Remus was in heaven.

He had never believed that Jenny would agree to go to Hogsmeade with him, and he certainly never dreamed that they might be sat in the Three Broomsticks, talking freely and animatedly about books and friends and plans for the summer. She was smiling and joking with him, that infectious smile in place, and he didn't think it was possible to ever be happier. He watched her eat another spoonful of her butterbeer ice-cream – Madame Rosmerta had been experimenting again – and wondered what she'd taste like if he worked up the courage to kiss her.

They had spent the day wandering the streets of Hogsmeade, ducking in and out of their favourite shops, avoiding the roaming gangs of Slytherins who were out looking for trouble and lapping up the fresh summer sunshine, without a care in the world.

She had even let him hold her hand.

Now, inevitably, their conversation had turned to schoolwork.

"I'll be glad when the exams are finished, I can tell you," Jenny was saying. "There's barely enough time to get everything done without volunteering for Sprout, and there's no time at all for just relaxing."

Remus nodded.

"It's a lot of work," he said. "But hopefully it'll be worth it in the end."

"You mean for our N.E.W.T.s?"

"Yes, I'm trying to think of it as a head start."

Jenny gave him a dubious look.

"I'm mostly thinking of it as the teachers' excuse to make us work so hard that we don't have the energy to cause any trouble."

Remus laughed.

"Well, there is that too… although I can't imagine you getting into trouble."

"That's because I never get caught," she smiled, and he raised an eyebrow.

Jenny shrugged.

"If I want to spend time in the Library or the Greenhouses outside normal hours, I don't see why anyone should mind."

Remus looked at her incredulously.

"Do you mean to tell me that all this time, with everyone thinking so highly of you, you've been sneaking around the Castle at night?"

"Well, not every night," she qualified. "Only when I'm bored."

Remus grinned.

"You're wonderful, you know that?"

Jenny blushed, prettily.

"It's nothing really…"

He shook his head.

His shining girl.

0o0o0o0

After a particularly unpleasant Defence Against the Dark Arts class, Ron sidled up to Harry outside the Great Hall, making sure that Hermione, who was chatting with Dean Thomas and Lavender Brown, wasn't listening.

"I did some checking," he said. "There was only one Jennifer in their year."

Unable to leave a puzzle alone and worried for Harry's godfathers, they had been surreptitiously hunting for clues to the vanishing Jenny. They'd been keeping it quiet from Hermione, too, who they suspected would not approve; this had been easier than they expected as the volume of schoolwork was currently precluding her concentration on pretty much anything else, as long as they looked as if they were working.

Harry glanced around.

"And?"

Ron pulled a scrap of parchment out of his schoolbag.

"'Jennifer Baker, Hufflepuff'" he read. "Has to be her. There's a couple of references to her in the chess championships…"

Harry smiled, it was and always would be the first place Ron looked for someone's name.

"…and she seems to have spent a lot of time in the Greenhouses – she won an award for some Fanged Geraniums at some show or another when she was sixteen – but that's it."

"Seems to have kept out of trouble," said Harry, thoughtfully. "At least on a scale with the Marauders."

Ron nodded, frowning.

"Well, we know she died," he said, thoughtfully. "We should probably check back issues of the Prophet."

"I'll do it," Harry volunteered. "I could do with a break from this bloody Potions essay."

Ron grimaced.

"Don't remind me. I bet Hermione's already finished it, too…"

"Already finished what?" Hermione asked, coming up behind them.

"Potions," said Ron, morosely.

"Actually, I'm still half-way through," she admitted. "I got so absorbed by my Arithmancy homework I completely lost interest."

"Only you could replace homework with more homework," said Ron, fondly.

"Wait – you mean you got bored?"

Hermione nodded, looking sheepish.

Harry reached a hand out to her forehead and pretended to check her temperature.

"Are you feeling alright?"

She brushed him away, looking like she was trying to be more annoyed than she actually was, and marched them up to the Common Room before they could get too distracted by the inviting summer sunshine spilling in through the front doors.

0o0o0o0

"So, what are you doing over the summer?"

It was the question that was on everyone's lips.

The last exam has been sat through, the last essay handed in, and the sixth years had –as one – burst out of their Charms exam and collapsed onto the grounds, where they were basking in the glorious sunshine and nursing their stiff necks and wrists.

Most people were so exhausted by the ridiculous amount of study that they'd needed to put in to survive what the teachers appeared to be treating as the preliminaries for the N.E.W.T.s that they were ignoring everyone else; several people were already dozing peacefully on the grass, Peter among them. Even Snape had seen fit to let down his guard, and was reading nearby; James and Sirius were ignoring him: they were just too tired to do anything. James was engaged in his favourite past time: Lily watching, so there was little chance of getting any sense out of him – especially since she had stopped hexing him every time she noticed the attention. Quite a few people had been surprised that James's tenacity and unusual tactics were finally beginning to win out.

Sirius rolled over lazily.

"So, Jenny, what are you doing over the summer?" he asked, as an echo of everyone else's conversations.

She and Remus were sat, side by side, their backs to a large beech tree close to the shore of the Lake; Remus's eyes were closed, but Jenny had been talking to her friends, who thought that she and Remus were very cute, and were sitting on the other side of the tree (partly as an excuse to be closer to Sirius, who would wink at them periodically and make them all giggle).

"Oh, the usual, I expect," she said, stretching her legs out and wriggling her toes in the grass. She'd taken her shoes and socks off almost as soon as they had sat down and was glorying in the feeling of relative freedom. "I'll go back and stay at the orphanage, see if they need any help. You?"

"Me and James are planning a camping trip – I'm staying with him for most of the summer."

It was no secret that Sirius had finally lost it and run away from home the previous summer, so Jenny simply laughed.

"Let me know how that turns out," she said. "Knowing you two you'll manage to set fire to the campsite – I'll keep my eyes peeled for news."

"Don't give them any ideas," said Remus, without opening his eyes. "I'm going with them."

She laughed again.

"Well, you just make sure I get him back in one piece, alright?"

Remus beamed, his eyes still shut.

"You hear that?" he asked, looking slightly dopey. "Now, be told: no explosions, no torture, no brilliant ideas at four A.M… you have to get me back in one piece of face the wrath of Jenny."

Sirius sniggered.

"I'm not afraid of you," he said, casually to Jenny. "You're too nice to cause lasting damage."

"You should be," she smiled, conspiratorially. "I have access to several Venomous Tentaculas and I'm not afraid to use them."

Sirius barked a laugh and grinned up at her.

She was good for Remus, he knew, like she was bringing him out of his cave of books a little more each day, out into the sunlight.

"I'd best watch my back then," he said, and winked at her.

"You do that," she grinned back.

0o0o0o0

It was hot.

No matter where he went, or how many layers he stripped off, there was just no way of escaping it. The heat sprawled about the house, like some great serpent creature winding its languorous way around them and slowly smothering anyone it came across.

That was the trouble with a mid-row townhouse in London, Remus mused, as he padded barefoot to the kitchen for a cool drink. The heat simply had nowhere to go, so it just squatted on the house like a toad, sucking the air out of the rooms. And it didn't help that half of the windows didn't open.

After a few hours of scraping away years of paint and a good deal of brute force, he'd managed to get his to move, so at least there was marginal air flow. He'd wedged his door open and let what air there was move about the house as best it could. The only other open-able window was in Sirius's brother's room, however, and it would take a lot more than an early June heat-wave to convince Sirius to unlock that particular door. So the fresher air – or at least, as fresh as London air could get – had stopped at the top floor landing, as if it were afraid of venturing deeper.

Wandering past the gurning House Elf heads on the stairs, Remus didn't blame it.

By rights, the kitchen should have been pleasantly cool, given that it was largely underground, but Kreacher had recently found a whole flotilla of excuses to keep the stove going day and night, and neither Remus nor Sirius had the energy to argue with him. He cackled vindictively as Remus passed his cupboard.

He opened the door and screwed up his eyes as a wave of heat poured out. He walked in, feeling stickier by the moment, and pulled out two bottles of lemonade from the cold store; he turned to leave, but thought better of it and grabbed the cold cottage pie that Molly had left them and neither of them had had the energy to eat.

He hurried out again, sighing in relief as he escaped from the oven that was the kitchen and pulled the door shut behind him with his foot.

Sirius was still trying to open the window in the library when he put the food down on the desk.

"Any luck?" he asked, wiping his forehead.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the bloody woman hexed it shut on purpose," Sirius growled.

He handed the knife he had been trying to pry it open with to Remus and picked up a bottle of lemonade.

"Still hotter than hell down there?" he asked, watching his friend jam the knife into what used to be an opening and wiggle it about, trying to force movement of any kind.

"Like a sauna," said Remus, grunting with effort. "I don't know how the little bastard stands it."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. Apparently the heat was getting to his friend more than he let on; Remus had always be faultlessly polite to and about Kreacher, no matter how foul the Elf was to him. It irked Sirius to no end.

"I can't believe anyone could be so vindictive as to magically forbid cooling or warming spells on their death bed," he said, between tugs at the handle.

"You never did meet my mother, did you?"

"Happily, no," said Remus, and Sirius laughed, eyeing the cottage pie hungrily.

"Moony?" he said.

"What?"

"You forgot the forks."

"It is definitely your turn," he said, grimacing. "Are you sure this window is supposed to open?"

"Yeah," said Sirius, heading out of the door with a determined expression on his face. "I dangled Regulus out of it when I was five."

Remus paused for a moment.

Well, at least that explains why Walburga never opened it again, he thought, and wiped his forehead again. I wonder if Sirius would mind if I just smashed it…

He froze.

There it was again, that scent.

That intangible mix of cotton and roses that had been following him around all month. She came to see him less in the summer, as if she was enjoying the peace and quiet, but her scent stayed with him, almost like it was trying to make up for her absence. These days she hated the sunshine, flitting out of the way of it as it made her feel hollow, unwelcome; she looked almost invisible in the sun.

He hated himself for that.

"I don't think I've ever seen you in shorts," she said, and he nearly fell out of the windowsill.

She was stood in the shadow of one of the bookcases, carefully tucking herself away from the light.

"Sirius made me buy them," he explained. "And since the kids are away, I don't mind wearing them."

She nodded, looking briefly at his scarred legs.

"It must be hot…"

"Sweltering," he responded, sadly.

"Must be unpleasant," said Jenny, but she didn't sound convinced.

When he was younger he'd assumed that ghosts couldn't feel the massive shifts in temperature that everyone else had to put up with and were therefore, in some respects, better off at the height of summer. But Jenny had given him a very strange and miserable look and told him the truth.

She had been freezing cold for nineteen years.

He didn't know how she could stand it.

He felt ridiculous, stood there with one of Sirius's mother's increasingly blunt and tarnished steak knives, voluntarily shirtless for the first time in probably a decade and staring at her with longing in every fibre of him. The sounds of Sirius cursing and possibly attacking Kreacher or various parts of the kitchen drifted up almost lazily, like they were part of some other, distant world.

She sighed.

"Come here," she instructed, and he moved across to her, curious. They had found out early on that they'd never really be able to touch, so generally they avoided it.

"Try not to scream," she said, and he frowned.

"Wha-" He bit back an incredibly unmanly shriek: Jenny had stepped right through him, making him feel like she had dumped a bucket of icy water over his head.

"Th-thank you," he managed, when his voice returned.

"You looked like you needed it," she smiled, and waved her hand through the two bottles of lemonade on the table. Ice formed briefly on the glass. "Sirius appears to be trying to blow up his stove," she said, conversationally.

"Kreacher won't turn it off," he explained.

"Ah…" she said. A crash from downstairs and a shout of triumph suggested that Sirius had defeated the oven.

"Looks like sandwiches for the foreseeable future," she said.

"Jenny…" he didn't even need to ask the question, she never visited during the day.

"Someone's asking about me," she said, and frowned. "I don't know how I know, but I do. And I can't sleep while they are." She looked up at him, pale and indistinct as she was in the light. "And I missed you."

He was about to respond when they kitchen door opened, and a triumphant Sirius could be heard ordering Kreacher not to fix the oven on pain of pain.

"Come back tonight?" he asked, trying not to make it sound like he was begging.

"I'll see," she said, and she was gone.

It was like there was a hole in the world.

0o0o0o0

"I'll see you in September," she'd said, and glanced at his friends. "Try not to get arrested or anything, ok?"

He'd grinned and told her that he'd do his best, and she'd kissed him on the cheek, making him blush crimson in front of his parents, before hoisting her trunk onto a nearby trolley and heading through the barrier.

That had been the last time he'd seen her in months.

He and the boys had managed (somehow) to return from their camping trip missing only Peter's eyebrows, which was some kind of minor miracle, and he'd spent quite a lot of the summer waiting for her frequent letters and helping his mum with the chickens.

She'd been immediately welcomed back at the orphanage where she'd grown up, and had once again become the surrogate older sister of an entire legion of children. She told them stories about magic and the pranks the boys got up to at school, all the while convincing them that it was all make-believe. Through her letters he had a fairly good picture of the daily chaos that fifty children between the ages of nought and eighteen could cause, and had no doubt at all that this was where her ability to go by unseen had come from. He loved hearing about the children and their games, loved hearing about the friends she had met up with, loved every second of contact.

Loved her.

It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise, but it had. He'd been lying on the bank of a river, somewhere in Wales, listening to his friends' snores and gazing up at the stars, and it had just hit him in the face so forcefully that for a few seconds he had been unable to breathe. He had no idea how he hadn't seen it coming, but he had glad when it had… he had a reasonable suspicion that she felt the same way, after all.

His parents hadn't missed the frequency of her letters – or the kiss at the station, and his cheeks still heated whenever one of them brought it up. His father had taken him aside towards the end of the summer and given him 'The Talk', which both men were equally glad was over with. Some of the things his dad had tried to tell him had made him shudder: when it came to your parents' sex lives, there were some things that you just never needed to know. Ever.

His father had told him something else too, and it was growing steadily in the back of his mind, slowly eclipsing his ability to think…

He'd found James and Sirius easily enough, and Peter had jogged up to the platform slightly pink and out of breath with only a couple of minutes to go, the station guard glaring at him as they dragged his trunk on board. He leaned out of the window with James and Peter, waving to his parents as they vanished in vast billows of steam. He'd caught his father's meaningful expression as the train had pulled away, and he'd nodded, feeling a little sick.

He was quiet as the train shot through the countryside, and he almost missed Lily and Alice Roberts, Frank's girlfriend, coming in to ask about their summers.

He'd chatted with them for a while, and shuffled up to let Frank in when he eventually found them. He'd pulled out a book after a while, and hidden inside it, unable to read. The sound of the carriage door opening again made him look up.

"Hi," said Jenny, and his heart leapt into his mouth; she hadn't put her school robes on yet, and she was wearing a flowery summer dress that made him wish he'd visited her at the orphanage. "I'm disappointed, boys – no major headlines about exploding tents at all – and I looked every week."

"Well there's always next year," said Sirius, with a grin. "How was the orphanage?"

"Chaotic, noisy and brilliant," she said. "I'm looking forward to some peace and quiet this term."

"At Hogwarts?" James scoffed. "You'll be lucky."

"Especially with you around," said Lily, with less venom than usual; James beamed at her.

Jenny eyed them curiously.

"Have I missed the romance of the century?" she asked Frank, who shrugged.

"I'm sure James'll fill us in," he said, and ducked as Lily tried to smack him around the head.

"Nothing has happened between James and I, and nothing ever will," Lily insisted, but everyone simply smiled. No one believed her anymore anyway.

"Fancy a walk, Remus?" Jenny asked, and he couldn't resist, his father's concerns flying out of his head as he followed her along the train. The dress made her look prettier than ever, a bright splash of colour amongst the other students, lighting up the world. She pulled down the window at the end of the last carriage and they watched the countryside opening out behind them for a minute, before turning to the serious business of getting re-acquainted.

When they came up for air some minutes later, both their faces pink and their hair tousled, they leaned against the wall of the carriage, fingers entwined, and watched the countryside some more.

"I missed you," she said, and he squeezed her fingers.

"Likewise," he said. "It was good to get your letters though – made a nice change from the insanity I'm usually subjected to."

She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder.

Even as they stood together, enjoying one another's proximity, that queasy uneasy feeling began to steal over Remus again.

"What?" Jenny asked, eventually, feeling him getting tenser as the minutes passed.

"Nothing," he assured her, hastily. Her slight frown told him that she didn't believe him, but he was saved from further questioning by distant screams.

Upon investigation, they discovered a large volume of mint custard spilling from the seventh year Slytherins' carriage. Apparently James and Sirius had got bored in their absence.

0o0

"You're avoiding me," Jenny said, pointedly. She was slightly out of breath: she'd had to jog to catch up with him after he left the Great Hall at breakfast.

"No I'm not!" Remus insisted, but he was lying, and Jenny wasn't an idiot.

She gave him a look that was part hurt and part utter disbelief.

"Remus, what's wrong?" she asked, stepping closer; her scent enveloped him like a hug, and he sighed. "Just talk to me," she said, one hand hovering over his heart.

Miserably, and fighting the urge to flee, he nodded.

"Meet me by the beech tree by Lake after Transfiguration?" he asked.

"I've got Potions last, I might be a while," she said, thinking out loud. "And not to make too fine a point of it, it's pissing it down."

As one, they turned to look out of the nearest window. The weather had held just long enough for school to start; since then, the rain hadn't let up for weeks. It was, as usual, grey and dismal, with a possible side order of hail forecast for the afternoon.

"Use an umbrella charm," he insisted, and Jenny gave him a look that was even more worried than before. "No one will be able to hear us out there," he said, quietly.

"That doesn't sound good," she said, and he gave her the ghost of a smile. "I'll see you later, then…"

0o0

He had to do it.

It was only fair, really.

The trouble was that he really, really liked her, and he was under no illusions about the effect of what he was planning might have on their relationship.

He swallowed; he didn't want to lose her, but as his father had said in the summer, if he cared about her at all then she deserved to know…

As Jenny had predicted, the rain hadn't let up, and Remus's breath steamed as he waited for her beneath the beech tree, the rain streaming down around him like his own personal waterfall. A thick layer of hail was quickly turning to slush under his feet, and he was freezing. He checked his watch.

Professor Slughorn frequently kept students behind in Potions, largely because he would only be part-way through what he considered a fascinating anecdote when the magical bell rang. He was notoriously pleased with the sound of his own voice, but he wasn't a bad teacher, as they went. Remus shivered; she should have been out a good fifteen minutes before, and it wasn't like Jenny to keep anyone waiting.

Briefly, he clung to the forlorn hope that she wasn't going to come at all, before a rain-soaked shadow detached itself from the door between the Greenhouses and ran towards him, dodging the large muddy puddles around the edge of the lake. She slowed down as she got closer, frowning in concentration as she slipped and slid across the muddy slush towards him; one final slip sent her tumbling into his arms, and almost had them both in the lake.

"Steady!" he said, holding onto her until she could keep her balance.

"That's easy for you to say," she grumbled, and shook some of the rain off her face.

"You're soaking!" he exclaimed, surprised.

"You're observant," she responded; it had not been a good Potions lesson: two people had been sent to Madame Pomfrey with minor burns and a third had been lucky to escape being hung, drawn and quartered by Filch. "I've never been any good at Umbrella Charms."

"Here," he said, pulling her closer and wrapping his cloak around her soaked uniform. "I'm sorry, I didn't know…"

"Yeah, well," she said, grumpily. "Thanks," she said, beginning to warm up a little.

"Er – you're welcome," he said, and cursed himself silently.

He'd had it all worked out in his head, but now she was here all he could think about was how warm and soft she was, with her damp hair resting against his shoulder.

"Remus?" she asked, and he groaned, internally.

"Yes?"

"I don't mean to hurry you," she said, "but I'm ankle deep in mud here…"

"Let's see if we can find somewhere drier," he said, and led her along the edge of the Lake towards the trees, his insides squirming alarmingly at what he was about to do. He ducked under a branch and held her arm as they slipped and slid along the bank; the trees were closer together here, and they retreated gratefully under the canopy. The ground below them – while far from dry – was firmer, at least, and there was a large rock around which Remus extended his Umbrella Charm. They sat down, and Jenny gazed out at the dancing water.

"I've never been this far around before," she said. "The water's so deep here, and peaceful…"

Remus nodded, happy to concentrate on anything other than their conversation.

This, unfortunately, was not to be.

"What's wrong, Remus?" she asked, taking his hand gently in hers. "I've not said or done something awful, have I?"

Remus shook his head, surprised.

"Of course not, you're wonderful," he assured her.

"Then what is it?" she asked.

He took a few moments to order his thoughts, and try to convince the gibbering thing in his chest that he wasn't about to have a heart attack.

"I need to tell you something," he said, voice and body trembling unhelpfully. "I should have told you before…"

He trailed off, not wanting to continue; Jenny gave him an appraising look.

"You, James and Sirius are having a mad and passionate affair in every broom cupboard in Hogwarts?" she asked, with a calculated expression of concern. He burst out laughing, profoundly grateful to her for breaking the tension. "Oh, well, don't let me get in the way…"

"Ok, first, eurgh," he said, and she smiled slightly. "And secondly, no, there's no one else. I really lo-like you…"

Jenny raised her eyebrow at his verbal slip, looking surprised and very pleased all at once.

"That's the problem," he continued, despondently. "I'm…" he opened and closed his mouth a few times, but nothing came out. He tried again.

"Do you want to write it down?" Jenny asked, after a while.

"I don't have any parchment," he managed.

"Charades?"

"I… don't think I could accurately mime it," he said, helplessly.

"Oh…"

"I'll try again," he said, and she gave his hand an encouraging squeeze.

He took a deep, steadying breath and shut his eyes. She was going to hate him for this.

"I'm a werewolf," he spat out, and cringed, waiting for the inevitable outburst of fear and outrage.

He hadn't expected her to burst out laughing.

"Yeah, right," she said, "and I'm a House Elf!"

He opened his eyes, shocked; of all the reactions he had envisaged, disbelief was not one of them.

"No, really," he said, and something of the terror in his eyes must have got through, because she stopped laughing and gave him a searching look.

"You can't be," she said. "You're too – well – nice…"

He didn't have a thing to say to that, so he just stayed silent.

"This isn't funny, Remus, stop it," she said, and now he could hear an edge of fear in her voice, see a flicker of it in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, wretchedly. "I can't help what I am."

Very slowly and very carefully, Jenny pulled her hand away from his.

He stayed perfectly still, not wanting to frighten or disgust her any more than he already had.

"So…" she said, leaning away from him slightly, "…you didn't get those scars rock-climbing with your parents when you were little?"

"No," he said, unhappily. "My father said something entirely accurate and insanely unwise to a very unpleasant man who turned out to be a werewolf with a taste for six year old boys…"

"Oh," she said, and he found that he couldn't look at her any more. "At least that explains where you disappear off to every month," she added, mostly to herself.

He gazed morosely at his incredibly muddy shoes. A part of his mind that was functioning outside normal parameters reflected that Filch would probably lynch him when he got inside.

"I need…" she began, tersely, and he risked a look. "I need to think about this," she said.

Remus nodded. He'd needed time, too, but there wasn't enough of it in the universe to make his condition less unpleasant.

"I can see why you wanted to talk out here," she said softly. "I won't tell anyone…"

He looked at her with eyes full of hope and she almost smiled. Almost.

"It wouldn't be fair on you – and if Dumbledore doesn't already know I'll eat my pruning shears."

"All the staff know," he confirmed.

"That makes sense…"

Remus glanced out at the unchanging weather.

"I could walk you back to the Castle, with the Charm – I mean, if I'm not – if you –"

He was scared and stammering with self disgust, but she interrupted.

"I'd appreciate that," she said, in that same, tense voice that scared him to his very core.

She left him outside the front doors, pausing to pass him back his damp cloak. He kicked his shoes despondently and waited for her to go, but she didn't; after a few moments he looked up at her, confused.

She was just standing there, looking at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

"Thank you," she said, abruptly. "For telling me."

And then she turned and hurried away, leaving him in the cold.

0o0o0o0

The heat had reduced considerably since Sirius had blown up the stove, a few days previously, but it was still sticky and oppressive in Grimmauld Place, and Remus couldn't sleep.

He rolled over for the fifth time that night and glared at the ceiling, kicking at the sheets that seemed determined to tie his legs together; quite apart from the cloying heat his head was too full for him to sleep. Too full of her.

Since her uncustomary appearance a few days previously, there had been little sign of Jenny, and he missed her terribly.

Not for the first time, the awful feeling that he might have simply gone mad and been imaging her all these years had begun to creep over him; he tried not to think about it. It was a little too realistic a thought for his liking.

For years, he had seen her only in his dreams, where she would either walk with him in the sunshine, or beg him to save her, or weep and wail, demanding to know how he could have done this to her. He had spent much of the first few years after Hogwarts unable to sleep.

And then the war had ended, taking every single person he had ever cared about with it.

For a long time he had considered joining them; every day had been a struggle for which he had neither the energy nor inclination, and he had lain awake at night, silently begging for release.

She had come to him then, sitting with him in dingy bars, walking the dark streets beside him, waiting patiently for him to come home at night… He had been certain, then, that he had lost his mind.

He'd decided a long time ago, that he would rather be hopelessly insane and have her with him than sane and be alone. And for a long time, there hadn't been anyone who would really have cared that he was mad… he'd toyed with the idea of telling Sirius about her on a few occasions, but he had resisted, afraid that he would find out that he really had lost her all those years ago.

His left arm grew colder, and he turned to see her there, resting just above the bed. She had that smile on her face and the sweet, heavenly scent of her filled up his head, driving out the unease and any thoughts of madness; what did it matter, if he could be beside her again?

It was irony itself that his primary reason for living had been dead for nineteen years.

He rolled over until they were nearly touching. They fell into their now familiar routine.

"I missed you," he said, and she smiled.

"You always miss me…" she ran her hand over his overheated torso; it was like being hit in the chest with a very gentle but ultimately freezing wave, making him shiver. After the initial shock subsided, he revelled in the cooler air that surrounded her, suddenly drowsy.

"Will you stay until I'm asleep?" he mumbled, softly, and she nodded, curling up beside him like his own, personal guardian angel.

He fell asleep with the memory of her face in his mind: her hair falling in sodden curls onto her pillow, her skin a shimmering blue-white under the stars, shining with some inner light, the dark, vicious puncture marks on her neck and hands barely visible.

His shining girl.