For Lady who requested Harry/Ginny. I've never attempted these two before so I hope this came out all right. AHHH! ;)
It's Saturday afternoon, and the Burrow is melancholy. Everyone seems to be doing their best to put on a brave face and to keep busy, to keep distracted. Upstairs, Ginny paces her room, manages to refrain from punching the wall, and, instead, runs her hands through her hair in frustration. They get caught in a tangled mess and it occurs to her that she hasn't brushed it in days. Not since the day they put Fred in the ground.
And she's a bloody mess and the house is too quiet without explosions coming from the room overhead or her mother yelling about rubber chickens and O.W.L.S. and things that don't matter anymore. She wants to yell and scream and cry to break the silence. But that kind of behavior will make everyone worry and she hates being coddled. And besides, George has everyone worried enough as it is.
She sits on the bed, gets up and paces some more, sits down again and she's at a loss as to what she should do with herself. Finally, she decides that she just wants out, but there's nowhere to go but up so she grabs her broom and begins to walk purposefully down the hall when Harry blocks her path.
And for a moment she is stunned because he is both the first and last person she wants to see right now and she wonders how that is even possible. They've been avoiding each other's eyes for days, and they've barely even spoken. He's been too busy with funerals and hiding from reporters to come talk to her. Or at least, that was the excuse she made for him in the beginning.
But they've been stealing sideways glances at dinner and skirting around subjects in the living room and rubbing shoulders as they pass each other going out the front door, and Ginny can't take the uncertainty anymore. She can't take the silence and the awkwardness. She can't take the fact that they were something and then they weren't and now they could be but what are they now? There have been too many questions and not enough answers, and she is going to explode.
This is absurd.
And so she does the only logical thing to do. She hexes him.
She sends her infamous Bat-Bogey Hex right for his face, pushes past him, and is down the stairs and out the door in a flash. She hates herself a little bit for doing it. She knows he doesn't deserve that from her. But she can't help but feel a little bit of satisfaction, and she savors it for the three whole minutes before he catches up with her.
"Oi! What was that for?"
She turns on her heel to face him. He doesn't seem all that upset. Or at least, not as upset as she thinks he ought to be. He stops a few feet away from her, maintaining that arms-length distance that's been driving her crazy and shoves his hands in his pockets.
The words start to pour from her mouth and she's not even sure she's making sense. But he's Harry, and he's an expert on things that just don't make sense, so she spills her guts and hopes he hears her.
"I'm just so angry, Harry! I don't even know who to be angry at. I just want things to be the way they used to be." She tosses her broomstick aside and crosses her arms. "I want Fred to not be dead anymore. And I want to go back to the way things were before… playing Quidditch, and snogging you by the lake, and sneaking off to the Room of Requirement. And I want to know that everything will be okay." Ginny pauses and bites her bottom lip when she feels it start to quiver. She hates crying; no one ever takes her seriously when she cries. And she definitely doesn't want to cry in front of Harry. She takes a deep breath to calm herself. "We're going to be okay, aren't we?" she finally asks, pleading with him to just this once tell her what she wants to hear even though she knows he will always tell her the truth.
He takes a tentative step forward and shrugs his shoulders. "I'm sorry…" he begins. But then takes two steps back as she shakes her finger at him.
"And I want you to stop apologizing for being you! I swear you drive me so mad some times."
Ginny considers picking up her broom and taking off before she can make more of a fool of herself. Because Harry is just standing there as though he doesn't know what to do. And clearly, he doesn't want anything to do with her so why is she sticking around?
But then he closes the gap between them and forces her into an embrace before she can resist. And it's warm and comforting and sincere. Just like she remembers. "I wish things were different too," he says and buries his face in her hair. "And I don't know if we'll be okay. But why don't we find out together?"
She nods her head and sighs, and for this moment the weight of the world seems to have lifted off her shoulders. And she knows he's right. No one can really say for certain that they'll be okay. And things will never be like they were before.
But the word together resounds in her ears, and she knows that this time around, he's here to stay. And that makes the future not seem so dark.