Title: Flight
Author: Lilya
Genre: Angst/Drama
Summary: AU. Susan and Millicent will spread their wings against the shadows that bind them down.
Main characters: Susan Bones, Millicent Bulstrode
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The world belongs to J. K. Rowling. This development belongs to me.
Author's notes: Millicent Bulstrode is listed as an Half-blood on Rowling's notes, however I don't remember ever seeing it written in a book – and I needed her to be a Pureblood because Daphne Greengrass just doesn't have the physique du role. I hereby declare her a Pureblood for the purposes of this fiction.
FLIGHT
She wanders over to the window and stops to look at those new, pretty leaves when she sees her.
There is a girl right in front of her – not that other girl who sleeps in the same room with her, a new one.
How weird… she looks oddly familiar, as if she knew her.
She wonders if she had known her before…then she pushes the thought away because thinking about before makes her head hurt and sometimes it makes her cry, too, even if she does not quite understand what she remembers.
Before does not matter.
Has there even been a before?
Maybe those are just bad dreams, only they will not go away.
Perhaps if she asked nicely, they would give her a potion to let her sleep – she already takes so many…
She frowns and starts counting on her fingers.
One, two, three, four – this many potions.
Surely there is room for one more?
Maybe he would give her a nice potion to make her sleep.
She wants to ask him, but she knows she is not to speak unless he talks to her first.
She wonders if she could talk to the lady, only she never sees her.
Maybe the other girl – not this one, the other one, what's her name, she is always forgetting names – maybe she has seen her somewhere, she knows they call her more around the house.
She tries to remember what she had seen when they had brought her there, but nothing comes.
Perhaps it has been too long.
All she knows is the tiny room with two beds and the tiny bathroom where the roof comes down and the other rooms, bigger rooms full of light.
She remembers the four bassinettes, two on every side, with the little sheets and little covers in pink or blue all ready. Next there's a room with bigger beds, but lower, with high bars for bigger babies – there is a name for those… oh, infant beds, that's the word!
She is always so happy when she remembers a word, too bad the infant beds are empty, and so are the cradles and so are the little blackboards hanging at their feet.
It seems so sad, yet part of her is troubled and she can't understand why.
There are two rooms filled with toys – stuffed animals and wooden blocks and rocking horses and little brooms.
There is a big, big bathroom but they cannot use it because it's for the babies.
That is all her world.
Bottle of potions long and short, all in a row, then all day cleaning and dusting and knitting and sewing little clothes with the other girl.
Maybe this new one, too, now. She smiles at her, hesitantly, and she smiles back.
Did she say her name already?
She really wishes she was not so bad with names.
If the other girl was here, she'd know, she always knows.
She wonder if this new girl who looks so familiar knows the other girl too. She does, she knows she does, although she doesn't think about it because it's from Before.
But if it's from Before, she should know their names and maybe they know hers.
All the little blackboards have no names, too.
Names are important.
Empty beds are bad, very bad, all of them.
Sometimes she wakes up after a bad dream and the other girl is not in bed and then she is not sure if the other girl was real or not.
Sometimes, if the dream has been real scary, she tries to pretend she has just gone to their tiny toilet or out in the baby rooms, even if it is not allowed after dark.
Millicent.
That's her name.
Names are important, even if she forgets all the time.
Millicent.
And he is to be called Master, always.
Yes, master. No, master.
Never ever forget or it hurts so much, so much.
It usually does when she goes to the other room, the room downstairs with the big bed and the dark drapes – what color are they, blue or black? It's always so dark in there when He calls her, even by day – and the drawer in the wardrobe…
She is afraid of that room, afraid of that drawer and the bed and him!
He always laughs and calls her Sue but she doesn't like that.
She doesn't like it, not any of it, not even when he says she does and laughs….
She leans against the frame, taking shaky breaths and reminding herself she has not been called downstairs for some time now.
She vaguely remembers being sick, perhaps that's why she has not been called down, why there are no bruises on her arms or cuts – not new ones, anyway, she knows by now that those white ones she sees are not going away.
As she slowly pushes herself back, she sees the new girl staring straight at her, but it's no girl at all. She is so pale, maybe she is a ghost.
Only sad people become ghosts and she looks very very sad.
She wears a loose white dress, like hers and Millicent's, like all the dresses they are given, and she has brown hair.
So many lines around her eyes, even if she's not old, and there's a small bump in the front of her dress.
The same bump that's in front of her own.
Dazedly, fearfully, she brings her hands to her stomach and watches the other girl do the same.
She is her.
It's her...her image.
Her reflection.
Name.
The girl's name is Susan Bones.
Her name is Susan Bones.
There was a battle at Hogwarts and she and Milly fought while so many died, but they did not die.
How much time? Three years, four?
Susan remembers the screams of her classmates as they were killed after they had won, she remembers sharing a cell with Hannah but then Hannah had been executed because she was a half-blood.
Susan has not died, they could not kill her…pureblood, magical blood, waste not want not, they had hurt her so bad, they did it because she had to learn her lesson, she had to learn it well, in her bones and then she was a pureblood witch and young…
They had given her to him, to the man of the dark room, to Macnair and she knows, she knows what he has done to her, over and over, for his own fun and to get her pregnant, to get her to bear him pureblooded children for their cause.
Not children, daughters. Fair Susan for pretty daughters to marry off but she has already had a big belly, twice, but they were sons so they had to die, only Millicent for sons, strong pureblood sons to fight and die while pretty daughters marry.
In that single moment, everything is horribly, painfully clear.
Memories floats before Susan's eyes – things she has seen, things she has felt and lived, like morbid pictures, like the scars on her body.
She does not faint. She does not cry or scream.
Before the moment passes, Susan Bones throws herself through the window. Glass and wood shatter under her weight, shards and splinters rip her flesh, then she falls down, down to her death and a dreamless sleep.
Author's notes: I must admit I creeped myself out as I was writing it. I was also planning to start publishing it when my exams started, but they got here earlier than I expected - this is preventive cheering-up.
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