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.

"True Family"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

Sometimes she remembers. She could wish that she didn't, but she does.

The first thing her mother had said to her in six months was, "Oh, Penny- you had such beautiful hair. Why did you cut it?"

Not "Hello, how are you?" Not "It's good to see you," or even "We've missed you." Even if those last two would have been lies, she could have said them. Penny might have believed her- might have believed in the effort, at least, if her mother had made that effort.

She hadn't.

"Because, Mum, I'm going to be an Auror, and I don't fancy fighting with someone if they've got a mess of curls handy to yank on. It's only hair. It grows back." She could have it back any moment she wanted it, of course- there are a ridiculous number of beauty spells, and she knows most of them, legacy of a former roommate who had thought her hopeless and thus left loads of books on the subject lying around. Penny had glanced at them- but only because they were books.

She never wears much makeup, often none at all. And she's never used a single one of the beauty charms, despite her friends' urging. All the others did it, and that had been enough for them. It had seemed quite a silly reason to her, and it still does.

Lately she has considered it, briefly, wanting to be beautiful for Alastor. Yet it's not necessary. She's never looked in a mirror and seen beauty, but when he looks at her, he does see it, and that is enough for her. Deep inside, she knows that he loves her for who she is, not what she looks like. And that, too, is enough.

She doesn't care what she looks like. She cares about doing her job and doing it well, not being so careless that it gets her killed- or worse, so careless that it gets someone else killed.

"Oh, Penny... Are you still on about that... police thing?"

How foolish she had been, trying to explain her career to her mother. But she had an uncle who was a Muggle police officer, and her mother had always seemed alright with that... How quickly she had forgotten that in her mother's eyes, no choice she made was the right one.

"I'm halfway through my apprenticeship, Mum. I'm not about to give it up now."

She wouldn't give it up for Percy, who had claimed to love her. She's not about to do it for the mother she knows truly doesn't.

She'd never give it up even for Alastor. But he wouldn't ask, wouldn't ever ask. He will worry about her, as she worries about him, but he respects her enough that he would never ask her to change who she is. Unlike so many others, he respects her choices and her right to make them- and that respect makes her love him all the more.

She's never been truly respected by anyone she has loved before.

It had been a mistake to come that Christmas. She'd known it, but she'd had to do something. She couldn't endure the horrible silence of Percy's flat, not when she had been so hoping he would come around this year, that they would go back to the noisy closeness of the Burrow... So it had seemed the most natural thing to grab her coat and announce that she was going to see her parents.

She'd even Apparated into the empty park at the end of the block, rather than pop into the living room; a concession to her mother's feelings on magic that she usually didn't make. It hadn't helped much. Her father had seemed glad enough to see her, had asked after her classes and Percy. Even if he didn't know what else to say, he tried.

Even her cousins, bane of her childhood, had tried to set the old enmities aside for Christmas. They still didn't like her very much, and she was never going to like them- but even they had some understanding that it was Christmas, and some things should be let alone on days like this.

So she'd stood there, let her mother criticize her hair and her clothes, and had tried, as she always did, to explain, to justify things she shouldn't have had to. But in the end it was the same problem it had always been- She could not change who and what she was. She could not give up the magic, the wizarding world. How could she? She belonged there.

She certainly had no place here.

They'd ended up fighting, of course. She wouldn't- couldn't- change her nature, and her mother couldn't accept it. This fight never really ended, it simply took holidays.

"Honestly, Mum, it's time you faced facts. I am a witch. I'm always going to be a witch, and I don't see how you have the right to ask me to be anything else. Even if I could, even if I wanted to, why should I bother? Nothing I do pleases you, so how can you expect me to throw my whole life away and just cross my fingers it's enough for you?"

She hadn't seen the blow coming, and that was quite lucky for her mother. It had been a long year and not always a good one, watching the threatening shadow of Voldemort sweep more and more across her world. If she'd seen it coming, she would have reacted not as this woman's daughter, but as an apprentice Auror.

Hexing her mother might have felt damned good, but it would have gotten her into trouble with the Ministry, and made things even worse, if that were possible.

She'd been able to keep from reacting that way- but she couldn't keep the fury from breaking over her. For years she had taken this crap, listened to all of her mother's criticisms, feeling them falling on her like blow upon blow, never able to stand against them. But now... Now it was too much. She is better than this, stronger than this, and she always has been. She is not the sort of woman who will take this from anyone- not anymore.

"Never," she whispered coldly, and it was that cold Ravenclaw fury that even a wise Gryffindor will flinch at, "do that again."

Her mother either hadn't seen the danger, or hadn't understood it. "Don't speak to me in that tone of voice, Penelope-"

"You have no right," Penny said, still in that cold voice. "You have no right!"

And I could have killed you, you sanctimonious bitch. You don't even know that, do you? That they've trained me to do it, that I can. That it's only a matter of time before I have to do it...again and again.

There had been no salvaging things after that, and she'd been too mad to try. She hadn't even taken off her coat, and she'd been glad of it, as it meant she didn't have to stop. She could get out of there that much sooner. And there was no point to walking away, not now- She cast the Apparition spell with a vicious pleasure. "Happy fucking Christmas, Mum. Good seeing you, Da."

And then she'd been gone.

She's missed her father a fair bit- they had always been so close. But a part of her can't understand how he has never defended her to her mother, never stood up for his only daughter, only child. She's past the point where she needs her father's protection, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want it.

If her mother were only... If things were only different, she would be writing her a letter, would probably have written it already. If their relationship were what it should be, she would have taken up her quill and told her mother she'd met someone... that she had fallen in love.

That she had- and she hadn't quite dared even to think this, not wanting to jinx it, but it was true- That she had found someone she could see herself spending the rest of her life with. Someone that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. And she missed the mother she should have had so much when that thought came to her- missed so much the mother who would have been happy, thrilled, overjoyed. The mother who wouldn't have had to ask questions, who would have needed only to see the expression on her daughter's face, the way she looked when she talked about him, the way she looked at him... The mother who would have known, and understood, and been genuinely happy for her.

Her mother? The one she had, not the one she wished for? Her mother would hate the very idea of Alastor Moody. He was a wizard, and that would have been enough to earn her mother's eternal loathing. The rest... that he was an Auror, that he was so much older than her... It almost wouldn't matter.

She wouldn't care, of course, that wizard or not, older man or not, he loved her daughter more than anyone had ever loved her, that he made her happier than she had ever been in her life.

She tells herself she doesn't care, of course- that it doesn't matter if she ever speaks to her mother again. But she would have liked to send that letter, would have liked it if that were something that were possible. And she would have liked to have had her mother throw her arms around her- "Oh, Penny, I'm so happy for you, dear, that's wonderful, and we can't wait to meet him."

But it's never going to be that way, and no amount of wishing will make this anything other than what it is. She can write this letter, but she can't ever send it. And it wouldn't be her mother she was writing to, anyway, only the ideal of what she could and should have been.

She's looking forward to that dinner over winter hols, looking forward to it very much. That she would spend the holidays with him has never really been a question for her. There is no one she would rather be with. But the prospect of dinner with Arthur and Molly Weasley, who of late have seemed so much more like her parents than the ones she has... She knows there she will find the acceptance and the love she's been looking for. The acceptance of true family.

She had thought she had no family anymore, after last Christmas. But she realizes now she was wrong. She has the Weasleys, who care for her (Perhaps in place of the son who may never come back to them? She doesn't know. But however it came about, they do care.) She has Luna, close as a sister now. Draco, almost a brother (and never mind how strange that might sound!)

And she has Alastor. Alastor who knows her, understands her, accepts her as she is. Who loves her.

True family.