Just like the angel that fell,

Banished forever to hell…

This is my doom, my humiliation,

Why should this pain bring me such strange elation?

Everybody going down, going down, going down…

Everybody going down, going down, going down…

Excerpt from 'Going Down' HAIR Broadway musical soundtrack

Flashback, Seventh Year

Hermione's seventh year at Hogwarts had begun innocuously enough. The position of Head Girl had been offered to her as expected, but just as unexpectedly she turned it down, stating her desire to focus solely on her NEWTs that year.

Upon the murder of her parents, her overwhelming grief had swiftly turned into a nearly overpowering hatred of a wizarding world that had welcomed her with opened arms only to treat her with varying degrees of almost imperceptible callousness to outright brutality.

She had openly grieved the loss of her parents, but as the grief turned to rage her mind still retained her calculating logic, which then out of necessity turned to a cunning that would have made a Slytherin green with envy. But a Slytherin could not understand how to manipulate that vaunted cunning to the wanted outcome against a Gryffindor without raising a suspicion – for a Slytherin, no matter how cunning, would never wear their heart on their sleeve for others to see.

A brief trip to Professor McGonagall's office, in which her face of mourning was brought out for the Gryffindor response it would trigger, had resulted in her own private room. A sobbing Hermione had informed her Head of House that with no home to retreat to on holidays, and with the personal possessions she had retrieved from the house before it's sale, required a room of her own for privacy and space reasons.

An equally emotional visit to the DADA teacher, with histrionics on her even more intensely burning desire to fight the Dark Arts, had resulted in an unrestricted pass to the Restricted Section of the Library.

As her overwhelming grief was muted by her anger, only the most astute observer could have noted the changes in Hermione. By all outward appearances she returned to the normal studious Gryffindor, who could be found laughing and conversing with her friends at the dining table in the Great Hall. But her equally expected studiousness had mutated from an overwhelming desire to excel in her NEWTs to voraciously devouring any information that might help her exact a measure of revenge on those that thought her an inferior, and worthy of such treatment as inferior, by her birthright.

For a student who could efficiently locate the appropriate tomes in the library, the knowledge that could be acquired was almost limitless. Books that held spells, incantations, and potions that would never appear in the Hogwarts curriculum. Informational books on the manufacturing of wands, which could be used by an exceptionally intelligent student to actually create one - a wand that would be unknown to the Ministry, and untraceable to the witch or wizard who wielded it.

It was also during this time that Hermione reflected on her muggle heritage. Thanks to Ron she was only too aware of how blatantly ignorant pureblooded wizards were of muggle culture, and of muggle weaponry - an ignorance that could work well in her favor.

She also recognized the fact that the majority of wizards (and witches as well, as Professor McGonagall made only too clear in her fifth year) were disdainful of muggle "pugilism", and that physical strength and agility could only be yet another advantage in her favor.

The Room of Requirement became as constant of a haunt to her as the library. In this room she could conjure muggle weight-lifting equipment, sparring dummies, and muggle weapons to practice with.

Once, after having completed her circular walk with heavy contemplation on muggle weaponry, her eyes drifted to a lightweight crossbow with arrows, and a sudden realization of how lethal an arrow imbued with a slicing spell could be. A wizard would immediately dismiss an arrow as harmless to a simple shielding spell, until that arrow pierced the wizard's shield and the wizard himself.

After that day, Hermione could constantly be found in the Room of Requirement wielding a crossbow, honing her targeting skills. That is she could have been found if someone had thought to look.

Purebloods, she thought contemptuously, were truly the inferiors of the wizarding world. It was the muggleborns that were blessed of a double heritage and the purebloods of a half heritage - not the other way around as the Death Eater's and their silent sympathizers deluded themselves.