Hermione ducked down as the winged beast that the Muggles were calling the Wrath of God flew overhead, screeching like a banshee, blazing a path through foliage, homes, steel bunkers. It didn't matter. Everything in it's path was destroyed. The fact that even the Muggles knew about this beast meant the worst breach of the Statute of Secrecy in the history of the Statute of Secrecy. She had been roughing it for months in the Danger Zone, where wizards and Muggles alike managed to herd the furious animal. For that was what it was, now. The animal smashed the few remaining structures with its wings, arms, legs, anything really. She looked at a shard of glass left unscathed by her hiding area, seeing the hideous scars the beast had given her on her face. It had cut her face apart, spitting venom into the cuts, ensuring permanent scarring. Four sharp talons had cut four scars into both sides of her face, leaving her with a face that seemed to be perpetually crying. How fitting, she thought. While the rest of the world had moved on, she had been stuck in the brokenness of her life. Her birth family, its foundation cracked to its very core. Her foster family, the most accepting of her different-ness, turning her down because she didn't conform. And her broken heart, its big size still unable to find some way to forgive the cheating bastard she had once proudly called her husband. And she cried, droplets flowing through the rivulets on her face as the Veela continued to rampage, blast, smite and wither.

Perhaps the two were not as different as she liked to believe.

*end of flashback*