As a Harry Potter novice I'm going to fully admit I'm not the least bit versed in what I'm doing, so one must bear with me. I'm reading the books now and just re-watched all the movies with my aunt, and I thought, hey Bellatrix and Hermione, how about that? And I love crazy, vicious characters with a potential for huge development. I don't own any of this stuff, and I'd love helpful reviews if you guys would be so kind as to tell me what I'm doing wrong or right! Thanks mucho for reading and hanging around these parts.

"You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul."-Julie de Lespinasse

As a child she had never rightly learned that, when touched, the stove was hot, and her hands were frailer than the strange, beguiling discs that glowed such a ferocious ember orange.

She had not cared because she would stand there and stare as it heated, her honey brown eyes very large and very round. She'd insistently watch once she was sure her dad or her mum had fled the scene to go about another matter of business for even a few precious moments, and then she would sidle into the kitchen, as quiet as a mouse, and she would wait. The ring would gradually illuminate until it was borderline red, and it was then she felt all too compelled to feel, to see the color with her hands. She wanted to understand.

Each time she went wailing and weeping to her mum or dad, apologizing between bubbly, childish sobs, nursing where her fingers had grazed the heat. It hurt, and it burned, but she thought, by touching it, she could better understand it. She could gather this strange thing known as heat if she found an immunity, a kinship to it.

Hermione Granger had never learned to stop touching the fire, and in spite of its burn, she always allowed the pain to settle before she jerked away. It was the one thing that made the brightest witch of her age a fool.

She could not dismiss pain, agony in the same way a more basic-minded individual could. Hermione hated in great bursts. They were fiery touches of fury that often took her in their throes, but she was not good at grudges, and she was even less talented at hatred unfounded. It was simple to feel pain, to express discomfort, and to revile the source that had caused the terrible sensation. The 'bad' guys wore black and the 'good' guys wore white, and the 'bad' guys made pain, and the 'good' guys made happiness, reasons for celebration. Or, at least, that was the way the world worked to almost every soul who did not seem to be the Gryffindor brunette.

She should have been happy. The girl recognized this. And she had been happy, until it felt like the world was turning on its ear once again.

Hogwarts had become a prison to a large number of criminals, and the Wizarding World cried out for the blood of Voldemort's former Death Eaters, demanding such a plague be wiped for their earth once and for all. Hate begets hate; she thought bitterly, violence begets violence. It was a vicious cycle, a mad dog chasing its own chewed-through tail who whimpered and bled each time it was caught, reeling to snap its frothy jaws and resume the dance again once it was deemed unsatisfactory.

The Ministry needed reinstating. Kingsley Shacklebolt would be next in line for Minister, so that scrap of grand news had surfaced. He was a kind, respectful, just man, tried and true. She could hope he would make right decisions.
And each time she walked into the soon-to-be-rebuilt castle, the stone structures she could very well call her home, she shivered beneath the cold weight of it all. Above her the lives of countless men and women hung in the balance. Perhaps it was naive to try to think the best of everyone, but it seemed unfair to so simply judge a life by its wrong actions, to condemn to death over the ease of poor choices made. She knew she had looked at Harry, looked at her best friend, looked at her cause with an unyielding light, a sure decision that the choices she had made were a righteous path.

Her memory of Bellatrix Lestrange was as constantly unyielding as that unwavering devotion to her cause- well, to what had been her cause. The War was won. She had to remind herself of that often. Her cause was newly evolving.

Bellatrix had believed in Voldemort- in her Dark Lord, as she had been so fond of saying- with a fanaticism that bordered on the admirable in its devotion. It had been a shame such natural talent was wasted on an insane monster of a woman who had tossed it carelessly away to dash headfirst into a race-war without any convictions that seemed her own. If it wasn't Voldemort's cause, it was a psychotic purebred supremacy. And muggle psychology easily enough deduced that was a family view.

But Bellatrix Lestrange had believed in Voldemort, in their War, like six-year-old children believed in Tinkerbell, and Hermione did not rightly know if she could convict such a strong belief with a clear conscience. The Death Eaters wanted her dead because, on their side of the playing field, Harry Potter and every muggle-born Witch and Wizard, every Pureblood who dared to openly coerce with the muggle-borns they saw as filth, were in the wrong.

Tricky, tricky things. It made the question of a life taken a moral one, and she wondered what it would weigh in the palm of her hand, the measure of a mortal life. Nothing was so simple.

She dismissed the ideas above her for the second time that day and continued on to find the Gryffindor common room, and within all the things in sore need of repair. There was only so much magic could do, and sometimes even the mystical needed a little physical labor. It was times like these she thanked goodness for her muggle parents, and the understanding for hard work that had been instilled in her. Magic was a worthy way out of things, a very easy fix, but it wasn't rare for a Witch or a Wizard to find themselves hopelessly hitting the brick wall when it came to the seemingly tedious nature of elbow grease. For Hermione, the muggle way of doing things was a stress relief. It was uncomplicated in a time of far too much complication.

No one had ever told her winning a War would be as controversial as losing it would be miserable.

So she tried to keep her thoughts quiet and occupied with the tasks at hand. The broom as it brushed the floor, the bits of dust and dirt kicked up and aside. And she tried to keep out the brewing anxiety in her chest that sank like a stone. All those ways a man or a woman could be so simply sentenced to an end through another's decision, and who had the rights to such things.

And how Bellatrix Lestrange had died for her cause the same way dear Harry had briefly died for his.