"Summer Bright, Winter Dark"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

What he wanted, more than anything, years ago, was a miracle.

He wanted the healers to work longer and harder, to delve deep into their libraries, turn dusty, old pages until one day it all became clear, until they turned to each other and said, "Ah, yes, here it is, this is the answer we've been looking for."

He wanted to turn back time.

He wanted Frank and Alice to open their eyes and see, wanted them to recognize him, the others of the Order... each other, and their son.

He wanted to see sanity return to them, wanted to see his best friend again, and his dear cousin. He wanted to see Frank's smile, to hear Alice's laughter. He wanted to fight again with them beside him, as they should be.

If the attack had never happened, that night when they had all thought they were safe again, if Bellatrix and her friends had never found them, if they had never tortured the sanity and the joy and the souls from them... If the partner Alastor Moody had believed would always be at his back was still standing there, and if the cousin he had defended since they were children was still insisting with a laugh and a shake of her head that she didn't need his protection....

If he closes his eyes, he can still hear her.

She tells him that she is alright, that she is an Auror and a Moody, and you, dear Alastor, ought to go and sweep some woman off of her feet, and become her knight in shining armor...

Alice was the sister he never had, and he knows she would have been the same to Penelope if they had been able to meet. He pictures finding them at the kitchen table, heads bent together, Penelope's raven dark and Alice's summer bright, conspiratorial whispers breaking off as they note his arrival. He kisses Alice's cheek, Penelope's lips, lingeringly, until she pushes him gently back, laughing, waving him off. He can see the two of them returning to their conversation, spoken in a feminine code he'll never be able to crack. He sees Frank and Neville waiting out back, and as he goes to join them it never occurs to him that this might not happen, that there might be any reason for it not to be this way...

But when he opens his eyes the night is winter dark, the hospital halls cold and pale, icy air brushes at his back like ghosts, and he knows what the healers will tell him, because they have said it hundreds of times before.

I'm very sorry, but there's been no change...

And all he can do is nod, and try to stop looking for the recognition in their eyes he's never going to see. All he can do is tell them, "I wish you could have known her," because they are never going to know anyone, not even their own reflections.

He's stopped looking for miracles now.