Chapter Text
“Day release?” Millicent checked that she heard correctly.
“Night is more accurate.” Catbag looked overly severe as they sat in the Headmistresses office, with the Matron, Snape and a professional from St Mungo’s.
“So I can go home?” Millicent wanted to make completely sure she wasn’t imagining things. “Now?”
“Yes.” Catbag’s lips were more pursed than a cat's backside. “You will undergo a monitoring charm for the next two weeks.”
“But I can go home?”
“Miss Bulstrode.” Snape gave her a warning look. She barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“Monitor away if it means I can go home,” she agreed. “Tonight?”
Yes was the answer.
Charlie cursed as he saw her. Bill was stuck at work when she got back, so he missed her bursting into tears as she stepped into the kitchen and saw Kreacher making a special tea to celebrate her return.
“Are they not feeding you?” Charlie touched her face, tilting it this way and that.
“They’ve all but been force feeding me, and it’s not staying on,” she sobbed, Winky clinging to her legs, Dobby lingering in the background with fierce determination. “I’ve missed home so much.”
That first night, she accepted all the fussing and clucking, Bill joining her as she walked up to see Dad, and Charlie got up at four so she could run over to the reservoir before having to go back to Hogwarts.
“How did you sleep?” the Matron asked as Millicent did as requested and flooed directly into the hospital ward.
“So well, so well,” Millicent sighed happily. She’d not realised how much she missed the smell of fresh washing, the scent hitting her hard the moment she could process all the different smells. Mopsy’s laundry service hadn’t seemed to be so pervasive in the house until Millicent hadn’t been able to smell it.
“What’s up with you?” Blaise asked as she drifted through the day in a happy daze.
She dragged him into a secluded corridor, waiting to see if anyone had followed them. “I slept at home last night,” she whispered in his ear.
“Thank Merlin,” he hissed. “So you aren’t leaving.”
“Only to sleep in my own bed.” She leaned back against the wall, humming softly to herself.
“Irons thinks you had sex.” Blaise rolled his eyes.
“Irons is a degenerate, like half of the school.” Millicent beamed at him. “I got to see Winky, Dobby and Kreacher. I haven’t seen Kreacher in months.”
For a week solid, she slept incredibly well. So incredibly well.
“You are still extruding a lot of magic,” the Matron stated, as Millicent had a checkup, the professional from St Mungos sitting in to monitor, with Bill and Snape waiting quietly by her side.
“I’ve gained weight, though,” she pointed out. Three pounds in one week. And they’d reduced her from three potions to one a day.
“My colleague would like to actively monitor you throughout the next two days,” Matron looked annoyed.
“Even when I’m running?” Millicent peered at the woman. “No offence, you don’t look like you a run.”
Bill tried to give her a warning look, but she caught a glimmer of amusement when Millicent rolled her eyes, which completely invalidated the attempt, in Millicent’s oh so humble opinion.
“I will be able to keep up.” Millicent wasn’t convinced, and not just because the woman smelled of nothing. Not even of sweat. She was almost unsettling with her lack of scent.
“Will you be coming home with me?” Millicent pulled a face just even suggesting it.
“The first night you were home, you exuded some magic. Since then, the charm hasn’t noted any difference in magic levels. So no.”
“Brilliant, then I really couldn’t care less,” Millicent sighed happily. “So we start operation stalk Millicent tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Matron agreed. “On time, tomorrow morning. Not after you’ve gone for another run.”
“I forgot,” Millicent lied. “It was a group run day, and they all get funny when I don’t turn up.”
“That’s cheating,” Millicent commented as the professional perched on a broom, not even steering it, with a wand out and a clipboard, where all sorts of measurements seemed to be being noted down. “I’m not going to take an easy route so you can cheat, I’m warning you now.”
She did, however, glance over now and again to try and catch what the measurements were saying, until she almost fell over a rock, and decided to pay attention to her surroundings again.
“Uh, so, we might be further out than I planned.” Millicent wrinkled her nose as her watch beeped to tell her she had thirty minutes before the first lesson. She’d eaten at home, with Kreacher supplying all the details for her meals at home for Matron’s approval. “Mopsy?”
Mopsy appeared looking annoyed, especially when she saw the professional. “Mopsy be busy.”
“I need to have a shower and get changed,” Millicent pouted.
“Miss Millicent needs being more time efficient,” Mopsy scowled at her. “Mopsy be very busy. But now Mopsy needs to make sure her Miss Millicent is not be looking like a ragamuffin.”
“You’re the best,” Millicent leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek, giggling as Mopsy squawked.
“Mopsy be telling Neville Miss Millicent is being terrible.”
“I’ll let him know it is all my fault,” she agreed.
Mopsy got them back to the changing rooms with a less vicious scowl. “Mopsy be making sure Miss Millicent’s clothes be ready and warming.”
“Absolute best Head Elf anyone could ever ask for,” Millicent cooed. She waited for Mopsy to disappear before turning back to the Professional. “Are you going to be watching me shower?”
“Monitoring, but not watching.”
She got looks throughout the day as the Professional followed her to classes, out on another quick run, and sat with her at lunch - Harry, Irons, Ginny, and Dennis sat around her watching the Professional with fascination. Blaise had the grace to pretend she wasn’t there. Theo and Tracey just kept gossiping further down the table, loudly.
“How did your first day go?” Bill asked as Millicent got back from having tea with Daisy and Timmy. Sirius was also there, but she’d ignored him for the most part after saying hello.
“Fine,” she flopped on the sofa, lifting up for Charlie to remove his legs that she’d not noticed taking up one half before settling down again. “She’s weird ,though. And she cheats.”
“Weird how?” Charlie asked around a biscuit.
“You mean other than she’s spending two days watching me?”
“For medical reasons,” Bill pointed out gently.
“She doesn’t smell.” Millicent wrinkled her nose. “At all. It’s weird.”
“How do you know?” Charlie looked confused.
“Because I can’t smell her?”
“Oh, you mean you can’t smell her, not that she doesn’t smell things,” Charlie snickered.
“How would I know if she could smell things?” Millicent stared at him. “That makes no sense.”
“How do you mean she doesn’t smell?” Bill asked as Charlie opened his mouth.
“Alright, so you know how you smell of, well, Charlie smells of bad smokes, occasionally weed, but of warm honey?” She gave a good sniff. “Sometimes, he smells a bit sulphuric too. Not quite bad egg, but dangerous, like a sparkler that hasn’t been lit yet.”
“I can smell the smoke and weed,” Bill agreed.
“And you, you smell of warm honey, sometimes a little spicy with it,” she breathed him in. “Like now, you smell like spiced warm honey, with a note of salt, but sometimes, sometimes you smell like the air before a thunderstorm. Makes my nose twitch.”
Charlie pulled on his jumper so it covered his nose and took a long sniff. “Weed and peppermint.”
“Peppermint for your deodorant,” Millicent agreed. “Bill’s wears lemongrass. And you both use spearmint toothpaste. She doesn’t smell of anything. At all. If I couldn’t see her or hear her, I wouldn’t know she was there. She’s like a ghost.”
“She isn’t a ghost.”
“I know she’s not a ghost, a ghost wouldn’t cheat by using a broomstick when I’m running,” Millicent rolled her eyes at Bill. “Also, I wouldn’t be able to touch her, and she wouldn’t have needed Mopsy to bring her back to the changing rooms this morning.”
“Is it really a problem?” Bill asked.
“She’s a void, I don’t like it,” Millicent wrinkled her nose. “Like I didn’t like not being able to smell freshly ironed washing.”
“One more day,” Charlie patted her on the leg.
“She makes me feel uncomfortable,” Millicent wrinkled her nose again. “Like I need to keep an eye on her constantly to make sure she’s not at my back.”
“Would it help if I was there?” Charlie asked after there was a pause while he and Bill had a silent conversation, pretending she couldn’t see them.
“Why?”
“Would you trust me to keep you safe?”
“I do,” she mumbled.
“I can be there during your run. We can even see if they’ll let me follow you around during the day too,” Charlie suggested. “And I can keep an eye out to make sure you aren’t in any danger.”
“I’m just being silly,” Millicent sighed, tilting her head back to stare at the ceiling. “It’s only one more day, and it’s not even the whole day.”
“Do you feel safe with her?” Bill asked bluntly.
“No.”
“I’ll go see Severus and Minerva.” Bill got up, dropping a hand on her shoulder.
Charlie was panting by the time they left the boundaries of Hogwarts, she’d set off at her normal pace. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“You said I could run at my normal pace,” she rolled her eyes. “You clearly haven’t been keeping up with the running while I’ve been exiled to school.”
“Drama queen,” he huffed. “I’m much older than you, take pity on me.”
“Fine,” she slowed down a fraction until she could hear his breathing even out. She caught a glimpse of a centaur through the trees, watching them from a distance. She’d spotted it a few times when heading out in this direction, it was clearly tracking her but not approached yet.
“Mopsy,” she called as her watch went off. They were deep in the forest, and she could feel the beasties lurking in the gloom, and Charlie getting more and more agitated as the trees got darker and gnarlier.
“Miss Millicent.” Mopsy looked distinctly unimpressed by Charlie’s presence. “Mopsy is being insisting that Miss Millicent not be testing Mopsy’s tracking like this.”
“But you are the best,” Millicent purred at her. “The absolute best.”
“Mopsy be knowing,” Mopsy sniffed. And then sniffed again. “Fine.”
Charlie was clean and dressed, lounging outside of the changing room door with the Professional as she came out in her uniform.
He was a mini-celebrity, answering all sorts of questions about dragons as girls and boys alike fluttered lashes at him.
“What’s going on?” Dean asked as they sat in the study room working through work, for what felt like the first time that term, and going by the stunned expression on Harry’s face, it might actually have been.
“Professional to work out what’s going on with me, and Charlie’s here because I don’t like them,” Millicent answered succinctly, making sure she didn’t lower her voice at all. Charlie winked at her, returning to his conversation with Ginny. He hadn’t stopped watching the Professional, who in turn hadn’t stopped watching Millicent in her creepy no-scent manner.
“But it was only for two days, and today’s the last day, and once I head home, she’s gone, and I won’t have to see her until the next check-up meeting, hopefully.” Millicent suddenly doubted her statement. “Do I?”
The Professional gave her a dead-eyed look.
“Anyway, Charlie isn’t my new bodyguard,” Millicent reassured him. “It is messing with my schedule. Blaise had to take over my prefect’s duties because I wasn’t going to traumatise the common room with that, and then an old lion.”
Dean snorted.
“Muggle Club-“
“Nope, not talking about it unless everyone's here for the meeting,” Millicent cut him off.
“We need Blaise but,” Dean ignored her.
“But what?”
“Are we handing over lead for next year?” He asked, the room going silent.
“What?” she blinked.
“Well, it’ll be a busy year, and we need to make sure whoever takes it over can run it,” Dean pointed out. “So if we start thinking about it now, then we can be there to help next year, but then they’ll be set up to do it properly when we graduate.”
“You want this to be your legacy,” Millicent groaned.
“Our legacy,” he corrected.
“Mine is that I killed Umbridge,” Millicent pointed out.
“Which you didn’t do.”
“We all know I didn’t, but still, if you were to ask the school, a good sixth of them would say I did. Some people think I killed Harry when they can see him,” Millicent wrinkled her nose. “Don’t underestimate people's idiocy.”
“Someone asked me if I was a doppelganger,” Harry agreed. “I said I didn’t know.”
“How do you know if you’re a doppelganger?” Dean asked curiously.
“I don’t know. How do you know if you’re a doppelganger?” Millicent asked Charlie, who looked perplexed.
“I don’t know, why would I know?”
“Alright, do you know?” Millicent asked the Professional. “How would a person know if they were a doppelganger?”
“Do you mean doppelganger or clone?” the Professional clarified.
There was a collective pause.
“I bet they really meant clone but didn’t know what a clone was,” Millicent pointed out to Harry.
“But they knew what a doppelganger was? Is?”
“Look,” Millicent gave a deep sigh. “These are the people who think I killed you.”
“True,” Harry agreed. “Alright, so how do you know if you're the clone or the original?”
“Are identical twins clones?” Dean asked, looking at Charlie.
“How would I know?” Charlie asked him.
“You do have identical twins for brothers,” Harry pointed out.
“Does it even matter?” Millicent asked. “Even if you share the same DNA, your experiences will be different - unless it’s a split alternative reality deal.”
“Time a timer turner situation?” Harry asked, leaning forward. “As in, I’m an alternative universe Harry, and the original Harry did die when you throttled me, him, us?”
“My brain is starting to hurt,” Dean groaned.
“I feel like this is a conversation best had while smoking,” Charlie mentioned idly.
“Probably,” Millicent hummed. “Anyway, back to my original point, there are people in this school who think I killed Umbridge and Harry. That’s my legacy.”
“Muggle Club is,” Dean disagreed with her. “And it’s a good one, better than not killing Harry.”
“Oi, I’m a celebrity. People would kill to be known as the one who killed me,” Harry pouted.
“Keep dreaming, four eyes.” Millicent threw a rubber at his head, snorting as he caught it instead.
“You know it’s rude to take the piss out of someones disability.”
“Sorry,” she wrinkled her nose. “Alright, keep dreaming, degenerate.”
Dean snickered as Harry blushed.
“And I don’t know what you're snickering about. You’re in his dorm as well, so you may as well be as degenerate as he is,” Millicent rolled her eyes.
“Muggle Club.”
“Fine.”
“Fine, what?”
“Whatever you want to do, you run it,” Millicent groaned.
“Yeah, right,” Harry muttered.
“I heard that,” she pointed at him. “Dean runs it, and I stop them getting too demented. Like trying to organise a massive domino party throughout the school. Because shutting down the main staircase and half the hallways isn’t stupid at all.”
“Dennis is just enthusiastic,” Harry grinned.
“Everyone is enthusiastic. Did you hear about the appeal to get a petting zoo to come for a weekend?” Millicent asked. “Because there aren’t enough animals roaming about the place, no, we need to have farm animals brought in so we can “destress” from exam fever. AND do you know who they want to bully the staff into allowing it?”
“Can I have three guesses?” Harry grinned.
“Fucking Fudge wanted something organising for Easter. A giant easter egg hunt - “ she paused. “Alright, no one is allowed to tell Tracey this. She will actually kill me. So Fudge quite liked the idea, but we, Matron, Snape, Catbag-“
“The Headmistress,” Charlie corrected her.
“Acting Headmistress,” Millicent rolled her eyes. “Sprout and Professor Flitwick had a long list of students that were allergic to dairy, so we didn’t have to do it. And I told him that there was no fucking chance I was staying for the Easter holidays for egg rolling - and then we tried to convince him normal eggs were dairy too. But he did offer to fund an easter egg for every student.”
“We might kill you.” Dean stared at her.
“Do you really think that hiding hundreds of chocolate eggs around the school is a great idea?” Millicent asked him. “Because it’s just asking for violence and murder, and no small amount of mayhem. That is not going to be my legacy - a full-on war at Hogwarts.”