Fred was smiling at her when she was brave enough. Looking every bit as he did the day he died, she felt a sob choke in her throat. How could someone who had always been so vibrant in life be nothing more than a misty shadow? Life was unbearably cruel. The moment their eyes met, he winked at her just as he'd done countless times over the years that they knew each other. She used to cross his path in the corridor between lessons in the last couple of years they were in the castle together. Never, even when they'd been at each other's throats earlier in the day for something so unimportant she couldn't even remember what it was, did he fail to wink. It was the same when she would pass him on the stairs at the Burrow or at Number Twelve.