AN: I decided I'd write a couple little fanfics that cover some of the important points of Ron/Hermione's and Harry/Ginny's relationships. It started with my fic "A Beginning at the End" and will continue on with subsequent chapters in this fic. I have no idea how many I'll write, though I can't imagine it'll be more than ten chapters, and it will end before the epilogue began. So here goes.

Disclaimer: If I owned this, I wouldn't write fanfic, obviously.

If someone had told Harry Potter that there would be a life after defeating Voldemort, he would have said they were mad. He hadn't realized how much over the last few years he'd come to see his life as a short and narrow road pointing only towards Riddle. In the past week, it was if someone had taken off his blinders, and suddenly there were so many possibilities that he hadn't been able to contemplate any of them. If he tried to imagine a future, he thought he might be crushed by all the choices that had never been available to him. To a boy who'd only had one choice for so long, the multitude was incomprehensible.

So here he sat, in an armchair at Hogwarts. After the many funerals in the past couple weeks, he and a few of the students and teachers had decided to come back to Hogwarts. They had one summer to rebuild and re-staff the school before the students came back, and it was the most useful thing Harry could think of doing just then. Of course, as much as he loved Ron and Hermione, sometimes he just wished...

"RONALD WEASLEY, YOU TAKE THAT BACK!"

... they'd gone home.

"PENPALS?!?!? SERIOUSLY?!?!?! WHY ARE YOU STILL WRITING TO KRUM?"

Harry sighed. So did Neville, who was sitting across from him. "I was hoping to go to bed soon," he commented forlornly, looking over at the stairs up to the boy's dormitory, where the shouts were coming from.

"... AND I WILL WRITE TO WHOMEVER I WANT! AND WHAT WHERE YOU DOING, LOOKING AT FLEUR THAT WAY WHEN WE HAD DINNER AT THE BURROW, YOU WERE DROOLING SO HARD ..."

There was the sound of Ron laughing before he bellowed back, "YOU WERE SITTING NEXT TO HER, YOU INSANE WOMAN! I WAS LOOKING AT YOU!"

Suddenly, it was silent. Neville looked even more uncomfortable, while Harry started to laugh. "I can't go up there now," Neville said desperately, reminding Harry just for a moment of the old bumbling Neville.

"Just use the girl's dorm," Ginny suggested, sitting in the chair next to Harry's. "The enchantment on the stairs got all shaken up with the giants walking around just outside."

Neville nodded at her thankfully over at Ginny, and went up the stairs she had just come down. Harry barely noticed his friend departing. He only had eyes for the girl next to him.

In the time since the war ended, they hadn't really talked about their relationship. They'd just sort of come back together, Ginny's head buried in Harry's chest as Fred was lowered into the ground, Harry's hand gripping Ginny's whenever the pressure of being the hero was too much, and kissing in empty classrooms and closets, holding her as close as possible to remind himself he didn't ever have to leave her again.

Now, it occurred to him that as close as they'd been the last few days, they had barely spoken a word to each other. He realized right then that the time of silence was over.

He reached out for her hand automatically and she gave it to him. "I killed him," he stated simply.

Ginny got out of her chair and let go of his hand, walking to stand in front of the fire. "I know."

"We broke up because I had to fight him. I had to do whatever it took. And I'm sorry for that," Harry added with feeling.

Ginny didn't turn around to look at him. "I know."

Harry, suddenly frustrated, got up from his chair and strode over to Ginny. "What can I say? I had to battle Voldemort. I had to go on a mission. I had to take Hermione and Ron and nobody else. I've had a job to do since I was a year old, with things that were set in motion before even Dumbledore was born. Do you think I wanted this?"

Finally, Ginny turned around. "I'm tired of fighting for you, Harry."

Harry couldn't really say anything to this, so she continued. "I've fancied you since I met you when I was ten years old. And ever since, I've been fighting. Fighting my shyness, fighting for you to notice me, fighting to keep you with me. I just don't want to fight anymore."

Harry opened his mouth and closed it again. He tried again and nothing but this strangled sort of noise came out, and he hurriedly shut it again. The third time, he managed to say, "When Voldemort was about to kill me, I thought of you. Every time I was about to do something dangerous or I thought I was going to die, I always thought of you. Now, with the war done ... nothing could keep from you. Nothing."

And there it was. That hard, blazing look was in Ginny's eye; next minute they were kissing again, neither sure how they got there or who started it, but it was very long time before either wanted to stop.

AN: Ok, I know, cheesiness is oozing out, but whatever. I think it's kinda cute. And I feel that, while HG got more time than RH, there was still not enough. So I'll try to split the chapters evenly. Love? Hate? Review!