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There were many feelings floating around in Millicent's head over the next several weeks. She felt like she had to keep an eye on Hermione throughout the day - glancing over at the Gryffindor table multiple times during each meal to check and make sure Hermione was there, and see what she was doing.

The girl seemed to be spending less time with her ever-present friends, Harry and Ron, since she and Millicent had started doing whatever it was that they were doing. Millicent thought this was an estimable change. While Hermione would surely never be a pureblood or hold pureblood sensibilities, it was heartening to see that Hermione was not keeping company with such egregious brutes as those two were.

Millicent, in turn, found herself sticking in the company of Pansy and her ilk far less. Given the quality of her interactions with Hermione, what was the point of pretending that spending time with Pansy and their other housemates was satisfying in any way?

And as she began to detach, Millicent began to realize that the other girls really didn't seem to notice or mind that she was edging away from them. She normally would have taken this detachment in stride, recognizing it to be a self-preservation tactic frequently employed by pureblood families. Her own family was guilty of it over the years to various acquaintances who had either slipped in station or risen, and only once those acquaintances stabilized did her family reach out again. Slytherins, first and foremost, thought of themselves and their own. Therefore, it was part of protecting themselves, to keep away from those who might be in a vortex of change that might also suck them in and drag them to their doom.

It was such a cynical view of the world. Millicent had never questioned it. Change was bad, and led to horrible things happening to people she loved, so she had always done her best to avoid it when her friends and acquaintances had entered those mutable and shifting waters.

But now that she was undergoing her own form of change, Millicent wondered what it might be like, to be excited to see someone change. To stand by them, and to help them, to ensure they wouldn't drown, even if it meant costing her own safety and security. Purposefully taking the risk of being sucked into Hades to ensure that someone else didn't get sucked down into the darkness.

Millicent felt like this was an admirable quality of a Gryffindor. They didn't even think of it as taking a calculated risk, they just did it. They sacrificed themselves at the spur of a whim, and all for the sake of preserving something that was beautiful.

Oh, who was she kidding. The only reason she was having these kinds of thoughts was from the books Hermione was making her read. They were making her doubt her house and its values. Doubt her family. Doubt herself, even.

And as soon as she realized that this was what was happening, she saw that her housemates could also see it. They probably were able to see it before Millicent herself could.

Soon, Millicent realized her housemates were no longer just detaching from her, to give her space while she fluctuated and bobbed on the ocean of revision alone. They were outright positioning themselves in a phalanx against her, waiting for her to lash out of them violently.

Change, after all, was bad, and Millicent was changing, which meant that something bad was rising within Millicent.

She realized how bad it had gotten one night when, craving some company, she sat down next to Pansy for the first time in nearly a month. It was late February.

She had been careful not to go over to the Gryffindor table more than a few times a week, to sit and eat with Hermione. Firstly, Hermione tended to get like a cat denied its dinner when Millicent tried to get her nose out of a book, and secondly, Millicent didn't want to get the Slytherins to think she was abandoning the house.

Most of the time in the past month, as she'd done most of her time at Hogwarts she'd sat in her own corner of the Slytherin table, eating and reading the less suspicious books that Hermione had told her to read. She was good at keeping to herself, and it had the added benefit of giving her privacy to stuff her face if she felt like it.

But even these cautious changes had made the Slytherins reject her.

As Millicent settled down to join her dorm-mates for a rare attempt at making conversation, Pansy merely looked down her nose at her. "There's no room here," Pansy said, and her eyes were stone cold. "How about you go try the Gryffindor table?"

Millicent felt her cheeks flush red, and she hurriedly turned away and went back to her normal corner. She proceeded to stuff herself silly, in lieu of crying. It was more satisfying than running off in defeat to cry in the lav.

No, Slytherin didn't want her anymore, that was evident. But it wasn't as if Gryffindor would want her. Hell, *she* didn't want to be Gryffindor. Moreover, she'd never heard of anyone changing their house. That was such an extreme intervention, she doubted it had been done throughout the years at Hogwarts.

She didn't know what to do. Instead, during dinner, she watched Hermione. As usual, she was sitting on her own at the Gryffindor table, and reading. But then she seemed to notice something was amiss, and Hermione took her head out of her book, and immediately her eyes met Millicent's across the hall.

Millicent tried to convey what she could, through mere glance alone. Enough of the pain in her eyes reached Hermione that the other girl slowly closed her book, pushed her plate away, and slowly rose and left the hall, glancing back at Millicent to check that the Slytherin was coming.

Millicent didn't need an invitation, and was soon out of the hall after Hermione.

Hermione was worried as she greeted Millicent in the shadows of their usual rendez-vous corner outside the Great Hall.

"What's happened?" Hermione asked, and her eyes were full of anxiety.

"Nothing much," Millicent said, but despite herself she felt her chest constricting tightly, and her breath becoming short. "Just disaster and disgrace."

"Oh, no," Hermione said, and she offered her body to Millicent for comfort. Millicent pressed her arms around Hermione tightly, and clutched the girl close to her.

"The word is all around, it seems," Millicent said, and then suddenly she began to feel her eyes filling up with tears. "People can see that something is happening. Even though I've taken care to prevent that."

"Would you like to go somewhere quiet?" Hermione asked, and Millicent nodded gratefully.

Hermione proceeded to grasp Millicent's hand warmly - the first time they had publicly shown any affection towards each other - and led the girl up the dark staircases, to find a private place where Millicent could cry.

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