author's note: written for tumblr's hinny week. this is actually my first time writing hinny, so it's probably not my best. (also for lucy, whose enthusiastic hinny shipping is an inspiration to us all. contains swearing (one word of it, but it's swearing nonetheless) (also shout out to you if you spot the florence + the machine reference) title is the title of a song by the band 'peace' who are fabulous and you should totally listen to.
i don't own anything.
The war ended over a year ago, but she sort of feels like it's still going on inside of her, in her chest, in her stomach, curses rattling around her organs like keys on a key chain. She swallows these feelings though, because she is strong, she is titanium, and she carries everyone else. She carries Angelina from grubby Muggle pubs to George's warm embrace, carries her parents from her brother's funeral, (grudgingly) carries Percy back into the bosom of the family. The only person she doesn't carry is him. He won't let her (he's the only one she wants in her arms, his is the only weight she can hold, because she knows he will hold her too (or at least, he used to)).
The summer after she leaves school, they are having dinner at The Burrow, to celebrate something (Percy's engagement, perhaps, maybe the new branch of the shop opening in Hogsmeade?) and he sits alone in the garden, resting on his elbows, head thrown back and eyes closed, sunlight pouring over him.
"Mum wants to know if you're staying."
He opens his eyes. They're greener than the grass, and still make her stomach do somersaults.
"What? Right, oh - yeah, if that's alright, I...yeah, I don't want to, um, y'know..."
She nearly reverts back to her fifteen year old self, laughing and saying "Shut up, Potter," in an exasperated tone. But she doesn't. Part of her - the ugly, nasty, bitter part of her heart that makes fun of people, and made Luna show Harry the Ravenclaw Common Room instead of Cho - wants to hurt him. She wants to make him feel like she did, in the months where she fought without him, for him, in the months where she knew nothing of his whereabouts, of his health, in the months where she missed him so much it made her feel sick. So she shrugs, an ice cold queen shrug (even though she's around him, she burns up, always has, always will) and says "Alright then."
He starts to get to his feet, and she watches his legs wobble as he stands, like a newborn giraffe's. He's an idiot, he's got no control over his limbs, he's too tall, too skinny, too ridiculous. It's hard to believe that this boy saved the wizarding world.
"Ginny?" he says suddenly, and she looks round at him. His glasses are perfect circles. They used to steam up when she kissed him.
"Yeah?"
"D'you remember that one, um, Wednesday, or maybe it was Thurs- anyway, it doesn't matter, I just- you, do you remember that-"
"Spit it out, Harry!" she laughs. Harry opens and closes his mouth several times like a fish. She feels fifteen again.
"Do you," he says slowly and deliberately, "remember that one afternoon by the lake?"
She thinks back. There were a lot of them, those afternoons by the lake. She looks straight into eyes, and finds that she knows almost instantly (because she understands him perfectly) the one he is talking about. He still wants them to carry each other.
"I've got to go and tell Mum you're staying," she mumbles, and kicks the grass with the battered Doc Martens she inherited from Tonks. He looks slightly (hugely, massively) devastated.
"Ginny," he says again, "I'm sorry if I-"
The memory of the way he had kissed her on the afternoon he's talking about hits her like it's a bowling ball and she's the pins, and she's scattering, shattering, because he hadn't just kissed her, had he? He'd whispered something too, oh, Merlin, it was all coming back to her now. He carried her, and she carried him, and she wasn't giving up - she was just giving in.
"Of course I remember, you tosser," she laughs shakily, "did you think I would forget?"
"I still mean it." It slips out before he can stop it, and once said, it hangs between them, thick in the air like treacle.
She turns to face him, and he's looking at his feet. Idiot, she thinks, beautiful, brave idiot.
"Don't fuck me over, Potter," she says quietly, so her mother can't hear her swear, "I don't do second chances very often."
"I won't," he says, "I'm staying for dinner, and I won't."
She gives him the blazing look that preceded their first kiss, their (horrible) break up, and he stares straight into her eyes. She sort of wants to cry, because before, that awful, awful day they kissed in her bedroom, he couldn't look straight at her. War has made him brave in more than one way.
"I won't." he repeats, and she glances behind her to see if her mother's watching out of the window. She's not, and Ginny crosses the distance between them, and kisses him with such ferocity that it's a little overwhelming.
"You're staying for dinner," she says when they (finally) break apart, "and you mean it."
"Yeah." He's slightly tongue tied, but he's smiling, and already she feels like a weight has been lifted.
"I mean it too," she tells him fiercely, and takes his hand.