Thank you to Rueflower7 and yzzilbe for your amazing reviews!

*I don't own Harry Potter*

Seven years after that fateful night with the sorting hat, all of us seventh years were ready to make our mark on the real world, and have problems other than last-minute homework assignments. I remember graduating with Marlene, both of us having achieved high NEWTs, both of us heading for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

In those first two months, things were not easy. You-Know-Who was on the rise, yet all 33 of us were still too naïve to notice much. Then, two months after we left our haven of Hogwarts, disaster struck for the first time.

I remember sitting at my desk at work, going over some briefs with Marlene and our boss, Gideon Prewett. Then, the unexpected face of Tina Quirke burst into the office, gasping, red-faced, with puffy eyes. One of the older men tried to stop her, but she whispered something in his ear, and he let her pass. Marlene and I stood up.

"Tina, what's-" I remember Marlene running up to her, guiding Tina into a chair as Tina got out, in shaky breaths,

"Marlene… Mary, it's Madalina Boot, you know, the Hufflepuff… she's gone… she's dead…"

I remember the words taking some time to process. Madalina couldn't be dead. Even though we were out of Hogwarts, we were really still kids; we still felt invincible. Madalina's death shattered our bubbles of invincibility.

Nothing bad happened at Hogwarts. Ever. Sure, I got cursed once by Mulciber, and had to go to Saint Mungo's, sure, there was prejudice against muggle borns, but at Hogwarts, nobody died. Everyone got their happy ending.

I remember Marlene breaking down into tears. Then, I felt a searing pain in my palm. I looked down to see that, in my shock, I had crushed an ink bottle, and my hand had been cut.

Then I passed out.

But my story isn't the important part here. Madalina's death brought us harshly into the adult world, where pain and grief did exist. Not many people remember her, and when they do, they remember her as "one of the first to die in a war."

But Madalina was never a soldier. The war shaped us all, made us tough. Madalina was still a child, still seventeen.

Madalina was… well, she was the nicest kid you ever knew, with a crazy talent for charms. I think Professor Flitwick always wished she had been in his house. Her laugh was infectious. She was my partner in charms during my first and second years at Hogwarts. She was the only reason I passed Flitwick's class those two years.

In third year, we began to drift apart. In the next five years, her best friends were Gracie Abbot, Nadia Patil, and Amelia Bones. I would love to ask one of them more about her time at Hogwarts, but that will never happen. Not now.

Madalina was sweet on Maxwell Brown. Everyone knew that. They started going out seventh year. Unlike Lily and James, their relationship was very slow. Neither of them planned on getting married any time soon. But I think we all found them adorable.

On the day she died, Madalina blew up a cauldron. She was trying to fix a potion to get rid of her hiccups, but she had never been good at potions. So, Madalina floo'ed in to Diagon Alley, to buy a new cauldron.

At precisely noon that day, there was a huge explosion in the Leakey Cauldron. Then, Death Eaters swarmed in by the hundreds. The survivors of the attack are few, and they say that the Dark Mark was projected into the sky dozens of times. Many people died, including Madalina. One survivor told me that he saw her get hit in the back with the killing curse.

In some ways, it is good that Madalina died. She was a sweet, happy girl, nicer and more optimistic than the rest of us. The war would have crushed her.

What else did I know about Madalina? She had a cat. She was an only child. She was a pureblood. Her family could trace lineage back to Helga Hufflepuff herself. She loved tongue twisters. She scored highest in the grade on every single charms assessment, except for our third year exam, where Lily Evans beat her by four percent. She liked to sing.

Maybe, if Madalina hadn't blown up her cauldron, things could have gone differently. But she did.

I remember gathering at Nadia Patil's house with Nadia, Marlene, Amelia, Gracie, Lily, Alyssa and Alice. As the girls of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, we had been good friends at Hogwarts. Amelia, Gracie and Nadia sobbed, and it fell on me, Lily, Alice, Marlene, and Alyssa to give them hugs and comfort them, while we cried alongside them.

I remember Emmeline Vance showed up, Penelope, Dorcas and Tina in tow. All day, we sat in Nadia's living room, talking, laughing, and crying. The boys showed up eventually, as well. James had followed Lily, and everyone else followed James. Everyone was there, except for the Slytherins. We ended up all crashing at Nadia's house, and when we parted the next morning, saying goodbye, we left as adults.

Madalina's death changed all of us. No longer were we kids playing adults, her loss had turned us into grown-ups.

Now we were 32. James, Sirius, Peter, Remus, Lily, Marlene, Alice, Alyssa, Severus, Avery, Mulciber, Antonin, Leonna, Maxine, Natalie, Tiffany, Benjy, Edgar, Caradoc, Dedalus, Nadia, Amelia, Gracie, Edward, Jordan, Maxwell, Charles, Dorcas, Penelope, Tina, Emmeline, and me; Mary.

There we have it! The next chapter should be up soon. I have a lot of OC's coming up, but I will try to make everything as cannon as possible. Please review! Constructive criticism is welcome!