I'm gonna fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry. I'm gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier. – SIA, Chandelier
She had been a late bloomer. This had come as quite the shock to everyone.
Everyone had been so busy worrying about death and destruction to notice that Millicent Bulstrode had become a knockout.
Millicent always tried to shrug off the sting that the looks of surprise brought in their wake.
Such was the price of beauty she supposed.
Men looked at her all the time now, and for reasons that weren't even remotely related to pity.
But there had been one, once, that had looked at her that way before she had blossomed
He had died in the war. But when he was alive, he had thought she was beautiful, magnificent; and when the night bled into morning Millicent wondered if somewhere he still did.
Neither of them had been remarkable, maybe that's what drew them together. Both placed in Slytherin the same year that Harry Potter arrived at Hogwarts. Not that either of them particularly cared about Potter and his squad of Gryffindors.
It was fifth year when he stole a kiss from her in a dim hall. They kept it a secret because Millicent knew she couldn't bear the merciless teasing she would have to endure if Pansy found out.
Back then it was generally thought to be amusing to make fun of stupid, ugly, useless Millicent Bulstrode.
He hadn't. He had even defended her, which had made her knees weak and her stupid, ugly, useless heart flutter.
They had made plans to be married; sometimes she laughed cynically at their childish plans and other times she cried. It had certainly felt like forever in his arms, like finally she had found her place.
But all of that had fallen apart after the Battle of Hogwarts, of course. She didn't know how it happened and she knew she'd never find out why.
She only knew that the headstone bearing the name Vincent T. Crabbe had been the worst things she had ever laid eyes on.
For over a year if felt like a dream, always the faint undeniable feeling that he would walk through her flat door with his stupid grin plastered all over his face. But then she saw everyone slowly turning to the new world around them and realized she had to do the same.
She worked at the Ministry, brought home a good deal of Galleons, and most nights she went to pubs to let strange men buy her drinks before taking them home. They brought relief, whether they were wizards or Muggles (did it really even matter anymore?), and a comforting monotony. Millicent Bulstrode was wanted and desired and she made those men jump through hoops before taking them to bed.
Millicent liked the way things were run now. She didn't have to feel ashamed of her Muggle mother and it was okay to openly loathe her no-good Pureblood father and his other family. She knew that Pansy had shut herself up in that ugly old house and Blaise was making loads of Galleons; Daphne Greengrass was still hung up over Theodore Nott and Draco Malfoy was sulking in his parents' sprawling manner.
Once she had met up with Greg Goyle. It was three years after the Drak Lord's defeat. They had gone to the Leaky Cauldron and Millicent had struggled to get her food down while trying to stamp out the feelings that seeing Greg's face brought. They carefully skirted around the topic of Vincent; Greg never saw Draco anymore but he worked at the Ministry now and was dating some irrelevant Hufflepuff girl two years their junior.
Afterwards they both stood and hugged, it seemed like the thing to do, and there was a brief flicker of static electricity between them.
They went to his house but Millicent added Greg Goyle to the notches in her bedpost.
It seemed logical. Here they were; the two people who loved Vincent the most and were loved by him in return. Maybe it mattered that they were dragon-snaking between his sheets but Vincent was dead so she figured that it didn't.
She left while he was sleeping; snoring in a manner so similar to Vincent's that it made her lonely heart ache.
Her expensive flat always seemed foreign; she was hardly ever there anyways. But there was a bottle of Firewhiskey in the pantry and if that didn't make a house a home then she didn't know what did.
The graveyard was silent at dawn but then Millicent supposed that the dead didn't make much noise any time of day.
The grass was wet with dew so she cast a discreet Drying charm before sitting down and leaning heavily on Vincent's tombstone. Taking swigs of the Firewhiskey she leaned her head back on the cool marble.
As the sun burned the sky with yellows and oranges and pinks, Millicent wondered what life would be like if the Dark Lord had won the War. Maybe Vincent would be sitting in her flat in that other world instead of laying six feet under her.
That was why Millicent really hated Harry Fucking Potter sometimes.
But then Vincent always had been recklessly ambitious, it probably would have only been a matter of time before he was on the wrong end of an Unforgiveable Curse. It probably would have been a matter of time for all of them really.
Millicent really hated deep thoughts like this; they stirred up things that had gone to rest, making them rankle inside of her.
But that's what the Firewhiskey was for she supposed.
** Let me know what you guys think about this story so far. Thanks for reading, please feel free to leave a review with suggestions or your thoughts!