Left Untold

If you asked me why I was writing this - five years from now, five weeks from now, tomorrow, even right now - I couldn't tell you. I don't imagine anyone would ever see this; it's not exactly the kind of thing I'm planning on MagiCopying and papering the walls with. I've never really written any of this down before, even, but for some reason it seemed important now.

I don't even know who you are. The faceless, ambiguous "you" to whom this is directed. I suppose that I've always found it easier to write as if in the form of a letter. Vaguely ironic, since I've never written a real letter in my life. I don't suppose I ever knew anyone well enough to warrant keeping in touch; perhaps I just never believed anyone really wanted to hear from me.

I think I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

When I was young, I was raised as a Muggle. Not because my parents wanted the magic squashed out of me, but because they wanted me off the radar - the same radar they had spent their entire life running from.

You see, there's a popular belief. I've heard it mentioned in passing. I heard whispers during my own Sorting Ceremony and all the ones since then; little ten- and eleven- and twelve-year-olds who don't know the Great Hall well enough to realize that voices carry ridiculously well in there. And I've always been one to pick out a scathing comment from the crowd. There's a favourite way of putting it, I suppose: "Not a witch or wizard who went bad that wasn't in Slytherin."

It's a logical flaw that no one really takes into consideration when they make their judgements from this statement: just because all A is B does not mean that all B is A. And just because all (well, almost all) Dark Wizards were once Slytherins doesn't mean that all Slytherins will be Dark Wizards.

Which was what my parents tried to escape. They were both here, once upon a merry old time. Both Slytherins. Ambitious, relatively cunning, and blood purer than the driven white snow.

Back then the rumours weren't as bad. The Dark Lord hadn't really come back to England yet and, despite the usual house rivalries, those who hadn't been raised into his inner circle were barely aware of his existence. All that changed in 1980, five years from when my parents left.

The Dark Lord had been collecting names for the past many years. It tickled his fancy when he discovered that my mother Juniper and my father Alan - by all accounts from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw families respectively - had been sorted into Slytherin. My mother was of special interest to You-Know-Who as her father Mundungus was a widely respected member of the Ministry. Yes, that's right - I'm from those Fletchers. That's not my last name anymore, of course.

My father's family had always ended up being mediwizards, barristers or some such. One of my great-uncles actually started the first independent-from-the-ministry law firm in the East Sussex area. Quite the legacy he had torn from him the day the Sorting Hat shouted that fateful word. Of course, it's not like the Hat had nothing to go on. My father always wanted to be different from his family, do something that wasn't expected, something wilder and more passionate than going into medicine. This might explain why, immediately upon graduating, he ended up marrying my mother. And the hat had that initial burning need to succeed to go on more than anything.

I'm getting off topic. I realize that. As I was saying, You-know-who had a pointed interest in both my parents, and they had a pointed interest in staying the hell away from him. Oh, don't think the Dark Lord didn't try. He never did anything so mundane as threatening their families or cursing them into submission. No, he never went for the end result. He didn't want slaves. He wanted followers. More than anything he lived for the moment when people would come to him, willingly, and offer themselves up. He didn't want to have to break people - he loved the fact that most of the people who followed him were already broken.

What the Dark Lord did do was pull most of my parents' friends away from them. He worked his magic (no pun intended) on almost every friend they made at Hogwarts. They found themselves gradually more and more alone, as the people they once trusted espoused the virtues of hatred and servitude.

Once my parents made it perfectly clear that they would never join him, they began to live in fear. It was only shortly afterwards that Voldemort began killing and torturing all the pure-blood families that would not bear his sigil, and my parents knew they were not far down on the list. They couldn't very well run, as my mother was by now pregnant with me, but they did know they could hide.

They performed the Fidelius Charm three weeks before I was born. My grandfather Mundungus was our secret keeper, and to this day he has never revealed where my parents live and where I go when I get off that massive red train every June. And I was raised, for the first ten years of my life, not knowing about magic.

* * *

I could go on a lengthy diatribe about how, if only my parents had told me, my life would have been so much easier at times. I could talk about how difficult it was to be the freak, all the time, all throughout my life, never knowing what was making these things happen, why I was cursed to be different. And I could rant forever about the names people used to call me, the way they used to point fingers.

And yet.

It's never been easy, I will tell you that. And I don't think I could put into words exactly how "not easy" it was. At times, it was like the effort to keep breathing was almost too much to handle, and it was made worse by the fact that I couldn't help, on some level, believing that no one would care if I just gave that effort up.

I wish I could say it was only because of the magic that people used to shy away from me, but I can't. Truth is, that was just an excuse for people to give me a wide berth. Truth is, I'm just ugly.

It's only looking back that I realize I always blamed the magic for alienating me. I wasn't even six years old before I began to figure out that I was making these odd things happen. But when you're a child raised in a non-magic environment, it takes duress to make the powers emerge. It took me a long time to figure out where I was feeling that duress. I remember times when I had things thrown at me, bits of paper, lunch meat, scrap pieces of clay that used to get stuck in my hair. I only now realize that all this happened before I found the magic. That it was why I found it.

I sometimes lie on my bed, wishing I could remember clearly these discoveries from my youth. One of the big ones is wondering when, exactly, I learned about death. That it was a constant, unchanging - as I am born, so shall I die. I wonder when I became aware of the concept that I, and everyone, is finite. That somewhere along the line, I will simply... stop. Things like these, I wish I could remember learning about. Whether it's inherent, or taught somehow. I wonder when I learned about death. I wonder when I learned the concept of good or evil. I wonder when I learned about magic.

And, often, I wonder when I realized I was ugly. Did I gradually, while exposed to the childhood world of television, come to understand that what was on there was beautiful, and I was not that? Did I hear it from someone and have to discover what it meant? Or have I always known, have I always just looked at myself and recoiled, as so many others do?

I do now. Recoil, I mean. No matter what I tell myself or what other people tell me, I still cringe on occasion when I glance in a mirror. Ironically enough, I've never met a rude mirror. Most of them are quite complementary, or if not, they sidestep the issue. "Dear, your hat isn't on straight," or "Dear, that middle button's come undone." Never "Dear, you're hideous." It's deliciously ironic that the best complements I've ever received were from mirrors.

When I hit eleven years old, I had already had screaming matches and weeping fits with my parents about how everyone hated me. And to this day, I cannot figure out if I resent them for not giving me the answers I so sorely needed about my powers. I understand why they didn't, but I hate what they did instead. They chose to focus on my appearance, or at least my mother did. My father just sort of gave his approval of her suggestions and approaches, while my mother would fuss about my looks and my round physique and entirely ignore what was really going on. Somewhere in my pre-adolescent brain I knew that what they were sidestepping the issue, that my looks wasn't all that made life such hell for me. But they were my parents, and I needed to trust them. Who else could I believe, if not them?

And so, I began to believe that everything bad that happened to me was because I was ugly. Later that year, that premise was somewhat dashed by the arrival of my Hogwarts letter, but the seeds remained and grew and blossomed into Blood-sucking Venemous Tentaculata. I believed - believe - that, because I am ugly, I somehow deserve everything I have gone through. I reap what I sow, and I sow disgust on the face of everyone I meet.

I've always wanted to believe that looks aren't what matter. And who knows? Maybe they aren't. Now I can look back and say this sort of thing. And I think that's why I'm writing this all down - so I can sort it out and say that my classmates, my parents, and all those people on the street have been wrong about me. And so that I can convince myself of the same.

* * *

When I did get my Hogwarts letter, I didn't tell my parents about it for almost a week. It took the rapidly nearing response deadline for me to actually go and talk to them about it, show it to them. I don't think I talked much during the entire thing. I just handed the letter, well-worn from reading it over and over, to my mother, and demanded an explanation.

So they sat me down, and they told me everything. And I mean everything. We were in that room for about three hours as they told me all about the world of magic, about Hogwarts and the Ministry, about Dumbledore and McGonagall, about the houses, the Hat, and everything I had ever needed to know. I watched in amazement as my mother pulled out her dusty old wand and (I'm confusing the order here, as it was almost six years ago) transfigured our cat into a bowler hat, apparated from one end of the room to the other and summoned the hidden chocolate bar from my pocket. I know she did more things, but they all kind of blurred together.

So many things made sense now. What I could do, and why, and how... then I asked why they'd never told me about any of this, why they would put me through all of the treatment they knew I got at school. And so they explained about the Dark Lord to me, in words that I understood at ten years old, but couldn't begin to fathom the true meaning of. They told me all about the bigotry, the name-calling, the ancient dark magics and the wizards that swear by them.

They never told me the Slytherin rumours, though.

Long story short (there are details which fade, and blur, and swirl together over time), I got on the train on September 1^st, my eleventh birthday. My parents had guided me through the twists and turns of Diagon Alley in late July, and though I wish I could remember that clearly as well, my first impression and real sighting of the wizard world kind of boils down to a mixture of confusion and awe. That's all I remember. Faces of nervous and intrigued children, about the same age as me but often talking as if this was all completely normal. I do remember resenting them for that. How dare they have known when I didn't? It wasn't fair.

I caught my parents whispering to each other hurriedly late in the day about "sighting" someone in the pub we went through to get to Diagon Alley - I didn't really care. I was still upset that they hadn't told me. On some level, I understood why, but it was hard not to begrudge them what I saw as a selfish withholding of something that could have made the previous many years that much less damaging. And even a little bit helps.

When I got on the train, I didn't kiss either of my parents goodbye. As I sat there, my brown tabby cat (Sassinak) asleep on my lap, I didn't even look back - I didn't want to see my mother cry. I didn't want to know. All I wanted was to move on to this new chance, a new place. This world would understand what I'd felt like, and my peers would accept me. I wouldn't have to be the freak any more. Finally, everything that I was and am would come together, and I swore to myself as the Hogwarts Express pulled out of the station that I would do everything I had to, no matter that, to fit into this world. There had to be somewhere I could fit, right? There had to be.

I made my first friend ever on that train. She came into my compartment with a massive bag of shiny, new, and utterly magical toys and dropped herself exasperatedly on the chair opposite me.

"This bag is torture. Anyone sitting in here?"

"No," I said shyly. "Just me."

The girl raised an eyebrow. "Well, you're someone, aren't you?"

"I guess so."

"Then it's settled!" The girl clapped her hands together. "You're in here, and I'm in here. And since my father said we've got over six hours on this ridiculous train, you can help me entertain myself."

I laughed. I hadn't laughed in ages. And at that moment, I knew this girl would be my saviour. She was the key to everything I thought I needed. Friends, acceptance, someone to guide me in this world I knew nothing about. I needed her. And I was willing to do anything to keep her as my friend.

"What do you want to play with first - Shape-shifting Jigsaw, Exploding Snap, Constance Q. Craven's Confunding Cube of Consternation?"

I shrugged. "I've never seen any of those before."

The girl looked at me oddly. "Well, the Constance Cube is a bit rare, but the other ones are pretty normal... you're not muggle-born, are you?"

I was desperate. And, technically, I didn't lie.

"Me? No, god no! Pure-blood all the way. God, do I really look like a muggle-born?"

"Well..."

"I think I'm feeling a little sickened with myself, then." Also not a lie.

"Don't worry about it. A good Slytherin's always got to be on the lookout for mudbloods, of course."

"Of course." Mudbloods? "You're already a Slytherin?"

"Not yet, but it's really only a matter of time. It's the best house, I think."

"Absolutely." Say anything.

"So why haven't you heard of Exploding Snap or anything?"

This girl was being nicer to me than anyone I'd ever met, and yet I didn't hesitate for a second before lying, through my teeth, about everything. Maybe I'm a natural born actress. Maybe I really was meant to be a Slytherin.

"My parents didn't really let me play with toys. Said they cluttered up the mind."

"Sounds dreadful."

"Well, it could have been worse." Only I knew how.

The girl laughed.

"I rather say not. But, here, I'll teach you."

I smiled, broadly, and stood up to join her on the opposite side of the box. She held out her hand.

"By the way, my name's Pansy Parkinson." I took her hand eagerly.

"I'm Millicent Bulstrode."

* * *

I never could have been a Gryffindor.

Ravenclaw I could easily have been sorted into. The Hat actually mentioned my intelligence - most people don't know or don't realize that I'm a pretty smart girl. I'm second in Potions among the Slytherins, and in the top three in most of my other classes. Herbology escapes me, for some reason. Anyway, I could have been in Ravenclaw. I'm sure of it.

And even Hufflepuff. Having never really had friends, I'm loyal to a fault with the ones I do have. I tend to put other peoples' feelings ahead of my own, happily getting walked on so other people won't have to know the pain I go through daily. Hufflepuff would have been a stretch, but I could have gotten in there.

But not Gryffindor. Never Gryffindor. You might belong in Gryffindor, where dwell the brave of heart; their daring, nerve and chivalry set Gryffindors apart. That's the first I ever heard of it, from the Hat as I stood there in my first year. If there's one thing I'm not, it's brave. I'm the most cowardly, terrified person you could imagine. Or at least I was. Now I don't even know anymore. I'm scared of everything, of everyone. I never take risks with the people I have in my life, because I am convinced I'll lose them. I don't even completely trust anyone I know - I can't help thinking that they'll take their first chance to get away from me. I don't have it in me to be daring, or nervy, or brave. So I could never have been a Gryffindor.

I know exactly why I was sorted into Slytherin that year - for Pansy. I told myself it was because I just needed to be where I had at least one friend, but it was to prove to her that I was worthy of her respect. Not even her respect. I would have settled for pity at that point, and having spent the entire ride with her, I knew she'd only give me the time of day if I were in Slytherin.

It's more than that, though. I came to Hogwarts with the express intention of fitting in, or if not, then not standing out. I didn't want to be singled out by my classmates, mocked or yelled at. Pansy told me that Slytherins are by far the most exclusive, tight-knit house. No one Slytherin is mocked because we all have better things to do with our time. Bait Gryffindors. Hassle Hufflepuffs. Sabotage Ravenclaws. I would do anything to be somewhere I could be assured of fitting in. Anything.

And so, the hat called out my house, I proudly strode to the table and sat down, and no one really took notice. I got a few scattered "Welcome to Slytherin"s from them, but they seemed pretty focused on the incoming group.

A burly boy named Vincent Crabbe was the next to get sorted in. He came over to our table, gave me an eyebrow and sat as far away from me as possible without seeming like he didn't want to be in the house. I couldn't help noticing that he got far more applause from the upper-years at the table than I had. Gregory Goyle did too. I realize now that it's because, among many Slytherins, their families were well-known supporters of You-Know-Who. And then, when Draco Malfoy got sorted in, there was an uproarious cheer from us. I joined in. I didn't know what else to do.

Finally, Pansy. How I prayed she'd get in. Of course, my fears were allayed - the Hat called her name out almost as quickly as it'd sorted Draco. Malfoy. You know what? To this day I don't know what he prefers to be called.

So Pansy sat next to me, thank heavens. I felt less alone up there now that she was with me, someone who seemed to enjoy my company or at least not revile it. And then Blaise Zabini rounded off the sorting with a resounding call of our house, and then food.

Oh, lord, how that was torture. I mean, I was starved. Everyone was starved. And I began to pack my plate full with everything within reach, before I heard it. A snicker, coming from the nearby Hufflepuff table. I looked up, and there were a few upper-years, doing the point-and-laugh I had so come to expect.

From that point on, I barely ate at meals. I felt so shameful. It doesn't make any sense, really - why, because I'm fat, should I be made fun of for eating in public? I knew it was ridiculous, and if I were the person then that I am now, I would have rolled my eyes and taken a nice, delicious bite of lamb chops. Back then, I had this horrible, cold feeling in the pit of my stomach; suddenly, I wasn't hungry anymore. Pansy gave me a weird look as I pushed the plate away, but I just shrugged and looked down. All I could think of was my resolution when I came here. Do anything. Don't let yourself be that girl again.

I really should have known that not eating wouldn't have made much of a difference.

* * *

I guess I should go over the people I know here. Most of them are Slytherins, of course, but I've encountered a few others that tend to stick with me.

Pansy is still my best friend here. She's been with me through everything. Lately, she's been pulling away, and I think she's leaning towards becoming a Death Eater. That terrifies me, frankly. But those first years were incredible. She was my backbone when I was made fun of, she let me cry on her shoulder... she's hexed more Hufflepuffs in my defense than for any other reason. I don't think people realize how cruel Hufflepuffs can be - oh, they tend to be good-natured, but they've also got an element of shallowness about them that can be pretty debilitating. I don't know if that's all Hufflepuffs, or just the ones I encountered, but let me tell you, my opinion has been rightly skewed.

I don't want to lose Pansy to You-Know-Who. I don't think I could follow her into the fold - I would have, that first year, but now... as her best friend, I have a responsibility to her to keep her safe, just as she's kept me safe. I don't even know if that makes sense. The point is, she was my friend because I needed her, and now I have a chance to be her friend for the same reason.

See, that's why I say I could have been a Hufflepuff. Seeing the way they treat people, though, I'm happier here. If I can pull Pansy back from the brink... if I can be enough for her to see that the Dark Lord isn't the right side, then being a Slytherin is worth what I've gone through tenfold.

Now, the other housemates. I guess I should tackle Malfoy first - I know I said I didn't know what to call him, but I don't think anyone other than Pansy's ever called him Draco and lived. He's... cold. I think that's the only way to put it. I don't even know that he feels anything except for anger, but I'd be lying if I said I knew him well enough to make that call. He spends most of his time with Crabbe and Goyle, who I'll get to later, but they certainly don't know him at all. They barely talk, and even when they do, it's usually just Malfoy griping about Dumbledore, or Granger, or Potter. And they just listen.

He's not very nice. He never shows overt animosity towards me, of course - never towards a Slytherin - but he's just not a nice person. He radiates this enmity in my general direction, and I've never been sure why. Could be because of my parents having disappeared from the Dark Lord's radar. Could be that I never really take part in any of the daily Muggleborn-bashing that goes on around here. Could be because I'm ugly. I'd love to say the last one isn't likely, but I always went - go - to that as my default. If something goes wrong, or someone doesn't like me, it's because I'm fat and hideous. I always go to that. And logically, when I step outside myself, I know that I'm being obsessive and ridiculous. It's more than that, though. I look for the easy way out. If whatever happens to me happens because I'm fat, then it gives me a reason to hate myself, which is a lot easier than to change myself.

You might say "Well, then, lose the weight! That's a change! And you won't hate yourself!" I don't think I can explain it, but it wouldn't make me hate myself any less. In fact, I would feel worse, because I would have let these people get to me. My stubborn, obstinate refusal to change in order to please them is one of the few things I deeply value about myself. If I don't make friends because I'm fat, it's not my problem, it's theirs. But if I don't make friends because I'm lonerish, angry and shy? That means it is a problem with me. And something like that is something I'm just not prepared to deal with.

Where was I?

Ah. Malfoy. Anyway, I am in a situation where I have to take his animosity with good humour and the repellance of a duck's back, because he's... well, he's Malfoy. He's the Crown Prince of Slytherin. What the hell else am I supposed to do? If I stand up for myself, I'll be completely cast out, because no one, and I do mean no one, will back me up. I've spent my entire life trying to not make a spectacle out of myself, and the last thing I need is to be cast as the bitter, insane, unsightly girl who will have a screaming fit at the slightest provocation. Plus, as we said before, I'm not brave enough. And, finally, it's just not worth my time. I have enough self-worth to know that.

Crabbe and Goyle. Goyle never really talks to me. I get some leering looks from him now and then, mostly because of what happened between me and Crabbe, but I could care less. Excepting the times when I want to drop an anvil on his stupid, pudding-basin head, of course. He's just a dickhead, that's really all there is to it. Not a single IQ point in his feeble little brain. I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh that time in second-year potions when his cauldron exploded in his face. I had to bite my fist to stop from chortling out loud, which later prompted that little Irish Gryffindor to comment that I must have gotten extra hungry in class. Prat.

Ah, but Vincent. Vince, once. He was never nice to me, but he didn't look at me like I was an abomination, and then? That was something. I wish I could say there was friendship involved, or even a real attraction to him on my part, but that would be, you know, a bald-faced lie. Just completely. He's crude, and obnoxious, and can barely string a sentence together. He also has the stupidest laugh. Ever. I don't know how just a laugh can be stupid, but he manages it. It's a guffaw combined with a chortle that has always made me want to stab myself in the ear with a quill. And he laughs. At. Everything. He. Says. I'm not even joking. He thinks he's the funniest person in the whole damn house. Pansy and I spent many a delirious night up, a filched bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky between us and a soundproofing charm on the dorm walls, imitating him and making bad voodoo dolls.

She's the only person who believes I didn't sleep with him. To most other girls in our house, that possibility makes me all the more repugnant, and to most of the boys it makes me a subject of even further ridicule. But there's always Pansy.

Why am I going on and on about a guy who I've gone to pains to make clear to whom I've never had an attraction? Because he's a manipulative, slimy wanker who never thought twice about me. And I think that everyone needs to know that. He started to come on to me in my third year, and our relationship - vomit-worthy as it was - evolved quickly. I'd love to write it off as one of those youthful experimentation things, but I had no control over it. I was just flattered to have some attention, from anywhere, and I truly believed that the only thing I needed in a guy was his interest in me. In a way, I still do, though now I value my instincts a hell of a lot more. Anyway. He came on to me, we flirted - rather, he would clumsily make...

Okay, I'm going to start this bit over again. What he did. It's sickening, honestly. And bearing in mind that I was thirteen and scared. What he would do doesn't even qualify as flirting. In fact I could probably have slapped a pretty strong sexual assault charge on him just for what he'd do before I reciprocated in any way. His method of flirting would be to put his hands on my legs, or between them, in the middle of class. In the library, he'd catch me in the stacks and fondle me. You like that. I know you do. That may have been the worst time of my life. Eventually, he moved on to kissing me. He'd pull me into empty rooms in between classes, never asking, never telling, just pressing his greasy horrible body against me and slathering all over my lips.

I think it might have counted as rape if I'd let him keep going. Most of the time we'd be saved by the need to get to class, or the fact that he was never, ever, not hungry. I never told anyone. He'd do this a lot in public places, too, like the dining hall. Nothing overt - he never wanted to show anyone that he had any sort of interest in me - just subtly wedging his hands between my thighs as I picked at my oft-untouched dinner.

We were only thirteen! To this day I don't know how he thought it was okay to behave like this, why he thought he had the right. And I hated myself because that small part of me craved the attention. It liked the bittersweet sensations it would stir up in the pit of my stomach, and loved the idea that I was wanted. Somehow, every time he'd come to me, I would forget how disgusting it felt that he didn't want me for my mind, or my personality, or anything like that. I would just feel. And later, I would feel sick.

I never had sex with him. I had that much control. Every time he would try to convince me - connive, manipulate, coerce himself into my pants - I would give him an excuse. Eventually we settled for other things. Remembering the feeling of his tongue makes me want to vomit. And the degraded, sickened feeling I'd get every time he pushed me to my knees actually DID make me vomit a few times. Later. After the fact.

Getting all this out here now makes me realize how utterly messed up I was. I let him play with my mind. It was, again, Pansy who saved me. I was throwing up and crying for about an hour after the last time we were together, feeling absolutely rotten and shattered, and she glued me back together. She's been the best friend I've ever had, honestly. And the next day, when Vincent tried to grab me again, I pushed him off and left.

He wasn't deterred quite so easily. First, he got a bit more violent with me, which I nipped in the bud - I'm a strong girl and I can deliver quite the well-placed knee. Then, he gave me the "I can change" business, which made me laugh because I realized, at that point, I didn't care. No part of me wanted to be with him anymore, and never had. He called me names to my face, which hurt more than I let on. Finally, he spread that rumour as his final straw and we haven't talked since except for homework purposes. I didn't do anything to get him back for spreading around that I was apparently easier to get into than the Hogwarts kitchens, but a few nights after it got out there was apparently an incident with his boxer shorts and a very localized, quite powerful Shrinking Spell that took months to fully reverse. He also ended up with the letter P tattooed on each arse-cheek - like I said, best friend ever.

To be honest, he's the Slytherin I had the most interaction with. Pansy and Malfoy I talked about because, well, Pansy's the greatest and Malfoy's Malfoy. You can't NOT talk about him when you talk about Slytherins. It's just not possible.

* * *

So who else? Hannah Abbott, bane of my teenage-girl-existence. She is a twit and she - along with her growing group of Hufflepuff cronies - were responsible for most of the things thrown at me, names called and mysterious mocking letters that would appear on my pillow from time to time. I'm going to use talking about her as a way to segue into another person. See what I did there?

When I was in first year, on Halloween, Hannah stopped me in the hall. She actually had the gall to back me into a corner as I was heading down to the feast.

"Hey, Slytherin."

I summoned what tiny sense of Slytherin and personal pride I had.

"I have a name, Abbott."

"Oh, I know. Bulstrode. Sounds like a cow. But then, that's fitting."

"What do you want?"

"I was just wondering if that was your costume. Are you going as a hag, Bulstrode?"

I couldn't let her see me cry.

"Oh, come on. Don't you have a witty Slytherin retort prepared?"

"Leave me alone, Hufflepuff."

"Why? In a hurry to get to the feast? Of course you are."

She laughed, a high-pitched keening laugh that echoed after me as I pushed past her and ran down the hall.

"Don't slip and go bouncing into the hall, you might crush someone!"

I ran to the nearest girl's bathroom and slammed the door, burying my face in my robes. My sobs were muffled by the thick wool and were the only sound in the bathroom until...

"H-hello?"

Someone else was in here. And from the sounds of her voice, she was crying too. I snuffled a little and wiped my nose.

"Alright in there?"

There was a small sob from within one of the stalls. I walked over to it.

"Are you alright?" I said again.

"N-no."

"Oh." Stupid response. "What's wrong?"

"Everyone h-hates me. They make fun of me, they think I'm a nightmare. I've g-got no friends and I shouldn't even have come here."

Whoever this girl was - her voice, thick with crying, was vaguely familiar but unrecognizable through the tears - she was echoing everything I was thinking. I didn't know what to do. No one had ever been able to offer me any words of comfort when I felt like this, so I hadn't the foggiest what they were supposed to sound like.

"I'm sure you'll make friends," I stammered. "I know how hard it can be."

"But I thought I had friends!" The girl said, her voice rising. "I'm just a bossy, ugly know-it-all."

"I know it's horrid when people who you trust say things like that... I'm sure they didn't mean it. And I'm sure they're wrong. All you need to do is show them they are."

"I d-don't know h-how." She gave another sob, but it seemed less urgent than the earlier ones.

"Neither do I," I said honestly. "I wish I could tell you. I know how you feel, though. I think a lot of people here probably do. You just can't believe them."

Easier said than done. I still don't know where these words were coming from. I didn't believe them when it came to me.

"I'm sure you're lovely," I finished. "And they're just being prats, whoever these people are."

There was a sniffle and a small laugh from behind the door.

"You're not wrong," the girl said. I laughed too.

"Come on out. We can clean up and go to the feast together." I was feeling better. There was someone here who knew how I felt, someone I could talk to who understood what being ugly and outcast felt like, someone who...

The door opened and a smallish girl with thick brown hair walked out. Hermione bloody Granger.

My entire stomach dropped.

She was complaining about feeling ugly. She, the thin, pixie-like brainiac I had potions with. She, with the good male friends and the support from her housemates. She thought she was ugly.

The little bitch. How dare she? How dare she not appreciate what I would have given anything to have?

She looked at me first, her smile fading, and then her eyes cast down to the Slytherin insignia on my robe and her face just dropped completely.

And she had been complaining about people judging her.

I had to get out of there.

"Know-it-all Gryffindor trash," I spat at her without thinking, and turned on my heel and stalked out. I heard her burst into tears again behind me. I didn't even care, I hated her so much. To make me think she understood what it was like to really be ugly! I felt taken advantage of. And I felt, more surely than ever, that no one would ever say those things to me that I said to her. No one saves the lost cause.

* * *

Looking back on it, I was horrible to her. When we got paired in dueling club in second year, I tried to kill her. I wanted her bruised, disfigured, in as much pain as I was in. She didn't say anything, just squeaked and bowed. So I rushed her as her head was down. It took two people to pull me off her. When Malfoy broke the "Mudblood" barrier by actually saying it to her face that time, I used the word ridiculously often. I joined the groups of people who would harass her and her friends. From that point on, my years were just a mass of insults and Slytherin plotting. I withdrew from my parents when I'd see them on the holidays, barely talking, writing owl after owl to Pansy.

It was the rumoured return of the Dark Lord that really threw things into perspective. Over the past two years it's gotten darker down here in the dungeons. People talk about killing like it's an everyday thing now. And I find myself wanting less and less to be a part of this group. I never answer when people ask me when I'm pledging my loyalty. I fear for the day when Pansy asks me.

I realize now that what I've been doing to Granger - to Hermione - is tantamount to what Hannah's been doing to me all these years. I don't know what changed in me, honestly. I was a wreck in my first few years here. Now I'm terrified, but I know I've got to do the right thing. For my parents, who gave up so much to try and raise me in a fear-free environment. For the people who have died at the hands of You-Know-Who. For Hermione, who I have been horrible to. For Harry Potter, who gave up so much without knowing it that first time around, and keeps fighting. For Pansy, who I will not lose.

And for myself. Because I deserve better than what I've accepted.

So here I am, in the middle of sixth year, about to make the biggest change in my life. I'll start small - now that I've finished this, I'm going to go down to the main hall and eat a satisfying lunch. I'll catch Hermione in the library afterwards and tell her how unbelievably sorry I am.

I'm risking all of my friends and, knowing the Slytherins, my health and well-being. And now, it's worth it. I'm worth it. I think I'm finally ready to be brave.