Okay, now I'm going to get serious. Those who review get a small preview of what is to come. I'll tell you what's going to happen next. Since no one gave me any ideas of which Death Eaters to include, I have put in the ones I see fit to use.

Thank you. Hope you enjoy it.

- xHx

Bellatrix stood on the large rock with the four men the Dark Lord had sent with her, storm-gray eyes locked on the blazing ladder as it fell, crushing the soldiers. Her wand-hand twitched.

"Bella," Rodolphus said, leaning close to his wife, "do we know who caused that?"

"Not yet," she replied, "but we will find out soon enough."

The woman raised her wand and shouted a spell.

Hermione froze as she watched the aquamarine jet of light soar up into the clouds. Harry, Gimli, and Legolas continued fighting around her.

"Legolas!" Gimli shouted. She barely heard him. "Two already!"

"I'm on seventeen!" the Elf shouted by way of reply. But she did not care as she watched the clouds distort, the greenish skull and snake forming from them.

An Uruk roared in her ear, raising its blade and drawing her from her reverie. She blocked the black tool with Gred (the shorter of the two blades) in her left hand, and struck out with Forge, slicing the Uruk's windpipe.

Harry didn't seem to be having the best time with his battle. He was far more inexperienced with this sort of fighting and couldn't get the timing right. She wasn't sure, but she had a really bad feeling.

Hermione then turned to look at Legolas, who was now standing atop the wall in front of a ladder, instantly killing each and every Uruk that tried to pass him.

She began slashing and spinning with her knives, cutting through the throat of any Uruk that dared try to pass her. As her blades sliced through flesh and bone, she felt more alive than ever. She usually hated violence, but this was different. Fighting for such a noble cause was different.

She then leapt up onto the wall, stowing one knife in its sheath on her back and pulling free her wand. Using every spell she knew, she immobilized, levitated, and otherwise incapacitated the Uruk-hai on the field below her, trusting that Harry and the other soldiers would guard her back. Gimli stood near her, at the top of a ladder, no less, and counted off each Uruk that he struck down.

It was then that she noticed that Harry was nowhere to be seen, and a white sparkling light came into her line of view – right below her. She tried to take aim with her wand, tried to immobilize him, but each spell missed.

"Bring him down, Legolas!" Aragorn shouted from her right. She gave up the attempt, running along the wall now, trying to get away. He was heading straight for the drainage grate. "Kill him! Kill him!"

Legolas fired twice before the torch-bearing Uruk leapt into the drainage hole.

And the world seemed to explode.

Stone fragments flew everywhere. Bodies flew through the air. She finally saw Harry again, though he was just a headless corpse. She scrambled away from the body, her eyes wide open.

I am going to need years of therapy to forget that, she thought, easing herself to her feet.

Bellatrix grinned, watching the bodies and chunks of stone flying through the air. This sort of carnage was just her taste.

"Let's go," she said, looking at her four soldiers.

"Shouldn't we wait a little while longer?"

"Either you are at my side and we go now, Rodolphus, or you are a traitor to the Dark Lord," she said.

"You are still my wife, Bella."

"Then your wife is right, Rodolphus," Nott said, coming up on the woman's other side. "It is time for us to join the fray."

Bellatrix, Yaxley, Nott, and Goyle leapt from the huge rock upon which they stood, running through the army without a shred of hesitation. Rodolphus, however, remained where he was for a minute longer than he needed to before following his wife through the Uruk-hai as they crushed toward the gap in the stone wall.

Hermione looked out at the raised stone in the field beyond the broken wall. No one stood there now. The Death Eaters had joined the battle. She pulled her wand from under the Uruk that had fallen from the explosion in the wall beside her and started running down the stairs as the army began to crush through the gap.

"Brace the gate!" she heard Théoden call over the noise.

I should have turned that damned thing to stone like I suggested to Legolas! she thought, frowning.

"Aragorn!"

Gimli's voice drew her attention as he vaulted himself into the gap from the top of the wall. She shook her head slightly and leapt for the stairs just as Gimli fell under the water.

"Sectumsempra! Stupefy! Impedimenta! Immobulus! Locomotor Mortis! Petrificus Totalus!" These spells were her shouts. Each spell struck its mark, spilling an Uruk's ink-like blood, freezing six of them in place, and others to fall flat on their faces.

"Charge!" Aragorn shouted. He, and the other Elves, began running at the Uruk-hai.

"Look what we have here."

Please let me be imagining that voice. Please, Hermione thought before she turned.

Bellatrix stood there, her wand raised. Everyone froze, except for Hermione, Bellatrix, and the four male Death Eaters with her.

"A little Elf-girl who thinks she has a right to a wand. Crucio!"

Hermione leapt out of the path of the red streak of light. It struck an Uruk in the face, which began slowly moving.

"I have more right to it than you do, bitch! Sectumsempra!"

The spell failed to reach its mark, of course.

Great, she thought. Just great. I have to fight the most notorious bitch among the ranks of the Death Eaters, Lord Voldemort's favorite lieutenant, and her husband, and three other idiots? And I have to do it alone?

Just then, the Time Isolation Charm ended. Aragorn and the Elves clashed with the Uruk-hai, while the one struck by the Torture Curse screamed a piteous shriek of pain.

"Hísiven!"

She heard Legolas's scream over the sound of the battle as she and the five Death Eaters engaged in a battle that filled the night with a multihued glow. She willed him to fight with the others, to stay back, but she knew it wasn't likely to happen.

"Incarcerous!" she finally screamed. Instead of the rope she had expected, a glittering white cage erupted from the ground around Rodolphus Lestrange as his wand fell to the ground beyond the barrier.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Hermione dodged the spell, sent her way by Yaxley, by a hair's breadth, and as he was distracted, a green-fletched arrow seemed to burst from his chest. Hermione spun.

"Legolas!"

Bellatrix laughed.

Hermione whipped back to face the woman.

The crooked wand was raised.

Hermione sprinted, knife-blade flashing

"Avada Ke –"

Bellatrix never finished the spell, instead emitting an ear-splitting, shrill, wild howl of pain as Hermione's knife sliced through her wrist. Her wand-hand thumped to the ground and her wrist began spouting a vicious fountain of blood.

"Not him, you bitch," Hermione said, raising the knife again. This time, she ran by Bellatrix so quickly she blurred.

The woman's hand felt the base of her neck, just before the blood loss from her wrist and the wound through her neck ended her life in Middle-earth.

Sorry for the cliffhanger, I just needed to use it just this once. Of course, some of you do deserve it. Maybe I'm just a mega-nerd, but I really would've liked the help with the Death Eaters.

Does anyone think I need to up the rating for using the word "bitch" three times?

This was planned from the beginning to give Hermione the satisfaction of doing something Molly will do later on. Legolas killing Yaxley was more spur-of-the-moment, but was also for my own reasons. I'm not going to explain it, either.

Thank you for reading. We're almost to the end of part 1 of the saga. I do plan to write more.

- xHx