A/N: Thank you to touchshriek and rijane99 for all their help. And regular HPfen, I apologise for crashing the party and flailing wildly, but it couldn't be helped.
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-17-
Courage is not what you once thought it was. You know that at seventeen you would have done anything, said anything, been anything to meet your destiny. You know this because you know you didn't run away when you were asked to die. You wanted to, you really, really did. But it was want in that distant, theoretical way that doesn't ever translate into action. It was want without any of the desire to make that want a reality; you never once considered doing it differently.
You are adjusting now to both the adulation and the fear. Nobody will believe you when you try to explain wandlore, when you say that Voldemort was twenty - fifty - a hundred times more powerful than you were, because there were two hundred people in Hogwarts who watched you kill him with nothing more than a Disarming spell. That makes some people very nervous.
You don't want to be a hero. You make all the gestures of a hero but you've told Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, everyone who means anything to you that you're not a hero. You're a pawn. You were given a role to play and you've played it. The best anyone can say is that you weren't a coward. You were the Chosen One only because Voldemort himself chose you.
You've spoken to Kingsley about the Orders of Merlin he is going to hand out and you know too many of the recipients. The Ministry is organising an open ceremony in honour of the dead and the living. 'To rival the Quidditch Cup' you overhear someone say and you feel a bit ill. That was the year everything went wrong.
Ginny has made no appearance in all of this. She's there, in the background, where she's put herself forcibly. They are all grieving and you grieve with them.
-18-
Eighteen comes impossibly quickly on the heels of your victory over Death. It's only now, when things are not so immediate that you realise you have fulfilled two prophecies. Defeating Voldemort was one, but there was another, an even older prophecy. Briefly, chillingly you think about the walk through the woods when you held the Cloak, you held the Stone and the Elder Wand's power burned through you. You have united the Hallows and you came back from beyond the veil. How many chances at life are you being given?
Ron is laughing again. You thought Ron would be like the rest of the Weasleys, quiet and hurting. But they have not lived as the three of you have for the last year, with Voldemort's evil flooding you inside and outside - they are only just hearing about Horcruxes but you remember the months carrying a Horcrux close to your heart. Ron has his Hermione now and they are both laughing, and you know that this is just the pendulum swinging to balance because you are alive, Voldemort is gone and there is finally time for laughter.
You're still in love with Ginny so you try to find her and tell her. She's not more quiet or more broken than anyone else. She's also not dating as far as you know; she still loves you, you're pretty sure. You both make it work for two months before she says, "I love you, Harry. I love you but I'm sixteen" and goes back to Hogwarts. You realise suddenly that the war has taken its toll on her in different ways. You never questioned fighting Voldemort when you were eleven but you're questioning yourself fighting simple, malevolent Dark tricks as an Auror seven years later. She never once questioned loving you until she realised that perhaps sixteen year-olds don't really know enough about love. War and death make awful parents and you have both grown up far faster than you are ready for. You don't think your parents' marriage was a mistake and you know you were never a mistake but you find yourself at their age and the thought of marriage seems...
-19-
You, Harry Potter, are now nineteen and a bit divorced from reality. In part it's your job, in part it's you. You've spent your whole life fighting something you didn't understand, Dumbledore's strategizing ensuring that you just got the job Done. It's been a year and a half. Auror training has started - you realise belatedly through your course that you should have listened to Hermione. You can't reduct a poison down to its basics and you start to think that fighting Dark Lords should be something from your past, not your future. You work extra hard and call it Remedial Potions, thinking of Snape the whole time.
Should you wait? Ron and Hermione are waiting but not waiting. They're still sneaking around, just waiting to make it official with a big, white wedding and you are amused by how Victorian the Wizarding world is. You've taken the time to catch up on the Muggle world [Hermione has started insisting on using 'Non-magical'. S.P.E.W has been sidelined a little but this is her new pet project] and you are amazed by the sex everywhere in it. Hermione giggles furiously as you both - in whispers - discuss what it would be like to see The Sun's Page 3 girls in The Daily Prophet. Luna, stumbling on this highly intellectual debate, says it's a great idea. The Quibbler's June copy runs an experimental Page 3 - a sexy brown-haired witch who takes her tops off when you tap her picture and whisper, "I'm nineteen". It is one of their highest-selling issues, almost matching the numbers sold of your exclusive interview with them a few years ago. Potter-watching is on the wane, you hope, and perhaps your normal will become a little more normal again. Ginny is seventeen now, of age. You've waited this long for that burning look in her eyes again. Should you wait any longer?
-20-
Twenty rolls around with a hangover and a charming blonde in your bed. You haven't waited because this is stupid and you are both stupid, and your thoughts about the world post-Voldemort, on those nights camping with Hermione when you watched Ginny's dot on the Map, those secret images of legs and hands and torsos tangled up, the smile on her face, and yes, the big, white wedding, seem from a different lifetime. You wake up and head into your kitchen and Kreacher is saying 'Happy Birthday' in his foghorn voice. It's too early for cake so you thank him and go back to Eugenia in bed.
Ginny is dating again. Fuck her. It's her birthday and she's kissing some fucking prat with smooth hair. The club is small and dark, the bodies swaying rhythmically makes it difficult for you to stand still and watch her. Someone is always asking you to dance. And - your eyes narrow - she is wearing feathers in her hair.
You ask her to dance.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" she asks, smiling up at you.
This is stupid. How the hell are you supposed to have a conversation when the music sounds like Kreacher singing in an earthquake and drowning out all your common sense. Perhaps you should've skipped the Firewhiskey. You are still a bit of a lightweight.
"No," you say and watch her eyes widen.
"Well, maybe if you decided not to sit in the corner and glower at people, you'd have a better time!"
She's been watching you. Oh.
"For God's sake, Harry--"
You kiss her. It's Happy Birthday, Ginny and I love you, Ginny and Marry me, Ginny and Don't cry, Ginny all rolled into one. Somewhere it registers sluggishly that she's pushing you away.
"This is stupid," you yell. "You're not sixteen. You want to find a better excuse now?"
She's watching you coolly but you're aware of how tightly her hands are gripping your biceps. "I'm only nineteen."
"What are you trying to prove?"
When she walks away it almost feels like she's saying 'That I can live without you.'
-21-
You can live without her too. Twenty-one and you and Ron are fully fledged lean, mean Auror machines. Ron has started to speak in Muggle clichés. He loves action movies. "Why don't we have anything like this in the Wizarding world, eh?" he says one day in a video store. You grin and point out that your lives have been more action-packed than most movies and you're both just starting out. The Wizarding world is far more destructive than the normal one.
There's a not-so-secret betting pool on when the first Dark Wizard will come for Harry Potter and the credibility and fear that will shroud anyone who takes down the Boy Who Lived [Twice]. Luckily for you, you and your best friend are pretty good in tight corners. All that happens is you get promoted. A lot.
You stop asking yourself how many chances at life you will get.
Quidditch. Ginny Weasley is playing professional Quidditch. After her first season you go out to a group dinner in her honour - Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, Seamus, Dean, Lavender...you lose track of names but they're all really happy to see you. You don't take her flowers, you're not that gauche. You take her a picture of the Gryffindor team from Fifth year, when you were Captain and you first kissed her. Only you're not in it because it's from the match she won for you when you were in detention with Snape. She's being carried on the shoulders of what looks like the entire House and she's still holding the Snitch. Dennis Creavey sent you this photograph and it's one of the most precious things you own-- owned.
That night she she doesn't ignore you, she seeks you out, talking and laughing about Quidditch. She holds the photograph and she reminisces. When it's late and everyone's collecting themselves to go home, you turn your head and she's looking at you, eyes blazing like you remember. It's three steps to her lips, three steps to go to her and finish this stupidity between you. But you're in public, there are people watching the two of you and you pause, waiting for a brighter sign. There isn't one and you tell yourself firmly that it's all over as you walk away.
-22-
You spend all of twenty-two living without her. But you are magnanimous, inviting her to your twenty-second birthday bash and it promises to be a wild one. It is a wild one, so wild you have to endure Kreacher mumbling about 'Master's friends' and 'wild, desecrating youth' as he scrubs mysterious stains off the floor, vanishes the footprints from the ceiling and mends three windows the next day.
-23-
Twenty-three and suddenly you're in love with a different girl. You have eyes for her only, you follow where she leads. She's one of Hermione's friends. It's six thrilling months before you are promoted again and the secrecy around you is heightened. Allegra's wonderful and you love her but she wants you safe. She worries. She rages at you eventually. Just an owl, she says. One single line. Why does she need to be on the sidelines so much, she demands. You feel the weight of being Harry Potter again, resent having to explain your past, explain yourself, explain protocol and explain how Auror's lives are marked from the outset. She tells you she's not stupid, she knows that; she works for the Ministry too. But how can you expect her to just ignore it all? You think about how this woman acts under pressure, how she would have acted with Voldemort's shadow over you...and it's all over. Well, that didn't last long.
But you are finally broken of destiny. You have believed for six years in destiny, waiting for the answers to find you. And you are tired of being a pawn.
You floo to Ginny's apartment and she asks, with a raised eyebrow, if you're drunk. It's another Muggle cliche from out the mouths of the Weasley family so you roll your eyes. Hermione really likes chick flicks and you wonder suddenly if Ginny has finally figured out what love is.
"I want to know why you ended things," you demand. "Was it my putting everything else before you?"
Her apartment is empty - just Arnold and Crookshanks, who has come to take up residence since Ron and Hermione got married.
"Is this about Allie?" she finally says. "Because--"
"No." You stand by her fireplace and watch her stroke ginger fur. "No, Allie's over with."
"I'm sorry," she says evenly and scratches behind Crookshanks' ears.
You ignore her completely. It's not what you came to talk about. "I didn't mean to leave, Gin, I told you. I had to. Voldemort--"
"Is that what you think?" she demands, looking up. Crookshanks growls at you in chorus. "You think it was about Voldemort and you leaving me to go hunt Horcruxes and having to die?"
"Are you MAD?" she yells. "Are you blithering, stupid, blind as a dumb troll, denser than Hagrid's beard MAD?"
"Then WHAT?" you yell in return. "What, Ginny?"
"I was sixteen, Harry! What the hell did I know about being your girlfriend?"
"What's so bloody difficult about a few snogs, some groping and making me happy?"
"Nothing, if that's all it means."
"OK." You breathe deeply. "All right."
"Mum told me how young she was when she and Dad got together," Ginny says heavily. "She says your mum was about eighteen when she married your dad. War does...mad things in your head. You can't always see farther than the end."
"And when it does end--" you prompt.
She gives you a ghost of a smile. "Then you ask yourself if what you thought was love is really love."
"And?"
Ginny gets to her feet and Crookshanks darts away. "I was eleven," she snaps and her fists are clenched tight. "You were twelve and you pulled a sword out of a hat to save me from a Basilisk and a piece of Voldemort's soul in a diary.... I worshipped you. You saved my father, helped my brothers set up their shop, you're the youngest Auror in history! You're Harry bloody Potter, the only person to have ever survived the Killing Curse twice."
She is saying terrible-wonderful things and you wonder if you're both mad because you have no idea what's moving the thread of this conversation. Neither of you seems to be making any sense.
"Merlin, Ginny."
"Yeah." She is disdainful. "I thought that would shut you up. It's fine when I'm stoic and kissing you, a few gropes here and there-- But this is way past that, Harry." She is breathing in short, shallow gasps. "And I love the hero," she says harshly. "I love the hero and I don't want to because I love you too."
Secrets, you think. Little secrets. Dirty secrets. Is that all it will take?
"You're Ron's sister," you begin, "and I love you for being a Weasley. When I'm with you, I'm a real member of the family. You have red hair like my Mum. Together, we look like my parents."
Ginny's brown eyes grow round and wide.
"I have an enchanted Map of Hogwarts; it shows where everyone is in the castle. I used to watch your name at night when you were sleeping. I didn't even know I fancied you until I saw you kissing Dean and I wanted to hex him. In the Forbidden Forest, I thought of you just before Voldemort used the Killing Curse."
"You didn't kiss me at the dinner," she says, eyes meeting yours fearlessly. "I thought we were done. And then I heard about Allegra so I just assumed..."
You're very deliberate with your answer. "She didn't know how to be my girlfriend."
"No groping then?" Ginny mocks.
"I'm not seventeen. I want a hell of a lot more than that now."
This draws an unwilling laugh from Ginny but you see a new awareness settle into her.
"If," you say thoughtfully, "I disappeared on the job for a week, what would you do?"
"Nothing."
"Come on, Ginny," you grin. "Play along."
She huffs. "Fine. Owl the Ministry."
"They won't tell you anything."
"Did you tell me anything before you left?" Ginny is frowning.
"Not allowed to."
She sighs. "It's bloody Horcrux-hunting all over again, isn't it?"
You nod because you knew once what her answer was and you hope and pray it's still the same.
"Wait until they find your body," she mutters. "And if you came home safe and sound, I'd hex your bits off."
"Would you leave me?"
Ginny draws herself up. "I'm not Allegra," she says tightly and her eyes are shining, blazing.
It's the wrong way round that sentence. "She's not you," you tell her and then she's kissing you, finally, and she's been right to wait until you're both ready, which is, you realise belatedly, now.