May 7th, 1998

The letter took several days to get to me. I was at the Burrow when the massive eagle owl landed on the open window sill of the kitchen while we were all eating dinner. We all jumped in surprise.

"Who's owl is that?" Ron asked.

"That's Draco Malfoy's." Hermione said.

"How do you know that?" He asked quickly.

"It was the biggest owl of anyone in our school and I happened to notice it always landed where he sat." She said simply.

"How can anyone remember that kind of detail?" He asked curiously, more astounded by her memory than the owl.

When nobody had gone to retrieve the letter from the owl, it flew into the room and plopped itself in front of my plate, just barely avoiding stepping into my food. It held its leg out with a great deal of insistence. "What an aggressive bird," Molly remarked. I finally reached out and removed the bit of parchment from his leg. I gave him a chunk of my roll to compensate him before he flew back out through the window.

"What's it say?" Ron and Ginny asked simultaneously.

I put the scroll in my pocket, "Dunno, I'll read it later."

"You're not curious as to why Draco Malfoy of all people is writing you?" Hermione inquired, giving me an odd look.

"I'm more hungry than I am curious." I admitted. This seemed to amuse them enough to distract them from the letter. We ate through the meal quietly. It had been a hard time for the Weasley family since the war ended. Hermione and I had more or less moved in for a while. Molly and Arthur didn't seem to mind. They knew we were sharing bedrooms, they didn't care. They were a little preoccupied with their grief. When night had fallen and we had all had about five servings of Molly's cooking, I asked Ginny if she would like to take a walk with me. We'd done this multiple time since the war ended. She helped me through my survivor's guilt during most of these walks. But this was going to be a different conversation altogether.

"How're you doing?" She asked as we started wandering around the backyard.

"Better. Not perfect yet, but I'm better." I assured her. "Listen, would you mind if I read this letter really quick?"

"Can it wait?"

"Something tells me its contents are going to be directly relevant to you anyway, so it might be a good idea to read it now and then we can talk about it," I explained.

She gave me a curious expression but agreed to it. I took the letter out of my pocket and unravelled it, reading it quickly. Its contents did not surprise me — at first. Then I read the simple three words. I had strongly suspected he had feelings for me, but I had no idea that he actually loved me. It was both flattering and heart breaking. I rolled the parchment back up and put it in my pocket again. "So, I'm really not sure how to say this."

"Just say it," She said. She always made it clear that she was happy to hear anything that I might say.

"Before I started to realize my feelings for you, I had a couple of flings with Draco." I had always thought this moment would be difficult. That it would be next to impossible to spit the words out. In many ways it had felt more uncomfortable telling Hermione than it was to tell Ginny. I let the words just tumble right out of my mouth, as if their meaning was not incredibly significant.

She coughed abruptly, as if the surprise had cut off her breathing supply. I stopped walking and watched her carefully. She looked at me in shock for a little while, but eventually her expression started to shift. She sighed, "What do you mean by flings?"

"I won't give you graphic details, but we had sexual interactions." I wondered if I was actually anxious but it was manifesting in an unnerving calm. Perhaps I had finally come to terms with the fact that it had happened, and that it wasn't the end of the world.

"That's what I thought." She said. She glanced away from me and smiled dryly as she ran a hand through her hair, "I'm just surprised, I'm not even that mad. I get it. We both have our exes that effect us. But they don't really matter to us anymore. Right? I don't think about Dean. Do you think about Draco?"

"No. Not at all," I assured her. Not until his owl came crashing into the Burrow had I really paid any thought to him since we both nearly died in the fiendfyre. It hadn't been relevant to pay any mind to him.

"So what's the letter about then?"

I smiled dryly and sighed, "Well, I might not think about him anymore, but he still think about me apparently. He said he loves me."

Rather than being offended or assuming a sort of competition, she sighed. She looked sympathetic. "Oh. Poor thing. I know what that feels like, to love Harry when he doesn't even know it. What are you going to tell him?" She asked, reaching out and taking my hands in hers. She was taking this far better than I expected her to.

"I don't think I'm going to say anything. I think he knows that it's not mutual. He said he doesn't care how I respond to the letter, so I'm just going to leave it be. I doubt I'll ever see him again anyway, and if I do it's better that the past is in the past."

"That's a good policy to have," She agreed, not being so subtle about the fact that she was scooting closer to me.

"Ginny, what are you doing?"

"Nooothing," She giggled, swinging our arms back and forth as she eased forward.

"Ginny," I laughed as she continued with this pattern.

"What, do I not flirt as well as Draco?"

"Oh, Merlin, you're going to give me so much grief over this, aren't you?"

"You bet," She assured me, now close enough that we were nose to nose. "What did you see in him anyway? He's so rude."

"I didn't really see anything. I was just stupid." I shrugged nonchalantly, moving one of her hands to my shoulder and my hand to her waist. We ambled around the yard, slowly but surely dancing in repetitive circles.

She smiled, "Well that's reassuring."

"Why's that?"

"I was … just a little worried there was some commonality between me and him. I didn't want that to be the case."

"You couldn't less alike if you tried." I reminded her. "Can I tell you something else?"

"Oh don't tell me you shagged Neville."

"Oh, quit it." I rolled my eyes, "It's serious, do you want to hear it or not?"

She smiled, "Alright, out with it then."

I stopped dancing with her briefly, though I still held her close and looked into her eyes, "When I went into the forest, when I stood in front of Voldemort and was waiting to die, the last thing I thought before the spell hit me was you. I thought of our last kiss together."

Her playful demeanor diminished dramatically and she only managed to blink a few times in response. "I was the last thing on your mind before …?"

"I died? Yes."

"Are you just saying that to get me to fool around with you?" She asked suspiciously.

"Of course not!" I said, slightly taken aback that she would assume such a thing. "I genuinely mean it. I have no ulterior motive. I just wanted you to know."

She wrapped her arms around me and leaned up to kiss me. When she pulled back a moment or two later she simply muttered, "You're too good for this world, Harry Potter."