Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

"Dance of Memory"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

She remembers her last dance, the Yule Ball of her seventh year, when it had seemed that no one was with who they wanted to be. Least of all her. She remembers Percy sitting at the judges' and champions' table, wearing that expression she knew meant he was talking about work. Remembers seeing Harry and Hermione rolling their eyes- and wishing she were in a position to do even that much.

He hadn't told her he was coming, and she had turned down each of the few people who had asked her to go with them. The girls she had shared her dorm with until the year she'd been made a prefect had told her she was being silly, but to her it was simple, logical. If she couldn't dance with Percy, then she wouldn't dance.

She hadn't. She'd sat in a corner all night, chin in her hands, watching everyone else dance. Watching them cast longing glances over shoulders or around partners, wishing they were with someone else.

She'd watched Alastor Moody, too- or the man they had all thought was Alastor Moody- and she had dreamed, her hero-worship building. She saw the way the others, the teachers in particular, looked at him, and she wanted that for herself. More than the fear and nervousness of the students, which she could well understand, there was respect.

Gods, how she had wanted that from someone, anyone...and Percy not least of all.

She had watched the Death Eater masquerading as Alastor Moody, the one who had fooled her, fooled them all so well, into thinking he was the Auror of legend, and nurtured her own dreams of becoming an Auror, the dreams people laughed at her for, the dreams no one took seriously. A little too much butterbeer had made her brave, and she'd been close to standing up, asking him to dance with her. Confessing her dreams to the one person she thought might understand...

She's glad now that she didn't do it. She has enough nightmares of that year now as it is, the year she spent blissfully unaware while the man she would come to love, the man who would be everything to her, lay imprisoned, locked behind his own wards... If she had danced with the one who'd done that, if she had spoken to him as if he had been who she thought he was... She could never have forgiven herself. Not for that.

The irony is that Alastor- her Alastor- would forgive her. She knows he would. She can hear his voice, the words he would say. "Never mind it, lass. You've nothing to be sorry for. You couldn't have known." And this would be true. It would be true, and yet she would not be able to let it go. She would be haunted by it. Is haunted enough by the idea that she came so close to it, so close to looking at that monster with kindness, so close to letting him touch her...

She has enough old ghosts. She does not need this one, too, and is glad that she does not have it.

Tomorrow night will be perfect. It will be for her what the Yule Ball was for so many others- a night of magic in every sense of the words; a night of magic and music and wonder. A night when she will be, at long last, with the one she is meant to be with. The Great Hall filled with music and laughter, color and light, and she surrounded by her friends, her family (for that is what so many of them are to her now), and the one who loves her beside her, with her.

Others she knows saved gowns and dress robes from the Yule Ball, and will keep those dresses forever to remember that night by. The dress she'll wear tomorrow night will be the one she'll save, the one she will pull carefully down from its hanger, the one she will slip out of its bag to run her hands over, years from now.

She goes to the wardrobe now, unable to resist the lure. The silk pours over her skin like water, and she loves the feel of it, cool and soft. It moves like water when she turns, smooth and flowing. This is a dress she can dance in.

She remembers the night they practiced, the night he had first said he loved her. She remembers her hand trembling in his, the feel of his arms around her, steadying her, holding her close...

She smiles. Oh yes, she can dance in this dress.