Sandstone

Millicent was born like a horse, her mother had always told her that she had been all knobby legs and a fat round face like a run over donkey. Millicent had never been told she was pretty. Growing up, Millicent had learned to square her shoulders more than roll them forward. Millicent had never been told that she was beautiful. In school she had learned that fists were more eloquent than her lips and she learned that stone walls were no more her allies than the beautiful girls with straight teeth who smiled at her and spat venom behind her back. Millicent learned to despise girls like Granger, because Granger was prettier than she was and smarter than she was and Millicent was never as good as the little mudblood bitch.

Some people in Slytherin were smooth like Draco Malfoy. He slipped between words and rumors. People remembered his face, and so many people called him things Millicent had stopped dreaming of a long time ago. Some people were like Pansy, she built herself up on other people. Pansy wasn't afraid to step on people and she had acquired a smile that accompanied the sound of breaking bones. Others were like Crabbe and Goyle, some thought that those two didn't have ambition, but it was more that they knew a sure way to get ahead than they were just lackeys. Be by the side of someone who is going places, and you're bound to get there.

Then there was Zabini, Millicent envied him. It was Zabini who could lean in doorways and catch people's eyes with the barest upturn of his lips. It was Zabini who was 'beautiful'. He took after his mother, it was clear, and even the way he moved reminded her of the pictures she had seen of the beautiful Mrs. Zabini. Millicent wouldn't have even remembered Zabini's face if it wasn't for the thin boy who could see thestrals who dormed with him.

Millicent hadn't ever noticed Theodore Nott before that Care of Magical Creatures class when the big halfwit had asked who could see Thestrals. She'd watched hands tentatively reach for the sky, her own among them. It was Theodore's hand that had raised, unwavering and steady, the stringy boy unafraid of both thestrals and his classmates knowing that he could see them.

Millicent didn't 'crush' on people. She crushed people. Millicent didn't pretend that she was in love, she knew that this was simple infatuation. Or that was what she called it when she found herself adjusting her step so she could catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye. She had taken to coming early to breakfast to see if he was going to be there, seated across the table. He was left handed. He always ate his sausage before his eggs and didn't drink pumpkin juice. Theodore didn't have a broomstick, but he was a good flyer when he borrowed Zabini's broom. Millicent didn't just watch, she learned.

Life was never kind. That was a lesson everyone knew. The sun shined and people pretended it was a good day, but everyone knew that this was only temporary. Millicent knew that eventually she would either grow out of Theodore Nott or she would grow obsessed. She tried to pace herself, to savor the feeling of unadulterated puppy-love. She tried to hold onto just watching his lips move and not listen to the words that came out of them.

"…You know, Bulstrode?"

"Hm?" Zabini's lips tilted to the side, because he already knew what Theodore was going to say.

"The ugly cow's been following me."

"I think she likes you."

Millicent had learned that laughter was easiest to ignore when there were tears behind her irises. When she dug little ditches into her palms with her fingernails and squared her shoulders to the world. The worst part about it all was that she had known it was coming. She had been counting down the days when everything dissolved like dried blood in the sink, washed away with only a faint ring of what had been there.

There were Slytherins who were hopeful. There were Slytherins like Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini. There were those who followed and those who taught others to bow. There were Slytherins like Theodore Nott who knew where to place a word to make it cut the deepest and had seen death too often to remember how to be sad.