A/N: Written for my friend Chi (skwirl). It was first meant to be her birthday present, but that was so long ago I'm not sure if it can be counted as that anymore… Anyway, Chi, I hope you like it!

And many thanks to mew-tsubaki for betaing!

The First Summer

Now the time for healing had come, with summer and brightness and the air that smelled of tomorrow will be better.

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It was the night after Fred's funeral, and they had been sitting in the backyard of the Burrow for hours, and none of them had uttered a single word. When she had grabbed his hand, before, and it had trembled the slightest one could imagine, they had gotten out of the house and away from the suffocating silences in there.

He hadn't questioned it. None of it. Ginny had pulled at his hand, and by the touch of her skin against his, he knew that she was in as desperate a need of him as he was of her.

So now they sat there, alone, his head resting on her shoulder and his fingers playing with hers. They had heard a window behind them being opened a while ago, and Harry had been about to turn around and see who it was, but Ginny had put her hand on his cheek so that he had not moved. A small gasp had sounded, that kind that came before yelling, but it had more resembled a fish flailing out of water, but then no yell had erupted. Then, a few moments later, the window had been shut, almost soundlessly.

Since then, nothing had happened. No birds had chirped, no leaves had stirred, and no words had been spoken. It was one of those quiet nights, where there were no stars in the sky and no movements in the air—only the silent breathing of everything could be heard.

It was also one of those nights where everything felt good and wrong at the same time. So maybe it just felt like…nothing? But didn't those two feelings negate each other? Either way, Harry could have stayed there for many more hours, just trying to look at the sky and decide whether it was worth being happy or wasteful being sad.

"What good did it do?" Ginny suddenly asked, and he turned his head around so quickly he thought he would snap his neck. She had her jaw clenched, and her hair was all frizzy where she had been resting her head in her hand until now.

"What did what good?"

"The war, everything. Everyone just died."

Harry swallowed. He had been thinking about this, too, but still didn't know the best way to answer it. "We got rid of Voldemort, and if we hadn't many more might have died" was his answer, finally.

Ginny nodded, and he thought, no, he knewthat she already was aware of this; she just wanted him to say the same words.

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It was a week later, and nothing had really happened, and for the first time that could be said in a sad way. If nothing had happened, before, then everything would be good, it would be a relief to hear those words. But now, "nothing has happened" could mean "I'm bored." It was a nice change.

They were in Ron's room, and nothing kept happening until Hermione spoke up. "I'm considering going back, you know." Hermione's words drifted through the room, almost unable to penetrate the laziness that the heat had caused, the feeling that the air was so thick one could eat it.

"Where?" Ron asked, and it looked as though he hadn't understood until now that she really had spoken, but now he rose a bit so that he could see her face properly, which rested on his stomach.

"Yeah, where?" Harry added when Hermione did not answer.

"To Hogwarts," she answered, looking up at the ceiling. Ginny put a hand on Harry's knee so that she could sit up properly when she heard it.

"Seriously?" Ginny asked, and she had to cough afterwards as her voice broke thanks to being quiet for hours.

"Yes, seriously."

Now Ron sat up completely, and it was so abruptly that Hermione almost fell and hit her head on the floor, but she put a hand against the ground so that she could push herself up. "Going back? To—but—why?" Ron's ears were red, but it could as well have been because of the heat, or that he had been lying with them on the hard floor.

"I actually do want to finish my education, Ron," she answered. "And don't tell me it's stupid, because I won't tell you it's stupid notto do so."

Ron opened his mouth but closed it again and sank back onto the floor. Hermione smiled a bit and laid herself back against his stomach with the smallest of content smiles playing at her lips. When Ginny had closed her eyes next to Harry, he did so as well, and the room was quiet again, back to its peaceful, dusty rest as if there never had been a disruption.

In a way, Harry felt that he should have expected this, that Hermione would want to go back. And in one way, he felt that he actually had known it—that they all had known it. She was the one of them that actually needed it, that would get something from it.

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A night not long after Harry's eighteenth birthday, he had woken up, a cold sweat all over his body, and he had felt so empty. As if something was missing.

The moment he realized what it was, he wanted to throw up. Had he just missed a part of Voldemort in himself? Wasn't he supposed to be okay now?

It wasn't right. He was never going to be okay, and he hated himself for it. And the fact that he had been so juvenile to believe everything was going to be all right… How could he even think that?

He now stood in the garden of the Burrow, and it reminded him so much of when he and Ron were younger, when they would sneak out of bed in the summers simply to search for an adventure, but with the difference that he wanted to get out of his body, that he did not want to be there, that everything was making him cringe and oh Merlin, he couldn't do this.

He fell down on the dew-covered lawn and buried his face in the wet grass. He wanted it to drown him, he wanted to remove that feeling that he wasn't whole, because he knew what it meant, and it meant that he was dirty.

There was something that tore him apart, all of a sudden. Something shouted at him that he was disgusting, filthy, no better than Voldemort, and the other pleaded to him to come back. To realize it was okay, that it had only been a stupid nightmare.

It was like a tiny hand pulling at him, wanting him to enter the light world, the one with warmth and safety and it was not likea hand—it was Ginny's hand.

She sat on the grass next to him, the big t-shirt she was using as pajamas pulled over her knees, and she simply held his hand and locked eyes with him. It was what he needed, and he did not let go of her eyes; all of his focus was on them and, after a while, his breath stabilized, the one he hadn't known was turning into a pant, and he could wipe the drops off his face, the ones he didn't know were tears or dew drops.

She pressed a bit tighter on his hand and then kissed him carefully on his lips. "What happened, what did you dream of?"

"I don't remember. I just got this feeling, this realization that it was notbecause of Voldemort. And, first…" He hesitated but let it all slip out at last: "First I missed him."

"It's okay." She hadn't let go of his neck, which she held so that their nose tips almost were touching and their foreheads definitely touching. Then she kissed him again.

They did not go inside until the morning, and when they finally did, they felt more rested than if they had slept the whole night.

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Harry rubbed his eyes tiredly and walked into the kitchen. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were all up, sitting by the table and eating cereal.

"Hey, Harry," Ron said through his crunches. "Slept well, mate?"

"Yes, sure," Harry answered with a nod, and he thought of how much brighter Ron's eyes looked compared to the beginning of the summer.

And Hermione, of course—her eyes would be bright today when she knew she was soon going to get back to Hogwarts, in no more than a couple of hours.

"Nervous, Hermione?" Harry asked and took a seat.

"Not much, to be honest," she answered and smiled. "Luna will be there, so I won't be alone."

Ginny smiled, at Harry, at Ron, and finally at Hermione. "You'll never be alone, Hermione."

"I know," Hermione answered, and for the first time Harry felt as though they really had defeated Voldemort and won. For the first time.

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It had been the summer after everything. It had been an ending to something they couldn't quite decipher. Once, they had been fragile, broken, but that had changed with this summer. This summer they had been put on a shelf, forgotten, slowly covered more and more by dust.

But that had ended now. They had been taken down from the shelf, wiped off, and they had found that they were no longer delicate; these dim, hot, summer months made them harder and stronger.

And now, as they stood at Kings Cross Station and hugged each other, all four of them, even though only one would leave, they hadn't even one piece of dust left on them, not one.They felt like newborns and they knew that it wasn't only the summer after; it was also the summer before, the summer before everything else.

They were going to live now.