Let’s talk about Millicent Olivia “Millie” Bulstrode.
She’s the youngest of her friends and the youngest of her year, her birthday is in late August, a day that is always dizzyingly hot and humid and miserable. She’s an only child like so many other Slytherin legacies, but it’s because her oldest brother died when he was fifteen, and her father died when she was six.
Her stepfather is older, he’s a kind man, but nothing in his eyes or hands or smile say gentle.
Her best friend is Theodore Nott, he is a troublemaker, he is the son of a Death Eater, just as Millie had been the daughter of one, still is the stepdaughter of one. Theodore is kind eyes and warm hands on cold days, his laughter makes her smile, he brings joy to her, to all of their friends, he holds the darkest secrets of them all.
Theodore sees his Hogwarts letter as an escape, they all do.
~`~
At Hogwarts, Millie does as she’s told.
Pansy tells her to make any jokes she can at the Gryffindors expense, Daphne tells her to laugh when the Hufflepuffs get answers wrong in class, and Tracey tells her to push the Ravenclaws faces into their plates when they walk pass them in the Great Hall.
It’s funny, but it’s mean and cruel and when the four of them sit together in their common room, they whisper about how unfunny it really is. Their parents told them to be a certain way, but that didn’t mean they had to be.
Draco is the best at ugly jabs and jests, but Millie had heard him cry in his quiet private room.
Vincent is cruel, the meanest of them all, and mean to Millie because their parents had decided they should be married to one another at six months old.
Gregory is angry, his mother left him and his father, his anger simmered under the surface and made him feel weak, mean words made him feel better.
Blaise is a smooth talker, he isn’t one to be in the spotlight, but he and Draco scheme together and it makes everyone feel sick.
Theodore is the bystander, he does make jabs and jests, but his are slightly more innocent, his aren’t filled with the same anger.
During late nights, they raid the kitchens and sit together, they’ve known each other since they were babies, or close enough. They listen to the football games in the fall and spring on the little radio Daphne sneaked in. They let themselves laugh silly at the commentary, they root for their favorite teams, they let themselves have fun.
They let themselves be teenagers.
Teenagers shouldn’t be cruel or mean or angry all the time, they should find a little light at the end of the day. They find light in Tracey’s silly stories about the Muggles in her town, and in watching her and Pansy kiss each other on late nights. They find light in Blaise’s hard to get smiles, and sweet forehead kisses. The find light in Draco’s monologs and Theodore’s mocking of them behind his back.
The find light in the little bit of controlled drama they can, the little stolen moments they find in their hearts, the little bit of love they share with each other, for each other.
~`~
At Hogwarts, everything gets dialed up to a ten.
Umbridge comes and stirs the pot, she’s crueler than Pansy or Draco can pretend to be. She puts badges on their chests and tells them to do good work, they are considered good boys and girls for keeping the peace. Millie doesn’t feel like this is peace, but she is too young for war, to know what war really is.
Umbridge leaves and another year passes and Dumbledore dies.
Millie keeps Theodore in the old groundskeeper house, on nights when the house is too loud or quiet, she sneaks out to the little house and climb into bed with him. Theodore is her best friend, they’re closer than Pansy and Draco, they slept together long before Draco and Pansy ever did.
It’s why they know their better friends than lovers.
The summer before they’re seventh year, she spends most nights together, trying to figure out their love and need for each other.
Then Tracey dies.
Pansy is a mess, she cries into Gregory’s shoulders, letting him be the support she was bound too. Tracey was meant for Draco, but everyone knew that wasn’t going to happen, Pansy was meant for Gregory, there was still a chance it could happen.
Tracey’s death marks the beginning of their war.
~`~
At Hogwarts, they fight two wars.
Their parents are Death Eaters, a war of family. The rest of the school thinks they’re Death Eaters, a war of peers.
Millie learns the shield charm and covers Pansy and Daphne, she would’ve covered Tracey too if she was there. They hold hands sometimes, while Draco, Blaise, and Theodore walk ahead of them, Gregory and Vincent are right behind them, keeping their backs covered.
They still listen to football games, but they do so in Draco’s private room. The eight of them curl up together on the floor, the radio barely louder than their breathing, they miss Tracey with every breath.
One night, she can’t stand the sound of the announcer and she turns off the game and whispers how much she loves each of her siblings. That is what they are, these boys, her boys are the loves of her life, brothers that protect her against the world. Pansy and Daphne, her sisters that hold her in the darkening days, they hold her up, the make her whole.
She sleeps with Vincent that night, lets him hold her close and make her whole.
She still doesn’t want to belong to him, doesn’t want to marry him, doesn’t want his children.
Then the war really does come to Hogwarts.
Pansy sells out Harry Potter because Tracey is dead, because her parents are Death Eaters, and because she wants it all to end. They all knew that Harry Potter could save them all. Pansy wanted it more than anything.
They tried to shut them in dungeons, but that was never going to hold. They flood Hogsmeade, and Millie, Pansy, and Daphne send them to their homes, to helping hands.
Daphne’s parents kept a family of Muggleborns in their own groundskeeper house and that’s where they send most of them. Then they go back to the school.
Millie perfected her shield charm, Daphne can stun anything that gets in her way, and Pansy know every curse there is to know.
When it’s over, no one will remember what they did. They’ll remember Pansy screaming and crying in the Great Hall, but they won’t remember her cursing one of the Lestrange brothers until he fell down two flights of stairs; they’ll remember Daphne’s stony face, but not her stunning masked Death Eaters out of windows; they’ll remember Millie’s silence, but not her shield charms keeping the wounded safe.
~`~
Vincent is dead, just like Tracey, they only face two casualties in the war, they only lose one brother and one sister.
Pansy tries to figure out how to love Gregory, because it lingers somewhere underneath their skin. Draco tries to reconnect with his family because the world is too loud. Blaise and Daphne let themselves be in love because they’re ready to be in love. Theodore chases after Padma Patil because he’s loved her from afar for years, and he always will.
Millie has Vincent’s baby and gives him up.
She goes to Witch Weekly and makes them give her a job, she learned how to get what she wanted from Pansy and Tracey and Daphne. She learned biting words and insults from her friends, but she has no need for them now.
She writes about the things she wants to, avoiding gossip lines and instead going after Ministry corruption and Quidditch interviews. She writes about Muggle fashion and about the new integration of Muggleborns in their society.
She writes an article about how blood status should be a thing of the past. Wizard-born becomes a trendy phrase because of her.
She interviews Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger on the lead up to the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. She is unrecognizable from her school days, but she knows that isn’t true.
She is more than a scared girl, but she feels as if she still is.
Her time moves by, she watches her friends get married, Pansy and Gregory, quickly followed by a daughter named Samantha, her first goddaughter. Next is Draco and Daphne’s little sister Astoria. Blaise and Daphne decide they want to get married, then they are, Daphne doesn’t like to wait.
After Millie, Theodore has the first baby of the group.
Theodore and Padma keep their son, a sweet little boy with dark hair, their caramel skin, and Theodore’s green eyes. He is a beautiful little boy, and is followed by his little brother Hajari and the temporary dissolve of Padma and Theodore’s relationship.
Millie is hurt by the words that Padma said about her and the anger behind the accusations. She was a scared kid, a child who was forced to grow up during a war. Padma couldn’t hold her mean words over her, over all of them.
But she did anyways.
Theodore is a wreck with the boys, and even worse without them. Millie can’t stand to watch Theodore be miserable, watch him spend all of his time either locked up in his tiny flat or locked up in his office at work.
He’s a lively person, he’s full of love and joy, he doesn’t deserve this sadness, this hate pushed onto him. She makes him come out with her and their friends, makes him drink and eat and laugh. Sometimes she brings him home to her flat and lets him sleep off his drink in her bed and they curl up together like they were kids again.
They talk late into the night, passing secrets back and forth like they used to. They don’t have sex, Theodore can’t do it to Padma, and Millie doesn’t want to anyways.
She gets pictures once a month of her own baby boy, he’s nearly four now, and she can’t decide if he looks more like her or Vincent. Theodore is the only one she showed his pictures too, just as she is the only one to babysit his sons when Padma and him are working and he needs help.
Devansh is just like Theodore on good days, warm and happy and sweet, while Hajari is still little and lovely and like Padma with his big brown eyes.
She knows that she would kill for the pair of them, and her goddaughter Samantha.
~`~
Millie is the first of their friends to arrive at St. Mungo’s when Padma finally lets the news get to them about Theodore’s condition. Part of her can’t forgive herself for letting it get lost on her desk, while the other part of her can’t forgive Padma for not telling them sooner.
Theodore will always be her best friend, she will always stand at his side, she will always be there for him when he needs her.
She and Padma come to the understanding that they both love him, that they both want the best for him, and that they both will fight for him.
It brings them closer, just a little bit, but it works.
Millie isn’t there when Padma finally brings Theodore home, but she is the first to know about their new baby.
Theodore and Padma name her godmother of their daughter Minali, though she knew that was a hard sell from Theodore. She is number four in their lineup of children, born nine months after Theodore and Padma finally get married.
After Millie pushed Draco aside and gave the speech that Theodore wanted her to.
~`~
The years pass by.
Millie watched her friends fall in love, watched them get married, watched them have children. She doesn’t want to be the only one without someone to hold, without someone to love, but she doesn’t know anyone looking like she is.
She meets a few guys, but none are interesting enough.
Some nights she curls up in her bed, the articles she had been working on crinkling under her weight. She doesn’t ever bring anyone home with her, the question of ‘your place or mine’ is always answered with her going home with them.
She has three miscarriages before one finally sticks.
Her daughter, Vera Tracey, is a sweet little girl with dark eyes and a warm smile. She grows quickly, and in the blink of an eye she’s eleven.
The son she gave up is older than she was when she had him. He’s older than his father would ever be, will ever grow to be.
Vera goes from eleven to seventeen faster than she went from a newborn to eleven. She’s beautiful, more like Millie than she wants to admit, she even starts to take after her. She becomes a writer, always taking the hard hitting stories like Millie had.
She raises herself, raises a daughter that takes after herself, raises a girl who isn’t afraid of herself or the world around her. Vera is headstrong and smart and wildly funny, she gives Millie the final push to get her book published.
She never thought that she would be more than a scared girl trying to survive the war.
~`~
She returns to Hogwarts sometime after the war.
She remembers the horrors she witnessed in the halls, the fear that was placed on her in the warmth of the halls, and the few moments of happiness she got with her friends.
Vera is seventeen and telling the whole school about Tracey Davis, the first casualty of the war that affected Millie and her friends. The first person that she knew to die since she watched her father pass away and since her brother died drowning in the river outside of their home.
Her daughter is not overlooked, instead she is the center of attention.
She is loud and known and heard.