AN: Okay, so this is a one-shot about Bella's thoughts and feelings towards Hermione at Malfoy Manor. Just so you all know, I'm going purely off my memory, and I've got a horrible one, so it's not going to be exact to the movie, plus I tweaked it a little to fit my theme. Not exactly a slash fic, but I had the idea in mind while writing it, and I guess it's sort of implied. I love reviews, so please don't hesitate to write them :) This is my first ever HP fic, so please be nice.
"Or he ran right into a Stinging Jinx."
As soon as she said it, Bellatrix saw the mudblood stiffen beside the ugly redhead, the girl's slightly widened eyes telling her that she had ventured correctly about the origins of the black-haired one's disfigurement. "Was it you?" she asked almost conversationally, eyeing the bushy-haired girl. She sauntered past her and towards the Snatchers with a devious smirk on her face. "Let's have a look at her wand then. We'll see what her last spell was," Bellatrix said to the rather disgusting looking man who dragged the girl in to the Manor. She threw the mudblood an amused look. "Caught you, didn't I?"
The man began to rummage around in his pockets noisily. Bellatrix took the opportunity to run her eyes up and down his body, her gaze resting on a silver object glinting in his open rucksack. "Is that," she began in a whisper. Then she screeched, "MY SWORD! Where did you get that?"
Everyone in the room grew very still at the manic tone of her voice.
He drew himself up, raising his chin indignantly as he did so, seemingly oblivious to the general reaction of fear everyone else radiated towards the female Death Eater. "Found it on her. Reckon it's mine now," he said cockily.
It happened too fast for anyone in the room to follow. Bellatrix hexed the man with the sword, and proceeded to shoot hexes and curses flying around the room indiscriminately, until all the Snatchers were scrambling away, struggling to breathe with the thick ropes of magic binding their necks.
"GO!" she screamed, and the Snatchers quickly obliged. She whipped around. "Cissy, take the boys to the cellar."
Narcissa obeyed without question, dragging both of the boys by the collars of their shirts and using magic to propel them if they struggled or faltered. "Hermione!" the Weasley boy hollered, craning his neck to watch Bellatrix drift dangerously close to his friend. "HERMIONE!"
Bellatrix smiled languidly. "I'm going to have a talk with this one," she said, leaning in close. "Girl-to-girl!"
The mudblood, Hermione, shivered and shrank away from Bellatrix, but the older woman caught the girl's arm in a tight grip and squeezed. Hermione shut her eyes and let out a whimper of fear.
Bellatrix felt something warm and foreign spread quickly through her at the sound, starting at the crown of her head and traveling along the length of her, making her freeze briefly, something that she had not felt for a long time: compassion. Anger burned across her stomach with that thought, with the idea that she should feel compassion for a filthy mudblood girl just because she gave a little whine, just because she seemed so young and innocent and breakable, and the brief emotion that had ripped across her so violently simply vanished, replaced with the cold emptiness she was accustomed to. She would have to break this one, she realized then, as she broke most of the people she interrogated, her prisoners, her playthings. Bellatrix was a Death Eater, one of the Dark Lord's most favored, and she usually enjoyed breaking things.
She grabbed the mudblood by her unruly brown hair and dragged her to the center of the room, holding her wand to the girl's throat as she did so. "I'll give you one chance, you filthy creature." She said, close to the girl's ear. "Where. Did. You. Get. My. Sword." She said it through clenched teeth, biting off each word harshly as she spoke.
"W-we found it I swear, we found it in the forest, and…"
"Wrong answer mudblood," she said, and she threw the girl to the floor. "CRUCIO!"
Bellatrix fought desperately against the pity trying to wedge itself in her hear with bouts of uncontrollable anger, and the two emotions battled inside of her as she watched the girl writhe in agony for a few minutes, a hard expression on her face. Finally, she lifted the curse and knelt down beside the trembling form of the mudblood. "How did you get into my safe at Gringotts?" she asked, pretending that her empty pit of a soul wasn't tearing itself apart at the sight of the tears rolling down the young girl's cheeks.
Hermione only shook her head and curled up into herself, crying uncontrollably. Bellatrix steeled herself. She could not allow a mudblood to break her icy composure, and since it seemed that the girl had such an effect on her. The Death Eater knew that the only way to be sure that Hermione Granger would no longer be a threat would be to destroy her, to completely decimate her, to break her down into such small pieces there would be no possible way that she could pose a danger to Bellatrix. And to do that, Bellatrix needed to be very, very angry.
She rocked back on her heels, closing her eyes momentarily as she remembered things from her past, from her childhood, from her long stay in Azkaban. She took all the pain and hatred that she had locked away and shoved it all on the image of the crying mudblood in her head, found a way to blame all of her anger and uncertainty on the mudblood simply for existing, just for inadvertently opening up Bellatrix Lestrange and making her feel almost…human. When her eyes snapped open, Bellatrix snarled viciously and launched herself at the shaking teenager before her, straddling the girl's hips.
"You got in my safe," she said, her lips mere inches from the mudblood's cheek, her breath stirring the girl's hair. "How?" she asked, but really, the safe and the sword did not seem so important to her anymore. What she really wanted to know was how Hermione made her feel.
Still the girl blubbered, and with a roar, Bellatrix pulled a knife from around her waist, attacking Hermione's arm. The girl let loose a blood-curdling scream when she felt the tip of the blade slice through her delicate, milky skin, and struggled against the woman on top of her, but she was far too weak, and Bellatrix was far too strong. The Death Eater pressed one hand to Hermione's cheek, her nails digging into the girl's flesh, and kept her face flat against the ground.
With a final huff of breath, Bellatrix leaned back to examine her handiwork. She smiled, satisfied with the detached indifference she felt towards the girl now that she had marked her, branded her as unworthy, and with one last glance at the broken mudblood beneath her, she stood, and turned to the wavering goblin standing in the corner of the room.
"How did the girl get the sword?"
The goblin shuffled his feet with a shrug and stared at the floor.
This one will need to be broken as well, the Death Eater thought, and she smiled. Bellatrix always liked to break things.