“I was just trying to see! Aurore wasn't letting me see!” James shouted across the room through his tears, while Ginny was trying to check him for bruises. “I told her to share, and she didn't listen!”
Aurore gave another scream of rage. “It was mine!” She turned and flopped into Hermione's arms. “Muuuuum, he ripped my book. My new book! He ripped the page with h-h-horses!”
Hermione hugged her and willed herself to stop shaking from terror.
She hugged Aurore more tightly, burying her face in the tangled curls, while she kept struggling to breathe calmly.
“I know. I know.” She stroked Aurore's head through her thick, curly hair. “But we don't hit people, not with our hands or with a book.”
“He ripped my book!” Aurore's rage transformed into despair, and she burst into tears.
“I JUST WANTED TO SEE IT!” James screamed across the room.
“It was mine!”
“Aurore!” Hermione said, her voice sharpening as her shock wore off, “We do not hit! You are not allowed to hit; you know that rule. What is more important, people or things?”
Aurore's grey eyes widened. She dropped her head down and studied her feet. “People,” she said in a reluctant voice.
“Yes. People.” Hermione forced herself to take a deep breath. “People are always the most important. A book we can fix or replace, but people aren't replaceable. We don't get them back after we lose them. We never hurt them. If something upsets us, we use our words, not our bodies. I am — so, so disappointed right now.”
Aurore's face screwed up, and she tilted back her head and bawled.
Hermione picked up Aurore and hugged her while she crossed the room to check on James.
James' face was buried in Ginny's shoulder.
“Is he alright?”
Ginny nodded. “Not even bruised. I think he's mostly in shock that Aurore was the one who lost her temper.”
Hermione sighed with relief. “I'm in shock.”
Ginny gave a nervous laugh, but her eyes looked as strained as Hermione still felt. “Well, I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one with a naughty child. I was beginning to worry it was my parenting.”
Hermione gave a tight, relieved laugh and shook her head. “I think we're due for a nap and then some serious conversations. Aurore, do you want to say sorry to James for hitting him?”
Aurore peered through her tangled hair. “It was my book,” she said in a quavering voice.
Hermione winced. “Right. We'll have to do that apology a little later. I'm so sorry, James.”
James' face was still buried in Ginny's shoulder, and he didn't respond.
When Aurore was sleeping in her room, Hermione turned and collapsed into Draco's arms.
“I thought someone had found us,” she said, her voice shaking. “When I heard her scream, I thought — I thought she'd been cursed. I thought when I went through the door that I was going to find her dying.”
Draco held her tightly, and his hands still spasming. She felt him nod and he rested his head against hers. She gave a low sob and tried to compose herself. She could hear his heartbeat, racing to match her own.
“I didn't realise how I was still waiting,” she said after they stood in silence for several minutes. “It's all still there. I grabbed a knife. I didn't pause to think, I just grabbed a knife and ran.”
The Liberation Front had reached Britain a few days before James' third birthday, but it took nearly a year before Voldemort's final stronghold was toppled. Thicknesse and most other Ministry officials were arrested, along with all marked Death Eaters. In exchange for more lenient sentencing, several Death Eaters cooperated in removing the manacles from the freed prisoners in Hogwarts and all the surrogates in the Repopulation Program.
Voldemort never even appeared. He hid inside his castle and after dozens of failed attempts to attack it, the Liberation Front left him there. It was kept under heavy guard, and the hope was expressed that he'd just die; his fortress eventually becoming his sarcophagus. Like Grindlewald, the newspapers said repeatedly, as though it put the entire matter to rest.