Author's Note: This was in my hard drive for months. So I'm posting it now. I already edited a banner for this. You can see it in my profile, though I think I will add more to it once I've got the time (since I've been with busy other things not only fanfiction) Anyway, this story is inspired by the book Red Rising by Pierce Brown, Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and mixed with the magical world of Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. In this story, they used weapons to channel their magic, not wands. Half-bloods are children born from purebloods and their muggle slaves. (Also, pardon my English, it is not my first language.)
She lived in the slave barracks in the east sector of Reichmengard.
She had a mother and father who loved her, and her family found joy in little things they manage to wheedle out of their simple life as a slave. And the Longbottoms, their Pureblood Masters, were kind and generous people.
Her parents regarded it as a good fortunate that they were sold to the Longbottoms instead of other Purebloods who might have treated them differently and without a care for their well-being.
…
And everything…everything was normal then.
.
Like the other children, she was tasked to tend the plants in the greenhouses or gather fruits in the orchards, while her mother and father were sent to the Longbottom's Plantation.
Every day she watched them step into those fire pits alight with green fire which would send them to someplace else. She had always wanted to know the 'how' and the 'where' of it, more curious of the world that she couldn't see outside the barracks and the acres and acres of lands that belonged to the Longbottoms.
She always hoped to see other cities and lands that she only caught a glimpse on a broken tele in the commons. She wanted more than anything to go out. But there were men guarding those portals and it won't be a few years before she was sent to work in the plantation like her parents did.
.
She was eight when someone saw her do something strange, something extraordinary…
Something magical.
Questions were asked and she could see the rising fear and worry in her parent's eyes every time they looked at her.
A month later, they arrived and took her away.
.
They told her she was different somehow, that she was someone special, that there was power in her blood.
.
Power that they said her parents had stolen from their Purebloods Masters.
Power that they wanted to beat out of her.
.
" Break her and break her until she can no longer stand."
.
A gut-wrenching scream left her lips as a wooden staff drove into the back of her knees. She crumpled on the floor at once, wailing and sobbing in agony, her small hands reaching out for the spot where she felt the radiating pain. And with another whirl and whip of wind - too quick for her to evade on time - the wooden staff was brought down and smashed against the fragile bones of her shin, fracturing her.
She howled as absolute agony lanced right from her broken legs while tears poured freely down her face.
.
" Crush her until she can barely breathe and her tears are never far from gone."
.
Fists rained down unto her – undeterred, unchecked and utterly without mercy - hitting her back, her shoulder, and her head, which she tried to protect with her arms. It was futile as a fist slipped past her pathetic defense and hit her in the gut. The punch drove all air out of her lungs. It cracked a rib, which punctured a lung, and caused nausea to rise up at the back of her throat.
She was on her knees instantly, clutching her middle and retching - blood and acid and spit – from her empty stomach. When she was down, they started kicking her, and she wheezed out her broken pleas of mercy, 'MERCY! PLEASE! MERCY!'. She half-sobbed and half-screamed, her words garbled and her nose gushed red. She could taste the iron of her blood and the salt of her tears on her tongue every time she opened her mouth.
They kept her conscious all throughout the beating.
.
" Hurt her and hurt her until her mind shatters and her body grows numb."
.
She was screaming screaming screaming, writhing and thrashing on the examination table as they injected something into her bloodstream. Her veins burned while her blood boiled , sizzled , like she was being cooked alive by a thousand fire-breathing dragons, setting her alight from the inside.
But no matter how she screamed for them to stop.
They never did.
.
She curled herself into a tight ball, whimpering softly when she heard the sounds of footsteps coming from outside, drawing closer and closer to her prison cell.
Please please please no more no more no more, she thought hysterically and desperately, already crying and rocking herself from side to side as cold dread wrapped around her heart, clogging her throat, choking her until she was gasping for each, sweet breath.
No more no more...someone help me, mom, dad, someone please, get me away from here…mom dad…where are you where are you?
The footsteps halted just outside her cell.
.
When the door opened, she saw an old man with a white beard and half-moon glasses.
His name was Albus Dumbledore and he was there to take her away.
.
"Child, do not be afraid. I have come here to take you out of this place. Those men, who have hurt you, they are gone. You are safe now. Completely safe…"
.
"Who were they?"
"They are called the Emperor's Hounds, feelers and neutralizers, sent to search and kill and torture people like you."
"Why? What am I?" she asked in a small, broken voice, her eyes red and puffy from too much crying that she had done.
Everything had become a blur to her. She could scarcely recall anything that happened after she was removed from the prison cell. She was only told that she was somewhere else now, the Order's Hideout, when she had woken up.
She hugged herself and said, "Why were they hurting me? I didn't do anything bad. I didn't."
"I know, child." Albus Dumbledore said gently,"Fifty years ago, before Grindelwald became the Emperor, you are someone called a muggleborn. A child born from muggles yet with a magic that rivals even that of any pureblood children…."
She looked up from her unruly mat of hair to stare at the insurgent leader.
"Now, however, the Emperor see people like you as an aberration, a threat that he needs to eliminate before any one of you can be use against the Empire. In his perspective, you are a child of chaos, one born with the power to destroy the belief system that he has established."
She listened as the Insurgent Leader told her what she really was, and what power she held that people tried to beat out of her.
"You…You are among the few who has the chance in toppling an entire Empire."
.
"Will you accept this mission?"
"Yes,"
"Then, train hard and grow strong. Once you have learned what you needed to learn, you will enter the Games and you will make War…a War to topple Gods and shatter the heavens. Give them a Battle of Armageddon."
.
PRESENT
.
"NOTCH YOUR ARROWS!" Hermione shouted as she moved behind the row of archers that were standing at the battlements of the Beauxbatons Castle.
The bowmen did as she commanded, taking a broadhead arrow from their quiver and started notching them on the string of their longbow.
She noticed that some had their hands shaking in fear, and fumbling with the notches. Their eyes glued towards the army below them - a thousand strong - encroaching on the Castle that they were sworn to defend.
Even after three months of having them trained - as a part of the War Games - these people were not prepared for what true fighting looked like.
Hermione didn't fault them for their lack of discipline, or their show of emotions, for they weren't bred for war after all.
Unlike her.
Most of these people - ranging from fifteen to sixty, and either male or female - were reaped from the non-magical community; the community that had been oppressed and enslaved since Emperor Grindelwald had taken over the entire world fifty-years ago.
Like a flock of sheep reaped for slaughter, these people were sent to the arena so that the purebloods and the Empire could watch and enjoy their games of blood and glory.
These were Her people, and she had done what she could to make them stronger and gave them hope when there had been none.
Now, she was there to lead them.
"DRAW!" Hermione barked, her voice strong and steady, still moving behind her staunch defenders; a paltry number compared to the enemy forces drawing closer and closer to their gates.
A simultaneous twanging sounds could be heard as the archers drew their bowstring tautly and aimed high. Their faces now set in grim determination, showing Hermione how much they had changed since the games began; and after Harry, Draco and the rest had raised her position as a Battle Commander, and unintentionally handing her what she had been sent to do.
Honed and trained in the arts of warfare; Hermione had been tasked by the insurgent leader - Albus Dumbledore - to start a revolution.
Last year, she had volunteered to complete her mission. However, Hermione hadn't intended to use Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter to fuel the fire, in which the people of the True Empire seemed to gobble up the story of Star Crossed Lovers and Doomed Love Triangle.
It had been the reason all three of them had won the last games. With Harry being the infallible, self-sacrificing-person that he was, had wanted her to win, while Draco, on the other hand, had only wanted to be a Victor and had arranged to make her as his war prize.
It turned out that the Empire had voted all three of them to become victors.
However, their 'tale of love and woe' was put to test once more, when Emperor Grindelwald had sent them to join the Quarter Quell. This time, sending Tom Riddle and his Knights in the Arena.
Hermione knew that Grindelwald had set this Medieval Theme Quarter Quell on purpose, to fool the whole world that every magical and non-magical participant have a chance of surviving the games. But in truth, all non-magical participants didn't stand a chance against Riddle's ruthlessness in Battle.
Hermione, and her tenacious allies, knew what they were up against.
Tom Riddle was the serpent that Grindelwald had unleash to slaughter her, Harry, Draco, and their supporters in the Quarter Quell.
Despite the limiter injected on those who are capable of magic, which would only allow specific spells cast in the arena, they knew that Grindelwald hadn't subjected Tom Riddle and his Knights in similar fashion.
And everything culminated when she had heard the two thunderous cannons that had signaled the fall of Harry's and Draco's strongholds. But since the two had come from prominent Pureblood families, it was yet undetermined whether they had been killed or spared after their defeat.
Hermione suspected that Riddle had done the latter.
"It is vital that you must not grow attach to anyone in the Arena, or your enemy will use them against you." Hermione recalled what Dumbledore had said to her, warning her.
"Every last one of them, every Commander will do it , because they are bred for this – this moment of blood and glory . They are ruthless, as you should be. They will exploit every weakness that they will manage to find. Do not let them … And Tom Riddle, he is someone you must watch out for. If you ever have the chance to face him in the Arena, don't give him any room to move against you. Kill him at once. "
Despite the fact that she had tried not to grow attached (or become attracted) to Draco and Harry, whom she had been using as a puppet commander's throughout the two consecutive games, Hermione couldn't stop the feeling of worry to coil and churn at the pit of her stomach when she had heard the sound of those cannons.
But after considering what she knew about Tom Riddle, she knew Harry and Draco were still alive, unlike the three Battle Commanders that they had allied with, whom she heard from reports that Riddle had swiftly beheaded after laying waste to the castles that Moody, Kingsley, and Minerva had occupied.
There was no doubt in Hermione's mind that Tom Riddle would use Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy as hostages to force her to relinquish Beauxbatons Castle, and her stomach tightened with dread at the inevitability of what she might have to do when it came to that.
No matter how she saw it, Hermione's future prospects were grim, with her being the only Battle Commander whose castle had not fallen yet.
The only left standing against Riddle for winning the Quarter Quell.
From a host of three thousand men, her army were down to a thousand. She had no true allies to speak of, and what remained, would doubtless remain loyal to her. For certain, they would turn their backs against her as soon as Riddle's rearguard army arrived.
Her lobstered gauntlets made a rasping clinked as she clenched her hands into fists, Hermione knew the entire world was watching her, and her people too - a live broadcast to see her fall.
She would not let that happen.
Because this was the moment that she had been waiting for, to make a final stand against the Empire and the God-like man who ruled it: Emperor Grindelwald.
And now, the siege had just begun.
BOOOOM!
BOOOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The castle trembled. She felt the shockwaves in the air after the boulders impacted against the magical barrier that came from the catapults and giants and ogres that Riddle's army had brought.
She saw the spray of dust and the rain of sharp, jagged rocks as the magical barrier pulverized every last sailing projectile that smashed against it.
BOOOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The Giants and the ogres let out an earth-shattering roar as they continued to attack in their attempt to destroy and weaken the Castle's defense. The Catapults, manned by a platoon of inferi, were being used as well to launch huge boulders to batter the barrier.
BOOOOM! BOOM! BOOOOOM!
Raising her hand up, Hermione shouted the final command.
"LOOSE!" Her voice was nearly drowned by the noise.
Yet her people heard and they answered with the simultaneous snapped of their bowstrings.
Soon enough, the sounds of hissing rent the air as the arrows took flight. The deadly missiles descended unto the charging army below them like a whirling, hissing hailstorm.
SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH
Then, the sounds of screams and shouts of pain and panic could be heard below as the arrows found purchased on live targets, mostly Giants and ogres, as well as the inferi. Some stray arrows hit the muggle soldiers and Hermione wished that she had more time to train her bowmen to make their aim accurate.
The heavy-packed earth turned into a sea of red, purple and black from the spray of blood that came out from the living, the dying, and the moving-dead enemy forces.
There was a feeling of guilt as she watched some of the muggles, her people die or got injured, but she remembered Dumbeldore's words to her before she had left the compound – that had been two years ago - but it felt more than a decade.
"Never shed a tear for the people you might have to kill, or let die, to achieve what you have been trained to do."
And so Hermione watched as the people lay dying in the killing fields. Her heart transmuting into hard, cold steel and heavily armored as the one which covered her entire form.
Kill your emotions. Pity the eternal dead, and not the living, Hermione thought, and with resolve, she raised her arm once more and shouted.
"NOTCH! DRAW! LOOSE!"
The sight of countless arrows filled the air yet again, like winged serpents ready to sink their fangs upon their targets.
And the screaming and the bloodshed was never-ending.
"LOOSE AT WILL!" Hermione barked, full of conviction, her blood singing with the battle song, and her eyes were ablaze as she walked to stand and address the rest of her army below the battlements, standing ready behind the castle walls.
"THIS IS NO LONGER A GAME! THIS IS WAR! OUR WAR AGAINST THEM!"
Hermione scanned the faces turned up towards her and shouted:
"IT'S TIME TO RISE UP AND FIGHT! IT'S TIME TO GIVE THEM A TASTE OF ARMAGEDDON!"
It's time for a revolution.
At her words, her people roared, roared in return and the Castle trembled and the heavens quaked and Hermione knew, knew she was close to killing a God.
She had just to wait for him to come charging on top of his Basilisk.
And then…then, she will see him bleed.
The entire world would watch her do it and they would finally see the power what someone like her could do.