Hermione forced herself to stop shrieking at the sight of the person who had once tortured her out of her wits.

Bellatrix Lestrange rose out of the cauldron as if suspended in midair. She took her first rattling breaths in the world of the living again, then as she descended to the ground, her eyes opened and she took in everything around her.

She was still the same woman of Hermione's nightmares - tall with heavily-lidded eyes, her black hair in a coil behind her neck, her body swathed in black. Merlin, she looked even more dangerous than before. There was pin-drop silence in the place except for Hermione's own ragged breathing, but the silence was broken as Bellatrix's voice rang out like cold, sharp flint.

"My friends," she said, "I, Bellatrix Lestrange, the right hand of the all-powerful Dark Lord has risen again, and now we shall together rise to avenge his death!"

A high, cold applause broke out, along with maddened cheers and whoops. The sound raised the hair on the back of Hermione's neck.

"Dear Bella," Rodolphus hurried forward, a twisted happiness in his gait. "Dear Bella. You return."

"Yes, my dear," Bellatrix replied, a similar expression on her face, though Hermione could not fathom how much of it was real. "I return. And I cannot thank you enough."

"No," he said. "But you can do one of us a favor, Bella. You see, a servant sacrificed his flesh for you, and it is up to you to help him now."

"Oh, yes, dear Lucius, our slippery friend," Bellatrix turned towards him. Lucius Malfoy was standing up in greeting, but he clutched at his stump of a hand, bandaged awkwardly with a bit of his black robes.

"The Dark Lord thought that there is no greater honor for the servant than to get what Wormtail once got for sacrificing his hand," she said. "And that is what will be granted to you."

She lifted her wand, and a gleaming silver, fluid mass appeared by Lucius' wrist that quickly molded itself into a perfect imitation of a hand, adhered just below the place from where Lucius had cut it off. Lucius stopped whimpering, looked at the contraption, and then flexed his fingers, testing it out.

"Thank you, Bella," he stammered out.

"Not Bella," Bellatrix turned away from him, walked right to the center, and spread her arms wide. "Today I am reborn, and today I give myself a new name. From now on, in honor of the Dark Lord, I will be known as the Dark Commander, forever the right hand of Lord Voldemort, and the person whose sole purpose in this renewed life is to punish those who have done the crime of putting an end to his glorious reign."

There was a stunned silence among the gathered Death Eaters. Then, one by one, they all bent to one knee, their faces downwards, hand over their hearts, as they said in a chorus, "The Dark Commander." Their faces showed variety in expression. Some looked positively reverent, some contemptuous, others downright disgusted.

"Rise, my followers," Bellatrix said. "You have all done well. But before we move ahead towards our goal, we all deserve to have a little fun as a prize, do we not?" She grinned manically as the Death Eaters rose, now all of them smiling maliciously as every eye turned to Hermione.

***

Draco and Harry quickly prepared to leave the dungeons and the basements. Searching every one of them had been exhausting and had taken up a lot of their time without any conclusive results except for the fact that Hermione had, at some point, been in one of the cells. So they quickly looked for any sign they might've left of their ransacking the place, obliterated any trails, and were on the stairs when they heard a massive boom from somewhere in the Manor. Their signal.

"Somebody's in trouble," Harry said. "Sounded like the right wing."

"Come on," Draco said, then started at a run, Harry at his heels. They skidded around the turns and climbed the stairs leading to the right-wing rooms. As soon as they reached the hallway that was lined with highly polished wooden doors in the wall, Draco knew in his bones something did not add up. Why was there no fighting, no noise of battle if there really was a Death Eater lurking in a room? 

Suddenly, three figures emerged from the room at the farthest end of the hallway. Blaise, Theo, and Ginny, all looking very shaken, stumbled towards Draco and Harry. As they drew nearer, Draco saw that Theo was badly burnt. So something's wrong after all.

"What happened? Where's the Death Eater?" Harry asked frantically. 

"There is no Death Eater here," Ginny said miserably. Blaise quickly laid Theo in a sitting position against the cool wall. He was moaning and whimpering in pain.

"Then why the hell did you blow up that room?" Draco asked angrily as he knelt beside Theo.

"I didn't! None of us did, that's the point. I think the room was rigged somehow. We entered the room and were searching around, then Nott stepped on something - I don't even know what - and it triggered an explosion. Zabini was nearby, he's singed a bit too - so am I - but as you can see," Ginny looked concernedly at Theo, "he took the worst of it."

At that moment, Ron and Pansy came up running from behind. "What happened? We heard something go off - is there someone here?"

"Nobody's here, Ron," Harry said bitterly. "The room they entered was rigged to create an explosion. Now we've lost one of our fighters and given away our location as well."

"Lost one of our - " Pansy said softly, then cried out when she saw Theo. "Oh my - Merlin, what the hell!" 

Theo's wand hand and one leg was burnt black, blood and pus oozing out of them. His face was mercifully spared, but a bit of his hair had burnt off. The damned room was still in flames, but they had subsided quite a bit, leaving behind thick gray smoke that mingled with the smell of charred flesh, suffocating Draco.

"What can we do?" Draco muttered desperately. "There's got to be something - I can think of nothing - absolutely nothing -" Hermione was good at this sort of thinking, not him. But he had to do something. He found his mind numbing with the sight of his best friend crying silently with a charred body, the smell and the taste of the smoke in his brain.

"Damn it Malfoy, you can at least wash it well with cold water or something, to ease the burning," Ginny said. 

"Yes... yes, water," Draco came back to his senses at these words. He conjured up water from his wand directly onto Theo's mutilated flesh. Theo hissed in pain as the cool water came in contact with his scorched skin, then calmed down slightly as the water leached away the heat. After thoroughly washing his arm and leg, he wrapped then up loosely using the Ferula charm. Theo said the pain felt a little better, but Draco could see the truth in his eyes. He was suffering. He needed a Healer, and there nothing else he could do. He needed to go back to Hogwarts.

"I'll take him back," Blaise said. "Just...don't do anything stupid, okay?"

"You're one to lecture us," Pansy said. "Just take care of him. And get out of here quick. There's got to be a fleet of Death Eaters on their way right now. The explosion was obviously a mechanism to alert them for invaders."

Blaise nodded, then gently brought Theo to his feet. Supporting him with his arms, Blaise led him down the hall, then down the stairs and out of sight.

***

Hermione felt the blast before she heard it - the slight vibration in the air, the feeling that something was wrong somewhere. A split second later, a huge explosion sounded from the direction of the Manor.

"They're here!" Bellatrix exclaimed. "Make the preparations for our guests, then set off that blast, quick."

"What guests?" Hermione demanded, as the commanded Death Eaters left at a sprint. "Who's here?"

"I'm surprised you even have to ask, Mudblood," Bellatrix said. "Of course, it's your own kindred. The fools you call friends, they've come for you."

"And how can you say that? From that explosion?" Hermione asked more bravely than she felt. If it really was her friends, they were in grave danger.

Bellatrix cackled. "It was brilliant, really. The entire Manor is rigged with exploding traps that activate on stepping upon them. Easy magic, but very effective. I'd be surprised if that blast didn't kill off one of them." She laughed, a high, unnatural sound.

Hermione's heart sank like a stone. No, no, no. None of her friends would die saving her. They couldn't. How would she live with herself for the rest of her miserable life?

"But we have other things planned for you besides letting you watch your compatriots die in front of you, Mudblood," Bellatrix said. "We're still missing the fun, so let's begin. Crucio!"

This time, the pain was simply unbearable. Maybe it was because her body had been weakened by all that torture before, or it was the new power that Bellatrix now controlled - either way, this time the agony was worse than death. She could barely move owing to her bonds tying her firmly to the tree, but she wanted to thrash around, fall to the ground, do anything to make it stop. The knives were hotter, they dug deeper into her skin, her blood boiled aggressively, her brain felt like it was about to explode - 

And suddenly, it was over. Hermione gasped for air, her body stinging painfully, ashamed to find tears running down her cheeks. This was not the first time she'd been tortured. She should have better courage than to cry in front of her enemies. Her mind numbed with rage. If only she'd be set free, she strangle every one of them with her bare hands.

"Like that, Mudblood?" Bellatrix chuckled. Hermione noticed that the other Death Eaters were watching interestedly, grinning from ear to ear, as one of them moved forward to cut her ropes free. "And the fun's only just begun."