Rating: G
Pairing: Crabbe/Millicent
Characters: Vincent Crabbe and Millicent Bulstrode
Summary: Fourth year - Crabbe is looking for a date to the Yule Ball.
Millicent Bulstrode was...
Not pretty. Not at all. Not in the least. In fact, she was often described as brutish and ogre-like. She wasn't stupid, though she certainly didn't hold the highest intelligence in Slytherin House. Average would accurately describe the girl. And violent. And... Well... There was the whole ogre thing to consider, but all in all, Vincent Crabbe thought she was rather nice in a roundabout way. Nice like what one might feel after pulling a shard of glass out of the bottom of a foot. The relief is there, but, damn, it still hurts.
Besides, her eyes looked like toasted marshmallows. He was proud of that little metaphor because he thought it up all on his own. They were rather large and brown, but of course there was a little white around them. Yeah, the more he went over it, the more he thought about how accurate his description really was. Her eyes looked like marshmallows that had been held over a fire for a minute or so. They were really pretty eyes, he thought. Or, well, pretty in perhaps a relative sense, because her rather pocked face threw off the whole 'pretty' feeling.
In any case, something was going on in the school this year. Something called a tri-something something tournament, and there were students from other schools hanging out at Hogwarts. Crabbe really didn't pay much attention to it other than the fact that he thought the dragons were pretty cool. Hey, he didn't have to pay attention. After all, what he really wanted to do was make sure the ickle peons stayed out of Draco's way, and also, he wanted to make fun of Harry Potter. That was easy enough to do, and it was fun. So why would he bother worrying about a bunch of other students with really bad accents?
Poor Crabbe. The whole thing became his problem when the subject of a school dance just happened to come up one day in the middle of second lunch. Having mostly ignored all previous announcements, he was forced to accept the fact that he'd have to wear dress robes when Draco approach him and Goyle rather irritably and demanded, "Do try to find someone to go with you to the Christmas Dance."
And that had been that.
And that's when he started noticing that Millicent Bulstrode was kinda pretty, and that despite the fact that she could probably pick Draco up and toss him out a window without batting an eye, she was a girl.
Meanwhile, despite Goyle's attempts to bully Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis into being his date for the ball, he still had no one to go with. He was trying his luck with some of the fifth year girls even now, but last time anyone had heard, all he had to show for his efforts was a slap upside the head.
Millicent, however, was sitting on the couch with a book open. She was smart, Crabbe decided, and his mother always had told him to look for girls that were smart. Since reading happened to be a smart thing to do, and Millicent was currently reading, the obvious answer had to be that she was smart. And she didn't have a date to the dance yet.
Adjusting his uniform tie (because for some reason, he was starting to feel warm) he approached her. She looked up at him, but only a glance. Usually, they didn't really talk too much since Pansy didn't seem to like her, and Draco liked Pansy... And in a complicated combination of webs and tangles that Crabbe would never be able to sift through, he'd figured out long ago that he didn't like Millicent, either. He wasn't ever sure why... It's just the way things had always been.
But her eyes looked like toasted marshmallows.
"Hey," he said to her.
She looked up again, book closing ever so slightly. Her face wasn't twisted in the usual rage. Actually, it was sort of curious, but her marshmallow eyes were behind thick glasses. After what seemed like a long time, she asked, "What?"
"Didn't know ya wore glasses," he replied.
"You never bothered to look," she said, before going back to her reading. "If that's all--"
"No, it izzn't," Crabbe spoke up. Millicent looked away from the page again, arching her eyebrows. Or, rather, her eyebrow, because it seemed there was only one. Clearing his throat, he went on. "I jes' wanted to tell you that your eyes look like marshmallows."
That kinda angry look returned to replace the curious one. "Well, that's a new one," she said through clenched teeth. They were kinda yellow, but at least they were straight. Crabbe's teeth weren't really straight. Didn't bother him none, though. He didn't have time to ponder on that, though, because his now enraged Housemate was going on now about said teeth. Perhaps she'd read his mind! "I don't suppose you want all your teeth, do you? Because I'm about to knock all of 'em out."
Crabbe noticed she was setting the book aside and starting to stand, so he figured he'd better say something. "What'd I say?" ...Oddly enough, his voice sounded the slightest bit panicked. He hadn't meant it to sound like that.
This caused Millicent to pause as she was getting up. Half crouching, she watched him closely. "No one put you up t'that?" she asked.
"Uh, no one else thinks yer ver' pretty," Crabbe mumbled. And this seemed to bring that completely outraged look back onto the girl's face. She stood up the rest of the way, and Crabbe closed his eyes in anticipation of the slap - he'd been slapped before, after all - but it didn't come. When he looked at Millicent again, that curious look was back.
"What did you say?"
In a moment of pure inspiration, Crabbe figured out that he'd indirectly called her pretty. It was the most intelligent thought he'd had all year, and so he repeated it. "I sed, I think yer pretty."
"Oh," she replied. And stood there. She didn't seem to be in the hitting mood anymore.
"I wuz wonderin' if you'd go t'the dance wif me," he finally said.
"No."
"Kay. Sorry t'bother yas."
He started to walk away, but Millicent spoke again. "It's because I'm going home, Vincent. You should have asked me sooner." When he turned around, she was already seated, the book back in her hand. She had some sort of odd smile on her face that didn't make her look half bad. "I'll be back after the holiday, though... We can do something then."
"That'll be nice," he replied, and he wasn't quite sure why the thought of that made him so happy. Maybe they could go to Hogsmeade together next time around. Maybe. Then again, he really wasn't thinking that far ahead. He'd have to figure it out when the time came.
Granted, he hadn't exactly done what Draco had asked, but as far as Vincent Crabbe was concerned, this was a whole lot better.
