Lethia gasped in ragged breaths, trying to keep herself from breathing so loudly that they would be caught. Surely, the Aurors could hear her pounding heart from miles away. Her hair fell out of its taut bun, though she barely noticed with her panic-drenched mind.

"Sister! SISTER!" Fina bellowed out. Lethia heard the rushing steps on the pavement and nearly jumped over to Chile out of fright.

She saw her sister's face and felt a tinge of relief, if only for a second. "Oh Fina..."

"What do you think you're doing?" Fina demanded.

"I'm scared," whined Lethia. She felt hot tears fall to her cheeks and felt the urge to just collapse onto Fina's feet. She wanted comfort, a hug from her older sister to tell her that everything would be alright in the end, like when they were scared girls with fresh Dark Marks.

"Fear will not save us," she said savagely. "The only thing we can do is stick together, disguise ourselves, and try to—"

"Fina!" Lethia said as she clutched her sister's robes. She fell to the ground and sobbed out her name over and over, as if begging her for sororal warmth. "Oh sister, I killed her! I've never killed before!"

"Get a grip, you pathetic wrench! You did what had to be done."

"No, no," Lethia insisted through her tears. "Not like this."

"There is no preference of how to rid the world of filth." Fina spat.

"No...humans aren't filthy...we're here for a reason, aren't we? All of us?"

"You're right," Fina said with surprising tenderness. She peered down into her younger sister's eyes and saw what they were truly made of: weakness. The decision was already made for her. "We're all here for a reason. Some of us bow to others—" her voice now turned steely, and the grip on Lethia's hand tightened like devil's snare. "—while others push them down."

Serafina violently threw Lethia to the side. Her baby sister's startled gasp gave her no remorse. The days of holding onto each other, fearing both the Dark Lord and each others' lives, were over and done with. They were now grown women who had to help cleanse the world. Obviously, Lethia was much too unprecocious for the world they would soon lead.

With a single glance back, Serafina gazed into her sister's eyes one last time. They were still hopeful, despite Fina's evident lack of remorse. How pathetic.

"Avada Kedavra," cursed Fina. There was now one less weakling for the world to be ashamed of, she believed as the hope and everything else left Lethia's eyes for good. I have done what needed to be done, she thought to herself.


When Scorpius heard stories from the war, he had wondered how people survived after losing their loved ones. It seemed unbearable to have your friends and family taken from you by a war, and yet it also appeared that every veteran went through exactly that. People lost friends, siblings, parents, cousins, they even lost people that they only saw in a passing glance everyday and never gave a second thought about. He imagined the wartime as a ravaging, wild place with no certainties and definitely no hope.

Somehow, people made it out alive. People did survive, despite the desolate atmosphere with death in the air. So surely he could manage to lose someone in this peaceful time without having his sense of everything shattered, right?

He winced from his recollected old thoughts. He had actually believed that losing a loved one in a war was worse than the loss in a time of peace. He realised that there are different types of wars, no matter what the politicians said. He was fighting a very vivid one in his own mind as he watched his mother's casket get covered with soil.

There must be a mutation in the Malfoys, Scorpius thought. Only a blood mutation could cause all of the men to think in the same way, look the same, and be the same. Lucius was the only person Scorpius could imagine who would think of the exact impact of loss a person could cause another. And here he was, doing exactly that during his mother's funeral of all places.

Scorpius glanced at his stone-solemn father. Draco was looking down at the earth, his face betraying not an ounce of emotion. Did Scorpius look like that? He probably did; why are we all the same?

The ceremony moved on into the church with people milling around and offering him their grievances. The day dragged on and on, which only made Scorpius feel more guilt. Shouldn't the funeral pass before his eyes, as he spent the duration of the ceremony grieving over his dead mother?

The pain of his mother's death had been gut-wrenching, though he felt it subsiding as the days passed. Scorpius knew nothing of mourning, and therefore worried that he wasn't doing it correctly. Are the melancholic feelings supposed to fade, or are they supposed to be a constantly throbbing pain throughout the rest of his existence? He could practically hear Al telling him that he thought too much. He chuckled out loud and wondered what was wrong with him.

"What're you laughing at?" Rose was standing behind him, and she spoke in an entirely too kind voice. Shouldn't she have asked with a steely edge to her voice with deep insult buried underneath? Instead, she was just looking up at him and giving him a gentle smile.

Scorpius hadn't seen her since the Quidditch match, and that wasn't exactly a nice memory to hold onto for two weeks. He should've hugged her, perhaps even kissed her, but he found himself asking the worst thing to ever ask Rose Weasley.

"Aren't you angry with me?"

"Honestly, Scorp," she sighed out, "how cold do you think I am?" She grabbed one of his hands and squeezed it comfortingly.

"I—I didn't mean—"

"Oh, relax," she said as she rolled her eyes. "Let's focus on not going mad, shall we?"

He smiled, the upturn of his lips feeling too foreign. "I'd be glad to go mad with you," he hummed. She released an onslaught of giggles at his corniness, which only increased as he turned red from actually thinking over his words. He could see that Rose was desperately trying to conceal her laughter and failing miserably. Once she tried to stop laughing, she realised that it was nearly impossible to stop. Scorpius enveloped her in a tight hug. Patting her upper back, he soothed her with various slurs of "There, there," and "she'll never truly leave us."

Scorpius managed to lead her out of the church through the back entrance. He released her from his tight hug, but only slightly so that he had his hands resting on her upper arms. She was still laughing when he peered down into her eyes.

"Bloody hell, Scorp, I love you."

If possible, both teenagers felt a shock of lightning course through their bodies. Such a phrase, the way she said it, the complete randomness of it all...

"What?" he asked after an achingly long minute. He wanted to slap himself immediately after he said it. He registered the hurt and mortification on her face just in time to save himself.

"Say it again," he demanded. Again he wanted to injure himself—first he questioned what she said when he had in fact heard her, and then he ordered her to repeat it? He began to seriously wonder if he was finally going mad. He was about to apologise when he noticed that Rose didn't look as dejected as before. He figured he was doing something right.

"I love you, Scorp." She said it with no casual playfulness in her voice this time; she was solemn and caring, a side he never thought he'd see play out in her eyes.

For the first time in too long, he kissed her. It was even better without the gaggle of Weasleys staring owl-eyed at them.

"I love you too."


Harry snorted when he saw Scorpius escorting his niece to the back exit of the church. Many people were sadly shaking their heads from Rose's "fit," but he knew better. He knew all of his family well enough to know their types of laughter, and Rose definitely hadn't been sobbing. Based on the snobby mourners surrounding him, it was probably for the best that they believed her to be crying.

He was quite grateful that Scorpius was taking his mother's death well enough. He wasn't quite as thick as Harry was at that age, and he seemed to accept the help his friends and family offered up to him. There was pain there, but as Harry knew all too well, it would slowly fade.

At the moment, Harry was awkwardly shuffling by Ginny's side. He had been in many positions he never thought he'd be in during his life, and a Malfoy's funeral was definitely one of them. In his Hogwarts days he had imagined dancing on Malfoy's grave, but that was a different story.

Ginny was a good friend of Astoria's. Everyone was saddened by the brute act of violence against the wife and mother, though Ginny actually knew her. Living through a war came with the deaths of both people you loved and people you saw passing through the halls without a second glance. It was more like having the wind knocked out of one's body to experience the latter. A complete shock to the mind that anyone could die sent many, even experienced survivors, to the brink of fear and confusion. Harry felt this a myriad of times, but he never entirely forgot the feeling.

It was a new feeling for only half of the couple to be in mourning. Of course Harry was saddened by Astoria's death, as he would be for any innocent person's death. Ginny's mourn was that of a close friend, a fellow mother and wife. They laughed together, gossiped together, consulted their mothering methods together. Harry supported her as best he could, albeit with a timid way of doing so for fear of being seen as insensitive.

"This is too familiar," Ginny said after the funeral as they walked to the car together.

Harry sighed. "I know."

"This...this isn't going to keep going on, is it?" The way she asked scared him so much. The fear in her eyes hadn't aged at all—she could have been that fifteen-year-old girl holding his hand as they cried over Dumbledore's corpse. Except, there was something else added into the fear. Harry took it as a motherly instinct, something she wouldn't have understood all those years ago. The fear she faced as a forty-one year old wasn't for her friends or her boyfriend, but for her children and husband.

"No," he said. "I'll make sure it won't."


His promise echoed in the back of his mind as he gave orders to his Aurors. He often thought of his family while planning routes and maps, though never before were they so conscious in his mind. He, along with every other Auror in the room, knew what this mission meant. Sure, it was a crackdown, but it was more than that. This mission would be the difference between a third Wizarding war and continued peace.

Most of the Aurors, including nerves-of-steel Teddy, were very nervous over the mission. None of them had any experience fighting Death Eaters. They tracked down werewolves, filled out the paperwork for the arrests of various Purebloods who missed the old bigotry, but never before had they encountered a live Death Eater.

"And finally," Harry said upon his closing, "you lot need to keep your nerves in check. A criminal won't drop their wand if yours is shaking."

That awakened the Aurors, and after a few minutes of gathering supplies, they were off.

Looking back, the crackdown of the last original Death Eater was a huge let down. Many suspected a fully-blown battle zone, or perhaps a heart-pounding hunt. In the end, it was only Serafina left. Lucius and Nott were found immediately, since they used the same hiding spot from the two wars. They believed they were safe because the Aurors never found out about the hideout, though they forgot about the sole Death Eater that remained uncaged and untrailed: Draco Malfoy.

Lethia's body was found one week after Lucius and Nott's arrests. She had been dumped underneath the sewer by her killer, whose identity wasn't a tricky puzzle to solve.

And so, the hunt for the last original Death Eater began.


Serafina Lestrange was never looked at as a higher person. She was not graced with the podium made for those of Pure ancestry. True, she was a Lestrange. She and her sister were never desired, however. A trademark of the Lestranges is that they were powerful, wealthy, ruthless, and quite handsome.

Serafina's mother was beautiful, though her features were not as striking or intimidating as the Purebloods' were. She had soft eyes and a kind face, with gently rolling waves that cascaded down her back like a caramel-tinted river. Serafina's predominant memory of her mother was when she was struck from behind by a Death Eater. It wasn't exactly her fall or the way her eyes stilled in her last moments from fear—she remembered that moment vividly for the laugh she had given before she died. She had no idea that her killer was standing right behind her.

Serafina was ten years old when her mother died. At the time, she believed it to be a random act of severe brutality. Once she entered Hogwarts, she realised why her mother had been killed. She was a half-blood who had married a Lestrange man (who it was, neither Serafina nor Lethia knew). Half-bloods had been somewhat acceptable at the time, though her lack of shame for her blood impurity had irked her in-laws. She had said something along the lines of not caring about her blood status. Her husband disappeared the next week with not even a note, leaving her with their two young daughters.

Her mother was caring and loving. When Serafina took Lethia's life, she saw more of their mother in her than at any other previous time. Of course, Lethia always took after their mother in looks. It turned out that they also looked alike while being murdered from behind, in a literal sense or not.

That's what Serafina Lestrange reflected on as she backed into the alleyway, surrounded by Aurors with their wands trained on her. She could have apparated away, but something in her couldn't. A few feet away was where her sister died. Though she never gave consideration for her unbeknownst empathy, she simply couldn't move.

Instead of raising her wand in an attempt to escape, Serafina collapsed to her knees and sobbed. The befuddled Aurors arrested her at the spot and led her off.


A/N: Finally, I finished this chapter. I know, it's horribly unorganized and sketchy and just blah. Sorry if you don't like it, but I had to post something, even if it was the worst chapter ever. Anyhoo, whaddya guys think? ;)