I On a clean, crisp night in mid-July, as crickets chirped and toads croaked, Dolores Umbridge set out into the night. She was carrying nothing but her sleek black handbag, and the craving for bittersweet revenge.

She had been thwarted; her dreams shattered, goals leveled to the ground, she was nothing but a lowly, unemployed unknown. She had been well on her way to becoming the next Minister of Magic, and then she would have had the power to make it all come true. /I

It had started for her as a child. Everyday she dreaded going to school, because she was constantly ridiculed. She was short, fat, and cared for nothing but flourishing flowers and knitting. Others saw her as another item to ridicule. As her first few years past, she collected a single, solitary friend who was a small, bespecled girl named Myrtle.

Although Myrtle was only a first year, she had come from nearly the same background as Dolores. Both were muggle-born and shared a love for a sleek, attractive fifth year by the name of Tom Riddle. But both of them were far to fearful of approaching him, for both knew he only associated with a small group of pureblood Slytherins. So, Dolores simply watched from afar. In fact, it became such an obsession for her, that etched his name into the back of her hand using her favorite pen.

As her fourth year at Hogwarts dawned, something terrible happened though.

It was her first true sensation of pain; a pain so unfathomable that it twisted her heart into something wretched and decaying. It was an agony greater than any other before. Her only friend Myrtle was killed.

As her abnormal face loomed in the dying candlelight that night as Myrtle's dead body slowly passed by, she made a solemn promise; she would kill the one who took away her best friend, if it was the last thing she did.