AUTHOR'S NOTE & SPOILER WARNING

This story contains a minor spoiler for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. All characters, places, and situations are copyright J. K. Rowling. As I am not J. K. Rowling, I own no rights to any of this.

The Baron had never been a patient man, even when alive. In death he was no different. However, there were some things, he felt, that were worth the high price of patience. The only one that meant anything to him was true love, more specifically the love of the only woman from whom he would have accepted it: Helena Ravenclaw.

She too was mainly unchanged in death, though marginally more intractable. The Baron knew that, as her murderer, his chances with her were less than none. He had, rather vainly, hoped that his subsequent suicide might have helped even the score, if only slightly; but alas, if anything she was colder towards him than ever before. Still, the holiday season was as good a time— better, maybe— to try to make amends.

And so it was that he found himself waiting outside Ravenclaw Tower on the night of the Yule Ball, a wilted bouquet of unidentifiable silvery blooms clutched in his sweating hands. He felt like a schoolboy again, with the obvious difference of his demise. The bronze eagle door knocker that admitted entrance to the tower had already asked him its question. he had been unable to answer it; besides, he knew she would come down sometime. She had never been able to resist a social gathering in which to disperse her wit among her many admirers. The thought still burned strong within him, the sight of her mingling, talking, laughing, flirting with other men. It was her right, of course, but that didn't make it any more bearable to contemplate.

At last he saw a pearlescent figure emerge from the wall not five meters away from where he stood. It moved so swiftly that it took him several seconds to realize it was her; even when he called out to her, she did not even acknowledge that she had heard. Feeling that this was not a particularly good omen for the evening, the Baron nonetheless drifted after her as fast as his gliding pace allowed. Sometimes it was a dreadful pain being dead... no, all the time really, but some times more so than others. This was one of them. Never had he so desired his old opaque, corporeal legs back; true, these no longer hurt after a good run, but then, they refused to run in the first place, didn't they?

He arrived at the entrance hall in due time, flustered but (and this was, admittedly, one of the perks of being dead) without being out of breath. However, somehow in his haste he had managed to leave his corsage behind. Silently lamenting this loss, he glided to the door behind a giggling gaggle of fourth-year Hufflepuffs. They could not have seen him, for if they had, there would have been no giggling. (Which would have been decidedly an improvement.) The Baron staked out a place beside the punch bowl, casting scowls at innocent boys playing at chivalry, getting their dates' punch. After all, they had dates, which was more than could be said of himself. It galled him to watch the puppy love floating about like extremely large and irritating dust motes.

As the evening progressed, and there continued to be no sign of her, he became increasingly bad-tempered until, after he had sent a particularly squeamish Gryffindor running from the Great Hall in terror, the Headmaster drew him aside and requested that he leave. The Baron, despite his strong affiliation with his House, had a modicum of respect for the current headmaster, so (albeit in bad grace) he turned to go. As he did so however, he could have sworn he heard Dumbledore murmur, "I should try the grounds if I were you."

Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the Baron took a shortcut to the entrance hall through several pairs of dancers ignoring their disgruntled gasps at the chill this must have caused. The grounds, he noted, did not look like the grounds at all. He allowed a moment to ponder who had done the decorating; true, it was not as hideous as what that idiot Lockhart had done to the school several years before, but if one did not consider it in relative terms it was rather grotesque. The fairy lights were nice, he had to admit, but he would have preferred to do without the statues of Father Christmas, and the burbling of the fountain merely made him want to hit somebody. It reminded him too much of his death.

True, many things reminded him of his death, but running water held a special meaning for him. The sound of the waterfall roared in his ears, distant but still the only thing he could hear as he stared down at her body, impossibly small in death, blood from the fatal wound still seeping slowly onto the forest floor. Her eyes, tarnished silver Sickles now, stared unblinkingly up at him. He could not bear it; leaning over to close her eyes, he was suddenly paralyzed by the intense desire to die. It was an easy decision to make. At least his experience would make its execution perfect. The dagger, already coated in blood, found its mark. So this, he thought as his eyes glassed over, was what they meant by 'to the hilt.'

A flash of white brought the Baron out of his reverie. Was that her? He was so hopeful that he barged through several hedges before he realized it was only the Fat Friar. Damn the Friar! Aiming some choice curses at the unsuspecting cleric's back, the Baron returned to scanning the grounds. The bushes seemed to be a popular hiding place for snogging couples, he noted with a certain amount of distaste. It was disgusting the way they were all carrying on. Even the halfbreeds were at it, by the fountain no less. Scowling, he floated to the edge of the temporary garden. And then he spotted her hovering near a particularly riotous clump of rose bushes. She looked (or was this only his eternally hopeful imagination?) as though she were waiting for someone.

As he approached, she looked round. Her expression was just as haughty as it had ever been, but he thought he might have seen the momentary glint of a pearly tear in her eyes.

"Good evening," he said, feeling it was probably best at this point to play it safe— although the fact that she hadn't fled already might be a good sign.

"Is it?" she asked, gazing out at the Forbidden Forest, whose trees were reduced to shapeless umbrage by the darkness.

"Well... It's not bad." Damn, he thought. She always had this effect on him. He was usually at least coherent if not witty; But she had a way of making him feel as though he were incredibly stupid. He supposed it was the Ravenclaw blood that did it; her mother had been the exact same way the few times he had glimpsed her.

"That is your opinion. I have my own." She paused, finally turning to face him. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to... to have a talk, that's all." He looked away. "Well, actually, I did want to ask if you'd like to dance."

She seemed to be staring very intently at the space behind him, where he knew the fountain was playing. Her eyes glowed fiercely, but for once their gaze was not hostile. "You do understand that we cannot be together forever?"

He wanted to ask, Why not? After all, where were they going? They were here to stay... but he knew she was right. "It was hard to put into words, but there would always be that horrible fact of their deaths hanging over their heads like a sword of Damocles.

"Of course. I just thought maybe, for one night, we could forget all that," he whispered, reaching out to take her hands. She didn't protest, but let him pull her close as the music floated out from the Great Hall. They swayed to the beat of the waltz, the bright moonlight blurring the edges between them; and as the song trailed off across the grounds, he pulled a colorless violet from behind her ear and pressed it into her hand.