Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, I'm just playing in it. Everything else, except for my imagination, belongs to the Author.

A petite woman was flung against the cold marble floor, her body cluttered with deep gashes, slashes, and bruises. Her arms and legs looked bended in the wrong angles, broken and fractured, her clothes dirty and torn. Her hair was a frighteningly frizzy mess, darkening blood stains coating the rich strands.

"W-why?" she asked in a miserable whisper, her voice strained and raw from her torment.

The brunette witch wanted to know what she had done to her best friend to turn so violently against her. She did not expect the girl she treasured as a sister to look at her with such intense loathing in her deep brown eyes. They had been friends for the better part of the past ten years, but it clearly had been some wicked lie, an illusion.

This betrayal struck at Hermione's heart, hurting her more than the actual physical abuse the redhead was putting her through.

"Don't be daft, Granger!" the other witch hissed, her voice cutting sharply through her victim like the coldest ice. Hermione shivered, her battered body aching in every muscle. "You stole the only thing I've ever genuinely cared about," she scowled, sending another cutting hex at the older witch, slicing into the soft flesh of her cheek.

"H-Harry is n-not an o-object," Hermione wheezed, feeling a sharp pain in her lungs, groaning with the sting of the hex assaulting her face. Normally, she wouldn't have let someone get the better of her, however, she had refused raising her wand on the pregnant Ginevra Potter, which was why she ended up in this situation in the first place.

Ginevra snorted. "Oh, please. I see the way you two look at each other. I've always seen it, but I refuse to let him leave me for you. You're just an uppity Mudblood whore, and you're not deserving of my Harry, or any other decent wizard, really. I was overjoyed when my dimwitted brother married the Brown bint instead of you," she chuckled darkly.

"I d-don't want H-Harry, Ginny," Hermione quietly said, the light in her eyes rapidly dimming as her life's blood was fading from her body. She didn't understand where this was coming from. She never once considered being romantically involved with Harry.

Harry and her?

That concept was so outrageously ridiculous, that Hermione would have burst into sarcastic laughter if she had any energy left to do so. She loved Harry Potter fiercely, but she regarded him as her silly, annoying, yet completely endearing little brother, whom she had sworn to always protect, and she knew that was how Harry felt about her as well – a sister he was fond of, not a potential love interest.

"Don't lie to me!" Ginevra's eye flashed with anger. "Heck, don't lie to yourself, Mudblood. Lies and deceit do not become you. Misdirection is really not your forte, sweetheart," she mockingly sneered, lifting her leg to swiftly meet Hermione's bruised side with a harsh kick.

"Y-you are," Hermione stammered, taking a very shallow breath that burned through her, "c-crazy," she continued, coughing up some blood, her eyes widening as Ginny advanced on her, pulling at her hair with force.

"Potter! What the fuck are you doing to my wife?" a completely enraged voice dangerously roared.

A/N: This is a short story with tiny mini-chapters. It's dark and full of angst.