AN: One-shot, no more. There's a lot of obvious irony, and a lot of not-so-obvious irony, but I hope you can also appreciate the sentiment I'm try to convey.
EDITED AS OF 1-4-08
The Last Battle was over, the evil Lord Voldemort undone, and all Ginny could think was that victory came at much too high a price. Ron was dead, having fallen protecting Hermione who died later of grievous wounds. They died never having admitted their feelings for one another. Neville was put in a bed next to his parents, caught up in a never ending nightmare; there was public controversy on whether to mercifully free him the only way anyone knew how. Fudge was dead; Professor McGonagall was dead; Draco Malfoy–playing a double agent- was barely alive but expected to live; Severus Snape was leading the Aurors. In her own family, her mother was dead, her father Kissed, and her brother Percy was never expected to be heard from again.
Ginny sucked in a shaking, rattling breath. It was hard—so goddamn hard—to remember that they had indeed won. And then there were so many quiet wonderings if death or Voldemort's reign may not have indeed been preferable.
She didn't hear him approach, but then again, Ginny almost never did. Harry was almost a ghost now, some brief waif with the palest green eyes and skin so white, one could trace the veins. His hands were ice as they slipped into hers, but she clung to them because that was what they all did now—cling to each other.
"I know," He said and she understood what he was talking about; that he wondered the same things too.
"It's not fair," She said, and to her surprise, she found that her vision was getting blurry; she thought she'd cried herself out along time ago. Harry almost smiled at her tears and his finger gently traced one down her cheek.
He pulled her against him and she wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face into his shirt. Stroking her hair, he murmured soothing nothings as she sobbed wetly. Eventually she pulled away and twisted her lips into a parody of a smile; no one these days quite remembered quite how to do it properly.
"Sorry," she muttered, giving a little, hiccupping laugh. "It's just not…you know, fair."
Harry didn't say anything for a moment, but dropped her hands. The sharp wind licked her skin, whispering chills along the raised hairs. Ginny watched it with some dismay, very distant, in the back of her head. She didn't see Harry's expression as he looked at her.
"It's not right, you mean." He corrected slowly, eyes looking at the gray sky somewhere over her head."There's no such thing as fair. You know that."
His eyes were bruised, puffy, like some beaten wild thing—they twitched as if he saw beyond the girl in front of him, into somewhere else. Eyes bruised with waking and sleeping nightmares, Ginny thought.
"I like to pretend that he got what was coming to him," She admitted slowly, "You know? Like we're caught up in that big white and black struggle but we won. Because it means that all this would mean something, you know? And that…I say 'you know' a lot, don't I?" Her eyes unfocused and Harry shook his head at her.
"This isn't a pretty fairytale in one of those three-volume novels, Ginny. Love doesn't triumph over evil and the 'good' guys don't always win.
"I think I fucked up somewhere along the way." He touched a finger to her cheek. "There's no such thing as 'good' and in the end, no one cares for the reason anymore but to live. It's survival. I killed him and I'm glad I did because he would've killed me too. I don't regret a thing but not winning."
His lips curved and it was the truest expression of mirth she'd seen in awhile. Briefly, their earlier conversation drifted across her memory: this wasn't victory. He continued, "I can't regret that people that didn't need to die, did, but that doesn't matter. There's a chance of future for the world now, and that's the best I could ever have dared to hope for, even in our blackest days."
Ginny nodded and laid her head against his chest as he played with wisps of hair at the base of her neck. Cold fingers, but she didn't mind. Breathe, breath-out, breathe, breathe out…
Her brows drew together. She pressed her ear to his chest and counted…and counted…and counted—
"Harry?" She pulled away and he smiled tiredly.
"I told you we didn't win," He whispered. A light seemed to go out in his eyes—she watched as it happened, like a candle guttering out or a sunset—and he simply suddenly sagged. Ginny staggered under the weight and sank to her knees.
A horrible, wonderful sort of truth occurred to her, that maybe her friend had died. She looked at him and, being an expert on death, realized that he was gone. She was holding a corpse.
She smiled.