A/N: Okay, so I'm totally shameless. This takes place directly after "The Flaw in the Plan", and contains semi-graphic sex. You have been warned.

He is sitting at the window when Ginny comes into the boys dormitory, shutting the door quietly behind her. Just sitting, chin in his palm, watching the courtyard below. He is shirtless, barefoot; there is a t-shirt in his hand, but he appears to have forgotten it. She clears her throat quietly.

He doesn't turn around, but she can see his shoulders tense and relax. There are deep red welts crisscrossing them, and the outsides of his biceps, from the trees, she thinks, when Hagrid carried him through the Forbidden Forest. He looks oddly vulnerable like this.

"Hi, Ginny."

She takes another step forward. When she came up here, she only wanted to see him; she didn't think of anything else, but now she feels like she must move slowly, quietly, like she is sidling up to some dangerous wild animal. "Hi, Harry. Are you okay?"

Stupid question, she knows. Of course he isn't okay. None of them are. This new world they have created is still made up of shattered pieces, and it will take time to put them back together.

He ducks his head a little, and she can see the wry curve of his smile. His hair is longer than she's ever seen it, covering the nape of his neck and falling into his eyes, starting to curl at the tips. He looks older, tired and too thin, and there is a crack across the left lens of his glasses when he turns to look at her.

"How are you?" he asks, without answering. "How's--" he winces, and moves his hand vaguely, but she understands. Harry has always been better at speaking with his eyes than with his voice.

"Charlie, George and Percy are still drinking," she says, and sighs. "I think they dragged Ron with them at some point." She doesn't say Fred's name, but she knows they are both thinking it. There's a cold hollow in the pit of her stomach, and she thinks that it hasn't started to hurt yet, not the way it will. Maybe it's just that she's so tired. "Dad and Bill took Mum back to the Burrow."

"And you came here."

She nods. "And I came here."

He stands up. She always forgets how tall he is, or maybe he's gotten taller over the last year (the last year, she thinks, it's been that long); he's nearly Ron's height by now. His jeans are way too loose, held up around his narrow hips by a battered leather belt.

"Why?" he asks. It's the honest confusion in his voice that does her in, like he can't imagine any reason that she'd want to be here, now, and she thinks that for all he's done, all he's seen, Harry can be shockingly naive. She puts her arms around his waist and steps close, pulling him into a hug, and his hands hover for a moment, uncertainly, before closing gently over her shoulders. She rubs her nose against his collarbone, nuzzling, and then they are still.

She doesn't know how long they stand like that in the empty room with scarlet hangings fluttering and the distant sounds of a half-drunken, half-mad celebration spilling out onto the castle grounds. Someone is playing fiddle music, and there is a frenzied feeling in the air, and it doesn't surprise her at all that Harry is hiding out up here, away from the world he's saved. His arms tighten convulsively, and he sighs and sags against her.

"I don't--" he says after a long while. "I don't know what I'm meant to do now."

She nods without moving her head away. His skin is warm and he smells like soap and smoke and she can feel his heart beating, slow and comforting, against her ear. "I've missed you," she mumbles. "When they brought you out of the Forest--" but she can't touch that, not yet. She can still see him, so limp and fragile on the ground before Voldemort's horde, like a sacrifice.

"I'm sorry," he says, but she shakes her head.

"Don't be. You're here now." Alive. Alive, and breathing, thank God, I've lost enough people I love to this war.

"But--"

"I said, don't be sorry," and it's as much to stop him from apologizing again as anything else that she tilts her head up and kisses his mouth.

It's a sweet kiss, slow and gentle, until all of a sudden it isn't and he's hauling her close, hands fisting in the sleeves of her robes, and she runs her fingers down the knobs of his spine and grins against his mouth when he shivers.

They're both breathing hard when he finally breaks away, and even in the dim light she can see the flush high across his cheekbones. She reaches up and cups a hand around his cheek and he closes his eyes and leans into it and she thinks that the last time they touched like this was on his birthday, in her little room with the end of the world looming over their heads. That was almost a year ago and the world didn't end, but she still half expects Ron to come bursting in with murder in his eyes.

"I keep expecting Ron to come charging in the door," Harry says in an unconscious mimickry of her thoughts.

"The last time I saw him, he was communing with a bottle of Firewhiskey," Ginny says. "Hermione and Neville, too." And she takes a deep breath and looks at him, at his high cheekbones and the sharp line of his jaw and the way his lips quirk to one side, not quite a smile, and the rhythm of his breath, all so familiar, and she is barely nervous at all when she adds, "we'll be alone here."

Harry's eyes fly open, and he stares at her for a long moment. "We're--are you--" Color rushes into his cheeks and Ginny smiles, thinking that she shouldn't find that quite as charming as she does.

"I'm sure," she whispers, and kisses him again. His hands slide down her sides, tentatively, and brush the bare skin where her shirt doesn't quite meet her jeans. Ginny closes her eyes, feeling like her whole world is narrowed into those two points of heat, and that's a good feeling, to forget everything and press up against Harry, putting her hands over his and urging his fingers up and under the hem of her shirt. He ducks his head, still flushing, but his lips are curved into a smile.

"D'you think we should talk about--"

"No," Ginny interrupts. It's possible that she'll regret it tomorrow morning, that maybe half-drunk with exhaustion and grief is not the best way to be doing this, but she doesn't think so. And even if she does regret it, at least there'll be a tomorrow morning. She reaches up to slide his much-abused glasses off of his nose and set them aside, then slips her hands into the back pockets of his jeans. Harry blinks at her. His eyes look impossibly green, and he shakes his head and smiles, dipping his head to nuzzle the tender spot under her ear.

Things get a little hazy after that, but Ginny thinks that she's the one who topples them onto the nearest bed while Harry's hands get tangled up in her shirt, and the way he apologizes for cursing under his breath makes her laugh. It takes him two fumbling tries to get her bra clasps unhooked, and she can't help him because she's trying to work out how to undo the buckle on his belt, but when he finally peels the satin away from her skin the cooler air hits her like a shock and she freezes.

Harry freezes too, eyes wide. "Ginny?"

She can feel goosebumps prickling over her breasts, nipples pulling into hard little knots, and Harry's warm weight between her thighs suddenly seems startlingly intimate. She closes her eyes and breathes in, feeling suddenly and unaccountably shy.

"Ginny?" Harry says again. "Are you alright?" She feels him tense against her, about to move back, and she hooks her leg over his, holding him still.

"I'm alright," she says, and her voice is only a little shaky. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" He sounds concerned and maybe a little dubious, but she can't quite bring herself to open her eyes and look. Instead of answering, she reaches down and finishes undoing his belt, pulling it out of the beltloops with an audible snap. Harry laughs a little at that, sounding maybe a bit shaky himself, and that's somehow very comforting, that he's just as nervous as she is.

"I'm sure," she says again, and lifts her head to kiss his worried mouth. He slides a hand under her neck, fingers tangling in her hair, unbearably gentle, and kisses her nose, the corner of her mouth, her neck, mouth opening warm and wet over her skin and she makes a small noise in the back of her throat and arches against him. She can feel Harry smile against her collarbone, and she slides her fingers inside his jeans, over his jutting hipbones, reaching forward to undo the button and zipper by feel. Harry's hips jerk forward, involuntarily; he's wearing boxers, but the material is so thin that it's almost like being skin to skin and he sucks in a sharp breath across his teeth when she slips her hand inside.

"I'm--" he says, "can I--" His hands hesitate against the button of her jeans. He's shaking, she realizes, nervousness or arousal or both.

"Yeah," she murmurs against his hair. "I want--" her breath hitches. "I want you to."

"Oh, well in that case--" he sounds distracted, fingers worrying at the button. "I suppose--" the button comes undone and Ginny lifts her hips instinctively, allowing him to pull her jeans down. "Oh," Harry says. There's a low rasp in his voice, and he presses his hot face against her breast. Ginny kicks her jeans the rest of the way off and then rolls suddenly, so that she's straddling him.

It's getting light in the dormitory, a gray and hazy false dawn. She can see his chest heaving with each breath, his palms pressed against the tops of her thighs, and she leans over to suck his left nipple into her mouth, bracing herself against his sternum with her other hand.

"Oh," Harry says again, and his head drops back agaist the pillow with an audible thud. His hands close convulsively over her thighs, fingertips digging into the muscle, and Ginny shifts up enough to hook her fingers under his jeans and boxers and skim them off over his hips and thighs. He laughs breathlessly when his feet get tangled up, and then they're naked, and Ginny still can't quite believe this is happening--that after all this time--

She kisses his neck, open-mouthed, and uses her teeth; he'll have a bruise there later, but right now he's moaning low in his throat and wrapping his arms around her, tight, tight, and she can't bring herself to care.

Harry murmurs something about protection, and she huffs out a laugh against his sweat-slick skin. "I did a Contraceptive Charm before I came up here," she says.

"Huh," he says, and she pulls away enough to see that he still looks dazed, but he's grinning, too. "I didn't realize you'd planned this."

"It never hurts to be prepared."

He closes his eyes and laughs quietly. "Still, are you sure--"

"If you say that again, I am going to hex you." She rolls her hips, and he abruptly stops talking, head thrown back, lips parted, gasping.

"I--" Harry swallows. "Okay."

"I'm tired--" Ginny nibbles his throat, trailing her hands down the sides of his ribcage, savoring the way he shivers, the way his hips are moving, restlessly, "--of you trying to protect me from myself." She shifts up, bracing her palms against his chest, and then he's sliding into her in one fluid motion.

Ginny freezes, clinging to him, mouth half-open against his neck, breathing fast and shallow. It doesn't hurt, not the way she thought it would, but the sensation is almost overwhelming, and it's several seconds before she becomes aware that Harry is holding himself unnaturally still, fingers pressing so hard into her buttocks that she thinks she'll have bruises in the morning. "It's okay," she murmers, not quite sure which one of them she's reassuring. "You can move," and to prove her point, she grinds against him, slow and deliberate.

Harry gasps something that's not quite a curse but is a long way off from coherent English and arches into her, and she presses back down against him and it's good, it's better than she even imagined it could be, how they move together and the way he says her name, whispers it against her lips and into the curve of her breasts, low and wondering and breathless, and how he forgets, for a time, to be gentle with her.

It's not quite light out when Harry stumbles back into the dormitory, loose-limbed and sleepy, clutching a glass of water. Ginny yanks the covers up to her chin when the door opens, then relaxes when she sees him. He sits on the edge of the bed and hands her the glass, which she promptly spills on herself in her haste to gulp it down.

"Take it easy," Harry says. His eyes are heavy-lidded and the words come out slow and slurred, like he's almost too tired to move his lips and tongue. " 'S not going anywhere."

Ginny laughs and hands the glass back to him, and waits for him to set it down before tugging him down beside her. He wraps an arm around her and buries his face in her hair and she twines her legs around his and feels, finally, like she's touching enough of him.

"Neville was in the common room," Harry says after a while, and yawns.

"Oh, no." It comes out sounding sarcastic, which she doesn't really mean; she just can't quite make herself get worked up over such a thing as that.

"I wouldn't worry about it."

Ginny nods into his shoulder and doesn't say anything else. She is tired enough that the world seems very far away and hazy, not quite asleep but drifting in a limbo between consciousness and oblivion. She notices, distantly, when Harry's breathing slows and evens out, and something cold and frightened uncoils in her chest, and dissipates.

Outside, the sun is rising.