Disclaimer: OK. If I owned Harry Potter, I'd be the richest woman in England, right? Well – two problems. I don't live in England. I am not rich by any means. So you see, I do not own anything but the ideas. Same goes for the song; the genius of "What Hurts The Most" belongs to Rascal Flatts.
Author's Note: Well, I'm experiencing a moderately serious case of writer's block at the moment. So I thought I'd try something that I thought I'd never do – write a real, honest-to-god songfic. It's to "What Hurts The Most", by Rascal Flatts. I'm posting it without looking it over; I don't feel it's really my best work. And please; don't even talk to me about the title… It's so horridly unoriginal. Unfortunately, no signs of the writer's block lifting yet. Enjoy!
21 August
I can take the rain on the roof of this empty house
That don't bother me
Dear Harry,
I want you to know that you hurt me. I don't know if I will ever forgive you for that. It would've been better if you'd broken it off with me because you didn't love me anymore and couldn't bring yourself to pretend any longer. But I know you, and you said it yourself. You just wanted to be heroic.
I can take a few tears now and then and just let them out
I'm not afraid to cry every once in a while
This summer has been one of the longest of my life. I watched Ron and Hermione finally discover their love – and you didn't try to stop them. I watched Bill and Fleur get married. As much as Phlegm is not my favourite person, Bill truly loves her, and she loves him equally. I watched Fleur's bridesmaid catch the bouquet, squeal and run off with her date. All the couples at the reception… and we should have been one of them.
I'm inextricably linked; I have been an integral part of this puzzle from the beginning. And in many ways, my part has nothing to do with you. It has to do with my family, my choices. I'm sure you've heard many times that the Weasleys are blood traitors. The only people that I could ever blame for my getting mixed up with the diary in first year are myself, Malfoy, and Tom Riddle.
So I've been doing a lot of crying and a lot of thinking. Every time you walk past me without a touch, without a look, a kiss, it's a punch to my stomach or a kick to my shins. It can't go on like this, Harry, so I don't want you to think that I will be there waiting like a dutiful girlfriend, unchanged, when you get back.
Even though going on with you gone still upsets me
There are days every now and again I pretend I'm ok
I can put on a pretty good front, like you. You know that – Mum thinks we're done for good and she'll never get her wish. She thinks of you as a son, and she always wanted for us to marry and have little Potter children running around for her to dote on. Dean's written me a few letters. He's got a job and a little apartment, he says. And he wants to try again. I may take him up on that offer.
But that's not what gets me
What hurts the most
Was being so close
Harry, I've loved you since I was eleven. Then, I think I just had a crush on the person the Prophet made you to be. But slowly, as I got to know you – first the Chamber, then the Department of Mysteries, and the battle at the end of my fifth year – I realised that I love you for the man you are. You're compassionate, selfless, and you have a capacity to love that does not match your upbringing. But Harry, as much as I love you, I hate you.
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
And never knowing
What could have been
You gave me a possibility; the possibility of love. I'm shattered, Harry. There was so much there for us – we had the world in our hands. It was a shiny glass marble that you rejected. All because of needing to be noble. I'm sorry that I didn't mean to you what you meant to me.
It's hard to deal with the pain of losing you everywhere I go
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was tryin' to do
But I'm doin' it
All along, all I was trying to do was to love you. All I wanted was to be loved in return for the person I am. And I thought we had that. How did we go so wrong? But, somehow, I'm moving on. I will not wait for you, Harry. You're going to have to come crawling back on your knees. I will do things with other men that I always wanted to do with you. But Harry – you lost it.
It's hard to force that smile when I see our old friends and I'm alone
Still harder
Getting up, getting dressed, livin' with this regret
But I know if I could do it over
I would trade give away all the words that I saved in my heart
That I left unspoken
I'd do it again, Harry. That's the part that gets me every time I think about it. Every time I think of our brief time together, I know that I'd make the same decisions. I wouldn't change anything. That first kiss – I could've turned away, not pulled you out of the portrait hole behind me. But I didn't – I couldn't. If – when – you come crawling back on your knees, I hope to Merlin that I give you a hard time, threaten you with hexes, and then take you in my arms and kiss you.
What hurts the most
Is being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
You may have hurt me, but, Harry, you're the only one for me. I don't know if you see it, but we are bound by fate. Our lives are interwoven, and if we don't see it now, we will someday. I hope that someday is soon; I hope the war ends and you come back safe with Ron and Hermione. I hope they say a quick hello to everyone and head up to his room, ripping each other's clothes off as they go.
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was trying to do
Don't you see, Harry? We deserve that, too. I don't know – you deserve it even more. You know full well that Ron grew up in a loving family, and I'm pretty damn sure that Hermione did, too. You never had that, and it cuts me to the core. Someday, Harry, I'm going to give you that. I hope to God I can give you that. Because you need it more than anyone else I know.
What hurts the most
Is being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
As I've written this, I've gone from being pissed off at you to now… Harry, I want to tell you, really tell you. We haven't said it to each other, and we should have.
Harry, I love you.
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was trying to do
I want to know what our children will look like; what we will name them. I want to know every line, curve, and scar of your body. I want you to count my freckles and lose count because you start kissing them. Harry, why is it so bloody hard for you to see this? This is your future, and you have all but thrown it away.
Harry, if it makes you happy, I will walk away. But I know that's not what you want; you want me as much as I want you. Gods, I love you, Harry. I love you, and I would do anything for you. That's something people say all the time, but I mean it. I would die for you, and I know you'd do the same for me. Doesn't that count for something?
Not seeing that loving you
That's what I was trying to do
I love you.
Ginny
Ginny took the tear-stained sheet of parchment and threw it onto the fire. Somehow, that motion oddly satisfied her; it seemed final in a way that nothing else she had tried to do had. Tears continued to roll down her cheeks as she drew her knees up to her chin, resting her head on them. She wanted to stay here, in this desk chair she'd had since she was five, for the rest of her life. The solid oaken arms kept her emotions from spilling out and affecting anyone else.
She remembered the many little moments they'd shared together, each one weaving seamlessly into the patchwork. She found herself wishing, more desperately than she ever had before, that the war was over. It had been nearly two and a half years now since Harry, Ron, and Hermione had left. She hadn't seen any of them; she'd been lucky to receive a dirty scrap of parchment each Christmas and birthday, and, on extremely rare occasions, a small letter. Shamelessly, she had hoarded them in her night-table drawer. When it became too much to bear, she would take them out and read each one.
Alone in the house, Ginny became aware of each tiny noise. Her parents had worried about leaving her alone, but she begged to be given just a few hours to herself. So, with much groaning and grumbling, they had acquiesced to leave her alone while they ran their errands. A stair creaked; Crookshanks would never learn, she thought, hoping that the ginger half-Kneazle would come up to her room.
The door to her room creaked open, and she looked up, tears still running down her face and dripping off the end of her nose. She gasped when she saw who was standing there. "Harry?" she whispered nearly inaudibly, hardly daring to believe it. "Harry?" she repeated.
He looked awful. Bone thin, he was covered with myriad cuts and bruises, blood, and dirt. A rather nasty-looking gash on his upper left arm still bled sluggishly. His clothes were worn and his chin and cheeks were covered in dark stubble. But his eyes – oh, his eyes still burned alive and in that wonderful way that was all Harry.
"Ginny," he replied. "Merlin, Ginny, I've missed you."
The tears rained harder down her face now. Noticing them, he moved closer, shutting the door behind him. "What's the matter, Gin?"
"Nothing. Everything," she replied. No longer able to stand it, she closed the distance between them and hugged him as hard as she could. She loved the realness of him, the way his t-shirt felt against her skin, the way his hand rubbed comfortingly up and down her back. "Is – is it over, Harry? Are you home for good, or am I going to have to give you up in a few hours?"
He tilted my face up to look at him and said those words I'd been waiting to hear for so long. "It's over." He sighed and closed his eyes, long lashes brushing his cheeks. "He's dead, Gin. I'm home."
"What – what about Ron? Hermione? Everyone else?" She didn't want to know, but at the same time, she had to.
"Ron took a nasty hex for Hermione. They're at St. Mungo's now, and he'll probably be home in a couple of days. And I'm sure they won't be happy when they've found out I told you this, but Hermione's pregnant."
She gave him a watery smile. "They deserve it, you know."
"I know. So do you."
This served only to make her cry even harder. "No, Harry, we deserve it. You and I. Us."
Surprised by the sudden onset of tears, he almost didn't catch the meaning of her words. "Y-you really want me? After all you've been through because of me?"
She laughed, but it was tinged with bitterness and sadness. "Harry, you really can be thick sometimes." After a brief pause, she added, "Kiss me."
He did, softly at first. Then, as their lips and hands and tongues remembered the feel of the other, they kissed more passionately. Pausing for breath, Harry whispered, "I love you, Ginny."
"I love you, too, Harry."
That was enough for the moment. No more needed to be said; they had two and a half years of lost love to make up for. There was no time like the present; they intended to make the most of every moment.