The Road to Perfection

Prologue

Do you ever look back on your life, and wonder what brought you to this point?

Then you know how I feel right now.

I am in the Hospital Wing, for the second time in my life. But this time, it’s not something anyone else did. It was my own doing.

I have been unconscious for the past three days. And now I am awake, and looking the man I love in the eye, trying to explain why I let myself get so close to death, all in the name of beauty.

But how do you explain to someone what you, yourself, don’t understand?

I’m a smart girl. Just ask anyone in this school. I have more common sense than most girls my age. I am a creature of logic. When all else fails, I turn to books. To facts.

But this, this was different.

Maybe I just delighted in having such control over my body. In a time of war and chaos, any control is a good thing.

At least, I thought so.

But, let me let you in on a secret.

I am not confident. I never have been. From childhood, I was teased. When you’re thin and wiry, with bushy hair and big teeth, it’s pretty much a given that someone will take advantage of your insecurity.

And I thought it would finally stop when I went through puberty. I thought I, like my mother, would suddenly become a beautiful, graceful creature.

Instead, I became . . .Well, some people call it thickset, nicer people call it curvy.

But I was fat.

Oh, sure, I did have curves, in the right places. My breasts were ample, to say the least.

But I also had pudge. You know what pudge is, don’t you? It’s when your stomach sticks out like a ball. Some people can get away with it. For some people, it doesn’t matter, because they’re so gorgeous you can’t keep your eyes off of them.

The others spend their life hiding behind baggy clothes and trying every diet imaginable to get rid of it.

And then, there are the Lucky Ones.

That’s right, the Lucky Ones.

The Lucky Ones are the ones every girl wants to be. They grace the covers and pages of fashion magazines. They break hearts. They have men hanging on their every word.

They are beautiful, graceful.

And thin.

Girls like this were the girls I wanted to hate. The ones I wanted to blow off as nothing but gorgeous air-heads who would never amount to anything in the real world.

But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t hate them. Why, you ask.

Because they were everything I wanted to be.

Girls like this were my dreams incarnate.

Girls like Parvati. Like Lavender. Like Ginny. Like Cho. Like Fleur Delacour. Hell, even Pansy Parkinson.

And if you found out that there was a way to become everything you ever wanted, wouldn’t you?

Magic could take care of most of it. The accident in fourth year left me with perfect teeth. There are serums for my hair, that make it sleek and smooth and soft.

But no amount of magic can actually make you thinner.

Sure, you can use glamours. But I didn’t want to use a glamour. I wanted the fat gone.

I wanted to be one of the Lucky Ones. One of the girls that every guy wanted, and every girl wanted to be.

So when Parvati and Lavender took me under their wing, when they told me their secret, and offered to share it with me, I was delighted.

After all, it was just a diet.

And perfection doesn’t come free.