Hermione sat in bed counting her daughter's fingers, looking at the tiny pink fingernails and tracing her fingers along the squashed profile. The baby had been weighed, checked all over with diagnostic spells, and then Topsy had swaddled her expertly. The matted brown hair was beginning to dry and stand in little tufts about her head.

"I think she's going to end up with my hair, poor thing. Although maybe she'll go platinum at six months," Hermione said. She glanced up, smiling, and found that Draco was standing near the wall, looking as though he were on the verge of apparating out of the room.

Hermione stilled and stared at him in confusion. He'd been right beside her through the labour to the moment she'd been handed the baby. She wasn't sure when he'd backed away.

Ginny and Topsy both slipped unobtrusively out of the room.

Hermione vaguely registered the sound of the door sliding shut as she studied Draco. He'd turned white, and his expression was more devastated than anything else. His fingers kept twitching.

"Draco... come see her."

He swallowed. "Granger—"

"She's your daughter."

His hands twitched, and she could see the muscles in his jaw clench.

"I know." His teeth flashed as he spoke through them. "I remember it happening."

The smile on Hermione's face faded away, and she flinched, holding the baby closer. It was like being slapped or plunged into ice water.

The happiness evaporated as though it had been an illusion. A dream she'd hidden herself inside.

She swallowed and looked down at the baby in her arms. The silence in the room was so heavy, she felt as though she were being crushed under it.

There were certain wounds that never fully faded. That likely never would.

"I think I should go," Draco finally said.

"Come here," she said in a flat voice, looking up at him again.

He looked despairing as he stared at her and so pale it was as though his heart had been carved out of his chest and he was bleeding to death in front of her. He wasn't making any move to get closer.

"Draco, come here," she said again.

He hesitated a moment before he moved forward slowly. She slipped her left arm free and took his hand, pulling him closer until he sat down on the edge of the bed beside her.

Hermione drew a deep breath as she tried to determine what to do. She'd thought he'd gotten used to the idea of the baby, that they'd mostly managed to reconcile what had happened before her memories returned.

He hadn't wanted to rape her. He would never have done so if there'd been any other way to save her. He'd never expected her to forgive him for it.

Maybe he still didn't.

She squeezed his hand tighter. He seemed unwilling to have any kind of physical proximity to Hermione or his daughter.

Her mouth was dry. "You—you promised to care about her. If you—if you—" her jaw started trembling, "If you were going to leave after she was born—you should have told me. This was a new beginning. All three of us. Remember? We left it all behind—all of it—so we could be together. You haven't even looked at her."

She shifted the baby to show her face better, but Draco stiffened and looked away. It was like being cut through, the rejection was physically painful.

"Look," her voice was fierce. "You have to look at her."

Draco reluctantly glanced down.

"She's just a baby. She's not going to hurt you, and you aren't going to hurt her. Just look."

Draco's head jerked sharply up and he gave a short, ragged laugh as he tried to pull his hand free. Hermione refused to let go. His expression was strained, as though he wanted to be anywhere, anywhere else on earth but where he was.

"Granger—" he said in a voice so tight it was shaking, "the only thing I do is kill things."

Hermione stared at him and then gripped his hand more tightly.

"No," she said forcefully. "That's a lie. You saved me. You saved Ginny and James. You could have been a healer. You can be a good father, I know it. It—it might not ever be natural for either of us, but we'll both try our best. You—"

"Hermione—" he released a sharp breath as though he'd been kicked. His voice was raw, and he still wasn't looking at her.

"Granger..." he tried again to pull his hand away. "Granger, I've—I've killed children before. The last—infant I touched, I used the Killing Curse on after I executed its mother."

Hermione froze, staring up at his face.

At some point she had known that he'd likely killed children, but she'd dissociated from the knowledge. Ignored it.

Wizarding folk and Muggles. Friends and strangers. Men and women... and children.

She'd known it all, but she'd also forgotten it.

Then she remembered Stroud's matter-of-fact tone when she'd offered to relieve Draco of an unwanted female child: "The ones with good potential will be raised to contribute to the program's next phase, and the others will be useful lab subjects. There's still so little understood about early magical development..."

She swallowed, trying to find her voice. "You didn't have a choice. You didn't. You didn't have any choice." She looked down at their daughter. "We're starting over now. She's going to grow up away from the war, and we—we're going to leave all that behind. We're going to take care of her and keep her safe. Both of us. We're both going to take care of her."

Hermione turned towards Draco so that the baby lay in her arms between them. Their daughter's silver eyes peered up at them. Her hair had dried into a halo of brown curls around her head. Her face was pink and still looked slightly squashed. Both of her hands had escaped swaddling and were up near her face. She was aggressively sucking on the knuckles of her right hand.

She was the loveliest thing Hermione had ever seen.

"Look at her, Draco. She's ours. She's all ours. You're not going to hurt her."

He stared down at his daughter for several seconds.

When he moved, she could tell that he'd stopped breathing. His fingers spasmed as he started to reach out. He hesitated and then just barely brushed the baby's palm as though he expected his touch to poison or break her. The tiny hand reflexively closed around his finger, gripping it.

Draco sat frozen.

Hermione watched him and recognised the expression in his eyes as he looked down at the little person who was clinging tenaciously to him.

Possessive and adoring.

Aurore Rose Malfoy was, according to Ginny, the easiest baby ever born. In appearance she was an almost perfect replica of Hermione, except for her astonishingly bright silver eyes and Draco's mouth.

She slept beautifully and rarely cried. She would lie for hours in her overly-indulgent father's arms, snoozing on his chest while he watched Hermione work in the lab. Aurore would gaze owlishly at pictures in herbology encyclopedias and sit very seriously while she teethed on her father's prosthetic fingers.

She was a quiet, solemn baby who matched her parents' seriousness, but her eyes had fire in them.

Hermione would carry her around in a sling, tucked up against her chest, where she could wrap her arms tightly and protectively around Aurore's tiny body whenever she felt nervous because the forest was too quiet or sky too wide.

Once Aurore could safely sit up, she would spend half the day sitting on Draco's shoulders, riding about with him while he checked the wards near the house.

Draco talked to Aurore more than he talked to anyone, even Hermione.

He would monologue to her about anything, about the trees, and the furniture, all the shops where he'd bought books for Hermione, about what the weather might be, and what all the colours and hues of the analytic spells meant. Aurore would listen to him intently and fret when he got distracted or fell silent for too long.

Despite Hermione's philosophical opposition to co-sleeping, Aurore slept in the middle of the bed between Draco and Hermione. It was not because Aurore needed her parents in order to sleep, but because they needed her. Hermione regularly fell asleep on the floor next to Aurore's cot, holding her hand. Draco would get up several dozen times at night to reassure himself that Aurore was still breathing.

Aurore barely touched the ground for the first year of her life. When Hermione or Draco put her down, Topsy would instantly appear and bustle away with her, or Ginny would sweep her off to play with James.

Aurore would sit with Hermione, stuffing quill feathers into her mouth and discovering what kinds of sounds she could make if she struck Hermione's collection of cauldrons with wooden stir rods.

When she learned to walk, she would trail after people like a little shadow, watching Ginny in the kitchen and gardens, Hermione in her lab, and Draco on his daily route testing the wards. She only needed to be told a rule once, and she would follow it perfectly.

She would have been almost angelic, if not for the influence of James Potter.

From James, Aurore learned race around the house on a toy broomstick at such breakneck speed that Draco would turn white; how to climb the hills and trees and scrape her knees and tear her clothes, and make soups and mudpies in the creek. She also learned how to wrestle, to Draco's eternal chagrin.

Hermione often woke in the night to find a tiny, serious face gazing intently at her, so close that their noses were nearly touching. It would have been almost terrifying if it had not been a regular occurrence since Aurore had been moved into her own bed.

"Mummy, can I cuddle you?"

Aurore always asked Hermione because the only rule Draco managed to enforce was that Aurore was not allowed to sleep with them any more.

"Don't wake your father," Hermione whispered, scooting back against Draco's chest in order to make more room.

Aurore clambered into the bed, curling up tightly in Hermione's arms, her hands resting on Hermione's neck. She was asleep again in seconds.

Hermione nuzzled their noses together and closed her eyes.

"There are rules, Granger," Draco muttered into her hair.

Hermione ducked her head forward. "I thought that was my line," she said. "Besides, I didn't want to wake you."

"I was awake the moment the door opened." Draco's tone was disgruntled. "As long as she knows you're going to say yes, she's going to keep coming every night."

Hermione hugged Aurore more tightly. "She won't want to cuddle forever."

Draco shifted and slid a hand along Hermione's hip. "You've been saying that for over a year now."

Hermione buried her nose in Aurore's hair. It smelled like moss and tree bark. "Well, it's been true the whole time. She'll grow out of it someday. I'll never know which is the last time she'll ask."

Draco sighed. His hand slid possessively around Hermione's waist, holding her as tightly as she was holding Aurore.

Life on the island was idyllic, like something from a fairytale. Gradually, it lasted long enough that Hermione began to tentatively trust it. The only disruption to their hidden world was the regular arrival of the news, which Draco, Hermione, and Ginny would read in the evening when James and Aurore were in bed.

Hermione's panic attacks slowly became a thing of the past.

When Aurore was weaned, Draco and Hermione glamoured their appearances and very cautiously left the island in order to take Hermione to a mind-healer to find out what had happened to her brain.

According to the mind-healer, there was so much anomalous magical activity in Hermione's mind it was difficult to determine everything that had occurred. The memory structure was so precariously maintained there was little to be done. The healer strongly advised a low-stress environment and as little magical interference in her brain as possible for the rest of her life. There were a few mild potions she could take for her anxiety, but there were too many conflicting sources of Magic permanently present for there to be any easy solutions. The damage had been exacerbated by her ongoing use of Dark Magic prior to her injury.

Draco was quiet for a long time during their return trip.

"The Heart of Isis generally works by proximity, doesn't it?" he finally asked.

Hermione was staring out the window of the train, and she closed her eyes, cringing. This was a conversation she had hoped to never have with him, hoping it was detail he'd miss.

After a minute she nodded slowly. "Yes. For minor amounts of Dark Magic temporary proximity is sufficient."

"And for larger quantities? Say—repeatedly casting spells to analyse and deconstruct Dark Magic And even casting the curses themselves in order to determine a method of reversal, how much Dark Magic would that be, in your expert opinion?" His voice was deceptively casual.

Hermione leaned away, crossing her feet as she kept staring out the window. "It would depend."

There was a heavy pause, and Hermione looked down, adjusting the hem of her shirt so that it would lay flat. She could feel Draco's gaze boring into her.

She cleared her throat. "It could accumulate quickly if an individual was required to do it frequently because there were so many new curses that required analysis and they didn't have the time or resources to perform regular purification rituals."

She could see Draco nod from the corner of her eye.

"Where did you keep the Heart of Isis before you used it on me?"

Her throat tightened. "Under my bed sometimes, but—usually I had it on a chain around my neck. It was—" she swallowed, "it was hidden inside a protective amulet that I used to wear."

"What happened to the amulet?"

"Well," she twitched her shoulder, her voice dismissive, "I had to break it, in order to access the heart. So I threw the pieces away afterwards."

Draco was silent for several minutes.

"I wish you'd told me," he finally said, his voice muted.

Hermione's mouth pressed into a wistful smile. "Neither of us were much good at asking for help. I don't think either of us made many choices with the expectation we'd survive the war long enough to regret them."

Hermione turned to look at him. He was staring blankly across the train compartment, his gaze faraway. It was the expression he wore when he was replaying the past, trying to place what he could have done differently.

She reached out and took his hand, entwining their fingers. "If I could change the past, I'd save you every time."

His expression didn't brighten or change. She rested against his shoulder and closed her eyes. "Let's love each other forever, Draco."

She felt him kiss the top of her head.

"Alright."

Hermione shattered a flagon of potion when a piercing scream tore through the house, followed by another.

The entire war rushed over her like a flood at the blood-curdling sound. She snatched up her wand and a nearby knife and raced through the house, nearly colliding with Draco and Ginny as they all burst into the room, wands drawn, and found Aurore with James pinned beneath her as she walloped him over the head with hardbound book while screaming with incandescent rage.

Hermione's knees nearly gave out with shock and relief as she put the knife down on a shelf and stumbled across the room. Her chest was spasming as she struggled to breathe.

Aurore whacked James across the head one final time as Hermione dragged her off and carried her into a corner while Ginny picked up a howling James and hugged him.

"What. Happened?" Draco's voice was deadly.

"He ripped it!" Aurore was shrieking. Her face was white with rage. "He ripped my new book!"

Hermione and Draco froze and stared at one another, eyes wide with disbelief. Draco was as pale as Aurore, and his fingers were spasming around his wand.

"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.

Some trials and convictions happened rapidly. The Death Eater regime had detailed records documenting their atrocities. According to The New York Seer "following the death of Antonin Dolohov in the Sussex Lab Explosion, Death Eater Severus Snape had a heavy influence on the records and structure within the Death Eater regime. The cause of the explosion was never officially confirmed, and most of the lab's records were destroyed. According to Snape, the accident, which killed hundreds of Europe's most prized minds, could have been prevented with more cohesive oversight. In the aftermath, prisons and laboratories were required to keep detailed records at an external location, with meticulous details and the signatures of anyone involved, creating a crystal clear paper-trail listing anyone involved and making it undeniable who was responsible in every branch. Snape was assassinated in a coup d'etat in Romania in Summer 2005 and never realised that his exacting requirements post-war built air-tight legal cases against hundreds of his colleagues and fellow Death Eaters."

Other aspects of the regime were messier and more horrifying, and as they emerged, the political spinning began.

The International Confederation couldn't deny knowledge of the Repopulation Program, but they claimed complete ignorance about the circumstances. The Supreme Mugwump gave a speech insisting that the International Confederation had been told that participation as a surrogate was voluntary, and that if they'd known prisoners were being used as lab rats, raped, and forcibly impregnated, they would have intervened years sooner.

Healer Stroud had fled Europe and disappeared long before the Repopulation Program trials began.

Hermione had to take anxiety potions in order to read about everything without hyperventilating. She'd known it had been horrific, but reading the testimonies in the trials that began was so devastating she felt as though she might break under the guilt. All the surviving surrogates were brought in to testify. Hannah Abbott was a shadow, cowering at the witness stand and hiding the left side of her face when asked questions about the compulsions and what had been done to her.

Due to the low virility of most Death Eaters, many surrogates had been dosed heavily with fertility potions, resulting in multiple births. Parvati Patil was brought to court heavily pregnant and had two children, barely walking, clinging to her robes.

When the surrogates conceived foetuses that showed low magic potential, the pregnancies were aborted and then attempts immediately resumed with more damaging fertility potions in attempts to "control" the results. Many of the surrogates had been rendered infertile with severe internal damage. Those that remained fertile were given six weeks to recover postpartum before being returned to the program for another baby. Angelina Johnson had an empty, tattered swaddling blanket that she held in her arms and refused to let go of.

To Hermione's outrage, the International Confederation was conflicted over what should be done. There were efforts being made to restructure the Ministry of Magic into something more democratic, which would leave less room for someone like Voldemort to slip in behind the scenes and begin controlling it, but despite their horror over the trial testimonies, the British Wizarding society was keenly attached to their pureblooded "aristocracy."

Voldemort hadn't even been a pureblood, said one editorial. It would be a travesty to see Britain's ancient families pay the price. The important thing was to settle things in court, make necessary reparations, and move on.

Hermione found her mouth curling in a snarl, and she put the paper down to consciously force herself to breathe.

The children and pregnancies from the repopulation program were all related to some of Britain's oldest families, most of whom now had parents serving multiple life-long prison sentences. Who should raise the children? What should be done with the surrogates? The editorials opined about it endlessly.

Some of the women wanted nothing to do with the children they'd been forced to bear, some wanted abortions, while others were ferociously protective of their pregnancies and refused to let their children out of their arms. After nearly three years of living with compulsions, many of the surrogates had internalised them so deeply they fluctuated between compulsive subservience and vicious rebelliousness.

The courts began moving in favour of the Wizarding families, which were very keen to see their bloodlines maintained and their heirs raised suitably. Their lawyers argued that the surrogates were deeply unstable; it would be in the best interest of everyone to remove the children, provide some monetary compensation to the surrogates, and let everyone "move on".

"I'm going to go back," Ginny said abruptly after reading the most recent newspaper about the Repopulation Program trials. "I've been thinking about it for a few months now, and I think I have to."

Hermione and Draco were silent.

Ginny looked down at the paper in her hands, her knuckles white. "They're trying to erase it all. Trials, and money, and taking away the kids and giving them to old families with the exact same ideology that started the war. They act like once everything's been ruled on, everything will be all better. They'll raze and bury it all and paint themselves as Britain's saviors, and let everything that happened and everyone that died just disappear. They don't care about the survivors. They're not even talking about the people who died. It's like they're trying to deal with everything as fast as they can so they can just pretend it never happened and that they're not collaborators."

Ginny released an angry breath and looked up at Hermione. "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to go kill Voldemort. He doesn't deserve to die on his own in some castle. After that bastard is dead, I'm going to make sure that no one ever forgets all the people who died fighting." She swallowed, her face was grey. "So I need you to take care of James for me so I can go back."

Hermione felt herself grow cold.

"And—" Ginny hesitated and inhale unsteadily, "I need you both to help me get ready. That bomb you made for Hogwarts, I need to know how to make it. I need to practice dueling. It's been years since I fought. I'm going–I'm going to try to go after James' 5th birthday." Ginny's eyes were beginning to swim with tears. "That way I have some time to say goodbye, in case–in case I don't come back."

"Ginny..."

"I have to do this," Ginny said sharply. "I always tell James about how his dad and all my family were heroes who always fought to protect people. I can't keep looking into eyes just like Harry's, saying that, and doing nothing but living on this island for the rest of my life. James can't live on this island for the rest of his life. He has to go to school at Hogwarts and see the world his dad died to protect–" Ginny's voice cut off, and she wiped her eyes. "I haven't done my part yet. This is my part. I've been thinking about it ever since the Liberation Front reached Britain, but I kept telling myself to let International Confederation handle it. But they're doing it wrong. I can't sit and read about it anymore."

Hermione reached across the table, trying to grasp her hand. "Ginny. Ginny, if you do this, you could die. Don't—don't leave James an orphan."

Ginny stared across the table at Hermione. "I don't think I can keep living with myself if I don't," she said in a flat voice. Her face twisted. "You feel guilty for being here, and you sold yourself to try to win the war. You were imprisoned in a hole somewhere in Hogwarts while I was here gardening; you were raped and nearly died more times than I probably know about while I was teaching myself to make meat pies; and you feel guilty that you're here, even though a mind-healer said going back would probably kill you." Ginny looked down and swallowed. "Staying because of James is just an excuse for me, I know he'll be safe with you."

Hermione nodded.

Hermione reluctantly compiled all her research on bomb-making. She'd had time to perfect it. She'd refined the analysis and technique as a mental puzzle. She hadn't planned to ever share it, or use it again.

Draco taught Ginny to duel. He was more unpleasant training her than he'd been training Hermione, and he was much more exacting. Hermione hadn't realised how much time and consideration Draco had invested in strategizing and determining the best way to kill Voldemort. Hermione watched them train and realised with horror that if his psychosomatic tremors didn't still manifested severely under stress, he probably would have gone back and tried to kill Voldemort after Hermione created his second prosthetic.

Hermione taught Ginny all the basic techniques involved in designing a bomb. Draco provided Hermione with as much information as he could recall about how the enchantments on the castle functioned.

Ginny looked over it all and then up at Hermione. "You should put your name on this. It's going to be obvious that I didn't come up with it. Even if you want people to think you died, you should get credit for inventing it."

Hermione gave a strained smile and looked down. "I don't want to, Ginny. I don't want anyone to start looking into me. If they ask, tell them it was Order information you took when you escaped and you don't know who developed it."

For James' birthday, Ginny went on a trip to the mainland with Draco and James. They returned with a long-legged puppy named Padfoot.

"I have to go on a trip, but you have to stay here and help Uncle Draco to keep the island safe," Ginny told James. "Padfoot will help you be brave like a Gryffindor, won't he?"

James nodded seriously.

Ginny's eyes were shining with tears. "I'm going to write to you—every day. The elves will bring big bundles of letters from me, and Aunt Hermione will read them all to you, and maybe she'll help you write some letters back to me. You have to listen to Aunt Hermione and Uncle Draco, alright? And take good care of Aurore—she's your best friend. You two have to stick together. Right? That's what best friends do."

Ginny left in November of 2008, leaving Hermione and Draco with two children to raise.

Ginny's absence had a deeply sobering effect on James. Despite the efforts to conceal the war's shadow from James and Aurore, the children had an undeniable sense of awareness about the precarious and anomalous world they lived in.

After Ginny left, James grew more serious. He would follow Draco around the house when Draco checked the wards. Aurore became the mischievous one.

Draco added an additional room to their wing of the house so that James wouldn't be alone in another part of the house.

Hermione tucked James in first night after Ginny's departure, with Padfoot in bed beside him. "Draco and I are just down the hall."

James was sitting in bed, his arms wrapped tightly around Padfoot. "I'm a Gryffindor like Mum and Dad, so I'm brave," James said in a quivering voice.

There was a stabbing pain through Hermione's heart. She wrapped her arms around James, kissing the top of his head through his wild red hair.

"I was a Gryffindor too, you know," she said in a thick voice. "We Gryffindors need lots of hugs to be so brave, so we'll have to give each other all the Gryffindor hugs until your mum comes back. If you need any extras, I'm just down the hall."

Hermione woke in the middle of the night when Aurore failed to appear asking to cuddle.

Draco sat up when Hermione did. They looked in Aurore's room and found it empty. They slid open the door to James' room and found both children curled up with Padfoot in between them.

Draco stared with narrowed eyes for several moments before going over and taking Aurore back to her room.

The next morning, Aurore was asleep in James' room once again.

Lord Voldemort died in January 2009, a week after Aurore's third birthday.

According to the papers, his castle was breached by an elite team of MACUSA aurors accompanied by Ginny Weasley, the last surviving member of the Order of the Phoenix. They used a new type of advanced magic to break through the wards. The castle was then painstakingly deconstructed in order to dig Voldemort out of his hiding place and bring his decaying body into the light of day.

Most of the aurors were killed in the process, and Ginny nearly died. The auror leading the attack ordered that everyone fall back, but Ginny refused. She went in and cast her first and last Killing Curse.

The newspapers around the world featured a picture of Ginevra Weasley emerging from the rubble of a castle, her face filthy and streaked with blood. The brutal scar on her face was the first thing the photo clearly made out. She tossed her head back, her expression a mixture of exhaustion and cold triumph as she stepped into view, dragging Voldemort's corpse behind her.

There was no denying Ginny's heroism, despite the pointed questions about where she'd hidden during the last several years. Ginny was tight-lipped; she'd been confined due to sickness and a Wizarding family had hidden her. She had returned when she realised that the Liberation Front did not intend to kill Voldemort. She did not want to be treated like a hero; she only wanted her family and friends remembered.

The reconstruction efforts slowly shifted from the staunch lines about "moving on" to memorialising the fallen: the Resistance, the Order members, the surrogates. Ginny Weasley was unmoving in her solidarity with the surrogates. She didn't care about how ancient the Wizarding families or their traditions were. Pureblood ideals from old Wizarding families who couldn't be bothered to speak up against the atrocities committed in front of them had allowed the war. They didn't deserve to raise another generation with the same ideology that had resulted in the Wizarding War.

The courts tentatively decided to grant custody to mothers who wanted it. The titles and estates of the old families were stripped from the fathers, and the surrogates were granted control of the estates until their children came of age. The surrogates who did not want custody of the children were given "compensation", and the children placed into fosterage or an orphanage set up specifically to raise them to eventually take up their family's seat.

There had been talk of razing Hogwarts and building a new magical school, but Ginny refused to hear of it. It had been the first home of Harry Potter and the birthplace of Dumbledore's Army. Hogwarts would be rebuilt; it would have classes that taught about what had happened so that the atrocities of the Wizarding War would never happen again and never be forgotten.

When there were whispers about the curse on Hogwarts' DADA position, Ginny announced her intention to become the professor.

On the island, life adapted to Ginny's absence. James and Aurore grew intensely attached to each other to the point that Draco and Hermione often cast worried glances at each other when they observed it.

"She's not going to handle it," Hermione said while she watched Aurore and James wading at the beach. Padfoot was racing up and down the shore, barking madly at the seagulls. "She's so possessive. I don't know if it'll be better or worse to begin preparing her for it."

Draco nodded slowly. His hand was gripping Hermione's, but his eyes were intently watching Aurore as she went bolting down the beach after James, dragging a long piece of kelp behind her.

Ginny returned before James' sixth birthday. The reunion was joyful. She had brought back old pictures that had been recovered, photos of Harry, Ron, and Hermione at school.

James was overjoyed to see his mother, but Ginny was not there to stay. She was going to take James back to Britain. They were going to live in the rebuilt Hogsmeade village and help with reconstruction before the Hogwarts School was reopened the following year.

"Come back with me, Hermione," Ginny said while Draco was away checking the wards. "You should come back. Everything I'm saying and doing are all your ideas. I'm just repeating them. You'd be better at this than me. All the ways you used to want to change the wizarding world—you could do most of it if you come back. People should know you're the reason it was even possible to kill Voldemort."

Hermione's chest tightened, but she forced herself to give a small laugh. "I think you and Draco had something to do with it too. How exactly would that work? Would I bring Aurore with me and have her there while I try to clear Draco's name, or just leave them both behind?"

Ginny's expression grew strained, and she looked away. "You can't clear his name. I know you think he's a tragic hero, but that's not how anyone else will ever see him, even if you explain why he did what he did. I've worked with the aurors and lawyers. I've seen the records. Hermione, do you know how many people he's killed? The lists are so long—"

"I know," Hermione cut her off.

Ginny crossed her arms tightly. "He's like Voldemort was when we were kids. People whisper when they say High Reeve. No one even says Malfoy if they can help it. His signature is all over the trial records. It's not like Voldemort signed anything. The way the regime's records come across, you'd think he was the one actually in power post-war. Everything that happened, he was at least informed about."

Hermione's stomach twisted but her jaw grew tense. "It's hard to destabilise a regime without being informed," she said in a dry voice.

Ginny gave a resigned sigh and looked away again.

Hermione looked at her from the corner of her eye. "I'm not going to leave him, Ginny. There's no version of me surviving the war without Draco. Believing in the other person is the only reason either of us survived. I'm too tired to try to rebuild the wizarding world based on a lie about how I managed to live through it."

Ginny stared at Hermione, and her lips twitched as though she were debating something.

"Hermione—" She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Hermione, I know I said I wouldn't say anything else, but I have to say all this at least once before I go and leave you here." Her throat dipped as she swallowed. Her scar had reddened and stood out starkly the way it always did when she was upset. "You're all the family I have left besides James. You're more important to me than just about anyone else in the world. I owe you my life and I love you, and Harry and Ron loved you; so I have to say this once. I know you love Draco. I just—I don't think you realise how inhumanly cold he is to anyone who isn't you and Aurore. The rest of the world could burn, and he'd barely care. It's not like it was some simple spell he used to kill all those people. You have to mean the Killing Curse—"

"I know what he's like, Ginny." Hermione cut her off. "It's the reason you and I are alive."

Frustration flashed across Ginny's face, and she started to open her mouth again. Hermione stared at her.

"What did you think about—when you used the Killing Curse on Voldemort?" Hermione asked.

Ginny's jaw snapped shut, and she stiffened as she stared at Hermione, eyes wide. Then she pressed her lips tightly together until her expression twisted and grew anguished.

"Oh god. It was Harry," she finally said, her voice wracked with grief, knuckles turning white as she clenched her hands into shaking fists. "I was thinking about everything he did to Harry."

Hermione nodded, unsurprised.

She looked down at the onyx ring on her hand for several seconds before she spoke. "Love isn't always as pretty or pure as people like to think. There's a darkness in it sometimes. Draco and I go hand-in-hand. I made him who he is. I knew what his runes meant when I saved him. If he's a monster, then I'm his creator. What did you think was the source of all his rage?"

When Aurore realised Ginny was going to take James away, she was initially uncomprehending and then, as they prepared to leave, hysterical. "He's mine! He's mine! He's my best friend! You can't take him away!"

She didn't want to be comforted by Draco or Hermione. She clung to James and refused to let go. James was painfully conflicted about leaving, although he didn't let go of Ginny's hand for a moment.

"She can come with us," he said, "I'll take care of her."

"No. No. Aurore has to stay with me and her father until she's older," Hermione said as she tried to pull Aurore off James.

"I want to go too!" Aurore said as Hermione pried her fingers off of James' robes. "I want to live in Britain too. Why can't we go too?"

"I'm sorry, Aurore, we can't."

"Why?" Aurore collapsed onto the ground and tried to crawl back to James before Hermione could pick her up.

Hermione pulled her up off the floor and held her tightly. "It's not safe for us to go there. That's why we live on this island instead of in the city with the shops, remember? Mum would get headaches there, and the healers told Mum that she can't go places that give her headaches."

"But James is my best friend. We stick together. Best friends are supposed to," Aurore sobbed into Hermione's shoulder.

Draco stood by, looking completely at a loss; his fingers were spasming.

James let go of Ginny's hand and went over to Aurore.

"Rory, you have to stay with your mum and dad. It's not safe at Britain."

"I can go. I'm a Gryffindor too," Aurore said in a broken voice.

Draco winced.

"Yeah," James said slowly, and his expression grew pained. "But you can't come because you have to take care of Padfoot. It's not safe there for a puppy. He doesn't come when we tell him too, and he barks too much."

Aurore's head popped up from Hermione's shoulder. "Really?" she said in a trembling voice.

"Yes." James nodded seriously. "It's not safe for a puppy. You need to take care of him. Uncle Draco doesn't like him, and Aunt Miney doesn't go outside very much. He needs walks every day, so you have to do it." James was gripping Padfoot's leash tightly. "He's still my dog though."

Aurore nodded slowly, and James gave her Padfoot's leash.

After Ginny and James portkeyed away, Aurore sat on the veranda, hugging Padfoot and crying.

Four years later.

Aurore ran in the lab and clambered onto Hermione's lap, a piece of paper gripped in her fingers.

"Mummy. Mummy look. Father took me to the market, and there was a lady—she had these on strings, and she let me have one." Aurore unfurled her fingers, and there in her palm was clutched a small, crumpled origami crane.

Hermione gave a small gasp, and her heart clenching as she stared at it.

"Oh, Aurore, that's lovely."

"She said if I make a thousand, I get a wish." Aurore stared at the crane with her silver eyes alight, then the light faded as she deflated. "But—wishes are just imaginary."

"What would you wish for?" Hermione asked, even though she was certain she already knew the answer.

Aurore looked up at Hermione hesitantly. "I wish we could go to Britain."

Hermione pressed her lips together into a tight smile. "That would be fun, wouldn't it?"

Aurore nodded and stared wistfully at the crane she was holding.

She'd lost most of her playfulness after James had left. Draco and Hermione had tried to bring back the spark. Draco took her to the mainland to visit playgrounds and markets, Hermione even went with them on occasion. Aurore didn't want to be friends with other children.

There were too many obstacles. In the Muggle world, she was cautioned against making any references to magic. In the magical world, Draco and Hermione had very carefully warned her that she could not tell anyone her parents' names, where they lived, or mention how Draco and Hermione had altered their appearances.

The rules stressed Aurore. As a result, she did not play. She stood quietly at a distance, watching other children play with an expression of longing but declining all invitations to participate, even when Draco and Hermione urged her to. After four years, James remained the only friend she spoke of.

"Mum... can I go when I'm old enough to go to Hogwarts?"

Hermione's stomach twisted, and she blinked through the headache she'd already been trying to ignore. "I thought you were going to go to the school in New Zealand? So that Father and I can visit you and you can come home for the holidays."

"You can't visit me at Hogwarts?"

Hermione's jaw tightened as she thought about the Astronomy Tower with the Weasleys' bodies hanging below Harry's corpse; about the winding corridor she'd been dragged down before she was locked away; of sitting in the Great Hall while being trained as a surrogate.

"I would—I'd probably get headaches if I visited you at Hogwarts. Some—very sad things happened to me there, and I would think about them all if I was there."

Aurore was quiet. "I guess New Zealand has a good school," she said after a minute, picking up the crane and gently smoothing some of the creases.

Hermione could hear the longing in her voice. She reached out and straightened the wings and then arranged the origami bird so it would stand. "Did you know? I folded a thousand cranes once."

Aurore looked over her shoulder. "Did you get your wish?"

Hermione nodded and gave a small smile. "I think so."

"What did you wish?"

"Well—" Hermione's throat tightened, and she reached up and brushed back Aurore's wild curls. "I don't remember exactly how my wish went, but I think I wished for you. I think—I wished for a place to be with the people I loved; where I wouldn't be lonely anymore. There was a while when I was really lonely. And now I always have you and Father. So I got my wish."

Aurore's eyes lit up. "Can you teach me how to make a crane?"

Hermione was still for a moment, her heart catching painfully. "No. I'm sorry, I can't remember how to make them anymore. I tried to learn again, but it always slips away from me."

"Why?"

Hermione pressed her lips together and swallowed. "Well, back when I was pregnant with you, I hurt my head. It got hurt on the inside. It could have been a very, very bad injury. Bad enough that I wouldn't be able to remember lots of things. For a long time, we thought eventually I'd start forgetting more and more things. But—" a smile curved at Hermione's lips. "Even though you weren't even born yet, you used your magic and you wrapped it all around the parts of my brain that were hurt so that I wouldn't forget any more things. But the parts of my brain that are wrapped up in your magic; I can't reach them now. They're locked up tight so they can't break. That means that even if you tell me certain things or I try to learn them, I forget them again."

"My magic fixed you?" Aurore's eyes were wide

Hermione nodded. "Yes. It's called fetomaternal magi-microchimerism. That's what healers call it. It's very, very rare. As long as I'm very careful and don't do things that make me breathe fast or get headaches, the healers think I'll keep remembering most things until you're all grown up and have children of your own."

"Maybe you could have another baby to fix your brain if you start forgetting."

Hermione gave a tight smile. "The healers said no more babies for me. Just you."

Draco appeared at the doorway with his hair still brown and his features softened with spells. Hermione stiffened when she saw him.

"Mum was telling me how my magic fixed her brain," Aurore said.

Draco's silver eyes flickered, and he gave a terse nod.

Hermione dropped a kiss on Aurore's head. "Sweetheart, can you go ask Topsy what's for dinner? You father and I need to talk."

Aurore picked up her paper crane and slipped away. As the footsteps faded in the distance, the smile on Hermione's face vanished.

Draco stared at her and raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong?"

Hermione swallowed, and her throat felt as though there were a stone in it. She reached under a pile of papers and withdrew a Wizarding newspaper.

"War Criminal Found Drowned"

Draco's eyes glittered for a split-second as he read it.

"They found Stroud drowned off the coast of Brazil," Hermione said in a quiet voice. Her fingers twitched against the paper. "She was found in a Muggle morgue. The official cause of death is a heart attack while swimming."

There was a brief silence.

"Pity someone didn't kill her," Draco said coolly as he flicked his prosthetic hand and muttered "finite" in order to pull off the glamours on his hair and features.

"Someone did," Hermione said in a voice that was almost a hiss.

Draco just stared at Hermione blankly.

"Don't. Don't you dare lie to me." Her heart was beginning to pound painfully in her chest.

Draco looked down and gave a low sigh. In a split-second, the sharpness of him re-emerged like a raw blade.

The version of himself that he wore so perfectly on the island whenever Aurore could see him, the softness, the crooked smiles, and quiet monologues. It all vanished as though it was a costume he put on. The perfect, unfailing persona of the father he wanted to be.

Now he was real again. As cold and glittering as razor-edged steel.

Hermione stared up at him, feeling as though there was a chasm inside her. "We said we were done."

"No," he said, folding his arms and quirking an eyebrow. "You said we were done, and I didn't argue with you."

Hermione's jaw trembled, and she looked down. "You could have been caught. If they'd caught you, you would have been killed."

Her head was throbbing, and her sternum hurt as though he'd cracked her in half.

"I'm quite difficult to kill. Considerably harder to kill than a middle-aged healer." His eyes were ice.

"What did you do?" She met his gaze. "Cruciatus until she drowned?"

The corner of his mouth twitched as he glanced away. "Clever as always."

Hermione didn't say anything else. She kept staring at him, waiting for him to look at her.

"She deserved to die," he finally said, staring stonily out of the window. "You had to have known I was going to kill her the moment the reports came that she'd fled. You knew I'd find her."

Hermione tried to swallow. Her shoulders were trembling as she held herself rigidly. "You lied to me. You lied to me. You hid what you were doing. You said you had to visit Canada to deal with a financial transfer. Now—every time you leave, I'm going to wonder what you're really doing, and I'm going to worry that you're never going to come back—" Her voice broke.

Draco's expression rippled, and he reached towards her.

Hermione stood up sharply to avoid his touch, pressing her hand against her sternum. "Is this not enough for you? Is having a life so dissatisfying that revenge is worth all that risk?" Her eyes were burning. "In a few years, we're going to have to tell Aurore. She's going to go to school and hear about the war in her classes, unable to say anything. They're going to talk about you. They're going to tell her all the things you did."

Draco's jaw clenched.

Hermione drew a ragged breath. "It's going to shatter her whole world—even if she hears it from you first. We don't get to have all the things we want in this life, Draco. You were the one who told me that. You said, there was a point when I had to realise I wasn't going to get everything I wanted, and that I had to choose something and let it be enough. I chose you. Always. I always chose you."

Her lungs started spasming so violently it caused a strained whimpering sound in her throat. She pressed her hands over her mouth. Draco flinched visibly and reached for her again.

Hermione glared at him. "If this isn't what you want to choose any longer, you owe it to me to at least tell me first."

"Granger, it wasn't like that," he said, his voice tense as he approached her slowly.

She stepped back. "Really? You just happened to come across her while you were an entire continent away from where you said you'd be? You've been looking for her this whole time, haven't you?"

He nodded reluctantly, but his eyes were still unapologetic. "She deserved to die after what she did to you. I couldn't leave her once I knew where she was hiding."

Hermione's mouth twisted and she looked away. "Then you shouldn't have looked. You should have left it alone." She gave a quiet sob. "The worst part is—I'm so glad she's dead. I'm glad she suffered. I just didn't want it to be you—why is it always you?"

Draco took two rapid steps across the room and caught her by the arm before she could back away.

Hermione wavered for a moment before burying herself in his arms. "I hated her. I hated her so much. I hated her."

"I know," he said, cradling her face and pressing their foreheads together as she fought to breathe. "I know."

She gave a low sob.

"I swear, I'm done now. Please breathe." He held her tightly in his arms. "There won't be anyone else."

Ten years later.

Hermione stood in the Wellington Central Station watching the green flames of a large fireplace die away.

"It's just the two of us now," she said in a wistful voice.

Draco was silent as he stood beside her. His hand slipped around her waist, warm and possessive.

She rested her head against his shoulder. "You realise why she's going, don't you?"

There was a pause before Draco gave a pained sounding sigh. "Yes..."

A smile played at the corner of her mouth. "I suppose it was almost inevitable."

She looked up at Draco, who was still staring at the fireplace; an expression of both bitterness and resignation was on his face. He looked down and met her gaze.

His features were hidden behind glamours, but his eyes were always the same. No matter how long she studied them, there always seemed to be nuances in the way the colour shifted that she had yet to discover. He felt things so intensely but privately. They were alike in that regard.

As he stared down at her, his eyes were molten silver.

The world around them faded away.

Her heartbeat quickened. "What do we do now?"

The corner of his mouth quirked into a smile that had only ever been for her. "Anything you want, for as long as you want to."