A/N: I own absolutely nothing. Rated T for language . . . and a warning for one really bizarre couple that I started liking this week. Yeah, don't ask. For the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum's "Shuffle" Challenge.

I.

I'll Stand By You

Carrie Underwood

Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley

He knows he said he wanted nothing more than a sandwich and sleep.

But he lied. He really knows that Ron needs Hermione now, and she needs him, and they need to be alone.

But Harry knows what he needs.

He sees her sitting in a window, clutching her knees to her chest, drawn up in a ball. She is trying not to cry, not to allow herself to feel. But he can see it's destroying her.

He lifts his Invisibility Cloak off of him. "Ginny?" His voice is barely a whisper.

She turns her brown eyes towards him, and he sees her breath catch in her chest. Harry realizes that they never had a proper reunion. He had seen her come through Ariana's portrait, his heart had stopped, and he had wanted to scream at her because she had insisted on fighting.

But everything's different now. Her family, hell his family . . . they have been set adrift. And even though he is the hero of the wizarding world, he realizes he has to be the man for Ginny. He can't run from her, he can't hold back from her.

That is if she'll have him.

"H-Harry?" Her voice is soft and he can hear it breaking. Her resolve is crumpling, he can see. So he lets his cloak fall to the stone and he goes to sit in front of her. He is relieved that she allows him to hold her hand.

Her chin quakes. The dam holding her back falls apart.

"Ginny . . ."

She opens her mouth wide, but nothing comes out. The only thing that runs down her face are her tears and it's only after he pulls her towards him and embraces her fully that she gasps and grabs his shirt in clumps.

He rubs her back as she sobs and says, "Fred . . ." over and over again.

II.

Once

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

Lavender Brown

How long has she been here? One week? Two?

Oh Godric . . . three?

St. Mungo's. It's so painfully lonely.

Her mum survived the war, which is good . . . but when she had seen Lavender lying there in the sterile bed for the first time, the Healers had to hold her because she had fainted. She's been here every day, though, to fuss over her wrappings and her care. It's nice, because she realizes she hasn't been around her much over the last seven years, since it was summers and holidays divided between her mum and the Patils and Hogwarts the rest of the time.

But as much as she loves her mum, she cannot replace the gaping chasm in her heart.

She's alive, but she has lost her sister.

Parvati.

Lavender cries again, she swipes at her eyes and she yearns for Seamus to hold her like he used to.

But Seamus is not really around much anymore.

When he is, he cannot look at her, he cannot approach her bed without crushing pain and suffocating guilt clouding his eyes. He brings Dean with him, but Dean is lost, she can see that. Dean is as broken as they all are . . . perhaps even more so because he doesn't talk about his pain and suffering.

There's a knock at the door.

Anthony Goldstein.

He comes every day since she's been here, and he always brings her something, whether it be flowers, or some new wizarding music or some Witches Weekly.

She tries to not laugh when he attempts to talk about the latest gossip or famous witch or wizard — because it's Anthony and he hates it, but he does it because he knows it's what she loves.

III.

Generator

Foo Fighters

Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbott

"Haven't you slept?"

"I could ask you the same question, Neville."

He looks at Hannah as she helps with the rescue and recovery efforts. He's seen her here at the entrance doors, in the Great Hall, in the Hospital Wing with the fighters who are awaiting transport to St. Mungo's — everywhere.

The battle's not but five hours past and he knows Hannah can push herself to limits, overcome fatigue and sickness to do amazing things, like some of the stuff that she pulled off with Dumbledore's Army this year.

But this is different. Neville can see the frantic need in Hannah to move, to do something so her mind doesn't linger long on Susan.

It was her and Ernie who carried Susan's body into the room with all the other fallen. They had laid her down and covered her with their robes and kissed her forehead. He had stood at the door and watched them.

Now, though, she is pushing herself to inhumanly limits. And she's going to push herself over the edge.

So, he swallows and goes to her. He grabs her shoulders gently and he takes a breath.

"Stop, Hannah."

She looks at him and her whole face is vibrating. "I can't! Neville," she looks at him. "If I stop, I'll see her."

He doesn't know what to do, but he remembers that he wrote to her after her mum died, and maybe she wants to talk to someone.

"I'm here, Hannah. If you need me."

She stops and he watches her as she smiles just a little, even though her eyes were wet. "You always are." Her voice is just a little disbelieving, but also a little amazed.

IV.

Oh Father

Madonna

Ernie Macmillan

He really doesn't want to do this. Come back home. But . . . hell, he's a veteran of a wizarding war, and, dammit! If he can't face the overbearing, stifling, suffocating presence of him, then what business did he even have fighting bloody Death Eaters?

"Ernest?"

"Father."

His mother pushes past the older man, and she grabs Ernie by the shoulders. "You're . . . you're all right?" And she hugs him tightly to her.

Ernie wants to shove everything down inside—

Why didn't you come fight with me?

Where's Edward? Did you even look for your other son?

It doesn't fucking matter that he's gay! Edward's your first born! There was a war on, you fucking idiots! Will it matter if Edward's dead?

Did you even care? Will it matter what I went through? Will it matter that I lost someone I loved? Some one I thought there was an ever after with. . . ?

But Ernie finds himself clinging to his mother, harder and tighter than he thought he would, and he doesn't even realize that he's crying until his father thrusts a handkerchief into his face.

V.

The Only One I Know

The Charlatans UK

Dean Thomas and Pansy Parkinson

Of all the dives that she had to show up to, she had to show up to one he chose, way the hell back in the dank recesses of Knockturn Alley.

Dean sneers into his pint. He's on his fifth . . . sixth . . . ? He gave up counting ages ago, but he does keep drinking, because he'll Floo to his flat and if he drinks, maybe he'll pass out and he'll be able to sleep—

She saunters up to him, taking the seat right next to him. With two fingers, she signals for the bartender to attend to her own needs. A shot of firewhiskey . . . no, make that a double.

She cocks an eyebrow at him and smirks. Dean thinks she's already three sheets because she sways a little as she lifts her glass . . . and because she smells like the Hog's Head on a Friday night.

"To Thomas," Pansy lifts her glass up and slurs, "to Mudbloods. Every — fucking — where. Even the ones next to me."

Dean slams his glass down, sloshing mead on the bartop. "Shut up anytime, Parkinson!"

"What? I was only toasting your success. You won, Thomas. And you — your entire Potter-loving band of idiots — you all got what you wanted and the whole fucking wizarding world's at your feet." She throws back the shot and winces as she swallows. "I'm reviled because I'm the one that wanted to turn him in and have all this shit end sooner rather than later, but . . . no!" She stares at the rim of her glass, swirling her finger on it. "Protect fucking Potter. At all costs."

She flicks her glass with her fingertips and it falls on the bartop. In a series of quick moves, she's off her barstool, she's walking away, and Dean's stumbling towards her because he's not letting her get away with that—

In the dark alley, he has a hold of her arm, and he's yelling at her to her face . . . something. He's not sure, but it's spiked with the months he had been on the run and had been in hiding and, even though it's past, he can feel that moment when he had watched two men he came to respect and love like best mates die and he's hurting and she's hurting—

He is in mid-scream when he realizes his face is close to hers. So close he can feel her breath. And it's so warm, even though it smells like the entire stock of the Hog's Head. It's human and Dean realizes he hasn't had true human touch in ages.

And it isn't long after that that she's wrapping her hand around his head and forcing his lips to meet hers.

He hasn't kissed a girl in so long . . . he hasn't kissed Luna in so long because Luna is lightness and happy and he feels everything around him growing more and more dark. Besides, who wants to be the bastard that hurts Luna? Not him.

Kissing Pansy, then, is right. She's just as fucked up as him. And don't two wrongs make a right?

Pansy's kissing him hard and furiously — saying she hasn't had warm male contact in so long as he presses his lips to her neck and chest, saying she's . . . "fucking pathetic for slumming it with a Mudblood."

But she yields to his greedy touch nonetheless.