The blade slammed in my shoulder, causing me to scream and fall backwards. My body hit the wooden floor of the kitchen harshly, causing pain to seep into my joints and bones. I laid motionless for a moment to regain my composure and my breath. When I was ready, within a minute of being hit, I yanked the dagger out of my shoulder with my free hand. I jumped up feet first, spotted the Death Eater that threw the dagger at me, and aimed straight for his throat. The dagger flew from my hand with precise flick and sailed across the room where it slammed into the attacker's jugular. The Death Eater made a terrible squealing sound as hot red blood poured from his throat. He groped at the dagger for a moment, while he lost his footing and fell to the ground.

He twitched awkwardly on the floor of the kitchen for a few moments before he finally died. I stood over him, staring sadly at the body on the floor. I crossed my arms over my chest and kicked the body gently with the tip of my boot. The Death Eater did not react to my nudge.

"Well," I sighed, brushing my hair over my shoulder. "This is a set back."

I bent over and pulled the knife from the Death Eater's throat. As I stared down at his young facial features; he had to be younger then me in his earlier twenties, with smooth blond hair like liquid gold, pale skin and emerald eyes. His eyes were staring up at me in terrified shock, as if he had not anticipated dying this way. I hadn't anticipated it either. Obviously, I should haven't aimed the dagger at his neck…that was my mistake…

I wiped the bloody blade on my pants to clean it, then I slipped it into the holster on my thigh. I stood up straight and looked around the Death Eater's kitchen. It was a well kept place for a man who followed the Dark Lord. I turned on my heel and moved back towards the counters, where I had fallen after the dagger hit my shoulder, and began to dig through the drawers, hoping to find something that would help me track down the Death Eaters kidnapping victims. As I moved from drawer to drawer, yanking them open and finding nothing but dining and cooking utensils, I tracked my footprints through the small pool of blood that was on the kitchen floor. It was my blood, from the hit on my shoulder, which was aching painfully. I held my shoulder with my good hand as I looked in the last drawer, which was full of spices and cooking ingredients. I slammed the drawer shut viciously and looked back at the dead Death Eater.

Before I could move, to head deeper into the house to find another room to ran-sack, the sound of the front door opening reached my ears. My stomach clenched as I grabbed my wand quickly from my boot and backed out of the kitchen, into the dinning room. I hid just inside the threshold of the dinning room, peaking around the corner with cautious eyes, and waited for whoever had arrive to make themselves seen.

To my surprise, Kingsley Shacklebolt appeared in the kitchen, looking around in distress. He stopped in front of the Death Eater's body and leaned over, touching his neck to feel if he were alive.

"Kingsley!" I said with a mild expression as I stepped forward.

He turned sharply, his blue cloak spiraling around him as he turned to face me, his wand extended in my direction. I raised my hands slowly in surrender. Kingsley took in my bloody appearance and frowned deeply as he glared at me. His dark brown eyes had an edge of anger in them, which I may have deserved.

"Cadence!" he said surprised. He kept his wand on me. "Who was the other Auror in Dumbledore's office the night he left Hogwarts?"

I frowned slightly as I racked my brain for the answer. "Uh…Dawlish, wasn't it?"

Kingsley nodded and dropped his wand to his side. "What the hell are you doing here!?"

"I just wanted to talk to Scotts, there," I motioned to the dead Death Eater.

"And he ended up dead!?" Kingsley shouted in his deep voice. I could see that he was clearly frustrated with me.

"Well, that was accidental," I shrugged. "It was self defense."

"Cadence, you killed a man!"

"He wasn't a man," I replied sharply. "He was a monster! He is the Death Eater responsible for most of the kidnappings in the last two months—"

"You don't work for the Ministry! It's not your concern how many people he's kidnapped! It's not the Order's job to bring Death Eaters in now. How am I supposed to explain this to my superiors?"

"That's not my problem," I said with an angry tone. "He was a bad person. I stopped him from hurting other people, it would be nice if someone thanked me once in awhile."

"It's not your job to kill people!" Kingsley yelled. "I should take you in. I should arrest you for killing someone—"

"What?" Cadence stammered. "You have no evidence I killed him."

Kingsley gave me a sharp look with high eyebrows that said 'really?' I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms tightly over my chest. I made to push past him, but Kingsley grabbed my arm and stopped me from leaving. I looked up at him with a wild glare that would have frightened most men.

"You need to get a hold of yourself," he said sternly. "Killing every Death Eater in sight won't bring them back, Cadence."

I pulled my arm out of his grasp. "I will let you know if I find anything that relates to Scotts," I said soundly. Without another word, I stomped out of the house, heading out onto the quiet street of downtown London, where the Death Eater's flat had been.

It was late on a July evening. The summer heat had taken the city, leaving people desperate for air-conditioning and iced tea. The heat had never seemed to affect me. I walked down the street in my jeans and long cloak over a tank top with no worries about the temperature.

I didn't go home right away. Mostly, because I didn't feel like I had much of a home to go to. Gabriel and I had moved out of Number Twelve when it was discovered that Kreacher had betrayed it to Sirius' cousin Narcissa Malfoy. Everything for the Order had been relocated, not to one place, but multiple. There was no longer an official headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. Meetings were held all across the country, with safe-houses in place to try and hide people from Death Eaters who were slowly taking over and corrupting every form of organization is the wizarding world.

Gabriel had found an old farmhouse for us very close to where the Weasley's lived. There was only a field separating our homes from the other. From the highest window of the Burrow, you could see our farmhouse to the east. Gabriel had spent a month rebuilding the house so that it could accommodate a secret training-basement, an escape tunnel out of the house that lead to the barn on the other side of the property, and a secret fire-place that was connected to the Floo Network. In many ways, it was the house that Gabriel said he would build for me with his own hands, which was a very romantic notion, but I could careless. Personally, I didn't care for the house much. But that had more to do with the fact that Carrigan was gone. Nowhere felt like home without her smiling face and lively attitude.

I walked around London for what seemed like hours, taking in the innocent Muggles as they went about their lives, nearly oblivious to the fact that the world was under attack. Our way of life was threatened, and if the wizarding world didn't stop Voldemort, then the Muggles world would come crashing down around them as well—as it had already began to. Muggles didn't realize, of course, that the bridge collapsing, the random building fires, the train crash, and the countless murders were because of dark magic. They didn't know that Death Eaters were out destroying their world in support of a man who hated them; a man they didn't even know existed.

When dusk had fallen, I realized I should go home. I was tired and still injured. The blood from my shoulder wound had dried, but it still hurt like hell. I needed Gabriel to look at it when I arrived home.

It had taken me all day to find Scotts and corner him at his house. I was hoping that he would be able to reveal some information about Carrigan—where Bellatrix LeStrange and Voldemort had taken her—since he was responsible for nearly ten kidnappings in Voldemort's name, I hoped maybe there was some connection. It was a slim chance to begin with, which is probably why I felt indifferent to killing him.

The farmhouse was well light when I Apparated in front of it. I stood on the gravel path that lead to the porch, looking up at the red and white painted house, with frank discomfort in my stomach. Kingsley had no doubt gone to Gabriel, begging him to get a hold on me, and I was not looking forward to the argument that would ensue when I entered the house. According to the Ministry, I was getting in the way of many of their investigations—according to me, I was doing their job for them because they couldn't catch anything or anyone.

I sucked in a long breath before making my way up the gravel and the steps of the porch. I hesitated at the front door, before grabbing the door knob and entering the house. Inside, all seemed calm. The lights were on in the front sitting room and the stairwell that led to the top floor. From the foyer, I could see that the lights of the kitchen were on in the back of the house. I pulled my cloak off slowly, unable to move my left shoulder very much because of the puncture wound. I groaned as I pulled the sleeve of the cloak down my shoulder and arm. Blood stained the cloak, my skin and the white tank top I was wearing. I'm sure I looked like quite a fright walking down the streets of London bloodied and banged-up.

"Gabriel!" I called as I threw the cloak on the banister of the stairs. I leaned against the wall as I unzipped my boots and flung them on the doormat where other pairs of shoes resided. "Gabriel!"

He emerged from the back of the house, from the kitchen, holding his wand tightly in his hand. He was handsome as ever. The last two months of stress and new war had taken a toll on his physical appearance. His head and face were completely shaved clean, to hide the fact that he was greyer then ever, but there were age wrinkles around his entrancing purple eyes that gave him away. He was still tall, muscular and tattooed beyond all belief. His charming smile, when he smiled, was half-cocked and made me weak in the knees. He aged well…

"Bloody hell, Cadence," he sighed when he took one look at me. He came forward, grabbing my side and ushering me forward. As my body pressed against his side, I felt his hard washboard abs under the white tank and long-sleeve flannel shirt he was wearing.

"It's not as bad as it looks," I insisted as we entered the kitchen, which smelled of grilled chicken and spicy potatoes. My stomach gurgled with hunger, but I ignored it.

Benjamin Snow was standing at the stove, cooking the food that smelled delicious. He turned to look at Gabriel and I as Gabriel pulled a chair from the table out for me. He was a young man who was of age and had taken a position at the Ministry in the Auror program. He had let his brown hair grow out in the last few months, and now it was so long that he had to tie it back in a ponytail. His crystal blue eyes stared at me with an intense, worrying, expression.

"What was our son to be named?"

"Caspian," I replied soundly as Gabriel knelt down in front of me to look at my shoulder more carefully.

"Ben, could you get me a bowl of hot water?"

Ben didn't answer, but moved from the stove to the cabinet to get a bowl out. He filled it with water and as he walked to the table, pointed his wand at it. His wand tip glowed red and then the water began to boil. I frowned as he placed it on the table. Gabriel conjured a clothe and set it in the water.

"Take off your shirt," he ordered.

"I can't move my shoulder," I replied.

Gabriel stood up again and lifted my injured arm carefully, causing me to groan loudly with discomfort. His expression didn't change as I cried out. Gabriel had seen me in many different levels of pain, and this was by far not the worse. He helped me wiggle out of my tank top, then threw it uselessly on the floor.

Benjamin returned to the stove and continued to cook dinner, keeping his back to me. I didn't care what he saw. He probably cared and felt more uncomfortable then I did.

Gabriel returned to his knees in front of me and took the wet clothe from the bowl. He began to wash the dried blood off my skin, and cleaned the wound. I grimaced every time he touched the open stab wound with his hot rag. I avoided eye contact with him; at first he was staring straight at my wound, but once it was cleaned he looked up at me.

"What were you doing?"

"Do you really have to ask?" I said as I looked at him with dark serious eyes. Gabriel frowned and pressed the wet clothe against my wound again, making me cringe.

"For once, you are blocking me," Gabriel responded.

"Funny, I can read you," I said as I leaned forward with an aggressive tone. "Kingsley was here, you spoke to him."

"He wasn't here about you," Gabriel said. "It just came up in the conversation because you're interfering with my investigation—"

"I was not interfering," I interrupted.

"Killing the prime suspect in my investigation is most certainly inferring, Cadence!" Gabriel snapped as he picked his wand up from the table. "Hold, still."

He pressed the tip of his wand against the wound on my shoulder. I cried out and flinched as the magic necessary to repair my broken vessels and skin tore through my injury. I still didn't know what was worse—the pain inflicted from the injury itself, or the pain of repairing and healing the injury. When he was done, Gabriel pulled his wand back and looked at my shoulder.

"It's left a scar," he said as he looked up at me.

I shrugged. "What's another scar?"

I was covered in scars—physically and emotionally—most notably, on my forearm was a long thin white scar where my father had sliced my arm to perform a blood bond that made him stronger; I cauterized the wound myself, which left it badly scarred. On my stomach was a scar, about an inch in length, from where Ondrea Cane, Gabriel's Death Eater ex-girlfriend and partner, had stabbed me while I was pregnant with Carrigan. There was a thin scar on my right shoulder, where she had also stabbed me. Now, I had a scar on my left shoulder to match.

"Look, now I have one that matches," I motioned to the scar on my right shoulder and smiled.

"You're an idiot," Gabriel said standing up and moving away from me. He picked up the bowl of boiling water and took it to the sink, where he washed it out. With a snap of his fingers the clothe soaked in water and my blood disappeared from the kitchen.

I stood up from the chair and walked out of the kitchen without another word. I was surprised that he said nothing else, but also relieved. Maybe he was finally starting to let me be. He had to stop holding me back; I had to find Carrigan anyway I knew how. I wasn't going to stop just because the Ministry was investigating Death Eaters. Carrigan had to come first.

In my room, I leaned back against the bedroom door and took in a slow sigh. My body was still running on adrenaline despite it being hours since I had fought with Scotts. My system seemed to always be running on adrenaline. I didn't sleep often and if I did, I only had nightmares about Carrigan being tortured while I was unable to save her. I spent hours training in the basement that Gabriel had built during the day; I trained on my own and with Benjamin a great deal. I had to be physically fit if I wanted to hunt down Death Eaters and find my daughter. After training I would retreat into my study to go through all of the clues I had found concerning Death Eaters and my father; then in the evenings, I went looking for more clues and people that could lead me to find out where Voldemort would be hiding my daughter and what he wanted with her.

The room around me was dark, which I liked. Gabriel had a tendency of leaving all of the lights on in the house now a days. I wasn't really sure what that was about. I ventured into my dark, well furnished, bedroom and found my way to the closet that was over-flowing with clothing.

After the fire in January that destroyed all my personal belongings, Gabriel and I had nothing left. When we moved out of Number Twelve and took up residency in the farm-house, Gabriel seemed to think that showering me with conjured gifts would bring me back to reality. Perhaps he hoped it would make the pain and fury of loss leave me…but it did nothing. The only thing that would satisfy and cure my depression was revenge…and the return of my daughter.

I was only upstairs for about fifteen minutes, when I heard Gabriel yelling for me downstairs. I ignored his yells and continued to change my clothes. I pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a tank top as if no one was calling for me. I grabbed a see-through black sweater off one of the shelves in the closet and pulled it over my head. Using my fingers as a brush, I stroked my hair, then tousled it out of my face.

My brown curls fell in messy-crazed waves. When I moved out of the closet and in front of the long standing mirror in the corner of the room, I instantly noticed strands of white mixed in with my brunette curls. I frowned as I inspected the white hairs more carefully. They were coming in behind my ears.

Please come downstairs, Gabriel's voice rang in my ears, causing me to jump. He had mentally channeled me with Advanced Legilimency. Scrimgeour is here to see you.

"Shit," I muttered as I closed my eyes tightly. I must have really pissed Kingsley off if he went to the new Minister of Magic, the previous head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and my ex boss.

I frowned again as I looked at my sullen appearance in the mirror. I looked thin, almost sickly, but strong and muscular. I brushed my hair one last time with my hands and then turned to make my way from the room.

Downstairs, Gabriel and Scrimgeour were sitting in the front room off the foyer, waiting for me. Scrimgeour stood up when he saw me descend the staircase. I paused in the foyer and crossed my arms over my chest.

"I'll go get some tea," Gabriel said roughly as he stood up. He looked me over as he passed by me in the foyer. He paused for a moment, leaned in close to me and kissed my forehead as he squeezed my elbow affectionately. He didn't say a word, just stood up straight and moved past me.

I accepted the sentiment but did not respond to it. I watched him as he moved away from me, down the hall towards the kitchen. I uncrossed my arms and moved forward into the sitting room.

"Hello, Cadence," Scrimgeour said very gentle from his seat on the small red couch in the room. He was wearing a black suit with matching cloak over it and a black briefcase sat on the floor next to his feet. I forced a smile at the lion-like man. It had been nearly nine months since I had last seen him, on the day that I was fired from the Ministry for conspiracy against the Minister of Magic.

"Hi," I said softly. "What can I do for you?"

"First, I want to offer you my deepest condolences," he said seriously as I took a seat in a black leather arm chair across from him. "I know that none of this has been easy for you."

I laughed lightly and rubbed my temple. "No," I said mildly. "It hasn't been."

"I promise you we will do everything in our power to find her—"

"Sir," I interrupted. "Please spare me the company line. I worked for the Ministry, I know where cases like Carrigan's fall on your list of priorities. I'm not interested in anything you have to say or offer. I'm only interested in finding my daughter. And I will do anything I have to, to get her back. Not even you will be able to stop me."

"You mistake my intentions, Cadence," Scrimgeour said in his rough tone with a frank smile at me. "I have always admire your spirit and work-ethic. I am not here to stop you from looking for your daughter. Shacklebolt did inform me that you are inferring with many of his cases, but I don't see a problem with how the job gets done, as long as it does." He paused for a moment, in case I had a retort or statement, but I didn't. I was caught off guard with his honesty. "On that note, I would like to offer you a job."

"Excuse me?"

Scrimgeour laughed, which was not something he did often, and shook his head, shaking the main of grey and white hair he had around as well. I inched forward on my chair.

"Let me be clear," I said when he didn't say anything. "You want me to come work for you, when most of the Ministry thinks me off my rocker, violent and intolerable?"

"Fortunately, my opinion of you is really the only one that matters when it comes to selecting Aurors," Scrimgeour said. "Given your background, your past experience at the Ministry and your down-right talent, I think it's completely reasonable for you to be reinstated. I want you to be reinstated. I never wanted you to be fired. You belong at the Ministry, Cadence, helping the department stop Voldemort. We need you."

"I'm sorry, Sir, I'm going to have to decline your offer," I said without thinking it over. I didn't need to think about it. The answer was no. "You said yourself you don't care how the job gets done, just that it does. Well, I can act without sanction right now—"

"Until you interfere too much with a Ministry case, you leave evidence behind and you're caught and tried for murder," Scrimgeour said sharply as he pulled a file out of his briefcase that was leaning against the couch. He opened it and threw it on the coffee table in front of me. "It doesn't matter who you kill, Cadence. As the council sees it, murder is murder unless you're Ministry sanctioned. The fact that you killed a Death Eater means very little to them."

I leaned forward and picked up the folder. It was a stack of six or seven photos. I was surprised that they were pictures of Scotts' kitchen—where I had killed him. The last picture in the stack was of the blood pool on the kitchen floor from where I had fallen when he stabbed me in the shoulder. The blood pool was disrupted by my boot print.

I dropped the folder back on the table and glared up at Scrimgeour. "You're black mailing me?"

"No," he shook his head. "It's just a method of persuasion. Cadence," he said my name sternly as he leaned forward on the couch. "You need to be doing something other then searching for your daughter. You need something to keep you busy—"

"Finding Carrigan keeps me busy."

"But so busy that you're not efficient, productive or even careful anymore," Scrimgeour motioned to the pictures on the table. "You should return to the Ministry. It's the best place for you. It will provide you with the resources necessary to find your daughter."

He stood up as he finished speaking and picked up his briefcase. "I will leave those pictures with you. Do with them as you wish. I expect to hear from you within the week."

I sighed deeply as he left the sitting room and exited the house through the front door. I sat back in the chair and slumped with bad posture. I didn't like his points, but part of me knew he was right. I was becoming reckless. I looked up as Gabriel came back in the room.

"Tea is done," he said. "Scrimgeour left already?"

"Yes," I whispered. Gabriel remained where he was standing in the threshold of the sitting room. "You're right, I've been an idiot."

"What made you realize that?"

I lifted the picture of my boot print up from the table. "I'm becoming reckless as Scrimgeour was so kind to point out."

"I've been telling you that for two months now," Gabriel said soundly as he crossed his arms over his chest. "How did he get through to you so easily?"

I glared at Gabriel fury and stood up from my chair. I left the front room without a word until I passed him. "If you'll excuse me, I need to get some sleep. I have to go to work in the morning," I snapped as I headed up the stairs.