Hermione Granger made her sick. Despite the girl's obstinate, bossy intellect, there was an underlying streak of purity so vicious and enduring that a single glance into her eyes sent anger and disgust coursing through Bella's veins. And yet there was a certain allure there, too. Ever since that night in the Department of Mysteries... Bella wanted to break her. She craved it. She needed it. And finally, after an entire year, she could do it.

Waiting had been agonizing. Days flicking past faster than she could account for as she waited for her Lord's go ahead. But she'd been watching all the long year. Watching that smiling, ignorant face. Watching her disgusting Gryffindorish displays. Watching her careful planning and her surmounting fear. But Bella had been planning, too. Just as carefully.

Today. Today it would all begin. And when she was finished, the girl would be nothing.

Bella cackled her glee, a harsh sound that filled the air around her. Her arms flung out of their own accord and she found herself skipping down the halls of the manor, words of nonsense flying musically from her twisted lips. Today.

xXx

Hermione Granger warily entered her childhood home, Harry close at her side. Her footsteps seemed to her so loud as to possibly belong to Grawp. Heavy. Weighted down by fear and uncertainty. She was glad Harry was with her, for all that she'd told him he needn't come. Ron had had to leave with his family long before, but Harry had waited with her, waited two long, hopeless hours.

Her best friends' concern at her parents' absence from the station had warmed the slight chill in her heart, and now the absence of the Dark Mark above her house allowed her the smallest of reliefs, but still she couldn't free herself from the fear. In that moment she felt herself able to understand what the older generation had always spoken of with such conviction; a fear so insurmountable it haunted every shadow; an uncertainty that rose from knowing that something awful had happened in your very own home, something that couldn't possibly have, something you just couldn't believe, couldn't think.

Harry gently shut the door behind them, and the sound felt ominous in the hush of the house. Sensing her fear, he gently took her hand in his and they started through.

Moments later Bella heard the shrill scream from outside where she waited, and she savoured the taste of agony which trembled along her taste buds. She could feel the Chosen One's fury shivering out through the windows, the doors, the cracks in the walls.

The picture painted so bloodily upon her mind was delicious. A little girl, fallen to the floor of a place she once thought safe, ripples of pain pulsing outward from her sobbing form. A boy—her champion, strong and brave but unable to save her from her torture, unable to end the bloodshed—standing tall above her, helpless to answer her call. Bella knew he was taking in what the girl could not. Not yet. Blood that smeared the cream kitchen walls, splattered the yellow curtains. Bodies defiled, mutilated, splayed upon the polished ceramic tiles.

Bella knew what he would guess. Torture. Rape. Endless pain. She laughed softly to herself. The first crack was made. Elation shuddered violently through her body. Soon, the girl would fall. Soon, Hermione Granger would be hers.