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At first, nothing happened. Neither Hermione nor Millicent did anything to alleviate the situation for several weeks. The holidays happened, and then there was the new semester, and then there was the inevitable blush of post-holiday depression that settled upon the school.
Winter was heavy and damp that year, and very cold.
Millicent began laying plans, however. She wasn't sure exactly what she wanted to do, but she knew she wanted to get Hermione's attention. So she began to make subtle changes in how she went about her life. Whereas in the past year, she had done most of her reading in her bedroom, spread out flat on her belly across the bed, Millicent decided a change was in order.
She knew Hermione was an aficionado of the library, and so she began to try out new reading locations there - ones that were well out of view of the librarian's desk, so as not to accidentally retrigger those sad memories of Irma Pince. She soon found the squashiest, most secluded chair out of eyeshot of the librarian's desk, and began to camp out there.
It just so happened to be within a book's throw of Hermione's own favorite corner, which housed a table and a few uncomfortable chairs where Harry and Ron sometimes joined her.
While Hermione never approached her, and Millicent never approached Hermione, they would sometimes see each other as Hermione wandered the stacks, usually with jumble of books in her arms. They did their best not to notice each other.
Millicent also began to slowly, subtly step up her game in potions class. She found herself standing abashedly outside Slughorn's door with a box of crystallized pineapple, and he received her in joyfully. She manufactured thoughtful questions, and through her cunning and guile, she managed to wheedle rare tutoring sessions from her professor. In his overwhelming laziness, he found himself completely unable to refuse her offer of cleaning up after classes every day, with limited magic, in exchange for some valuable one-on-one time with him.
She never was able to compare to Harry Potter's bewildering brilliance in the class, but with work, she more than held her own.
It came as a point of pride to her when she received her first glare from Hermione's direction at the end of class one day.
Millicent grimaced in envy when Hermione presented, at the end of class, a perfect aqualimus potion, a single drop of which could cleanse a pond of all unnatural pollutants unsafe for drinking. The potion was supposed to be dark and murky, and Millicent saw that Hermione's was darker than most, a dusky brown ochre color. Millicent thought it looked like the color of shit, and was obscenely jealous. Millicent was good enough at potions to recognize when she was bettered, and to resent it.
But as she looked down at her own potion, which she was about ten minutes behind on because she'd been more careful (she hoped) in her preparation process, she had a realization. Based on something the professor had told her about oxidization, she surmised that she could accelerate, and potentially heighten the effectiveness of the process in her own cauldron. With a few extra stirs slightly earlier in the brewing process, and covering the cauldron with a heavy crock cover for a precisely timed few minutes, soon she had finished as well. The color of her potion was nearly black, and it was much more thick in consistency, almost like tar.
She gave up the project as ruined, but went ahead and stoppered it anyway. What else was there to do?
As she began cleaning up her cauldron, she saw Harry Potter bring his potion up to the front of the class. For some reason this year, the blood traitor had risen to preeminence as the premiere potioneer of their year, but Millicent knew he must be cheating somehow. He'd always been rubbish at potions, and all of a sudden he was better than Hermione? Damned if she could figure it out, but she didn't even give him a second thought. He wasn't worth her time angsting over. But Hermione? She definitely was worth it. Hermione actually was the head of the class in terms of practical skills and excellence, and whatever Potter was doing didn't even matter.
Except that his potion was, based on the way it slopped around in the bottle he put on the desk, was almost as black and viscous as her own. Almost.
She nearly dropped the cauldron on her foot to see it. Had her potion actually been better than Potter's? Or was hers just a touch overdone?
She then felt eyes boring into the back of her head, and she turned her head to see Hermione Granger staring straight at her, a murderous glare in the other girl's eyes.
Once the last classmate's bottle was placed on his desk, Professor Slughorn was unstoppering the bottles that had landed in front of him. He paused and looked quite pleased to see Potter's potion, and then his eyes widened to see the one with Millicent's name on it. He opened them both and sniffed them, shifted them around in his hand.
"I must say," he said, his voice booming over the class as everyone packed up, since he wasn't going to give final grades until tomorrow, "Miss Bulstrode. This is a nice surprise. What a stroke of genius to implement the oxidizing effects from the grownburt potion we studied last week to this potion. It looks like Mr. Potter also had the same idea, and well done, m'boy... but your execution, Miss Bulstrode, is simply superb."
Millicent found herself stammering a thank-you, and blushing just a little bit while she examined her shoes. She hated to be the center of attention, particularly in potions.
Then, she realized that someone was standing close by her.
"What. Did. You. Do?" came a tense voice, one of resignation and surrender.
Millicent did her best to look confident. Based on her reflection in the chrome cauldron on her desk, she only managed to successfully appear smarmy. "Why, Granger," she said cooly, thrusting her hands in her pockets and hoping her button-down shirt was going to choose this particular moment to pop open in an unruly fashion. "Are you talking about my potion?"
"No," Hermione said, flatly, and her face was serious.
Millicent was puzzled, and showed it. She knew she didn't have the best of faces for hiding her secrets.
Hermione clapped a hand over her face. "No, of course I'm talking about your potion. What else would I be talking about?"
"There's no need to get snappy, Granger," Millicent heard herself saying, and her heart died a little bit as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She tried to amend, "We're all friends here."
"Yeah. Sure. Friends," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "Just tell me what you did, if you wouldn't mind? Or if you won't, fine, but just tell me if you're at least going to tell me."
"I'm happy to," Millicent said. And there it was - the tone of sincerity she'd been trying to get at this whole conversation. She pushed her glasses back further on her nose and thoughtfully touched her soft double-chin. "I just noticed we were using the same preparation process as in the grumpthwile and the grownburt potions. I don't know, it just came to me at the precise right moment, I guess, and I used the crock cover for seventeen seconds three times, just like the grumpthwile potion, and stirred intermittently. My thought was to do something similar as what we did with the grownburt potion modification we learned last week. I'm just glad it didn't end in an explosion," she confessed, and she realized she needed to check herself, for she was blathering.
Hermione's face looked a little less harsh, though. Perhaps blathering was the way to the Gryffindor heart? Millicent was a little surprised, since she thought that was more a Hufflepuff thing, to appreciate vulnerability, but perhaps Gryffindors were like that as well.
"I see," she said, and she provided a small smile in return for the information. "That was clever. Good work."
"Thanks," Millicent said, and there was a sickening earnestness in her voice that made her want to hide her face from her fellow house members. "Say, Granger."
Oh no. Hermione actually stopped from turning away, and she looked straight into Millicent's eyes. "What?" she asked, a little crossly.
"Would you… consider coming with me this weekend to Hogsmeade?" Millicent asked, and she immediately realized that she was hungry, and making poor decisions because it was just before lunch, and oh hell had she just asked Hermione Granger, Mudblood Extraordinaire, out on a date?
A date?
Would she ever be able to live this down, if she survived the hexes that were bound to come her way now from her house members?
Millicent glanced around, and was happy to see that only Hermione, Potter, and Slughorn remained in the classroom at this point. At least her shame was going to only be noted by a small number. She could, in fact, kill them all if needed to hide her shame, ha ha. (She was only half joking.)
However, a Slytherin couldn't backtrack. She'd made herself even more vulnerable. And Millicent was kicking herself. What a fool she was.
Hermione was squinting very hard at Millicent, as if expecting this to be some kind of trap. Millicent felt sweat accumulating on her brow. Hungry, and sweaty. Wow, what a hog she was. Who'd ever want to go out with someone like her?
Then, very slowly, Hermione said, "No Madam Puddifoot's."
"Oh," Millicent said, with a deep breath of relief. "No. Of course not. What do you take me for?"
Of course not. What rot. Millicent had, in all truth, not thought far enough ahead to consider where she might take Hermione on the next Hogsmeade trip.
Hermione remained very quiet for several more minutes. Then, her next words made Millicent very glad that Potter was standing at the door, too far to hear, and that Slughorn had waddled into his office to put away the potions, also too far to hear.
Hermione stepped forward a little bit, and murmured with low tones, "I take you for a lesbian."
Millicent swallowed firmly. She'd heard the word before, of course, and even identified with it, in her mind. But no one had ever outright called her that.
"I… I'm not a lesbian," she denied, her voice hot but nervous. "At best, I'm… I don't know... I mean, I do fancy Snape," she explained helplessly.
Oh dear. She was certainly putting on a bad show of being better than Hermione. For some reason, Millicent was feeling tongue-tied. She had no idea how Hermione was able to make her carefully-constructed facade fall away like a pile of loose parchment caught in the wind.
Her mind extrapolated to a future that didn't exist yet, that probably would never exist. Would she ever win against Hermione Granger, at anything?
She doubted it. And she also knew that for Hermione Granger, she'd be willing to lose. Every time.
"So," Hermione said, and she was smiling quietly, like a Renaissance painting. "You're not a lesbian. So, this isn't a date?"
"I mean," Millicent said, and she felt her stomach flip-flop. How dare her brain have contrived this idea immediately before lunch? What a cruel mind she had. "Irrespective… if you'd like, it could be a date."
Hermione seemed mostly amused at the suggestion, then, with a sigh and a smile, she said, "Sure. Let's call it a date. Meet me at Honeyduke's. I'll be there around ten on Saturday."
With that, all Millicent could do was nod. Millicent's eyes grew wide as she watched Hermione saunter away, her delightful apple bottom waggling seductively.
Oh Merlin, Millicent thought, sinking down into the nearest desk with a thwump, I seem to have a date with Hermione Granger.
And somehow, she couldn't get the ridiculously goofy smile off her face through the rest of the day. Or the next.
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