Confessions Of A Fat, Ugly Slytherin

With a nervous smile that Millicent didn't return, Susan Bones picked up her bag and made her way over to Millicent's table. "Hi," she said brightly, sitting down.

Millicent just grunted. She didn't really have anything against Susan, aside from the general irritation she felt toward most Hufflepuffs, but she wouldn't have wanted to talk even if she hadn't had a longstanding reputation as an antisocial troll to uphold. She needed to think about some things, and a jabbering Hufflepuff wasn't one of them.

Susan, however, had other ideas. "So," she began tentatively, "are you looking forward to the Hogsmeade weekend?"

"Mmph."

The other girl's lip quivered slightly, but she pressed on bravely. "I'm going to Honeyduke's. What about you?"

"Hmph."

"What's your favorite sweet? Mine's chocolate frogs."

"Grmph."

Fortunately for the continuation of both Susan's optimism and Millicent's sanity, Professor Flitwick chose that moment to begin to speak. "Does everyone have a partner from the other House?" he asked, beaming at them.

No, we're just sitting like this because Slytherins and Hufflepuffs work so well together. It had been one of Dumbledore's more inane ideas: to "foster school solidarity" by putting members of different Houses together in class projects, rather than letting them be paired with their Housemates. She didn't mind working with Ravenclaws, and it was really rather amusing to... interact with the Gryffindors (rumor had it that Neville Longbottom had been regularly going to the hospital wing for tranquilizers ever since being paired with her in Potions last week), but working with Hufflepuffs always made Millicent feel like she was putting on full armor and attacking a large pudding with a broadsword. There was just no point.

"We're going to be working on the Balancing Charm today," the diminutive professor continued. He was still smiling. Idly, Millicent wondered how many Cheering Charms he had to cast on himself each day in order to achieve that neurotically happy effect. "Can anyone tell me what it is?"

On the other side of the room, Justin Finch-Fletchley's hand shot up. "It's used for making magical scales, Professor - Ow!" (Francis Nott, his partner, had just surreptitiously poked him in the stomach while fishing around for a spare quill.)

The smile dropped off of Flitwick's face slightly. Huh. Maybe she'd been wrong about the Cheering Charms. Then again, Francis' habitual idiocy - honestly, poking him in the stomach? How childish could you get? - was usually enough to put a serious damper on any amount of good cheer. "That's not funny, Mr. Nott," he said crisply. "Ten points from Slytherin."

Francis straightened, quill in hand. "What's not funny, Professor?" he asked innocently. "I was just getting a quill."

A faint snigger skittered through the classroom. Pansy, sneeringly paired with Ernie Macmillan, shared an elegant, derisive smirk with Draco, who then rolled his eyes innocently skyward and began twiddling his thumbs while his partner, Hannah Abbot, looked on nervously. Blaize, meanwhile, was ignoring the entire incident, although she was taking advantage of the lull offered by the momentary confusion by engaging in her favorite pastime - boy-baiting - and shooting sultry looks at her partner, Stephen Moon, who didn't seem entirely sure whether to be attracted, flattered, or utterly terrified; whereas Crabbe and Goyle (much to the relief of their relatively tiny partners) merely sat back in their chairs with the serenely confused bliss of the mentally deficient.

Finally, after about thirty seconds, Flitwick rapped sharply on his desk. Beside her, Millicent heard Susan breathe a quiet sigh of relief. "That's enough," he said, somehow managing to make his normal squeak sound dignified. "Mr. Finch-Fletchley, will you continue?"

"Er," Finch-Fletchley began intelligently. He seemed to have lost his train of thought. "Doesn't it even out the weights of different objects?"

Flitwick beamed, apparently having regained his good humor. "Yes, that's exactly correct. Five points to Hufflepuff. Does anyone know any other uses?" He glanced around the classroom expectantly. When no answer came, he glanced around again and, rather surprisingly, turned to Millicent. "Miss Bulstrode?"

Oh, God. Not again. She always tried not to do any better in class than she absolutely had to - people usually seemed to think that an ugly body housed a defective mind, and since first disabusing every single one of them of the notion and then soothing away their astonishment would have taken up a lot of time and exasperating effort, she simply didn't bother - but every so often one of the teachers made an effort to "bring her out of her shell." It usually wasn't all that difficult to deflect these attempts, reputation of stupidity intact, but it was certainly irritating.

Fortunately, this time she had a natural advantage: She honestly didn't know. "Errrr..." she said after a decent pause, putting on her best "stupid troll" expression.

Flitwick looked faintly suspicious, but moved on. "Miss Bones?"

There was a slight pause, and when Susan finally answered it was in a quiet, hesitant voice quite unlike her normal tones. "Er, I'm not completely sure about this," she began haltingly, "but don't some people use it to counteract spells that unbalance the emotions? My mum told me... about the Anguish Curse... things like that..." Her voice trailed off, and her shoulders hunched. Millicent gave a quick glance in her direction, and was surprised to see that Susan's eyes were starting to fill up with tears.

Apparently Flitwick noticed it too, because he abruptly changed the subject, passing out a set of balancing scales and various objects to each pair and taking them through the steps of the spell, then instructing them to practice evening out the weights of the different objects. Millicent barely listened, though, not even caring much when Susan tentatively poked her in the arm and said that it was time to start; as she halfheartedly picked up her wand and began prodding various objects, she was simply too preoccupied to care.

So... there were curses that affected the mind as well as the body. She'd always suspected that was the case - the Cruciatus Curse, after all, was essentially a very intense burst of purely psychosomatic pain, which was why there were no physical effects - but she'd never really looked into it; she'd never been particularly interested in becoming a psychologist, after all. But now it was confirmed. The only question was, what did it prove?

Well, that Anguish Curse sounded fairly nasty, but it was still a vague title. What, exactly, did it do? She'd have to look into it. Find out what the effects were. See if it only produced depression or if it could be varied to other disorders. See if it could be used to make someone start to behave oddly - as oddly as staring at a door for three hours straight or cut her hair strand by strand in the middle of the night... Damn it!

She still couldn't understand why what she had seen last night in the girls' lavatory had effected her so much. Why she suddenly cared about what was happening to Cho. No - that wasn't quite true. It hadn't started last night. It had started months ago, ever since the term had begun and she had noticed something... off in the Ravenclaw's eyes and expressions and behavior. Something subtly, inexplicably wrong. Not a conscious observation, simply filing it away like she filed away everything she noticed - until that meek little mental file had taken up permanent residence in her brain, and she discovered that something about Cho's pain had pricked her; even though she had never even made eye contact with the other girl, much less spoken to her, she was surprised (and a little chagrined) to find that after last night, she wasn't about to let the matter go without finding out what the hell was going on. Irrational? Oh, absolutely. But Millicent had discovered at a very young age that it was rather futile to try to argue with your brain once it had decided on something. Meaning that she was stuck with trying to figure this out.

Which still left her absolutely nowhere.

No. Negative thought. Focus.

Was Cho's condition magically imposed? She still wasn't entirely sure, although it would make a great deal more sense than the alternative; she didn't know the other girl well, and therefore had no basis upon which to figure out whether or not it would make sense for Cho to react as she had without outside interference. Which meant that she had to get some reliable information, and fast.

How?

Well, the most obvious solution would be to make some inquiries herself. Blaize was fairly close to Lisa Turpin, who was a Ravenclaw, and if she asked Lisa...?

No. Lisa, from what she had seen, wasn't terribly close to Cho, meaning that Lisa would have to do some surreptitious poking around herself, which meant two things: First, she would owe Lisa, which she didn't want. Second, Lisa was well-connected to the Hogwarts gossip mill and would therefore start with her equally well-connected friends, meaning that enlisting her would increase the probability of everyone and their third cousin's dog finding out that Millicent Bulstrode was asking questions about Cho Chang. Which she definitely didn't want. Any unnecessary attention would destroy any chance of effectively analyzing and/or fixing the situation; furthermore, if it really was caused by magic, she didn't want to alert whoever cast the spell.

Actually, she realized, it didn't make any sense to ask directly. Using someone else to ask for her would be far safer. Which meant that she couldn't approach anyone from either Slytherin or Ravenclaw, owing to the higher possibility of exposure; ergo, she would need a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor. Someone with intelligence, too, which - she gave Susan a sidelong glance - ruled out the Hufflepuffs. Someone with discretion as well. Someone with strong research abilities. Someone close to Cho in age. And, most importantly, someone who the average Hogwarts student (or faculty member, for that matter) would never, ever suspect of working with Millicent Bulstrode. Which, judging from her past experience and her general knowledge of the Gryffindors, could only mean...

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"Granger."

The other girl looked up, smiling bravely, although Millicent noticed a faint hint of panic in her eyes. It was late, after all, and they were far enough away from the librarian's desk that a shout would take some time to travel there. But Granger still managed to quickly mask any uneasiness she felt and politely respond, "Millicent." In spite of herself, Millicent was rather impressed.

She'd spent some time working out how she was going to approach Granger, but eventually concluded that the most effective way would be to speak as honestly as possible. It meant that she would have to blow her cover of stupidity, but that was a small loss when compared to getting Granger to help her. Besides, that was the beauty of it, even if Granger let anything slip - who would ever believe that she would willingly approach a Gryffindor Mudblood? So she gave Granger a knowing look and said, "Don't worry - I usually try to cut down on the physical mayhem in the library. It's always so difficult to get bloodstains out of parchment." When Granger looked startled, she laughed quietly. "It's all right. You can say it."

Granger blinked. "Say what?"

Millicent let her jaw drop, and, mimicking the tones of a credulous first year, gasped, "You can talk?"

Granger flushed. "I didn't - "

"Yes, you did. It's a perfectly natural reaction."

"To what?"

"To the fact that I'm ugly and fat, of course. What did you think it was?"

"I think," Granger said in a slightly unsteady voice, "that you're being unfair. People aren't that shallow."

Millicent shrugged. "What's so shallow about assuming that I'm stupid? You certainly did."

Granger stared at her for a few moments, mouth working slightly. Then, in a calmer tone no doubt developed from four-and-a-half years of helping Longbottom in Potions, she said, "Do you want something?"

If Millicent hadn't been consciously trying to keep a straight face, she would have smiled. As it was, she looked at Granger seriously, all traces of irony dropping from her face. "I need your help on an extra-credit project." There. Let her chew on that.

Granger blinked again. "What?"

"An extra-credit project." She gave the other girl a meaningful look. "One that I don't want anyone else to find out about. And that includes Potter and Weasley."

Interest sparked in Granger's eyes, but she stayed wary. "Why come to me?"

"Because nobody would ever believe it."

Pause. Then, still cautious, "What do you need to know?"

Millicent smiled, meeting Granger's eyes fully for the first time since she'd started the conversation. "What do you know about the Anguish Curse?"