The Boy Who Came Through
When the battle had ended, on the morning of May 2nd, the Weasleys, Hermione, and Harry, had the chance to relax for the first time in months, even years. However, relaxation was only one of the many feelings in the air. With the end of the battle came sadness, relief, happiness, joy, grief, love, and friendships that would last lifetimes. People were reunited with loved ones who they had been separated from sometime during the war. Couples who were separated were together once again, and were in a mode of celebration. However, there was a blanket of sadness and grief over it all. Mothers lost sons, husbands lost wives, wives lost husbands, children lost parents, lovers lost lovers, and above all, friends lost friends. Minerva McGonagall, newly appointed headmistress, stood in the center of the Great Hall, tears leaking out of her tired eyes, looking at the bodies of her former student, some of whom she was very fond of. Minerva, a multi-generational teacher, remembered every student she had ever taught. She remembered the Marauders, some of the brightest and most outgoing students she had ever had the pleasure of teaching, parading around the school, bringing joy and laughter to everyone. Today, she looked at the body of the last living Marauder and his wife, shrouded in white.
Harry walked back into the Great Hall with Ron and Hermione, who walked over to the Weasleys, hand in hand, comforting each other. Oh, how he missed that. He missed Ginny. He had attempted to approach her today, twice, but well wishers and congratulators got in his way and he was never able to talk to her. However, what was strange to him was that when he made eye contact, she didn't seem happy or sad. In fact, she had this strange steely look in her eyes and gave him reproachful looks, then shifted her focus elsewhere.
Time moved on, as it always has and always will, funerals passed, and life began to gain a new normalcy to it once again. Harry was still at the Burrow, waiting to return to Hogwarts for his seventh year. It had been two weeks, and Ginny still hadn't talked to him. Not one word. He longed for her, to talk to her, to hug her, to press his face into her beautiful hair, to cry with her, to heal with her, to start a new life with with her, maybe get another chance to live. However, she didn't seem to want any of this because every time he tried to talk to her, she was busy, or she avoided him or any contact with him. He started to think that leaving her had hit her too hard and she had moved on. He began to get quieter everyday, and had began to talk to Ron and Hermione about getting a place of his own.
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley gave him looks of sympathy, and at times Mrs. Weasley patted his shoulder and said, "Give her time."
Harry thought that he had given her enough time when it was a month after the battle. He was never really busy, save the few times he visited the Ministry to chat with Kingsley. She had never approached him, and stayed up in her room most of the time. Occasionally, he would catch a glimpse of her stalking out of the house, a broomstick in her hand. She never looked at him, as if looking at him or speaking to him would insult her.
One morning, Ginny overheard him talking to his best friends about a potential apartment in London, and she had bolted upstairs, and hadn't come down until the next morning. This confused Harry incredibly because he had originally thought that Ginny didn't want to talk to him, which is why he stopped trying. But this event proved that she didn't want him to leave. "Women," he thought reproachfully.
Which is why he stood outside of Ginny's door on the first landing after dinner on one particularly warm evening at the Burrow. At first, he hesitated knocking on the door, and after a couple of minutes he decided to turn back and was just about to climb the stairs to Ron's room when Hermione turned him back around with a pointed look on her face that clearly said, "Talk to her" and continued up the stairs.
He pulled himself together and with a steely resolve, or what little he had left in him, knocked three times on the door.
"Ginny? Are you there?" he asked. He received no reply.
"Ginny? It's Harry, can I talk to you please?" Again, no reply.
"I'm coming in Ginny, I really have to talk to you!" And with that, he walked in. What he saw then was something that he didn't really expect. He expected to see his old Ginny, sitting with her back to the door, her arms crossed, her face expressionless.
However, in reality, what he saw was a broken girl, crying in the niche by the window, looking hopeless. Her eyes bloodshot, she was the exact opposite of the Ginny Weasley he knew. He closed the door, walked over to the window, easily pulled Ginny into his lap, and buried his face into the crook of her neck. He half expected her to pull away, but surprisingly, she wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her face into his chest, crying even more.
Harry rubbed her back in circles, pulling her as close as possible, murmuring soothing words into her ear, even though he doubted that she could hear him. He waited until she was done crying, then tentatively asked,
"What's wrong Gin? Why are you crying?" She pulled away, got off his lap, his embrace, angry.
"What the bloody hell do you mean, why am I crying? What the hell do you want from me Potter?" she asked menacingly. "I saw you die, you left me a year ago, no explanation other than, 'I am going to save the world from bloody Voldemort' or 'Just trust me Gin'! You died right after my brother did! And now that I was just starting to get comfortable with your presence, you decide to bloody leave again! What the bloody hell are you playing at?" she shouted. Harry, taken aback, did not raise his voice, but said,
"What did you want me to do Ginny? I couldn't not leave, or Voldemort would still be over our heads, terrorizing the world. I bloody feel guilty for making you and your entire family suffer through a battle that was entirely my fault, and it is for that reason that so many people are dead!"
"Oh Harry!" she said as she jumped into his arms and kissed him as hard as she could manage, "You came through in the end."