Author's note: This is not officially a NaNoWriMo story. However, I am going to endeavor to put 1500 words on it (more or less) each day during the month of November. I have some scenes blocked out and others completely un-created, so this is going to be a bit slap-dash, probably with some Mary Sue and Marty Stu characters in it. I've also never written a Harry Potter fanfiction before, so we'll see how it goes!

Though I will endeavor to make the word limit each day, I am a homeschooling mom of three, one of them an infant. So we'll see how it goes.

Chapter start:

Roughly fifteen years after the Fall of Voldemort, Drucella Bulstrode received her letter for Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Her mother was as terrified as her father was pleased.

Her mother, Millicent Bulstrode, never truly began to shine until her sixth year at Hogwarts. She had been overweight as a child and made painfully aware that she was considered ugly. She had a large frame and an aggressive personality which, in her younger years, expressed itself mostly in physical action. Millicent was not a naturally gifted witch, and she struggled with spellwork. Of course, to her peers, even in her own house, that made her "stupid" as well as "ugly", and many Slytherins privately puzzled or outwardly asked her why she had not been placed in Hufflepuff.

In her fifth year, Millicent learned a great deal. She became one of Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad, and for the first time, she had power that she didn't have to hit someone to obtain. Her own ostracization ultimately protected her from the thirst for more power because she learned that it did not give her what she truly wanted… acceptance. When she saw what became of Umbridge afterwards, she learned the dangers of having raw power in places where the majority still opposed you. In her sixth year, she saw a different kind of Slytherin in Professor Slughorn, and decided that she would much rather have respect than power. Having no particular animus against half-bloods or Death Eaters, she ultimately did not end up taking either side during the seventh year Battle for Hogwarts. She simply left with the rest of the Slytherins and did not return.

Once the war was over, Millicent recommended to her family and other pure-blood families that it would be better to remain quiet and keep a low profile than to rush out proclaiming their heavy support for this new group of people in charge of the Ministry and Hogwarts and, especially, their decision to utterly abandon their previous unfortunate associations with Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Few people bothered to listen to this just-graduated "ugly stupid girl". She experienced her first moment of pure schadenfreude when many of those families wound up being greatly reduced in circumstances as the Ministry levied large fines for having supported Voldemort and his path of destruction in the first place. Millicent began seeking ways to shrewdly invest through Gringott's in reconstruction efforts, hoping to increase her own situation if she could. Then the one thing happened to her that she never thought possible… she received an offer of marriage.

Virgo Lestrange, mostly-forgotten son of Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange, had been shipped off to Durmstrang for his education. His parents had very little regard for him, as they were far too busy with their Death Eater duties and then, later on, serving long sentences in Azkaban. They merely wanted him out of the way and well away from Dumbledore's influence. He had a childhood in which nobody had ever encouraged him to exert himself, and so he preferred idleness. He came into the rather large Lestrange fortune upon his graduation, and spent several years realizing just how much everybody hated his family before he sought comfort in solitude… and in a woman who could make up for his perpetual lackings. It seemed more like a business proposition to Millicent than a love affair. He had a fortune and wished a life of ease; she was shrewd and tough and wanted a fortune to manage. When they married, he took her last name and withdrew almost entirely from society. Meanwhile, her frequent trips to Gringott's and careful business dealings earned her what she told herself she wanted most… respect. Yet still, something was lacking.

When Millicent delivered her first baby, a little girl, she was a little worried. Surely Virgo wanted sons, especially first-born sons, and here he had a daughter instead. Virgo showed no sign of hesitation in embracing his child, and Millicent breathed a sigh of relief. Little Esmerelda, Esme for short, drew out the best in her father. He spent hours with her, showing her little baby things and talking to her, leaving his wife free to continue her search for respect and betterment of their wealth. Esme grew to be a beautiful little girl with heavy-lidded eyes and dark, tumbled hair, taller than many and slender in a way that her mother could never be.

Millicent became pregnant again, and felt a stab of real fear for the first time since her childhood as she looked at a very familiar face. This baby was also a girl, and Millicent feared that her daughter was going to suffer as she did under the scorn of those who believed that "ugly" could not be "clever". Like with her first, she also worried that her husband wanted a boy. Virgo again showed no hesitation and embraced the baby, then smiled and spoke words that awakened and satisfied a longing that Millicent didn't even realize she'd still had… "She has your beautiful eyes."

Drucilla, nicknamed Drucy, grew to be a cheerful little girl, short and with her mother's thicker frame. Her small blue eyes and round face, however, were graced with a short crop of black ringlets, and she looked 'cute' rather than 'thick'. What concerned her mother, however, was that Drucy seemed utterly guileless in a world that would not be friendly to a pure-blood Slytherin-heavy family… for Esme obediently entered Hogwarts at age eleven and was almost immediately added to that House. Millicent wondered if it might be better to send her to Durmstrang rather than risk having the child of a Bulstrode and a Lestrange wind up trying to advance in Hufflepuff. Virgo unexpectedly spoke up strongly and overruled her. The child would go to Hogwarts, and she would be fine.

Then, one day, little Drucy noticed a snake in the garden. Instead of shying away, she held out her hand and hissed at it…