Hermione Notices
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Slightly pre-slash-y thoughts. Hermione's POV. Hermione/Millicent. Partner piece to Millicent Reflects. Sort of a prequel to The Strangest Conversation.
The first thing Hermione notices about Millicent is how obsessed she is by anything sensory. Unlike Ron, who bolts his food, and Harry, who eats without sign of pleasure, Millicent lingers over each taste, each texture. At the Yule Ball, she remembers seeing her in the corner, eyes half closed, just listening, with a look of absolute contentment on her plain face.
When Hermione first started noticing such things, she was, unsurprisingly, somewhat disturbed. After a few weeks she decided it was simply research into the side of Darkness, and began to record everything in a small notebook.
The second is how much Millicent has changed. In first year, Millicent was a violent, repulsive hag. Time has turned her into a quiet, reserved girl with antisocial tendencies. It's been a year since she hit anyone. All she seems to hit now is books.
Millicent isn't pretty now, not like Parvati or Cho, far from it- but she's not ugly any more. She's… decent. Average. Handsome, possibly. Striking is a better word. She still wears her hair in a bob, but a flattering one, unlike the blunt cut she used to have. Her lumpiness is halfway to womanly curves, and her permanent glower has softened into a halfway-pleasant blank expression.
The third thing is how she smells. Oh, the jokes about Millicent's body odour are known all over the school, but none of them are true. Millicent smells of green apples, and cinnamon, and fire, and a faint whiff of ozone, like lightning strikes. Hermione found herself wishing she could bottle it.
Millicent had changed, and nobody but Hermione seemed to have noticed. Hermione wasn't surprised. Things like this were subtle. What left Hermione stumped was the important question- if they were subtle enough not to notice, why had she?
END