Secrets and Masks

25. Suffocated? Or beheaded?

30th April

Rebecca Stewart: decapitated.

Daryl Ivy: ripped in half.

Josh Harper: chest carved open.

Hermione punched her fist through her bedroom wall. She didn't care that her violence destroyed a section of her mural, didn't care that the ageing brick underneath tore her knuckles apart as it bit into the stone.

She didn't care. She just wanted to break something, snap anything within her reach!

Stephanie Cole: decapitated.

She spun around, her Death Eater robes swirled around her as her anger searched for another target. Another prey to sink her teeth into and destroy.

That's all she ever wanted to do when she came out of the hex.

Smash something.

Kill.

Break things.

Kill.

Rip everything apart.

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

Her killer instincts were still heightened, her bloodlust still at the surface, clawing to break free. She felt like a kettle that had been brought to boiling, simmering and ready to burst, but the lid was still screwed on too tight. She had nowhere to go, no room to explode.

Milo Lopez; skull fractured from her knockback jinx.

She was so fucking angry and she had no one to take it out on. She needed something, someone to sink her teeth into and tear apart until this ache was gone.

Peter Eilish: crushed under a tank that Hermione had flipped on top of him.

Her robes felt heavy, saturated with too many other people's blood to count. They were weighing her down, dragging her to the floor. A cruel reminder of what she'd done today.

Marcus Pollard: chest exploded from the inside out.

Or had Hermione sliced his throat open? Turned the end of her wand into chains, wrapped it around his neck and suffocated the poor bastard? Or did she do that to Chloe Gray? Or Kevin Allen? She wasn't sure, didn't really want to linger on it.

She kicked her bedside table and sent a vase full of flowers falling to the floor.

A biting pain shot up her foot, her toe hurt, but it did nothing to soothe the rage. Didn't dull the fires of the festering guilt she felt twisting in her stomach. So she did it again. And again.

This raid had been so much worse than all the other's Hermione had been forced into, and she didn't know if she could survive another.

Why did the Order have to send witches and wizards today?! Why did they have to send people she knew?! People she'd helped save on battlefields?! People she cared about?! What were they trying to do?! What were they trying to accomplish?!

"Hermione, you don't need to do this!" Harriet Stone had screamed, pleading with a fierce intensity in her eyes, just before Hermione had sliced her in half with a flick of her wand.

"Stop this Mione! Stop this and come home with us!" Marcus had growled as he'd deflected one of her relentless attacks. "We know you're in there! This isn't you!"

Hermione stopped, the toe of her boot still wedged into her bedside table.

Had they realised she was under some sort of spell while she was slaughtering them all? Had they seen past her Death Eater robes? Seen past the blood dripping from her gauntlets, and realised she wasn't doing this of her own free will?