Written for the Drabble and Marauder's Map Challenge
Challenge: This is challenge where you write a one-shot/drabble/multi-chapter/poem/whatever-you-please about what someone was doing at someplace with someone else on Friday night.
Characters Given: Millicent Bulstrode/Blaise Zabini
Place: Shrieking Shack
Prompt: Tears
She had been hiding there - hiding from her peers, from her ugliness, from her blood. Because she was a fricking half-blood - fricking ugly, large half-blood - girl who Pansy Parkinson loved to torment every night. So she hid-hid-hid.
Until that day – when he came.
"Bulstrode?" he had asked, surprised to see her, Millicent Bulstrode, in the haunted, dangerous Shrieking Shack.
She had looked up, tears still running down her cheeks, Pansy words still ringing in her ears.
"What are you doing here?" she had asked, stunned. Had he followed her? She had never seen anyone here since the last three weeks she had been coming - so what was he doing here, now?
"I... I..," he had seemed confused, but soon his face had come back to his usual scowl, questioning her instead. "What are you doing here, Bulstrode?"
"Nothing," she had replied quickly - too quickly.
"You don't do nothing, at night, in Shrieking Shack," he had drawled, before noticing the wetness of her eyes.
"Are you crying Bulstrode?"
"No. Why would I cry?" she had replied, wiping her cheeks. There was nothing called comfort in Slytherin. Only weakness and stupidity.
"Did Parkinson say something?" he had asked, concentrating on something she hadn't understood.
"What if she did? What if she torments every girl, everyday? It doesn't matter Zabini. She will still be the most popular Slytherin girl, because she is beautiful and rich,"
"Parkinson is not beautiful. She is pug-faced. And if it helps, then you are much prettier than her Bulstrode, because you are yourself. Now, you may leave. This is my hide-out and I don't like sharing,"
His hide-out? But she had come here first - Who was he to claim it as his? She was about to remind him that sternly, until his words finally hit her - He had said she was pretty - She, Millicent Bulstrode - large, ugly Millicent Bulstrode, was pretty.
So she did the most startling thing – she left the Shrieking Shack, without saying another word to him or disturbing his "peace", because she was happy - happier than she had been in a long, long time - and the least she could do was give him her hideout, because she was pretty and she no longer needed to hide.