excited. As much as she didn’t complain outwardly about the skirts upon skirts of dresses, as she became older, it became more taxing, and having time to find out who she was sounded much better than playing dress up with her mother who seemed little interested in anything else. In fact, as she grew older, her mother became easily annoyed at her ‘strange proportions’ due to growing. It was a little like a knife in her heart, but she pursed a smile and pushed on, sure that it was just because she was growing and all girls went through this odd stage. Still, Hogwarts meant freedom to spread her wings, and that it was supposed to be. Until she walked through the front gates. It first begun in the train as whispers between children, side-eying her as she walked through to find a seat, she was sure it was nothing, but in Hogwarts it was nearly impossible not to notice the buzzing. There were cold rumors, about her house being uninviting, about her parents being cold, about her of all people being just as shrewd at the stories said her mother was. She was sure it couldn’t have been her brother, but how could she know? She didn’t know him at all and it didn’t struck her until then. She was seated with a busy mind with a hat on her head that sorted her into Hufflepuff to her surprise, but she didn’t care. She had one goal in mind and that was her brother, and not one day later she was stopping him in the halls to ask what all the ruckus was about. He stood by his word, a word she didn’t comprehend no matter how hard she tried, didn’t he see how much they had had growing up? How although they might have lacked typical love that they had a home larger than they needed and bellies fuller than most people? She thought he was selfish and foolish, to believe his own lies, and when she tried to confront him he simply seemed to get exasperated with her and the two left as unlikely friends. Amelia couldn’t see her own brother without feeling a twinge of anger, so she avoided him, unsure she’d be able to speak to him about this again, since it seemed they’d never see eye to eye. She was right. She knew she was. He was just being stubborn.
In the end, Hogwarts proved that for Amelia it was the right environment to be loose from her beautiful cage and spread her wings. In studies she excelled, well liked by her professors due to her hard work and desire to improve and learn, she had notebooks and notebooks on the subjects that interested her piled next to her bed, and had been known for seeking out professors outside of class for a question or twenty. This didn’t make her be popular amongst most students, the professor’s pet that got the best marks. However, Amelia was lucky, she had been sorted in the house of the kind, and although people tried to bully her and pry into her darkest fears, she slapped their hands and stuck her tongue out and even tried to hit a boy or two with her books in her arms when they pulled at her plaits. She was friendly with most people in her house, though she was known to be quiet unless you caught something that she was passionate about and then she’d talk for hours on end. She loved learning, and overall loved her life, she flew under the radar and learned how to stick it to the bullies with words larger than they’d ever be, and that sadly grew her a big head on her shoulders that made some people feel she was uninviting, though with enough time, anyone would understand how she came to be so rough at the edges. She had a few friends, most that came and went, but one stuck out for the rest of her life and her heart and it’s the deepest secret she hides. She was fourteen, and had come home one Summer and minded her business as usual, going to her room and doing her homework. She was surprised that not a week into her arrival her mother had come to her room, not fetched her with a maid or something alike. She was cautious, but mostly thought that it was about another gown or perhaps something more about her “awkward body” but to her surprise and horror it was about love and sex. Amelia hadn’t truly been interested in anyone, well, not really, except one friend. A female friend. Amelia took her mother coming and talking to her as a door of communication opening, but she was wrong. Very wrong. Amelia explained her feelings for her friend and her mother hardly hid her face of disgust, she had hardly finished her sentence when her mother cut her off. The following conversation was not pleasant. Amelia was taught what she felt was unnatural, insignificant, and forbidden, only freaks and animals felt the way she did, and that whole Summer Amelia attended an office with a nice lady who made sure Amelia never had these thoughts again. When she returned to Hogwarts she never spoke to that girl again, shutting her out like they had never even met at all. The feelings were still there, but she pushed them down, and whenever anything alike happened with a woman she simply didn’t even let it flourish, killing the feeling like it was old news she didn’t want. This also extended to all romantic feelings, with men and women alike, she simply didn’t want it, didn’t want to be hurt, to be vulnerable, or to hurt another, so when graduation came, she was the only one who hadn’t had a girlfriend or boyfriend or even a kiss that wasn’t just a “get over it!” kiss like her first one was. Instead, Amelia launched herself into her career.
In the Ministry, Amelia was a force to be reckoned with. She stood tall and proud, and learned quickly, she seemed to breeze through job after job, climbing higher and higher. At first people admired her, the young girl with the passion and drive to get what she wanted, but the tides turned on her quickly as she reached higher than people thought she should at her young age. It was her own fault, she’d done little else but work, pushing her life only into that of a Ministry worker, it was only natural with her talent she’d raise up so high. However, people were cruel and soon rumors of her sleeping with people in the Ministry was the cause for her success, and while it chips away at her from time to time, she tries to stay strong, she developed a very tough skin early in her life, she just needed to thicken it for the Ministry. She wanted to do good, at that wouldn’t come easy, it’d come at a price, and that price at times was her pride. She’d do whatever it took to make sure that people like Rodolphus Lestrange never got to power.
