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Millicent Bulstrode's invisibility cloak is a well-kept secret. She never takes advantage of it, though. Not really. Not until sixth year when she suddenly finds herself staring at the cold grey stone ceiling of her dormitory room. In the beginning, it is the mundane things that keep her awake. Blaise's light snores or the river of moonlight that slashes across her eyes. And the list grows from there. Pansy has a tendency to mumble things in her sleep, but never anything coherent, which only keeps Millicent more awake. It's usually along the lines of 'Where's my pumpkin hat?' or just snatches of words like 'socks...yes, table, please' or 'Hmph. Longbottom' and once, a shrill scream made all the more eerie for the fact that no one else seemed to have heard it.

At first, she just spends her nights on the couch in the common room, wrapped in the musty silence of the dungeons. And at first, it's actually kind of fun. She hides books that the first years have left scattered haphazardly around the room. Displaying a rare streak of whimsy, she casts a charm on her favourite armchair to make it invisible because the idea of floating appeals to her. With her wand, she scrapes away at the mortar between the stones of the bottom stair leading up to the boys' dormitory. When she discovers that it fills itself in by the time she appears the next night, it becomes a game. Each night, she tries to scrape away more than she had the night before. After a while, she tires of that and the game changes. She scrapes at the stair and then watches to see when it will repair itself. But it never happens while she's looking.

It is on one of these nights that Draco Malfoy sneaks down the stairs and past her without a word. He slips out of the common room and as the portrait swings shut behind him, Millicent realizes that she doesn't have to stay there if she doesn't want to. And when she glances back at the step, she finds that the mortar has reappeared.

On her first night out, she doesn't venture very far from the dungeons. She knows that Potter and his hangers-on often roam the castle at night. Everyone knows that. But she has never done this before and Hogwarts after dark is really rather intimidating. So instead of playing the brave Gryffindor, she goes to the top of the first staircase she finds and sits down. The staircases shift restlessly all night and she is just along for the ride. And somehow, perhaps inevitably, her staircase always brings her back to the dungeons just in time for her to return to her bed to awaken with the other girls.

It becomes a ritual of sorts. She never leaves before Draco. Every night she waits in the common room and once he has appeared and left, Millicent follows. But never past the first staircase.

Then one late night, one early morning, they return at the same time, but Draco's gaze just slides past her and he says nothing. Millicent, on the other hand, sees everything. She sees that his hair has been hurriedly patted into place, that his pale skin is not really so pale here in the hazy pre-dawn light. She sees his hand brush his neck, grazing a soft bruise that is blooming there. She sees him lick his lips, sees his eyes go just softly out of focus. Sees him take a deep breath and glance once over his shoulder, up past her staircase.

The next day, Millicent watches. When, as usual, she is ignored by the other Slytherins and left to work with an awkward Granger, she watches. While she tries half-heartedly to block out the other girl's nervous rambling, she watches. Between classes, as students shuffle past her, never looking quite at her, Millicent watches. And she wonders why she never saw this before and what else she may be missing.

So when Draco creeps out of the dungeons that night, Millicent trails along behind him. He leads her much further than she's ever gone before and, even though Draco doesn't know she is there, she's glad she's not alone. Hogwarts at night, she finds, is an unsettling place. It is not very well-lit and what dim light there is casts distorted shadows against the uneven walls. She lags behind Draco, afraid he will hear her heart pounding, but not so far that she can't make out the soft scuff of his feet. The paintings, drowned out during the day by the students' voices, whisper and chatter and move about with soft rustles of cloth and canvas. She decides it disturbs her because it is noise created by silence.

Just when Millicent notices that she can no longer hear Draco's footsteps, the click of a door latch echoes back to her and she hurries on ahead. But she's not sure which room Draco has gone into, so she drops to her knees in front of the nearest door and peers through the keyhole. The room is empty. So is the next one and the one after that. The fourth door, however, tells a different story and Millicent actually gasps before pressing a hand over her mouth.

Harry Potter lies sprawled in midair while Draco crouches over him. Millicent wonders at this for the second it takes her to realize that Draco is kissing him as though he'll never drink his fill from Potter's mouth. These are slow, lazy kisses, savoring kisses, being passed back and forth between the two of them. Draco's robes are draped over them both, combining the lines of their bodies into one. Their kisses stretch on and on and Millicent realizes that, despite their intimate posturing, the only part of them that is touching is their mouths. She begins to wonder if that is somehow more intimate, but is distracted when Potter's hands come up to tangle in Draco's hair, pulling him closer and closer. Draco takes the hint and finally lowers his body to meet Potter's, settling into him. The kisses are growing steadily hungrier, ever more fierce, and their hands are beginning to roam. Millicent is about to look away, to leave them in one another's clutches when a door slams somewhere down the hallway.

Draco doesn't miss a beat, just trails his mouth down Potter's throat when Potter's head jerks to the side at the jarring intrusion.

'No, wait. Did you hear that?' he says, tugging Draco's busy mouth away from his collarbone.

Draco gives a disgusted snort. 'Honestly, Harry, that's what this is for.' And as

Millicent watches, he reaches down beside them and, with a sharp flick of his arm, a desk appears and Potter and Draco vanish. She knows they're still there, though; she can hear the whisper of clothing being pushed aside and little gasps coaxed from parted lips.

Reluctantly, she climbs to her feet and wanders on shaky legs back to the dormitory, wondering again what else she may be missing, because, if she hadn't noticed something like that, the possibilities seem endless. She sits with her staircase for the rest of the night until Draco finally reappears, looking rumpled and warm, and they both slide through the portrait hole, together but not.

Millicent spends the next day watching. At breakfast she sees the Ravenclaw seeker nearly fall asleep in her cold cereal, sees Loony Lovegood let her rest on her shoulder. In the hallway, she notices Longbottom chatting animatedly with the Weasley girl, who laughs and plucks an errant leaf from his hair. And in Potions, she ignores an eager-to-please, know-it-all Granger in favour of watching Crabbe and Goyle struggle through their lesson, but struggling together.

She follows Draco again, but closer this time and, the moment the door closes behind him, she is kneeling at the keyhole. Her sudden sense of urgency seems to be catching because Potter steps out of nowhere and immediately backs Draco up against the wall. He presses close and leans in for a bruising kiss. Draco responds with equal intensity and Millicent has to swallow a moan when Potter pulls away and Draco drifts forward to recapture his mouth. Hands are yanking at ties and impatiently shoving clothing out of the way and before she knows what's happening, Potter drops to his knees in front of Draco. She gasps rather loudly, but they're too caught up in each other to notice. Draco's head falls back against the rough stones, his hands sink into Potter's hair, and Millicent tears herself away from the keyhole.

She wants to watch. She doesn't want to look away. They're so beautiful. They are wordless. But she can't do it. It wouldn't make her a part of them and it wouldn't give her what they have. She would only be watching.

Feeling restless in her own skin, she stumbles back to her staircase and lets it take her to the highest point in Hogwarts where she steps off and makes her own way back down to the dungeons.

The next day, instead of listening to Snape drone on and on about bottling this and stoppering that, Millicent looks out the window. The day is clear and she can see all the way to the Quidditch pitch where its lively banners flap in the wind. Hagrid tramps across the lawn, that overgrown hound of his bounding along after him. A single cloud drifts past and Millicent rather thinks it looks like a rowboat.

This time, when she ends up paired with Granger, she doesn't watch. Instead, she smiles at her and is rewarded with a friendly, if a bit uncertain, grin in return. And Granger's nervous monologue about the properties of Nerminroot becomes a welcome, if tentative, conversation.

Millicent decides that maybe the world has shed its invisibility cloak and thinks that maybe it's her turn to lose hers.