A/N: Yes it's another one of those. This is my version of how Harry and Ginny first met after the battle of Hogwarts. This hasn't been beta read so all mistakes are mine. Also, please ignore the excruciatingly uninventive name for this story.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or the Wizarding World.

Harry and Ginny's reunion

After leaving the headmaster's office, Harry, Ron and Hermione walked in silence towards the grand staircase, each enveloped in their own thoughts. Once they reached the third floor landing, the trio muttered solemn "see you later"s and left in opposite directions. Harry started the long climb up the many flights of stairs that separated him from Gryffindor tower; while the other two departed hand in hand, heading down the staircase to the great hall.

The only thing that infiltrated Harry's exhaustion-muddled brain as he put one foot in front of another was the image of his warm four-poster bed which was waiting for him upstairs.

When he finally reached the portrait of the Fat Lady he was surprised to see that, for the most part, she had escaped damage during the battle. Instead, she beamed at him, greeting him with tears of joy and a raucous round of applause. Of course, she wasn't alone. The applause had followed him through the castle every time he passed a painting. The occupants of the portraits had then decided to follow him to his destination, forming a procession beside him.

Without a word, without even bothering to ask for a password, the Fat Lady swung forward to admit him, wiping away a final tear. Up to that moment, Harry had, more or less, managed to ignore the noise behind him. But as the corridor suddenly fell silent, he chanced a glance behind him. It seemed like just about every portrait in Hogwarts had tried to cram into the ones on the seventh floor. Now, all of the occupants were staring at Harry expectantly, eyes full of respect and awe.

With a terse nod at his audience, Harry hurried through the portrait hole and into Gryffindor tower. He breathed a sigh of relief as he reached the comfort of the common room. Nobody was there. No more questions, at least for the time being. The place was the same as always. The same roaring fire, the same plush armchairs and sofas. Almost as if nothing had changed.

Harry took but a moment to soak in the memories of his home, before climbing the final staircase that led him to his dormitory. He barely noticed the morning sun that was shining outside as the fatigue overtook him and he collapsed in a heap on his old four-poster, glasses still on and wand still in hand.

It felt like he had been asleep for mere minutes, when Harry was abruptly awoken by a commotion beneath him. Groaning slightly at the noise, he started to carefully disentangle himself from the sheets which had twisted underneath him as he slept. Looking out the window, Harry saw the tell-tale sign that he had spent far longer in that room than he realised. The sun was just beginning to set in the distance.

Suddenly, he found the source of the commotion. He couldn't help but smile at himself as he heard the all too familiar voice of Mrs Weasely shouting "Come back down here at once! The poor boy's been through enough already! He needs to rest!"

"Well you're not exactly helping, are you? You've probably gone and woken him yourself now!" came another voice. Again, he recognised it immediately, but it was not the one he had expected to hear. The response was followed by pounding footsteps on the staircase, getting louder and louder. Quickly, Harry got back to disentangling himself – he had unconsciously stopped doing so when he heard the voices.

He had just managed to free himself and was just standing up when the dormitory door burst open. Standing in the doorway was none other than one Ginevra Molly Weasely.

Harry would have been happy to see her if she didn't look like she wanted to kill him. The dirt, blood and grime from the battle only adding to the effect. He was rooted to the spot as a fuming Ginny Weasely stormed over to him. She stood there glaring up at him for the space of a millisecond.

Then, in one brisk movement, she raised her hand and slapped him across the cheek as hard as she could. Ginny's "as hard as she could" meant that Harry was literally seeing stars as he was sent flying right back onto his bed.

He gave a gasp at the sudden pain on his cheek. Lifting a hand to cradle the red mark Ginny had left, Harry looked up at her; a confused and hurt expression on his face.

The scowl she was sending his way did not soften in the slightest. "That" she said, "was for that awful trick you decided to pull yesterday.

"And this", She raised her hand again. Harry winced, anticipating the blow. Her hand came down on the other side of his face. At least she had the courtesy of being slightly gentler this time. "Is for breaking up with me and then abandoning me for almost a year."

All Harry could do was stare up at her towering form in shock. She was breathing heavily and glaring at him with fire in her eyes.

"Er… sorry?" He tried, before realising just how bad that sounded. Ginny seemed to have the same opinion.

"Sorry? Sorry? Don't you "sorry" me Harry Potter! You disappear off the face of the Earth for months! Never mind that I'm worried sick! And then what? You just turn up out of the blue and all of a sudden it doesn't matter anymore? Not in my books. You insensitive prat, Harry Potter!"

Shooting him one last look of disgust, Ginny turned on her heel and stalked towards the open door. Just as she reached the doorway, Harry's brain finally kicked into gear. He couldn't let her leave. At least not without giving her the explanation she deserved.

"Ginny, wait!"

She stopped at the sound of his voice but did not turn around to face him. Her hand was on the doorknob, a second away from pulling the door shut behind her. Her free hand was clenched in anger.

"What?" she muttered so quietly Harry almost missed it. Cautiously, he stood from the bed and took a couple of steps towards her.

"Um… You're right. It wasn't fair of me to do that to you and I owe you an explanation." He could swear he saw some of the tension in her shoulders leave.

She turned around to face him and he was thrilled to see that, for now at least, some of the anger was gone from her expression. "This had better be good." She told him.

With a nervous smile he sat back down on the bed and motioned for Ginny to do the same. Reluctantly, she moved away from the door, closing it behind her, and towards Harry. She did not take the space he offered her, however; instead choosing to sit on Ron's bed, which was next to his.

"Right… Okay, I'll start from the beginning. As you know, Dumbledore left me an important task which I needed to complete if we were going to have a chance at defeating Voldemort. Ron and Hermione decided to come along and help me. I won't go into all of the details just yet-"

"But-"

"I know. Don't worry; I'll explain it, but not now. Everyone else has the right to know about it as well and I would prefer to have Ron and Hermione with me in case I forget something. Anyway, these past months have basically been the three of us moving around the country, camping in various places. Oh, and we broke into the Ministry of Magic and Gringotts, but I'll explain all that later."

Glancing at Ginny, Harry could tell that she was trying to hide her surprise at the news. When she noticed him looking, she raised an eyebrow, motioning for him to go on.

"Well, on this little "mission" that Dumbledore left us, we needed to find certain objects and destroy them. Without destroying them, Voldemort couldn't be killed. That's why we broke into those places and that's why we came back here. So, I know this does nothing to make it up to you but please believe me when I say how sorry I am for leaving you. At times this year, when I felt especially down or lonely, I would take out the Marauders' Map and just look at your dot. It helped me get through some rough times, knowing that you were still there."

Harry could feel himself going red as he said this. Ginny was now looking at him with open curiosity. He cleared his throat and continued before she could ask any questions. "You don't know how difficult it was for me."

He heard a snort of disbelief from Ginny, so he hastened on before she could interrupt.

"When we discovered that the last object that we needed to find was here at Hogwarts, we came straight here. Of course, we set off the curfew and had to get here through Aberforth's secret passage. But you probably already know all that seeing as you came the same way. Anyway, I found the item. It was Ravenclaw's lost diadem. We then came across Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle who assumed that, because I was looking for it, the diadem was useful to Voldemort; but Crabbe set off this fire thing which managed to destroy the diadem and kill him in the process. He never was particularly bright.

"So that about sums up the task. With the diadem gone, the only thing that was stopping Voldemort from dying was his snake. Yes, the snake was included in the list of things to destroy." He answered to Ginny's questioning look.

"Okay, now I get to the part with the trick I played. I can honestly say I had no intention of going into that forest. If I thought Voldemort would have kept his word and not harmed anyone else if I surrendered, then I would've.

"But then I found out that we'd been wrong about something all along. There had to be one more death in order for Voldemort to die. Mine. And Voldemort had to do it himself for it to work. On my way to the forest, I saw Neville and told him about killing the snake. I didn't tell him why. I just told him to make sure it happened.

"My plan was going fine. No one knew where I was going. No one could see me because I was using my invisibility cloak. But then I saw you. You were out in the grounds, helping a student. I had to force myself away from you. I knew that if you saw me; if you knew what I was trying to do, you would try to stop me, and I wouldn't have been able to say no because it would've been so much easier to just stay there with you.

"So I walked to the forest. I found the clearing the Death Eaters had set up in. I didn't put up a fight. I had already accepted that it had to happen. But when the killing curse hit, I found myself somewhere entirely different to where I had expected to be. Dumbledore was there and he explained everything. He told me that because I had sacrificed myself willingly, I had placed a magical protection over those I had sacrificed myself for. That's why none of the spells Voldemort used after my "death" actually held.

Then Dumbledore gave me a choice. He said that I could stay there or I could come back here. If I stayed, I could have been with my parents, Sirius, Remus… Fr-Fred. But I chose to come back. I chose to come back to a world of pain and suffering. I chose to come back to you."

He felt a weight join him on the bed and looked around to see that Ginny had sat down next to him. She gave him a small, comforting smile, all traces of her previous anger gone, and put her hand over his, interlocking their fingers.

Harry fought the lump that had formed in his throat and carried on. "Once I made my decision, I was suddenly back on the forest floor. In the real world, no time had passed and the curse had knocked Voldemort to the floor as well. He sent someone to check that I was really dead. Unfortunately, dying for a moment doesn't mean that you don't have a heartbeat."

Ginny gave a sharp intake of breath as she feared the worst. "Fortunately, though, he had sent Narcissa Malfoy. She realised that the only way she would be able to get inside the castle to find Draco would be as part of the victory party. She announced that I was dead. She knew I was alive but she still risked lying to Voldemort just so she could see her son. I pretended to be dead and Hagrid was made to carry me as his own personal torture. Well... that's about it. You know the rest." He trailed off.

"Harry?" He turned to look at her and was shocked that she had tears in her eyes. Ginny never cried. "I have one question."

"Yeah?"

"How did you survive?"

He looked away from her. "Erm… Well… You see, on the night that my parents died, a piece of Voldemort's soul latched itself onto the only living thing in the building. Me. That's why I could speak Parseltongue. That's why I could see into his mind. When he tried to kill me last night, he only killed the part of himself that was in me. He had to kill me, because he couldn't die if there was still a part of him alive in me."

Harry avoided Ginny's eyes throughout his answer, not wanting to see the look of disgust on her face. But then she started talking again and he looked at her, finding that her expression hadn't changed in the slightest. She hadn't recoiled away from him and her hand was still on his.

"So… that means, those objects you had to find… and the snake... they had some of his soul in as well?" He looked at her in wonder. How on Earth had she managed to figure that out?

As if reading his mind, she said, "It's the wizarding world, Harry. Nothing's too far-fetched and it's the only thing I can think of. Plus it would explain the diary." A shadow passed over her face at the memory, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. "Am I right?"

"Uh… Yeah, you are."

A satisfied smile crossed her face, but was soon replaced by a mischievous one. "You know, Harry? You forgot one thing that you still owe me."

"What's that?" he replied.

"This." She said, pulling him down to kiss him on the lips.

A/N: Hope you liked it. Please review to let me know what you think. This is my first fic so criticism is welcome, but hopefully it's constructive.