"Ever After"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

When I was younger, I didn't believe in happy endings. Most of the girls I knew did- but most of the girls I knew were nothing like me. Those girls knew that no matter what they did or said, their families would always love them, would always accept them and the choices that they made.

I was always different. My parents had a mold laid out for me that I refused to fit, a mold I couldn't fit. For the longest time a happy ending was the farthest thing from my mind. All I wanted was to be left alone- and even that seemed far too much to ask.

When my Hogwarts letter came I discovered that there might be a way out for me, that there might be a place where I fit. But even that wasn't any guarantee. I was certain they'd never let me go. In the end I think they agreed to it only because it would get rid of me for the better part of each year.

For the first time in my life, then, I was truly happy- surrounded by people who understood most of what I could do and didn't think less of me for it. I was free to study, to learn to use my power. To Hogwarts I was mostly an outsider- strange Penny, always, but at least, at last, I was not crazy Penny, and the word "witch" was not hissed as I walked past like an epithet. Hogwarts looked at me, I think, as something a little bit strange, a bit beyond their norms, and yet, for all my strangeness, somehow a part.

I had known for a long time what I wanted to do with my life, had known from the moment I first learned of them that I wanted to be an Auror. It was more than a desire, really- it was a calling. To be one of those who helped keep safe this world that had taken me in, to fight the darkness that threatened my friends and my classmates and so many people I would never know at all... It was more than what I wanted to do, it was what I needed to do.

One of the greatest Aurors of old was Alastor Moody, and when I met him two years into my apprenticeship as an Auror, he told me it had been the same for him. That it was the same for most of the truly good Aurors. I admired and respected him a great deal, idolized him really, and there was no way I'd ever have counted myself as an Auror of his caliber. He told me I was too modest, and perhaps he's right about that- he would say that he is, of course- but who would ever consider themselves on par with a legend?

Looking back, I'm not sure when it was exactly that I realized that more than looking up to him, more than admiring him, I was falling in love with him. It could have been any of a number of moments; from the time we met, he was the truest friend I ever had. And I know that he was dear to me from that moment.

How could he have been anything else? He looked at me and truly saw me. Such a simple thing, and yet it seemed no one else could do it. Others looked at me and they saw the outsider, the girl who would never quite fit. Alastor looked at me, and he saw a woman who understood him, who saw him and accepted him as he was.

It was all either of us had ever wanted, and yet it had seemed for so long it was the only thing I might never have. I couldn't imagine finding anyone who would love me so much or so deeply. And that of all the men in the world that person would be him, my hero, the one I admired so much, aspired to be like... No, I never would have dared even to dream that Alastor Moody would fall in love with me as I had fallen in love with him, never dared to hope that he would...

Some nights I lie awake just to watch him sleep. I don't want to wake him- I know better than anyone how hard he is working, how much he needs to rest. But I reach out sometimes to touch his face, smooth back his hair. Just to remind myself that he is real, that his presence, his arms around me, are not a dream.

I watch him and I don't think, somehow, for these moments, of the war, of what we have to face. I don't think of how far we still have yet to go, I think only of how far we have come together.

Most people think the war must end, and Voldemort must be defeated, in order for them to reach their happy endings.

I already have mine.