Varied Vignettes
A/N
Well, this is yet another attempt to start writing again. What I'm doing here is using a randomizer to pick out two HP characters from the full list of HP and Fantastic Beasts characters listed on FFN and to also pick out the relationship between the two I'm to write about.
Example:
Character #1: Terence Higgs
Character #2: Penelope Clearwater
Relationship: Rivalry
These are totally random so many of these vignettes might be quite crackish and require me to break the universe. Also, if I get the same name twice, I will write a self-reflection piece for them, most likely. Expect new entries every few days to once weekly. Enjoy!
Varied Vignettes
#1
Bitterroot
Character 1: Millicent Bagnold
Character 2: Millicent Bagnold
Relationship: Enmity
Ah, the twilight years… The very thought of such saccharine sentiment made Millicent want to barf. However, turning out her stomach onto her grandniece-in-law's shoes would certainly not be polite, now would it? The girl was barely into her twenties, so exuberant and full of life. However, her now deceased sister's children, grandchildren, and assorted spouces were all she had left and, really, she was too tired to argue.
It was in this frame of mind that found her later gazing into the mirror as she readied herself for the retirement party sprung on her. She had once been as vivacious, young and full of hope. However, as she looked into the mirror, a stranger stared back at her with empty marble eyes, a dull and misted gray. The face, too, was alien, cut through by deep lines and framed by lank hair of a dark brownish gray.
"Buck up, Millie, where's your spirit!" she scolded herself sarcastically. However, she knew. It was in the past where she could never find it. She had seen too much, done too much, and not done enough for all of that.
Millicent was honest enough to admit that she had grown to hate herself over the years. She had come into politics with so many big, bright ideas like equality, safety, and honoring of traditions. She had modeled her entire platform off these ideals from the beginning and they had been what had gotten her elected as Minister of Magic after decades of clawing her way to the top despite her half-blood status.
If she were honest, she would likely never have been elected in peacetime with more appealing pure-blood candidates waiting in the wings. However, with three ministers assassinated in the course of two years, the general consensus among politically-minded folk was that you'd have to be crazy to take the job and that the half-blood upstarts could bloody well do so. And she did. This was what she had sacrificed decades of clawing to the top for above all else, even family. Being the Minister was all she'd ever wanted, peace or war.
However, her garden of roses quickly started churning up the shit no sooner than she was in office. Ministry personnel seemed to be turning up dead every day, particularly those of so-called impure blood. It was only thanks to her own intuition and/or auror guards that she had survived multiple assassination attempts in the first half-year alone. As 1981 dawned, it was made apparent that the light was losing, and losing fast. She tried to ram through new legislation but it was always blocked. Millicent was honest enough to say that had Harry Potter not happened all would likely have been lost by the beginning of 1982. But Harry Potter did happen, by some miracle, and peace came slowly.
However, wars don't just stop suddenly with the death of one single figurehead. Her mind cast itself back to the tragic mental loss of Frank and Alice Longbottom and the shocking betrayal of Sirius Black. She shook her head. Now that was a sad situation. Though she didn't know the young man personally, he had been one of her auror guards for a short time and seemed a good sort. As with many Death Eater trials and sentencings, she had not been involved as the DMLE remained on a wartime footing until very late in 1982. In a wartime capacity, it was within the DMLE's remit to try and sentence without a full court hearing and the papers showed that Black had confessed, after all.
By 1983, she had what should have been a dream ministry. The country was at piece and the citizens seemed ready for a change. Millicent was content to spearhead such efforts. However, things weren't as easy as all that. Those on the Wizengamot were as stubborn as ever. No matter how many new legislations she tried to pass herself or through her allies her effers were, by in large, useless. In 1985, she came up for re-election. Now the world was more peaceful, she found herself fearing a loss to a less competent pureblood. She made more and more compromises that she never would have done before, sticking herself in the middle of the road more firmly than in any of her past endeavors. Even compromising wasn't enough in the longrun, though.
Millicent scowled. The young fools in her extended family didn't seem to understand that she had not retired. Instead, she had been pushed out… by Cornelius Fudge of all people! The bumbling little idiot would leave the ministry in shambles by 1995 if he was half as bad as she thought he was.
Yes, Millicent was not short on self-hatred. She had given up anything and everything else, including existing family and the possibility of her own, in the pursuit of her dreams. However, those dreams were more like nightmares where the protagonist keeps running and running without getting anywhere. She hated herself for it. She was seventy, burned out, and full of bitter regrets. As one of the tinkling laughter of her many grandnieces and grandnephews floated upstairs and through her open door, however, she turned sharply away from the mirror.
"Seventy!" She thought with disgust. "You fool, are you a witch or not?" Millicent was already older than her Muggle grandmother had been when she had died. Even with the increasing lifespan of Muggles, witches and wizards tended to live at least half a century longer than the majority of non-magical folk. She had decades left on this earth, if she was lucky. She had better make the most of them and not continue to waste them with futile efforts and what-ifs.