Pairing: Millicent/Hermione.

Rating: PG-13.

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Characters owned by J.K. Rowling.

Summary: Let me tell you a love story.

Author's Note: Written for the First Kiss Project.

Let me tell you a love story.

You think only pretty girls get love stories? There aren't enough of them to make the world go round. There aren't enough of them to fill a shoebox.

There's the rest of that want out there, nipping at smooth heels and calloused ones. Tightly strung wards and booby traps in the basement, just waiting for you to step into the parlor and sit your ass down. It'll settle if it needs to, will take your fingernails bitten and your toes packed in wrong. It'll whisper you promises.

There's enough for a pug faced girl, with thick thighs and broad shoulders; if love has time for Malfoy, it can fit in anyone.

The story goes, I woke up and there were geese in the bed.

The story begins earlier, but I won't bore you with the details. She wasn't there much, and while love will take what it can get, the rest of us were never that generous. You want to hear about the girl with a soft set to her mouth and wide brown eyes.

She came with the geese, be patient. We're almost there.

The story goes, I woke up with geese in my bed, and I yelled and nothing much happened. I was still ugly, still cross, still shackled with a name that only I could spell and a cat that scratched whenever it could. The world didn't come crashing down.

The geese honked, sharp and nasal, and I kicked them, because anyone would kick them. They were under my sheets, between my mattress and comforter. Their webbed, yellow feet were slick and grimy with mud, their feathers still damp.

I woke up the house and the boys came tumbling in, rubbing sleep from their eyes and slow limbed. They squawked, a pitch higher than the birds, and Pansy woke and demanded we all stop "this very instant" and none of us did. She lost some beauty sleep and Pucey, kicking at the most visible beak, nearly lost a toe.

The geese were still in my bed, and it only felt a tad bit better to knock Zabini into the bedpost.

"And what did you expect?" said the girl we've been waiting for.

She stood there, as if appearing from nowhere, with her thick bunch of hair and loud crisp voice, and pointed to the window. "You left it open."

Proud, high chinned Gryffindor shake of the head, and she tucked a goose beneath one arm, smiling softly down as it nipped at her finger.

"And this'll lose you points," Warrington sneered.

She sent him a measuring glance, and scooped another off my pillow. "Do you want me to get them out or not?"

We wanted them out, and I especially wanted them out, and Warrington said, "Aren't the both of you fifth years, and it is your bed," and then I was taking them with her, sneaking past the mangy cat and out into the cold.

Fifth year and I wasn't any closer to being anything -- bumping into Hufflepuffs in the hallways, checking out books on a sport that you'd have to be a boy to be Slytherin and play, and waking up with fowl.

Fifth year and hours past midnight, striding over grass beside a mouth that wouldn't quit -- on about habitats, conservation, and persecuted flocks driven out of their native homeland. She stepped in speckled white and black droppings and didn't miss a beat, one stomping foot in front of the other.

She said I wasn't so bad then, if I was saving them with her, that I could have thrown them right out the window. And I would have if I'd thought of it, but I didn't tell her so. I watched the anxious spread of her lips and wanted to kiss her, even though I'd never thought much of kissing anyone before.

"I don't quite trust Hagrid," she admitted, "Sometimes when he looks towards them, I think I see a hungry look in his eye," and I nearly asked if I could check with her, when she peeked out at them nightly -- just to be sure -- with those questions quivering in her throat.

I nearly asked, and then I did, and she paused. She said that was fine.

"All right then," I said, "But we can't tell anyone."

The geese ran straight to the pond the moment we set them to the ground, and she watched them waddle with hands balanced against her knees, face out of focus almost, as if she were caught in a daydream. 

"Can't let on that a Slytherin's gone soft," she finally said.

"Haven't gone soft." 

I hadn't. I haven't still. One girl in all the world doesn't say much, says something about her and not much about me.

She'll never believe that. "Have too."

She bent her neck up and put her mouth to my mouth, chapped and cool from the wind and tasting strangely like sunshine, the too bright kind that makes you squint.

"Have too," she said again, smeared across my cheek like a stain.

She can believe it enough for the both of us. 

Enough for a first kiss in fifth year moonlight, enough for the happy ending.

What, fifteen is too young for a love story? Fifteen is more than some girls have. You think you can promise me I'll be here in the morning? You think I want to be another translucent prisoner hollering in the loo, whining about nicknames and Potter, sniveling around?

Poor Myrtle, she'd tell you. Get it while you can.