There was a sound behind Aurore, and she instantly snapped the book closed and turned. James was standing at the beginning of the aisle, a cheeky grin on his face.
She studied him for a moment before smiling.
James Potter had never been scrawny like his father, and two years of auror training had made him broad-shouldered. He had the beginning of a dark auburn beard along his jaw, and his hair stood roguishly on end, just long enough to hang over his eyes.
“Hey,” he said. He was still holding her suitcase.
A smirk played at the corner of Aurore's mouth, and she quirked an aristocratic eyebrow, her grey eyes staring coolly up at him. “Hey yourself.”
He rested his hand on a shelf over Aurore's head so that he loomed over her slightly. Aurore's eyes glittered.
He stared down at her. “Hiding from Mum already?”
The smirk faded, and Aurore looked down. “No. I was just curious about the new book. I thought I'd look up the section about the High Reeve.”
The grin lurking in James' eyes vanished. “Don't. They're never going to tell it how it was.”
Aurore shrugged. “I know. Somehow — I feel like I need to know what they all say anyway, but it's always the same thing. It quoted that line from Sederis, about the High Reeve being soulless.”
She gave another shrug that was almost convincingly indifferent as she looked up. “What do you think the odds are that Mum's even in the index?
James rested a hand on her wrist. “Don't.”
Aurore didn't listen. She turned, resting the book on the edge of the shelf as she opened it to the rear index, running her finger along until it stopped under a name.
She released a low breath. “Look...”
She flipped rapidly through the book and finally stopping at glossy photo page in the chapter on Harry Potter. There was a moving photograph with a caption beneath it.
Aurore and James both stared at the photograph.
Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley sat squashed together on a couch. They all looked faded and tired.
Harry and Ron's arms were slung around Hermione's shoulders as they turned their heads to stare at the camera and grinned, their eyes happy.
Hermione sat in the centre, so painfully thin her collarbones showed through the green jumper she wore. Her hair was pulled back into two taut braids that were pinned into a thick knot at the base of her head. Her face was set with large, devastated eyes, and she gripped the boys on each side of her.
Just before the photo looped, the corners of her mouth curved up into a sad, forced smile.
Aurore studied it for several minutes in silence before reaching out and gently touching photograph. “I'd never seen a picture of her from the war. Your mum sent a few from school, but there weren't any after her fourth year.”
James didn't say anything, but when Aurore kept staring at the photo without moving, he rested a hesitant hand on her shoulder. She looked up and met his eyes before giving a sad smile that was reminiscent of the girl in the photograph.
She looked down again, and her fingers ran along the words captioning the photograph as though she wanted to rub them away.
“Someday… someday someone should set the record straight,” she said quietly.
James cleared his throat and shifted. “You know Mum offered to. She wanted to tell what happened to them, just up to the fire. Your mum and dad, they don't want her to.”
Aurore nodded slowly, her eyes still glued to photo as it replayed over and over again. “I know they don't. I get it. I do. If I lived through everything they did — I'd just want to leave it all behind. There's no point trying to explain something like that; no one's ever going to even want to understand.”