Just a little thing that rolled out of my brain one afternoon several months ago while I was waiting out a tornado warning. I don't read much HP fanfic, so if it bears resemblances to anything else you've seen, I apologize, and it wasn't intentional.

I highly doubt this is the most original piece of fic on the market, but it's my first HP fic and this is a terrifyingly large fandom, so I humbly request many reviews!

J.K. Rowling owns everything but the exact words on this page, et cetera.

"I say, Ginny?"

She turned automatically at the sound of the familiar voice, squinting against the sheeting rain that rattled suddenly against her face as she turned out of the protective magical bubble she'd created over the open novel in her lap.

He was standing not three feet from her, hands in pockets, jacket collar turned up futilely against the deluge. "Hello, Harry," she said, smiling almost without meaning to. Even through the downpour his brilliant green eyes were unmistakable.

"You're sitting outside in a thunderstorm," he observed, unnecessarily.

"It's so loud inside." The Wizarding world had everything to celebrate. The partying had gone on for days now, as if they were afraid the world would end all over again before they got out all their happiness. When mixed with the grief, and the thousands of unspoken words in the aftermath, it was almost unbearable. Everyone had their retreats, and for Ginny, today, the front steps of the Burrow was hers. It was physically louder in the storm, of course; but somehow the bustle of contradictory emotions and obligations fluttering within her was quieter.

Harry absorbed her words, and everything she meant by them, and did not offer comment. Instead: "It's a thunderstorm," he repeated blankly.

"It's just rain. The lightning isn't anywhere near here," she assured him. He didn't look any less bewildered, but he sat down beside her anyway.

"The Phantom of the Opera?" Doubtfully, he read aloud the title of the book she held in her hands, as if it was a string of nonsense syllables.

"Hermione gave it to me…I've heard it's a Muggle classic."

He looked away from her questioning gaze, and she bit her lip. Sometimes she forgot that Harry's Muggle childhood hadn't had free rein of the world, like Hermione's. His corner of the world had literally been not much more than just that—a corner, and its small trappings, and that was all.

She leaned against his shoulder, not caring that the dye on his brand-new navy shirt was leaking and spotting her own purple blouse.

"Ginny?"

"Yes?"

"It's going to be okay."

She blinked. "I know that. You-Kn—Voldemort's gone, this time for good, right? It has to get better from here."

"I mean, it's going to be okay for you. You're going to be okay, even in the moments when you don't feel like it."

"I haven't tried to marginalize your feelings, Harry; I hope you're not trying to marginalize mine." There was no threat in her voice; only tiredness. Talking about everything her family, or she, had suffered during the war, even though it was really relatively little by some standards, exhausted her. It was easier to carry it in silence, at least for now.

Harry spoke carefully but firmly, without hesitation. "The thing is, Ginny, I've spent a really long time thinking about my parents, and how I never really knew them, and how I'm never going to see them again, except maybe after I die. But the point is that I know what it's like to not have important people in your life. And I don't ever want you to feel like you don't have me."

Closing her book with one hand, she sought out his hand with the other.

"All I want is freedom / A world with no more night," she quoted.

"What?"

"The Phantom of the Opera. It's a musical, too." Hermione had seen it on Broadway when she was ten, and bought the sheet music so she could recall the words. Ginny had spent a lot of time studying Hermione's Muggle things since the war; they were a change, a nice distraction, maybe kind of like Ron found Hermione a ("brilliant," as he frequently put it) distraction. (Hence, why Ginny had spent time with Hermione's things, and not so much time with Hermione herself.) Well, Ron and Hermione were less a distraction than a romance-centric epic absorption, but there were still parallels.

By and by, Harry observed, "War changes things." The residue of distant lightning flashed across them, turning them skeletally white for a split instant, emphasizing his words.

"But it's not always for the worse," Ginny finished for him, and her statement was punctuated by the thunder, growing more distant as it passed through the north.

"Definitely true." He slipped an arm up her back and about her shoulders, and she closed her eyes. Sometimes Harry's touch felt like sparks on her skin. Sometimes his very presence was like a magnet that tugged at her with playful insistence. Sometimes, like now, he was just the best kind of warmth, warming and fortifying her as not even hot chocolate or her family or magic could do. She curled against him, comfortable in the mugginess of their soaked clothes and mingled body heat and June humidity. She leaned one cheek against his chest, and he nestled his chin against her shoulder. It was like sinking into one another, absorbing each other, breathing the essence of the other until they were saturated with the heady feeling of being so close.

"Let's make this a tradition," she murmured, almost without realizing what she'd said. It was only when Harry sighed and bent his head more tightly against hers that she realized she'd implied (out loud!) that they would be together for a very long time.

As in, forever. Maybe.

For the hundredth time in half as many days, she turned that serious notion over in her mind, pausing briefly at the little wondering snags. Harry wasn't the most stable person in the world. He disappeared, and broke the rules, and did stupid, crazy things when he had to, and often when he didn't need to. But that was no reason not to give her heart to him, even if it hadn't been years gone already. Maybe his aptitude for going mildly off the rails would change now that he was grown up, and now that the Dark Lord wasn't hounding him at every turn. But she trusted that he—the Harry she had come to know—come to love, since the idyllic days of her childhood infatuation—wouldn't change.

And you, always beside me / To hold me and to hide me.

Yes, Harry Potter had Ginevra Weasley's heart, and she dared to think she held his as well. And so it happened that on this day in the beginning of summer, they sat in the midst of the crashing rain, trying to hear that quiet rhythm over the thunderstorm.