Fold I.
When he was a child, Severus had wanted a different name. Why did his parents want him to be "severe", "grave" or "stern"? (He had looked up the meaning of his name in the public library.) He had played around with calling himself "Ver", which means "truth" in Latin, but never shared this with anyone lest they laugh at him. However, when Lily Evans started calling him "Sev", he decided that he liked the sound of that.
The days he got to spend with Lily were the happiest he had ever experienced. Even the most mundane activities, like waiting for a bus, seemed special when she was there. When she laughed, or made him laugh, it felt like the weight that was always on his shoulders had lifted. And the way that she carefully listened to the things he shared about the magical world made him feel important. Even his father's spite couldn't cut as deeply when Sev had just seen his friend or planned to see her soon.
Sev arrived at Hogwarts with high hopes. He was excited to learn as much as he could, to spend more time with Lily, and to be free of his home and all the negative emotions that came with it. His first major letdown came when Lily was not only sorted into a different house, but the same house as the spoiled brats he had met on the train. The next was when he found that his housemates automatically treated him as an inferior because of his being a halfblood.
But the boy from Spinner's End had not been sorted into Slytherin for nothing: he was determined to prove his worth. After finding that he had the most affinity for potions, he obtained permission from Professor Slughorn to brew in the classroom outside of lessons. Upon request, the professor would also lend him extra books to read and allow him to use extra ingredients supplied by the school. But while Sev felt his understanding and skills (in both potions and other subjects) strengthening, he also felt the familiar weight of isolation and anxiety. He had become the primary target of the gang of first-year Gryffindor brats, his housemates still gave him the cold shoulder, and his time with Lily was constricted as she made more friends in her house and got involved in her own extracurriculars, mainly Charms Club. (Sev had tried attending one of the meetings, but vowed never to return after some of Lily's friends in it had laughed at him.)
...
By third year, Severus no longer found his given name inappropriate. On top of demonstrating his potions prowess, he had to constantly be alert, poised, and tough to gain the approval of his housemates and to (try to) avoid the Gryffindors' harassment. Below the surface, he worried about the future and simmered with anger at the arrogance of those who had been given everything - in his own house as well as the rest. But he fought to keep his face blank and his mind cool.
By fifth year, Severus mostly felt tired. He went through the motions of coursework, social interactions, and minimal bodily upkeep, only occasionally having a burst of energy when he ran across an especially interesting potion recipe. And of course whenever he saw the Marauders. At these times, he felt his anger rearing up and driving him to say and do things to get back at them for all the injury they had (and continued to) inflict on him. But of all the things they had done to him, the worst was when they tormented him into insulting Lily. The day after he tried to apologize and she said she didn't want to be friends with him anymore, he could barely get out of bed to pack his trunk and make it onto the Hogwarts Express.
That summer, while brewing copious amounts of uninteresting potions for a low-end apothecary to help his ailing mother pay the bills, Severus was numb. He'd never felt more alone and miserable.
...
Years later, Severus will wonder whether he would have gotten caught up with the Death Eaters as a teenager if he had been taking the antidepressant potion he discovered at age twenty-three under Dumbledore's direction. He doubts he would have felt quite as desperately lonely or as furious at the world, even when confronted with Lily's betrayal in dating and eventually agreeing to marry Potter.
But it's not only the potion that Dumbledore has guided him to. Severus' years since Lily's death have been full of learning Occlumency, both to structure his mind against the grief and guilt that threaten to overwhelm him, and to prepare for the next war, which Dumbledore for some reason believes is inevitable. Severus doesn't bother to question the Headmaster's conviction, especially once he feels Occlumency helping his mind gain clarity it hasn't had in a very long time.
Other mages might have turned to a mind healer for help with this process; Severus convinces himself that he has too many secrets to risk letting another person discover. But if he's honest with himself, he doesn't really lack faith in the magically-binding patient confidentiality oath so much as abhor the idea of having to talk about his feelings.
Fold II.
Apparition couldn't be used for large distances and wasn't safe for adolescents to try on their own; Portkeys took skill and power to create, and had to be tailored to each location. Both were also physically unpleasant. There had to be a better form of magical transportation. And Zhang knew they were close. His team had an eclectic mix of backgrounds and expertise, but he had a feeling there was one key element they were missing. It turned out that the missing element was a cartographer.
When we look at a map of the Earth in two dimensions, the edges on the left and right appear far apart. But in three dimensions, we can see that these locations are right next to each other. What if we could show our magic how space would need to bend for any two locations to be right next to (or on top of) each other? We could do this by folding a map magically tied to the surface of the Earth. Then we'd hardly need a spark of magic to flit between the spaces.
Prototyping revealed many challenges beyond the obvious. But Zhang's interdisciplinary team kept making progress. The alchemist developed uncreasable parchment. The Muggleborn computer geeks figured out how to import images from Muggle satellites so the map could magically zoom in on any part of the world. They were initially concerned that this would leave out magical communities shielded from Muggle notice, but thankfully it turned out that the magical landmarks still showed up in the satellite imagery. The team's working hypotheses were that (a) the Muggle-repelling charms were transmitted through photographs as well as in-person or (b) the Muggle-repelling charms petered out in the upper atmosphere so they didn't affect the satellites, and if Muggles noticed anything off in any of the images, then they forgot or were otherwise turned away if they ever went to check on a location. Zhang filed this mystery away for future research.
Fold III.
Millie's wand buzzed in her pocket, prompting her to dust off her hands, open the oven, and levitate and rotate the roast so it could cook evenly. Then she returned to the dough she was kneading, always preferring to do this part by hand. It's soothing.
"You is needing a break?"
Millie smiled. When she was small, she always used to ask Brosy if she needed a break when she wanted a turn doing something - stirring, chopping, icing…
"I thought you were at the market."
"The supplies is not being good today, so I is leaving early." The elf hoisted herself up and perched on the counter an arm's length from Millie.
"Stock will last for a few days anyway. Want to put on some music?" Millie knows Brosy prefers background noise while she works.
The elf smiles and snaps her fingers, starting the radio, which is already tuned to her favorite Muggle station. She crosses her legs and hums along to the smooth jazz as she starts making pie filling.
...
Millicent Bulstrode wasn't like other pureblood girls. She wasn't dainty, didn't have a head for politics, and liked keeping her hands busy. When she was a girl, she would intentionally spill things on her dresses so she could leave formal events. At Hogwarts, she was a mediocre student and kept her head down in social situations. Still, her housemates jeered that she should have been a Hufflepuff, given her apparent lack of ambition or cunning. They only tolerated her because she could help to intimidate kids from other houses with her bulk and brooding stare. Millicent's parents tried for years to make her conform to their snobbish expectations, but she stubbornly dug in her heels. Eventually, they stopped trying and lavished attention on her younger brother Miles.
Millicent's life would have been very lonely if not for Brosy. Her parents' deputy house elf was in charge of cooking for the manor, and a master chef at that. When Millicent was five, Brosy found her crying in the pantry after an especially torturous etiquette lesson. The kind-hearted elf comforted her by taking her into the kitchen and showing her how to make cookies. Millicent, who had always loved food, was entranced by the ingredients flying through the air and being mixed smoothly with a flick of Brosy's finger. She began coming to the kitchens whenever she could and asking to watch the elf work. Even though the girl couldn't yet use magic, Brosy began giving "Miss Millie" things to do. While she loved all of it, the girl was obsessed with making chocolate croissants. Laminating the dough by folding in layers of butter, gently rolling up the chocolate core, smelling the incredible wafts from the oven…
By the time she had to go to Hogwarts, Millie had memorized hundreds of recipes and was excited to start learning how to use magic to increase her precision and efficiency. Brosy got in touch with one of her second cousins who worked at Hogwarts, and arranged for him to take Millie under his wing. The day after the Sorting, Millie found a note on her pillow giving her directions to the kitchens. It was a bit odd, at first, convincing the Hogwarts house elves that she really enjoyed cooking and wanted to continue learning. But once they saw that she was serious, they delighted in helping her improve her basic spellwork and teaching her their special techniques and recipes. Occasionally, when she made something really good, one of the elves would send a sample to Brosy so she could see how well Millie was doing. During the summers, Brosy erected wards over the Bulstrode manor's kitchen so no one would be able to tell that Millie was practicing magic outside of school.
Cooking and baking always filled Millie with a sense of purpose. When the war broke out, it was the thing that kept her sane. Dobby, a strangely dressed Hogwarts elf who was apparently obsessed with Harry Potter, coordinated an increase in meal production to support the anti-Voldemort contingent. Millie volunteered to help. She didn't particularly care about Potter, but she hated the Carrows and would be glad to have less violence and bigotry in the world.
After the chaos of her seventh year, Millie opted out of taking her NEWTs and moved from her parents' home to a small flat in London. Before she left, she negotiated to bring Brosy with her. It turned out that telling Miles she wouldn't contest him for inheritance of the Bulstrode manor was sufficient motivation for him to convince their parents to part with their cook.
Millie and Brosy had been talking for years about starting a business together. They were both skilled chefs, but otherwise complemented each others' abilities. Millie didn't think she would do well interacting with clients, and house elves typically weren't allowed to sign paperwork. Brosy had been cooking long enough that she was happy to be in charge of running the business (including advertising and dealing with their supply chain) while Millie did the majority of the food preparation and occasionally signed contracts. After renting and renovating an industrial space at the edge of wizarding London, they opened B&M Catering Service. In two years, they had solid revenue from Ministry and corporate events as well as weddings, helped along by the fact that wizarding Britain was rebuilding and people were taking every opportunity to celebrate forward progress. B&M's chocolate croissants were in especially high demand.
...
Millie was middle-aged by the time Brosy passed (the elf's energy had belied her advanced years even when Millie was born). Beyond her initial grief, she felt her mentor's loss acutely in the silence of their kitchen and in needing to interact with clients. Millie wanted to keep their business going, but knew she would have trouble doing it alone. She was pleasantly surprised when her flyers soliciting applications from individuals with cooking and/or business experience, which she had only been motivated to put up in Diagon and Hogsmeade, brought in two dozen responses. Mostly witches and wizards, but also a few free house elves (she could tell because they didn't use last names). Millie knew before talking with any of them that she would be biased towards the elves.