Flashes of light and movement cut across his vision. He was rising out of the dark... It seemed to take a very long time to reach the light. As though floating up through water, Harry Potter rose, the radiance above him flaring brighter and brighter...

His eyes flew open. It took several seconds for his vision to clear, then several more for him to make sense of everything. Where was he? Where were Ron and Hermione? Memories flashed across his vision, enveloped his senses... the thin dark seeker in the photograph; Kreacher lying on the ground, tears pouring from his eyes; Mad-Eye Moody's eye set in a door; Ron's furious words, sharp as knives; a white grave brighter than the snow that lay around it; the locket burning, stuck to his skin; a great silver sword at the bottom of a frozen pool; a rook shaped house, high on a hill; Greyback's foul breath as he crouched in front of him; approaching Malfoy manor, fear clawing at his insides; Dobby, beneath the stars, eyes glazed, unseeing...

A great blind dragon; the heat of the Lestranges' treasure; Voldemort's fury... this briefly overwhelmed everything. Harry however did not get a reprieve, as the flashes were coming faster now; it was getting harder to recover as each one assaulted his senses. The ambush in Hogsmeade; their return to Hogwarts castle; the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, beautiful and intimidating like goddess Athena; Voldemort's voice echoing around the Great Hall; great pyres of flame tossing a discoloured diadem; the entire castle shaking under the Death Eater's siege; Fred Weasley's empty, blank face...

And Harry desperately wanted it to stop, but the images kept coming. Snape, his face bloodless, black eyes boring into Harry; Lily Potter, at age 11, age 14, age 15... and exactly as she had died, standing right in front of Harry; Remus and Tonks, dead under the enchanted ceiling; Colin Creevey, tiny in Oliver Wood's arms; Voldemort contemplating him, as Harry faced his own death; the terrible cries and sobs of his friends as Harry lay unmoving; the flash of silver as Neville Longbottom sliced the head off the great snake; and Voldemort, as he finally fell. They flashed in front of Harry's eyes again and again, and some were so clear Harry wished he could erase his own memory... Fred, Dobby, Colin, Tonks, Remus ... Remus, the last Marauder... and new father. His son would never know him, as Harry had never know his father. Harry could see James and Lily, returned as mere shadow to assist him in crossing over... but Harry had not, he had survived. He wasn't sure he could live with their memories now he knew he wasn't joining them...

Harry knew where he was now. He was back in Gryffindor tower, lying in his old four-poster bed, in his empty dormitory. Back at Hogwarts, his first and only real home. He didn't belong there anymore. Hogwarts was behind him, he was 17, it was over... but he had never graduated from Hogwarts either. There would be nothing waiting for him in the rest of the wizarding world. Nothing except endless questions, endless faces wanting a piece of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, who had finally defeated Voldemort...

Harry was tired, so tired. Everything was too much. Weight crushed him until it felt as though his chest, hollowed out, could hold up no longer, it must collapse... and tears came, and he could not stop them. Faces flashed in front of his eyes, not just the ones he loved, but everyone else he knew, who had lost their lives to Voldemort. The grief crushed him, flattened him, and Harry could not resist, could not stem the flow of tears. He cried for everyone and he cried for himself, for all he had lost. It was all gone and it was not coming back...

Harry eventually slipped back into sleep, exhausted. He slept fitfully, unable to escape the images that seemed emblazoned on his brain. Starting awake again and again, he wondered if he would ever escape them.

Harry awoke again, slowly this time. He waited for the onslaught to start again, but he felt nothing. He wasn't sure he preferred it. He looked at the chink of sky visible through one of the long windows. It was dark, tempered by stars, but deep blue rather than black. So he'd slept for... how long? The rest of the day and most of the night it seemed. He felt stiff. He stretched out and felt bones click, rolling over as he did so, and then stopped. Emotion abruptly flooded him again, different, very different than before, because Ginny was sitting beside him, silent and watchful.

"How... how long have you been here?" Harry's voice cracked. She did not answer immediately.

"A little while." She spoke no higher than a murmur, but Harry thought it seemed forced, too even. He sat up, causing the covers to fall off him, and realised he must have pulled off his shirt in his restless sleep. Something, though, made him refrain from covering his bare chest. He tried to clear his throat to speak, but nothing came to him, despite everything that he had wished he could tell her during their months apart. The silence stretched. Then Harry remembered.

"Are you ok?" he asked urgently, thinking of the battle, how close she'd come to death...

Ginny just blinked in surprise. "I'm fine, Harry, I..." but she trailed off. Harry realised his stupidity. Of course she was not fine. She had seen countless people die... and she had lost her brother. Harry wanted to take her in his arms, wanted to relieve her of a little bit of what she must be feeling. But he stayed frozen, unable to make the movement.

Ginny swallowed in a determined sort of way. "Harry, I..." But no words came. Harry found his voice instead.

"Ginny, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your family, I'm sorry for you. I..." The lump in this throat obscured the rest of his words. Ginny didn't need any more. She nodded, her eyes down as tears filled them.

"...the hardest part is seeing George. I can't imagine..." She shook her head furiously as though to clear it. "...what he's feeling." The tears spilled over then, and Harry suddenly found he could move. He pulled her up on the bed next to him, and she buried her face in his shoulder. Harry rested his cheek on top of her copper hair. He had forgotten just how good she smelled, and how well her body curved to fit against his. Harry had missed her even more than he'd realised. A though occurred to him, disturbing and upsetting. He stiffened. Ginny felt the movement and pulled away, further worsening Harry's fears. He couldn't bear to ask her, but he also couldn't go another minute not knowing.

"Ginny... I..." He swallowed, then changed tack. "I know I hurt you, when I... ended thing between us." Ginny became very still. Harry couldn't find anymore words.

"Harry..." Suddenly, he realised he had to get everything out, before she said anything that he couldn't come back from, and he barreled ahead.

"Ginny, I'm sorry. I know you said you understood why I did it, that it was because of Voldemort. Now Voldemort's gone ..." Harry had to pause there. It was still hard to believe, let alone that Harry was the one who had defeated him. Suddenly Harry saw his future again, as he had almost a year ago. ...her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his ... he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead. Now... what did Harry have? His whole life had been leading up to the point where he would defeat, or be defeated, by Voldemort. Now there was no guide, no plan.

Ginny got up from beside Harry. He felt abruptly cold. She spoke with her eyes averted.

"Harry, it's ok. I understand. We both changed this past year." She looked up at Harry, and the determined fire that burned in her eyes, the fire Harry so loved about her, seemed to strike him down. All breath stolen, Harry could only nod. Ginny turned away, fighting the tears that were threatening to fall again. She wouldn't cry for this... she only had so many tears and she had already shed so many over Harry.

In spite of himself, Harry asked the question he had been trying so hard to hold back. "Who... who is it?"

Ginny turned around to look at Harry. Confusion crossed her eyes.

"Who, what, Harry?" As he looked at her confused face, an inkling of the truth filtered down to him. Hardly daring to believe it, he sprang from the bed, urgently gripping Ginny's shoulders. She looked utterly bewildered.

"Ginny... you didn't ... date someone else ... this past year?" Ginny shook her head mutely. Harry's heart-beat increased so rapidly it seemed to blur into one sound.

He swallowed. "I guess what I really want to know is ... do you still want me?" Harry had done it, he had laid himself out there. Every second now felt like nothing and forever at the same time. Please... please, just say something. Anything.

Ginny's shock was palpable. Then the facade broke. She closed her eyes and shook her head, tears finally falling. "Harry, you're all I've ever wanted since I was 11 years old."

Harry felt the happiness bubble up inside him, and it was so unfamiliar he felt as if he might burst from the expansion of it. He pulled Ginny close again, and this time he never intended to let her go.

Slightly muffled, Ginny tried to speak. Harry moved back and took her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

"Harry, I thought... you were saying that Voldemort being gone hadn't changed anything. I thought you were saying you didn't want me anymore. Just to be clear," she said, and her old fire was there, back in her eyes, "you weren't saying that? You ... still want me?"

Harry smiled; he didn't think he'd ever been so happy.

"Ginny, I do." Words then rose to his lips, so easily that he must have already known them to be true. "I love you."

Suddenly she was smiling too, and to Harry it was the most beautiful thing in the world. Her eyes blazed, alight with joy. "I love you, Harry Potter."

Then his lips were on hers, and the world dissolved away until only they remained.

The sky was light when they pulled apart. They stared out the window, watching the dawn. Then Harry spoke.

"I'm scared." Harry blinked, shocked by his own admission. Ginny looked up at him.

"...why?" She whispered softly. Harry thought about it. Instinct made him want to draw back, shy away. However, he also felt that how they established themselves now, would be how they would continue. He needed to get this right.

"I guess it's because... there has always been a point, a plan to my life, up until now." Harry frowned. "Now there isn't... and that scares me."

Ginny just nodded slowly. She knew Harry well enough to know that she didn't have to say anything just yet. Harry bit his lip. He didn't know how to convert what he felt into words. He didn't even really know what the weight on his chest was.

"I ... my life ... I don't know what it's all for, now." Harry swallowed. "I can't envision my future anymore... I can just see the past..." Ginny craned her neck up to look at Harry, to look in his green eyes. What she saw there shocked her, chilled her right through every sinew and bone, because she knew that the pain she could see in Harry's eyes would eclipse anything she would ever feel...

Harry saw a shadow of how he felt pass over Ginny's face. Seeing it reflected there made it worse somehow, magnified it... because Harry never wanted Ginny go through that pain. He would suffer anything to stop her feeling it, horrors, the Cruciatus curse, death ... although Harry now knew that death was nothing, was painless, was freedom... the pain of life was far worse than the pain of death, and to endure through that pain was a far worse punishment than to die. That was Harry's fate now... to live. That thought gave him far less comfort than he would have ever believed. Harry had already survived horrors... how much more would he have to survive?

Ginny could see Harry's downward spiral on his face, as clearly as if she had used legilimency on him. She gripped his arms fiercely, but her eyes were clouded in pain – Harry's pain.

"Harry. Harry look at me." Harry did as he was bidden. "It's over. No more pain, no more suffering. You can have peace now. We all can... I can." She swallowed. "But only if I can have you. Without you, there would be no peace... not for me. Not for Ron, not for Hermione.

"I know who you were to the wizarding world... and I know who you'll be, now. But to all the people who love you... you're Harry."

She didn't seem to be reaching him. Ginny pressed on.

"I know you're ... damaged. Perhaps you'll never be the same again, Harry, but I will still love you. We will all still love you."

Love... the fire in her eyes.

"Please, Harry. You said that love was the one thing Voldemort could never understand. It finished him, didn't it? So... love can help you. It can heal you."

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love."

Harry heard Dumbledore's voice as clearly as if Dumbledore had just spoken the words in his ear. In a blaze of understanding, Harry realised... "that was what Dumbledore meant." Harry finished his thought aloud. He looked at Ginny, and there were tears in her eyes – but they were tears of relief, relief for him.

"Dumbledore told me that ... he told me not to pity the dead, but to pity the living... and above all, those who live without love." Harry felt the plates in his mind change, scraping past each other, into what he knew were the right places. "He meant... that I needed to love... after everything he knew I had gone through... and that I would go through."

Ginny nodded. "He was right, Harry." Ginny had a far away look to her, as though looking back on the past with new eyes.

"He was right about everything in the end, wasn't he? I know you doubted him, felt abandoned with the way he left you." She peered up into his eyes then, and Harry felt that there was close to nothing that he could hide from Ginny. "But you don't feel that way anymore, do you?"

Harry shook his head, and he was smiling again. Then his expression turned serious, and the fear re-entered his eyes. But Ginny knew. She wrapped her arms around him. She could feel his ribs, pronouned under his skin – he was very thin.

"I'll be here, Harry," she whispered in his ear. Ginny had had a taste of what life without Harry would be like, not just when he had been in hiding this year, but when Voldemort's voice had echoed through the great hall... "Harry Potter is dead."... and Ginny felt as though she had been winded, her chest an empty hole where her heart and lungs had been. Anger had kept the grief at bay, anger which kept her alive in the ensuing battle... until the shield charm had expanded in the middle of the hall, come out of nowhere, and Harry had ripped off his invisibilty cloak. Only then did Ginny truly breathe again.

Harry spoke, looking over her head. "Where are the others?"

Ginny knew who he meant. "They're waiting for us." She smiled. "We're going back to the burrow."

"We're going home."