Title: Laissez Faire

Betas: The fabulous Lina and Jess.

Pairings: Harry/Ginny and Draco/Ginny, very minor on both accounts.

A Warning: This fic is home to what may be the longest run-on sentence ever. What can I say? I like to make my own fun with grammar.

Notes: It's a curious little thing. Many thanks to the Rapture for the inspiration.

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When everything was over, Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood at the top of the hill and looked immensely relieved. Ron half-smiled, and Hermione wiped a tear away, but Harry looked relieved most of all, as if he'd always rather hoped it would happen but had never really believed it could.

They stood at the hilltop and surveyed the ruin below with utter disinterest. They weren't alone there, really, but they were all who remained on the apex- all who remained with breath on the apex, the last left of those who had been meant only to end it.

Hermione descended first and threw her arms around Neville's neck. He started slightly in shock, and she pulled away, but not before whispering fiercely what could only be words of encouragement, as she'd done so very many times before. Ron came next, and he held out a hand to Luna, who took it and pressed a very solemn kiss to his forehead. Mostly absent as always, she looked up to the Boy Who Lived Once More and allowed a small and satisfied smile to play at her thin lips. Harry did not descend. He only looked at Ginny, who was utterly, utterly devastated and barely felt the oh-so-familiar touch of her brother's large hand on her shoulder.

They joined Harry once more, and Hermione withdrew something from the pocket of her robes. They held it up together, eyes seeing nothing but all that was left to them and they disappeared for the last time, in a way not so dissimilar to the way that Harry was ever-so-fond of sweeping all that was his under his dead father's invisibility cloak and hiding it away from the rest of the world.

She supposed he was entitled to a little bit of selfishness.

And so she and Neville returned to the castle, holding Luna firmly by the arm, who did not seem to want to leave the valley, as if there was some chance Ron had dropped his Sneakoscope or some little thing and would pop back to get it any moment now. Ginny knew it was the very last time that she would see her favorite brother, but somehow, she hardly felt it like she felt the loss of Percy, whose place he'd taken. Or Charlie. Or George.

Ginny paid no attention to the rumors she heard about the ghosts of Godric's Hollow, or the Quibbler article on the true identities of a popular Muggle rock group, or the incredulous Prophet report that stated the trio had been spotted in Paris, eating ice cream and waltzing down the Champs-Elysées in broad daylight as if they hadn't been missing, presumed dead for the past seven years.

And when Ginny Weasley married, finally, a bitter-cold love in a warm, over-floral ceremony that half the wizarding world attended, to Draco Malfoy, whom she'd convinced herself had redeemed himself by saving that lost brother's life, in a move she was certain would convince the rest of those bloody ungrateful bastards she cared about not-at-all that the war really was over and their sacrifices had not been in vain (oh-how-noble!), she didn't bother trying to tell herself she'd imagined that warm, large, so-familiar hand in hers as she walked down the aisle, and had blinked, then stopped short, when Draco's eyes darted to his shoulder and then behind him very quickly. She had recognized Ron's measured breathing, and that sob she'd heard from the empty back row as they recited their vows had been unmistakably Hermione's.

Neither of them had ever been very good at being subtle.

So Ginny was not surprised, after her first daughter was born, to see two extra presents under the tree her third Christmas at Malfoy Manor. One was a tiny wizarding chess set, one she'd entirely expected, and the other was a small, mother-of-pearl barrette that Draco had later identified as being Argentinean. A note had been attached. It said only Love from... and was unsigned.

It was only then that Ginny wondered if perhaps Harry had died. It could have merely been that the thought of being a ghost did not appeal to him- that his heart didn't ache for the world as she knew Ron's would, and Hermione's would, that he'd imploded and was living in a small house on a mountain somewhere with the people he'd made his family at last. But, later that night, after Draco had fallen asleep and she was kept awake by the lonesome, mournful cries of one Minerva H. Malfoy, she stood, abruptly, and recognized the silken whisper of a well-loved Invisibility Cloak on her pale, trembling hand.

"Harry?" she'd whispered, terrified of the resulting silence.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, voice thick with guilt. Ginny smiled, eyes moving up to where she knew his were, fixed on her with an intensity that hadn't, in all these years, dulled a whit.

"But I'm fine."

And that was the last of them that she ever heard.

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My betas are awesome. Ridiculously awesome. Thanks, girls.