The answer to that question wasn’t easy to find. She had to go further back than simply the moment when she had accidentally killed the Muggle man in the forest and started taking the Draught of Pleasure to dull the pain. Even further than the beginning of her addiction to various substances, an addiction that had made her act recklessly in the first place. Somewhere around the Ministry Christmas Gala many years prior, when Draco had stumbled upon her crying on a staircase and offered her a cigarette and his flask, lay the answer most likely. Right around then, her former self had died, after her initiative to free the house elves had been rejected. The optimism, the belief in a bright future for witches, wizards, and all magical creatures, everything had crashed and burned. 