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Since they entered school, Flora and Hestia Carrow had been experiencing more than their fair share of bullying from members of the non-Slytherin houses. Perhaps it was because they were so pale and quiet, and when confronted, they would break down crying immediately. More likely, it had something to do with their father, Andreius Carrow, the older and more mature brother to Amycus and Alecto, being the foremost manufacturer of ladies' intimate garments, and their third-year peers were reaching the age where imagination became equally matched with cruelty. (Oh the sweet tender blessings of being a sixth year, Millicent felt). Their inclusion in the Slug Club during their third year did nothing to quell these issues, and Millicent witnessed first-hand some of the truly incomprehensible gimmicks perpetrated against the two fragile twins.
So it was with her usual intrepid nature that Millicent accompanied the young ladies hither and thither around the castle. They were quiet creatures, and odd even for inbred pureblood witches, speaking to each other in their own language that sounded vaguely like French. They were inseparable, but not in the way that Fred and George Weasley were, or even Padma and Parvati Patil. No, Flora and Hestia Carrow seemed literally to wilt when their other sister wasn't in the same room as them. They often walked the halls hand in hand, and seemed to have a deep sense of bonding that Millicent frankly envied. What a beautiful life to have, she felt, where you had a ready-made defense against loneliness.
The girls seemed to accept Millicent's new arranged friendship with them in stride, but never to demonstrate any interest in her. They treated her like a delivery-person, or a waiter, or a cab driver - they would have prolonged conversations in front of her, never acknowledging her. They would periodically ask her to pass the salt, or instruct her to help them avoid a certain person, but otherwise treated her like they would a servant.
This made Millicent's face burn with shame. She had watched Crabbe and Goyle serve as official bodyguards for Draco Malfoy. But they'd literally been chosen from birth to serve that role. The Crabbe and Goyle families had always been servants. The Bulstrodes had never been servants, at least not in recent history. They had their own noble bearing and lineage. Her family was minor nobility, but nobility all the same.
She dared not write home about the recent turn of events. She knew her mother would make some sort of comment like "That's what you get for being so unladylike," and then follow that up with, "If, perhaps, you tried that new diet I told you about…"
It was a depressing state of affairs, and Millicent probably wouldn't have kept with it as long as she did except that after her first few weeks, she received an effusive letter from their father, saying that he was setting up a Gringotts account for her to use as she wished, with the amount of her disbursements increasing every month she continued her work for them. The sum wouldn't have impressed a Malfoy, but Millicent was well aware that her family estate was deeply underwater, and she wouldn't have much, if anything, to pass on to her when her mother passed.
The money was important to her in many ways. It represented the possibility of freedom. The possibility of never needing to marry. And, indeed, the possibility of living exactly the way she wanted.
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