Seven Preposterous Things

Chapter 1. A Little Pre-Fab Job


The world is crazier and more of it than we think.
Incorrigibly plural.
-Snow
Louis MacNeice


Millicent Bulstrode was enjoying the common room fire and darning six sets of socks at once with the new needles she'd got for Yule when it occurred to her that she had been misnamed. In a just world, she would have been called Gertrude, or possibly Grundellyn.

Millicent was a name better suited for the type of girl whose hobbies included drawing pictures of unicorns and delivering hand-knitted mufflers to the home for infirm wizards. Witches named Millicent wore gauzy robes in pastel colors and spent a lot of time singing, in tune no less. They liked flowers.

Above all, Millicent was the name of a pretty girl. Bully, as Crabbe and Goyle called her, was well aware she had all the physical charm of a slab of congealed kitchen grease.

It was the sort of thing that made her wonder exactly what her parents had been thinking. They had no reason she was aware of to expect she'd be a lovely little ray of sunshine: her gran was a typical hag and her mum was working on it. Her parents did quite a few utterly bloody inexplicable things in Millicent Bulstrode's assessment. No one in the wizarding world lived like they did any more. A gingerbread house might seem picturesque, but the number of charms required for basic upkeep was a pain in the bloody arse - she glared at one of her needles that seemed moments from dropping a stitch - when she left school she was going to find one of those Muggle pre-fab jobs she'd read about in Muggle studies. Something practical.

The practical was Millie's personal gold standard. The practical was what made a difficult life at school bearable. It wasn't her fault that she came to school bigger and taller than any other first years except Crabbe and Goyle, but she could make the most of what had been a liability. The other houses didn't seem to have noticed that she hadn't grown any taller since she first arrived. No, they still gave her as wide a berth as they did back when she could have knocked them about like skittles. Not one Gryffindor seemed to have realized that the terror of their first year was now just another short pudgy witch. She did still have the biggest bubbies in Slytherin, though. It wasn't much, but it was all she could lay claim to. Even puny little Granger was taller than Millie now.

Granger. The very thought made Millie practice her look of death in the direction of her darning. What would it be like to be Granger, all but turning herself inside out trying to please people? Even her penmanship looked like it had been taken from a manual somewhere. Millie had preposterous handwriting and wasn't the least interested in improving. All you had to do was ask and Granger would tell anything she knew. To Millie it seemed not unlike spreading your cunt-lips for public viewing at a train station. Only Millie knew for certain what Millie knew and didn't know. Except for Snape, her school masters had no notion she was brighter than your average steamed pudding, and this pleased her. She hadn't decided yet whether she would take any N.E.W.T.S., but she had managed to almost perfectly calculate the minimum of effort necessary to pass her O.W.L.S by the barest margin possible.

Still, Millie's housemates didn't underestimate her and neither did her head of house; this was enough for her.

Sometimes though, she wondered if Granger and she had been sorted together, if perhaps they could have been friends. As it stood, Millie didn't believe in casual hate. In Millie's book hate, like love, was too important to throw around like candy sprinkles. Millie imagined hate, real hate worthy of the name, was something you had to work at, tend like a loyal gardener, you couldn't properly hate someone you had known for less than twenty years. Given time she thought she could learn to hate Granger. Love or Hate, either way, there was something about Granger that pricked Millie's brain like a thorn; she was not a witch to be ignored.

"Can I ask you something?" someone behind her said.

Millie looked round. It was Draco - not exactly surprising - lying on the divan like a young sultan. He was up late pretty often these days and it showed. He didn't have her constitution.

Millie shrugged.

"There's no one else here, I want to ask you something serious, Bulstrode," he said.

"What for?" Millie answered with her own question; in the past she'd found it to be a useful strategy.

"Because I need help from a person who thinks about things," Draco said with a frown, "and I know that's you."

Millie shrugged again.

"I need to talk to someone with a brain about what's happening and not these...cunts I have all around me," he said.

Millie didn't want to talk about the war, particularly because she wasn't sure which side she was on.

"Someone who won't say the same thing as everyone else. I know Potter's a wanker, and Bumblebore's a senile old sod," Draco said impatiently.

Millie just looked at him, unmoved and expressionless; she'd heard it all before too.

"Stop looking at me like that, it's unnerving. I'll give you my wizard's oath that I won't repeat what you say," he said.

"That would be stupid of you," Millie tilted her head then turned back to her sewing.

Draco didn't say anything for a few moments after that, and she thought perhaps she'd embarrassed him out of bothering her. She'd known him since she could remember, but that didn't mean she was especially interested in following him onto the limb the adults had thrust him out on.

"I need someone clever, Bulstrode, and I'm not sure I can trust Snape," he said. He sounded frightened.

Millie put her head down and focused very hard on her sewing before she answered him "Dumbledore may be senile, and Potter might be the biggest cunt at this school, but they're still going to win."

"Come here," Draco commanded her in that voice that sounded more like Mr. Malfoy's all the time. It was a voice that demanded obedience because it didn't even consider rebellion an option.

Millie tried to remain composed as she edged toward him, perhaps she should have made him take the oath after all: this could turn very bad very quickly.

"Why do you think that?" he asked his eyes wide. "Why do you think they'll win?"

"Because," Millie straightened her green chenille bathrobe and fought the urge to swallow, "All you have to do is stay awake through a history class or two to know wars don't stop change. The Muggleborns are going to take over, one way or another; it's how the world works. There are a limited number of us and more of them every day. Say the Dark Lord wins tomorrow, it won't change anything. Muggles will keep giving birth to witches and wizards even if they don't go to this school. We'll just be a handful of purebloods rattling around inside Hogwarts, and meanwhile there'll be more wizards outside the magical world than in it. If our dads win it's going to be the beginning of the end for the next generation of purebloods, everything we are is going to disappear. The truth is, the best we can hope for is to be assimilated by the Mudbloods, and maybe it's for the best."

Her row of sewing needles stopped and hovered mid-air beside her row of socks.

"You can't mean that," Draco said with quiet solemnity.

"Think about it. My mum didn't have a choice, she grew up this way herself, so I don't suppose she's to blame, but why in the name of all that is green and good did a wizard like my dad choose it? Before you say the old ways are best, think about it.

"Normal people like you Malfoys pick your own husbands and wives these days, and your lot have been dating for ages. You've changed with the times, even if you don't want to admit it. You do not respond to a set of magical challenges carved on a boulder, win a hag-to-be, and settle down to a gingerbread cottage in the heart of an enchanted wood. Don't get me wrong, I love my dad, but even I admit he is a bit off and as soft as toffee to boot.

"No one is going to bring my granny a dragon's treasure so they can marry me.

"No wizard these days gives two shits about getting a hold of my family treacle mines," Millie said and to stop herself from saying anything more she took a chocolate out of the box in front of Draco and shoved it in her mouth.

He raised his eyebrow at her, but he couldn't quite pull off Snape.

Millie pursed her lips and thought of her mum. She was more the strong silent type, which Millie considered a good option, all things considered. When she'd gone away to school, because her had Granny insisted and there was no doubt who was in charge at the Bulstrode household, her Mum had started to choke up but managed to turn away before any traitorous tears could escape. Her dad on the other hand couldn't stop bawling into that big blue hanky of his. Millie did not want to use her father as a role model.

"I didn't quite get the point of it all at first. I didn't understand why my granny sent me to Hogswarts. Couldn't I conjure whatever I pleased before they ever put me on that train? Didn't I know how to stitch a wizard's shadow to the hem of a witch's robes so his heart never left her? Couldn't I waste my enemies away to nothing without leaving so much as a wisp of smoke as evidence? Wouldn't I learn more at home with my gran? People come to the enchanted wood to learn magic, they don't leave it.

"No, my gran sent me here for a reason. She wants me to learn Muggleborn ways. There can only be one motive for that, she knows they're going to win. If not this go round, then the next. I am as close as it comes to the last of my kind, and they aren't making any more. No one is going to come to the enchanted wood and struggle with a list of impossible tasks for my sake no matter how many times all our dads put on pantomime masks and light green fireworks in the sky," she said then inhaled at the unaccustomed effort of saying just what she thought.

"I thought you and Crabbe and Goyle..." Draco gestured vaguely.

"They'll do for wrestling about in the dark if that's what you mean, but even then it takes both of them to accomplish anything," Millie said, telling altogether too much. Another witch might have blushed at the admission.

Draco giggled.

"Would you want to be stuck to one of them for life? Bear their clueless spawn?" Millie scowled at him.

Draco cringed appropriately.

"I'm sure someone..." he started.

"Shut up, Draco," she said not particularly interested in pity.

"What do you think I ought to do, Bulstrode ?" Draco said, his face strangely close to hers.

Millicent considered the answer before she spoke. "If our dads and the others follow the Dark Lord, it's because the only other choice they can see is to let the magical world as they know it go down the sewer drain of history. He-who-everyone-is-so-poncy-about-naming might be a wanker, but no one else has stepped up. There's a good reason only lunatics volunteer to lead our lot; we can't win. All blood loyalty aside, you don't want to be on the losing side, Draco. Stay out of it."

"I don't think that's an option for me anymore," Draco said and pulled up the sleeve of his silk dressing gown. The stupid bloody Dark Mark showed like a blurted word on his pale skin.

"You stupid cunt," Millie said shaking her head.

Draco sighed "It gets worse; the Dark Lord wants me to kill the headmaster. What do I do?"

"Why are you asking me? As far as I can see the only thing for you to do is try to kill the headmaster, you can't run away once you have the Mark, can you?" she said.

"What are you going to do? Are you going to turn me in?" Draco asked rubbing his face.

"Don't be insulting," Millie said.

"So?" Draco asked impatiently.

"So what?" Millie asked back, confused.

"So what are you thinking?" Draco insisted.

"About what?" Millie answered.

"About what?" Draco all but squealed. "About what?"

"I'm wishing I had ingratiated myself to a Mudblood or two. I'm wishing my first time on the Express when that Finnegan wanker asked me if living in a gingerbread house was the reason I was so fat, I hadn't kneeled on his throat," Millie said.

"He's lucky you didn't get out your wand." Draco winced. "But what about my problem?"

"Why don't you ask Pansy to help you?" Millie said.

Draco looked incredulous "Pansy?"

"I'm not your girl, she is," Millie insisted right back at him.

She was not in the least prepared for what happened next. Draco knelt easily beside her on the floor and took her hands in his, pricking himself with the one needle on one side and clutching a holey sock on the other. Red blood slithered onto her hand from his.

"I, Draco Malfoy, give my oath as a wizard I will marry you Millicen...owww," he yelped as she kicked him in her haste to get away.

"You're must be really desperate," Millie said backing away in awe and horror.

"Life and death does that to me," Draco said "I mean it, Bulstrode. Get me out of this and you'll never have to worry about dying alone and unwanted."

"Who says I want to marry you?" she said, her voice rising.

"Who wouldn't want me? Have you taken a look at me?" Draco shouted back. "You shag those two baboons and you say 'no' to me?"

"I'd rather wind up married to a goat like Hepseba The Unwell," Millie snarled. A small voice in the back of her mind told her this was the most fun she'd had since she'd come to school and her magic had been curtailed into plodding academics and keeping the Mudbloods at bay. It was a dangerous thing that small voice.

"You want a goat, Bulstrode?" Draco hissed.

"At least a goat would have more than ornamental value," Millie hissed right back.

"Ornamental? Ornamental? You want to see what I can do?" Draco said, starting to draw his wand.

"Looking out for yourself isn't on the list," Millie said, her wand already at his throat. She wouldn't have admitted it to Draco, but Millicent Bulstrode was extremely excited at that moment.

Draco swallowed hard, looking as though he were trying to decide whether to faint or wet himself. The box of chocolates lay overturned on the divan.

"Please, Bulstrode, he defeated Grendelwald. I don't have a chance," he whimpered. "Pansy isn't... she isn't... she's not like you. She gets sick to her stomach cleaning doxies out of the curtains. I need real help."

"You're a matched set, then, both useless," Millie said, careful not to drop her guard or her wand.

She always knew Draco was softer than he let on, but she could hardly believe it when the whimpering gave way to fat, salty tears. For several flustered seconds she was at a complete loss. Draco was sobbing harder by the moment, his pale face red; she wondered vaguely if he would notice when his nose started running. She patted his shoulder experimentally. Unfortunately, he took this as encouragement of some kind and threw himself against her, knocking both of them backwards onto the divan.

"I'm not going to help you kill the headmaster," she said trying to wiggle out from under the sniffling Draco. He was tenacious when he was frightened for his life, she had to grant him that. "But I think I might have a chance to do something about the Mark so you can run away."

"Can you, really?" he stared down, still half on top of her. Millie winced as he wiped his nose on the hem of her robe.

"I'm going to try, that will to have to be enough," she answered shoving him off of her, "but I still don't want to marry you; you're a right pain in the arse."


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Author's Note:Thanks to Shiv for Beta