He wakes, and sees the moonlight fall in a shaft across the floor. Sitting up, he doesn’t realize what day – or night – it is. He gets up, and goes over to the window, moonlight streaming down on him. He looks out, and then he remembers.

She is standing there, in the same white dress. The asymmetrical hem brushes against her too-thin legs. The strapless top leaves her shoulders bare, and they too are simply bone, so pale he can’t tell where the dress ends and her skin begins.

She is standing in the same shaft of moonlight as he is. She looks at him, and her eyes are calling him.

He shouldn’t go down. Not to her.

But he could never resist her eyes.

He slowly, carefully walks out onto the landing. Even though her tiptoes down the staircase, every creak and groan makes him jump. H can’t help comparing the noise to what she would make. She never makes any noise at all.

His feet pad against the dew-ridden grass. He wishes he could stop, stop this routine, repeating year after year.

Her eyes are calling him.

“Harry,� she whispers.

She can’t even muster the energy to speak at a normal volume.

He goes up to her, and reaches out to touch her arm. Gasping, he pulls his hand back. He forgot. Even after all these years, he forgot. She is as cold as ice.

A solitary tear glistens on her cheek. He brushes it away, managing to shiver only slightly at the contact. . He hurts her so much when he forgets even the mundane, everyday things.

She puts her hand, white and skeletal, on his shoulder. The cold seeps through his shirt, and chills him to the bone.

He knows what to do. He has done this, every year. He places his hand on her waist, flinching as he does. He shouldn’t be doing this; he is just getting sucked in further.

She glides along the damp grass, her bare feet skimming the soft blades. She turns, one of her icy hands still in his, her skirt flaring softly. Her silky red hair fans out, haloing her head. He gasps, amazed at how beautiful she is, even in this mirage of herself. He wants to save her, save her beauty, save the grace with which she is dancing. He wants to stop her from leaving, because he knows, this time, she will never come back.

He doesn’t know how or when he realizes this is the last time he will see her, dance with her. After all these years . . . this is the last.

She knows it, too. Her skeletal hands hold his tightly, their grasp vice-like. She wants to stay, to hold onto her last tie to this world.

But she doesn’t belong here. She hasn’t belonged here for six years.

She halts abruptly in her spin, and looks at him. Brown into green, and he cringes. This, too, he has done before.

She draws closer, and rests her head on his chest. He can almost feel his heart growing cold, turning to ice.

She raises her head, and her eyes are pleading. He closes his eyes, a fierce battle raging inside his head. He knows this is his final chance. He will never again . . .

He steals himself, and bends over her, eyes still closed. He lips meet his, and though they are cold, they seem to slowly warm, as she entwines herself around him.

He can feel how glad she is, after all these years, to have a final embrace, a final kiss.

But the tears are still flowing from his closed eyelids.

He has never let her kiss him before. And though he decided to, in a way, it seemed an unattached decision, something he had no control over. The same part of him that knew this was the final confrontation, and that could be the only reason his stubborn brain let him kiss her.

The tears trace rivulets down his cheeks.

He doesn’t want her to go.

She pulls away, and her face is also streaked with his tears. Their warmth seems to give her cheeks a tinge of pink, and for a moment he sees her old self shine through the wasted ghost she has become. For a moment he can see the girl he fell in love with.

“I’m sorry, Harry.�

Her tears are mingling with his on her cheeks. He can feel a sob well up inside him. She shouldn’t see him cry, really cry, over her.

Now she brushes the tears from his cheek.

They float across the grass, dancing to music only they can hear. And as they move together, her fingers don’t seem as cold as they did before. Maybe she has gotten warmer. Or perhaps he has become colder.