Thinking For Herself

While Slytherin's Quidditch team were practicing hard, determined to beat every other house and win the Quidditch Cup after years of letting it slip away, it didn't stop some members of the house from working out more devious ways of succeeding against Gryffindor.

Millicent had to admit that sometimes Draco Malfoy was inspired. He thought a lot of himself, but then he was very rich, bright, pureblood and good-looking, and so he had good reason to be confident. He could be nasty with it, though. All the way through the Halloween feast he'd been humming a catchy little song, and before too long people who'd been around Draco for any length of time found themselves humming it too. After she found herself mmm-mmm-ming it while walking back from Herbology through the vegetable beds, Millicent ticked Draco off.

She looked back to where he was walking, his usual twin shadows trailing behind him. "What is it with you and this stupid song? You've got me doing it now."

"Hur. Tell her, Draco," Crabbe pleaded. He still had smears of potting compost down his face, Millicent noticed. Still, Goyle had dirt round his nostrils. At least Crabbe didn't pick his nose. She fought down the urge to spit on a hanky and clean their faces up, just as her mother had done to her as a child (to her utter horror) when she was grubby in public.

Their enthusiasm made Millicent suspicious. There was clearly more to the addictive little song than she knew. "It's not some sort of spell, is it? It's not contagious somehow?"

"It's not a spell, but I think you'll find it truly magical," Draco smirked. "Have you learned the whole tune, Millicent?"

"I think half the house has learned the whole tune." She was sure she'd heard a couple of the younger pupils, the ones who particularly looked up to Draco, humming it at breakfast. Daphne Greengrass had warbled it reedily in the shower that morning, until Pansy had hammered on the door and told Daphne to stop screeching or she'd Transfigure her into a parrot. (Pansy couldn't manage such advanced Transfiguration, of course, but she'd have attempted it, and Daphne hadn't wanted to spend several days in the Hospital Wing having a beak or feathery tail removed so she'd shut up.) Millicent lala-ed it to Draco, who looked very pleased.

"Very good. You may have the words to go with it."

Draco handed Millicent a parchment, which she read carefully. 'Weasley is our king... he always lets the Quaffle in...' "Very clever," she said. "I suppose this is going to put Weasley off his goalkeeping." At least they'd given up on the knicker-flag idea.

"Exactly," Draco replied. "The whole house should be singing this by the day of the match with Gryffindor. It's going to be beautiful."

"Have a badge," Goyle said, moving one hand towards Millicent. She grabbed the badge from him and held it in her hand, not giving him the chance to get anywhere near the front of her robes. It was very well made; either Draco had ordered them in specially or he'd really worked hard to get the shape and lettering right. He had the talent to do it, but she suspected he'd paid for them and saved himself the effort.

"You have to come and watch," Crabbe pleaded, rubbing his stubbly hair nervously. He really wanted Millicent to see how good he was on a broom. She was no mean player herself; perhaps he should ask her if she wanted to help him practice. It'd beat spending a couple of hours hitting a Bludger back and forth with Goyle. "Um, to support the team."

"Wear your badge with pride on match day!" Draco chuckled. "Don't let it be seen until then, though - you'll spoil the fun."

Millicent didn't want to wear the badge at all. Having been teased and picked on for being clumsy herself in the past she didn't think it would be appropriate for her to torment Ron Weasley for the same thing, but she couldn't see any way out of it. Even Theodore Nott, who didn't mix much with Draco apart from at meal times, had a 'Weasley Is Our King' badge by the end of the week. Whenever Draco and Pansy began an impromptu chorus, joined eagerly by their fans from among the lower years, Millicent found an excuse to find something else to do. Usually she'd hunt down Adrian and spend half-an-hour being berated for the awkwardness of her wand movements, or sometimes she'd escape to the Library.

On match day, Millicent was sure there would be no escape. She loved watching Quidditch, and wouldn't miss a match for the world. Draping her green-and-silver scarf as Eloise Midgen had once shown her, in a way that helped her to avoid looking broader, she reluctantly pinned her crown-shaped badge to her front. Pansy and the other girls looked on approvingly.

"You haven't been singing much, Millie," Pansy remarked, tugging on a bobble hat in the Slytherin colours. "I hope you're not going to let the team down.

Millicent shrugged. "I'm not a very good singer, Pansy. They're supposed to laugh at the song, not my voice."

"Maybe you should wait until the end," Daphne Greengrass tittered. "Then it really will be all over when you sing"

Pansy, who was perfectly capable of teasing Millicent about her larger-than-average figure when the mood took her, turned on Daphne like a hungry shark. "Perhaps, Daphne, someone with a voice like a House Elf that's gargled with vinegar ought to take a leaf out of Millie's book."

Daphne gulped and said nothing. Millicent hoped Pansy's comment would excuse her from singing at the match. The problem was, Draco really had come up with a brilliant tune. As they were sitting in the stands to watch the match, when the excitement of the sport caught hold of her she found herself roaring the words along with every other Slytherin, especially when Ron Weasley let in yet another goal. "Weasley was born in a bin..." she bellowed enthusiastically, not thinking about the words. She didn't care that the rest of the school seemed to favour Gryffindor, and the noise her house around her made drowned out all other sound, even Lee Jordan's noisy commentary and the roaring of Luna Lovegood's ridiculous lion-shaped hat.

"Draco's doing pretty well," she said excitedly to Pansy, not taking her eyes from the pitch. "We could win this one."

"I hope so," Pansy said, breaking off her own singing but still following Draco's every move. "I don't know why Draco was so keen to have Crabbe and Goyle on the team. We must have better Beaters in Slytherin."

"They've got the right temperament," Millicent remarked cautiously. The truth was, Slytherin didn't produce good Beaters or goalkeepers, and at least Crabbe and Goyle enjoyed whacking the Bludgers at people. Traditionally Slytherin was a house for Seekers and Chasers, if you could find a trio of Chasers who could combine their self-interest. Still, Adrian Pucey and the others were doing well, and Millicent cheered gleefully as she watched her informal Defence tutor hurl the Quaffle past Ron Weasley and through one of the goal hoops.

As they watched Draco soar above the pitch, desperately trying to find the Golden Snitch before Harry Potter, the girls carried on singing. Please let us beat Gryffindor, Millicent thought, as Urquhart passed the Quaffle to Pucey. I've waited all these years for us to do it... She waved her scarf enthusiastically. Even Crabbe and Goyle weren't doing too badly, and she found herself believing that this year Slytherin would finally triumph over their old rivals.

It was not to be, and Millicent ended up cursing the Gryffindors yet again. She slumped in her seat in disappointment, not paying much attention to what was going on around her. I should have been out there in goal, she thought. I'd have kept the Quaffle out...

Pansy's screech shocked her out of her reverie. "DRACO!"

"What?" Millicent looked up, and followed Pansy's line of sight. Down at the edge of the pitch, Draco's hands were on his face and he was outnumbered by angry players in scarlet robes. Clearly the Gryffindors had done something to him. He stood up and moved his hands, and they all saw the bright red blood running down his face, standing out starkly against his pale skin and blonde hair.

"Oh no," Daphne Greengrass said. "Is he hurt?"

For some reason the Weasleys and Harry Potter had attacked Draco. As Pansy frantically shoved her way through the crowd to reach her injured boyfriend, Daphne started smiling. "Oh, he's a clever lad," she laughed. "If she wasn't so crazy about him, Pansy would see what he's done - but then Umbridge likes her, so Pansy being in a state won't do any harm."

"What are you on about?" Millicent asked, confused.

"Use your brain," Daphne sighed. "He probably shot his mouth off again, but it's turned into something he can use. Umbridge hates Potter. She likes Draco and Pansy, and Pansy's having hysterics. What do you think Umbridge will do now?"

"Ah," said Millicent, thinking of how the lonely form of Ron Weasley had trudged sorrowfully from the pitch, clinging to his broomstick as thought it was the one thing stopping him from drowning. He didn't appear to be going towards the changing rooms, and she guessed that he really wanted to be alone with his sense of failure. Draco could take care of himself, but she knew all too well how Weasley felt, and she didn't think many other people would spot it. Even his friends probably wouldn't notice now that Golden Boy Potter was probably going to get banned from playing for a month. As the other students swarmed from the stands back towards the castle, Millicent sat and stared at the now-empty pitch. Quidditch defeats made her gloomy, which meant watching Slytherin play Gryffindor always made her glum.

When she finally made it back to the Common Room, Draco was the centre of attention and loving every minute of it. He was sprawled the entire length of the most comfortable sofa. "Well, it suddenly hit me that I could get Potter off the team, and those twins into the bargain..." he was boasting to a circle of admirers. "So now they're all banned from playing Quidditch for the rest of the year, at least."

"He never planned anything," Urquhart muttered to his cronies, while Millicent was close enough to overhear. "He got mouthy and then got lucky." Urquhart played Chaser, and resented the attention Draco got as Seeker, especially as Draco had so often lost the Snitch to Potter, losing the match in the process.

Having heard what punishment Umbridge had dealt out, Millicent was inclined to agree with Urquhart. She sidled up to Draco and Pansy and said, "He's got to miss every other match this year? Don't you think that's a bit harsh?"

Pansy shook her head. "They were horribly violent. They shouldn't even be allowed to watch any matches, I think." Draco squeezed her hand appreciatively. Millicent sat down and shut up. She didn't think a fight warranted a Quidditch ban of a year. Punishments were never set in stone at Hogwarts, depending largely on the teacher giving them, so technically Umbridge was within her rights to ban Potter and the Weasley twins for as long as she liked. However, Millicent believed the punishment should fit the crime, and this one was too severe. Draco and Pansy would never agree with her, though, and it wasn't worth getting into a discussion over.

Instead she thought again of Ron Weasley. She'd never expected to feel sorry for him, a pureblood who was throwing all his privileges away, but that look of utter defeat and self-loathing struck a chord with her. Next time, she promised herself, I won't sing that stupid song.