Breaking Hermione

My Fallen Angel

♡ dedicated to my sweet husband

Hermione

I stared through the mirror at my frozen reflection. Deep within the wall of glass I observed the stranger in silence, those dark eyes hollowed, dead from within yet also set as flint. Pure. Clean. Born again. Blood trickling scarlet from the nose. I licked my lips, tasting yet another side effect of the curses. It was a difficult sight to see myself all dolled up playing the part of Tom's young love only to be the sacrificial lamb slaughtered for the greater good of all the wizarding world. Was this my destiny? It took a lot of strength to have been slain by Dark Magic so deeply and still work hard to drag myself around, working meticulously at my features alone in the bathroom, scrubbing every inch of my body clean with pink eden rose soap as if this ritual would ever cleanse me of him. After washing under hot water and applying makeup, I wiped the blood from my powdered face and yet there it remained. My own image. How could I ever dream of running when I could never escape her? I brushed my hair, pinning it up tastefully. Hermione Granger. Undesirable No.1. Target prey. Excommunicated. The wick of the candle had surely burned through both ends by now, as this night was now endless. If I could have hexed my failures away I would have by now. I would have bled out to rid this taint from my veins. It was just another testament to the sinful life I led, so I wasn't surprised just filled with venom. I was like a machine now. Even though I had destroyed myself it was all for a higher cause. I had worked hard to reform myself to become polished, gleaming alone in the dark. I shouldn't fall for anything. Not this far down in this Hell of dark power. There were no outliers, no anomalies in the code of perfection. How was I made only to fall apart? Shaking hands, weak yet so certain in their carnal works. How did Tom exist in these dark realms of understanding and not succumb to this pressurising horror? What power did he have that I had not known? My fallen angel. How could he have led us astray like this?

Yet even the fallen had to create themselves again, and I was over contemplating that I was wrong. I still existed. I had to bear the weight of myself, snowed under by newfound glory and soul damage. It was time to burn myself down, cast off the weakness and do something new. Rearray the shining pieces until I was reaccustomed myself as an identity found at elite level power in its purest form. Consciousness of God, working to train my hands for war until my reach was truly unlimited. The scope of my mind was an assassin armed and arrayed with all the books of ancient Dark Magic I could get my hands on, knowledge weaponising me like a tactical compressor rifle assembled from nothing, firing at select targets, my power ever expanding to acclimatize to the heights of power I aimed for. Both Tom and I were leveling up alongside one another, the way led by the dark grace and the certain hand of pioneers from former times. My days and nights of endless study had paid off. I was powerful now. I had worked hard and I had built up credit. My status was reinstated and now fixed. I used to live in fear, and now my opponents were swept off the grid and desititute, foraging in nameless places as they awaited my next move. Gracefully, I walked in silence as I slaked the hunger of my mind. The game was mine. I was now set high in my new dominion of light and darkness. I worked to use every piece of myself for power and glory. As the students watched me closely, monitoring my mirrored moves deep in the trenches of Tom's mind games, I would only barely consider them. Were their hearts only stone? How could anyone truly know me just based on appearances? How were so many people so captured and provoked only by their own reflection? My hard work had costed me yet also created me. I had earned my stripes. All I could do was watch them in silence and monitor them even more carefully. My enemies who had lied had been ensnared by the narratives they had spun. Trapped by the darkness of their own hearts. Was I only a token to enhance one, like steel to temper steel? Did all I touch turn to power or be destroyed? Not one who assumed me to be lost dared help me, yet all were so quick to consider themselves noble by action and deed. What showed the truth of peoples hearts other than a descent? Who desired my loyalty and love now? Who was proven worthy? No one thought through how painstaking it had been to use my own weakness as the foundation of my strength. My publicized relationship with Tom opened out for the audience of veiled spectators. It just wasn't enough to realise I had orchestrated the entire thing meticulously, written it all out before me with my own mind. The fall before the rise and all the greatness attributed to it was mine for the taking. My claim and reach was across the fields of the mind where I worked to stain myself. Tom had shown me how true destruction could forge greatness and how teaching it could influence the great minds of the generations. A lasting legacy, while the rest would be returned to the dust. Who could truly call themselves good and desire in secret the destruction of another? Any friends I had managed to have were now enemies, surrounding me and psychoanalysing only to mock and scorn what they assumed to be my reality, yet it was still controlled hand selected awareness of myself that I fed directly to their mouths. I was someone to watch out for, because Tom didn't fratunise with the weak. Staring at the small painted doll smiling back at me in the mirror, I saw in her what I kept carefully hidden from the world. My secret identity in darkness. I was using myself as a sacrifice for the dark powers I had come to know, as I knew I was only a vessel to serve. I had no set identity, I was only a formation of powers in full effect.