Fix You

A/N: Angst angst angst. Your reviews rock my world insanely. I'm glad of what everyone is asking/bringing up because they were all the things that this chapter addresses. This is the chapter, so it's taken a bit for me to be satisfied with this. Enjoy guys; all of your love is loved.

This is a birthday present to my sister Steph, who turns 21 on Saturday! Harry birthday Stephy, and I hope you enjoy the new chapter even though I know you've already read half!

And the length? I just couldn't bear to break it up in two. I did change some bits an I have removed some of what I was intending to be here to next chapter, but it seems okay.

Could I Be You


"Let's compare scars, I'll tell you whose is worse," – Rise Against, Swing Life Away

"Some wounds run too deep for the healing" – Albus Dumbledore, OotP, p735.

"During the struggle
They will pull us down
But please, please
Let's use this chance
To turn things around
And tonight
We can truly say
Together we're invincible"
– Invincible, Muse


"What do you want?" She asked him one final, miserable time. "If not that, what do you want from me?"

He looked around the moonlight flat, terrified, finally stuttering out something, and shocking not only her but himself too.

"Ginny," He said hoarsely. "Would you marry me?"


"What?" She asked him clearly shocked. She was wrapped up in Harry's coat jacket, half naked in her seated position of defeat on the couch. "What are you on about Harry? Talking nonsense because you feel bad?" She looked up at him harshly. Perhaps Voldemort had managed to get a stray hex in that had somehow addled his head.

"No I'm not," He said quietly, looking up at her shyly. "Marry me. Please."

"Why?" She asked him angrily, still hiccoughing.

"Why not?" He asked as if it were simple.

She gaped at him for a moment. "I know what you are saying that for, why you are asking me that, I know," She looked up at him, a slight glare on her face. "Always wanting to save someone, aren't you? You feel obliged."

"It's not like that," Harry told her self-consciously. "I want to."

"No you don't," Ginny muttered. "Why would you?"

"Is it too hard to believe that I care about you?" Harry asked her with a sad smile, running a hand through his messy black hair. "Because I do. More than anything."

She rolled her puffy bloodshot eyes at him. Nonsense, it was all nonsense. Of course he didn't care; he just liked to say that he did. Nothing had changed. Four years ago he had spurted out awkward words of love with a goofy grin, before shooting her down and leaving her lonely, hurt and empty. Now it was the same thing. What did he expect from this weak marriage proposal? Did he expect her to break down, say yes and tell him that she loves him, and then things would be perfect, all issues forgotten? Sure, they had a past, and as much as she hated it, she had lingering feelings for him; feelings which she knew had transformed themselves into contempt. But what next? There wasn't enough to go on. What exactly did he want from her? Her question from mere minutes ago remained unanswered, something hanging in the air, lingering over the conversation.

"Is it?" He pressed her after a moment of silence. "Is it too hard to believe?
She looked up at him imploringly.

"I still don't know what you want," She told him calmly, hiccoughs having subsided.

"What do you mean?" He questioned rapidly, fidgeting slightly on the spot, toes fiddling with the corner of the rug. "I just asked you to marry me, surely that speaks for itself?"

"Not in this case," Ginny told him fiercely. "I'm sure that you have your other reasons for asking me to bloody well marry you, Harry, reasons that you don't want to share around, noble reasons I bet. What do you really want from me?"

He sighed, falling on the couch in an attempt to calm his nerves. He was now sitting next to her, now able to avoid her eyes. "Everything."

"Well, that's a bit much to ask, isn't it?"

"Not really," Harry said quietly, not looking at her. "I just want you. You're everything to me. You're everything without trying. You're everything by just being you."

"Shucks," She said sarcastically. "You really don't have to pretend, Harry. I know you don't want to marry me. You just say that because you think you're supposed to. You don't have to pretend, and you don't have to lie to yourself."

"Trust me, I'm not," He said in a small voice. "I've known it for years."

"So if I'm your everything," She said to him, drawing out the last word. "And you've known it for years, how come you've never bothered to say?"

"I'm not very good at this sort of stuff," Harry explained. "Just ask Hermione, apparently I'm almost as bad as Ron. I'm saying it now, if that helps."

Ginny shook her head at him. Harry wasn't facing her; seemingly barely able to say these things to himself, let alone to confess it to her. "It's not good enough. The damage has been done."

"But surely we can just get over that?" Harry pleaded her. "Stuff happens, but we can get over it."

"Get over it?" Ginny laughed sadly. "I told you back then that I wouldn't be waiting for someone who doesn't need me in their life, and as I've told you before, I haven't."

"Obviously," Harry said, sickened. "Quite obviously you're just looking for someone who can replace me for a night. Someone who needs you or whatever it is that you're searching for." He spat the last two sentences, his voice full of venom, hating both himself and what she was doing to herself.

"Don't be like that with me," Ginny snarled, getting up off the couch and standing in front of him so she could see his face; his coat dangled around her hands, hanging to a little above her knees and looking like an oversized dress. Her face was blotchy with her dried tears, but she had composed herself slightly, or as much as she could when standing in only her underwear and a jacket that Harry had forced upon her.

"I'll tell you how I see it," Harry said to her defiantly.

"Well, you see it rubbish then," Ginny smiled derisively. "I don't know when you got so cocky; perhaps it was the whole saving the world thing, but I most certainly am not looking to replace you in anyway. I learn from my mistakes." She smiled sarcastically at him.

"You are trying to replace me," Harry said, shaking his head and ignoring her grin. "In one way or another. Maybe you don't realise it yourself, Gin, but I told you that I didn't need you in my life so instead you look for someone who does. I hurt you, and you're trying to get revenge on me or make yourself feel better about it." Green eyes met disdainful brown ones as he struck a nerve.

"Well," She said huffily after a brief pause. "Perhaps I wouldn't have to if you hadn't just up and left me!"

"And now we're back to the start," Harry laughed at her, shaking his head. "We- we just seem to keep going around in circles, don't we? We're just saying the same stuff over and over."

"Well, you're not helping it" Ginny told him indignantly.

"Neither are you," Harry told her angrily. "Ginny, you just yell at me and not even bother to hear me out!"

"Why should I bother?" She asked him fiercely, jaw set in a painful glare. "I know what you're going to say, you were trying to protect me. And you know exactly how I'm going to respond to that, so really, why bother?" His eyes darkened. "No matter how much we try, we're not going to work this out; we're never going to be able to work out all these stupid problems and issues, no matter much time you spend or how much you want to fix it. I don't want to even make the effort of going through the motions of trying, especially when we just keep going around in circles as you put it. So can I go now?" She looked towards the door, hoping that somehow that was enough for Harry, so he would swish his wand and it would spring magically open. It remained closed, silence resonating around the dark room.

Harry shook his head at her. Maybe it was just because of her anger, but she was profusely refusing to see it from his point of view. It was time he told her. It had gone on long enough, and he knew that it was the time to just be painfully honest and put it all out on the table. He was going to get hurt either way. But if he just told her the entire truth about what was running around in his head, perhaps that would leave him able to salvage something from the ruins of the past, preferably a relationship. He just had to be ridiculously honest, no matter how much that put him out.

"Sit for a bit," Harry said, motioning at the coffee table. She just glared at him. "If you just listen to what I have to say and you still want to leave, I won't stop you."

"I don't want to hear it, Harry," Ginny moaned quietly.

"But you have to," Harry told her confidently, fiddling with his wand, which he was still holding. "I won't let you go until you do. Just listen and try to accept what I'm saying, even if you don't agree with it. Just listen and try to accept that I think this way, and no matter how much I wish I didn't, that's how things go for me. And after that, if you still can't see what I'm trying to say, well, I can't make you stay. Just sit and listen." He looked at her breathlessly, awaiting a response. It seemed good enough for her. She sat on the short glass table directly in front of him, fiddling with the buttons on his coat, looking at him but not quite meeting his eyes.

"Okay," Harry said, sounding pleased. "Okay." She rolled her eyes at him.

"Is that it?" She asked him sardonically.

"Don't be silly," Harry told her, smiling a little. "It's just... this is hard for me, Gin. I don't talk about stuff like this. But you have to understand." He swallowed, and reached out, putting his hand on her left knee. She shuddered slightly, but didn't force him away. She knew it was time to listen. She'd had enough. Ginny knew she couldn't just shout at him every time she saw him, she knew that there was only so much she could do, she knew that she couldn't just hate him passionately forever. It was time to listen; time to let him just try, even if he was just being stupid and it all came to nothing. It just had to be resolved. Not over, but resolved. Maybe they could make a truce of sorts; maybe they could be civil at least for everyone else's sake.

"I... I know what you're saying in all of this," Harry told her quietly, sounding pained to say this, letting the darkness of the room wash over him. "I can really understand why you're so angry with me, because the truth is I deserve it."

"You're not saying anything new," Ginny told him impatiently, tapping her foot on the floor in spite of herself.

"I'm trying," He snapped back, then paused for a second. When he spoke again, he stared at his feet, his voice tender. "Sorry for that. It's just hard and I'm trying. I'm trying." He glanced up at her, and she nodded at him understandingly, trying to act how she knew she should in comparison to how she was used to. Slightly encouraged, he went on. "You see, the thing is that I do deserve you to be angry at me. I don't want you too, but you have the right to be. What I did to you was wrong, but do you have to understand where I was coming from back then."

"That I don't," She admitted to him quietly.

"Have you ever wondered?" Harry asked her. "Why I was suddenly so horrid, I mean? It's not like it just came from nowhere."

"I just figured you were being a prick," She laughed quietly, realising how stupid her reasoning sounded when voiced out loud.

"I was," He told her, smiling sadly. "Not on purpose though. I didn't want to be like that and I didn't mean to hurt you. I just needed to know you were going to be safe, that you were going to make it through the war alive."

"There was never any guarantee on that," She told him, sourness coming back into her voice. "My whole family is in the Order, I was in danger just by that. And Snape and Malfoy both knew that we were dating at Hogwarts, so of course they would have told Voldemort. I don't know how breaking up with me was ever going to take the target off my head. All it did was hurt me, Harry."

"I know that," He told her simply as she glared at him. "I'm not stupid, of course I know that. I knew it then too, but I still had to do it."

"Then why did you do it?" She asked him softly.

"It just made me feel a bit better about everything, thinking that you weren't in as much danger," Harry told her. "I hated it so much, but it made me feel like you were just that bit safer. And that's all I care about, Gin." He looked at her wistfully as she sat there confused.

"I don't know how that works," She told him rapidly, sounding irritated. "I don't understand how you thought I'd be a bit safer by hurting me. How I'd be safer by being slightly detached from the war at all. It was never going to work. I just can't see where you're coming from with this." She stared him down breathlessly.

Harry sighed loudly. He knew what she was saying. He knew it made so much more sense than what he was saying himself. But somehow, that didn't work for him.

"I..." He began slowly, sliding off the couch and kneeling in front of her, looking up into her tearstained face earnestly. "I knew that it wouldn't. I just had to know... that I'd done all I could to keep you safe. It was the only thing that kept me sane through the war, knowing that I'd done everything possible to keep you out of harms way. It's like I told you after Dumbledore died, I couldn't live with myself if it was your funeral I was sitting at and I knew it was my fault."

She nodded at him. "I can kind of get that." She told him patiently, seeing vaguely where he was coming from. She had always assumed it was about her, that he didn't think she should be anywhere near the war because she was too young. That's what her family had always been like anyway, but she was now beginning to realise that it was him. It was what he needed to be able to live with himself and get what he had to do done.

"Everyone around me dies," Harry told her with a sad laugh escaping him. "It's a bloody crude way to put it, but everyone I get close to dies. My parent, Sirius, Dumbledore, even poor bloody Cedric! It's what I expect now," He paused for a moment. "I didn't want that to be you."

"But it was okay if it were Ron or Hermione?" Ginny asked him half-heartedly, fighting herself not to hug him, to comfort him in some way and tell him that things weren't like that anymore. "They were expendable?"

"They had each other," He told her, staring straight into her eyes. "I knew they would be fine, but you..." He trailed off

"So-" Ginny began angrily.

"No, no, I know that you can more then take care of yourself," Harry cut her off with a grin, knowing exactly what she was saying even though she had barely opened her mouth. "Merlin, I know that. It's one of the reasons that I... love you so much. You're so strong. It's all me, I just that I had to feel like I was doing something."

"That's just you," Ginny murmured to him, not taken aback by his confession. "You and your saving people thing."

"My saving people thing," Harry repeated, smiling and nodding. "I honestly can't help it."

"I know," She told him sadly. "It's just you." They sat in silence for a brief moment, the sound of the muggle street below and the tick of the clock the only thing breaking the tense quiet.

"But before you left," Ginny asked him. "What happened before, at Bill and Phlegm's wedding,"

"When we had sex," Harry said wryly. Ginny snorted.

"Yeah, that," She said awkwardly. "Why did you do that?"

"Why did I what?" He asked her sneakily. "What did I do? You were there too. You did just as much as I did." He grinned slyly.

"Don't be a smart arse," She told him harshly, rolling her eyes at his immaturity but holding back a blush herself. "Why did you lead me on like that, making me think that you were letting me come with you? I mean, by what you just said just then, I can understand a bit why you didn't let me come with you lot, I can understand your whole need to leave me out of it, even if I don't agree with it. The thing is though, why did you make me think that you were letting me?"

"I didn't think that I was," Harry told her. "I thought that you understood all that back then."

"So you came out with all this stuff about you loving me in hope that I'd stick around and wait for you?" Ginny asked him, eyebrows raised.

"No," Harry told her, looking away from her. He was still kneeling in front of where she sat on his coffee table. "I wouldn't expect you to have done anything. I just had to tell you."

"Well, it would have been a lot easier on me if you hadn't had," Ginny told him.

"I had to tell you," Harry repeated plainly.

"But surely you knew that when you came back I'd feel used and be furious?" Ginny asked him with a forced calm. He sat quietly for a moment before replying, not looking at her still. "That I'd be angry at you for lying and for making me feel like crap?"

"I had to tell you," He began, clearly not knowing how to tell her exactly what was going on in his head but needing to express it at the same time. "Because I didn't think I'd be coming back. I just had to make sure you knew... how I felt I guess."

She looked at him dumbfounded, meeting his eyes with that stare that made her feel like she could see right through him. A whole slew of things just clicked into place for her, majority of what he'd done before the war and his explanations all slid together in what seemed to be a seamless way, as did a lot of his more recent off hand comments. He thought he was going to die, he thought Voldemort was going to kill him. He spent four years thinking he was about to die at any moment, but he had gone about business as usual, going out to save everyone on a daily basis. She knew now. He had thought that all those things he said to her would be forgiven after he died, knowing that after his death she would go on able to remember their time together fondly and have no regrets, able to move on with her life. He had wanted only the best for her after what he saw as his imminent demise. She reached out to where he remained kneeling in front of her, running one of her petite hands over his forehead and through his hair, holding his hair out of his face tenderly and revealing his now slowly fading scar, trying to find some comfort for him, trying to let him know that she couldn't blame him nearly as much as she had been anymore. He'd faced the unknown with bravery, fighting to save the world because it was the only thing he really knew how to do.

"I wrote letters," He told her softly. "Four of them, one each to Ron and Hermione, one to everyone in general and one to you. I told Hedwig to deliver them if I well, died. They're still in my trunk somewhere, you can read them if you'd like." He looked up and met her eyes awkwardly.

"One day," She told him quietly as he looked back at his feet. "Maybe one day. I'd like that." They sat there in silence, staring at each other, Harry's hand lingering on her knee, Ginny's in his mess of hair. That was then she knew without a doubt that he cared for her. He had cared all along, and she had just denied it to herself because it was easier. It was a lot more simpler to hate him then to know the truth and have to struggle with the honest reality of it all.

"So friends then?" Ginny asked him quietly.

"Friends?" He asked her, clearly bewildered. "Just friends?"

"We can't be anything more," She told him. "You know it would never work. Even if we've partially resolved all this stuff, things will never be like they used to. Even if I can't force myself to hate you for the past, even if you want it to be so much more, things aren't they way they were before."

"I know that," Harry told her, pulling his head back away from her and moving his hand off Ginny's leg. "Things could be better though." His eyes pleaded at her, his lip stuck out a little, looking much younger than he was. "We won't have what we used to, but we could still have something amazing, something that could be better."

"Can't we just be friends?" She asked him imploringly.

"I can't just be your friend," Harry told her. "If I'm going to be honest with you and myself, something that I am really trying to do at the moment, just to tell you everything that I'm thinking, I have to tell you that I could never just be your friend. I can't pretend that I don't care about you like that, that I don't want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you."

"Why not?" She asked him, running her hand over her cheek and wiping away her tear tracks and the smudged makeup. "Can't you pretend? Just think back to when you were fifteen and thought of me as nothing more than Ron's baby sister. Sometimes, it doesn't have to be all or nothing."

"You're right," Harry told her forcefully. "It has to be all."

"Just when I was thinking that we were sitting down, having a valid, civil, mature conversation," Ginny said to him, anger striking up yet again, "You come out with that. So very macho of you, wanting to control the world."

"It has to be all," Harry told her. "Because I could never settle with anything else. If you say that it can't be all, I'll spend the rest of forever chasing you around and trying to make it all. I need you."

"You didn't need me when you were seventeen," Ginny reminded him, harshly, but feeling herself crumble slightly at his words.

"I was talking rubbish," Harry told her with a sour laugh. "We both know that."

"Still, I have to say that that did have quite a profound effect on me," Ginny said quietly.

"Don't," Harry told her, dread filling his stomach. He knew this was going to come up. "Don't talk about it. I don't want to hear it. I know what you are trying to bring up, but I honestly don't want to talk about it."

"Well, you were the one who was just going on about honesty," Ginny told him. "Or does that only apply one way?"

"Of course not," Harry replied automatically.

"Well then, we have to talk about this!" Ginny told him forcefully. "If we even are going to be friends we should talk about this! If you want something more, we need to talk about this!" She scoffed at herself. "But that's my fault. I can't believe that I've been even letting myself imagine you coming out with an explanation for everything. I can't believe I've been dreaming and wishing for something to pull me back into that abysmal joyful fluffy bliss that is a relationship with you!"

"You... you want that, then?" Harry asked, his eyes pricking up hopefully.

"The horrible thing is that some part of me does!" Ginny told him, throwing her head back and exhaling deeply. "If going off to save people is part of you, well then I guess I'm just a romantic. I hate it, I really do. And I hate you, but you burst in here and I know that I'm inches away from melting like someone out of one of those soppy muggle novels! And all that I've tried to build up is about to be destroyed and I hate it! I hate that you can do that to me! Can't I just move on somehow?" She looked at him, desperation in her eyes, pleading for him to somehow stop the old feelings arising in her, multiplying every time he looked at her. What she had been despising was now working its way back into something that she sought after.

"Ginny," Harry told her optimistically, "We could have that. We could have everything back."

"Not while you can only talk about what you want to," Ginny told him with anguish, realistically knowing there was no future despite her new-found longing. "Not with all this overlying shit above us that goes so deep we might as well be on the other side of the world. Not while I hate myself for it. And especially not while you see me as some desperate slut!" She rested her elbows on her knees, her head in her hands dejectedly.

Harry seized both of her hands in his left and tipped her chin up with his right so she was looking him straight in the eyes. "I don't see you as some slut, Gin," Harry told her earnestly, honesty ringing in ever syllable. "And I'd like to be able to talk about it; it's just that the thought of you with some wizard makes me feel violently ill." Shadows were cast over his face, the only light source the waning moon outside, his glasses glinting slightly, pale complexion looking slightly ill.

She smiled at him sadly. "I don't think that I can believe that you don't see me as some slut. Especially since I just stripped in the middle of your living room, assuming you wanted sex."

"I don't think you're a slut," Harry told her. "Not at all."

"A whore?" Ginny questioned.

"No," Harry shook his head

"Some skanky slurry?" Ginny asked him again.

"No," Harry repeated, eyes twinkling at her from behind his glasses.

"What do you think then?" She said desperately. He paused for a moment, examining her carefully out of the side of his eye.

"I think you're very messed up."

She swatted his shoulder half jokingly. "This is coming from the boy who's locked me up in his flat, doesn't have a job and gets blind drunk every night." Harry rolled his eyes at her.

"Yeah, well, I've got my own problems, don't I?" Harry said innocently, as she just brought up the major issues in his life with minimal effort. "But at the moment we're talking about yours."

She looked at him carefully. "I thought my problems made you feel sick to the stomach."

"They do," Harry admitted, still holding her two small, soft hands in his large, rough ones. "But on second thoughts about the whole thing, if it's something to do with you, I'd better get used to it. See, I plan on sticking around for a while. So I can't let things that get to me actually get to me. You mean more then that."

"You don't have to," Ginny told him. "Stick around I mean. I'm not sure if I even want you to."

"Well, I'm going to," Harry told her. "Whether you like it or not. So tell me, why?"

"Why?" Ginny asked him thoughtfully, suppressing a grin. "Why."

"Why," Harry said plainly. "Just tell me why you started being all... well, how you are sometimes." It was her turn to roll her eyes.

"Ever since you got back, I've been thinking about that, trying to find some reason in why I've been doing that," Ginny told him. "Honestly, I have," She added, seeing his raised eyebrows. "I just haven't been able to stop myself doing it." She gazed out of the window for a moment, seeing other flats in nearby buildings also lit up, silently wondering if anyone else around them was going through such a sudden change of feelings in the past hour as she was. She had been stemming with hate, anger, contempt, pity, self-righteousness and that flutter in her chest that she associated with Harry interchangeably through the evening.

"Well," Harry pressed her after a few minutes. "Why then? When you're ready of course." She looked at him, and added admiration to that list at his patience.

"It's like you said before, I guess," Ginny told him. "It's hard to be able to just tell you these sort of things, as I don't even properly understand it myself."

"So you just freeze up," Harry nodded understandingly. "And your voice fails. Because it's so hard to be honest when part of you wants to think you're lying to yourself."

"Exactly," She nodded. "You deserve an explanation, so I do want to tell you what's been going on. It's just... well, hard."

"That's good then," Harry said to her, the hand that wasn't grasping her two tucking a lock of stray red hair behind her ear. "Just force it out. It's easier that way."

"It's like this then," Ginny began slowly. "It's like I was saying before. Even if I didn't really believe you about that whole you not needing me around thing, it still got to me." She paused for a moment. "Quite bad. And as you said before, I guess I was trying to replace you."

"I told you so," He teased gently.

"Don't interrupt," She told him quickly. "It's just that... I needed to feel important to someone, to feel like I was making a difference in someone's life. I don't know if that makes much sense to you, but it does to me. I was kind of filling the void you left with other people. And it was almost like I was trying to write off what we had as nothing." She sat there for a moment, waiting for his reaction.

"And I hated myself for it," Ginny continued after seeing Harry's hurt look. "Because it was never anything. Not to me. I'd been obsessed with you for so long, and that's probably why it hurt so much when you left, so I just tried to shun that to the side. So I guess that it's your fault then, in a way" She added.

"I already knew that," He reassured her. "Or I was taking the blame anyway."

"A lot of the time I was doing it to spite you," Ginny told him sadly. "And now I think about it, you probably didn't deserve it. Especially what I've been doing to you in the past month. I'm really sorry Harry." She looked down into his face carefully.

"I know you are," Harry said kindly. "Just don't get yourself caught up in feeling bad about it. It was my fault you were angry in the first place."

She smiled properly for a moment. "It was wasn't it?"

"It was," Harry concurred, just staring at her. "But as you now know, I didn't really intend it in that way in the slightest." They sat in a comfortable silence for a minute.

"Well?" She asked him, getting goose bumps as she felt his gaze on her.

"Okay," Harry said, finally removing his hand from hers, placing his on her lower thighs. "This is what I don't get. Surely you knew you were putting yourself in danger. How come you kept doing it?"

"I couldn't really stop," Ginny told him quietly. "It's addictive, knowing that somehow I was hurting you, even if I felt horrible afterwards. It just satisfied me; knowing that I was getting over you and making you feel as hurt as I had been in the process. Or," She went on dryly, "thinking I was getting over you when really I was just getting more hung up about the whole thing." She met his eyes, seeking acceptance of what she had just got just off her chest, the thing that had been plaguing her for years.

"I'd probably say it was the second more then the first," Harry told her playfully, letting her know he could take that with a grin.

"Probably," Ginny concurred, a spark lighting her eyes. The spark behind her eyes that Harry had been missing since he was sixteen and could openly appreciate every moment of the puppy love they had shared. It was the spark that he had taken with him to war and hadn't returned yet. It was the blazing look she wore when he hugged her; it was honesty, and understanding. It was knowing that they were back to the stage where they could say anything and the other would understand or know there was a reason. It was the foundations of trust being built back up. It was friendship and everything else simultaneously.

"Are you cold?" Harry asked her, running a hand across the goose bumps on her leg. She nodded earnestly.

"A little," She admitted. Harry flicked his wand over the top of the couch, lighting up the fireplace, warmth spreading through the flat. Everything around them was illuminated by the light, casting dramatic shadows across the room and exaggerating both of their features in the fireligt

"You know," Harry said conversationally, letting the warmth envelop him. "You could have been in big danger, you know that? Running off with strangers?" He sounded pained to say that last bit.

"Of course I knew that," She told him simply, placing her hands over his subconsciously.

"Then why?" Harry asked dumbfounded.

"Same reason," Ginny told him. "I just couldn't stop."

"You could have been really hurt," Harry's voice strained, sounding painful. Ginny shook her head at him, knowing he'd be at least slightly pleased at what she was about to say next.

"But I guess I just figured that someone would come save me if I got in any trouble," Ginny told him, smiling at him. "Someone with one of those saving people things might just come back because they'd suddenly realise that they did care about me and wanted to save me from some horrible place that I'd gotten into."

"It wasn't sudden," Harry told her grinning. "Realising that I liked you I mean. It was an excruciatingly long and painful event when I was sixteen that had me fearing your brother more then Voldemort." Ginny laughed at this.

"You didn't have to," She told him. "You could do or say anything and my family wouldn't question it."

"I wouldn't say that," Harry smirked.

"I would."

"Speaking of your brothers," Harry asked her as she picked a strand of short black hair off his shirt. "How on earth did none of then find out about this?"

"About me?" Ginny asked him.

"Yeah," Harry said gruffly. "And about us too. The twins didn't know until Ron and Hermione told them. It's kind of amazing, actually, them not knowing something."

"I just guess that everyone knew I was related to them," Ginny told Harry.

"Yeah, you can tell by the hair," Harry said cheekily, "Just a little bit."

Ignoring him, she went on. "And I guess that also, people don't want to risk making the twins upset. Or any of my brothers for that matter. And anyway," She narrowed her eyes at him, "how did you react when you first found out about this stuff?"

"Got angry, told Neville, Dean and Seamus that they were talking crap, that they should mind their own business and to not talk about things that they didn't know about." Harry said quickly, looking straight into her eyes.

"Now imagine what any of my brothers reactions would be in comparison to yours."

"Oh, yeah, scary thought," Harry said mildly, imagining a whole array of jinxes and hexes on to one poor person who had just told them the truth about Ginny's escapades. "Don't think that would be a good idea; remind me not to be that guy."

"Exactly," Ginny smirked, revelling in how utterly comfortable she felt discussing this should-be touchy subject with Harry, and how weird it was to imagine that just over an hour ago she was screaming at him, and wondering in amazement how all of a sudden it felt right to not hate him as determinately as she had in the past. It was weird, she decided, how natural it felt, and how she could suddenly just drop what she had been feeling because of him. She had hated it minutes ago, but now it was growing on her. But he had always had that effect on her. She had given up on him when she was thirteen and had thought she had moved on but then two years and two boyfriends later she found herself being kissed by him and all those suppressed feelings releasing themselves from that place in her where she hid what she didn't want to acknowledge. Perhaps that place was his. Maybe he held the key; she was somehow unable to hide anything from him. And despite the mass difference in the severity of these problems to the previous ones, he still had that power over her.

Not that that meant a relationship was on the agenda. No, not at all, Ginny thought. If they could work through some of these problems, fantastic, they could be friends, despite his utter reluctance to being only that. It wasn't like they could ever figure everything out; that was impossible, there were just too many problems that added up to one bigger, more painful one. And until they could work out those problems, there was no way that they could be together like that. It was not a possibility in Ginny's books, despite how much she was not so suddenly wishing it could work like that, that there was a spell or potion to make things go the way she wanted deep down, to fix everything. This was just making peace, and she couldn't allow herself to think it could be anything more. The sat in comfortable silence, Harry's hands just above her knees. She ran a hand through the hair on the side of his head before placing it on his shoulder, guiltily lapping up his calming warmth.

"So," Harry said after a minute in which they soaked up the silence, not knowing precisely what to do or say.

"So," Ginny responded. "Stuff eh?"

"Stuff," Harry smiled at her.

"Things are good too," Ginny told him with a smirk. He rolled his eyes happily.

"Where do we go from here?" Harry asked her seriously after another brief silence.

"What do you mean?" She whispered slowly.

"Us," Harry pushed. "You, me. What do we do now?" His eyes looked relentlessly at her, pressing for the response he wanted with every moment.

"Well," Ginny began. "I should probably go home and get some sleep; I have to work tomorrow afternoon."

"You're not going anywhere until we work out what's going on," Harry told her, waving his wand in front of her face playfully, feeling happily foolish and childlike. She made a slight swipe for his wand, causing him to grin widely at her.

"Nothing's going on," Ginny told him, exhaling deeply. "I know you don't want to be just friends, but that's how it's got to be."

"Why?" Harry questioned. "Why can't we be more?" He reached out to her, taking her hands in his.

"You don't want to go out with me," Ginny told him sadly. "I'm the girl that everyone's slept with," Harry shuddered, "And you don't want to go out with me. People will just say 'Oh, I've slept with Harry Potter's girlfriend'. You shouldn't have to put up with that."

"Ginny, have I ever cared what people say?" He asked her, his dark eyebrows mixing in with his hair. "And besides, if those guys are scared of your brothers, their bound to be scared of me." She smiled and shook her head.

"It won't work."

"Is that your best excuse?" Harry asked her plainly.

"There's... there are just too many hairs from the unicorns tail," Ginny told him slowly, having to say it but wishing she didn't. "Just then, we've barely started on all the problems that are in the way and there's so many. We've both got too many issues for it to work."

"It did in the past," Harry pointed out blandly. "We can just try."

"This is now, Harry," Ginny told him. "We've both changed in so many ways and we... we'll just be kidding ourselves. We'll just give it false hope."

"But would you want a relationship?" Harry asked her, eyebrows clenched.

She threw back her head and sighed. "Harry, it just wouldn't work. Let's just cut our losses and be friends."

"But would you want something?" Harry questioned her, letting go of her hands and cupping her face. He tilted her head forward, bringing her eyes to his. "It's like I said before Gin, it's all or nothing for me. And I can't be without you anymore."

"Don't say things like that," She cried softly. "Just don't. We can't do th-"

"In the perfect world," Harry said calmly, cutting her off. "If there were no problems or anything wrong, would you want something? Would you give it a shot? You and me?"

"Yes!" Ginny told him loudly, trying to shake his hands off her face in vain. "But it means nothing, Harry, because we can never be! This time yesterday I hated you, but somehow I've ended up sitting here and hating to say this because I know how bad it's going to hurt! That's what you mean to me, you can do that somehow. You can make me go from a together twenty year old woman to the eleven year old girl who blushed when you entered the room. I'd do anything for you. I'd do anything I could because I love you and I always have! I've just been hiding from it for years, hiding from myself because it's easier to detach myself from... from feeling all this stuff that you provoke with a smile. I don't want to love you so openly that the whole world can see, but I do! And I can't help it because it's you and you're the person that can rule over everything I think, say and do without trying! I really can't help it! And I don't want to anymore because suffering in silence is surely better then admitting that I love you to myself and sitting around knowing I can't have you!"

"You can though," Harry told her, his thumbs wiping unshed tears from her eyes, taken aback slightly at this outburst. "You can have me, you already do. We could try, Gin, we could just try. And sure, it does hurt, but imagine what it would be like if it worked. Just think about it. It's like I said before, you're my everything. You make me feel real, like... like there's some hope for me to do something with my life after Voldemort, like I wasn't alive just to kill him and then I have nothing after that because it's over for me. You give me hope, you're my entire life."

"But," She began.

"No buts," Harry told her. "This is for keeps Gin, it's not like Quidditch or something where there is just a next game, this is forever. This is everything forever. I want to spend forever with you; I want to always be known as yours. I want to do everything with you and not be without you and I only want you in my life. We only live once and I want it to be with you." Ginny's breath hitched in her throat as he tried to explain the magnitude of it all. "You just told me you wanted all of that too, so just... just why not? The problems don't matter, it's the good stuff that does."

"It's just too much," Ginny said, noticing his emerald eyes glazing slightly. "There are too many problems, too many little niggling things for us to ever be happy. All we'd do is fight because we could never get over all the little issues. And it's too painful, it's too much."

"I want to spend my life trying to get through the problems, though," Harry told her plainly. "I'd spend my life with you getting over those, and if we can't, I'll die trying. If we fight, so what? Look at Ron and Hermione! Even my parents hated each other for years and years. I'd spend the rest of my life fighting with you if we could have just one day together being happy because it would be worth it with you."

"It's still too much," Ginny told him wearily. "I wish it wasn't but it is."

"It's only too much because you let it!" Harry told her fiercely as her hands reached up and clutched onto his softly. "Something Dumbledore once said was making the choice between what's easy and what is right. And we're right; you know it. If it hurts, so what, it's like I said, it'll all be worth it if we're together."

"I suppose," Ginny whispered half heartedly.

"It's like Ron and Hermione were saying at Christmas," Harry told her with a small smile. "We're so much better together than apart. And together, I think we could make it through anything. But if it doesn't work,"

"We can at least say we've tried," Ginny finished for him, meeting his eyes with a look that made his day. "We're not going to sit around in ten years wondering what could have been if we had have just given it this shot. No regrets."

"Yeah," Harry grinned so widely that his cheeks hurt.

"Yeah," Ginny repeated, dropping her hands from his and to her side, a satisfied smile on her face. "We'll give it a shot, because you're right, we're better together, so it's worth the entire struggle."

"No, you're worth the struggle," Harry told her happily and she giggled. "Just you."

"So are you going to kiss me now then?" Ginny smiled placing her forehead against his.

"Well, now if you'd like," Harry leant in.

"Wait," Ginny halted him, tugging her head out of his hands and smirking as he stuck his lower lip out, pulling a sad face. "Are we going to tell Ron and Hermione about this?"

"Let's see how long it is before they notice," Harry said, closing his eyes and leaning in again. Ginny pulled away again.

"You know, last time you said that it didn't work out too well," Ginny told him as he opened his eyes, looking slightly put out.

"Well," Harry deliberated, putting his hands on her hips. "Is there any super evil guys trying to kill me at the moment?"

"Probably," Ginny told him. "I'm sure there are plenty of uncaptured Death Eaters who would like to top you."

"But they're just evil," Harry pointed out, grinning. "But we're talking super evil here, Gin."

"Doesn't seem so then," Ginny smirked.

"Well then," Harry grinned, their foreheads falling together again, Ginny's hair forming a red curtain around their heads. "In that case, I'm not going anywhere." He drew out the last word, breathing in her scent.

Both of them smiling so widely it was incredibly awkward, their lips met passionately and they fell into each others arms once again, and the world was how it should be.


A/N: Weeeeeell? What did we think? Was the fluffyness level enjoyable? They were never going to work out all of their problems, the idea was that there were too many for that, but they can get over their stubbornness, grow up a bit and move on, taking their issues with them and facing them when they need to. Now, I have a feeling that that leaves around two chapters left and epilogues of sorts, of which there may be up to three. Please review! It's just down there!