Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

"Skin Deep"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

Penelope Clearwater has no idea she is beautiful. No one has ever told her. When she looks in the mirror she doesn't see it, and she doesn't spend a lot of time looking. She doesn't think of beauty much at all, really. Even if she were beautiful in her own eyes, she can't imagine it changing anything that would matter. Her mother still wouldn't love her, and her father would still not stand up in her defense.

Penelope Clearwater has no idea she is beautiful, and the girls she shares her dorm with take shameless advantage of this. They sit before their mirrors, brushing hair that is not as long or as lovely as hers, covering skin less flawless with powders and potions, highlighting bone structure that will never be as fine, and they project onto her their own adolescent insecurities. They spend hours before those mirrors, knowing deep down they will never have what she has. They'll never accept the truth, and she can't see it.

These girls will never have, for all their hours of effort, what Penelope has without trying at all. They'll never have it, and they'll never understand why. Instead they will spend those hours trying to recreate through artificial means what can never be recreated. These girls think of beauty as something that is only skin deep, and that's why they'll never have it.

Penelope's beauty has, in a way, more to do with her nature than it does the features nature gifted her with. When her eyes sparkle it is her kindness and humor shining through. When she smiles bright enough to put the sun to shame, it is her joy, her happiness radiating out. When she brushes back that shining hair with such a casual gesture, it is everything about her these girls will never have, will never be.

Penelope Clearwater may not know she is beautiful, but she is comfortable in her own skin in ways these girls never will be. She has never tried to make herself anything other than what she is. Even though she does not see her beauty, she is content with what she does see. It's not just that she is more concerned with her studies than her appearance, concerned more with how she acts and what she does than what she might look like, though this is part of it. It is, more than anything else, the fact that she sees no reason to change her reflection in mirrored glass to feel better about herself.

She understands the beauty that goes beyond skin, and that is one thing she has never doubted she possesses.