CHAPTER 1

Truthfully it was just by chance he spotted her that day. There is a limit to once hope and quite frankly after six years that spark dimmed day after day. It started just right after the main trials were done. Much like the first war, the Wizengamot still favors them. They do make up most of the higher seats and you cannot really condemn the hand that feeds you. His family got off on probation, community service for two years and a sizable penalty paid in due gold. It was the type of punishment that made the war a pointless… affair. It was nothing compared to Grindelwald's moment, despite all that darkness and torture, there was still a good amount of citizens who were just bystanders to the war. Outside of Great Britain, the darkness was just like dull ache, there but easily ignored. That's what civil war is to those untouched.

Laughable really, how scared everyone seemed. The war was pointless, nothing much has changed.

Despite the lingering animosity and the all too familiar bigotry, it is as if the spilled blood was just a page off of a children's novel. One created to keep the children at bay, a tale for bed time stories. Just an unsavoury chapter that left a bad taste, a flop as the younger ones call it these days.

There were those that have been scarred the better part of their life, his good friend - the one he considers his brother in all but blood still breaks out in cold sweats from time to time. His haunted face a recurring reminder that the nightmare was once his too. However, his Father made sure he was not as tainted as him and his colleagues. He had freely slept in the safety of his home while his friend hosted a deranged living corpse at his. There are things he can never really share with him, and that was the true horrors of being a Death Eater. He was, after all, just associated to one. Therefore never really condemned by the public.

Never mind that his family has held the same awful beliefs.

It didn't matter if by chance they have funded the prejudiced cause.

Their past now is just an unsavoury gossip among social gatherings. No one could blame them, everyone was ready to close that chapter and start a new life.

So it was a delightful surprise, to say the least, that his Father confessed to him. A twin, his Father said. One that they lost in the French Riviera, when a group of low-time bandits mugged his Mother. He was fussy that day, a bit colicky, and was left to be tended by their elves while his Mother and apparent twin visited the nearby magical town. Low-time bandits, who for the price of a few heirlooms and a pouch of gold found themselves, their entire family, and even their neighbor's cat in a cold death after his Father delivered retribution. His Mother was left for dead on the cobbled streets, and a pram unknowingly vanished. Never to be seen again. But after years of search, finally his Father catch sight of a promising lead. Apparently a child has been adopted, one resembling his Mother so, one with an uncanny resemblance to him . And after years of disappointment, fruitless search and covert investigations, they finally have a name - Hermione Jane. His twin, Theresa Louise Nott, was adopted by two upstanding citizens of a muggle community. Dentists, with a clean record and apparently desperate for a child. In a bland sheet of paper, in harsh identical letters, Doctors Grangers adopted a girl from Saint Elizabeth's Home for Children. Theo was elated, a sister, his other half, finally found and he was just more than ready for a reunion. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Because even before the first of the trials started, her shadow was no where to be seen. Disappeared from the dead of night, not even Draco's sudden forced partnership with the Boy Hero helped them find her. Gone back to the muggle world they said.

The war was just a pointless excuse for bloodshed. A civil war that just ended up in page 3 of Le Cri de la Gargouille, and just a footnote in Wizard's Voice. So a story about a lost Princess was just demoted to the Society Pages. Another missing face, amongst a sea of disappearing people. As if just a classified Ad of 'Have you seen me?', nothing like the bold stories of lost daughters and grieving family in the Prophet and surprisingly even that of Quibbler. It took him four years to finally see her, and all of it is just coincidence. His family's gold never gave them the result he wanted, the outcome his Father wished. It just so happen, on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, he was walking down Diagon Alley, looking for a shop to waste his few hours before dinner with Daphne. Her unruly hair, and sweet face, which he cannot believe he never recognized resembling his own, barreled towards him. Neither a glance was exchanged, she didn't even bother to stop and look at him. She simply pass over him, and the shock of it all freezes him on the spot seizing his breath. As he snaps back to reality he realizes, that she was walking towards one of the new cafe's in the alley. A man, with a shock of red hair engulfs her in a bone crushing hug, which she had no problem returning.

Red, hot anger shot through him. His family has endlessly worked together with Potter to find her, and here she was apparently having tea with Ron Weasley like as if it was just a common occurrence. As if she was not missing for a better part of six years since the war, and her face was not plastered in every poster, newspaper, and tabloids their money could afford. Like as if he was not desperate since his father's confession, to find her, to be with her again, to finally complete the family he always wanted. A sister he never had. And here she was, exchanging old time jokes with Weasley. Patience was never one of his redeeming quality. So despite the jubilant realization that he finally saw her, Theo marched towards her and yanked him away from her companion. He didn't recognize the complete indignant shock of Hermione, or the angered face of Ron Weasley. He didn't even realize there were two more with them at their table. His hazel crazed eyes just stared to an identical furious one, and all Theo could say was. "What the fuck!"