II
It begins with Susan's death.
It won't be written in history books, but that's how it is.
It starts when Millicent walks up the path she just raked, the gravel crunching beneath her feet, and looks up to see a window explode around a dark shape, see all the glass shards around Susan catching and reflecting the sunlight, all suspended in the air for a moment before they come crashing down.
They will never know she saw the body in those short minutes before the alarm was fully raised.
Millicent stands at the corner of the house and watches that broken corpse spill red blood on the pavement with dispassionate eyes but inside a part of her feels suddenly awake, awake and relieved and envious and lots of other things all wound up in a knot she can't undo. Yet.
As voices raise and footsteps approach, she turns and walks back inside, to her next chore but with Susan's very last images burned in her brain.
That night, Millicent dreams of the battle and wakes up in cold sweat, anger and desperation clawing at her chest. Her eyes are filled with tears, but she does not cry.
There is only one bed in the room, now, and only one set of clothes in the closet, only one toothbrush on the sink but they can't fool her, not anymore.
She does not need to turn her head where Susan used to sleep. She just stares at the white plaster overhead as the light creeps across the ceiling.
Susan's corpse still dances in front of her eyes.
As inexorably as Earth revolves around the Sun, her mind is slowly clearing. Some memories lose the haze surrounding them, others don't and Millicent just lets them be, letting everything sink in little by little.
Eventually, she knows.
Not that it comes as a surprise. In a sense, she has always known – her Imperius curse is not as strong, the potions she takes not as numerous as Susan's. Perhaps they thought it a fitting punishment for her: the Slytherin and pureblooded witch who dared to raise her hand against the Dark Lord and his servants is now a Doll and a servant of the House of McNair, lower than an House Elf, a mere beast of burden.
Part of her was always aware of her own humiliation.
And now she's wide awake.
It begins with her.
The trouble with the Imperius curse is that, unlike similar potions, it does not keep its prisoner from remembering – and Millicent has been coming and going around the house for the last four years.
They never bothered to watch their tongues around her.
By day, she keeps up her duties – all of them – faithfully, without slipping or faltering, but every night she lies awake for hours, raking through her memory for useful information, painstakingly trying to put everything together.
She has never been the scholarly type, like Tracy Davis, but she always had a good memory. It always served her well – at times, even too well.
Occasionally, right before falling asleep, she considers, with more than a little irony, that she's really lucky to have such level-headedness and such an unexpressive face.
And for all the not-exactly-easy times she had at Hogwarts, she's thankful for some of the skills she learned rigorously outside the class.
It's been almost five years from the Battle of Hogwarts and Potter's death: all the opponents of the New Ministry are abroad or in Azkaban.
Only a handful remains in hiding, like Weasley and Granger, but all they do is move about aimlessly to avoid capture, too crushed to consider anything beyond mere survival.
Yet there's a fourth category no one ever considers: those who did not have a chance to fight, those who were threatened and pardoned back in line, those who cannot speak up against the New Order for they are unwillingly part of it.
Millicent knows exactly where to find the allies she needs.
Among the most frequent visitors of the Manor there are Theodore Nott and his father.
She remembers the first time she saw her old Housemate there very well, even if it was years ago. He had excused himself to use the restroom, she was bringing the tea Master McNair had ordered – there aren't many enjoyments Master gets from her, she's not delicate, beautiful Susan, but showing her off to the other purebloods is one of those.
They passed each other in the hall – Theodore did nothing as obvious as gasp, but his face blanched and the pity in his eyes hurt more than anything Master had ever done to her.
It was the first and last time she openly met his gaze – he never looks in her direction now.
Betting everything on that single look is extremely dangerous and Millicent spends days pondering on it. She manages to resolve herself a couple of days before the Notts' next visit.
It begins with a note slipped in his pocket as she helps him put on his cloak.
She wrote it on the back of a ripped piece of parchment with the stub of a pencil she found as she was emptying the garbage bin in the Mistress' study.
She waits for almost two weeks.
He Materializes with his House Elf one early afternoon as she's tending the garden in a secluded part of the property.
Millicent does not show it, but her heart almost bursts with relief.
They spend the next four hours talking, going over one detail after the other. It's nothing big yet, just comparing notes and laying down some serious groundwork, like what they can do and who can be recruited.
There can't be too many people, not yet, and all must be handpicked. They cannot afford to fail or, worse, be discovered before they can even start.
When she walks back to the manor – alone – they have agreed to exchange messages only through Dory, the Notts' House Elf, and settled on a short list of suitable candidates.
The very next day, Theodore approaches the first one: Percy Weasley.
It's not an easy task, but he has to persist because he's exactly what they need: smart, level-headed and in perfect position to gather more info.
It takes almost a month before the Gryffindor agrees to talk to her and only because it will be quite easy to find an excuse for him to be there.
They meet on May 2nd.
Millicent is two weeks pregnant.
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