A dance, her mother said, was just the thing to cheer the young folks up a bit, and it wasn't right for a girl to be forever mourning. So she was going to the dance at the school reunion; she had no right to attend, being a year below the class it was held for, but then Harry, who had asked her as his date, had no right to be there either, being a dropout, and no one objected to him. She wore her mother's pearl drop earrings and a diamond comb all her own in her hair, and if her robes were old school ones lengthened and ironed for the occasion, they were clean at least and had no holes in them, so she was respectable.

Harry and Hermione Floo'd in at six to pick up her and Ron, respectively. Both of them had visibly new robes for the occasion, and the necklace Hermione wore would have paid for the new broom she had gone into debt for twice over. Ron told Hermione how lovely she was. Harry gave her an empty smile and asked if she was ready to go. But he offered her his arm as they stepped into the fireplace, and she forgot everything in a whirl of excitement.

She had no idea where the place was in which they arrived, but it was painfully gaudy, an old gym hung with diplomatic pink and purple streamers (she could imagine the debates which would have sprung up had house colors been used) and a big banner saying Congratulations Class of '98! Young men and women turned in a slow waltz or clustered around tables covered with plastic sheets in bright colors eating hors d'hoeuvres. A number of people who wished to avoid public attention wore Mardi Gras masks of the dollar store sort, plain and black or flaunting extravagant peacock feathers and glitter. Just before they left, Harry, forever hiding from his celebrity status, had pulled on one which covered his scar.

The decorations were tacky, no doubt about it, but the music was angelic. Soft symphonies which she could not identify floated from all about, a thousand soft musics humming in her ears. She stopped still and took deep breaths as if she could inhale the sonata, scent the chord; then, clasping Harry, she began to move in rhythm to it, joining the circles of twirling dancers.

When the tune finished, a quicker one started; she and Hermione swapped partners, and she waltzed with her brother. The movements were mechanical, her body's instinctive response to the music that filled her ears, her mind, her heart. Halfway through, she left her brother to stand by the wall, and, her chest rising and falling in quick breaths, listen to the music.

As the night wore on, she wondered from time to time if Harry would come looking for her, ask where she'd been, if she was all right. Apparently, however, he considered his obligations to have been satisfied by the one dance, and had moved into another corner of the room to talk with a group of old school friends. She didn't mind; she was satisfied just to listen to the music. Long robes brushed her from time to time as the dancers moved in and out; from time to time, a draught sent her a whiff of perfume. Every so often Hermione and Ron passed her, always together, content in each other, dancing the night away.

It was deep into the night when a man approached her. He wore long robes and a black silk mask, and seemed to bring the music with him on a breeze, wafting about her as if it sprung from him and was meant for her and her alone. Masked, she could not know his identity, but half from the quickened throbbing of her heart, half from the pale hair swept down his back, she guessed it.

"You should not be here!" she told him, in a quavering voice. Should he? It was his class, but...did known Death Eaters really come to high-school re-unions?

"I might say the same of you, Ginevra Weasley." He reached out; she thought he would touch her lips or her cheek, but instead he plucked a single bronze hair from where it lay on the shoulder of her robes. "The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. I have been watching you; you have not been dancing."

"Harry just isn't much of a dancer, that's all," she replied defensively. "Besides, I like listening to the music."

"It is beautiful," he agreed gravely. "But if he does not dance, he can hardly object to this."

And, without further ado, she was clasped against him, dancing.

They danced to that tune, and the next, and the next; each seemed designed for him, written for him, played for him, uniquely suited to him. All were beautiful to her ears. Once or twice, she tried to speak, to ask him if he was who she thought he was, what he thought he was doing; but he only placed his finger on her lips and said simply, "I will listen to the music." And his I will suffered no contradiction.

At last, towards morning, as the tender interwoven melody of the flute died out and the strings rose in a final clarion chord, he raised his arm to twirl her in a pirouette, and the words one last time sprung to her mind for no reason at all.

And then his sleeve fell back.

One dissonant note, and then silence.

Somehow, in that moment, every person in the room were staring at them, alone in the middle of the dance floor. Not at Ginevra Weasley, the fianceé of the Boy Who Lived; not at the masked man pale as death in his black robes; but at the hideous, disfiguring scar, the remnant of a tattoo, sprawled across his exposed forearm.

He fled like the last shadows of a long winter's night dispelled and shattered by the rising sun; but, watching him, she could not help but wish that the dark and the cold might have lingered a little longer.

The chatter resumed, but the music did not. She was glad when Harry and the others came to take her home. Her mother was waiting in the warm comfort of the living room, wanting to hear a joyful tale of the fun she had had.

"How was your night, dear?"

"Lovely."

She was a bit tired from being up all night, she said, and that was certainly why she cast herself down on her bed the moment she was alone. Not to weep. Never to weep. Because she was happy.

...

Outside a respectable old house, in the gray morning, a man in black stopped to unfasten the length of silk bound about his eyes. He turned to look off into the red-gold of the rising sun, and a thin hand slipped into the pocket where he had tucked a single hair of the same hue.

"Ginevra," he whispered. "Ginevra, I lose myself in you and never want to come back out."

And he never did.