Thinking For Herself

When you don't see someone for months, you notice changes in that person more easily. Over the summer holiday Millicent had noticed that her mother seemed lethargic, but put it down to the heat. When she stepped from the Hogwarts Express, however, her trunk levitating obediently behind her, she nearly walked past the painfully thin lady with the dark-shadowed eyes. It was only when she turned to Mrs Montague to ask if she'd seen her mother that Millicent realised the two were standing next to one another.

At first she said nothing. What could she say? 'Oh, you look dreadful, mother', perhaps, or 'Have you been eating properly?' All the way home in their car with its spacious magical interior and silent engine Millicent glanced at her mother. She couldn't ignore it when they reached their home. Stella Bulstrode lived in a sort of magical purdah, allowing nothing Muggle any further than the little cloakroom just inside the front door. She'd even remove her skirt and change into robes there in a little cubicle set aside for the purpose. Today, however, she tottered through to the drawing room in her skirt and jacket and slumped gratefully onto the sofa.

"You're ill," Millicent said accusingly. "You should have owled me. I could have come home on my own. I could have hired a car and driver like I did at the start of term."

"I'm not ill," her mother replied. "I'm dying. I couldn't tell you that in a letter."

Millicent sat opposite her, flabbergasted. "Dying? How do you know?"

"I've got cancer, and it can't be treated."

"You've got what?" Millicent's mother seemed to be speaking an unknown language.

Millicent's mother kicked off her shoes and propped herself up on a purple velvet cushion. "You know, tumours. Muggles call it cancer. I've been going to see the Healers for months, but they said there didn't seem to be anything wrong with me. In the end I went to a Muggle doctor, because they have big machines that can look inside you. He said it was too late to do anything for me."

Millicent's head reeled. Her mother never had anything to do with Muggles since she married into the Bulstrode family, nor had she allowed her daughter to. The streets around their house were as alien to the whole family as the Forbidden Forest. "Doctors cut you up," she said lamely. "They cut you up and inject you full of dead germs." Like most pureblood children, Millicent had been raised with horrible tales of the gruesome things doctors did to people.

"Well, with tumours, sometimes cutting them out works. Mine's spread to my spine, though. That's it. It's all over. Neither the doctors nor the Healers can help me."

"Um." Despite hating her mother and herself for their bad blood, Millicent found it terrible to think of her mother actually suffering. "Does it hurt?"

"It would if I were relying on Muggle doctors, but pain-killing potions are something Healers excel at making."

"I'll make some sandwiches," Millicent announced, needing to be alone to think for a while. She'd wished her mother ill for so long, and now found herself wondering if she'd somehow caused it with her magic. "We can have a snack before Father gets home."

"You don't have to worry about that. Your grandmother's lent us her House Elf," Stella told her. "She just knows I'm ill. She doesn't know how I found out how ill."

"What difference does it make now if you tell her you went to see a doctor?" Millicent was angry. "Everyone at school knows I'm a half-blood - yes, I've known since the second year - and so all their parents and grandparents must know you're one too. If you tell people you went to the doctor, will they really care? No one would expect any better from a half-blood. And if they do care, you're not going to be around to notice for long."

"You know what we are. Good. That makes things easier. When I die, you'll still be around, and what I do reflects on you," her mother said softly. "Do you know how precious you are to me? I couldn't pick up Muggle things now and leave you defenceless."

"What do you mean?" Millicent couldn't bear this.

"You-Know-Who is back," her mother said. "If Albus Dumbledore believes it, that's good enough for me."

"Oh, he's listening to Harry Potter's stupid tales..." Millicent had had more than enough of Harry Potter's tall stories in their four-and-a-bit shared years at Hogwarts.

"Millicent, when I married your father we burned all my family photographs. We gave away hundreds of books and household items, all so we could have a completely magical home to raise children in. Before that I had slowly shed all my old friends and made new ones, and do you know why? Because Muggleborns and those who befriended them were being killed. People who had something the Death Eaters wanted would be killed. Even people who they simply took a dislike to would be found dead. I couldn't take the risk that they would harm our family.

"After You-Know-Who was defeated, my friends - Narcissa, Freda, Jessica - needed my support. They could say, 'Oh no, we never thought there was anything wrong with Muggleborns, and we even have a friend who's half Muggle'. I repaid the way their acceptance protected us from the Death Eaters by looking after them when I could. Now things are going back to the way they were, and you will need those people. I won't alienate them by taking up Muggle things."

Millicent's head was in a whirl. Even when she'd discovered her mother was a half-blood, what her parents must have gone through in the years before her birth hadn't crossed her mind. All her friends and their families had partied through the dark days, safe within the double walls of blood and respectability. She'd never imagined things would be any different for her own parents. Who was this woman she was talking to? Her mother was weak, desperate to ape her pureblood betters, always doing 'the done thing'. This woman, this stranger sitting in front of her, was as hard as nails, talking about cutting chunks out of her own life to ensure that she and those she loved survived. "I've got to unpack," she mumbled, and fled the room.

Her father found her when he came home from work that night. She was still in her pretty bedroom, with its heavy dark wooden furniture softened by cream-and-lemon brocade curtains and bedspread. Puss was sulking on top of the wardrobe, because he hadn't appreciated being soaked with tears.

"Hullo Moose," her father said. "Your mother tells me you're a bit upset." He'd called her Moose ever since she was an oversized toddler who could only introduce herself as 'Moosent'.

"I'm being stupid," Millicent said. "It was a bit of a shock to hear she was ill, that's all."

Mr Bulstrode looked serious. "We've put up with a lot from you over the past few years, Millicent - heaven only knows what got into you at Hogwarts - but I will not have you being mean to your mother this holiday. She always tells me it doesn't bother her, but if you ruin this Christmas for her, I will never forget it."

"I hate her," Millicent said. She frowned. "I thought I did, anyway. Now she's dying and I don't want her to, but she still made me what I am."

Her father squatted down beside her. "What are you talking about?"

"I know what she is and what I am. Unclean. I can't bear it. I look in the mirror and all I see is this big, ugly thing. A big, ugly Muggle thing. I've wished so often that she didn't exist and I had never been born, and now I've made her sick and..."

"Moose, what nonsense is this? I made you what you are as much as your mother did. You can't blame your looks on her, either - you're a classic Bulstrode woman, my girl."

"I made her sick," Millicent repeated. "I wished I didn't have to see her."

"Now you're being ridiculous," her father told her. "You know as well as anyone that wishing someone ill won't make them sick. It takes a serious curse or potion to do that. Come down, now. We'll have dinner together, and no more of this nonsense."

Dinner was uncomfortable. Stella Bulstrode was clearly troubled by her back as they sat at the table, but she'd changed into evening robes and was determined to eat in the dining room. All through the starter, the only sound in the room was the 'ping' of the crystal wine glasses being set down on the table (Millicent had apple juice) and the clink of silver cutlery on porcelain. Millicent kept glancing at her mother. During the main course Stella gave in. "What is it, Millicent?"

"You should be on the sofa," Millicent huffed. "You don't have to keep up appearances for us. No one's fooled by them anyway - everyone knows what we are."

"Maybe I like this," her mother said softly. "Did it never occur to you that I like some things about being a witch? That I like making potions, and would genuinely rather eat Honeydukes chocolate than a bar of Muggle chocolate?"

"You're still not comfortable," Millicent protested, adding, "And I still think you go too far."

"On some things, maybe," Stella admitted. "But not as far as you do. I just do it. You believe it." Millicent attacked her chicken and said nothing. Her mother continued, "You're a lovely girl, Millicent. I know you haven't liked me for some time..."

"I don't like me either!" Millicent said in self-defence.

"Oh, Moose," her father said.

Stella helped herself to a glass of wine. Her voice was softer now. "You are lovely, even if you can't see it. Mothers of other children tell me how much you help their sons and daughters. Professor Snape tells me you're an ornament to Slytherin. Everything people say to me about you makes me proud."

"Well, Pansy's the prefect," Millicent said. "Pansy got the best boy in the year. Pansy's doing really well in her lessons. Oooh, and what a co-incidence, Pansy's a pureblood. I'll never be as successful, never! So why don't you sit on the sofa and stop hurting for me? Keeping up appearances like this is stupid. All the pain in the world won't make me or you any cleaner."

Her father was about to tell her off, fearing yet another series of rows this holiday, although he was glad that he now knew why Millicent had been so aggressive towards her mother for the past few years. Stella waved at him to silence him. This holiday, she was going to be straight with her daughter. "Pansy is bright, it's true, but all the mothers say that the brightest child in your year is Muggleborn."

"Granger," Millicent sniffed. "She calls Pansy thick. She really gives herself airs, that one."

"As for success, Pansy knows what she wants from life, so she's going to do well. Do you? You'll never be anything if you don't have a goal to aim for. I'm starting to think this stupid blood mania of yours is the only reason you're in Slytherin."

Millicent bit her lip. It was true that she lacked direction. Her mother pushed her own plate away, drained the glass of wine and a small glass of painkilling potion and finished by saying, "And if I thought you fancied Draco, I'd disinherit you. By all means limit yourself to purebloods, but at least find one who can love you back."

They remained silent for some time more, eating in tense silence. During the savoury, Millicent looked at her mother again and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't want to fight with you. Please, though, don't suffer for me, I'm not worth it. I know what the others think of me. All this formality won't change it. Please go to the drawing room, it'll be much better for your back."

"It's not just for you," Stella said. "I've always loved this room. I want to enjoy it while I still can." She looked at the cabinet full of valuable antique figurines, made by the wizards at Dresden, all dancing a minuet to music only their tiny china ears could hear, and at the long red-and-copper striped curtains, and smiled.

After the meal, Millicent and her father hovered behind Mrs Bulstrode as she walked gingerly to the drawing room. They allowed her to get ahead of them. "I didn't mean to argue with her," Millicent told her father. "I just got carried away."

"You apologised," he said. "That's a start."

"She's not the person I thought she was," Millicent confessed. "I'd like to get to know her."

Her father hugged her. "You're not the person you think you are, either. I think you should get to know her, and Millicent Bulstrode too.

**

Christmas at the Bulstrode house was a time of forced jollity. Millicent's mother grew weaker by the day, and by Christmas Eve Millicent and Nippy the house elf were taking care of everything domestic. She'd spent a lot of time talking to her mother. The days when You-Know-Who had been in ascendancy were never covered in History of Magic; the events were too recent and the wounds people bore - not just show-off Potter - still too raw. Stella Bulstrode shone a new light on those times for Millicent. Everyone around them always shrugged off the notion of danger, and said there were very few violent incidents during the 1970s. Stella told Millicent the truth, talking of entire families being wiped out or people being tortured horribly.

As well as adjusting her attitude towards her mother, whom she was rapidly coming to admire for her sheer courage for daring to marry her father at all, let alone finding a hiding-place at the heart of wizard society, Millicent found she had a bedgrudging admiration for Harry Potter. He had, after all, put a stop to most of the killings and made the world a safer place for Muggleborns and half-bloods. It was a shame he was such a chronic liar nowadays.

Stella Bulstrode's biggest fear was not her approaching death. She hated the thought of pain, and often wondered whether there really was anything after death, but she was not afraid to hurt or die. Her biggest fear was for Millicent. Her daughter seemed genuinely to hate herself. Late at night, lying in bed, she and her husband would discuss it. Millicent had been difficult for years, but they'd always assumed her bad attitude was directed only at themselves, and that she would grow out of it in time, so they'd left her to her own devices. They'd had no idea that being a half-blood had affected their daughter so badly. The one thing that comforted them was realising their daughter didn't mind half-bloods outside her family or even Muggleborns; she just treated them as people. Perhaps learning to accept herself wouldn't be so difficult for her in the end.

Millicent's father had time off over Christmas. He came to find her in her neat and tidy bedroom on Christmas Eve morning. Her bedroom was her private space, and she still remembered with pride how surprised Pansy had been at her tasteful decor. When Mr. Bulstrode popped his head round the door she was rehearsing her Defence Against the Dark Arts spells, determined not to let Adrian down by forgetting them all over the holidays. It was strange how often she thought about Adrian, more than she ever thought about Pansy or Draco. Puss was supervising from his position at the foot of her bed. "What-ho, Moose," Mr. Bulstrode said.

Millicent smiled. "Hello father. How's mother?"

"She needs a lie in this morning," he told her. "I thought we could go and get her something special for Christmas."

They both fell silent, realising that these would be the last gifts they'd ever give Stella. "Have you got any ideas?" Millicent asked. She usually bought her parents' gifts by mail during the winter term, but the diary she'd bought her mother was now woefully inappropriate.

Her father nodded. "How brave do you feel?"

"Brave? What am I, a Gryffindor?"

"Ha! Very well, my Slytherin daughter, how determined are you to get your mother something she'll really love?"

Millicent stood up. "Just try me."

"Put on your train-catching clothes, then," Mr. Bulstrode said. "We're going out and about in Muggle Land today."

**

Millicent didn't like the Muggle town. Although the shops and buildings of Salisbury were old enough to feel proper - nothing upsets a wizard as much as modernity - things didn't do what they were supposed to. Posters didn't move and sweets were simply sweet. It was as though a level had been taken out of the world. Three dimensions had never felt so flat. "It's a good job my housemates can't see me," she snuffled with embarrassment.

Her father looked at her with surprise. "You're a Slytherin, Moose, like me. You should be above doing what other people tell you to. Don't they teach you to think for yourself at Hogwarts any more?"

"This is a foul place."

"No, it's just not magical. It's no more dirty than our own world, and it's only dangerous if you don't understand it."

"Being here feels wrong."

"More wrong than buying a gift for your mother feels right?"

"Ah... I..." Millicent thought about it. More than anything else she wanted to buy something her mother would love, if only to atone a little for how horrible she'd been for the past three years. Making her mother happy was the most important thing for her, and her own discomfort didn't count by comparison. "I want to buy things," she decided.

"Lots of people, they do what they're expected to and believe that what everyone thinks is right is truly right. If I'd felt like that, I'd never have married your mother. We knew what we wanted, and we made sure we got married."

"Some of my friends would say that makes you a bad Slytherin."

"I would say kowtowing to their will would make me a bad Slytherin. Feeblemindedness is not one of our traits."

Millicent smiled at her father, who always seemed to say the right thing. They stopped to look at a display of vases in a shop window. "I want to get one of those. Do you have any Muggle money?" Her father handed her some funny-looking pieces of paper and then, for the first time in her life, Millicent Bulstrode stepped through the door of a Muggle shop.

**

That night while her father set up the Christmas tree Millicent stayed up late and took down the pots of magical plants from around their house. She'd always regarded them as a prime example of her mother 'trying too hard', and had been astonished and glad to find out that her mother hated them too. She put waving, happy family photographs in their place. The plain Muggle decorations her father had strung across the room had a sort of charm, she supposed, even if they didn't sparkle or play tunes.

Halfway through the decorating, they stopped and had some mince pies. As it was Christmas, and she'd already handled the delicate items, Millicent was allowed a very small glass of sherry. She sipped it gingerly, feeling very grown-up. There were things she needed to ask her father. Despite being a half-blood like her mother, she'd grown up with attitudes only a pureblood could understand.

"Father, were you ever, um, bothered by Mother? By what she is, I mean."

Mr. Bulstrode thought for a minute. "At first, I wondered how such a fantastic witch could have a Muggle parent. Then I realised she was as good a witch as anyone, and I loved her, not her family. After that I was just scared she might get hurt. We both feared for you, you know."

"In case I was a Muggle or a squib?"

"In case someone decided your mother was too Muggle. Times were very dangerous then for anyone who wasn't completely involved with magical culture. We had to be very careful for a long time before you were born, too. We waited a few years to make sure your mother was accepted before we had you. Perhaps we waited too long. I sometimes wish you could have grown up with brothers and sisters."

"I wish I was pureblood," Millicent finally admitted. "Sometimes I feel like I'll never get anywhere in life."

"I used to wish your mother was," her father said. "Back in the early days of our relationship, I'd look at her and think 'she'd have the world at her feet if her surname was Burke or MacNair'. Then I realised she didn't need all that nonsense. Whatever you think is wrong with you, Moose, it is your problem, it doesn't come from being half-blood. Anyway, do you really want to be like all those pureblood girls, frantically scrambling for the two or three decent chaps from a group of about twenty? Wouldn't you rather just fall in love with the right man, regardless of where he comes from? Isn't it better to know you can find your own path through life? You're free of all the things that Pansy's trapped by."

"Father! You're talking like a... like a..."

"A Blood Traitor? In a way, that's exactly what I am. It's also exactly what I'm not. Regardless of what flows in your veins, there's nothing remotely Muggle about you. If you had to make a telephone call or plug in a kettle, you'd be lost. You're a Bulstrode, through and through. Most of the older families appreciate that."

Millicent helped herself to another mince pie, wondering what you plugged a kettle into, and why anyone would need to. "I don't know what to think any more, Father."

"Then stop listening to other people and start thinking for yourself. Decide what you want, and go out and get it."

Whatever doubts Millicent had about herself, she adored her father and was starting to realise she really did love her mother too, half-blood or not. In the morning, when Stella Bulstrode slowly and delicately made her way downstairs, her gasp of delight at the changes her husband and daughter had made to the living room made the late night worth it. Nippy the Elf brought cups of tea, and the family agreed to have breakfast where they were instead of at the dining table where Stella would have to sit upright on a hard-backed chair. They all avoided commenting on the large dose of pain-killing potion she poured in her tea, and then set about unwrapping gifts.

Mr. Bulstrode laughed as he unwrapped socks from both his wife and Millicent. Millicent shrugged. "You're a man, and you've got everything," she protested. Her father looked more satisfied when he discovered the bundle of socks from his wife had a bottle of 20-year-old Ogden's Firewhisky at their centre.

Stella gasped at the Muggle books, cassette player and music she'd been given. "Oh no!" She then looked ashamed. "I mean, I love them, but..."

"You're too sick to receive visitors," her husband told her. "No-one but us will ever see these things. When you've read them, we can burn the books, or pass everything on to one of those Muggle shops that take old stuff."

When Millicent opened her gift, she was astonished and delighted. Pansy had a delicate gold pendant decorated with pearls and sapphires and matching earrings to wear for special occasions like dances, and a couple of the other Slytherin girls had dainty jewellery nearly as lovely as Pansy's. She'd always both yearned for and known she would look ridiculous in something so fragile. From a medium-sized jewellery box she drew a chunky silver chain. Dangling along the chain were graduated teardrop-shaped stones, the largest in the centre. Her parents had clearly tried to get something that wouldn't look out of place on her bulky frame. "What stone is this?" she whispered, stroking the smooth black and white surface. "I've never seen it before."

"Snowflake obsidian," her mother replied. "Do you like it?"

Both her parents looked anxiously at her. "I love it!" Millicent said. She ran the chain through her fingers in wonder. It's like me, she thought. It's hefty and only semiprecious... but I think it's beautiful anyway. I wouldn't swap it for Pansy's sapphires. As she moved it about, she noticed something. "The white patches are moving!"

"It's been charmed so the 'snowflakes' whirl when you move," her father said.

Millicent fastened the string of winter sky beads around her neck, and beamed with happiness.

Her mother sat up and reached for the potion bottle, but her father grabbed it first. "You've had this morning's dose, Stella," he warned.

"It hurts," Stella Bulstrode whispered. "I just need a bit more."

"Any more and you'll have to start the bottle in the bathroom. This is all but empty."

She looked at him in alarm. "This is the bottle from the bathroom. I left the empty one in the dining room for you, so you could get some more."

"I never saw it!"

"Nippy must've tidied it away," Millicent guessed. "She probably didn't know what it was."

Mr Bulstrode swore. "There's only ever a skeleton staff at St Mungo's at this time of year. If I don't leave now I'll be in a queue behind twenty people." He kissed his wife. "Tell Nippy to keep breakfast warm, I'll get this refilled right now."

"I'll go," Millicent said eagerly. "I don't mind waiting. Please, let me do it." The Bulstrodes' fireplace in the cloakroom made travelling around magical Britain easy.

Her mother was already starting to look strained. Mr. Bulstrode nodded, and Millicent ran to the cloakroom. The Dispensary at St. Mungo's was on the ground floor, not far from the Reception Desk. Millicent had been even clumsier as a child than she was as a young woman, and was no stranger to the hospital. In the end, her mother had taken up fundraising for St Mungo's as a personal crusade; she'd joked that it was the only way she could think of to repay them for looking after her daughter so well. The family often went to see the unveiling of new furnishings or equipment paid for by one of Stella's schemes. Getting there and finding her way around was second nature to Millicent now.

While she waited for the Healer to refill her mother's prescription, Millicent noticed a group of people enter through the street door. Their completely Muggle clothing made it plain that they had come along the street outside, and even before she got a good look at their faces the number of red heads told her they were Weasleys. Millicent shot out of sight behind one of the pillars supporting the roof in the open-plan reception area. Why are they here? Someone in their family must be ill, she thought. There's Harry Potter with them - how very odd. Although Draco did once say that Potter lives with miserable Muggles, so maybe staying in magical company over the holidays is preferable... there's Hermione Granger too.

Millicent kept peering round the corner of the pillar until they were all out of sight, then went back to the Dispensary to see if her mother's painkilling potion had been measured out. She had to wait a while before the cheery Healer handed over the refilled bottle and said, "Tell her to go easy on this lot. If she takes too much, she might not wake up, if you understand what I mean."

Millicent nodded. "She's in a lot of pain, Miss Bletchley."

The Healer looked sorrowful. At the end, the pain got so bad it was sometimes hard to tell whether the potion or the illness carried the sufferer off. "She's a lovely lady. Always so polite to everyone. Please, tell her we're thinking of her. All the staff here wish her well."

"I will, I promise. She'll be pleased to remember you all. Um, I saw some... some schoolfriends earlier. The Weasleys. Is a relative of theirs ill too?"

"Ooh, you little gossip," the Healer winked. "It's their dad, but he's going to be okay. You don't need to worry about them."

"Thanks. I'll probably be back in a couple of days." Millicent carefully stowed the bottle of medicine in her pocket and headed back to the fireplace. So, it's Ron Weasley's dad who's ill, she thought. Being friends with Draco and Pansy pretty much precluded getting along with the Weasleys, although Millicent had nothing actually against them. Ron always seemed to be the less glamorous one, the friend of the star, which made her feel some kindred feeling for him. Knowing that he too had an ill parent gave her an extra twinge of sympathy. She resolved to say nothing about what she'd seen to Pansy. Some griefs were too deep for gossiping about.

As she stepped into the fireplace, she saw Neville Longbottom and his scary grandmother crossing the entrance hall, clearly returning home. What is this? Millicent thought as she whizzed through the Floo network. Is it Gryffindor reunion day? Why was Longbottom visiting Mr. Weasley?

Millicent was very glad that at least her own parent could be ill at home.